Salvaged in Seattle
A look back at the weekend and forward at the playoff race and the week ahead
The Blue Jays lost ground over the weekend, but may have began to salvage their road trip with big a win on Sunday that sets them up nicely for the week ahead. So let’s talk about it!
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Thursday (Blue Jays 3 - Angels 6)
We’ll start off way back on Thursday, which was a bad game, though hardly the worst one we’ll be talking about. Here’s three down…
▼ José Berríos
Everybody has a bad start from time to time, so there’s nothing to worry in this, but it was undeniably a poor outing from Berríos. Six runs on eight hits and an uncharacteristic four walks over 4 1/3 innings meant that the Jays really didn’t have much of a chance in this one, given that the guy on the other mound for the other guys was Shohei Ohtani. Berríos saw his ERA for the season go from 3.23 to 3.52 — which is to say, his track record suggests this was only just a blip. He’s as solid as they come. Even if his Statcast numbers don’t quite line up with the results.
▼ Trent Thornton
When Berríos was lifted in the fifth, Charlie Montoyo turned to Trent Thornton. I'd like to say this was inexplicable, but it's really not. The Jays understandably save their best relievers to protect leads, so down 5-2 was not a situation where they were going to send in their best. But if the choice wasn't inexplicable, the result sure was predictable. Thornton got ahead of Jo Adell but couldn't finish him off, allowing a single to cash José Iglesias and close the books on Berríos. The run didn't go on Thornton's record, but he's still been a wreck lately. Over his last eight outings (7 1/3 innings) he's allowed 10 runs (nine earned) and allowed 13 hits to the 38 batters he's faced with just five strikeouts to show for it. That's a 13.2% strikeout rate, and while I acknowledge we're talking about a pretty small sample where an extra strike here or there could swing that in a big way, the league average for relievers is 24.3%. Enough already.
▼ Losing to a team of chumps (and Ohtani)
I probably shouldn’t be too harsh on a team that split the series with the Jays, but man alive. David Fletcher? Phil Gosselin? The ghosts of Adam Eaton and Justin Upton? Brandon Marsh? Kurt Suzuki? I know it's baseball and anything can happen, but come on!
Friday (Blue Jays 2 - Mariners 3)
Woof. Woooohhhuuufff. Here’s a rarity: six down!
▼ The replay reversal
We’ll start at the end of this one, because this was the play that truly changed the game. Even with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. due up, and with Breyvic Valera (who is exactly in the 50th percentile when it comes to sprint speed, per Statcast) on third base, I don’t think this was a bad send. Aggressive? Absolutely. But the Mariners needed to make a great play, and they did it. Or they almost did it, depending on your perspective. Does the dangling lace from catcher Tom Murphy’s glove brush Valera’s arm here? Maybe. We could probably infer that it did based on the movement of the lace, even if we don’t clearly see it. But I don’t know about there being evidence to show he got him with any more of the actual glove than that. And if the faintest theoretical touch of a lace is enough to overturn a play like this, that’s absurd. Also, what’s to stop catchers from wearing gloves that look like a goddamn cat o’ nine tails? I call bullshit.
Also, hey MLB! Maybe you should actually, you know, explain why the hell these plays are overturned instead of having umpires simply signal safe or out, eh??? Plenty of other sports can do this just fine.
▼ Wasting a good Robbie Ray effort
This is sort of an up arrow for Robbie Ray cloaked as a down arrow. The Jays’ starter was excellent once again, allowing just two runs on five hits over seven innings, with eight strikeouts and only a single walk. Ray deserved better from the rest of the team (and, yes, the coaching staff).
▼ Brad Hand
In general, I think it’s a good quality in a manager to trust your relievers. Yanking guys around from role to role, making them pitch while constantly looking over their shoulders, does nobody any good. Doing things like trying to rebuilding the confidence of a guy like Brad Hand, who is supposed to be a late-inning option for these Jays but has not looked like himself all season and was particularly bad in his first two appearances after being acquired, makes some sense too. But there’s an art to that sort of stuff, and I think the right time to be experimenting with the confidence of a guy who has been so shaky is probably not a bases loaded situation in the ninth inning of a tied ballgame.
This down arrow isn’t about Charlie Montoyo, though. It’s about Brad Hand, who needed to do better than the four dogshit pitches he threw to Jarred Kelenic for a walk off walk. Shrimp alert!
▼ No offence
The Mariners’ Chris Flexen is having a good year, and seems to have genuinely figured something out during his 2020 season in South Korea. But he ain’t that great! And the Jays continuously failed to get to him and the relievers who followed. Toronto was 1-for-7 with runners in scoring position in this one, so as much as people may want to complain about sending Valera, or turning to Hand, or the replay reversal, or Hand’s four awful pitches, the bats could have — and probably should have — ensured that the Jays avoided that situation altogether.
The Mariners did, of course, have some help in that at times…
▼ Umpiring
The number two missed call in the image above, which reads “Steckenrider to challenged,” is, of course, the 1-1 pitch to Marcus Semien that preceded the Valera play.
▼ “Tough fucking luck”
There’s a reason people say “it’s early” and urge fans to not get too bent out of shape about bad losses in May. Sure, they feel like gut punches at the time. But this? This was a real gut punch.
Saturday (Blue Jays 3 - Mariners 9)
More controversy! Here’s three up, three down…
▲ Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
The Jays obviously didn’t get the result they wanted from this one, but there were still definitely positives to take from it. In particular, it very much felt like Vlad snapped out of his funk here, collecting three hits. Yes, they were all singles, but more importantly, this was just his second multi-hit game in his last 13, and he was absolutely crushing the ball.
▲ Teoscar Hernández
A more complete offensive performance came from Teoscar Hernández, who continues to be on fire of late. This was his fifth multi-hit game in seven (he’d do it again on Sunday). In it he collected three hits in four at-bats, including a home run and a double. Teoscar up to a 138 wRC+ for the season now (including Sunday's results), which tracks with his 143 wRC+ last season, and the 142 wRC+ he put up in the second half of 2019. This might just be who he is, folks. And that is extremely good.
Teoscar now has a 140 wRC+ in total since the 2019 All-Star break, which ranks 11th in baseball among qualified hitters — just behind Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who is at 142. (Marcus Semien ranks 20th at 134. George Springer doesn't have enough plate appearances to count as "qualified" over that span, but he's at 154! HOW IS THIS NOT A PLAYOFF TEAM?!?!?? GAH!)
▲ Hyun Jin Ryu
Should Hyun Jin Ryu have been pulled after 89 pitches in the seventh inning with runners on the corners and only one out? Well, based on what happened next he absolutely shouldn't have been. And it was maybe a bit strange, given the loyalty shown to Brad fucking Hand the night before, to see the staff* turn away from their ace. But the fact is, Trevor Richards has been really, really good for the Jays this year, and going to the bullpen and giving hitters a different look instead of letting more guys see Ryu a third time (given he’d allowed a triple and a walk to two of the first three hitters he’d faced that inning) was entirely fine. Debatable? Sure. A coin flip? Maybe. But there’s just as much reason to make that move as there was not.
Of course, Hyun Jin Ryu is also really, really good — as he yet again demonstrated in this one. Through his first six innings of this one he'd allowed two runs on just two hits and a walk, albeit with only three strikeouts.
That last fact may have contributed to the decision to bring in Richards, who has struck out 36.4% of the batters he's faced so far as a member of the Blue Jays, with the tying run on third base and a right-hander at the plate. Ugh. Anyway, this game sucked. This is an up arrow!
*And yes, I mean the staff. Obviously the manager has to wear decisions, and has the final say, but I am once again here to remind you that there is a whole lot of collaboration going on in the dugout and before games. As I quoted in a post last week, Ross Atkins described a little bit of that process, explaining that “where we (the front office) try to contribute is where we think they'll be the most successful, in what types of situations, against what types of hitters. They go through, he and Pete, along with John Schneider, Matt Buschmann, every day. They go through several scenarios on what could potentially unravel.”
If you think the Jays make confounding bullpen decisions, that’s fine. They sometimes do. But please recognize that it is absolutely not the result of one dumb guy making stupid choices because he’s dumb. Jesus, people.
▼ The bullpen
Whether you were OK with the Richards decision or not, there was nothing to like about what came next. Back-to-back home runs, and suddenly a 3-2 lead was a 6-3 deficit for the Jays. Then, an inning later, just in case there was any doubt that the Jays were toast, Rafael Dolis took the ball and failed to get a single one of the five batters he faced out. Home run. Walk. Walk. Single. Double. And suddenly it's now 9-3.
Dolis I've defended a lot (because people are way too hard on him), but this rather famously is not the try league. He just hasn't consistently been reliable this season (despite going on a run of nine scoreless outings that was broken when he coughed one up in the Angels series) and when guys like Tim Mayza, Nate Pearson (who is back in real game action for the Bisons), and Joakim Soria return, it's hard to see him getting a whole lot of action. Richards, on the other hand, I think you comfortably give the ball to the next time.
▼ Springer scare
It looked bad. Ankles aren’t supposed to move like that. But fortunately X-rays on George Springer were negative, and he seemed to be moving around relatively well on Sunday, despite having the day off. Hopefully that means he can not only avoid a stint on the IL, but that he might even be able to play during the Jays’ midweek set in D.C. It sure didn’t feel like that was going to be the case on Saturday, and it’s huge news. The Jays can’t lose this guy. Not right now.
▼ Losing a game you were leading in the seventh
Fffffffffffffffffffffart.
Sunday (Blue Jays 8 - Mariners 3)
Finally, a good one. Here’s three up…
▲ The home run jacket
There were a number of good things that happened for the Jays in this one, but the best by far that we got to see four players model the club’s fancy home run jacket, including Corey Dickerson, who hit his first blast with the club. The biggest blast of the day, however, came off the bat of Randal Grichuk, who hit a two-run shot in the top of the second just three batters after Teoscar Hernández had tied the game up with a blast of his own.
Marcus Semien was the other player to go yard, accomplishing the feat in the ninth inning with his 27th of the season. He also picked up his 70th RBI on the blast, leading to this little fun fact…
…and, of course, more questions about how in the hell this isn’t a playoff team (yet).
▲ Steven Matz
The Matz or Stripling debate is now settled. Ross Stripling is on the IL with an oblique issue, and since those are always tricky, and it’s going to take some time for him to ramp back up once he is healthy, and we’re starting to run out of season here, I think it’s fair to wonder just how much we’ll even see of him again this year. For now, the fifth starter’s job belongs to Matz, and while he maybe isn’t the sexiest name, he can give you good innings — as he did on Sunday.
Just one run (none earned) on three hits and three walks over five innings with four strikeouts? That'll play. He was a little inefficient, needing 95 pitches to get through five, but that'll play.
▲ Santiago Espinal
Yes, it’s more love for the 2021 version of Ryan Goins. Santiago Espinal continues to make me feel very comfortable when he’s standing at third base — Statcast puts him in the 92nd percentile by their defensive metric Outs Above Average — and in this one he picked up three hits and a stolen base. He now has a 109 wRC+ on the season through 184 plate appearances, and while I’m not confident that’s a real durable number for him (he’s rode a .343 BABIP to get there), he’s been taking his walks, he doesn’t really strike out much, and he puts some good swings on the ball. The lack of power is an issue, but for a glove-first complementary player? That will also play.
The week ahead
The Blue Jays, and George Springer's ailing ankle, get a break here on Monday, then will return to action with a two-game midweek set against the Nationals to complete their weird Anaheim-Seattle-D.C. road trip. The Tigers, who are lowly but not as bad as previous years, come to Toronto for a visit on the weekend. Then next week it's four tough ones against the White Sox, before a visit to Detroit, and a home series with the Orioles to close out August. A lot of winnable games in that stretch.
Pitching matchups:
• Monday: Off
• Tuesday, 7:05 PM @ Washington: RHP Erick Fedde (4-8, 5.12 ERA, 83 K/38 BB/91 1/3 IP) vs. RHP Alek Manoah (5-1, 2.59 ERA, 71 K/21 BB/59 IP)
• Wednesday, 4:05 PM @ Washington: RHP Josiah Gray (0-1, 4.13 ERA, 31 K/9 BB/24 IP) vs. RHP José Berríos (8-6, 3.52 ERA, 142 K/37 BB/138 IP)
• Thursday: Off
Worth noting:
• Alek Manoah is really good. I laughed out loud typing out those stats above.
• You may remember Josiah Gray as one of the big piece the Nationals got back from the Dodgers in the Max Scherzer/Trea Turner deal. One, still hard to believe the Dodgers now have both those effing guys. Two, Gray is obviously a good prospect (though less regarded than catcher Keibert Ruiz, who was also in the deal). Hopefully he isn’t about to have a Manoah-like start to his big league career.
• Old friend alert! The Tigers have already announced their starter for Sunday’s game, Drew Hutchison! Hutchison took the ball for Detroit on Sunday for the first time in a big league uniform since 2018. He toiled in Triple-A for three organizations in 2019 before spending his 2020 with the independent Milwaukee Milkmen of the American Association. The Tigers gave him a chance this year and he pitched to a 3.63 ERA in Toledo before getting the call over the weekend. On Sunday he lasted just 1 2/3 innings, giving up six runs (two earned) on five hits and three walks. Let's get weird!
• Definitely note the time on the second game the Jays have in D.C. this week, as it is a rare midweek afternoon game for the club. Yes, please!
• Tuesday’s game between the Jays and Nats is, I regret to inform, a YouTube game. You’ll only be able to watch the game on the streaming service (for free, no account required), as it will not air on Sportsnet. No thanks!
• Fortunately, the Jays will have a local radio broadcast. And doubly fortunately, this time it won’t be Buck and Pat with the call, as Ben Wagner is finally back on the air calling games. They’ve been fun. Ben’s real good!
Scoreboard watching
• Looking at the teams that the Jays are trying to chase down for a playoff spot, we've got the Yankees and Red Sox playing each other during the week before both get easier assignments on the weekend (New York hosts Minnesota, Boston hosts Texas). The surging A's have it tougher, visiting the White Sox during the week then hosting their Bay Area rivals the San Francisco Giants on the weekend. The stupid Rays get the stupid Orioles before facing the White Sox on the weekend (not that they're the team anyone has to worry about anyway).
• Lastly, here’s a look at the American League wild card standings from MLB.com as of Monday afternoon. (If you’re a masochist, please not the teams’ expected win-loss records.)
I think one myth that has to be dispelled is that we will benefit so much from our easier schedule for the remainder of the year. It's only a marginally 'easier' schedule than what the A's, Red Sox, and Yanks have.