Stray Thoughts - Domed
Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
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The cursed Trop, ladies and gentlemen! Have you seen this? Have you heard about this?
I’m guessing that you most certainly have.
But, at the risk of ruining the “fun” a lot of people seem to have agonizing over the place, I must admit here that I’m pretty exhausted by the whole thing. Not just the Jays constantly losing when they play there—though, yes, obviously, that is also extremely exhausting. But also the way that it has become such a reflex to treat the Trop like it’s the Amityville house on Jose Canseco’s borrowed steroids if it was designed by the catwalk-obsessed ghost of cocaine personified in order to host NASL games in 1983.
Granted, watching the Jays find new and ever-more-stupid ways to lose there over the years has been pretty frustrating. IT EVEN GOT POOR, PERFECT TYLER ROGERS THIS WEEK! But it just feels like I’m always seeing stats with caveats like “since 2008” or “since 2016”—i.e. the year when the Rays became a successful (on-field) franchise, and a year that fully captures the Jays’ post-Bautista intentional downturn. Tampa’s been over 100 games better than the Jays since 2008, and nearly 50 games better since 2016, so you’d fully expect their home record against them to be a bit lopsided.
As crazily lopsided as it has been? OK, probably not. And are 10 years and 18 years not enough time for me to agree that this really is a deeply weird thing that is worth discussing because of how much and how often it sucks to go through? No, they are! I guess that’s fair, when you put it that way!
But it’s not even the ballpark where the Blue Jays have been the worst.
Good teams win games, and tend to do better at home. Hell, the Rays played last year at Steinbrenner Field and the Jays still went 2-5 against them on the road. It ain’t the building!
I mean, again, I’m not saying it hasn’t been awful. Nor am I opposed to a little bit of lore. I know that’s the kind of stuff, whether it’s good or bad, that unites a fan base.
It’s just… OK, maybe I’m just in a foul mood because of how this series went. Or maybe it’s because, in a podcast interview posted on Tuesday night, noted Red Sox fan and former TVO man Steve Paikin forced Jays president Mark Shapiro into commenting on the subject of Israel, which is going to force me to comment on his mealy-mouthed reply1, and I’m not looking forward to the fact that a bunch of people are somehow going to get mad at me when I point out that genocide, apartheid and land theft are, in fact, indefensible, that opposing them isn’t complicated in the slightest, and that it is utterly bonkers that we’ve allowed a situation to be created such that people fear repercussions for saying as much. I’m not loving the fact that a whole bunch more people are going to wonder why they’re reading about this stuff on a baseball blog either. (There, that’s at least out of the way now!)
But… I don’t know. I hate the Trop, too. I do! Maybe just for a slightly different, dumber reason than most.
Either way, BRING ON THE ROGERS CENTRE!
From the Sublime to the Ridiculous
It’s been quite a week for Blue Jays injury updates, as the club has kept on trying—and would have mostly been failing if not for everybody else in the American League still playing like garbage too—to tread water as they wait for some key players to return.
On Monday, the updates were legendary.
Even here on Wednesday there were still some positives to be taken on the health front.
Addison Barger’s rehab assignment has gone well so far, and the plan for him is to get in one more minor league game with Dunedin, then return to the Jays when they open up their series with the Angels on Friday.
Alejandro Kirk is still apparently on track with his original six-week timeline and is slated to begin hitting over the weekend. He was injured April 7th, so could be back as soon as two weeks from now—give or take however the rehab assignment goes. Assuming, of course, he keeps on checking the right boxes.
And Shane Bieber caught up with his teammates at the Trop here this week and, prior to Wednesday’s game, threw a “two-up” bullpen. According to manager John Schneider he “looked sharp,” and the plan now is for him to throw another of those “two-ups” next week, then progress to facing live hitters.
For comparison, José Berríos first faced live hitters on the weekend of April 4th/5th, then got into his first rehab game just over 10 days later, and—if he’d pitched better—might have had his final rehab start two weeks after that. Obviously every injury is different, but a similar timeline would put Bieber at least a month away.
So... that one’s in the middle maybe, as far as updates go. Progression is good! Another month of Eric Lauer in the rotation, on the other hand...
Which… yes, you read that right. Get ready for more hours of Lauer. Because there were negative updates on Wednesday, too—the most significant of those being the fact that the aforementioned Berríos is now seeking a second opinion after getting an MRI on his elbow on Tuesday night.
It would be easy here to say something like, “Well, that obviously isn’t good.” Or, “You don’t go for a second opinion if you liked the first.” Or, “Good lord almighty, how many goddamn years are left on that goddamn contract?”
And… well… that’s especially easy to say when we’re talking about a guy who’s been throwing with a stress fracture in his elbow, and whose average four-seamer velocity has dipped in every rehab start he’s made so far—93.9 back on April 16th, to 93.5, 91.9, then 90.8 in his most recent.
Of course, none of this means that he’s cooked for certain. The weather in those International League starts was cold! We don’t know enough to be certain of anything!
But it doesn’t feel great right now either. Which stinks, because even Berríos—who, by the way, only has two more years left on his contract after this one—would be a welcome addition to the Jays’ rotation at this point.
Partly, that’s because Lauer’s having velo problems of his own, and currently sporting a 6.03 ERA.
And then there’s Max Scherzer, who is also currently on the IL, and doesn’t appear to be especially close to a return either. Even though according to a tweet from Hazel Mae, he thought he’d be at the ramping-up phase by now.
She added:
Scherzer does say that his ankle is feeling better, but clearly he isn’t yet ready to help. (I mean, even if he was healthy I’m not sure he’d be ready to help, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.)
Not great!
The Fabulous Fibrous Plant Matter Boys*
Of course, pitching isn’t really the problem with the Jays right now, as they scored just four runs in these three games with the Trop. But though the hitting situation is dire at the moment, there are at least a couple of positives we’ve seen of late.
Heading into Wednesday’s action there were 278 players with at least 50 batted ball events so far this season, and in terms of Pull AIR%—i.e. the rate that a batter hits a ball in the air to the pull side, obviously—the Jays had one player in the top 10, and another in the top 30.
The first is Myles Straw (31.4%, ninth)…
…and the second is Kazuma Okamoto (26.4%, 29th).
Both players doubled in Wednesday’s dispiriting finale in St. Pete, and both did it to the pull side.
Now, Okamoto’s 112.4 mph rocket to the wall was only hit with an eight degree launch angle, so it’s probably going to end up in the ground ball bucket—Statcast’s “general guideline” says that balls hit with a launch angle below 10 degrees are considered grounders—but it was still yet another fantastic piece of hitting from one of the hottest hitters on the planet.
Straw’s hit, on the other hand, was definitely an air-pull, 102.4 mph off the top of the fence in left-centre—so close to a home run that the umpiring crew decided to review it just in case. (Perhaps after some cajoling from the Blue Jays’ bench.)
Even with just a double there, with it plus an earlier single, Straw’s wRC+ for the season jumped from 125 all the way to 136 over the course of his three plate appearances on the day.
Need more stories like this, boys!
* Oak and Straw
Vladimir Gwynnero Jr.
Speaking of big changes in wRC+ as a result of just a single day’s work, we’ve got Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
Unfortunately, Vladdy’s got his numbers moving in the wrong direction. After an 0-for-4 with a strikeout on Wednesday, his wRC+ fell from 137 all the way to 131. That’s not as much movement as Straw’s had, but considering that Vlad has come to the plate 87 more times than him so far in this young season (154 PA to 67), it’s probably even more impressive.
Sigh.
It feels somewhat crazy to be negative about a guy with an on-base above .400, and I know that part the issue is that his lack of power is magnified by the fact that guys like Springer, Barger, and Kirk haven’t been in the lineup, but… jeeeeeeeez, man. Hit some bloody dingers! Do we really have to do this every year???
Quickly…
• I haven’t written a whole lot about the actual games this week here and, well, why on earth would I? I mean, I don’t want to get too down on the team at the moment, because they had momentum, were in a playoff spot, and were a win away from finally getting back to .500, like, a minute ago. But that was a rough one. (Well, three.)
• Cap tip to Patrick Corbin for continuing to be weirdly serviceable, and being way down the list of guys we’re concerned about right now.
• April 21st was 15 days ago.
• With Barger due to return to action on Friday, the Jays will have to either send a position player down or to the waiver wire in order to make room, and it sorta feels like Yohendrick Piñango has taken himself out of that conversation, doesn’t it?
• Maybe not! I mean, he’s not walking, he’s not really hitting for power—or, at least, not picking up extra-base hits—his .500 BABIP is obviously unsustainable, and he’s optionable. But the at-bats have been pretty good, he certainly can strike the ball well, and his Statcast numbers are—as expected—pretty impressive. Not across the board, mind you. But, for example, among guys with at least 20 PA—which, yes, I know, is a crazily small sample—he ranks sixth in expected batting average and is in the top 30 for strikeout rate. And he just feels like a dangerous guy at the plate right now, more so than a number of his teammates. If it were my decision, I’d probably be inclined to go another way with it.
• Which way would I go? Well, I think your only other realistic options are demoting Davis Schneider or getting rid of Lenyn Sosa. And while Davis is certainly a mess right now, and maybe could use some sorting out in Buffalo, I just really haven’t seen nearly enough from Sosa to think that it would be any kind of loss. Replacement Level is real. I guess we’ll find out soon enough!
• Ismail Munguia time? Probably not. But there’s something intriguing about a guy who FanGraphs called “a spark plug little outfielder who plays his ass off and makes a lot of contact,” and who has now hit his way out of New Hampshire and up to Buffalo. (Keep in mind that he’s 27. But still!)
• I’d be lying if I said I didn’t laugh a little bit at the idea that, thanks to a long-ago follow, Buster is still out there seeing all the crap I tweet.
• Oh, did something happen with the Leafs?
• The Hound. Forever, the Hound!
• Aaaaaaaand, I think that’s it! WOOF! NOW GO WIN SOME GAMES YOU JERKS! ENJOY THE OFF-DAY EVERYBODY, I KNOW I WILL NOT MISS WATCHING WHATEVER THAT WAS!
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The crazy thing is, I’d say that he answered this like a politician, but these days most politicians are too cowardly to even say “and there are some Palestinians that I support as well.”
Stoets, I'm one your biggest longtime fans, but you lost me with your false accusations about Israel. There is no Genocide, Apartheid or land theft. 1st, genocide. 70% of buildings destroyed yet only 3% of the population killed. The IDF vaccinated almost a milliion people against polio during the war. It's a war (started by Hamas on October 7th) where tragically civilian lives were lost, like every war. Of the 70,000 reported dead, about half were combatants and 10k died of natural causes. There is no legal grounds for genocidal INTENT. My mother spent her teens in Auschwitz, an ACTUAL genocide. You misuse the word shamelessly like so many others. Apartheid? 20% of the Israeli population are Arab/Muslim with more rights and freedoms than any Muslim country. They serve in the IDF, police, parliament, judiciary and medicine and have equal rights. Those that live in Gaza and the West Bank have their own government and are not Israeli citizens. BTW, Jews are not allowed in those areas, y'know, like Apartheid. Land Theft? Pre 1948, most land was purchased from absentee Arabs, the people living on those lands rent free had no rights to the land. They were all offered to stay, but told by The Arab League to evacuate until they eliminated the Jews. 5 Arab countries started a war against Israel and lost. The people who left are now the longest tenured refugees (in the same place) on the planet. Every war that followed was started by the surrounding countries and they lost them all. When wars are lost, often so is land. Yet after 1967 Israel gave back some of its conquered land in hopes of peace.
Your baseball knowledge is great. Based on your beliefs stated, your knowledge on the subject not so much.
Sorry to do this on your great baseball page, but I am fed up with the lies about Israel and Jews.
I'm super down on the club these days as I'm sure people can tell, but I still believe. Didn't stop me from pulling Leafs gear out this week to dry my tears, but I still believe. Let's go Jays! Get healthy and get on a summer long run.