Never in Doubt
On last minute heroics, absurd Schneider stats, no I will not call him "Babe," the Jays' need for power, plus José Berríos, broadcast goodies, Vlad spray charts, Yariel Rodríguez, and more!
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“Davis Schneider has home runs in 26% of his games as a Blue Jay,” tweeted Daily Hive's Ian Hunter in the aftermath of the Blue Jays' skin-of-their-teeth, blink-and-you-missed-it late victory Tuesday night over the Houston Astros.
“Schneider now has the 8th highest wRC+ in MLB history (min 140 PAs),” the great Brendon Kuhn told us back in February, explaining cheekily that this is “a random cut off line I chose.” On Tuesday, Schneider moved into sixth place.
It truly is an audacious list for a member of the 2024 Blue Jays to be a part of.
“Man I feel for Astros fans,” everybody's favourite Spencer added. "Watching your team blow a 9th inning lead and you can’t even go home to watch Pornhub after. I can’t imagine what you’re going through.”
It truly was a wild ending to what, until two outs in the top of the ninth, had been an excellent, hard-fought, extremely weird game that, if you’re a Blue Jays fan, you couldn’t help but have absolutely hated.
A night after being improbably no-hit, the Jays managed eight of them—three off the bat of Justin Turner—but just one walk (also Turner) and had no runs to show for it going into their final at-bat. Starter José Berríos didn't have his best stuff—he couldn't locate his sweeper all night, and allowed 12 hard-hit balls to Astros batters—but absolutely battled, with a Jose Altuve solo shot his only blemish in six-plus innings.
We can only say that, however, because of the incredible job Yimi García did to bail him out in the seventh. After Berríos went back out to start the frame and promptly issued a walk and a single, García came in and induced a shallow fly that didn't allow the runner on third to tag and score, then a harmless pop-up to shortstop, before striking out Victor Caratini on a 98 mph fastball perfectly placed on the outside black.
There was some good fortune on the Jays' side in this one, too. Or, at least, a trio of brutal mistakes by Houston. Two of those came courtesy of Altuve—a future Hall of Famer, or so I've heard several times in the last two games. *COUGH*
With two outs and two runners on in the bottom of the sixth (one due to catcher's interference!), Altuve couldn't get out of the way of an Alex Bregman dribbler to shortstop—which looked like it was going to be a tough play—and was called out on the bases. Then in the bottom of the eighth, after moving to third following a lead-off double, Altuve was caught napping way halfway to the plate by Alejandro Kirk on a play so delayed that Sportsnet's broadcast crew of Dan Shulman and Buck Martinez didn't even see it. (At the time they were looking at a replay on their monitors as they tried to figure out how Kyle Tucker, who had worked a walk off of Tim Mayza, ended up on second despite the fact that the previous batter had harmlessly popped out.)
The little guy got so mad at himself! Adorable!
That, of course, set the stage for the top of the ninth and Schneider's heroics—off of one of the best (and most expensive) closers in the game no less!
“He threw the slider and it was one that just spun there, didn't really break,” Schneider told reporters, including Sportsnet’s Hazel Mae, after the game. “Reminded me of the one I hit off Chapman last year. It's one of those sliders I saw up and away, and then it just came down right in the middle.”
And that was just about that. Chad Green still had to get through the bottom of the ninth—which he did, thanks in no small to pinch runner Jake Meyers' bizarre face-plant in between first and second during an attempted steal. Pain turned to joy. An impotent loss became a win. The insufferable discourse paused for a moment.
Never in doubt.
Hitting for power, you say?
The 2023 Blue Jays’ problem was not that they were bad at hitting. As Nick noted on Tuesday’s podcast, a lot of the gnashing of teeth that’s gone on so far this season—particularly in the wake of Monday’s no-hitter—is partially the product of confirmation bias. People think last year’s lineup was far worse than it really was, and after seeing them struggle a few times here in the early going, they’ve not exactly been disabused of that notion. As I noted myself on the pod, last year’s Jays topped the Baltimore Orioles—that high-flying lineup of kids that overcame some spotty starting pitching to hit their way to 100 wins—in terms of walk rate, strikeout rate, batting average, hits, home runs, and wRC+. They were tied for seventh in baseball by that last metric.
Part of what made the Jays’ offensive output so much worse than the Orioles’ was that Baltimore was clutch all year with runners in scoring position (128 wRC+), while the Jays were merely average (102). But while clutch hits are a thing, clutch hitters are not. The Jays rebounded in a big way after having an abysmal three months w/RISP during the middle of the season, putting up a 131 wRC+ in the split in August and September, which was good for fourth-best in MLB. A repeat of those mid-season woes should not be a concern at this point.
What should be a concern—what I thought we all basically agreed was the key concern coming out of last season—is the team’s lack of power. Yes, they out-homered the Orioles, but only by five, and overall the O's topped them in extra-base hits by 19, despite having 24 fewer hits in total. And looking beyond just Baltimore, we see a Jays team that ranked 16th in baseball with 188 dingers, despite leading the league by a wide margin in 2021, and belting 200 in 2022.
It seemed like every Jays hitter lost distance on the balls they hit in the air last season, with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. being a particularly conspicuous culprit. Compare all the balls off of his bat that died in the outfield last year, to how many of those left the yard in 2021.
A little extra power could make a huge difference for this lineup, whether it returns to Vlad’s—or Springer’s—bat, or whether it comes from somewhere else.
And now here we have Davis Schneider—a guy who doesn’t quite fit the Jays’ new, infuriating glove-first ethos, as he showed during a misplay along Minute Maid Park’s dumb fence-line on Tuesday night, but who possesses something too many of his teammates lack. Namely: a bat.
Now, considering that Schneider has generally been placed into favourable matchups and only hit 29 home runs last year, 21 of which were at Triple-A, I think this is more than a touch optimistic. The projections on his FanGraphs page, though indeed ranging from a 105 to a 114 wRC+, have him south of a 30-homer pace (putting him in the 15 HR range in nearly 400 PA), and I think that exposing Schneider too much is going to get a lot of people to want to put the leash back on. But the general point is a good one.
The Jays have more than enough moving parts to eventually strike a decent balance between offence and defence, I think. But they don’t have unlimited time to get that all sorted.
If he’s hot—and he is—let the young guy eat.
Quickly…
• Let’s go back to the play where Altuve was picked off for a second, because I saw some criticism of the booth/truck/crew for the confusion over this and, as I noted above, there really was a pretty simple reason why the play was missed. I know the folks doing the broadcast are our eyes and ears, but they can’t see and do everything all at once. It’s not exactly difficult to understand the mechanics of the thing.
• “Jose Berrios admitted to not having his best stuff tonight. Didn’t feel that explosiveness to the plate,” tweeted Hazel after the game ended. “He could tell from warming up in the bullpen that his body was feeling a little off. Was proud he could keep his team in the game.”
He should be! I hesitate to use narrative-y language like this, but it was a gutsy performance from a guy whose fastball was down 0.7 mph and who only found the zone with 18% of his sweepers (classified by Statcast as a slurve), which was down from 50% in his opening day start in Tampa, and from 42% last season.
• Speaking of good pitching performances, Yariel Rodríguez made his season debut for the Buffalo Bisons as they took on the WooSox in Worcester, Mass. Getting up to 55 pitches, the Jays' new Cuban right-hander was great, sitting 92-95 and working four no-hit innings with just a single walk and six strikeouts.
On a more granular level, he generated whiffs on 42% of the four-seamers he threw, with eight called strikes on it in addition to that—all thanks to its excellent cutting action. He also worked with a slider that opposing batters could mostly do nothing with—seven fouls on eight swings, with just one put in play—and flashed a splitter that he struggled to get into the zone (but did get swing-and-miss on both of the ones that were offered at) as well as a handful of curveballs. Intriguing guy!
• A little-noticed thing about the play in the bottom of the ninth when Meyers slipped while running to second was that Alejandro Kirk made a really strong throw and seemed like he might have thrown him out regardless. Sportsnet’s Joe Siddall noticed, though. He tweeted: “under the radar good throw by Kirk….note his footwork…comes up off of one knee stance to prep for throw…I like this better 👍”
• And one more from Joe, as he had an interesting discussion with BK and others about the rule book and how, exactly, Tucker was able to advance to second base on that pop-up.
• Lastly, somehow, despite failing to get a hit in their first nine innings in Houston, and failing to score a run in the first 17, the Jays go into Wednesday night’s game with a chance to take the series. Chris Bassitt will look to rebound after an unfortunate start in Friday’s 8-2 loss in Tampa. For Houston, right-hander Cristian Javier looks to build on an impressive six innings of shutout ball against the Yankees in his season debut, and get to back to being the guy he was in 2022 (2.54 ERA, 3.16 FIP, 11.7 K/9) and away from whatever happened to him last year (4.56 ERA, 4.58 FIP, 8.8 K/9).
Please Jays, score some runs before the ninth so that tomorrow’s off-day isn’t poisonous. Thank you!!
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The Astros being 1-5 with a -1 run differential is the best thing about the 2024 season so far.
The second best thing is watching the Giants run out a weird, parallel universe version of the Blue Jays lineup. Last night Chapman, Soler and Conforto hit 2-3-4. They lost to the Dodgers 5-4.
“The insufferable discourse paused for a moment”
……….until Jays Talk started. Yeeaysh, some pitiful stuff over there. They only took calls coming from the USA for some reason. Some jabronie from New Jersey called in and they cut him off after complaining that the front office signed too many “pansies” lmao.
What world is this? What did they do to us!