How can an MLB team, through no fault of their own, turn an important win into a loss? Would you believe that the 2023 Toronto Blue Jays have an answer to this question?
Of course you would!
The Jays won a rollercoaster of an affair on Friday night in Denver by a 13-9 score line that mostly flattered their opponents. Unfortunately, in the bottom of the sixth inning, after weeks of close calls that have seen multiple pitches hit him on the hands, they lost their most reliable catcher, Danny Jansen, to a finger fracture.
What a season, huh? Here are some 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
Janooooooooooo!!
I tweeted on Friday night that it would have been a good idea for the Blue Jays to have taken advantage of the fact that they spent the bulk of this season as beneficiaries of unbelievably good health by banking a bunch of wins. After having slept on it, I must say that I still completely agree with myself.
If you look at the league injury table at RosterResource, you’ll notice that there are a handful of teams who’ve had fewer IL stints in total, but it’s hard to believe that anyone has had fewer injuries of consequence than the Jays. Or, specifically, had fewer injuries of consequence up until the very end of July.
Below is how the Jays’ season has gone in terms of injuries severe enough to send players to the injured list:
Let’s quickly review:
• Green and Ryu’s injuries were well understood coming into the season, so the club was able to plan for those.
• Outside of the waiver wire, Mitch White’s best position was always the IL, so him landing there at the end of camp was not just not a big deal, it was a way to keep him in the organization even though they didn’t have a place for him on the active roster and he was out of options.
• After some ugly performances Adam Cimber went down in April. This was theoretically a big loss considering his performance in the previous two seasons, though the bullpen has obviously been able to weather it extremely well.
• In May they lost Zach Pop, who remains a fringe bullpen arm despite showing some flashes of figuring it out early on (remember the Clay Holmes comps! Lol).
• Santiago Espinal was out for a spell that month as well, not that anybody noticed.
• Of course, there was also the obligatory Jansen early-season IL stint, which he’s now followed-up with his obligatory late-season one. (Not officially at the time of this writing, but given the nature of the injury and the fact that Ben Nicholson-Smith reported on Friday night that Tyler Heineman was already on his way to join the club, we don’t exactly have to guess. (UPDATE: It’s official.))
• June saw a couple of quick stints for Brandon Belt (hamstring) and Alejandro Kirk (hand laceration), after which it was smooth sailing until the end of July. It was only at that point, with four months of the season already in the books, that the floodgates opened.
The Blue Jays, as we all know, didn't make nearly enough hay with this run of good health. Only 20 pitchers in the American League have as many or more innings than Yusei Kikuchi's 139. Four of them, Kikuchi obviously included, are in the Blue Jays' rotation. The Seattle Mariners are the only other team with more than two. (And Alek Manoah probably could have been a fifth for the Jays had he not blowed up real good.)
Three cheers for the much maligned High Performance department, I suppose.
But, while the garbage they take from fans who hate all the scheduled off-days and relievers being down and starters being removed too early from games surely is misplaced, it would be more accurate to only give them three cheers up until the end of July.
Yes, regression is real folks. And, of course, for the 2023 Blue Jays it seems to have come for their remarkable run of health rather than their inexplicable inability to consistently cash runs. Ugh.
As for Jansen, this just sort of seems to be his thing, unfortunately. Yes, this is something of a freak injury, and being a catcher is a dangerous job, but if he doesn't return this season—and that, sadly, would be my expectation at this point (I believe six-to-eight weeks is the general timeline for a fracture like this, and poking around the IL table you can see that Kris Bryant fractured a finger on July 23rd and still isn't back, or that, in 2021, Cleveland catcher Roberto Pérez did the same thing in early May and didn't begin a rehab assignment until June 23rd)—it will leave him with a high-water mark for plate appearances over the last three seasons of 301.
That's tough. It's hard not to really like Jansen, or to hugely respect the hitter he's turned himself into by zeroing in on his one most productive offensive skill—home run power to the pull side—and ignoring everything else to tap into it as much as possible. Not only has that been especially refreshing to watch throughout this season of mixed-up-seeming hitters, over his last 158 games/549 plate appearances he's got a 127 wRC+ and has been worth 4.6 fWAR. If only he could stay healthy!
I don’t know how the Jays should best try to price in these health struggles when they start thinking about getting Jansen signed long-term, but they’re going to have to start doing that soon. He was originally called up in late 2018—remember how Russell Martin basically sat that entire month and then we heard that he was excessively playing video games in the clubhouse?—so his service clock started far enough ahead of Vlad’s and Bo’s that he’ll be a free agent after next season, rather than along with them following the 2025 campaing. (I would simply pay him).
As for the near-term, well… thankfully Alejandro Kirk has been hitting much better since the All-Star break, because we’re about to see a lot of him. However, the fact that Jansen had started behind the plate in nine of the team’s last 11 games doesn’t give me a ton of confidence that we won’t also be seeing a bunch of Heineman.
Just what this team needs, another limp bat!
You’re my Ángel
Ángel Hernández. If you know you know. And if you don’t know, the man behind the plate for Friday’s Jays-Rockies contest is truly awful at his job.
Who among us, am I right? Ho ho ho. Except, while I’m out here merely trying to scrape together enough to pay my rent and some bills—have you considered becoming a paid subscriber??—our friend Ángel is adjudicating balls and strikes for multi-million dollar athletes employed by multi-billion dollar companies with all manner of livelihoods, and the very integrity of the great sport of baseball, on the line.
Not to mention the gamblers! Won’t somebody—presumably Jesse Pinkman, or whatever his real name is—think of the gamblers!
Or how about the people whose emotional wellbeing is directly tied to whether their team won, or lost, or got absolutely hosed by a worthless excuse of an umpire on any given night? Hmm???
Uh… where was I?
Oh yeah, Ángel Hernández is bad! It usually cuts both ways, fortunately. For example, those somewhat questionable Ump Scorecards say he favoured the Rockies on Friday night to the tune of 0.85 runs (though, to be fair, I do not question their assessment that only 80% of Ángel’s called strikes were actually strikes). Yet, on the other hand, Umpire Auditor points out that the most crucial call was probably the one that “gifted Danny Jansen a second life on what should've been a strikeout” right before he hit his game-changing home run. But the fact that you routinely make both teams upset because of your awfulness is not exactly a point in your favour.
Via Umpire Auditor (as well as Sportsnet and AT&T SportsNet), here are some of Hernández’s greatest misses from last night. What on earth are we doing here?
Vlad the Infuriator
One of the crucial at-bats that was affected by “somebody else’s mediocrity,” as a wise man once called it, was when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. feebly struck out on three pitches without swinging the bat, despite having runners on second and third with the score 5-5 in the seventh.
The Jays would go on to score five runs in the frame, and that plus Ángel's involvement seemed to significantly mute the frustration with Vlad that I saw. Which is to say: it was merely incredibly loud.
ANOTHER FAILURE FROM OUR SUPPOSED GENERATIONAL HITTER IN A BIG MOMENT!
Only, the thing is, the things that seem so obvious—the failures that seem so evident—in the minds of so many fans aren't necessarily really there.
This was undoubtedly a high leverage at-bat. You can look at Tom Tango's website and see the leverage index tables for every inning and potential situation, and this one certainly fits the bill. (White squares are low leverage, gray are medium leverage, blue are high leverage, and red are very high leverage).
Now, as you probably know, and as you can see above, high leverage and runners in scoring position are two very different things. Had the Jays been down a run Vlad’s at-bat would only have been considered medium leverage. And Vlad has, indeed, been less than great in his RISP at-bats this year, producing a 101 wRC+ (i.e. almost exactly league average, which I think is still well above the abysmal level most fans seem to believe he’s performed to).
In high leverage, though? The strikeout took him from having a 144 wRC+ in those situations down to a 141. It bumped him just out of the top 30 in baseball among qualified hitters in high leverage situations. Seriously!
It also underlines what an unbelievable wacky season it’s been for Vlad.
He's been awful at home (91 wRC+), but really quite good on the road (133). Fine with men on first (123), but not nearly as good with the bases empty (105) or with RISP (101). And a bunch of other stuff that's probably just random.
There are some interesting and potentially less random details to be noted when you drill down into some of these splits, though.
For example, everybody hates all the grounders, but he's really no different in that regard than in previous years. We simply notice them more because he's not doing as much damage on his other hits.
Ground balls:
• 2023: .250 BABIP, 44.1 GB%, 36.8 Hard%, 44 wRC+
• 2022: .241 BABIP, 53.5 GB%, 30.3 Hard%, 37 wRC+
• 2021: .275 BABIP, 40.9 GB%, 33.8 Hard%, 53 wRC+
In other words, he's hitting fewer grounders than last year—also borne out by his average launch angle of 9.9°, which is not only much higher than last year (4.3°) but also tops his 2021 rate (9.4°)—and hitting them harder, too. And while his 2021 results on grounders were obviously better, it was really not by a whole lot.
Interestingly, when hitting it on the ground to either the pull side or the opposite side he's actually been better this year (63) than last year (45) or 2021 (56). Ground balls up the middle (5), however, have been worse than in those other years (25, 48). But those numbers have never been good.
Where we really start to see a significant difference is in his fly balls, and in particular his flies to centre. This year, overall, he's got a 112 wRC+ when putting the ball in the air, compared to 244 last year, and 283 in 2021. And, whether it's on the ground, a line drive, or in the air, he's been great pulling the ball (165), and great going to the opposite field (151). Yet overall he's been awful up the middle (66), and that's especially true of his flyballs (11)—and especially compared to last year (165) and his epic 2021 (314).
Vlad's HR/FB rate on flies to centre in 2021 was 23.5%. Last year it dipped to 11.9%. This year it's an abysmal 5.3%. I'll say it again: his wRC+ on flies to centre has gone from 314 to 11!!! (THIS ONE GOES TO 11).
This makes sense if you remember something else that's come up this season, regarding how far Vlad's been hitting the ball. Or, as it were, has not been. According to Statcast, the average distance on Vlad's flyballs to centre field this year is 339 feet, which is down nearly 20 feet from 2021, when those hits averaged 358 feet.
We've heard stuff about topspin being an issue with this. I also think it's possible he's not as fully healthy from the (chronic?) left wrist issue that flared up in May, or the knee thing he dealt with both in spring and in May. I'm sure someone will rush to chime in with the word "conditioning" here if I don't preemptively mention it here. Or… it could be any number of things.
Obviously I don't know what's up.
What I do know, however, is that people fucking love to armchair quarterback his approach, love to talk about what's in his head, love to see him as completely screwed up and over-coached and wasting his talent and all kinds of negatives. Yet, while there definitely are differences between this year and the previous two beyond just what I'm pointing to—his numbers in certain counts are varied enough to raise eyebrows in this corner—a whole lot of what he's doing really isn't all that different. And I think this would be a whole lot easier for people to see if he'd had 16 of of 68 flyballs to centre go over the fence, like in '21, instead of three of 57. That is a massive difference.
Weird goddamn year.
Quickly…
• More weird Vlad stat stuff!
• I wrote a bunch about Chad Green in yesterday’s Stray Thoughts piece, and… well… I’m sure he’ll be fine. Not exactly a Blue Jays debut to write home about though, was it? But I’ll give him a pass for having to make his first post-Tommy John appearance in the most low pressure situation imaginable in Colorado. As far as I'm concerned, the .714 BABIP and 54.00 ERA will very likely come down.
• As a palate cleanse, how about some good numbers?
• And, lastly, bit of an odd one here! (Also, be sure to follow Eric if you’re still on that terrible website!) (Oh, hey, and if you’re no longer on that website but are on Bluesky instead, follow me there! I haven’t done much with it yet, but I’m sure Twitter’s ever-diminishing returns will push me that way eventually!)
• Oh yeah, and one more thing: WIN THIS STUPID GAME TODAY, BLUE JAYS!
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What is the use of having the very best bullpen in the league if you don't decide to use it when your starting pitcher cannot command his fastball?
Danny Jansen would break his last remaining bone to give a fan a thumbs up.