On missed opportunities, a bullpen blow-up, Riley Adams, Spider Tack, prospects, humidors, Atkins Speaks!, and more!
Happy Manoah day to those who celebrate. Let’s hope it goes better than Tuesday’s game did. However, before that one gets too far into the rear view, I guess we should talk about it.
But first, please indulge me while I attempt to make a living. Because if you’ve been sent here by a friend, or are an existing subscriber who would like to move to a paid membership so you can comment, ask questions the next time I open up the ol’ mail bag, or just plain old support what I do, click below to upgrade or become a subscriber. You’ll be helping keep all posts free for everyone, and I will be eternally grateful, too!
OK, deep breath. We’ll start, as usual, with a little three up, three down…
▲ Robbie Ray
Robbie Ray pitched more than well enough to deserve a win in this one. Of course, so did the White Sox’ Carlos Rodón, but that’s not really our concern.
Ray continues to look like the best version of himself by far, picking up a season high 13 strikeouts in this one while walking zero for the fifth time in eleven starts. Among 132 pitchers with at least 40 innings pitched this season (Ray has 64 1/3), he ranks number 17 by strikeout rate (31.2%), in a tie for number 30 by walk rate (5.7%), and 13th for K-BB% (25.5%). That last mark puts him ahead of Trevor Bauer, Yu Darvish, Clayton Kershaw, Aaron Nola, and, well, 119 others. His ERA- (79) ranks 38th.
Oh yeah, and Ray’s average fastball velocity on Tuesday was 95.5 mph — up slightly from his season average of 95.3, which itself is well up from 2019, when his fastball averaged just 92.4. (His spin rate, since I suppose we're now obligated to remark on that, has remained steady — save for a small spike in 2020 — since tracking began in 2015.)
He also tied his career high for sliders thrown in an outing with 46. And with the feel he’s got for that pitch lately, why wouldn’t he?
The home runs are clearly a problem still, but they’re much less of a problem when they come with no one on base. That, sadly, didn’t make the one he gave up to Andrew Vaughn in the seventh inning any less frustrating, but absolutely nothing about that loss was on him. He’s been tremendous.
▲ Riley Adams
My thoughts on the Jays’ long-term catching situation didn’t change much over the course of this one single game. But did they change a little bit? Maybe!
Adams was fairly impressive in his big league debut. He came as advertised with the bat, striking out twice, but smoking a 99 mph fastball from Rodón off the wall for a double to lead off the fifth. But what impressed me the most was the fact that he looked better than just competent behind the plate.
I mean, maybe not a whole lot better. I’m certainly not going to act like I’m an expert in the finer points of catcher assessment. A lot goes into that position! But for such a big guy he looked comfortable back there, managed the game well, blocked some balls well. Receiving-wise, I don’t know if he stole any strikes but he certainly didn’t seem to be costing his pitchers strikes either. He looked entirely fine back there. Which, given how little the Jays have managed to get out of the position offensively this season, bodes well for him potentially getting a nice little run back there.
▲ The Chicago White Sox
The White Sox may have a joke of a manager and a clown of an owner — or maybe it’s the other way around — but damn, they’re a ridiculously talented team. Rodón wasn’t at his best but was able to rear back when he needed it, and was still throwing 100 in his last inning of work. The bullpen was lethal — and the difference between the quality of their ‘pen and the Jays’ right now was obvious. Lance Lynn here on Wednesday is going to be a problem. We’re not even going to see Giolito. And though the lineup didn’t have its best day early on, it’s oozing with talent, despite the absences of Luis Robert and Eloy Jiménez. The Jays mostly beat themselves in this one, I’d say. But credit to the White Sox. It, uh… it turns out you can’t let them off the mat a thousand times like the Blue Jays did on Tuesday night.
▼ Missed opportunities
The Jays had two runners on in the first with no outs: no runs scored. They began the second inning with a double followed by a single: one run scored. A double and a walk to start the third: no runs scored. A lead-off double in the fifth: no runs scored. A single and a walk with one out in the seventh: no runs scored.
That kind of failure is not easy to pull off. And it wasn’t like those situations kept happening because the White Sox hit the black hole at the bottom of the Jays’ lineup. Teoscar and Grichuk struck out to end the first. Semien struck out to end the second. Teoscar struck out, then Grichuk grounded into a double play to end the third. In the fifth, Semien moved Adams to third with a ground out, Bichette struck out, Vlad walked, then Teoscar flew out. Vlad struck out, then Semien was picked off in the seventh.
Before anyone gripes about Teoscar — whose name, I will admit, appears in the above paragraph quite a few times — I’ll note that he hit better than Vladdy in May, a month that literally just ended. (Tesocar had a 166 wRC+ to Vlad’s 165). He ain’t the problem. It was just one of those nights.
▼ That pick-off
There are plenty of moments to pick out that could have completely altered the outcome of this game, and this maybe isn’t even the worst of those. I hate to pick on Semien, who has been brilliant for the Jays thus far, and I must acknowledge that it took a perfect throw from White Sox reliever Evan Marshall to get him at second base and end the Jays’ threat in the seventh with their slim 1-0 lead intact. But woof.
Woooohhhhuuhhuhhhuuhhhhfffff.
▼ The bullpen
It’s hard to pick on the bullpen on a night where the Jays’ hitters failed to capitalize on so many chances to break the game open, but I’m going to have to pick on the bullpen a little here. Because it’s trash!
You can nitpick Charlie Montoyo’s usage if you really want — like, personally, I’m not a fan of Trent Thornton in higher-ish leverage spots precisely because, while I think he can be a useful pitcher for the Jays, innings like the one he had on Tuesday tend to follow him around a lot — but it’s real tough to make a bullpen work when you’re down to just 1.5 reliable arms. There are a lot of potential land mines back there.
So, while I won’t argue that there were probably better options that Charlie could have gone to — and maybe even would have if the Jays had gone into the eighth inning ahead or at home — I’d say that the difference between the potential for Thornton blowing the game and either Anthony Castro or Joel Payamps blowing the game simply isn’t great enough for us to waste time getting hung up on that.
Clearly, however, the Jays need help back there. Some of it will come soon in the form of Ryan Borucki, Thomas Hatch, Patrick Murphy, etc. The question is will that be enough?
I’m never the type to panic when it comes to bullpen stuff or to scream and shout that “they can’t keep losing games like this!” Games are going to be coughed up from time to time no matter who the relievers are or who is in charge. You can examine those types of losses in a vacuum and usually find a way to feel better about them. It just wasn’t someone’s day, you got burned by a bad bounce, an umpire’s call changed the tenor of an inning, etc. But when those things start to add up, and then you look at the relievers you have available and see Jordan Romano, Rafael Dolis, and about seven giant question marks, it’s more than fair to start wondering whether the ship is actually going to right itself this time.
I think things will get better as guys get healthier, but, well, they can’t keep losing games like this. I know it’s early for trades, I know they prefer to use their powers of pro scouting to find relievers on the cheap, and I know they’ll have to give up something they won’t want to give up in order to find a quick fix, but they can’t allow this open wound to fester. They can’t let “if only we’d done something sooner about the obvious problems in the bullpen” become a lament later on in the season.
Links!
• In what I'm going to characterize as surprising news, Zach Crizer of Yahoo Sports reported on Tuesday that, once they return to Toronto, the Blue Jays are going to be MLB's 10th team to store game balls in a humidor. They will join the Rockies, Diamondbacks, Red Sox, Mariners, Mets, Astros, Marlins, Cardinals, and Rangers in doing so.
The Rockies, of course, use the humidor to suppress offence because they play their games at altitude, where the ball reacts differently than in the thicker air of sea level. Arizona also has tamped down on offence with their use of one. The stadiums newly equipped with a humidor, however, don't fit the same profile at all (save, perhaps, for the Red Sox, who play in a very hitter-friendly Fenway park), so it's unclear to me what exactly this is all about. (Though Crizer makes clear that the science surrounding the baseball is pretty complicated.)
So, uh, what's going on here? I'd love to hear Mark Shapiro or Ross Atkins offer some insight!
• Another big picture story going on right now is, of course, the one about pitchers using foreign substances. It doesn’t help that the Yankees’ Gerrit Cole-bot seemed to blow a fuse when asked about Spider Tack earlier this week.
Thing is, it’s unfair to make Cole the face of this issue. Clearly Trevor Bauer should be the face of the issue. But also, though it’s much less funny this way, no pitcher or group of pitchers should have to wear what has been, unequivocally, MLB’s fuck-up.
A piece at Blue Jays Nation this week took a look at the spin rates on Jays pitchers over the last few years, searching, I guess, for anomalies. It was tactfully written, and I suppose understand the impulse. The data is kind of interesting. But it’s about as meaningful to this question as trying to draw conclusions based on José Bautista’s 2009 and 2010 home run totals was — a comparison brought up in the piece itself, which is nice and all, but how about we just don’t do this at all?
• Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet has an excellent piece on this very topic (in general, not the Blue Jays) here on Wednesday.
• More MLB controversy from Richard Justice of Texas Monthy, who looks at Andy Martino’s new book Cheated: The Inside Story of the Astros Scandal and a Colorful History of Sign Stealing. There are a lot of details in this one, which is well worth a read, including the fact that the Astros appear to have continued on cheating into 2019.
Nothing shocking there. But what sticks out to me in the piece is this paragraph:
As previously reported, the Boston Red Sox definitely broke some rules, while the Los Angeles Dodgers, Cleveland Indians, and Milwaukee Brewers were suspected of it. But none of them pushed the envelope as far as Houston. As for the Yankees, they did experiment with a sign-stealing scheme that was so complicated it may not have broken any rules. They were so careful about keeping players away from replay monitors near their dugout that they erected a barrier to prevent anyone from stopping by for a quick peek.
Houston “pushed the envelope” more than other teams, but were hardly the only team. And, as the article makes clear elsewhere, plenty of people were raising alarms about it for a long time and nothing was done. Which we knew! But, again, an issue where MLB’s long-term lack of action — and, of course, the lack of action from, and participation from, Astros management — is the issue much more so than what individual players being allowed, and incentivized, to operate within an ethical grey area were doing!
• Always great stuff from Friend of the Show (TM) Drew Fairservice, who writes over at Vlad Religion about the fun that Vladimir Guerrero has playing the game, which isn’t expressed in Bautista-like bombast. “Improving the game and the fan experience by injecting some fun is important. Freeing players to express themselves doesn’t mean bat flips are required. It’s not about the bat flips and chirps, it’s the freedom to be who you are. Vlad Jr gets to be who he wants to be and, at this point, giving his homers an extra glance or leaning allllll the way back after feasting on a José Urquidy cookie is how he expresses himself. Nothing more, nothing less. The way it should be.”
• Speaking of Vlad, Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic wrote about the process — minus all of the corruption *COUGH* — of him, Fernando Tatis Jr., and Juan Soto being signed as amateur free agents from looks like a pretty incredible 2015-16 international free agent class.
• Gregor Chisholm of the Toronto Star has a fresh mail bag up and… people are asking about Austin Martin playing in the majors this year??!?
• Samad Taylor, who you may remember from such 2017 trade deadline day deals as Joe Smith for Thomas Pannone, is… uh… leading the Fisher Cats with seven home runs so far this season? Pretty interesting turn of events for a guy who is still just 22.
• Speaking of guys potentially heading in the good direction out of prospect limbo:
Atkins speaks
Jays GM Ross Atkins met with the media via Zoom back on Sunday. Here are some highlights!
• On strengthening the team
With the calendar having recently flipped to June, at one point during the session, Mike Wilner of the Toronto Star asked Atkins about the old Billy Beane adage about essentially splitting the season into thirds, one to assess the team, another to address its problems, and a third for the team to make its push. After having seen the Jays come up short against a loaded White Sox squad on Tuesday night, I think this is as good a place as any to start.
There's no hard line. I think that's a good perspective and I think that frames things relatively well. But there's never just a hard line where this is the date where we determine exactly what we're going to do. So it is still relatively early in the season, and we're really proud of this group, really excited about this group, and are thinking about how do we just continue to make this organization better for the short term and the long term. And they've earned it. They've really earned that, as you've seen over the last two off-seasons, and last year's deadline, that we're committed to just taking steps forward.
Atkins, as you might expect, is a bit reserved about this stuff. Partly that’s because he’s correct when he says that it’s still relatively early in the season. There was a good FanGraphs piece last week from Kevin Goldstein, who is back in the writing world again after some years in the Astros’ front office, about how teams use June for outreach with each other as they all prepare for the trade madness that starts taking place in earnest in July. The league isn’t very deep into that process yet, which is why I’m always reticent — as I was above — to start pounding my fist on the table about getting deals made at this stage. (There can be exceptions, of course, like the Rays’ recent Willy Adames trade.)
I would like to think, however, that the Blue Jays are going to be a little bit more aggressive this summer than we’re used to. Not just because of the bullpen, though it obviously needs to be addressed. But because of things like the fact that Hyun Jin Ryu and George Springer aren’t getting any younger from here, and that Robbie Ray, Steve Matz, and Marcus Semien are free agents next winter. The Jays may not be quite full on win-now just yet, but as good as we may feel about the team’s future opportunities as good as the one they’ve got here in 2021 aren’t guaranteed to come every single year going forward.
We can worry about that in July, though. For now we’re worry about the bullpen, which apparently Atkins does too. Asked what he’s learned over the first two months of the season about the tweaks he’ll need to make, the GM proved he’s not blind.
The injuries to our bullpen has been — it's not so much learning, but is just information that we need to be aware of. We started the year feeling pretty good about that group, and we've just taken some hits in that category. We'll also look to build from within, not just externally. Really excited about the guys that have stepped up, in Timmy Mayza, Trent Thornton (on Saturday) was exceptional. His stuff has really bounced back and he looks like he could have an impact as well in that role.
That bit did not age well! Not that Thornton should be ruled out of a bigger role because of one bad inning. He should be rule out of it — once there is actually anyone better on the roster — because of this:
• On reliever health
Obviously we are going back a few days here, but things at the time were — and, to my understanding, still are — looking good for the Jays getting some reinforcements soon.
Ryan Borucki:
Ryan's been feeling better and better each day. To my knowledge he's pain free today and will take the next step with a throwing progression. As you know, with throwing progressions, this is not a science. How the player's responding and feeling is the most important part of the equation, and he's had a positive few days.
Patrick Murphy:
He threw an inning and a third last night, I believe. Good velocity, good effectiveness, and just a matter of consistency for him at this point.
Julian Merryweather:
He's feeling good and he's in a throwing routine now. It will probably be a little bit past that date (he’s eligible to come off the 60-day IL), because we want to make sure when he comes back into the fold that he can go back-to-back days and is not someone that we need to protect when he is back with the major league team.
Thomas Hatch:
He's throwing today with the Trenton team, so looking forward to that. He had just a very mild setback — he had some mild tightness in his side — and we wanted to make sure there was nothing serious enough to keep him down for any extended period of time. So we gave him a little bit of space to recover and he's going to be throwing in the game today.
Hatch did throw in that game, tossing two scoreless, hitless innings, walking one and striking out one. Asked if he’s being built up to start, Atkins said, “Yeah. That's correct. We don't want to eliminate him as a relief option for the major league team, but he will be built up as a starter.”
• On Nate Pearson
I’m putting the stuff on Pearson here mostly because on Tuesday night I joked on Twitter that he may be the answer to the Jays’ bullpen problems. Or, at least, part of the solution.
I think it’s safe to say that the team doesn’t feel that way. Asked what Pearson is focusing on in the minors, Atkins replied:
I think it really is the reps as a starter. He's had some disruption with a couple of setbacks this year. Getting into the routine of a starting pitcher, again, has been (something) we're encouraged by. And then, for us, it's efficiency. So, the command of his three pitches and being very aggressive with them early. He likes to throw the ball hard, and he doesn't want to lose that, we certainly don't want him to lose that either, and we want to balance that with him also being as efficient as possible.
So he’s taking a little off of his heater in exchange for better command of it? Is that what I’m hearing here?
Interesting. And either way, clearly not someone the team is going to flip into the bullpen on a whim after so much “disruption” so far.
• On Alek Manoah
Obviously start number two didn’t go nearly as well as start number one did for Jays fans’ new large adult son. His general manager seems rather unconcerned.
It's really, really impressive to see how he's handled so much so quickly and so well. It's so interesting to think about how player development has evolved, too. The resources that are available to us are very different than they were when I was a director of player development. To think about the technology, the cameras that are involved, the resources across the performance side, on strength and conditioning and nutrition. The most encouraging thing, I think, from our perspective and Alek, is to see how he's embraced all those resources and the consistency of his routine. So, if he sticks to that, he has the hardest part figured out, in that embracing the competition — he seems to have a pretty good heartbeat, as we saw in the Bronx and as we saw in spring training. Exceptionally encouraged by the consistency that he's had when when the lights aren't on and when the cameras aren't on. And that is sometimes the hardest part. I had time as a pitcher, and I remember Orel Hershiser saying to me you're not a professional until you enjoy the preparation. That really resonated with me, and I see Alek embracing that, and embracing that preparation, which is very exciting.
Not hard to notice that Manoah’s start against Miami was not included among the times we saw his “pretty good heartbeat.” Still, Atkins believes the big leagues are where he belongs.
Right now, for sure. The way that he embraced the things that we talked about, the way that he embraced his off-season, then how he performed — albeit a small sample size — in Trenton was enough for us to feel confident that this is the next step for him, and this is where his development should continue. We don't anticipate changing, and would like for that to be his last stint in the minor leagues, but you never know. And in my opinion it will be all about the consistency of his work and his routines and his ability to really bounce back in between each start.
• On Gabriel Moreno
My sense is that a few too many people are looking at the way Alejandro Kirk was rushed to the majors last year and seeing a similar path for Gabriel Moreno, who is currently tearing it up in Double-A, given Kirk’s injury and the black hole that production from behind the plate has been for the Jays all year. I’m still betting against the idea that we’ll see him in the majors this year, but I must admit, the Moreno hype train is getting pretty loud.
In fact, that’s precisely the word (minus caps-lock) that Josh Norris of Baseball America said about it in a top prospects chat this week. (Shouts to the great Clint from BC for asking the question!)
Clint (BC Canada):
Is Moreno finally the Jays catcher of the future that sticks and if so does that happen this year?
Josh Norris: I don't know that he necessarily gets there this year, but, yes, I do think he's their catcher of the future. The reviews on him this year have been LOUD. Put it this way: I've picked him in my fantasy league and have given him a roster spot fully knowing there's a chance he doesn't get to Toronto (or Buffalo) this season. That strategy worked out for me with Fernando Tatis Jr !
The BA chat was prompted by the release of an update to their top 100 list this week, in which Moreno has jumped from number 94 all the way to number 36. (Manoah jumped from 87 to 37 as well, though Pearson tumbled to 38 from 16 and Jordan Groshans went from 26 to 56). Scott Mitchell of TSN has one about Moreno potentially being the real deal for the Jays, too.
Atkins, for his part, like Moreno a lot too, and suggests that another step up the chain is not out of the question. (Moreno is slashing .369/.427/.595 for New Hampshire, I should note.)
He has been awesome, he really has. There actually are some things with his approach — he's so talented with bat-to-ball, bat speed, contact rates — I think just his ability to control the zone better is what we're focused on with him. Doesn't mean he has to stay in Double-A to do that, and we will absolutely consider if it's best for him to take another step forward. Riley Adams has also been tearing the cover off the ball as well, so feel like we're in a really good position with those two at Triple-A and Double-A for us.
• On Austin Martin
Of course the Jays’ top prospect, according to BA, is Moreno’s teammate, Austin Martin. At .277/.405/.415, Martin’s line isn’t quite as pretty, but he’s heating up, and starting to make it clear why he was the fifth overall pick in last year’s draft (and maybe the best talent of them all).
Future Blue Jays had an excellent deep dive on what makes Martin so good this week. Atkins clearly sees it too.
He's been awesome, man. He really has embraced it. Every individual's different, and every situation is unique, but a guy of his pedigree, who was drafted as high as he was, has performed as well as he did, and has continued to perform well, has really embraced thinking about not just resting on his laurels, or thinking 'What I've done will be good enough.' He's embracing, 'How can I be even better?' and 'How can I get stronger? How can I be more powerful while sticking with my approach?' Which we're seeing. He's had a good approach, he's trying to get to more power, and he's looking to make adjustments. And the defensive challenges that he had in spring training he's really worked on. He's been really consistent as a defender, so really impressed with his overall professionalism.
The Blue Jays adding Martin, Moreno, and Groshans over the next couple years? It rules.
I'm excited to see what Moreno can do but the hype train needs to tap the brakes a bit. We've seen so many catchers of the future underwhelm. Josh Phelps. Quiroz. D'Arnaud. Thigpen. Arencibia. A.J. Jimenez. Even Jansen. Dozen times bitten, twice shy. But here's hoping!