Mail bag: On the Jays' broadcast mess, Tellez vs. Grichuk, Cavan Biggio, Charlie Montoyo, lineups, and more!

The Grapefruit League season is underway, exciting developments are happening in Dunedin, prospects are playing, jobs are being fought for, and Blue Jays fans across Canada are being left in the cold — literally and figuratively.

I’d really love to stop grousing about such things, but the Jays-Yankees game on Wednesday was the club’s second contest in a row to not be broadcast on TV or radio, meaning we missed a wonderful debut from Simeon Woods Richardson, a pair of high-octane innings from Alek Manoah, Gabriel Moreno getting some time in behind the plate (and smashing the hell out of a ball), Jordan Groshans, and, more generally, baseball!

So here I am grousing about it. And, fair warning, in the mail bag below, more than one question gave me a chance to do so again.

But this won’t just be an exercise in petty complaints about Sportsnet’s absurd short-sightedness, because there is plenty of on-field stuff you will see that I was asked about as well. So much, in fact, that once again I could barely get all of your questions in before running into Substack’s post length limit. So thank you so much everybody. And while I have you here, if you appreciate what I’m doing in this little corner of the internet, I would love it if you’d tell your friends.

And if you’ve been sent here by a friend, or would like to upgrade to a paid membership so you can ask questions the next time I open up the ol’ mail bag, click below to become a subscriber.

Now on to the questions! As always, I have not read any of Griff's answers.

I'm all for the pre-season prognostication and columns talking about who's in and who's out of the line-ups, how there are too many outfielders, or who's gonna DH, etc. But in the end, IMO, this stuff all ends up sorting itself out via injury or performance right? Like, let's all calm down about Rowdy and Grichuk because, in the end, everyone will get plenty of bats in a 162 season. Tell me I'm wrong! — Steve

You’re absolutely not wrong. You are, in fact, the opposite of wrong. You’re right. If the Jays get through the year — even get through a month or two — and are struggling to find at-bats for Rowdy Tellez or Randal Grichuk, that would be an incredibly positive development.

Still, I think it’s understandable to find the Tellez-Grichuk thing at least a little bit irksome. Or, maybe more accurately, I, personally, find it irksome. Tellez obviously shouldn’t be handed anything based on how well he played in an abbreviated chunk of an already abbreviated season, but he truly looked like a completely different hitter in 2020. And a pretty great one at that. He slashed .283/.346/.540 (133 wRC+) last year and managed to strikeout just 15.7% of the time, despite having come into the season with a career strikeout rate above 28%.

Even though we’re talking about just 35 games, that’s generally considered enough for strikeout rate — the biggest indicator of Rowdy’s positive change — to stabilize.

Add it all up and Tellez is an incredibly intriguing player right now. Grichuk, on the other hand, is very much not.

In his Blue Jays career, Grichuk has made 1,321 plate appearances and owns a 102 wRC+ and a .293 on-base. In his career as a whole he’s come to the plate 2,707 times and sports a 105 wRC+ and a .295 on-base. Those aren’t awful numbers, and it seems like every year he’s good for a hot streak that gives us hope that he’s finally figured something out, but the overall trends are getting pretty compelling. I think it’s safe to say we have a good idea of who he is at this point: he’s a decent outfield defender who makes too many outs but makes up for it by striking the ball reasonably hard and smacking a good number of pitches over the fence — a skill, it’s worth noting, that may take a step back in 2021 thanks to Rob Manfred’s de-juiced balls.

I will grant that the Jays are probably saying the right things in this situation, telling the well-paid Grichuk he’ll be in the DH mix as well as the right field one, and that performance is going to dictate his playing time. That leaves the door wide open for Tellez to possibly get a huge chance without upsetting Grichuk (whose contract makes a trade highly unlikely) any more than necessary. But I don’t have to think that’s good enough!

Free Rowdy! At least until he shows the strides he made last season were a mirage!

Are the Mariners/Jays/Rockies all early adopters of some new market inefficiency that I'm not seeing where actively destroying brand equity benefits the club? Not that cutting the radio broadcast is on the same level as those two shitshows but it's certainly not a PR boon for the club. Is this a "fans don't pay for radio so the telecom giant doesn’t care" or a "Rogers can't see the nuts & gum match made in heaven that is Baseball & Radio?

This forum suits your style better than the Athletic, hope this is a positive for you, always enjoy reading your writing. — Ben Ciceri

Thanks for the kind words, Ben. I definitely find that this site suits me better as well, and it absolutely has been a big positive so far — well, except financially, but the number of paid subscribers keeps creeping up, and I feel very good about where I’m at so far and where it’s going.

As for situation with the Jays and radio, it’s really not the same thing as the Mariners’ (former) president saying the quiet part loud or the Rockies just being a flat-out dismal mess.

The thing is, the Jays aren’t Sportsnet and Sportsnet isn’t the Jays. What’s happened here is that Sportsnet evidently doesn’t feel as though having a radio broadcast this year justifies the cost. They’re claiming it’s a health and safety issue, but that’s very clearly nonsense. Like a lot of people, I think it’s absurd that fans would end up so severely under-served by a team broadcaster owned by the same company as the club itself, but I don’t deny that radio is, unfortunately, a dying industry, and probably just not very important to Sportsnet.

I also can’t deny that, in the abstract, keeping Sportsnet and the Jays in different silos makes sense. We wouldn’t want Rogers higher-ups stepping in to override baseball decisions for the sake of Sportsnet, so I can appreciate how Sportsnet may not want higher-ups stepping in to override their programming decisions for the sake of the baseball team. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if, politically, within the company, this could be a difficult subject to broach. It’s just so incredibly obvious that helping the Blue Jays build their brand, and making existing Jays fans feel valued, is a good long-term play here, even if it may not be the best short-term financial move for the radio side of things. It’s sort of the entire reason Rogers bought the Jays in the first place.

The fact that the Blue Jays have been out there spending big the last two winters, investing in the team for the long-term rather than worrying about saving as much as possible in the present, underlines that at least someone in the company grasps this concept. Unfortunately, that makes Sportsnet’s unwillingness to deliver what fans want all the more frustrating.

Understanding that you don't know but would it be your guess the no games on radio thing is just a one year thing to save some money and Wagner will be back in 2022 teamed with some ex-player as the analyst? What would you bet on? — Steve

I definitely don’t know, but it honestly doesn’t feel great. Last month, Rogers’ main media competitor, Bell, abandoned their all-sports radio stations in Vancouver, Winnipeg, and Hamilton. Like I said above, it’s not a great time for radio. And, sadly, those decisions, and Sportsnet’s decision with the Jays, show that live event programming — an important pillar for cable TV over a difficult last decade — likely isn’t going to be a saviour here.

Sportsnet had both a radio and TV booth calling games remotely last season. It wasn’t necessary then to “streamline production” in “an effort to minimize travel and closely adhere to team, league, and government protocols related to the pandemic,” so the fact that they’re claiming it is now doesn’t smell right. My best guess is that if they think they can get away with merely simulcasting the TV feed going forward, that just might be what they’re going to do.

I very much hope I’m wrong, because it would be a shameful choice considering this is a team that rightly honours Tom Cheek’s record 4,306 game streak on its Level Of Excellence, and considering how deeply important the simple idea of having the ballgame on the radio is to so many Canadians’ conception of the ideal summer day.

As long as there’s baseball and there’s radio, there should be baseball on the radio. A TV simulcast is absolutely not that. (There is a petition going around about this that you might like to sign, FYI.)

You were ahead of the curve declaring that cheap light lagers are actually good. What trends should alcohol drinkers be looking out for in 2021? — ACK

I’m probably several years behind the trends, to be honest, so I’m sure I don’t have any sort of great, or even good, insight into that sort of stuff. I just, after years of reflexively choosing to drink beer, eventually found myself wanting less and less beer taste, to the point where I’m a pretty big cider guy right now. The Queen Street ones that Brickworks make hit my taste buds just right, but your mileage may vary. Beyond that, I’m far from the first person to sing the praises of White Claw, but they are indeed mighty tasty — and apparently we’re going to see several made-in-Ontario hard ciders introduced this summer to compete with White Claw, which I’m looking forward to trying. I also like a bunch of the sours that have become more popular in recent years. Side Launch makes a couple of my favourites in their Hibiscus Sour and their Margarita Gose.

Am I the only one whose brain autocorrects Trent Thornton to T-Thorn? That's what we're calling him, right? — Eric Axen

I’m just happy my brain doesn’t think of him as Matt Thornton anymore, to be honest.

As for what we’re calling him, you’ll be saying “Oh, hamburgers!” to yourself for this one, but I’m pretty sure he already has a pretty good nickname.

Hi Andrew! I am a big fan of your work and I've really enjoyed The Batflip. You have been my voice of the Jays for a long time. Some of the line-up projections, I've read, have Semien low in the batting order like in the 7 spot. I have a feeling that Springer and Semien should be given the prime spots in the batting order and that the kids should have to slug their way into key positions. What am I missing? — CurtButch

Thanks for the kind words, man. I honestly don’t think you’re missing anything, but maybe I’m the wrong person to ask here. Over the years I’ve basically come around to the idea that everybody’s got their own version of what a particular team’s optimal lineup is, and nobody is really wrong or right about it.

Sure, some people can be less not wrong about it, but ultimately I guess I’ve decided that the energy it takes to worry about that stuff just isn’t worth the complete lack of payoff. The lineup is very likely going to be something you don’t 100% like, but in all but the rarest of cases it just doesn’t matter enough to get too hung up about.

I have nothing against Charlie, but I wonder if you could comment on the pros and cons of keeping him as manager moving forward? We hear a lot about the respect he garnered as a coach, but has that translated through to his managerial role? — OzRob

I couldn’t possibly answer that, because the vast majority of what a manager does goes on behind the scenes. At this point even the in-game tactical decisions a manager makes can’t be pinned on him alone. So I’m just not sure what I could fairly call a con. On the pro side, I’ve at least been on Zoom calls with him enough to know that Charlie is upbeat, affable, genuine, positive about his players, fun-loving, and intelligent (though I worry people sometimes fail to see that, just as they did with John Gibbons for a long time, because of the way that he talks).

Maybe there will be a time when the Jays feel they need someone in that job with different traits, or who deploys the information they’re feeding him differently. Maybe he’ll simply end up a sacrificial lamb if the team hits a cold streak when expectations are high, as managers so often do. But I don’t imagine anyone who isn’t there day-to-day will ever really be able to say why they will or won’t continue to keep him around.

That’s not a very fun answer, is it? Managers used to be such great focal points for fan anger or praise, and often rightly so because of the autonomy they used to have. With a few exceptions those days seem to be gone, though, and what managers seem to have lost in autonomy they’ve gained in insulation from criticism.

I don’t know how you put that cat back in the bag, or if you’d even want to, but it’s one of those little things the game has lost along the way that I can’t help but getting a little nostalgic for — like the whole stadium chanting “Ci-to! Ci-to!” whenever Cito Gaston would leave the Jays dugout primed to lay into an umpire after a questionable call. Ah, good times.

Wouldn't it be cool to hear the players during the game instead of the piped in fan noise? You may need to bleep a lot of stuff, but it would be interesting. It would help the fans get to know the players at another level. Let's do this before baseball returns to normal. — Jay M.

No, I want my player banter heavily edited! I’m sure there would be some great stuff picked up if the league actually were to do a thing like that, and it absolutely would be interesting, but please just have someone else listen to all of the tape and compile me the best two minutes. Three minutes, tops.

Full disclosure, though: I actually don’t hate piped-in fan noise. It’s jarring without it!

Hi Andrew. I was thinking of Tatis’ recent contract extension and what it means for baseball players in general. I have heard Arden Zwelling mention many times that “rising tides lift all boats”. But is this actually true? Seems to me that if you are an elite player, sure. Maybe it does. But does this analogy hold true for all players? — Steve D.

I think it’s a pretty good generalization most of the time, including when talking specifically about the Tatis deal, with respect to other pre-arb mega-stars. When it comes to MLB free agency in 2021 as a whole, I tend to agree more with you that it’s not apt any longer. Ken Rosenthal wrote about this very subject for the Athletic last week, regarding Jake Odorizzi’s current free agent predicament. To wit:

An agent for other players notes that at this late stage most observers would consider a three-year, $36 million deal for Odorizzi a triumph, but in relative terms it would not be. Thirteen years ago, Carlos Silva signed a four-year, $48 million free-agent contract with the Mariners. Seven years ago, Ricky Nolasco negotiated identical terms with the Twins. Both deals proved to be massive overpays, but the agent’s point was that the market for non-elite players has gone significantly backward.

You’re definitely right that, while the best of the best have continued to do extremely well in free agency, mid-tier guys have not had a great run of late. And, as Ken’s piece notes elsewhere, it looks like MLB’s average salary will go down for the fourth straight year this season.

Sadly, it’s stuff like this that makes it seem so likely that the league and the players union will go to war with each other when the current collective bargaining agreement expires in December.

Hello Stoets! I want to start by telling you that I’ve been a big fan of your work since DJF and you continue to be my favorite Jays writer, so I’m so glad you’ve found a good home. It seems as if there has been positive feedback from some of the young players about the alternative training site from last year. Do you see the Jays trying to incorporate some of that type of player development moving forward? I feel like some players would benefit from facing major league quality competition in a controlled environment with the ability for the player development staff to provide real time feedback. — Cook

Thanks so much for the kind words, Cook. I’ll say here, since you’ve been a fan since the old days, that I used to roast Richard Griffin for not cutting out praise like that in his mail bags, yet now I’m finding myself including it as well. I recognize now that it’s not an ego thing, which would have been my main riff on it when Griff did it, I just genuinely appreciate someone taking the time to say a nice thing. I wasn’t always as smart as I thought I was back then, it turns out.

Anyway, thank you!

As for your question, I think a big part of the reason that we saw teams jump on board the reorganization of the minor leagues is that they’re seeing how non-traditional environments like alternate sites are so well suited for the development of a small group of top prospects. The huge investment in and excitement over the Jays’ new complex in Dunedin is another place where we can see how teams are starting to think beyond just minor league reps when they think about development. And we learned on Tuesday night from Jeff Passan of ESPN that alternate sites will be back again in 2021 — at least at the start, as Passan also reports that the Triple-A season will be delayed by a month.

“Some executives told ESPN they believe the alternate sites could last longer into the season,” Passan added. “The reason for rekindling sites — which serve as training facilities for players who are likeliest to be called up to the major leagues — is the proximity to teams' home stadiums and easier oversight of testing and coronavirus protocols, according to sources. Further, Triple-A teams travel via commercial airline, whereas major league teams can go from hotel to stadium to private flights on getaway days.”

Those are all very practical reasons, but it’s a safe bet that teams also welcomed the chance to have some of their best prospects regularly facing and working with guys who have been in the big leagues or are on the cusp.

That’s not to say that teams want to do away with the minors entirely. Clearly there is value in both setups. But would Alejandro Kirk have been a late-season sensation for the Jays if not for his time in Rochester? Unlikely.

It was a good experience for Jordan Groshans, too. Last month, TSN’s Scott Mitchell wrote about Groshans’ experience at the alt-site last year.

“The player I am now leaving Rochester is a completely different player than I’ve been so far in my career,” Groshans told him. “I knew I had good ability, but I didn’t know if it was good enough to play at that level and I think going to Rochester and doing some of the things I did, it was a confidence booster. Like I just said, it went from ‘I don’t know’ to ‘absolutely’ that I can play at the big-league level.”

How could teams not want more of that from their most important prospects?

Hey Andrew, do you think Biggio hits enough to be successful playing third base? — Ron

I guess I do? But I’m a sucker, so I wouldn’t put too much stock into my opinion on that. I mean, I know it’s become a bit fashionable — and that it’s completely reasonable — to worry about Biggio, but am I going to be the guy that actually bets against him outperforming his expectations once again? No, I am not.

Cavan Biggio is known for his eye at the plate. He draws a lot of walks, he also takes a fair amount of called third strikes. Might he be better off being a bit more aggressive? — Paul

He might. But he might also be worse off! I’m sort of the mind that, for the moment, Biggio should probably keep doing what he’s doing for as long as it keeps working, unorthodox as it may be. It’s an approach that can work. Mike Trout, for example, swings at a similarly low percentage of pitches as Biggio, and in 2020, nobody swung at a lower percentage of pitches outside the zone than either Biggio or Trout did.

The two also had a very similar number of strikeouts in 2020, and a similarly high rate of called strikeouts, too.

Of course, comparing anyone to Mike Trout is an inherently terrible idea. “Well, if Mike Trout can do it…” isn’t a sentiment that usually ends well. And Cavan Biggio, despite some writers’ opinions (I kid, I kid), is not Mike Trout. But Biggio went from a non-prospect to a guy with a 118 wRC+ over 695 big league plate appearances by doing what he's been doing. If you have to take a huge amount of called strikeouts in order to get the huge walk numbers and a decent enough number of home runs to make it all work, that's fine by me.

It's when it stops working that I'll get concerned.

Am I concerned that it will stop working? Oh, absolutely. When I wrote about Biggio for the Athletic at the end of August 2019, he was in a tailspin. After a hot start to his big league career, his wRC+ had slumped to just 87 and his rolling hard hit percentage had sunk below league average. I noted at the time that pitchers’ first pitch strike percentage against him had been steadily creeping up — that pitchers seemed to be taking advantage of his passivity to put him in an early hole.

He seemed to adjust rather quickly for that, and since the day I wrote the piece he has put up a 142 wRC+. I’d half-jokingly try to take credit for fixing him here, unfortunately a much more plausible explanation is that feasting on September pitching helped him finish strong in 2019, and then the supreme weirdness of the abbreviated 2020 season helped him as well.

It’s not like like his hard-hit percentage has ever gone back to where it was during that initial flourish — quite the opposite.

As I said above, I’m not going to bet against the guy at this stage. It’s just, if I were the Jays I might have taken the resources used to acquire, say, Steven Matz and used them instead on a little extra infield depth. However, you get the sense that the Jays love Biggio’s intangibles, and I suspect that includes his ability to make the necessary adjustments to keep being a productive hitter. That may eventually require him to start being more aggressive, but I definitely don’t think that should be a goal for him just yet, unless he can do it in such a way as to not take away from what’s already working.

Hey Andrew, So with the Jays ditching the radio broadcast, I'm starting to get a little bit discouraged. I wonder if Jerry Howarth saw this coming down the line. How will this even work? Will TV broadcasters announce who's at the plate, who's working in the bullpen, what the count is? I don't think they do very often — they let the graphics in the screen tell some of those details where we need to know them if we're listening to radio. And what goes on with the MLB app? I guess the only reason to subscribe if you're a Toronto fan is for the convenience definitely not the quality of the radio broadcast. — Scott from Bobcaygeon

Jerry retired for health reasons, so I don’t think the inevitability of these kinds of changes would have had anything to do with that. But other than that small point, you’re pretty much bang on here. Radio and TV are two different mediums that place different demands on the booth in order to serve their different audiences, and simulcasting has never proved to be a satisfactory solution.

It will be interesting to see just how much the booth plays to the radio audience once they actually get to broadcasting some games this year. If the radio audience is given consideration, that probably bodes well for this just being a one-year blip. If the TV broadcast doesn’t change much, I’d take that as a signal that Sportsnet has decided radio simply doesn’t matter.

Not so much a question as a comment. I am very much enjoying the sense of internal competition the Jays have now. After Ryu, if a SP wants to start, well, pitch better than everyone else and you can, or someone else will. There are 10 arguable starting players for 9 spots in the batting lineup, so if you want to be in there, have a strong approach at the plate with results. If you want to field at a certain position, play it well enough, or someone else will. Want to be a high leverage reliever? Like the starters, pitch the best, because there are options. Want to get paid? Stay on the field and perform, because someone even younger is coming for your job. It's friendly competition, but competition. I haven't always gotten that sense to the same degree with previous teams. — Mister MEH

You make a great point. I think some guys are obviously going to get a little bit more rope than others, but nobody is going to be handed anything here, nor do they have to be.

Well, other than the big free agent signings not named Tanner Roark.

Hi Andrew,

What’s your Game 1 batting order against Cole? How about vs lefties? Cheers and thanks for all the great writing! — Julian

Like I said above, this isn’t something I’ve put a lot of thought or energy into, so I wouldn’t put up much of a fight if anybody wants to disagree. You could talk me into making all kinds of changes here. The one thing I won’t go for, however, is giving more plate appearances over the course of the season to Biggio than anybody else. I don’t absolutely hate the idea or anything, as long as he’s still getting on base, I just don’t think a lineup spot that high is merited considering how good the rest of this group is.

Mike Wilner of the Toronto Star wrote this week that Biggio should leadoff for the Jays, but his arguments didn’t really work for me.

“Biggio could bat ninth, setting the table for Springer, Bichette, Guerrero and company that way,” he wrote, “but why would you want the hitter who gets on base the most on your team getting the fewest plate appearances?”

You probably don’t, but I don’t think that means you have to give him the most either!

“Josh Donaldson won the American League MVP award with the Jays’ 2015 juggernaut, hitting mostly second in the order, claiming that spot for good on Victoria Day,” Wilner also writes. “He hit behind José Reyes, Devon Travis, Troy Tulowitzki and Ben Revere at various points in the season.”

Wow, sounds like a bunch of guys who weren’t nearly as good as Donaldson were given the chance to rack up more at-bats than he was every day!

Springer leading off, as he did for the Astros from mid-2016 until his final game with them last fall, sounds great to me.

Anyway, here goes nothing. Against right-handers I'd do something like this:

Springer CF
Bichette SS
Hernández RF
Tellez 1B
Guerrero DH
Gurriel LF
Semien 2B
Jansen/Kirk C
Biggio 3B

And against lefties:

Springer CF
Bichette SS
Hernández DH
Gurriel LF
Guerrero 1B
Semien 2B
Grichuk RF
Biggio 3B
Jansen/Kirk C

In 2017, you tweeted (twote? it's twote, right?) that the Rogers Cente-Aramark deal expires in 2021. Which is this year! So, heard anything else? — Joe

I think it’s twote! As for Aramark, I have absolutely no idea what the situation is there. Frankly, if we get to a point by the end of the summer where the Jays are back and fans can actually attend games, I don’t think I’ll be able to complain about a single thing — even the return of Aramark!

The darkest timeline indeed.

So when I get the email with your post in it, I can obviously read it there, but does it help you in any way if I also load it on the web? Or does that matter? I know nothing of these things but want you to benefit the most from your posts. — WAMCO

Thank you so much, man. And thank you for asking, because I’m sure there are other people who don’t know. I barely know! But, to answer your question seriously, no, it doesn’t help to load the site on the web. Please just enjoy what I write in whichever format suits you best. I don’t make money on page views, I only make money on paid subscribers — legends, as I like to call them.