Catching up on some sweeps!!!!!
On Manoah, Gurriel, Apple TV+, Stripling, sloppy defence, Kikuchi, Merryweather, Berríos, Gausman, Richards, Captain Kirk, Reese McGuire, Ryu, runs (finally), and more!
The Blue Jays just keep winning, and at the risk of jinxing this incredible run by actually, finally, writing about it some more, I think it’s about time I do a little bit of catching up here. The Jays have won eight straight and just swept two pretty good teams in the Angels and White Sox.
So let’s talk about it!
Up: The Angels Series!
I was at a wedding over the weekend — congrats, Josh and Cheyenne! — and had some out of town friends around later as well, so wasn’t able to write as much about the Angels series as I’d have liked to. And while I’d rather not dwell too much on games that are already kind of stale, these were pretty spectacular games! A trio of one-run victories over a team that entered the weekend ahead of the Jays (at 27-19 to Toronto’s 24-20), and ended behind the Jays, who were by then on their way to claiming the top AL Wild Card spot.
Plus, somewhat significantly, the run between the 8-1 win in St. Louis and Sunday’s victory saw the Jays’ offence explode for 35 runs over five games, after having scored just 27 over their previous 10. (They’ve since played three more games and scored 21 times in those! That’s an average of seven runs per game. Four of their eight games of seven-plus runs have come during this win streak!)
It was clearly not a good May for most of the Blue Jays’ lineup, but they certainly ended it on a high note.
Some highlights!
Friday
• Ho hum, Alek Manoah was brilliant again, surpassing the nine strikeout mark — something he did five times in 2021 — and overcoming just the third multi-homer game of his career. Final line: Three runs (two earned) on seven hits over six innings, with nine strikeouts and no walks. Something interesting about the lack of walks here is the fact that it was Manoah's fourth no-walk start of 2022, after accomplishing the feat just twice in 2021 — something that has helped him get by without having the same kind of strikeout stuff he showed last season.
• Regarding the strikeout issue, we can see it visualized quite clearly in this chart from Props.cash — player prop research made easy! This was what his trend line looked like coming into this one, so getting up to nine was quite an outlier for this season. (And remained an outlier after his start in the White Sox series, in which he only managed to strike out five.)
• Lourdes Gurriel Jr. hasn’t quite done it long enough to call this a breakout yet, but he's taken his wRC+ for the season from 70 to 89 since the start of the Angels series. It started with his three hits here, including an RBI double and a single that scored the winning run on a Juan Lagares error in left field — somewhat indicative of the kind of sloppy game this was on both sides. (Interesting look from Noah Vanderhoeven here at Medium at a subtle change Gurriel may have made in the box that could be behind the improved results. Namely, that he’s not quite crowding the plate the way he was earlier in the year.)
• Gurriel was mic’d up for this one as it was one of MLB’s new exclusive Apple TV+ games — a broadcast that was… fine? I don’t know. Some people liked it, some people didn’t, which is pretty much exactly what you’d expect from an unfamiliar crew being parachuted into a 162-game TV broadcast schedule for a one-off. Katie Nolan is always fun, at least. Personally, I’m more bothered by the whole idea of the thing, which makes games inconvenient to find for a whole lot of loyal fans. It was a nice surprise that they were free, at least.
• Three perfect innings from the Jays' bullpen really made the difference here. Yimi Garcia (0), Trevor Richards (2), and Jordan Romano combined for five strikeouts, to boot. Romano was especially impressive, adding velocity to his slider (which was at 87.6, compared to an average this year of 86.5), and spin to his fastball (2,699 rpm, which was up nearly 400 rpm — higher than even his best months of early 2021).
Saturday
• They needed a Ross Stripling save in this one, somehow, and even more unbelievably managed to get it! But there was plenty of weirdness that happened before we got there. A see-saw affair that saw the Angels take the lead twice, only to cough it up for good on a comical two-out Matt Chapman “double” — though much of the credit for this one should go to the two misplays by Juan Lagares and the error by Luis Rengifo.
• The Jays were 6-for-15 with runners in scoring position in this one, flipping a script we’d heard for much of the month. They also saw doubles from Bo Bichette, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Cavan Biggio, and Raimel Tapia. Alejandro Kirk chipped in with a pinch hit RBI single. Biggio, Kirk, Chapman, and Tapia all had two-out RBIs. This was a whole lot more like the Jays we expected to see this year — at least on the hitting side.
• Yusei Kikuchi had a fine enough night on the hill in this one, allowing just two runs over five innings, but the base paths were busy throughout. He allowed nine hits and a walk, forcing him to work with runners on constantly. The fact that he managed just four strikeouts, three of which came in his impressive third inning of work — his closest to a clean inning, which saw him K Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout before allowing a deflected infield hit to Matt Duffy (which the usually sure-handed Kikuchi probably felt he should have snagged), then striking out Jared Walsh to end the frame — is a strong indication that he wasn’t quite at his best.
• Kikuchi just isn’t seeing as much swing-and-miss on his crucial fastball/slider (cutter? slutter?) combo since he so excitingly debuted the new version of the latter a few starts ago. Back on May 4th, when he allowed just one run on three hits over six innings against the Yankees, he generated whiffs on 41% of the swings against his slider and 31% of them against his fastball. That’s steadily declined, to the point where in this one those rates were 19% and 24% respectively. Still, he’s looking much better than at the start of the year.
• Julian Merryweather continues to confound and frustrate. He really needs to find a less straight fastball, or at least start locating the damn things better!
Sunday
• And you thought Saturday was a see-saw affair? This one was like a pendulum at 200 bpm, not least of all because a guy who is two months into a seven-year, $131 million contract was inexplicably awful again. José Berríos allowed six runs on six hits and a walk over just 2 2/3 innings. Oof.
Still seeing a lot of blue there, José!
• It didn’t help, either, that one of the longer tenured Jays — the well-liked Ryan Borucki — got himself designated for assignment not long after yet another underwhelming performance in this one. Borucki faced six batters over two innings, getting out of the third with a couple of hard lineouts around a single. Then in the fourth he walked Tyler Wade then gave up a home run to Taylor Ward before striking out Shohei Ohtani on strikes. The Ohtani thing is impressive, sure, but Borucki's problems haven't been with left-handers. Both the single in the third and the home run in the fourth were to right-handed hitters, which bumped his awful .375/.583/.875 line against right-handers to an ungodly, unplayable .455/.600/1.091 mark.
• But, of course, Berríos was the story on the pitching side in this one. Through 10 starts this season he’s now got a 5.62 ERA, a 5.02 FIP, has averaged fewer than five innings per start, is down nearly 2.5 K/9 from his career mark (6.5 versus 8.9), and holds the highest barrel rate and the fourth-highest hard hit rate among qualified MLB starters. At the risk of oversimplifying, it seems to me like he’s just not putting his pitches where they need to be!
For example, here’s where he’s induced swing-and-miss this season off of the fastball and then the curveball.
And now here’s where those pitches have been located overall.
Catching a whole lot of the plate, José! Next time let’s try not doing that!
• Lourdes Gurriel Jr.’s five-RBI, two walk day has to be the story on the offensive side here, if we’re singling out a player. I’m not sure we have to, though, as there were hits up and down the lineup in this one, and big ones at that. Bo Bichette evened up the game with a homer in the eighth, just a few batters before Gurriel doubled to put the Jays up. Raimel Tapia was 2-for-4 with a walk and three RBIs, Springer had a pair of hits, Kirk had a pair of hits, a walk, and four runs scored, Biggio was on base twice, Teoscar Hernández didn’t start due to a hip issue but came off the bench to draw a game-tying bases-loaded walk (and then would single in the ninth). As a team they walked eight times — more than all but two other games to that point in the season (one of which was the 8-1 win in St. Louis less than a week before this one; they’d do it again against the White Sox on Wednesday night).
And they did it all with Vlad out of the lineup and only available to pinch hit. This was very much more like it!!
Up: The White Sox Series!
More wins! More hits! More homers! More everything!
Tuesday
• Kirky! The Captain! Locomotive Kirk! Call him what you like, this one was, of course, the coming out party for the 2022 version of Alejandro Kirk — a player who didn’t manage an extra-base hit in the first month of the season, but who a lot of people started noticing a whole lot of good things about after this two homer night with the Jays back home to face the White Sox.
Kirk is 23. Yes, he’s a unicorn in terms body type, speed, skillset. Sure, the whole package looks untenable when he’s weirdly swinging at balls off the plate and not hitting for any power whatsoever. But when he turns in a 181 wRC+ May, bumping his season mark up to 133 (as it was by the end of this series), that’s pretty noticeable!
By the end of Thursday’s game, Kirk’s wRC+ was the third best among 28 MLB catchers with at least 100 plate appearances this season. And his 1.29 BB/K rate ranked fifth among 279 hitters of all positions with at least 100 PA this year — and was one of only ten marks above 1.00. Also noticeable! Clearly the Jays have a good problem on their hands when it comes to what to do with their catchers.
• Kevin Gausman wasn’t quite as brilliant in this one as we’ve become accustomed to, but he certainly wasn’t bad. His biggest sin was probably that he lasted just five innings (in which he gave up three runs on six hits and a walk, with five strikeouts), which meant that Trevor Richards came into the game.
• Richards pitched twice in the Angels series and did a great job both times, facing the minimum in each one-inning appearance and picking up two strikeouts in each outing. When he's on, he's on. Unfortunately, bad outings seem to crop up for him a little more often than you'd like to see — which I suppose is why he was pitching here in the sixth, and not given a later-inning assignment. Since the start of the year, here are the number of run-free outings Richards has provided between each of the ones in which he's given up an earned run: two, six, five, zero, four. He's only given up an earned run in five of his appearances thus far, which accounts for only 23% of his appearances. That's not far off the rate at which Adam Cimber has given up an earned run (20%), but it sometimes feels a whole lot worse, doesn't it?
• Anywho, Richards gave up two (one of which came in after Cimber replaced him), letting the White Sox back into the game at 6-5 after the Jays had done a nice job of getting to Chicago starter Lucas Giolito. And it would have been a tie game if not for a ridiculous play from Lourdes Gurriel Jr. in right — and an absolute boner from former Jays catcher Reese McGuire, who noticeably slowed down on his tag from third when he saw that Gurriel’s throw after catching a Yasmani Grandal fly out was going to second base. The inning ended when Danny Mendick was deemed out at second, with McGuire still very clearly not yet having crossed the plate. McGuire was really caught with his dick in his hand on this one!
• Teoscar Hernández also had two hits, two runs scored, and two RBIs in this one, as he starts to heat up. (Teo has taken his wRC+ on the season from an awful 31 mark at the start of the Angels series all the way up to 84. Getting there!
Wednesday
• Hyun Jin Ryu started this one by giving up a lead-off home run to Andrew Vaughn (which would be answered in the bottom half of the frame by Santiago Espinal), before settling down for the rest of that inning and two more. The fourth was a little uglier, but Ryu — even though his velocity was dipping significantly, down 1.7 mph on the fastball to 87.6 mph — generally looked like the number five starter he's become over the last calendar year. Then, with just 58 pitches in the books, he didn't answer the bell for the fifth inning.
We later learned that he once again was experiencing forearm tightness — the same affliction that caused his velocity to dip during his second start of the season, leading to a nearly month-long IL stint — and will need an MRI. He was placed on the 15-day IL a day later.
• Ross Stripling filled in admirably in this one, giving the Jays 2 2/3 scoreless innings, while allowing just three hits and no walks. But the story here is Ryu, whose contract with the Blue Jays expires after next season, meaning that any significant amount of time he'd need to miss could effectively end his Blue Jays career. Of course, we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves here. Ryu has always struggled with his health — and always been resilient.
A great SI piece from Stephanie Apstein on the 2019 Dodgers and their love for Ryu and his unorthodox routines gives us a good overview of that history.
He underwent Tommy John surgery in high school, then starred for the Hanhwa Eagles of the KBO. Before the 2013 season, Los Angeles paid $25.7 million to the Eagles, then $36 million to Ryu over six years. Ryu pitched well that season but lost a month of ’14 to left-shoulder inflammation. He tore his labrum the following March and missed the year. In ’16 he made only one start before elbow tendinitis shut him down. He began ’17 having thrown 4 2/3 innings in 28 months. He struggled, compiling a 3.77 ERA amid foot and leg injuries. He pitched well last year but lost three months to a groin strain.
Ryu finished second in NL Cy Young voting in 2019, then finished third in voting for the AL version of the trophy the following year, his first with the Blue Jays. It gets harder for the body to recover as one gets older — something I can definitely attest to after last weekend! — but hopefully he has a bunch more effective innings left in him, not just for the Jays’ sake, but because he really is a joy to watch when he’s on.
• On the offensive side of the ball, ho hum, just another seven runs on 10 hits and eight walks. Bichette had three walks, Teoscar had two and a pair of hits, Vlad had two hits — an infield single that held up under review (and may have busted him out of his slump), and a particularly Vlad-esque blast to straight away centre in the ninth (which was on a ball in the lower third of the zone, an area he should be capable of doing damage in but has struggled to so far this season) — and Danny Jansen continued his transformation into José Bautista with another pull side home run. Danny Bats!
Thursday
• Alek Manoah began this game by giving up two hard hit singles. Two outs later he issued a four-pitch walk to load the bases. The White Sox threatened throughout the first, and Manoah at one point needed a mid-inning mound visit from pitching coach Pete Walker. It felt like the kind of inning that could undermine a great start, even if the damage was limited. But by the time it was all over, and he had struck out Yasmani Grandal to end it, no runs had been scored, and all it had cost him was 19 pitches. He'd end up pitching into the eighth, allowing just one hit between the second and the seventh, ending up with a final line of three runs on six hits and one walk over 7 2/3 innings, with five strikeouts. Again the strikeouts were on the low side, but if he's not missing bats he's at least missing barrels, which is allowing him to be efficient enough with his counts to go deep into games. He really is pretty special.
• Things got a bit shaky in that eighth, as the White Sox' three-run outburst made the score 4-3 Blue Jays, but the first four batters of the bottom of the frame — Teoscar Hernández (double), Alejandro Kirk (walk), Cavan Biggio (RBI double), and Matt Chapman (HBP) — all got on base, leading to a four-run rally that put the game safely enough out of reach that the Jays could summon Trent Thornton from the bullpen to finish it out.
• Three hits in this one for Espinal, two apiece for Hernández (one being a two-run blast in the fifth) and Kirk, a double and a walk for Vladdy, and an outstanding double (that saw him end up on third after a throwing error) and a pair of runs scored for Tapia. This really is more like it!
• How much more like it? Since the start of the Cardinals series back on May 23rd, the Jays have four players in the top 35 in baseball by wRC+ (min. 20 PA; 297 total): Tapia (35th, 190), Springer (23rd, 207), Danny Bats (19th, 216), and Kirk (3rd, 271). Among 11 Jays regulars, only Espinal has produced a wRC+ below 100 over that stretch. Only Biggio (45%) has struck out more than Tapia's very reasonable 26.1% rate, and only Biggio, Tapia, and Bichette are above Vlad's 20.5% mark. Seven players (provided you round up) have walked in 10% or more of their plate appearances over that span, and only one — Jansen at 4.3% — has walked less than Tapia (8.7%).
As a team, over that span the Jays have the best wRC+ in baseball at 155. They have the best walk rate in the sport at 12.4%, and the ninth-lowest strikeout rate at 19.7%. Their .229 ISO is tops by 19 points over second place Boston. Their average exit velocity and hard hit rate rank second. Their BB/K ratio is first. And yet this isn't necessarily because they've seen less velocity — the preponderance of which was talked about a lot during their early-May struggles — as the 94.4 mph average on the fastballs they've seen over that span is tied for second highest.
What's night and day, really, is the walk rate. Heading into the St. Louis series the Jays for the season were at 7.4%, fourth worst in baseball, and the narrative was that they needed to be more selective. Lo and behold, they start walking more — and chasing less — and good things have started to happen all over the place.
They won't be able to keep this pace up forever (though facing the Twins, Royals, Tigers, and Orioles in their next four series gives them a real chance to go on a massive run). They almost certainly won't be able to avoid another slump at some point (though hopefully it won't be as prolonged as the one in early May). But the fact that they seem to have figured it out and gotten through whatever was collectively wrong with them for a while there is pretty great! It tells us they should be able to do it again. And it has propelled them to a 30-20 record, with a firm grip on a playoff spot, and a much easier schedule ahead than the Yankees team they're back to chasing for the American League East crown.
Pretty good run!
Other notes:
• Just a couple of other notes for this one, the first being that I won’t be including other notes in this one. There’s just too many at this point! The ones on the prospects and the recently retired members of the 2015-16 Jays alone would take up too much space. So I’m just going to save those for Sunday/Monday’s “Weekend Up!” piece.
• Speaking of Sunday, my second note is that Nick and I will be back at the conclusion of Sunday’s game for another live edition of Blue Jays Happy Hour on Callin. Be sure to get the app, and follow us on there to join in live!
Next up: Friday, 7:07 PM ET: Jays vs. Twins (Yusei Kikuchi vs. Chi Chi González), TV: Sportsnet, Radio: Sportsnet 590
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You jinxed it.
It was a great run and I think with the favourable schedule, we can go on another, but there are some red flags with the pitching now...baseball is so crazy. I have a feeling we won't see Ryu for a while...I didn't realise he had so much injury history, it's amazing he's still pitching! Kikuchi is not a sure thing and god knows what is going on with Berrios. So where is our starting pitching depth? What happens of Gausman or Manoah get hurt? The Front Office would have been aware of this at the beginning of the year and I'm sure we'll be going after a starter at the trade deadline.
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