Scraping (past) the bottom of the barrel
On a strange end to a strange first half, Blue Jays discourse discourse, Vlad thoughts, Manoah's spin rate, big words, bullpen heroes, Arjun Nimmala, several other draft picks, and more!
I've never found it harder to write about a Blue Jays team than the one we've been subjected to here in 2023. Never had so many games — even the good ones — where the best use of mental energy seemed to shut down afterwards and erase it from memory rather than dig rapturously or furiously into the details.
I wouldn’t say that it’s the most frustrating season I’ve ever experienced because — little known fact! — every single baseball season is incredibly frustrating. But the conversation about the club hasn’t exactly been warm and fuzzy, and it certainly doesn’t help that, as the first half of the season came to a close, it increasingly felt like the team could barely even win ugly.
The Jays managed just three hits over 17 2/3 innings between the start of Saturday's no-hit shutout loss to the Tigers and Danny Jansen's two-run blast to tie Sunday's game with two outs in the ninth. Back on Tuesday in Chicago they needed a two-run eighth-inning Vladdy home run to rescue a 4-3 victory from the jaws of a 3-2 defeat. Two days later, in game one of Thursday's doubleheader, they managed just one hit through 10 innings before exploding for a big win in the 11th.
Credit to them for going 5-1 in their last six games before the break, and doing it sort of the way they always planned to — often with pitching and defence rather than the heavy doses of offence we’re more accustomed to in these parts. They've kept pace with the Yankees and Astros and will be sitting in a playoff spot when play resumes on Friday. They also did a nice job of putting a disappointing home sweep at the hands of the Red Sox last weekend behind them, I suppose. But, as has been the case most of the season so far, getting there was a slog.
It's as if the team was dropped in quicksand when the season began, and every time they're about to turn a corner, make a big push — move a limb — it seems to suck everything down further.
You could probably say something similar about Vladimir Guerrero Jr.'s swing, now that I think of it. And you could definitely say it about my brain, as I keep struggling for novel ways to say the same things over and over about watching what often feels like the same game over and over: that they've just been too inconsistent at the plate, that they've had weirdly prolonged struggles with runners in scoring position, that players who are better than this shouldn't be this bad for this long.
The Jays aren't the only team suffering under the weight of expectations this way, of course. On Sunday the Yankees made the bold decision to let go of hitting coach Dillon Lawson — a move that, were the Jays to pull it, would satiate a lot of fans' misguided anger for at least five minutes, I think. Maybe more!
Has the expanded playoff field created a new mushy middle that's only now really coming into focus — and only if you take a step back from your own fandom to try to see it? I’m sure that’s part of it…
Are this season's sky-high expectations colouring the way we're responding to some genuinely typical baseball failure, like the fact that the Jays have scored two or fewer runs in 24% of their games so far, which puts them on nearly the exact same pace in that regard as 2022 (23%) and 2021 (25%)? Or is there really something specific about this team that's made the season so tough?
These aren't exactly new questions. These are the same stupid, godforsaken questions it feels like we've been asking ourselves for months now. They've only gotten louder. And they'll continue to get louder until this team manages to find itself another gear — or until the Yankees and Astros do and leave them in the dust.
But as the first half of the season wound down, my mind went to a different place regarding all of this stuff. I couldn't stop thinking about one thing. One player. And, maybe strangely, it was Luis Robert Jr.
There have been a number of stories to follow and things to contemplate about this team over the last week or so — the Red Sox series was awful, the Jays might have played worse in sweeping the White Sox, throughout it all we've experienced the usual encouraging ups and brutal downs, Alek Manoah looked good, Whit Merrifield flashed enough power to keep foolin' 'em, George Springer got an early break via the paternity list, they were no-hit by a terrible team (a little too on the nose, boys!), they won maybe several games they had no business winning — but the thing that I'm struggling the most to shake is the palpable sense of danger felt every single time the White Sox' red hot slugger stepped to the plate during that midweek series in Chicago. Thanks to a brutal April, Robert has “only” a 143 wRC+ for the season, but for all of May (172 wRC+), June (183 wRC+), and certainly when the Jays were visiting the South Side last week, it was like you couldn’t get anything past him — as Dan Shulman noted on Sportsnet’s telecast multiple times.
There was a feeling every time he came to the plate that trouble was afoot. Something bad was going to happen. And it was a feeling that was especially noticeable for its absence on the Blue Jays' side of things in the first half of this season. Outside of a couple of weeks for Matt Chapman in April, for this team that feeling simply hasn't existed.
The feeling is fear.
I didn’t want to make this about Vlad, but it's absolutely about Vlad. Bo Bichette has found his niche shooting everything he can into the opposite field. Springer isn't getting any younger. Brandon Belt is fine. Chapman has struggled to find consistency at the plate since undergoing hip surgery in 2020. And Vlad? Well, he's putting up passable enough numbers, with a ton of ceiling still to reach for, but he doesn't exactly make you feel like the spectre of imminent death is casting its evil gaze on his opponents when he's in the batter’s box the way Robert did, does he?
That's a tall order, and in a lot of ways unfair. Few players are that guy for more than a few weeks at a time, at most. And focusing on one player elides the fact that these Bland Jays were put together by a front office that made massive — and so far really ugly looking — bets on Daulton Varsho and Alejandro Kirk, failed to find extra right-handed power despite it being a glaring need since December, and doesn't appear to have any answers as to why the fourth-best offence in the American League by wRC+ ranks 12th with runners in scoring position. Plenty has gone wrong that can't be laid at one would-be superstar's feet. But most people don't follow sports to be well actually'd with big picture statistics and nuance, deserved as that may often be. It's about emotion, it’s about community and identity — and often, perhaps because those needs are more easily filled in other online pursuits than they used to be, it’s about victory. It's about witnessing the superhuman, or at the very least a curb-stomping, not having failure explained away.
When blogs started to be a thing, at least in the baseball world, much of what was written on them was a response to mainstream writing that didn't just fail to educate readers about the way the game was changing in the wake of Moneyball, but that clung proudly and desperately to an increasingly outdated view of the sport. Writers would tell the story of games and teams and players, sometimes quite beautifully, as though there was a narrative logic to be found in the mountains of data points. Or, even worse, as though the data points that they didn’t like didn't matter.
Hall of Fame debates especially became flashpoints as young outsiders used numbers to rip apart the largely feel- and narrative-and personal-relationship-based arguments of writers whose response would often be to lean harder and harder on their own authority as Guys Who Had Been There. A 2008 Fire Joe Morgan piece titled "The Hall of Oh Buh-rother" is not just painfully representative of some of the worst tendencies of online writing at the time — no shade, I’m as guilty as anyone, but warning: (ugh) snark — it’s also a delicious example of all of this. And of what the online consensus seemed to be at the time about describing that sense of danger we can all feel when a great hitter is at the plate.
"Every time someone makes an argument about a player by saying that player was the 'most feared,' I barf a little on myself."
In this case the author was actually talking about reliever Goose Gossage, but the player I most associate with the term was also mentioned in the piece: Jim Rice. The longtime Red Sox slugger undoubtedly had a great career, finally making the Hall of Fame on his final try, in 2009, after being passed over the previous 14 times. But anyone could see what the voters way back in his first year of eligibility had seen: his career was more in line with guys like Dale Murphy, Mark Grace, or Matt Williams than most of those enshrined in Cooperstown. Yet, through the last years of his eligibility, a groundswell of old-school types threatened by the online hordes decided to start giving him extra points for being the “most feared” hitter of his generation, and eventually it took.
From this the phrase "most feared" became something of a joke for a lot of people, myself included. Much like "narrative," it was used as pejorative — shorthand for writerly laziness. Crutches to be leaned on when statistics or newfangled ways of thinking didn't jibe with an old writer's preconceived notions.
Mostly, I still believe that was correct. The fans are more knowledgeable and the sport is better off for eventually embracing the new. But sometimes there's poetry in the simplicity of asking whether a hitter is feared or not. Or in a more vibes-based assessment of the things that happen on a baseball field. And those types of insights can be just as valuable — and maybe just as real.
Objectively, the Blue Jays are among the most productive offensive clubs in the American League and there's no reason to think their troubles stringing multiple hits together won't change, but they have been atrocious to watch. Objectively, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is a clearly above-average hitter with a Statcast page that shows he strikes the ball as well just about anybody in the sport, but there's no sense of danger when he comes to the plate. His at-bats are not stop-everything, must-watch affairs like they were when he first broke into the majors, or in 2021. We could express this in all kinds of statistical ways, but we really don’t have to. He's not fearsome.
It's a problem. I wouldn't say it's the problem. I would suggest anyone with particularly strong feelings about what a bust Guerrero is think back to Bo pulling into the All-Star break a year ago with a 105 wRC+ before erupting to a 163 mark in the second half, and then slap themselves in their dumb faces. But its a problem.
And it's the thing that the first half of this season will surely be most remembered for.
Vlad's 0-for-4 on Sunday in Detroit pushed his numbers down just enough for him to go from 0.5 WAR, according to FanGraphs, to 0.4 WAR. He is 3.9 wins south of where he ended the first half back in 2021. Some of that is that Outs Above Average weirdly hates his defence, and Baseball Reference suggests he's been more than twice as valuable — a still-putrid-for-Vlad 1.0 rWAR — but four wins! The Jays could have used four wins! Keep all the other ups, and downs, and frustrations, and bullshit of the first half of this season, give us four extra wins, and I think this would be a much happier place.
Instead, Vlad is taking his prodigious batting practice power to the Home Run Derby and All-Star Game this week, where he'll be celebrated as the face of this era of Blue Jays baseball and one of the sport's biggest stars. It will be a peculiar spectacle for Jays fans, I’m sure, sitting at home home watching their slugger crush baseballs while thinking about how true greatness seems so close yet so far, knowing that the most frightening thing about him right now isn't what he might do to an opposing pitcher but that his time here is running out.
With that last bit as the backdrop, how can you blame fans for looking past objective numbers and veering straight into malaise? The 2023 Jays might make the playoffs and still have a season that ends up feeling worse than the one where they missed out by a single game. That 2021 team at least made you feel like anything was possible. They may have blown it that year, and it was awful, but they'd surely be back. The Vlad we always expected had finally arrived. He and Bo had four more years of club control left, plus however long the Jays would surely extend them for after that. Everything was in front of us.
Fast forward to today and no one will be quite so forgiving if the second half of this season ends up looking much like the first one — if the Jays go quietly in the playoffs, should they even make it at all. Nothing short of a miraculous Shohei Ohtani signing in the winter would be able to recapture the sense of hope and enthusiasm that was so palpable here coming out of the disaster that was 2021. Given that, the ennui shouldn’t be so surprising.
Fortunately, this is a story that is not yet written. A hot month, or even a couple of weeks, is all it will take to make things seem much better here. And only the most piss-mouthed misanthropes could look at this team, their track records, and think it’s not eminently possible that they could get on a major roll. But it’s up to the players to actually do it. And, more to the point, I think it’s really it’s up to one player in particular.
Hit some dingers, Vladdy.
Anyway! Here’s Weekend Up…
I’ll be honest here, friends. This site keeps the lights on for me, but it isn’t a cash cow. And I could live a lot more comfortably than I do right now if I was willing to put some of my work behind a paywall and push a bunch readers who are on the fence into becoming paid subscribers. But, the thing is, I know that times are tough for a lot of people and I really don’t want to become inaccessible to anyone. So, if you can afford it, and you value what I do and aren’t already a paid subscriber, I’d ask that you consider upgrading your free membership to a paid one. Thanks. — Stoeten
Up: Friday: Jays 12 - Tigers 2
Runs! RISPs! Rallies! Only three strikeouts for the entire lineup!
Friday's offensive outburst at Comerica Park was a welcome change for Blue Jays hitters. It was also, evidently, not a harbinger of things to come in the rest of the series. And, more importantly for our purposes, not especially relevant to the story of this game.
Alek Manoah got the start in this one, making his return to the majors after a month or so spent mostly at the Jays' pitching lab in Dunedin, and it was a pretty triumphant one. At least, as triumphant as it could be when facing the majors' fourth worst offence — a team that has sent the seventh-fewest left-handed batters to the plate against right-handed pitchers this season.
Favourable conditions or not, though, Manoah can only face the batters in front of him, and he did that on Friday with a kind of aplomb we've rarely seen from him this season. Over six innings he allowed just one run on five hits, with eight strikeouts and zero walks — both season bests.
Less interesting that what he did, of course, is how he did it. What about Manoah in this start, apart from the competition he was facing, was different than what we saw from him earlier in the season. Fortunately, Statcast can show us a whole lot of exactly that. So let’s have a look.
(NOTE: Before we get to the charts: Manoah only made one start in the month of June and, as you may recall, he only lasted 1/3 of an inning in it. We’re going to be looking at month-by-month data, so it will include numbers for June, but they’re meaningless, so we’re just going to ignore them.)
The first thing I wanted to look at was the horizontal break on Manoah's slider. That pitch was a hugely important offering for him in his previous two seasons, but had turned into an awful one this year, with the theory being that, for some reason, he simply wasn't able to generate the same amount of break on the pitch.
Interestingly, though the slider was reasonably effective for him on Friday (30% CSW%), it wasn't because of any additional break. In fact, the break on the pitch was actually down a little bit overall.
It’s worth noting that his sliders in innings four through six were breaking 2.5 innings more on average than the ones in the first three frames, but even so, if he was able to throw the pitch more like he did in the later innings going forward, it would still only be breaking about as much as it had been earlier in the season.
More interestingly, in addition to getting less arm-side run on all of his other pitches in this one, he was spinning those — and, crucially, the slider — less than usual.
Now, spin rate is more complicated than is often implied, and it’s especially hard to know what exactly was going on here without information on any changes to spin axis or efficiency. A layman might look at this and figure that if more spin equals more break, less spin means less break, which might give Manoah a better chance of locating the ball where he wants. I couldn’t say that’s wrong, but I couldn’t say it’s right either. What I can say is that it would surprise me if a shift this dramatic wasn’t deliberate. Or, perhaps, a indicator of some kind of a different change he’s made.
Whatever the case, if the idea was to get him in the zone more — and it was — it certainly seemed to work. Manoah did a better job of throwing strikes in this one than he had in the early part of the year (though he did miss high with a few four-seamers), and this was especially pronounced when it came to the slider. The pitch went from being in the zone less than 40% of the time earlier in the season to over 60%.
“When he's in the strike zone, he beats you,” Tigers manager AJ Hinch told reporters, including MLB.com’s Steve Kornacki, after the ballgame — a statement that certainly seems to augur well for Manoah going forward.
Drilling deeper we can see some typical signs of tinkering — a little bit of movement on the rubber, a bit more extension, his vertical release point is an inch or so lower (and, on the slider at least, was already lower than it had been since early 2021) — but nothing in the numbers that jumps out as much as the above.
So is Alek back on track? Clearly its too soon to say. But the much-questioned decision to get him back to the majors so quickly certainly looks to have been a shrewd one — he can keep on working in side sessions to refine the changes he's made and not have to pitch again until next Tuesday or Wednesday — and it's always good to be able to connect improved results on the field with tangible changes under the hood. But it's just one start, and it was just the Tigers.
More than just being the Tigers, it was a lineup that tilted heavily to the right side. The 30 pitches to left-handed hitters that Manoah threw in the game represented the fourth lowest total of his career, including that 0.1 inning start against the Astros in June. And since lefties have generally had more success against him than right-handed hitters, I have to conclude that he’s not out of the woods just yet. And that he’s in for a big test when Juan Soto and the Padres come for a visit next week. Yankee teens they are not.
Down: Saturday: Jays 0 - Tigers 2
On Saturday the Blue Jays were no-hit by the Detroit Tigers.
Up: Sunday: Blue Jays 4 - Tigers 0
How does an incredible, improbable, uplifting, come-from-behind, down-to-your-last-out win to finish off a 5-1 road trip not feel like an incredible, improbable, uplifting, come-from-behind, down-to-your-last-out win to finish off a 5-1 road trip? When it comes at the end of a 17 2/3 inning stretch that saw your team manage just three hits and one run against a club on pace for more than 90 losses.
Well, and also when a huge number of fans out there won't put nearly as much effort into trying to like and appreciate their team as they do into being miserable about it. But I digress...
The heroes in this one were, of course, Danny Jansen and Nathan Lukes. Jansen followed a Matt Chapman walk with a game-tying two-out blast in the ninth, and Lukes saved his manager the embarrassment of not getting grilled over the decision to let Alejandro Kirk run for himself in the top of the 10th by slashing a double down the left field line to score Daulton Varsho (who had reached on a fielder's choice when Kirk was thrown out at third) as the go-ahead run anyway.
More accurately, though, the heroes were the Jays' relievers. Not to keep on belabouring this stuff too much, but it's wild to me that fans can watch the performance of Trevor Richards this year while simultaneously believing that anything in this sport is ever as it seems. Once again Richards was massive, giving the team 1 1/3 scoreless innings with just a single hit allowed, as part of a six-inning, two-hit, no-walk, seven strikeout performance from the 'pen as a whole. Tim Mayza, Erik Swanson, Yimi García, and Jordan Romano: take some big-ass bows.
And the thing is, this has been the case all season. Yeah, Yimi has had his struggles, Adam Cimber blowed up real good, and there was, of course, Popcorn Boy, but outside of the usual ups and downs, this has really been a very good bullpen. And do you know how I know? Because we’ve hardly had to talk about them all season.
Also because Josh Goldberg tweeted about it.
You love to see it.
I mean, you’d love to see some of them worked a little less. A few more blowouts where the best guys don’t have to pitch would be nice for a lot of reasons, really. But regardless — irregardless — they’ve been good. In fact, as a group, only the stupid Baltimore Orioles have had their pitchers produce a lower ERA and hold opponents to a lower wOBA in high leverage situations than the Jays have this season. Seriously!
They’re good, in other words. And there are guys still not here— like Chad Green, Zach Pop, Hagen Danner and Yosver Zulueta if they ever get it together, a potential trade deadline acquisition — that could help out as the season progresses, too.
Nice that we at least don’t have to agonize over all of this for once, eh?
Gettin’ drafty…
As you likely know, MLB's annual draft is taking place this week, during the All-Star festivities in Seattle. And, as you probably also know, I've long ago stopped breathlessly reporting on draft stuff as it happens.
There are a couple of reasons for that. One, I just don't have the bandwidth to acquaint myself with all there is to know about a bunch of amateur players, the vast majority of whom will end up drafted by organizations that are not the Blue Jays — and even the ones that do end up with the Jays may never sniff the majors. Two, without really putting the effort into learning about the draft class, you're only just doing a book report on someone else's work. That can't entirely be avoided here, but I'll do my best to leave plenty more to read on the Jays' selections from anyone I quote, and obviously, as always, will be sure to link.
With their first pick, 20th overall, the Blue Jays selected Florida high schooler Arjun Nimmala. Taking up baseball because his father, who immigrated from Andhra Pradesh, India, in 2001, thought he'd like to play something similar to cricket, Nimmala is generally referred to as a shortstop, but listed by FanGraphs as a third baseman. In their day one recap, we're told by Eric Longenhagen that his young age — at 17.8 years old ,Nimmala was the youngest day one selection in this year's draft — and therefore his projection, appealed greatly to the Jays. He also notes that Nimmala "struck out a lot during the spring, which is why he fell."
Fall he did, or at least seemed to, as the consensus draft board produced by Twins Daily — a compilation of rankings from 10 major pre-draft boards — had him at number nine on talent. (MLB Pipeline, for example, had him 11th; Perfect Game had him third among high schoolers).
"If you want a prospect to dream on in the '23 class," TD's capsule begins, "Nimmala is him." Unlike FG's account, we're told he had "series steam" this spring, and that he's expected to be able to stick at shortstop. MLB Pipeline's Jonathan Mayo concurs on the defence, and also cites him as a very high upside play for the Jays, because he's got such a great raw toolset while being much farther from a finished product than most of his draft peers.
And... that's about the extent of what I know about him. There are some things about this pick that I really like in the abstract, however. It isn't a safe pick, nor is this a player who is going to be able to rocket through the system the way someone like Alek Manoah, picked as a 21-year-old college junior, was in 2019. The Jays would have been well within their rights to take the safer route, I think, considering that they forfeited their second-round pick and had their international bonus pool reduced by $500,000 for signing Chris Bassitt (who had rejected a qualifying offer from the Mets) last winter. They could also have justified a pick that lined up better with their timeline, I think, because it's not inconceivable that GM Ross Atkins won't be here to reap the rewards of this one.
Good for them for choosing talent and upside, I say.
And good for them, since they’re getting such a young guy, for making it someone who won’t end up far from home. According to Google Maps, Nimmala’s high school is about a hour’s drive from the Jays' player development complex in Dunedin in good traffic (which, since this is Florida we’re talking about, it surely never is).
So, I don't know! I think there's lots to like here. And if you want to get to know Nimmala and his story a little better, Sweeny Murti of MLB.com has a great piece about the parallels between his own life story and Nimmala’s. Plus, the Jays shared the following video from MLB Network about Arjun’s journey, and the one after that of the moment when his name was called on draft day. Cute family!
Other draft notes of note
Day two of the draft is taking place as I write this, and so far the Jays have added to their collection of picks.
• With pick number 89, they took 6'3" Oklahoma State RHP Juaron Watts-Brown (ranked 67th by MLB Pipeline, 52nd by the consensus board). Reports suggest Watts-Brown has a pretty average fastball by today's standards, but good extension and a swing-and-miss slider, plus a curve and changeup. Walks were an issue for him last season, but the Jays seem to like the ingredients here. One for the pitching lab, I'd guess.
• Another "local" kid, Landen Maroudis was taken at pick 121 (72 by Pipeline, 66 by TD) out of Calvary Christian High School in Clearwater, FL — the same school attended by Braeden Halladay, where his father Roy briefly coached before his tragic death in 2017. Maroudis is too young to have been coached by Doc, as he's another projectable youngster that the Jays have nabbed much lower than his talent and the pre-draft boards would have suggested. He's committed to go to North Carolina State in the fall, but presumably the Jays already know that he'll be willing to take their money to turn pro.
• A local kid (sans quotation marks) was taken by the Jays with their next pick, number 157. Connor O'Halloran is the son of former Jays prospect and national team coach Greg O'Halloran. The 6'2" LHP from Mississauga, Ontario, pitched for the University of Michigan, and was ranked 164th by Pipeline and 219th by TD's consensus. An under-slot selection to help boost the available money for Maroudis, perhaps?
• Lefty-swinging University of Arkansas outfielder Jace Bohrofen was ranked one spot higher than the Jays' second selection, Juaron Watts-Brown, according to MLB Pipeline, and wasn't far behind him on the consensus board either (68th). Weird to get him at pick 184 as I have to assume he's unlikely to go back to college for his senior year, but I'm certainly not complaining. Stop me if you've heard this one from the Jays before: he's a bit of a helium guy who had a strong showing last summer in the Cape Cod League, and his ultimate defensive position remains up in the air, apparently.
• At the time of this writing the Jays have also taken Kansas State shortstop Nick Goodwin at pick 214, West Virginia outfielder Braeden Barry at pick 244, lefty-hitting Canadian outfielder Sam Shaw of Lambrick Park Secondary School in Victoria, BC at pick 274, and 6'3 Oregon right-hander Josh Mollerus at pick 304.
• One more draft note, and it's from last year, and not a particularly good one. The Athletic's Keith Law, in version 4.2 of his mock draft, suggested that the Jays were mostly being linked to college players (which turned out not to be the case with Nimmala), and that on the pitching front there was a specific reason for it. Namely, "chatter that last year’s first-rounder, high school pitcher Brandon Barriera, showing up much heavier this spring and hitting the IL with an elbow issue almost immediately has shifted them away from prep pitching." Oof.
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You beautifully encapsulate why this season feels so bad. It's not over, but it almost feels like the window that opened so hopefully in 2021 is rapidly closing, and the team has nothing to show for it. The worry is that considerable resources are being deployed, so this isn't a case of Edward Rogers going all cheap on us (and the fans are coming out to support the team). But why is it that a team like Tampa can consistently do so much more with so much less? Is this a front office problem?
The team's lack of depth has been repeatedly exposed. Springer is out and the offense looks like a pop-gun offense. There is no margin for error. There's nobody on the farm the team can call on to get things move. There's little hope on the horizon.
The Jays do have a World Series-winning GM on their payroll right now. Perhaps one thing to consider is replacing Ross Atkins with James Quick, if things don't turn around by the end of this season?
The first half of this article was some of your best writing yet! But I disagree with you about the lack of fear in the Blue Jays line up. I get scared every time Daulton Varsho comes to the plate.
That 2 run stat is fascinating. Does that mean in 2021 we either didn't score many runs or just bludgeoned the opposition? I guess so.
And Vlad and the home-run derby? Hard to get excited. He can hit batting practice and position player pitching far. Great. I sometimes wonder if the Jays are not particularly enamoured with extending him and have always leaned that way despite his 2021 season.