Long Weekend Up (Part II): Nelson Dunce/Rain-Bo Rising
On shoddy umpiring, a phantom balk, a huge double-victory, Rain-Bo Rising, José Berríos, Julian Merryweather, Yusei Kikuchi, unionizing the minors, Kyle Bradish, and more!
As I noted repeatedly in Part I of this long weekend roundup, after a successful, if nervy, sweep of the lowly Pittsburgh Pirates, the Blue Jays have moved on to what is undoubtedly a — [long exhale] — massive September series with the Baltimore Orioles. On the holiday Monday they played 18 innings of baseball — several of which they absolutely should not have due to the weather conditions — and apart from a couple of “uh-oh” moments and a protracted troll job from the umpiring crew, it went about as well as it possibly could have.
Their work isn’t done yet, of course. Not against these pesky Orioles or anybody else. But for four days against two of the teams projected before the season to be among the worst in baseball this year, the Blue Jays have looked like the team everybody expected them to be. Huzzah!
More importantly, they've gone from being in genuine danger of slipping behind the Orioles and out of the playoff picture, to 4.5 games clear of Baltimore and just a half game back of the maddeningly hot Rays and Mariners. It could definitely be a whole lot worse.
Here’s the finale of Long Weekend Up…
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Up: Game One: Jays 7 - Orioles 4
Jeff Nelson is a bozo. I don’t know what other conclusion a Blue Jays fan could come to about Monday’s umpiring crew chief. Partly that’s informed by history.
When you say “the bad umpire game” to someone who has followed the 2022 Toronto Blue Jays, inevitably the first one that comes to mind is the hack job Doug Eddings did in Chicago back in June, which led to a five-game suspension for hitting coach Guillermo Martinez, who awesomely got tossed during the lineup card exchange the following day when he berated Eddings. There was, however, another “bad umpire game” for the Jays this season, and it was authored by Nelson.
Back on April 16th, the Jays lost 7-5 to the A’s in a game that was so woefully umpired, and so egregiously imbalanced, that Umpire Scorecards said the A’s benefitted from 1.74 runs based on balls and strikes alone — a number that, honestly, felt light.
It felt especially light because of what happened in the bottom of the eighth inning. With no outs and the game tied 5-5, Nelson rung up Lourdes Gurriel Jr. on a 3-2 pitch that was clearly outside — a call that got the typically mild mannered Charlie Montoyo ejected for the first time this season — then did the same to the next batter, Matt Chapman, at 1-2.
Of course, Jays fans with longer memories are no fans of Nelson for another, more literally-franchise-altering reason.
Annnnnnnnyway, Nelson woke up on Monday morning and decided to call one (1) balk on Kevin Gausman.
Not to warn him, which Gasuman says umpires frequently do. “Every outing one umpire says something to me about it — ‘Hey, make sure you stop.’ So I was kind of maybe expecting something like that, or maybe a warning. So for it to happen right away.”
Not to think back to when his crew umpired Gausman twice last season — when he was still doing the same rocking back-and-forth on the balls of his feet thing with the briefest of pauses before delivering the pitch — without incident. (Though Gausman notes that these calls often come from the third base umpire, because they’ve got the opponents’ third base coach in their ear after every delivery, which he felt was also a reason Monday’s call from the second base umpire was unusual and likely premeditated.)
Not to do so with any sort of consistency from pitch-to-pitch.
Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I can no longer un-see what might be an “oh boy, here we go” look to the heavens from first base umpire Brian O’Nora after the pitch is delivered.
“Before I even threw the pitch, I heard him calling balk,” Gausman told reporters, including Sportsnet’s Arden Zwelling, after the game. “So, that made me pretty mad.”
Indeed it did! Gausman was heated, and it took an MVP performance from Bo Bichette — and not for the last time on the day! — to calm him down and keep him in the ballgame.
“Bo kind of saved me,” Gausman said later, “and kind of just did a good job of reminding me, 'Hey, we've got two games today, not just one game.'"
You can hear Gasuman’s comments in their entirety here (audio via Sportsnet):
Annnnnnnnnyway again, the Jays’ bullpen certainly didn’t need Gausman getting tossed with no outs in the fourth inning, and fortunately that didn't happen. Gausman was BABIP'd a bit, as usual, didn't necessarily have his best strikeout stuff (only 6 Ks), but didn't walk anybody and did a great job of keeping the Orioles off the board. He allowed 7 hits, but only two came around to score — a first inning home run off the bat of Anthony Santander and another from an RBI double by Blue Jays nemesis Ryan Mountcastle.
The offence did their bit, picking up single runs in the second, third, fifth, and eighth — that last one being a huge insurance home run off the bat of Teoscar Hernández, which pushed the score to 4-2 — before finally breaking out with something resembling a big inning in the top of the ninth.
It wasn't as easy a win as the score line makes it look. the Jays were just 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position heading into their three-run ninth, but they got the job done and started this — [sighhhhhhhhhh] — big September series against the Orioles on the right foot.
Up: Game Two: Jays 8 - Orioles 4
Bo-nk Moreland. Proposition Bo. Bo-nny Colvin. D'Angel-Bo Barksdale. Bodie Bo-dus. Bo-mar Little. Bo-bbles. Frank So-Bo-tka. Bo-land Pryzbylewski.
You get the idea.
Riff on it however you want, his name is his name, and on Labour Day he was king of the mean streets of Baltimore. Bo Bichette. In three, nearly four, of his at-bats in game two of the double dip between the Jays an Orioles, he did not miss. Though the score was mostly out of reach, and much of the game was wetter than a freshly dredged canal, the possibility of a historic achievement kept Jays fans tuned in down to the wire.
Sure, all the pieces matter, but this was Bo's triumph first and foremost. The young shortstop has struggled and been a little bit unfairly maligned throughout the season, but the thing about the old days? They're the old days.
Bo went 3-for-5 with three homers and five RBIs in game two, with a really well struck ball in the ninth as well. That was in addition to his 3-for-5 effort in the first game, which also saw him cash in a pair of runners.
Bichette's wRC+ for the season now sits at 118. In his last 15 games he's slashed .400/.463/.700 over 67 plate appearances, producing a 233 wRC+. Since August 1st his mark is 162. Go all the way back to May 1st and it's now 132.
But really, the most remarkable numbers are the ones that he woke up with on Monday morning, and the ones he went to bed with Monday night.
You’re not reading that wrong, Bo’s fWAR jumped by more than half a win over the course of two games. And while there are obviously improvements to his numbers across the board, what I would submit to you here, dear reader, is that home runs are really, really good.
Look at his offensive component of WAR! Nearly doubled! In a day!
This stuff is probably not as impressive as homering three times off major league pitching — er… well… once off major league pitching, twice of Bruce Zimmerman — in a single game, but it’s still really impressive. And joke as I might about Zimmerman just there, it’s clear by the run Bo has been on of late that he’s not just torching sub-par arms.
He also showed that he’s not so shabby with the glove on Monday, too. Not unlike his first baseman, I might add.
Of course, Bo’s glove wouldn’t have been quite so necessary in this one were it not for the fact that the Jays’ game two starter, José Berríos, simply could not get batters to swing and miss. He managed two strikeouts and generated just four whiffs on 91 pitches, and though part of that can be attributed to the fact that Jeff Nelson — who I am loath to talk about again, as I usually at least try to sympathize with the tough job that umpires have to do, but since he wants to make such a spectacle of himself... — insanely allowed the game to play on (and on and on and on) in a torrential downpour for several interminable innings, most of it is just that Berríos once again was not the pitcher we expect him to be.
This wasn’t the horrific version of Berríos we’ve seen sometimes, but I don’t think it’s unfair to say that without a couple of different bounces it very well could have been. Berríos and Zimmerman each pitched six innings, each allowed eight hits and 12 hard hit balls, and Zimmerman struck out one more and walked one fewer batter than Berríos did.
I like Mike, but this ain’t it.
Other notes…
• If the league’s protocol for trying to get game two of a doubleheader between two teams in a playoff race in September is to have an 8-1 game carry on in a rain storm to the point where every pitch feels like it could be somebody’s last, the protocol is insane. Either that or Jeff Nelson is insane. At the very least a bozo. And while it was somewhat satisfying to watch him have to stand their getting as soaked as anybody else for his own dumb decision to keep playing, he’s not the guy whose career — or $117 million contract — is at stake if he tears his knee ligaments slipping while trying to take a step on a field that should have been tarped over 45 minutes earlier.
• One guy who I was particularly fearful of coming into the game in that situation was Julian Merryweather, who was activated by the Blue Jays prior to the second game of the series. It turns out my fears were unfounded! About that, at least. My fears that Merryweather didn’t spend his time on the shelf trying to find a splitter or cutter, and that he still throws that straight-seeming fastball, on the other hand…
• Casey Lawrence was optioned down to clear room on the active roster for Merryweather, while Zack Collins was designated for assignment in order to free up a spot on the 40-man. It’s going to be an interesting numbers game the rest of the way with the Jays’ relievers, I think. At least until Kikuchi is shut down. Although…
‹ 🤔
• ICYMI, a reminder that last week I wrote about Bo Bichette’s season, as compared to the player he was ranked one spot ahead of on FanGraphs’ annual trade value list: Austin Riley. Riley has since signed a $212 million extension with Atlanta.
• I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that Jackie Bradley Jr. had himself a pretty good one in Monday’s second game, going 3-for-4 with a pair of doubles, two RBIs, and a run scored. It may not have made for a Bo-like surge in the WAR department, but Bradley’s wRC+ as a Blue Jay jumped from 25 at the start of the day all the way up to 68. Still not good, but that’s progress, baby!
• More than 50% of minor league players have signed and retured their union authorization cards in just the week-and-a-half since they were issued. Evan Drellich of the Athletic has a good one on the subject, in which he relays that MLBPA, who is backing this unionization push among minor leaguers, has now "taken another significant step: it has asked MLB and the 30 teams to formally recognize the MLBPA as the minor leaguers’ collective bargaining representatives."
This is incredible news that is long overdue. That said, while I can't pretend to be a labour lawyer, I have eyes enough to have followed recent pushes to unionize places like Starbucks and Amazon, and like those companies, MLB has a lot of power and has a vested interest in keeping people underpaid. We've already seen the league reduce the number of minor league teams, and there is a trend in the industry toward player development complexes and other in-house development that was accelerated by the alt-site summer of 2020. I’m just not sure how much they value the kind of development that riding the bus from Akron to Altoona brings anymore, but I think they’ve already shown their hand pretty clearly.
This isn’t to say that this isn’t a great and entirely worthwhile effort — it absolutely is. I just don’t think Major League Baseball is going to respond benevolently to to the effort. This isn’t the end of the fight, it’s the beginning.
• The Jays have an interesting test coming up here on Tuesday night, as the Orioles will send Kyle Bradish to the hill. The right-hander sports a 5.17 ERA this season, and the Jays have already seen him three times this season, rocking him to the tune of a 6.91 ERA in those games. However, we can see in the following charts from Props.cash — player prop research made easy! — that Bradish has had some genuine success in his last two outings, both in terms of innings pitched and runs allowed. In Houston and Cleveland, no less!
Has something actually clicked for Bradish, or did the Astros and Guardians just happen to get him on a couple of particularly good days. Guess we’ll soon find out.
• Lastly, and speaking of the game, Nick and I will be back live tonight after the final out for a fresh episode of Blue Jays Happy Hour!
Be sure to get the Callin app and follow us on there so you can tune in tonight! And then again for our second show of the week, which will be coming at a slightly odd time for us: 11:30 AM ET on Sunday, which will give us a chance to preview the final game of the Jays’ three-game set against the Rangers in Texas. Join us!
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It's impressive that JBJ can more than double his wRC+ in one day and still be godawful.
I thought the exact same thing about Merryweather! Yep...let's send in a muscle injury prone guy to slip and slide all over the mound. Baseball minds work in mysterious ways - like not letting Richards pitch another inning when he hadn't gone through the order once.
I did not know it was Jeff Nelson behind the plate for that infamous KC game. Revere blew up and did some damage to a water cooler with the bat I remember. And the other batter that inning (Navarro?) got gipped as well. I think we can safely call Nelson a bad umpire. After the Gausman balk, the home plate ump was pretty generous with some of Gausman's pitches - it almost felt like payback. But then he was making poor calls the whole game as well.