Never in Doubt
The Jays produce a tremendous walk-off win, plus: pitching development in the major leagues, new border talk, and more!
The Blue Jays won in absurd fashion on a rainy Wednesday night in Buffalo. So let’s talk about it!
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I’m still not convinced that the Jays and Marlins should have been playing in the downpour that moved into Western New York at the end of Wednesday night’s game, but they did. Fortunately, nobody was hurt. And the result was goddamn beautiful if you’re a Blue Jays fan. So let’s back up and play some three up, three down…
▲ Ninth inning comeback
The Blue Jays looked to have squandered their best chance to win this one in the seventh inning, when back-to-back one-out walks from Marcus Semien and Bo Bichette (!) perfectly setup Vlad, Tesocar, and a red hot Randal Grichuk for a late rally against former teammate Anthony Bass.
Vlad certainly got a pitch to hit...
… but his 100.3 mph liner to right field found its way into the glove of Adam Duvall.
Hernández smashed the very next pitch into the dirt at 108. Jazz Chisholm Jr. couldn’t make the play at short, and the ball bounced far enough into the outfield off of his glove to allow Semien to smartly rush home and pull the Jays to within two runs at 5-3. Grichuk then struck out to end the threat.
Fast forward to the ninth inning, with the score still 5-3 Marlins, Yimi Garcia on the mound in the middle of a downpour, and Reese McGuire at the plate.
McGuire came out hacking, fouling off a good four-seamer at the top of the zone before bouncing the second pitch he saw up the middle for an unlikely single. The backup catcher was oddly not immediately replaced by a pinch runner, though the bench corrected that mistake after a soaking wet Marcus Semien battled his way to a full-count single on a 96 mph pitch on the outside black that he somehow managed to pull through the left side of the infield.
At this point the move to replace/not replace McGuire became academic, because up strode Bo Bichette. The young shortstop is having a fine year at the plate (117 wRC+), but not the kind of spectacular one that it feels like he's capable of. He's been extremely aggressive...
...and seems to always find himself behind in the count. The Jays' TV broadcast, particularly when it's Buck Martinez and Pat Tabler on the mic, continually tells fans that this is no problem, because he has such a great two strike approach. That may be accurate if you specifically mean his mindset, and his ability to shorten his swing, or to spoil pitches. But, like everyone else in the league, Bichette is terrible once pitchers get to two strikes on him, slashing just .169/.208/.234.
(Holy shit aside: Bo is slashing just .172/.338/.293 when he is ahead in the count this season! It's not fair to compare anyone to Vlad right now, but Vlad is 751 points of OPS better than Bo when ahead in the count this year. Perhaps the two-strike thing should not be his focus! Perhaps the pre-two-strike aggressiveness could be toned down a touch!)
After taking a ball on the first pitch he saw, Bichette proceeded — naturally — to pick up two quick strikes. Fortunately for the Blue Jays, and for the fans who lasted this long through a slog of a game, this was one of those instances where the two strike thing actually worked. Sort of.
I mean, it worked, but I’m not exactly sure that a chin-high heater at 98 is necessarily a pitch anybody should be swinging at, expanded strike zone or not.
Still, you can’t argue with the results!
Bichette’s triple tied the game, and the two intentional walks that followed brought Randal Grichuk to the plate with no outs and the bases loaded. Grichuk had been one of the Jays’ heroes on the night (more on that later), but a walk-off moment for him was not to be. Instead it was left to Joe Panik, who took a curveball for a strike on the inner black, then got a second curveball that caught just a bit more of the plate. And he didn’t miss.
Or, OK, he totally missed. It was a pretty lazy fly that he hit. But it was deep enough for the winning run to easily score, and for the Blue Jays to win the ballgame. CUE THE FLICKERING LIGHTS!
▲ The bullpen
The Jays' bullpen had a bit of a wobble in the seventh inning, when Starling Marte crushed a Trent Thornton fastball to put the Marlins up 5-2, but it was otherwise a fantastic night for a battered group that the Blue Jays need to get back in order. Working 5 2/3 innings in relief of Alek Manoah, the 'pen allowed that lone run on two hits and one walk while striking out five. Other than Tim Mayza, who struck out the only two batters he faced, it wasn't exactly a lock-down overpowering performance, but it was exactly what was needed.
Mayza, Thornton, the newly promoted Carl Edwards Jr., and Anthony Castro did a nice job of keeping the team in it. But it was Joel Payamps who really saved the day, entering the game with the bases loaded and one out, after Manoah ended his outing with two walks on either side of a hit-by-pitch, then pitching out of that jam, throwing a clean inning in the fifth, then picking up the first out of the sixth as well.
Payamps' inability to put guys away via the strikeout is going to limit his utility as a late inning reliever for the Jays, but his ability to pitch multiple innings, to induce ground balls, and to generally keep the ball in the ballpark, makes him a guy the Jays are going to look to in games like this. And as long as he can continue to escape like he did on Wednesday, who am I to complain?
▲ Comrade Grich
Randal Grichuk didn’t play much of a role in the seventh and ninth inning situations that I wrote about above, but the Blue Jays wouldn’t have been anywhere near in this one without his contributions on the day. Namely, a pair of solo shots early in the game: one to tie the game at 1-1, and a second to claw back a run and make it 4-2.
The early going in this one wasn’t a lot of fun for Jays fans, with Grichuk’s performance being the major exception. He now has a 128 wRC+ on the season, with a strikeout rate that's sitting below 20%. He's played solid defence in the absence of George Springer, too. Pretty good for a guy I was dreading would take at-bats away from Rowdy Tellez back before the season started!
▼ Corey Dickerson’s home run
Alek Manoah’s second big league start will have to be chalked up as a learning experience. He wasn’t good. But he also wasn’t awful, or unglued, or clueless. He just didn’t seem to have his best stuff, didn’t execute in some key spots, and, along with Reese McGuire, made some questionable calls as to what to throw.
Let’s take a look at some of the problems he had, focused around the three home runs.
Manoah’s fastball averaged just 93.2 mph after being up at 94.9 in his electrifying debut. The one he threw to start Corey Dickerson’s second inning at-bat was definitely on the slow end — just 91.2, high, and well outside. His second pitch was harder and to a better spot, but he followed it up with a belt high slider — one of those pitches the TV scouts from his last Triple-A game against Worcester were worried about — that was about as slow as he throws them, clocking in at just 80.3 mph. Not a great pitch to a lefty big leaguer.
▼ Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s home run
I thought Manoah rebounded after the Dickerson home run well, striking out two batters around a walk to end the second inning. The third inning was a tough one, though. Manoah had number nine hitter José Devers down in the count, then got him to smack one back to the mound that Manoah deflected but couldn't make a play on. This brought up Miami's best lefty hitter, Jazz Chisholm, with a runner on first.
In the first inning, Manoah had induced a groundout from Chisholm on a 3-2 slider. He'd thrown him two changeups in that at-bat — one that was way outside and taken for a ball, another that was pretty good, right on the ouside corner, which the young Marlin had managed to foul off. He'd thrown only one other changeup the first time through the order — a pitch that he bounced to Isan Díaz. Chisholm looked at a sinker on the outside black for a strike, then Manoah and McGuire decided it was time to try the changeup again.
It was, uh, not great.
Chisholm pounded this one for a home run.
Of the three hits of consequence Manoah had given up to this point (I include Devers’ infield single, mostly because I think it would likely have made it through the infield if not for Manoah’s deflection anyway), all were to lefties. They, I’m afraid, are going to be the problem for him. Especially if he’s putting pitches where the ones to Dickerson and Chisholm went.
Development in the majors, baby!
▼ Jesús Aguilar’s home run
Manoah had thrown two fastballs to the right-handed Aguilar in the first, inducing a groundout. The idea in seeing him a second time, evidently, was to go away from the fastball. Manoah started him off with an excellent slider that caught the inner part of the plate. A second slider missed low and inside. Then, in what I — despite what I'll admit is a very amateur understanding of game calling — am going to characterize as a not great decision (which, of course, is much easier to say in hindsight), they decided to throw him a changeup.
The pitch was a bit low, and a bit inside, but evidently not far enough in either direction to avoid the sweet spot for a pull hitter with power like Aguilar.
I know Manoah was obviously fighting it a little bit during the outing. His slider wasn’t working especially either, producing just one whiff and two called strikes over the 17 times he threw it (for comparison, in New York last week he threw the slider 26, generating just two whiffs, but six called strikes). But maybe don’t get beat on your worst pitch to a right-handed hitter you probably shouldn’t be throwing it to anyway?
Again, it’s a learning experience. Manoah wasn’t the guy we watched dominate in every outing this year up until this point, but that was bound to happen eventually. The call to go to the changeup to Aguilar, and a couple of the calls for sliders in three-ball counts against the number seven and number nine hitters in the fourth inning, did not appear to be great moves from my side of the TV, and helped make a not-great-but-not-awful outing look a little bit worse than it could have, but there will be better days and better calls. Manoah will look sharper. He will, after a couple tough upcoming assignments against the Red Sox and White Sox, get to see a whole bunch of Baltimore and Seattle. He’s still better than Tanner Roark right now, and only going up from here.
Most importantly: the Jays have never lost a game when he starts.
Links!
• Great stuff from my current podcast co-host Nick Ashbourne over at Yahoo Sports, and my former colleague Cam Lewis at Blue Jays Nation, as they each take stock of where the Blue Jays are at after the first two months of the season.
• Another one from a place I used to work — of which there are, apparently, many — is an interesting look at spin rates, and the concoctions used to generate them, from Travis Sawchik of theScore.
• Yadi Molina and his sticky chest protector feature prominently in that piece, and also in this one, which dovetails well with some of the Bo Bichette thoughts I went into above: a look at why hitters are attacking the first pitch more often this year from Mike Petriello of MLB.com.
• Mike Wilner of the Toronto Star also focused on Bichette, as he felt that Bo-and-2’s seventh inning walk was a key event in setting up the Jays’ successful ninth inning rally.
• Future Blue Jays, as always, provides us with a great breakdown of last night's minor league action in the Blue Jays’ system.
• Speaking of the minors, the most buzz-worthy name among Blue Jays prospects (that haven’t already been promoted to the majors) this season so far has been catcher Gabriel Moreno. Kevin Goldstein of FanGraphs includes him among a group of “low-hype” prospects who are getting close to the majors. (Yes, the majors! I mean, it’s not like Danny Jansen and Reese McGuire are standing in anybody’s way right now.)
Border problems
Lastly, let’s have a quick look at a little bit of news that, at least on its surface, seems like it could be pretty significant for the Toronto Blue Jays.
U.S.-based teams being allowed to cross the border is undoubtedly a huge step toward the return of professional sports to Canada, to be sure. But would a return of the Blue Jays be as simple as deciding on a bunch of similarly restrictive protocols that the team and their opponents would have to abide by? It didn’t necessarily sound that way when Mark Shapiro spoke about the subject on Wednesday.
I think there is an underlying level of optimism that the proliferation of vaccines, and then the impact of vaccines is being seen in their models. They feel very good about where public health is headed. But I think, you know, despite the encouragement and despite the optimism about, most importantly, where the public health scenarios are moving in the city of Toronto, throughout the province, and throughout the country, which is to a good place, there remains the obstacle of the border. And I think what I've come to recognize is, until the border is open any proposal would have to deal with that and create a set of circumstances that allow cross-border travel for players, families, and visiting teams. That is not an easy thing to do. It's not impossible, but it's not an easy thing to do. I guess what I would suggest to you is that until the border is open there are significant challenges with us returning to Toronto to play.
Would families be able to travel with Blue Jays players as well? With opposing teams? Would opposing teams be open to following the strict rules that would be required to make this happen? Would the players union? Would the Blue Jays players themselves? Would it be worth it if the team couldn’t have fans in the stands anyway?
Obviously a big, important step is out of the way here. Having teams come across the border at all was a non-starter a year ago. Another big step was made earlier in the week, when the province of Ontario allowed fully vaccinated fans to attend that doomed Leafs game. But other MLB teams are no longer in the same boat on this stuff. Players based in the states are playing in front of big crowds, their lives returning to normalcy. Asking them to rejoin us here in Pandemic Land for a weekend — or a two-week homestand — of rigid protocols might be a lot, and the payoff may be too little.
Even if Canada were to open the borders to anyone fully vaccinated, or travelling parties that reach a certain threshold, that’s still going to create problems. Gabriel Burns of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported yesterday that only 16 MLB teams have reached a vaccination rate of 85% so far.
Light at the end of the tunnel? Sure. But I’m not sure if this brings us all that much closer to seeing the Blue Jays in Toronto just yet. Fingers crossed, but it’s complicated.
Top image via the Toronto Blue Jays/@BlueJays
Shapiro mentions, at the highest level, some of the many barriers that still exist to cross-border travel for baseball. These obstacles are getting wider what with the Jays and opposing teams playing in front of fans, travelling with family and organizations making money by hosting fans at games. I think it will be very challenging to move these obstacles for the Jays (one team) and all their opponents (you might as well wait until the border is back to "(new) normal". If that's the case, I am doubtful they are back this season.
That being said, we are headed for an interesting collision. If the Jays make the playoff and are hosting teams in Buffalo and not Toronto, then the Feds and Ontario Gov'ts are going to see a heap of scorn and hate.
If I am Shapiro (or Trudeau, or Ford for that matter), I would be aiming to make sure, that any playoff games, are played in Canada.
Bo-and-2!! Lmfo