Remembering what a win feels like, Large adult sons, the Cry Baby Rays, Manoah Day links, and more!
A couple times a year every baseball team will lose a game in such a horrendous, awful, gut-wrenchingly stupid way that it makes you question your entire life as a fan. Over the weekend the Blue Jays did that four days in a row. Then on Tuesday they won! So let’s 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. I will be eternally grateful if you do!
So long, Stinktown! The Jays leave Dunedin and win a game. Coincidence??!?!
Anyway, time for a little three up, three down…
▲ Steven Matz
Steven Matz got agonizingly close to getting through seven innings for the Jays on Tuesday night, but Charlie Montoyo and Pete Walker were understandably (to a point) not leaving anything to chance in this one. A double and a run scoring single to the last two batters he faced pushed his line for the game to six hits and one earned run over 6 2/3, with zero walks and 10 strikeouts. Even with that hiccup, it was one of the Jays' best pitching performances of the year.
If it weren’t for the terrible run of cluster luck he ran into with two outs in the second inning against the Red Sox last week I think we’d safely be saying he’s turned the corner after hitting a bit of a rough patch at the end of April. (That Red Sox sequence: soft single, single fisted to the opposite field, three-run wall-scraping TD Ballpark special, legit double, run scoring “single” off the third baseman’s glove, seeing-eye single, legit single).
The “holy shit, did Pete Walker turn Matz into an ace?” days are fully behind us now, but I think the “the Jays only have two reliable starters” stuff can also stop. Not a bad place to be with a guy who may end up looking like the team’s fourth starter in fairly short order. (OH NO, THERE GO THOSE HIGH EXPECTATIONS AGAIN!)
▲ Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
Have you heard of this guy? Seems like he’s pretty good!
Just your major league leader in home runs, OPS, wRC+, and fWAR having a typical night at the office. Vlad is also tops among AL position players in rWAR, and is one of just six qualified hitters with more walks than strikeouts.
It’s been an MVP-calibre couple of months for Vladdy. Ho hum.
▲ Winning a damn baseball game
Ahhhhh, yes. That’s the stuff.
Seriously, though. In addition to winning being obviously good, and stopping a losing streak being obviously good, I think it’s also good that we’re not going into Wednesday’s debut of Alek Manoah with all that still hanging over the team. Not that anybody at all seems worried about Manoah’s ability to handle pressure, but asking him to come in and stop a potentially season-derailing losing streak would have seemed to be a bit much, no?
▼ Jordan Romano in the ninth?
Even if it’s probably not the decision I would have made, given all that had happened with the bullpen over the last few games, I think it’s justifiable for Charlie Montoyo to have gone to Jordan Romano in the ninth inning with a five run lead. But it’s a little bit weird that he’d manage that situation like it’s the seventh game of the World Series and not, say, Saturday’s extra inning loss when he brought in Travis Bergen to take over for Tyler Chatwood, right?
I don’t want to revisit that disaster too much, but I’ll say the same thing about Montoyo’s decision there: probably not the decision I’d have made, but a more justifiable one than a lot of people were willing to accept after the implosion (also: before). Chatwood is notorious for command problems, Bergen hadn’t walked a lefty all year, and Austin Meadows was hitting .146 against lefties at the time and was .145/.253/.211 since the start of 2020. Going away from Chatwood made some sense, going to Bergen made some sense, and playing the long game by saving Romano for the next day made some sense.
Now two days later the long game isn’t as important?
I do entirely get why the bench wanted to make sure this one got closed out. I also understand that it’s not great to get a reliever warmed up and ready to come into a game only to have him sit back down. There is definitely logic behind Charlie’s choice here, just like there is always some reasonable measure of logic behind the managerial decisions we disagree with (bunting with two strikes being the exception that proves the rule). But there were no outs when Randal Grichuk homered to put the Jays back up by five, and if someone like A.J. Cole can’t be trusted with a five run lead what is he even doing here? And it’s especially weird if someone like that ends up forced into an even higher leverage situation here on Wednesday because Romano isn’t available after being asked to pitch on back-to-back days.
▼ Kyle Higashioka
Another good game for this guy against the Toronto Blue Jays. Extremely rude!
▼ Vlad’s Shadow
Don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly not asking Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to do anything different by giving his shadow a down arrow here. I’d very much like to see him keep on doing exactly what he’s been doing. But he’s been so incredibly, awesomely good that lately it’s been easy to overlook the contributions of some of his teammates a little bit. In particular, Marcus Semien and Teoscar Hernández (though it’s been nice to see Lourdes Gurriel Jr.’s bat start to come around as well).
Teoscar has a better wRC+ right now (148) than he did last year (143) in what was a breakout Silver Slugger campaign. He's been worth 1.2 wins per FanGraphs in just 31 games, which puts him well on pace to top the 1.5 mark he had in 50 game last season (a career high). Maybe most impressively, seeing as his ability to strike the ball incredibly hard and take a decent number of walks was always there, he's got his strikeout rate down to just 22.1%. His career rate is 30.8%.
As has been the case quite often this season, Teoscar’s success has made me think of some of the things Dante Bichette said when he spoke last September about the work he’d been doing with him.
With Teoscar we've done really another thing. He's backed the ball up, and I can't tell you how important that is, for hitters to back the ball up. Great hitters do it. Bad hitters catch the ball out in front of the plate. But that's been — he trusts his hands. But we've been — we'll throw — we've actually got at-bats before the game. Live at-bats from 46 feet. And it usually starts where I'm pitching to him in a 1-1 count, and I'll throw the barrel — I'll beat him up high with fastballs when we start, but by the end of the session he's making the adjustment. He's realizing how to make the adjustment in a non — he's not getting paid for this, so it's a no-pressure situation, he can make the adjustment. So when he steps in the game, he has it in his mind, 'Oh, I know the adjustment for this.' The toughest thing to do in baseball is get real at-bats in a non-pressure situation. It's almost impossible. It's like the only sport where we can't actually do it like it's really done in the game, because we don't have arms to pitch. So, that little drill for him I think has been big.
...
I think Teoscar can get better with two strikes. And I don't really want to go there right now with him, but I think there's another level. He can learn, like Grichuk has done, understanding different approaches against different pitchers. Right now he's kind of got one approach, and it's working. You know? So I don't really want to go to the next step yet, but it's in there with him. He can learn to maybe hunt a breaking ball once in a while, or maybe get inside a guy. Learn how to handle different types of fastballs, things like that. But the sky's the limit with that guy, because honestly I don't know if I've ever seen a guy with more opposite field power than that guy in the history of me. I don't know. That is ridiculous opposite field power.
Another level with Teoscar? Sign me the hell up.
As for Semien, right now he’s playing at a level we all knew he was capable of: The same MVP-calibre level he was at in 2019.
Semien couldn’t have hit the free agent market at a worse time for him, or a better time for the Jays. That wasn’t quite so clear at first, but there’s no doubt that the guy he was in 2019 is still very much in there. There will be dips, naturally. But the Jays are well on their way to getting their money’s worth and then some. (Now extend him!)
Links!
• Shi Davidi of Sportsnet gets us set for Alek Manoah’s debut by way of a chat with Manoah’s West Virginia coach, Randy Mazey, and stories of how Alek grew into a pitcher who is arriving in the big leagues as a starter at just 23 years old — including taking accountability for his conditioning, and using videos from Pitching Ninja to help himself improve.
• Future Blue Jays gives us a nice, level-headed scouting report Manoah. But, honestly, the link is worth clicking for the up-close pic of Manoah’s size 17 1/2 cleats alone. Big lad!
• We spoke above about Teoscar’s success in Vlad’s shadow, and it turns out my Blue Jays Happy Hour cohost, Nick Ashbourne, dove into some numbers on exactly that subject in his latest for Sportsnet.
• And speaking of Vlad’s awesomeness, I think it’s safe to say that my former podcast cohost, Drew Fairservice, is have a whole lot more fun this year at his Guerrero-centric blog Vlad Religion than he was over the last two years.
• And speaking of podcasts, don’t forget to catch our most recent edition of Blue Jays Happy Hour, which has many benefits, including: plenty of Manoah talk, no mention of the results of the Rays series (which hadn’t happened yet when we recorded), and special guest Dan Shulman!
• Since we’re doing the ICYMI thing here I should also point out that I wrote a bunch about the Manoah call-up just yesterday. Check it out if you haven’t yet!
• Interesting Manoah chat early on in the latest episode of the RotoGraphs podcast The Sleeper and the Bust. RG is, of course, the fantasy baseball vertical from FanGraphs. Worth a listen!
• One of the hosts of that podcasts, Paul Sporer, also has a Jays-related piece up this week, as he looked into the changes Robbie Ray has made to improve his control this season.
• Tony Blengino of Forbes takes a look at some interesting park factor numbers on TD Ballpark, which was certainly hitter friendly, though not necessarily friendly to Blue Jays players, who must have felt like every “home” game was on the road.
• Cool stuff from the New York Times, taking a look at the return of the Blue Jays’ army of cardboard fans, including celebrity Jays fans like Lauren Ash of NBC’s “Superstore” and the legendary Ennis Esmer!
• The Perfect Game Cares Foundation announced here on Wednesday that (hypothetical) Blue Jays outfielder George Springer and Rockies shortstop Trevor Story have made a sizeable donation to the organization in order to support its "Grow the Game" fund. "Springer and Story wanted to join forces to ensure that more athletes of color and underprivileged youth in general are getting the financial assistance they need to play baseball in their local communities," says a press release. Awesome stuff. Now join forces on the field, will ya? (Story is, of course, one of the marquee players headed toward free agency this winter.)
• MLB.com gives us seven early season breakouts to believe in, and I don’t think you’ll have to try very hard to guess which of our large adult sons is named first.
• Friend of the show Jonah Birenbaum makes the observation that “Blue Jays pitchers seem to be making a conscious effort to elevate their sinkers,” pointing to this piece from Pitcher List about Tyler Chatwood, and the below tweet showing Steven Matz’s pitch locations on Tuesday night. Interesting! (Perhaps something Alek Manoah was doing in his Triple-A start last week, causing people to think he was hanging pitches? Hmmm.)
• This week’s series in the Bronx must present a lot of conflicting emotions for Blue Jays outfielder Randal Grichuk, who, of course, also owns the Yankees.
• And in their Mets-iest move yet…
The Tampa Cry Crys
Hmm. Not sure if that heading works as well as I thought it did, but I’m sure you get the idea. The idea is that the Rays are a bunch of whiners! Or so it turns out.
Back on Friday, Rays starter Tyler Glasnow, was brutalized by the Jays back on Friday to the tune of, uh, five runs on nine hits over 4 2/3 innings. A perfectly normal line for even the best starter on a bad day, but apparently enough to get Glasnow — and Rays TV analyst Bryan Anderson — wondering if something nefarious was going on.
LOL.
Cheating? By the Blue Jays? This past weekend? Yeah, must be why they won all those games.
“I don’t know; I definitely think about it,” Glasnow told the Tampa Bay Times. “I’m not quite sure. I think you’d have to ask the Blue Jays what was going on. It was definitely a weird start for me. It was definitely strange. I think I had some decent swing-and-miss stuff. I think that the takes were different.”
“They were just kind of on time with everything no matter what I threw,” he added.
That’s called backing the ball up, Tyler! Talk to Dante Bichette for once in your life!
Anyway, this is dumb and the Rays are ridiculous for suggesting it might be anything but Glasnow maybe — maybe — tipping his pitches.
And before we leave the world of the stupid Rays and their egregious “fans don’t matter, what matters is never paying anyone fairly” business model, we have another story from the Tampa Bay Times with yet another (albeit more tenuous) Blue Jays connection.
Back on Monday, Josh Soloman and Emily L. Mahoney reported that the team's principal owner, Stuart Sternberg, is being sued by a group of the club's minority owners. The group, according to the Times, is "alleging he has been engaged in a “relentless scheme” to take over control of the team and began secretly negotiating to sell an interest in the Rays to Montreal investors in 2014 — years before it was publicly disclosed."
"If true," the report continues, "city officials said those discussions could have violated the exclusivity clause woven into the team’s Tropicana Field lease."
It’s an ugly situation for an absurd franchise that can’t get itself to Montreal, and into a real rivalry with the Blue Jays, soon enough.
In conclusion:
Top image via MLB.com/Sportsnet
Nice summary of a lot of stuff. You know, aside from his pitching I think Romano has serious potential as baseball's next 'character' or 'flake'. He's got the crazy beard, the funky wiggling and crouching pre wind-up, he's always muttering to himself...and the 100 mph fastball. He could be some sort of Bird-Mad Hungarian hybrid. There's an opportunity here.
The last few years I've gone to a few games at Tampa's Tropicana and side note: the traffic in Tampa sucks, too.