Stray Thoughts... - Goblin Mode

On playoff seeding, playoff odds, but not feeling like a playoff team. Plus: Vlad, Chapman, Manoah, Judge Smails, Noam Chomsky, Ben Wagner, Max Scherzer, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and so much more!

The Blue Jays have done an outstanding job in the first two games of this week’s series against the Rangers of keeping the AL wild card race incredibly tight, and therefore maintaining their ability to avoid finishing second and being drawn into a playoff series with the Rays at the dreaded Trop. Smart!

Mind you, the Jays still have a lot of work to do if they want to avoid the Rays and play the Twins in the first round. But these two limp, dispiriting losses were a good start.

Otherwise, I’m not sure how much there is to say about how this massive series has begun, despite a whole lot of fans being very eager to make grand pronouncements about the team and the season as Tuesday night’s deficit grew.

There are certainly ways to put a positive shine on it. FanGraphs gives them a 62% chance of making the playoffs still, though that puts them behind the Rangers and Mariners. Baseball Refence puts them at 70%, which is ahead of only Seattle now that Texas has got their noses ahead (and secured the tiebreaker with the Jays).

The Mariners, after they play their finale with the Angels here on Wednesday and follow that with an off day, will finish with 16 games in 17 days. They'll host the Dodgers, then visit the A's and Rangers, before coming home to host the Astros for three and ending with the Rangers for four. That’s a tough run given how good the Dodgers are and how much the Rangers and Astros—who only lead the AL West by one game at this point—have to play for. It will give the Jays a fighting chance basically no matter what, outside of a massive 1987-esque collapse.

But very obviously there are ways to look at the situation negatively, too. Like the fact that there have been a lot of nights this season, and Tuesday was one of them, that such a collapse hardly feels impossible. Some days you wonder how this offence managed to get them even this far.

And yet, as a club the Jays are seventh in baseball by wRC+, tied for first in ERA, and 19 runs better than the second best team by DRS. DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD IT IS TO MAKE IT FEEL LIKE THAT TEAM SUCKS? By those same metrics Atlanta ranks first, sixth, and fifteenth! (Of course, they also have 113 more home runs than the Jays do. I wonder if that has anything to do with the difference in their records???)

This season has been a miracle, really. But, like, in the way that a goblin is a kind of miracle.

Ugh. Here are some more stray thoughts…

---

---

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

---

---

I love the smell of blasphemy in the mid-afternoon…

Not to go all Buck Martinez mode for a second here, but one of the things the venerable broadcaster said during his silly analytics rant the other day that did make a certain amount of sense was that we've reached the time of year where the averages matter less. I certainly don't think that means it's a good idea to leave Yusei Kikuchi in, even when he's dealing, if he's about to face tough right-handed hitters in the sixth inning of a critical close game, given his awful third-time-through numbers and the fact that the bullpen was fresh. I do, on the other hand, think it sure would have been a good idea to not keep running Chris Bassitt out there on Monday night, despite his good numbers deeper in games, when he obviously looked uncomfortable and not quite right from basically the moment he balked in the game's first run via a third disengagement (and maybe even before that, when his PitchCom device was on the fritz).

I also don't think it means Vladimir Guerrero Jr. should be enshrined in the top half of this lineup—especially if he's going to put together fugly at-bats like he did in the bottom of the sixth inning on Tuesday—or that Matt Chapman necessarily needs to be immediately reinstalled as a no-doubt, every-single-day player once he's off the IL.

This may sound like I’m setting myself up to make some grand argument here, but really the numbers speak for themselves. Vlad's power is nowhere to be found, and without it his warts are showing in 4K Technicolor. He's got a.405 slugging percentage in the second half, meaning that any day now he's going to dip into the .300s—an almost unimaginable number for a guy whose "TLDR" prospect report still greets you at the top of his FanGraphs page, reading: “Guerrero has a messianic bat, and while he may have to move off of third base quite soon, he'll probably hit enough to be a superstar anyway.”

He's been barely over league average in the second half, at 103 wRC+, and September (89) has been even worse. Davis Schneider hasn’t hit higher than Vlad when Bo Bichette has been healthy, but it feels like the time has come. I still wouldn’t bet on him long-term over Vlad—that this could even be a question worth debating is wild, yet it genuinely feels like it could be—but they need to ride their hottest hands here and avoid giant holes in the one part of the lineup that actually feels like it has a chance to be productive.

The Chapman question is trickier because his defence is so good, and the way he’s talked about makes it sound like there’s no doubt he’s going to be in there every day once he’s ready. But I've certainly enjoyed what I've seen from Cavan Biggio since the All-Star break—a span over which he's slashed .286/.422/.407 (139 wRC+)—more than I did the previous four months of Chapman, even factoring in the defence. And I think most fans would be in agreement on that.

Clearly some of that is the product of Biggio seeing favourable matchups, and I'm not saying that Chapman should be completely rooted to the bench once he's back. I understand that it would be a pretty awful look to get to the end, just miss the playoffs, and realize the Jays went through bunch of games where Biggio played ahead of a genuine All-Star who showed in April how he can carry a team when things are going right. But Chapman has an 85 wRC+ since May 1st, had a 70 wRC+ in August prior to his finger injury, and an 18 wRC+ while trying to play through it. And according to Tuesday night’s broadcast he probably won't be back to 100% once he's off the IL! Let the man take his time, please.

A massive element of the ongoing Manoah saga—which we’ll get to—is that you can’t put the fear of hurting somebody’s feelings ahead of the team, even if they’re someone really important.

The Manoah Mess

It's been interesting to watch Alek Manoah fans begin to progress through the five stages of grief over the last day or so, as the news has come to light—from Ben Wagner, not Jeff Blair, despite what Talkin' Baseball's widely shared tweet said—about what has really been behind the young starter's disappearing act after he was demoted for the second time this season back in August. But I can't fault anyone yet for not being past denial.

Frankly, I almost hesitated to be so definitive in my language that Wagner's reporting is indeed the truth. I've certainly not been nearly cynical enough at times as this story has evolved—mostly because I don't think it's a great idea to go poking around about conspiracies and cover-ups when there are signs an issue might be a private medical matter—so there's definitely an instinct to not want to get burned again by suggesting that this is the absolute truth. But every time I consider hedging on that I think about the fact that Manoah hasn't been placed on the injured list, and how few other scenarios would account for that except for the one Wagner reported.

I also think about something that was staring me in the face the first time I wrote about this extensively, when Ross Atkins addressed it in a scrum late last month.

Speaking to the uniqueness of Manoah’s "pause," Atkins acknowledged that the team had “made sure with Major League Baseball that they were OK with it.”

This led me into the CBA, and to the fact that the league office requires notification in the event of a potential grievance. My thoughts at the time were that maybe all this supposed testing suggested a non-work-related medical issue, or mental health one, which required privacy or a delicate touch. Perhaps, I thought, the team’s story was true and they were squaring it with the league because of the potential for grievance, or at least the appearance of one. Knowing what we know now, it looks like the league was indeed contacted about a potential grievance, but one of a very different nature. And I think the acknowledgement of MLB's involvement from Atkins during that scrum gives credibility to the new details.

I could be wrong again, but that's where I'm at.

Yet those Manoah fans are still processing things, understandably. I've seen folks who've moved past denial into anger that are upset about the cover story that was used here, which I actually think was pretty effective (though kind of gross considering the concern it caused, and that it will only invite heavier scrutiny if ever there really is a player dealing with something best kept private). I've seen folks who are sure the Jays have mistreated players before and therefore there must be some way to pin this on them. And I've seen people certain they know who is leaking what and why and how and that this all comes back to the Jays being clearly the party in the wrong.

I don't agree with the conclusion there. Frankly, I'm less inclined today to even believe that it's Manoah’s "camp" that's the problem, after someone wrote to me: “His agent's probably not advising him to be a giant diaper baby. As someone who gives advice, can state definitively many clients get to that condition all on their own!”

But who is leaking what? What are their objectives? And why did we get two conflicting stories on the same day? These are good questions.

I don't know how to answer those, but I will humbly suggest that anyone who thinks Rogers or Blue Jays officials are dictating what's being reported get themselves a copy of Manufacturing Consent—or even just watch the first half of the movie, before it gets bogged down in the—tragic but dry, cinematically—East Timor stuff).

There are two camps here, yes, but the idea that the “bad” story is necessarily the product of a coordinated effort from the Blue Jays—that the team decided as an organization to throw Manoah under the bus and create a distraction at the most pivotal time of their season—is as silly as the notion that the Jays would have preferred to send Manoah down to save some money over having him stay in the majors if they thought it was at all viable or helpful.

It's just a big ol' dumb-dick story all around at this point, isn’t it? And yet still somehow more enjoyable to think about than this team's performance on the field!

Quickly…

• Sticking with the Manoah stuff, my Blue Jays Happy Hour cohost, Nick Ashbourne, had a great one about it for Yahoo on Tuesday, in which he’s as befuddled as everyone else is that anyone could think the Jays’ demotions of Manoah this season were for any reason other than pure necessity.

• Also from Nick, and also related to something I was on about above, is his Wednesday piece for Yahoo, which he sets up via Twitter by explaining: “I've been more optimistic than most about Vladdy this season — but with his quality-of-contact reaching new lows believing in a big finish from him at this point would be based on faith alone.”

• Personally, though I know nothing about nothing, I’m still looking at that wrist of Vlad’s. He was too poor in the first half for me to try to create a “the home run derby ruined him” narrative, but he did skip last year’s event because he was afraid the wrist issue would flare up. Could it have? Well… his stupefying home/road splits remain infuriatingly durable here in the second half, so probably not. Vlad’s power on the road has gone down month by month since the ASB, just as it has at home, but he has a 131 road wRC+ since then! His mark at home is just 78. WHYYYY?

• Vladdy is grindin’ for it, though. You can’t say he’s not grindin’. (I mean, you can, but you’d be wrong—and also missing out on an opportunity to use the word “grindin’.”)

• I noticed today, when going to Sportsnet’s site to find the most embarrassing screengrab I could capture from Vlad’s putrid sixth-inning at-bat last night, that what was called Sportsnet NOW as recently as, I think, yesterday, appears to have been rebranded as Sportsnet+. I said this on Twitter but I’ll say it again: Great use of a lot of time and energy there I'm sure. The many meetings must have been scintillating.

• Could the change of branding also come with some kind of a change in price? Rogers wouldn’t do that, would they???

• Re: the rebrand consultants…

HEYO! Also, it wouldn’t surprise me if this was true. And since Ben Wagner’s excellent work has been front and centre of the conversation around the team this week, let me once again take the opportunity to stump for him to be allowed to do his job properly. *COUGH*

• You obviously never want to see a player injured, even if it affects your team favourably as they try to finish off a 162-game backslide into the playoffs, but there’s no denying that Texas starter Max Scherzer’s early exit on Tuesday night could potentially impact the race in a big way. As of this writing the Rangers are awaiting the results of an MRI, so little is known. Here’s how he explained the issue post-game on Tuesday via Bally Sports Southwest:

• According to a report from Newsday, the Blue Jays were one of several teams scouting Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the 25-year-old ace of the Orix Buffaloes, when he threw a no-hitter over the weekend. The latest from Brennan Delaney of Blue Jays Nation will get you up to speed.

• Not to pick on Buck Martinez once again this week, but Travis Sawchik has a great read for us here on Wednesday at a site called theScore (never heard of it). It’s called “How the knee-down revolution changed catching - without downgrading defense”. Lol. Lmao.

• Lastly, please, for the love of god, could you just win a damn baseball game here, Blue Jays? I really don’t think that’s too much to ask.

---

⚾ Be sure to follow me on Twitter // Follow the Batflip on Facebook // Want to support without going through Substack? You could always send cash to stoeten@gmail.com on Paypal or via Interac e-Transfer. I assure you I won’t say no. ⚾