Checking back in on the Jays' top pre-camp storylines
The latest on where things stand with Kikuchiwatch, Ricky Tiedemann, bullpen battles, the 26th man, José (ugh) Berríos, second base, health, and more!
Spring training is chugging along, and while it hasn’t been an especially eventful one for the Blue Jays, I feel like I’ve reached the point where — much like Brandon Belt and his surgically repaired knee — I’d better get to ramping things up or people are going to start asking questions.
The thing is, it’s easy to lose your centre a little bit during the spring. The samples are small, the level of competition is all over the place, guys are working on things. Taking anything that happens in these fake games too seriously is a recipe for disaster. I’m old enough to remember Gabe Gross, you know? Hell, or Orelvis Martinez.
Those guys became compelling stories — which are fine and enjoyable in their own right! — but a compelling story is not necessarily a consequential one.
I’d posit that a good way to not get overly distracted by those kind of stories is to focus on the big picture. And, fortunately for us, what constitutes the big picture has essentially already been established. Several weeks ago we all had a bunch of questions that we hoped spring training might answer. Where are we on those questions now that opening day is less than two weeks away?
Uh… let’s find out!
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Kikuchiwatch
A perfect encapsulation of why I haven't been especially compelled by the stories coming out of Dunedin this spring is the whole Kikuchi "saga." For all the effort that's been expended examining his every (TV-viewable) pitch, assessing his mechanics, winding up the take machine, etc., we sit here less than two weeks from opening day and he has 16 strikeouts and nine walks in 13 innings. The ERA may be tidy (1.38), the WHIP looks pretty good (1.154), he's only allowed six hits so far, and some of the individual outings have seemed to offer a little hope, but those K and BB numbers put him pretty much exactly in line with the walk and strikeout rates he produced in 2022. And, the thing about that is, the walks are going to kill him if this keeps up. Opposing batters will not keep hitting .136 off of him forever.
It doesn't help, either, that the walk issues have been getting worse as the Grapefruit League season has progressed. In Kikuchi's last three starts (9 IP) he's walked eight. Gulp.
This doesn't necessarily portend doom, but things sure as hell don't feel as good as they did when he came out looking relatively great in his first couple of spring starts.
Ricky Tiedemann
Will Ricky Tiedemann pull an Alek Manoah and push up his timeline with an eye-popping spring? In a word: no. I don’t think that takes any of the shine off of the Blue Jays’ most gleaming prospect of the moment, but it is what it is. To this point Tiedemann has managed to get into just two Grapefruit League games, and in his second one he began by allowing a single — albeit to a former NL MVP, Andrew McCutchen — then surrendered a home run to known (*COUGH*) lefty-killer Carlos Santana.
That's not to characterize Tiedemann’s spring as any kind of a disappointment or a setback, but the Manoah-sized "wow" factor — an impossible ask in the first place, realistically — simply didn't materialize. And then his shoulder started (mildly) barking.
Bullpen battle
The Blue Jays’ bullpen situation has long seemed fairly settled, with six guys locks for spots as long as they're healthy (Romano, Swanson, Garcia, Bass, Mayza, Cimber), and the final two spots set to go to the pair of guys who are out of options (Richards, White). As camp has progressed, I don’t think a whole lot has changed.
No one seems to have taken the spot away from Richards, who has pitched somewhat well over his last four outings (four hits, three walks, and 10 strikeouts over 4 2/3 innings) after starting the spring with a couple of clunkers. I've been saying for practically the entire time he's been here that Richards is the kind of guy you'd want the Jays to take a shot on if some other team were to put him on waivers, and despite not being close to enamoured with him, I still basically feel that way. Even if he's not a high velocity guy, the strikeout stuff is clearly there. It's just, y'know, everything else that's lacking.
I have to believe he's a candidate to be moved closer to the start of the season, or perhaps early on in the year, because the bullpen is just a little too inflexible with him in it, yet he's still standing while many of the Jays’ other candidates for his spot have already been reassigned to minor league camp.
On Monday the team announced that Brandon Eisert, Julian Fernández, Paul Fry, Drew Hutchison, and Jackson Rees have been sent down, joining Hayden Juenger, Hagen Danner, Yosver Zulueta, Adrian Hernandez, Casey Lawrence, and a host of younger arms who were originally among the club's spring invitees.
Remaining in camp at the time of this writing are NRI's Luke Bard, Junior Fernández, Bowden Francis, Jay Jackson, and Matt Peacock, along with 40-man guys Thomas Hatch, Nate Pearson, Zach Pop, Zach Thompson, and Trent Thornton.
With White potentially starting the year on the IL, one of those guys might get an early look.
Thornton would probably be the safe bet for that gig, given the Blue Jays’ odd fixation with him over the years, but of the NRI’s, I think Bowden Francis has certainly made a solid case for a job. For whatever little they’re worth at this time of year, the numbers check out — four hits, three walks, 11 strikeouts and two earned runs over 8 2/3 innings — but even more impressive has been his stuff. In his blink-and-you-missed it appearance in the majors last year Francis averaged 92.5 on his fastball, but on Saturday against the Yankees he was up to 93.6 on average, touched 96, had about 100 extra rpm, and generated nine whiffs on 21 swings, plus nine more called strikes on it.
With White and Thompson already on the 40-man, it’s not going to be easy for Francis to force his way into the picture, but I’d wager he’s a couple steps closer now than he was a month ago.
Jackson, it’s worth noting, has also impressed. The journeyman, who was a top 100 prospect (98th) for Baseball America in 2010 (one spot ahead of Jake Arrieta!), has produced 11 strikeouts to only two walks (and no earned runs) in 8 1/3 innings, plus some additional velocity of his own (94.8 mph on Monday, compared to 92.6 in his brief big league stint with Atlanta last year).
26th man competition
As I’ve already mentioned, the Jays made some roster cuts on Monday, the most notable being Addison Barger. The infielder was very impressive this spring, especially early on, but with just eight games at Triple-A under his belt he was probably always a longer shot to make the club than a lot of fans — myself included! — were willing to believe. He’ll almost certainly make his big league debut at some point this season though.
Another notable cut on the position player side was outfielder Wynton Bernard. Also a long shot to make the club, Bernard hasn't impressed a ton this spring, slashing just .226/.235/.323 over 31 plate appearances. He did, however, put up some very loud numbers in Triple-A last year with the Rockies' affiliate in Albuquerque (playing in one of the most hitter-friendly parks on the planet), which could have given someone squinting hard enough the idea that he might be a big league option as a right-handed bench bat/extra outfielder. Evidently not.
The candidates for the last spot on the bench who remain in big league camp are, frankly, the ones we probably would have expected all along: Otto López and Nathan Lukes.
Spring stats matter a whole lot less, if they even matter at all, than things like where a hitter's approach is at, how he's striking the ball, etc., but it's nonetheless difficult not to notice what López has done over the last month. For Canada at the WBC he went 5-for-17 with a homer, a triple, and one walk to one strikeout. With the Jays, though he hasn't played in the Grapefruit League since March 5th, he's 7-for-15, with a double, a triple, and two walks to two strikeouts. He was maybe always the favourite to take the last spot on the bench anyway — though I would still really like to see a trade for a Steve Pearce type! — but if not, perhaps he is now. (Provided the groin issue that currently has him day-to-day ends up being as mild as they’re saying).
López checks a bunch of boxes in terms of what the Jays are likely looking for in the last guy on their bench. He played shortstop for Canada at the WBC, is probably best at second base, and can also handle centre field. At the plate he severely lacks power, but in FanGraphs' recently-released top Jays prospects list, on which López ranked ninth, Eric Longenhagen and Tess Taruskin praised his hit tool and noted that "he’s especially difficult to beat with fastballs and puts enough balls in play to be a semi-regular big leaguer at several positions."
A Pearce-type he isn't, but that could work. And he has the advantage over Lukes — who is also having a nice enough spring, I should note — of hitting from the right side.
Another name to at least theoretically watch is Vinny Capra, who is also still with the big leaguers and has slashed .250/.435/.500 this spring. Again, obviously we're talking about a tiny sample, but Capra's got a little bit of defensive versatility of his own, and though his platoon splits were pretty even last year in Buffalo, he torched left-handed pitching (albeit in just 75 PA) in New Hampshire in 2021.
José Berríos
Uh... yeah.
Berríos struggled in his one WBC start for Puerto Rico, and that's putting it mildly — six runs (five earned) on five hits and two walks over just one-plus innings. That said, there are genuinely some silver linings to take from his disastrous outing, and I don't just mean that one of the six runs he allowed was unearned!
For one, the first batter Berríos faced reached on an error. For two, the first run he allowed was on a flare of a single. And for three, the three-run home run he surrendered to Anthony Santander wasn’t on one of those poorly located fastballs that bedevilled him so often last season, it was on an 85 mph slurve that tumbled below the bottom edge of the zone.
A good pitch? Not necessarily. But definitely an interesting one.
In his excellent breakdown of this latest Berríos debacle, Sportsnet’s Arden Zwelling makes the case that an 0-0 slurve to Santander, a left-handed hitter whose power is especially pronounced against breaking balls from right-handers in the lower half of the zone and below, is a pitch that Berríos never should throw — and, more to the point, one that the Blue Jays’ staff would have never had in their game plan.
He writes:
To say Blue Jays' pitching coaches would be livid if that pitch was called and thrown in a regular-season game is an understatement. It would fly in the face of everything they’d discussed in Berrios’ pre-game strategy meeting. Hours and hours of research and analysis out the window.
There is a time and place for Berrios to throw first-pitch breaking balls to lefties. That time is against hitters that struggle to barrel breaking pitches and that place is on the outside edge of the plate, trying to steal a back-door strike. The Blue Jays want the worst-case outcome to be a ball outside or weak contact off the end of that left-hander’s bat. Not a breaking ball that bends directly into the barrel, as the one to Santander did, allowing the hitter to turn on the ball and lob it over the right field fence.
You can see it in the swing Santander executed. He recognized spin and took his 8-iron to it. He’ll do that every time. He loves early-count breaking balls in that location. And the Blue Jays know that.
In other words, maybe we don’t need to be overly alarmed by an outing that was — understandably — painfully reminiscent of what we saw so often from Berríos in 2022. He was, in a pretty meaningful way, not the same guy as he’s going to be when he takes the hill in a Blue Jays uniform. At least for one pretty important pitch.
Am I putting lipstick on a pig here? Well, yes. Obviously. It was bad! This is kinda scary!
But… I don’t know. At least Hyun Jin Ryu seems to be on the right track and still aiming for a mid-July return. That’s something, right???
Second base logjam
I saw some Whit Merrifield love from a few places on my Twitter timeline over the weekend, which in the abstract is fine enough, I suppose. Merrifield is a versatile defender, good base runner, etc. etc. He made a very nice play on a ball off the wall during Sunday’s untelevised game against the Rays at the Trop, for example, which sparked some of that love.
Merrifield’s a nice enough player having a nice spring, slashing .333/.387/.593 over 11 Grapefruit League games (9-for-27 with four doubles, a home run, two walks, and a couple of stolen bases). However — and I know I’ve been a bit of a broken record on this! — he's projected to be a below average hitter, with the system highest on him, per FanGraphs, handing him a 98 wRC+ projection — 10 points higher than he produced in 2022 and eight points higher than 2021.
He’s 34. Since the start of 2020 only eight of 118 qualified hitters have produced a worse mark than his 92. What am I missing here?
He also barely has a platoon split, so the idea of him being even adequate as the kind of lefty-mashing outfielder/bench piece that was the entire reason Grossman was appealing doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Merrifield's wRC+ against left-handed pitching over the last three seasons is 96. Against right-handers it's 91. And of 705 batters with at least 10 plate appearances in 2022, he's one of 35 who didn't once face a shifted infield — so don't expect any kind of a BABIP bump because of the rule changes.
Now, I acknowledge that an outfield with both Kevin Kiermaier and George Springer in it is going to need some cover, and Merrifield can certainly provide that. There's a role for him here. But for me he's mostly just a stopgap second baseman, and not a particularly exciting one.
I'm not saying a dead cat bounce is out of the question, but this is a guy well on the wrong side of 30 who is coming off of a .250/.298/.375! I know he’s looked good since the trade, but the optimism baffles me a little bit.
The same goes for Cavan Biggio — though me being a bit down on him is nothing new. He’s another of the Jays’ trio of second base options, and he's having a spring that, frankly, hasn't really answered any questions. On Saturday, Jays From the Couch posted a piece titled "Blue Jays Will Need To Find Playing Time For Cavan Biggio," citing the rather impressive .313/.371/.406 (.778 OPS) line he'd produced through 12 spring games. Three games later and he's down to .275/.341/.350 (.691 OPS) — a fact I don't bring up to pick on anybody, but to remind just how quickly the picture can change when we're looking at numbers produced in such tiny samples. (Something worth considering re: Merrifield's performances this spring and last September, too.)
Biggio's projections tend to be better than Merrifield's (though, interestingly, the system that's highest on Whit (The Bat) is lowest on Cavan, suggesting a 92 wRC+ for him), and he also has utility because of his defensive versatility. But, again, I'm not especially enthused. Santiago Espinal is a similar story, though he’s at least the best fielder of the bunch — and pretty clearly so, in my view (though the metrics indicate Whit is no slouch in his own right).
I don’t know. It's not that every single spot on the diamond has to be occupied by an All-Star, nor is it a bad thing that the Jays have more than adequate cover on the infield, or that Merrifield seems clearly to be the hot hand that demands riding for the moment. It's just... meh.
Health
As they usually are, some of the biggest stories to have occurred this spring across the majors have been the injuries. Edwin Díaz and Jose Altuve at the WBC, the Mets’ Brandon Nimmo scare, multiple Yankees pitchers. You get the idea. And yet the Jays — touch wood! — have so far managed to avoid anything even remotely catastrophic.
Sure, we’ve had Vlad’s bout of knee soreness, Mitch White settling into his ideal spot on the roster (IL), and Tiedemann’s shoulder — he threw on Sunday and felt fine (and, frankly, a little overly-precautionary early setback like this might just allow the organization to save some bullets for when he potentially reaches the majors later in the year). But otherwise? Unless anyone’s particularly worried about Belt’s knee, it’s been pretty clear sailing on the injury front. And, really, that’s all you can ask for out of the six-week slog that is spring training.
Dear god please don’t let me jinx it!
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