No Sportsnet spring training broadcasts, Atkins speaks, links, and more!
Ahoy hoy, everyone. With camp officially up and running down in Dunedin, there was a whole lot to digest over the weekend, and so instead of boring you with some lengthy preamble here, I think we should just get straight into it…
Sportsnet one, Jays fans zero
The Blue Jays are restricting access to fans and reporters at the club's new traiing complex in Dunedin, writes Rob Longley of the Toronto Sun. No real surprise there, given the state of the world at the moment. But it turns out that's not the only media freeze out going on regarding the Jays this spring.
"Once games begin, the exposure will increase with limited numbers of fans and media allowed in the stadiums, but even then fans will be left largely in the dark. Broadcast rights holder and fellow Rogers family member Sportsnet has no plans to produce any games while its radio network will carry a handful of contests at best," he writes. "We’re told that, when possible, Sportsnet will pick up games broadcast by the Yankees and Phillies, a small consolation for Canadian fans."
The fact that we’re still in the middle of a pandemic would be a great excuse for Sportsnet to use here if not for the fact that 2020 proved that broadcasts could be produced remotely.
Last July my former colleague at the Athletic, Kaitlyn McGrath, looked at some of the challenges that broadcasting remotely posed. Among them was the fact that, with broadcast crews not allowed to travel, home team broadcasts were responsible for producing a feed that would be useable for both sides, “and every team has been instructed to shoot it 50-50, meaning it can’t favour one team.”
“Because the home team is responsible for producing the home game broadcast,” she added, “if the Blue Jays play at an MLB ballpark, Sportsnet would work closely with that team’s broadcaster, essentially contracting them to mount its broadcast. If the Blue Jays settled at a minor-league facility, production staff from that city would need to be contracted.”
Sportsnet could surely do something similar for the Jays’ Grapefruit League games this spring. They are simply choosing not to, presumably because of cost.
On one hand that’s understandable. This isn’t the Maple Leafs pre-season, where there are, like, six games and all of them in prime viewing hours. The benefit in terms of straight-up TV ratings for mid-week, mid-afternoon exhibition baseball can’t be very high. But on the other hand it’s a decision that’s incredibly hard to reconcile with the kind of marquee product that Sportsnet should want the Jays to be for them, or the notion that we heard all winter that Rogers’ strength as a company put the Blue Jays in a unique position in baseball to go out and spend.
True, Sportsnet is technically not the Blue Jays, but there’s such easy synergy here that even a Rogers executive should be able to see it.
Why not provide your highlights shows with broadcast quality footage of George Springer and Marcus Semien and Nate Pearson and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. that doesn’t have MASN’s or YES’s logo on it? Why not have at least a couple camera operators down there so at least you can give the radio guys a feed to call from so Jays fans who want to listen in on games don’t spend all spring learning about the Pittsburgh fucking Pirates?
I know, I know, the world where these decisions get made sometimes makes little sense. It’s the same kind of world where a clown like Kevin Mather can grouse about having paid $75,000 for an interpreter for a player his team was paying $14,000,000 a year to. I don’t want to see anybody laid off in order to offset the costs of producing Grapefruit League games, yet that feels like exactly the kind of thing that would happen. It’s just… that’s absurd.
Treat the team your company just let spend nearly $200 million on baseball players like a team your company just let spend nearly $200 million on baseball players. Treat their games, even exhibition ones, like something people not only want to follow — because many absolutely do and are rightfully disappointed by this decision — but that people should be following. This isn’t hard.
Atkins Speaks!
GM Ross Atkins met with the media via Zoom call back on Friday, answering a wide variety of questions about where his Blue Jays club stands as spring training officially got underway down in Dunedin. Here are what I considered the highlights.
• On the state of the rotation
For obvious reasons the rotation was the biggest topic of discussion during the session, as reporters tried their best to pry information from Atkins without asking questions they knew he couldn’t or wouldn’t answer — “so are you done adding to the rotation or what?” chief among them — while Atkins tried to parry and defend the group of pitchers the Jays currently have in camp.
“I'm excited about Ray and Roark and Stripling and Matz,” he said when asked somewhat incredulously how he justifies “a Ray and a Roark in the rotation” considering the club’s “excited and expectant fan base.”
“The strikeouts, the aggressiveness, and the work that has already occurred with a couple of those individuals with Pete Walker and Matt Buschmann,” Atkins continued. “The positions that we feel like we can put them in. And knowing that we have options if guys, whether it be performance driven or health driven, knowing that we have several options beyond those names … is a great starting point.”
There is no part of that answer that was particularly surprising, but I think it’s interesting that he mentioned the fact that Walker and Bushmann have already worked with guys. That may sound innocuous, but as Charlie Montoyo made clear on Saturday, this isn’t necessarily just a reference to work that took place last season.
When Montoyo was asked then about what he expects from Ray this season, he gave a typically sunny response while also noting that “he’s been communicating with Pete and Busch the whole off-season.”
Yes, camps have formally opened last week, but players weren’t just showing up after an off-season of doing who-knows-what. Some have already been working out at the club’s facilities in Dunedin — Atkins mentioned at one point that he is “really excited about some additional left-handed pitchers, Timmy Mayza to name one, that really over the last few weeks have looked impressive to us and, at the start, we're encouraged by” — which is something the team hopes will start to become the norm now that their player development complex is just about complete. Others have been getting their preparation for the season in closer to where they live, but clearly Walker and Buschmann’s doors are open.
In fact, when Buschmann was a guest of Arden Zwelling and Ben Nicholson-Smith on an episode of At the Letters back during last summer’s shut-down, he discussed the fact that the way the club was using technology to stay in touch with players because of the pandemic had been an eye-opener. “It’s almost like creating the model of what the off-season can look like,” he said, “where we are kind of disconnected from these players, and that is the kind of main time they can make adjustments and develop and not be in competition.”
I obviously can’t claim to know the extent to which the Jays have already been seeing and connecting with their pitchers, or the amount of data they may have had access to over the winter, but what I’m saying is that they’re not exactly coming in blind to where their arms are at. That, plus the fact that as the winter has progressed it has seemed more and more like the Jays are confident in their youngsters, and wary of depriving some of them of big league opportunities, may not be unrelated.
It might be unrelated though! They may not have the kind of money to spend that it was once expected. Or maybe the Semien deal — an excellent one regardless of what happens to the rotation, and one that makes the team a whole lot better than spending similar money on Taijuan Walker would have, given the difference between each player and the Jays’ alternatives — tapped them out to a greater extent than believed.
Maybe they similarly don’t feel that the cost of guys like Walker or Jake Odorizzi is worth the difference between what they might bring and what their young arms can do, or worth tying up a roster spot beyond 2021. Hell, maybe when the budget was being formulated back in the fall it was based on a belief that Doug Ford might not bungle this province’s pandemic response as badly as he has, or that there was a better chance most Canadians might actually get their hands on a vaccine sometime before Thanksgiving, and as the situation here worsened the likelihood of pulling in some real ticket revenue this season got more remote.
Whatever the case, it wasn’t as if Atkins was trying to sell anybody hard on the idea that things are better than they look, or that some kind of saviour might be on the horizon. He straight up acknowledged that there could be performance-related reasons why any one of Ray, Roark, Stripling, or Matz could find themselves out of the job. What was clear is that he believes his staff can help get the best out of these guys, that he believes in the guys who are likely to start the year in Buffalo, and that he believes that there will continue to be opportunities to add to the rotation.
Will those opportunities arise in the coming weeks? Are they working as urgently as fans want them to be at adding to the group? He didn’t say one way or the other, but he certainly didn’t give off the impression that they are. And the fact that more days have elapsed since without any movement or rumours has not changed that.
If they are indeed done, I think it’s going to change how a lot of people feel about the work the club has done this off-season. Some of that will maybe be a little bit unfair. A run scored is equal to a run saved, and the concept of exponential offence (which I wrote about back in January, after Semien was acquired) is one I’m looking forward to seeing in action. Plus, the Jays’ pitching staff just isn’t as bad as many of its detractors would suggest. For whatever it's worth, the Depth Charts projections at FanGraphs have Jays pitchers at 16.0 WAR as a group in 2021, which is the sixth highest mark in baseball, and third in the American League behind the Yankees and White Sox. Taijuan Walker's 1.2 WAR projection would put him only barely ahead of Tanner Roark (1.1), and behind Ray (2.5), Hyun Jin Ryu (3.3), Nate Pearson (2.2), Steven Matz (1.5), and even Ross Stripling (1.3) among potential Jays starters.
Still, there is obviously plenty of risk in this group, even if Montoyo, Walker, and Buschmann can help to maximize how pitchers get used up and down the roster — and they’ll absolutely be trying to do that, as Atkins admitted that he believes “the makeup of (the) 26-man roster is going to fluctuate a great deal.” And while I think it’s entirely possible that guys like Trent Thornton or Thomas Hatch could have better big league seasons than Jake Odorizzi, I, uh, maybe wouldn’t be betting my team’s season on it.
It would be an awful look for the Blue Jays if they chose to wait until the trade deadline to bring in reinforcements and ended up out of the race by then because of it. That’s maybe not the most likely of possibilities, but it’s a real one.
Of course, there are still real ways to avoid it, too.
• On Gurriel at third base
Manager Charlie Montoyo met with the media for the first time this spring back on Thursday, and by far the most interesting revelation from that session was the fact that several players are going to see time at places around the diamond we’re not entirely used to seeing them.
Vlad getting reps at back third base was a certainty, because the Jays seemed to be using that as a carrot to help him get his conditioning in order — and he seems to have done precisely that. Teoscar seeing time in left makes sense because Springer could see some time in right, though it's a bit of a scary thought given how awful he was on that side in 2018. Semien not getting time at third base is interesting, though it's not as if he couldn't slide over there in a pinch anyway. But what's most intriguing is the fact that the Jays will have Lourdes Gurriel Jr. back on the infield at times.
To say that Gurriel’s last foray as an infielder went poorly would be an understatement. He played 75 1/3 innings at second base in early 2019 and, thanks to a bout of the yips, managed a -1.2 UZR. Extrapolate that mark over 150 games and it would put him at 28 runs below average. (The worst qualified infielders in baseball that season were "only" nine runs below average by UZR.)
Gurriel seems to have found a happy home in left field now, and the Jays are probably better off leaving well enough alone — “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” — but it’s hard not to see a massive potential opportunity here.
Move over Vlad and Biggio, there’s a new makeshift third baseman in town!
Gurriel has agility and reflexes to play shortstop, which means he should be able to do just fine at third. He has the arm strength to play there too. The question is, can he consistently make accurate throws from across the diamond?
The way he flamed out at second says “absolutely not and stop thinking about this immediately.” But the truth is that Gurriel’s major issue was with short throws from the hole at second to first base, not longer ones like he’d be asked to make at third. And, contrary to popular belief, though he disappeared to Buffalo after that horrible stretch then returned to the Blue Jays six weeks later as an outfielder, he wasn’t being shielding him from playing the infield during that time. Far from it, in fact.
In August 2019, Sportsnet’s David Singh did an incredible job of chronicling Gurriel’s spell in Buffalo, and one of many things he highlights is something that was hiding in plain site on Gurriel’s Baseball Reference page: He started only seven games in left field for the Bisons during that stretch. The rest of his 31 games there saw him start at either DH (6), shortstop (6), or second base (12).
In other words, though most people seem to think that getting away from the infield was how he turned his 2019 season around and got his career back on track, that’s not really the case.
Does that mean he will — or should — get a real shot at significant playing time at third in 2021? Not necessarily. Speaking generally about the defensive experimentation planned for this spring, Atkins explained:
In an ideal world we don't need to see that for an extended period of time, because that means everyone's healthy, everyone is playing the positions that they're more accustomed to. But what we don't want to do is not think about that early in spring training — not use this time to get guys exposure to different positions.
So, in the event that we do have injuries, or just different performance opportunities — because of lack thereof or really elevated performance, and just wanting different ways to get different bats into the lineup — this is the time to work on that, and to give different players exposure to different positions.
But it also — not just for extended playing time opportunities — it also creates different late game decision-making opportunities for Charlie, as he thinks about pinch running and pinch hitting, and what that means for repositioning and realigning our defence.
In typical Atkins fashion, he’s not exactly opening the door for Gurriel to become the third baseman here, but he’s not closing the door either. And while I understand anybody having wariness about the idea, I’d really like to see where this goes.
When Charlie first suggested that Gurriel might see some time at third base, I used Baseball Savant’s incredible search tool to check out some of the plays he made at shortstop back in 2018. I can’t say I came away terribly impressed. Anecdotally, his footwork wasn’t always the best, and several of the throws I watched him make weren’t exactly on the money. Justin Smoak’s glove at first base seemed to save Gurriel on more than a few occasions.
There were things to like, though. Like the play below, for example, from a game on July 2 of that year. It not only shows Gurriel having to come in on a ball and make a strong throw in much the way he’d have to if he was over at third base, but also highlights something that Atkins was precisely talking about regarding “late game decision-making” opportunities (though not in a good way).
That third baseman dashing in front of Gurriel and almost causing a misplay? It’s Kendrys Morales.
Yes, this play just so happened to come during the only inning Morales played at third base during his entire 14-year MLB career.
How did he he end up there? It started with the Jays down 2-1 with one out in the bottom of the ninth. The Jays' third baseman that day, Yangervis Solarte, walked. John Gibbons replaced him with a pinch runner, Devon Travis. After a Teoscar Hernández double (which didn't score a run), then an intentional walk to Morales, Kevin Pillar flied out. Down to their last out and down a run with the bases loaded, Gibby decided to pinch hit for Aledmys Díaz and bring in Justin Smoak (who'd been having the day off, with Morales handling first).
It worked, sort of. Smoak walked to tie the game, but the Jays would get no more. Though Russell Martin was on the bench for the Jays that day, he had a knee that was "barking," so Gibbons decided to just roll for an inning with an infield of Smoak, Travis, Gurriel, and Morales.
The Jays would lose that one thanks to a Niko Goodrum triple that was cashed by a José Iglesias sac fly. But the infield defence held. Barely.
More importantly now, it’s a reminder that Gurriel has the tools to play at third, and maybe even to thrive there. And with the Jays going into the season with what looks like four full-time outfielders and a pair of full-time 1B/DH types, allowing him to do it would be great for flexibility.
• Just checking in to see what condition Vlad’s condition is in
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. isn’t the focal point of the conversation around the Blue Jays the way he once was — one of the reporters on Atkins’ Zoom call noted that it he was nearly a half hour in before a question about Vlad was asked — and while you could say that’s a good sign for the Jays because of what it says about the talent they’ve added in around him, that’s putting a bit of a shine on things.
It was two years ago that Vlad was talked about like he was the best prospect anyone had ever seen. Now Fernando Tatís Jr., two months his senior and generally viewed as the next best prospect of Vlad’s class, has signed a $340 million extension with the Padres. And when Vlad’s name comes up, it isn’t to poke at how the Blue Jays are holding him back or to dream about the way the ball explodes off his bat. It’s about conditioning, and where he needs to be in order to make the leap from “really good for a 21-year-old in the major leagues” to the full fledged superstar it looked like he was going to become.
Atkins seems to have no illusions about what that will require.
If you just think about how many times a hitter swings, and what that means for consistency as you're trying to do one of the most difficult things in all of sports to do — to make hard contact with a round bat against a round ball moving very quickly — if you think about the reps that it takes, and how many swings they'll take before they get into a batters box to understand what's going to happen with the bat path at the right time to create the right trajectory of their swing, which creates the right trajectory on the ball, so much of it is about the athleticism that you can repeat. So, the better shape that you're in, the more repeatable things are going to be, because you're able to repeat them more in your practice.
One factor is just the fatigue level that occurs over the course of reps and practice — if you're taking 100 swings, and what that's going to mean for how that engrains your bat path, and what it's going to do when you're facing Gerrit Cole. And the second thing, I've already touched on, and you asked about, is just the athleticism and the quickness it creates for not just the bat path, but how quickly it moves through, and how consistently that occurs.
He would later add: “But Vladdy's special, and that is not just my opinion. What he's able to do with his athleticism when he's maximizing it, and his swing, is really fun to watch.”
“When he’s maximizing it” seems to be doing a lot of work there.
• Miscellaneous translations
On what a full pitching workload will look like in 2021: “Every one of them is so different. There are examples of guys that miss an entire season and come back and throw 200 innings. I think there is certainly the potential of someone who has an established workload over the course of their career, like a Tanner Roark, where that would not be unrealistic at all to think about that occurring.”
TRANSLATION: “This guy’s not a our problem in a year. We paid for innings, and by gosh, we’re going to get innings.”
On Vladimir Guerrero Jr.: “For a 21 year old to have already been talked about as much as he has, to already now have a good season and a half under him in the major leagues, and to have transitioned with a young group that he developed with here in Toronto — it's incredible to see the smile on his face, the shape that he's in, how his routine has developed, and how it's become his own. He's every day this off-season gotten better. He looks great. He's in a really good position. And I'm really excited to see how that's going to impact every aspect of his game this year.”
TRANSLATION: “Man alive, it is going to be incredibly nice if we never have to talk or think about Vladdy’s weight again and the kid can just go out and play.”
On Julian Merryweather’s role: “We'll start out stretching him out and, based on how he's pitching and what are our alternatives, consider whether it's best for him to start or relieve. But initially we'll get him into more extended roles and make that decision closer to maybe the middle of spring training or even later.”
TRANSLATION: “Merryweather has a real good chance of ending up as a reliever in the big leagues.”
On Anthony Kay and Thomas Hatch’s roles: “I don't want to limit how we're going to build our roster, and I want to make sure we're open minded, but we'll see. We'll see how that develops and we'll see how guys come into camp and how healthy they are.”
TRANSLATION: “Kay and Hatch are going to be in Buffalo’s rotation unless something happens that forces us to bring them up.”
On the backup catcher: “Reese we feel confident can perform defensively, and if his offence comes around he's a very valuable piece. And Alejandro Kirk, as you mentioned, as young as he is, has shown us all of the attributes that it takes to be a major league catcher. It will be for him a matter of just durability and being able to handle those rigors with such a limited foundation. … It's certainly a realistic scenario for him to be a backup in the major leagues. And then balancing what's best is the question. We'll have to factor in, 1) how he's performing and how he's recovering. And then, 2) what our options are.”
TRANSLATION: “Better get working on your stroke, Reese. OH GOD, NO, NOT THAT ONE.”
Links!
• Great stuff from Chris Black over at Sportsnet, who takes a look at what made Teoscar Hernández different in 2020 — something I wrote about in a recent mail bag, but that Chris goes much, much deeper on. Beli37e!
• Mike Wilner of the Toronto Star takes a look at the Blue Jays’ optimal lineup, and says something that, frankly, surprises me.
“Rowdy Tellez will definitely get some time, but outside of his red-hot last two weeks of last season (before going down with a knee injury) he’s a career .239 hitter with an on-base percentage under .300, so he’s still got a lot of room to improve and shouldn’t be handed an everyday job,” he writes. “Having Tellez in the lineup on a regular basis would force Teoscar Hernandez into the outfield from the DH spot and Randal Grichuk to the bench, which is a big hit on the defensive side for not much gain, if any, on the offensive side.”
I’m not saying that this isn’t indeed the way the Jays see it, but yikes. I don’t know about you but, uh, I absolutely want to see a ton more of Rowdy Tellez than I do of Randal Grichuk. I will take the defensive hit, thank you very much.
Strikeout rates for hitters generally stabilize after about 30 games, and Rowdy played 35 last year with a rate of 15.7% after producing marks above 28% in each of his first two big league years. His walk rate went up, his ISO stayed strong, his contact rate went up. This wasn't the guy who rode a .391 BABIP to a ridiculous month at the end of 2018. He looked like a quality big league hitter and it would be a huge mistake for the Blue Jays to not give him a long look at the start of the season just so we can see more of Grichuk. Hand him an every day job until he proves 2020 was a fluke, please.
• There are many reasons Kevin Mather is bad and should already have been fired by the Mariners by now, but seriously, this just truly blows my mind.
• There was actually a Jays-related tidbit buried in the story of Mather running his mouth at the Bellevue Rotary Club, which is the fact that the Mariners president said that the team had the option to have moved their High-A affiliate to Vancouver. I’d like to imagine that the Blue Jays would have fought to keep the Canadians in the fold, but who know! The excellent C’s Plus blog takes a look at the situation from Vancouver’s side of things.
• Jays pitching coach Pete Walker met with the media via Zoom over the weekend, and Keegan Matheson of BlueJays.com has a good roundup of the most notable things he said.
• Shi Davidi reports that Jays right-hander Tanner Roark has changed agents and is now being represented by MVP Sports. Some reward for getting him more money than Tanner Roark should have ever been paid! But it is funny to wonder if this is in any way a reaction having ended up in the situation he’s in with the Jays. (And, to be fair, though his awful 2020 season is easy to pick on, it was really not ideal for an innings-eater like him and I would have no trouble believing he’ll be quite a bit better in 2021. Better enough to be “good” though? I won’t go that far.)
• Prospect stuff: Gerard Gilberto of MiLB.com has a nice profile of Simeon Woods Richardson, while Scott Mitchell of TSN.ca reminds us not to forget about Eric Pardinho.
• Another guy not to forget about is Trent Thornton. Sure, I said above that I might not exactly want to bet my team’s season on him, but as I’ve mentioned a few times around here (and elsewhere) he really was quite good in a whole lot of starts back in 2019. Arden Zwelling of Sportsnet looks at where he’s at now, which is a pretty good place, it turns out. Specifically, he’s not in a place where he has four loose pieces of bone floating around his elbow — including two the size of molars — which, it turns out, was the situation he was in last year.
• Lastly, I can’t imagine this is a coincidence.
Top image: Presser screengrab via the Toronto Blue Jays
Not broadcasting games is cost cutting, and it's horseshit for fans, plain and simple. That's basically what you said, just adding my voice.
I remember spring 2013 after all the trades and the Melky signing, (people forget; Melky was the ASG MVP the year before) Sportsnet was sending Buck and Tabler to do spring games IN THE OPPOSING TEAMS spring training stadium site. Jesus. Not even the Yankees do that. We've gone from that to have no games at all. It sucks.
There was another article recently on Kirk's conditioning where he says he's not sure how much weight he's lost, but he thinks 'it's a lot'. Does he not have access to scales? In these days of high performance departments how is that possible? Speaking of Kirk, can we just have him and Jansen split duties? Put the best players on the field.