Stray Thoughts - Feelin' Fine (Unironic)

On a nice little run, a bit of optimism, a schedule eventually easing, a still-controversial trade, George Springer, Addison Barger, xwOBA, Kevin Gausman, Eric Lauer, farm notes, and a whole lot more!

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Waking up on a Saturday, checking the Major League Baseball standings, and seeing the Toronto Blue Jays five games clear of .500, tied with the Twins and Rays for the top AL Wild Card spot, five games ahead of the Red Sox in the standings, and eight-and-a-half up on Baltimore. Folks, it’s a good time to be alive.

The Jays are doing the thing. All this season needed was a strong run for a few weeks that could push them well above their .500-ish baseline and allow them to, at the very least, coast on it all the way into September as a legitimate threat for a playoff spot—sort of like in 2023, when they went just 62-58 between an 18-9 start and a 9-6 finish to end up with 89 wins.

They’re a long way from being able to coast, and they’re hardly the best baseball team in the universe—though there have been moments these last few weeks where, I’d say, they’ve felt closer to that than they have for a long while—but considering how little they’ve gotten out of Anthony Santander, Max Scherzer, Andrés Giménez, Daulton Varsho, Erik Swanson, Nick Sandlin, Will Wagner, Alan Roden, Orelvis Martinez, Ricky Tiedemann, Jake Bloss, Adam Macko, Joey Loperfido, Leo Jiménez, Alek Manoahhhh…uh, I think you get the point. There are many potential contributors who have yet to really contribute, and should be able to contribute quite a bit more as some of the guys who’ve been carrying them to this point go through natural troughs.

I know, I know, the bar is subterranean if we’re all aglow about the mere theoretical potential of contending for a playoff spot. But every win they rack up today makes for more meaningful baseball down the line, and the alternative is, of course, much, much worse.

And it’s not like they’re here just by beating up on the lowly A’s. They did it against the Mariners. They did it against the Padres. They did it against the Rangers. They did it against the Phillies. And now they’ve started out well against the Twins.

Take out games against the stupid Rays and they’re 16-4 since May 8th!

Absurd statistical cherry-picking? Yes, obviously. Missing the doubly important head-to-head factor against Tampa, who may be a serious foe in the Wild Card chase? Absolutely.

But they’ve been good! They’ve been fun! And I think it is high goddamn time that I got back to writing about them in shorter bursts around here, and got it out of my head that every post needs to be some 8,000 word mammoth.

So let’s get into it. Here are today’s stray thoughts—”Quickly…”-style!

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Quickly…

• Speaking of the Jays and Rays, right now Tampa is up in the season series 5-1. There are still seven games left to play between the two teams, all of which are scheduled for the second-half of September: the 15th through the 18th at Steinbrenner Field and in the final regular season series of the year, from the 26th to the 28th, at Rogers Centre. Tasty stuff, provided they can maintain relevance for that long.

• Sticking with the schedule, and to underline how important it is that they’ve managed to keep their heads above water thus far, it must be noted that things look a lot—not easier, but certainly less daunting—after this current Minnesota-St. Louis-Philadelphia road trip. Or, if you want to be generous to a .500 Arizona team, through the road trip plus three home games with the Diamondbacks.

After that they host the White Sox for three, then go to Cleveland and Boston (who might be bad!). Then it’s home for four against the Yankees, but that’s followed by three with the Angels before they head into the All-Star break with a road trip that sees them visit the White Sox for three more, and then three out in Oakland Sacramento.

Could be worse!

• The second half of the schedule starts tough, hosting the Giants and Yankees and then heading to Detroit. But then it’s four in Baltimore—a series that ends a day before the trade deadline, which means the Orioles might have already sold off some pieces and started looking toward 2026, assuming they don’t rediscover their mojo in a hurry here—and August starts with three at home against the Royals, then three in Colorado. Two tough series—away to the Dodgers, home versus the Cubs—follow that, but then it’s Rangers (home), Pirates (away), Marlins (away), Twins (home), and Brewers (home) to close out the month. And September starts with a trip to Cincinnati before things get especially hairy again.

• Again, not an easy schedule, but there are definitely some places where they can make hay as long as they stay afloat against the tougher teams. And while it’s easy to be optimistic here at their literal high water mark—FanGraphs currently has the Jays’ playoff odds at 54.4%, which is the highest it’s been all year—I think it’s worth taking a moment to be optimistic, considering how fleeting that feeling has been around here these last few years.

• Ugh. I just realized that during that aforementioned Diamondbacks series you just know there are going to be clowns showering Gabriel Moreno with unearned cheers as a way to stick it to the front office—as if ending up with an elite centre fielder and an elite catcher in Alejandro Kirk was somehow a worse outcome than having to figure out what to do with Kirk and Moreno both on the roster (and, until the middle of last year, Danny Jansen).

• It will be nice to see Lourdes Gurriel Jr. make his return here, though. And those cheers, though many will be for the same reason, will all be entirely deserved.

• Of course, Gurriel did already make his first return to Rogers Centre back in 2023, which too many people seem to intentionally forget was the only year he was under contract for when the Jays included him in that deal.

People also forget that he was coming off a five homer 2022 in which he insisted the wrist injury he was dealing with didn’t affect him, because apparently he just wanted to be a slap hitter or something? (A decision arrived at before Don Mattingly was part of the staff, it must be noted for all the Mattingly weirdos out there).

And that 2022 season still stands as his best by wRC+ (115) since 2020, by the way. Since moving to Arizona, Gurriel’s 105 wRC+ is identical to the one produced by perpetual-until-two-months-ago disappointment George Springer. And Springer’s 49 home runs over that span are just two behind Gurriel’s 51.

People really need to get over that one, is what I’m saying.

• In other other words, Atkins haters are so funny to me, man. I mean, it’s not that I’ve never been at my wits’ end with Ross sometimes. It’s just… congratulations on being so miserable about the team you love for the last decade that you can’t even really enjoy it, I guess? It sure doesn’t seem to have worked, and it didn’t work for the last guy, or the guy before that, or before that, but rather than just enjoying it for what it is and trying to see the logic behind what the front office is trying to do, maybe this time if you keep sulking hard enough you’ll be able to bring down the average tenure of an MLB GM by a tenth of a year. Best of luck?

Anyway! Moving on…

• Speaking of Springer (weren’t we?), his renaissance has been an absolute godsend for this team so far. It’s not elite power by any stretch of the imagination, but he’s hit nine home runs in just 228 plate appearances this season. Last year it took him 614 to get to 19, so he’s well ahead of that pace—as well as his pace from 2023, when he hit 21 in 683 PA.

The strikeouts are up, but not to any sort of dangerous level (22.8%), and there are plenty of other indicators that he’s—to deeply oversimplify it—doing the old man thing of trading strikeouts for power.

For example, his average bat speed is a full mile-per-hour higher than it was a year ago, and his percentage of “fast swings” (>=75mph) has jumped from 22% to 32%. He’s also producing “blasts” (balls Statcast considers to have been both squared up and hit at a high bat speed) at a better rate, doing so on 14.1% of his swings compared to just 11.7%. His hard hit and barrel rates are also the highest they’ve ever been, his launch angle is back up to where it was in 2020 and ‘21, when he hit 36 home runs in 564 PA. He’s swinging at the ideal attack angle more often (55.2%, up from 52.2%), and even though he currently ranks 26th in baseball with a 139 wRC+, he’s actually underperformed his expected wOBA by 40 points. That difference ranks 41st—in the wrong direction—out of 257 qualified hitters.

Good stuff, George! Keep it up! Now let’s just work on that second-percentile (-7 OAA/-8 DRS) outfield defence, shall we?

• Speaking of xwOBA underperformers, ahead of Springer on that list are Alejandro Kirk (39th), Bo Bichette (37th), Andres Giménez (20th), and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (18th).

Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean that these guys are due to see increased production or anything. A slow-footed guy like Kirk will turn enough doubles into singles to probably always produce a little less than what’s to be expected based on the way he strikes the ball. There’s some of that effect in Vlad’s numbers too, I'd wager. Partly because of speed, and partly because he’ll occasionally hit balls off the wall so hard that the outfielder can get to it quickly enough to hold him at first. Vlad also probably uses too much of the field to grade out well here—expected stats don’t take the direction of the batted ball into account (yet), so long outs to deep centre are overvalued because balls with the launch angle and exit velocity to produce them, if pulled, are likely to go over the wall, and yet they all end up in the same bucket. That effect is probably true of Bo as well. So, context definitely matters here! But I can certainly buy that there's more still to come from some of these guys.

• Sticking with Statcast stuff, every day it feels like we’re getting closer and closer to being able to say that Addison Barger is the real thing. Maybe not the guy who has put up a 178 wRC+ since May 5th, but certainly someone who is making a hell of a lot more out of his impressive toolset than we’ve ever seen at this level—or maybe any level. His best year for power was 2022, when he hit 26 homers in 526 plate appearances across three levels, the bulk of which came at High-A. That meant he was hitting a home run about once for every 20 trips to the plate. This year, with seven in Toronto and two in Buffalo, he has nine homers in 190 PA, which means he’s hitting them at a very similar rate, albeit mostly against major league pitching.

It’s really impressive stuff, and though the sample is small, it’s hardly a bewildering breakout. His underlying numbers offer a ton of positives. Some of these everybody likely understands by now, like that he’s making better swing decisions—chasing less, swinging at more pitches in the zone—and that he's hitting the ball even harder than he was last year. What’s much more interesting to me, however, is what we’re seeing in his bat tracking. Last year he was catching the ball, on average, six inches behind the front edge of the plate. This year he’s striking the ball 1.1 inches in front of it.

And last year, according to Statcast, he struck the ball with an ideal attack angle 45.2% of the time. This year that number is up to 58.6%. It’s also more pull-oriented swing. In fact, he’s pulling the ball in the air 25.5% of the time, which is not only up from 18.8% last season, it ranks 30th out of 252 qualified hitters.

With the juice he’s got in terms of bat speed/exit velo, the fact that he’s making better decisions, catching the ball out in front of the plate, and pulling it in the air? That’s a real hitter right there, my friends. Long may it continue.

• Seriously though!

Quickly quickly…

• Joshua Howsam makes a keen observation as Kevin Gausman gets set to face the Twins here on Saturday afternoon, noting that Minnesota seems to have been the team to get to him best since he’s joined the Jays—especially intriguing because of how much “classic Gausman” we’ve been seeing over the last few weeks. An interesting matchup in other words. It will also make it easier for me to brush off a loss if he struggles!

• There have been a ton of great stories in the minors for the Jays this season, but few have been as fun as Trey Yesavage-Gage Stanifer combination, who on Thursday night combined for four hits over nine innings with just three walks, one run, 15 Ks, and 32 whiffs. Add in Khal Stephen and I’m getting “Lansing Three” vibes over here.

• “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is a good rule to abide by, so I’m not exactly champing at the bit to give Eric Lauer a full-on spot in the rotation and eliminate the use of an opener before him, but credit to him regardless.

Drilling into it, it honestly doesn't seem as though he’s doing a ton that's different from when he was last in the big leagues in 2023—his arm angle is down a bit and there have been some small changes to his pitch mix, but not much in terms of velocity or movement, and there’s no transformative new pitch or anything. It just sort of looks to me like he’s doing a better job of commanding the ball.

For example, we see a hell of a lot nicer heat map of fastballs and curveballs against right-handers this year...

than we did two years ago.

Simple as?

• Speaking of broken things, I won’t dive deep on Bowden Francis in this one—especially because it looked for a minute there that he might have been getting himself back on track—but we may have another fairly simple answer there, too.

• And this guy sure doesn’t seem like he’s about to fix anything…

• But this one certainly could.

• Back to prospects for a second, as there are more exciting stories coming from down on the farm than just the Vancouver trio I mentioned above. One of them, of course, is their teammate, Arjun Nimmala, who has moved into the top 50 according to the latest update from Baseball America. Also intriguing, and noted in the BA piece, are Yohendrick Pinango—“our Wilyer Abreu,” potentially, according to Gate 14’s Avery Chenier—as well as catcher Edward Duran (who may need a 40-man spot at the end of the season, due to his Rule 5 eligibility), and LHP Johnny King, who is definitely one of those guys I was sleeping on when I addressed the system in my recent Heads or Tails post.

• Seriously though…

• Let’s not sleep on Orelvis, either, while we’re at it, eh? He’s heating up.

• We’ve also had a recent sighting of 2022 top pick Brandon Barriera, who—as D.M. Fox notes—missed most of 2023 with a knee injury, and then required Tommy John (the brace version) in 2024. He pitched a pair of complex league innings on Tuesday, allowing one hit.

• Sticking with D.M., he’s got a new Future Blue Jays newsletter out, which, as always, has all kinds of goodies from up and down the system.

• We also learned on Thursday that Alek Manoah is set to face live hitters for the first time this year on Tuesday—a key step as he continues to progress toward a potential August return.

• Memories…

• Hmm. Almost like constructing a baseball roster is not as easy a job as people tend to think. Will continue to look into this!

• Worth mentioning: the good version of José Berríos is pretty good!

• Evan Drellich of the Athletic reports that Rob Manfred is set to propose having MLB move to the automated ball-strike challenge system to begin in the 2026 season—which, despite sounding made up, is apparently just next year. That’s less-than-great news for catchers with a ton of value tied up in their ability to frame pitches—*COUGH*—but far, far better news than if they went purely with robo-umps. More fun, too. And probably the right thing to do.

• Lastly, as far as things go, this is one that you love to see…

• OK, that’s it for now! More stray thoughts again sooner than it took for this batch! Now let’s get at it and break that stupid Gausman-Twins curse, shall we????

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