Six straight wins!
On the high point of the Jays' season so far, the brilliant Alejandro Kirk, thinking about long-term payroll re: Ray and Semien extensions, Hall of Fame talk, the week ahead, and more!
A funny thing happened over the Labour Day long weekend (uh, plus, you know, the Tuesday after the holiday): the Toronto Blue Jays finally made up some serious ground and vaulted themselves into real contention in the American League wild card race. So let’s talk about it!
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Nine wins in their last ten. Six straight. Two-and-a-half games back of the Yankees — who they play again here on Wednesday, then once more in the Bronx on Thursday, plus three more times at home at the end of the month — and two back of the Red Sox.
The Blue Jays are — suddenly, finally — one of the hottest teams in baseball. And the teams they’re trying to chase down? For the time being they are not.
I couldn’t put it any better than I already did in the middle of the night after the dust of Tuesday’s action had settled.
After a season of incredible frustration, it all sort of feels like a dream. For five months the Jays fought to escape fourth place in their division despite having the fourth best Pythagorean record in the American League. And yet it feels like this isn’t even yet where they’re supposed to be. This is a team with a Cy Young candidate in Robbie Ray, and the third best starters’ ERA in the AL (3.71). They have the second best team wRC+ in baseball and two players putting up MVP-calibre seasons in Marcus Semien and Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who currently sit one-two in baseball by WAR among position players (per FanGraphs; Baseball Reference has Semien first and Guerrero in fourth).
They’re good.
They’ve also left it so late in the process to show as much that there’s no mistaking how precarious their current position really is. What that position absolutely cannot be, however, is boring. They’re doing the thing! Holy crap! Eat it, naysayers!
Tuesday (Blue Jays 5 - Yankees 1)
Don’t expect many down arrows today. Here’s three up…
▲ Winning the pitching matchup
OK, so I’m cheating a little bit already, but there are a couple of hitters who are obviously going to need up arrows, so I’m just going to lump all of the pitchers in together. And not just the ones for the Jays, who were all good, but the ones for the Yankees, who were not. Partly, of course, that’s because New York’s own Cy Young candidate, Gerrit Cole, ended up leaving the game in the fourth inning due to hamstring tightness.
While I certainly don’t want to revel in someone’s injury — fortunately for the Yankees it’s been determined that an MRI isn’t required, and the team will simply give Cole a couple days to see how his hamstring responds before deciding if he’ll need any time off — I didn’t exactly mind seeing the Yankees’ ace depart Tuesday’s game. Especially since he’d already allowed his team to fall behind the sneakily good Steven Matz, who now sports a 3.70 ERA on the season, thanks in large part to his last 10 starts. Over that span Matz has allowed just 13 earned runs in 52 2/3 innings (2.22 ERA). And while he's been a little light in the strikeout department (40, or 6.84 per nine innings), he's been well-liked by FIP too (3.05), thanks to the fact that he's generally limited walks and has done a great job of keeping the ball in the ballpark.
Obviously Matz isn’t Cole, and he likely isn’t going to be in the discussion to start playoff games should the Jays manage to get there, but he did what he had to do once again in this one, allowing just a single run on seven hits over six innings of work. He also struck out six and walked zero — totals that you’ll gladly take every single time Matz takes the ball. (Cole, meanwhile, lasted just 70 pitches over 3 2/3 innings, giving up three runs, two earned, on five hits and two walks with just two strikeouts).
Then we had the battle of the bullpens, which in this case was no contest. The Jays picked up two more runs off of Yankees relievers while Joakim Soria was the only Jays reliever to allow a hit. Tim Mayza continued his excellent season, pitching a clean inning with a strikeout, and Jordan Romano did the same in order to close it out.
The matchup against Cole was obviously going to be a big hurdle in this series, and it went about as well as it could have for the Jays. Obviously the pitchers were a big part of that. But they weren’t the only part…
▲ Alejandro Kirk
Alejandro Kirk hits rockets. He put four balls in play on Tuesday night, none of which came off of his bat at less that 100.4 mph. Among 398 batters with at least 140 plate appearances this season, his average exit velocity of 92.3 mph ranks 26th. His wRC+ for the season is now up to 138, which puts him in a tie for 29th best among that same group of hitters. Among catchers he's tied for fourth. And though it must be noted that the vast majority of other batters at the top of those lists have had a lot more plate appearances than he does, I think it also needs to be noted that Kirk just keeps getting better. Over 95 PA since the All-Star break he's slashed .321/.379/.548 (148 wRC+).
The way he was able to turn around a high 99.4 mph fastball from Cole for an opposite field homer in the second inning was particularly impressive.
It wasn’t as much of a Yankee Stadium Special as it looked, either. Per Statcast, that one goes out in 18 of 30 MLB parks.
His second blast of the day, off of a Clay Holmes slider in the eighth, would have been gone everywhere but Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and Kansas City.
I’d maybe just settle for another Blue Jays winner of the AL Player of the Week. Jays players have won four of the last six of those, and with three homers, a double, and five RBIs in his first two games of the week, Kirk is already well on his way.
Choo choo.
▲ Marcus Semien
There are a few different ways I could have gone with this up arrow. With the exception of Soria, any one of the Jays' pitchers could have been singled out. The way the bottom of the Jays' order manufactured a pair of runs in the top of the fourth definitely deserves a mention of some kind. But Marcus Semien, man. How can we not take yet another opportunity to admire him and the season he’s having?
Semien doubled in the first, walked in the third, and led off the fifth with his 38th home run of the season to push the Jays ahead 4-1 and give them some much needed breathing room. He now has a 136 wRC+ on the year — a number that puts some good perspective on Kirk's small sample 138 — and 6.1 fWAR, which puts him even with Roberto Alomar's 1992 as the 14th best Blue Jays position player season of all time.
Speaking of Kirk, if we're thinking about his AL Player of the Week chances we also have to think about Semien, who also has three homers and a double in his last two games — though his RBI total is even higher at six. He also has six home runs in his last six games.
One of those, of course, was the magnificent walk-off he hit against his former team, the A’s, back on Friday. I wrote about that one, but published it before Oakland’s Tony Kemp responded to a fan who noticed that he lingered on the field a long time to watch Semien’s post-game interview.
I’ve said it before, but the respect that Semien engenders throughout the game is an incredible thing to keep being witness to. And that, plus his incredible on-field performance, surely has a lot to do with the fact that the Blue Jays, according to a Sunday report from the Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal, have attempted to sign him to a contract extension.
The Jays probably can afford the loss of Semien more than Ray, considering they are fourth in the majors in scoring despite playing most of the season without center fielder George Springer. According to sources, they’ve attempted to sign Semien to an extension, without success to this point, and plan to approach Ray about a new deal this offseason. General manager Ross Atkins would not comment on negotiations but said, “We are so impressed by both players and feel as though the organization and team have benefited greatly from their contributions on and off the field.”
The fact that they’re waiting until the offseason to negotiate with Robbie Ray may simply be due to a preference of Ray’s to focus on baseball in-season. And the fact that they’ve already broached the subject with Semien is unequivocally great.
It will, of course, cost the Jays a ton to get both under contract. Ray, as I've mentioned numerous times, is likely looking at a deal worth something close to the five-year, $118 million that Zack Wheeler got from the Phillies two years ago at the same age, while there's little reason to believe Semien shouldn't get a deal like George Springer's six-year, $150 million pact with the Jays.
That means adding something in the neighbourhood of $50 million a year to the team’s payroll for the next several years. Can the Jays do it? It won’t be easy, and there will be reasons not to, but yes. I think so.
According to Cot’s, the Jays had a $135 million payroll on opening day this year. Next season they're committed to just $63.2 million in guaranteed money to Springer ($28 million), Hyun Jin Ryu ($20 million), Randal Grichuk ($10.3 million), and Lourdes Gurriel Jr. ($4.9 million).
Add to that healthy raises for José Berríos (~$9.5 million), Teoscar Hernández (~$8 million), Ross Stripling (~$4.5 million), and a big first arbitration salary for Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (~$10 million based on Cody Bellinger's record-breaking Arb1 salary after his MVP 2019 season). They also have Adam Cimber in his second year of arbitration (~$1.5 million), something like $5 million for whichever of their five other Arb1 guys they choose to keep (Cavan Biggio, Danny Jansen, Tim Mayza, Ryan Borucki, and Trent Thornton), and about $6 million for their pre-arb guys.
Add that all together and you get $107.1 million. Another $50 million would bring their opening day payroll about in line with where the club was at in 2017 and 2018. Whether Rogers is ready to allow the team to return to that level so quickly is a big question. Whether the front office would accept such a hit to their flexibility is another, because clearly the bullpen will need to be addressed this winter, and in future years more pieces will have to move around.
There are ways to potentially keep the money a bit more manageable than all that looks though. For example, the Jays could give out large signing bonuses in order to get some money on the club's books for 2021, or they could defer some of the money until the end of the deals. They could also structure the contracts in such a way as to take advantage of when other money comes off of their books — Grichuk and Ryu will both see their deals end after 2023, freeing up more than $30 million, though by that point the team will need to really start thinking about earmarking big dollars for Guerrero and Bo Bichette, who are slated to hit free agency after 2025. (CORRECTION: An earlier version of this piece suggested Bichette reach free agency after 2026.)
Clearly the team's flexibility would take a hit, and we know that's something they value a lot. It’s hard to see them get quite that locked into this roster, good as it is, unless we really are talking about a payroll closer to the luxury tax threshold — and, of course, that’s all subject to change depending on this winter’s CBA negotiations go. But they’ve also got to take advantage of the fact that they have guys like Bichette, Guerrero, Hernández, Manoah, etc., on well below market deals right now. That’s value in this game. That’s why I think there’s a chance here. Though it seems to be a popular concept, this really isn’t a roster that’s setup to simply wait for guys like Orelvis Martinez and Jordan Groshans to be impact big leaguers.
Pay Semien and Ray.
Those long weekend games
These games are already a little too far into the rearview to bother going into real detail on them, but nevertheless here’s three more up!
▲ Saturday (Blue Jays 10 - Athletics 8)
This one got dicey for a bit. José Berríos pitched as the Jays took a 4-0 lead through four innings on a trio of homers: one from Lourdes Gurriel Jr., another from Danny Jansen, and then a two-run shot from Breyvic Valera (if you can believe that!). A Matt Chapman solo homer in the fifth brought the A's closer, then a double and single on either side of a pair of strikeouts in the seventh ended Berríos's day. Adam Cimber — a reliever who is a little too pitch-to-contact for that kind of situation — came in to face Chad Pinder and ended up inducing a weakly hit jam shot that had just enough English on it to handcuff Semien out at second base.
A tougher play than it looks and a tough break that looked like it might end up taking the shine off the previous night’s season-saving win. But no matter. Vlad walked to lead off the bottom of the seventh, Bo singled, then Teoscar crushed one 105.4 mph off the bat into the Blue Jays' bullpen to make it 7-3 for Toronto. They'd add three more the following frame — and it was a good thing, too! Joakim Soria faced four batters in the ninth and got none of them out. Jordan Romano was forced to come in and immediately gave up a homer to Sean Murphy to make it 10-8, but they couldn't muster anything else off the Jays' closer and the streak continued.
▲ Sunday (Blue Jays 8 - Athletics 0)
Romano had pitched on both Friday and Saturday, making him unavailable for this one, so the Jays went out and made sure the bullpen wasn’t needed. Robbie Ray was, of course, brilliant once again, allowing just one hit and three walks over 6 2/3 innings of shutout ball with 10 strikeouts. Trevor Richards finished the seventh with a strikeout, Bryan Baker worked around a lead-off single to keep the A's off the board in the eighth, and Nate Pearson struck out the side to finish the game. Meanwhile, the Jays' hitters continued to rediscover their stride, scoring eight runs on 13 hits, including homers from (who else?) Semien and Kirk in the bottom of the third. An actual laugher? Unbelievable!
▲ Monday (Blue Jays 8 - Yankees 0)
This one was another 8-0 victory, but it certainly wasn't as comfortable — at least not until the top of the ninth, when Teoscar hit a lead-off homer to push the Jays' lead to 4-0, and two walks, a strikeout, a pop out, and one walk later, Semien put the game out of reach with a grand slam — his 37th homer of the year, breaking the record for the most ever by a Blue Jays middle infielder.
The concern, however, was the fact that starter Hyun Jin Ryu — who was excellent for six scoreless innings, allowing just three hits with no walks and six strikeouts — exited the game after just 80 pitches with some tightness in his arm. Fortunately, the bullpen held, and the prognosis for Ryu ended up being good.
Another win in the books!
The week ahead
Yeah, I know, the week is already halfway over. But there are huge games upcoming, so we’d better talk about them.
Pitching matchups:
• Wednesday, 7:05 PM ET @ Yankees: RHP Alek Manoah (5-2, 3.63 ERA, 88 K/28 BB/79 1/3 IP) vs. RHP Luis Gil (1-0, 0.00 ERA, 18 K/7 BB/15 2/3 IP)
• Thursday, 7:05 PM ET @ Yankees: RHP José Berríos (10-7, 3.55 ERA, 169 K/40 BB/159 2/3 IP) vs. LHP Néstor Cortes Jr. (2-2, 2.67 ERA, 71 K/21 BB/67 1/3 IP)
• Friday - Sunday @ Baltimore
Worth noting:
• Manoah is looking to rebound from his wobble back on Friday, when he allowed six runs on five hits, three walks, and a pair of HBPs in that crazy game the Jays ended up coming back in twice. He seemed to struggle after hitting those batters — both of which came in the top of the fifth, the second being a scary incident involving a fastball to Starling Marte's head. The next A’s batter, Matt Olson, hit a two run double, then in the following frame Manoah surrendered a two-run homer to the light-hitting Tony Kemp. Not great, and a bounce-back seems likely.
• Manoah hasn't faced the Yankees since his impressive big league debut back in May. You may recall that he had their number during a couple of eye-popping outings in the spring. Will the familiarity finally help them? Let’s hope not.
• Gil has been impressive in three starts for the Yankees this year, though if you’re the Jays there are reasons for optimism in facing him: He's been a bit lucky (.231 BABIP), and he certainly wasn't as good during his time in Triple-A this season (4.66 ERA over 46 1/3 innings). The Jays will need to be patient though. His 4.02 BB/9 in the big leagues is bad, and his 5.44 rate in Triple-A was even worse.
• The Jays won’t have Tim Mayza available here on Wednesday, as he’s been used in each of the last two games. Per Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet, Jordan Romano, however, is available despite pitching on Tuesday night and having warmed up on Monday.
• LATE ADDITION: Also available for the Jays here on Wednesday will be Julian Merryweather, who has officially been activated by the club. Bryan Baker has been optioned back down to Buffalo, while Anthony Kay has temporarily surrendered his 40-man spot by being placed on the COVID-related injured list. Merryweather has pitched just 4 1/3 innings this year, though they were brilliant ones, as he struck out seven, walked just one, and allowed just one hit while giving up no runs. In three Triple-A rehab innings he allowed three runs on five hits and a walk with 5 Ks. Merryweather has pitched just 28 1/3 competitive innings since 2017, so obviously there are some very, very real injury concerns here. But if he can stay on the field he has the pure stuff to be a weapon, with a fastball that averaged 98.2 earlier in the year to go with an 88.2 mph slider as well as a curveball and a changeup.
• Cortes may be a guy the Jays have trouble with. Though something of a journeyman with a 4.86 career ERA in the majors, he's found his footing this season "by coming at hitters from a variety of angles, speeds, and arm slots, with the occasional hesitation thrown in for good measure," according to a recent profile from Jay Jaffe of FanGraphs.
• Neither team’s starters for the weekend series in Baltimore have been announced yet, though it seems likely that Robbie Ray will get his usual day on Friday, Ryu apparently should be good on regular rest for one of Saturday’s games, some combination of Ross Stripling and Thomas Hatch will likely get the other, while Matz would then likely get the call on Sunday.
• Hmm…
• There is, of course, more going on in the baseball world right now than the Blue Jays’ run toward a wild card berth. Today is, of course, Hall of Fame induction day in Cooperstown, so I’d like to offer a hearty congratulations for the long overdue (and, sadly, posthumous — and against his wishes) election of union pioneer Marvin Miller (who Mark Normandin has an excellent piece about today), as well as Ted Simmons, Larry Walker, and that other guy!
• For us here in Canada, the most meaningful of that group is, of course, Walker. And the feeling, it turns out, is mutual.
• Just Larry being Larry.
Scoreboard watching:
Lastly, here are the matchups Jays fans will want to keep their eyes on throughout the rest of the week and over the weekend…
• If you’ve read this far you probably already know that the Jays are playing in the Bronx here on Wednesday and Thursday, then have four over the weekend with the Orioles in Baltimore.
• After hosting the Jays, the Yankees head across town to face the Mets for three (including this week’s ESPN Sunday Night Baseball matchup).
• The Red Sox finish their home series with the Rays here on Wednesday, then get a day off before a tough weekend assignment in Chicago to face the White Sox.
• The A’s are hosting the White Sox both Wednesday and Thursday of this week. They then host the Texas Rangers over the weekend.
• The Mariners are, at the time of this writing, trailing the Astros, then also have Thursday off before getting a chance to force their way back into the race with a weekend visit to the Diamondbacks in Arizona.
• The Jays had better keep the good times rolling while they can because next week things get a big tougher with a visit from the Rays.
• Let’s do this!!!1!
The wins are great. I'm not going to argue with winning. Our reliance on home runs and lack of RISP is still troubling though. Jays are the #1 team in the majors in HR/PA. Yes, we can smash. But the Clutch metric explains a lot of the reason why the team has less wins than expected all season. We often don't hit when it counts most. Mariners are #1 in Clutch. Depending on where you consult the Jays are last or 2nd last to the Orioles. It was nice to see some small ball scoring runs in these last couple of games and I hope it continues. Last night's game should have been a blowout with the Yanks giving up 11 walks. Would love to see some scoring with RISP tonight to consolidate the sweep!
When's the last time we swept the Yankees? 2016? https://www.mlb.com/news/blue-jays-sweep-yankees-with-shutout-c181565392 ? (and that a 3 not 4 game sweep)