Stray Thoughts... - Maximum Max*

I'm seeing double here. FIVE pitchers in the Blue Jays' rotation??!?

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The Blue Jays took a tough, extra inning loss in Cleveland on Wednesday night. However, as disappointing as it was to have watched them make yet another comeback—taking a 4-3 lead into the bottom of the sixth after more bases loaded magic from George Springer—only to cough it straight back up and go on lose, it’s almost like it didn’t even matter. And that is, of course, because Max Scherzer pitched for the Jays for the first time since the first week of the season—and made it through a start for them without having to be removed due to injury for the very first time ever.

Granted, this wasn’t exactly vintage Scherzer. He was a little spotty with his command—“I was a little rusty,” he told reporters after the game—and he laboured through a 25-pitch first inning. But he got through five frames, struck out four, made it to 83 pitches—up from 75 in his final rehab start for Buffalo last week—and was really only burned by an unfortunate two-out double-walk-double sequence in the bottom of the fourth.

And his stuff looked as good as you’d expect, if not maybe even better. His velocity was up across the board as compared to his first start of the year, and was even up compared to his 2024 averages. Last year his fastball sat at 92.5 mph; Wednesday he averaged 93.2. And the 95.2 mph heater he threw to sit down Lane Thomas in the bottom of the first was the hardest pitch he’d thrown since 2023, according to Statcast.

Scherzer topped 95.0 just once all of last season, and only hit that mark on just 10% of his four-seamers in 2023. He also spun his fastball a little better than last season, with readings looking more like 2023 too. That is not exactly the season of Scherzer’s you’d like him to replicate, of course. But these are certainly not a bad signs.

We can’t declare it a victory yet, obviously. We still have to wait for word on how his injured thumb responds, and whether he experiences “expected soreness” or something worse in the coming days…

NOTE: So far, so good on that front

…but a version of Scherzer throwing like this, with a little bit better command, taking the ball for the Blue Jays every fifth day—fingers fully fucking crossed—from here on out? Sign me the hell up.

And speaking of signing up, now’s your chance to sign up—see what I just did there?—to get all my posts sent straight to your inbox the second they’re published (and, should you choose to be a hero, to become a paid subscriber and support what I do), before we move on to today’s batch of stray thoughts—which, for the first time in a while are not “Quickly…”-style…

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Turn! Turn! Turn! / Piña Power

With the addition of Scherzer there, of course, had to be subtraction, and that took the form of Spencer Turnbull being designated for assignment.

It’s a bit of a shame to see Turnbull lose his spot, but... you know... not really. He’d allowed just one run in his first 4 1/3 innings of work for the Jays, which could appear seem somewhat useful if you squint hard enough, I suppose. But he was really roughed up by the White Sox last Friday, and overall the 33 batters he faced while in a Blue Jays uniform slashed a collective .414/.485/.621 against him, so... not really tenable at this point.

It was a nice enough idea that the Jays had by bringing him in. No harm, no foul. Or, at least, only a truly marginal amount of harm. But the way I see it is that, essentially, they threw a bunch of stuff at the wall to see what would stick. Eric Lauer stuck, Turnbull didn’t.

So Scherzer has taken Turnbull’s spot on the active roster and on the 40-man. But that wasn’t the only bottom-of-the-roster activity we saw from the Jays on Wednesday, as a trade that was first reported on Tuesday night became official. The club has acquired RHP Robinson Piña from their favourite trade partner, the Miami Marlins, in exchange for RHP prospect Colby Martin.

It’s a fun little deal, really. Martin was found money. A 16th rounder from last year’s draft that farm director Joe Sclafani called “electric” in a recent interview with Future Blue Jays that we’ll get into the weeds of more below, Martin had been impressive this season and had just been promoted to Vancouver.

At 24 he’s a bit old for the levels he’s been at, and he’s had a bit of trouble finding the zone, but considering that he’s a relatively recent convert to pitching—he was an infielder until his final year of college ball—that’s a bit more understandable.

So why move him for a 26-year-old who got his first taste of the majors over the weekend, after nine pro seasons in three organizations, then was immediately DFA’d?

Well, obviously because they like something there.

I mean, partly it’s also because Martin is found money and far away from the majors still. But mostly because of what Piña offers. Which, I certainly would have to guess, has to do with a thing like this:

And… uh… this:

And this…

“He has a truly elite splitter, the slider looks solid but it’s inconsistent, and the velo and deception works,” explains @MarkWestyNolan. “They will use him as starter depth but I genuinely believe in the long run he can be a high leverage relief arm. I've been a big fan for a while.”

That seems as good a summation of what this looks like as I can find. So, a bit of a Yariel Rodríugez-y thing, I suppose. Makes sense to me.

Personally, I might be inclined to start converting him to a relief spot right now—tick tock Chad Green—but I do understand that rotation depth is a bit thin at the moment, with Turnbull gone, Francis “hurt,” and Alek Manoah not likely to return until sometime in August. Adam Macko will make his fourth start of the year for Buffalo here on Thursday, by the way, which will probably be worth watching this evening.

Anyway! Piña’s acquisition was announced on Wednesday. He took an open 40-man space and was immediately optioned to Buffalo, which leaves the 40-man full for the moment. Theoretically they could open up a spot by placing Jake Bloss on the big league roster and then immediately assigning him to the 60-day IL—something I think I might have wondered about or suggested in a recent piece—but, of course, putting him on the big league injured list would mean he’d start accruing service time, which no team in its right mind would do.

OK, moving on…

Spring-a-ding-ding

George Springer has been one of the Jays’ better hitters so far this season, and he reminded us of that with his huge eighth inning grand slam in Tuesday’s opener in Cleveland. He reminded us again on Wednesday, too. But the grand slam? Man, he really needed that one—and his two other hits—just as badly as the team and the fans did.

The last time Springer produced a wRC+ over 100 for three calendar months in a row was from April through June of 2022. That means he’s played 18 months of baseball played since doing something that once was practically automatic for him. From the start of 2015 through the end of 2021, Springer's wRC+ was below average just six calendar months out of 38. And that includes April of 2021, when he took just 10 trips to the plate. Since the start of 2022, however, he’s already had seven below average ones. And, before Tuesday's heroics, he was on his way to another.

Heading into that game Springer was sitting at just a 79 wRC+ for June. His slugging percentage had dipped to .371 from .477 last month, and his strikeout rate had dipped to 18%—a fine mark the aim was for him to be the more contact-oriented guy he’d tried and failed to be in his previous two seasons, but not a great indicator given the success he’d been having trading swing-and-miss for more power this year.

And coming out of Tuesday’s game? His wRC+ had jumped all the way up to 102, with his SLG up to .433, and his ISO (.179) even higher than it was back in April (.176).

Add in two more hits on Wednesday and it’s now up to 111.

He’s still got work to do over this next week or so to keep his head above water and finish off his best three-month stretch in ages, but that one was a big step in the right direction, to say the least.

Enter the Lehr

As I knew there would be when I mentioned it in my last batch of stray thoughts, there was a ton of great stuff in the latest Future Blue Jays Newsletter, which featured an interview with Jays farm director Joe Sclafani. But the thing that Sclafani said that most jumped out at me wasn’t about a prospect at all.

Here was Sclafani’s answer when asked about the personnel changes that the club had made after years of struggling to produce major leaguers, and then having so many pitching prospects go down due to injury last season:

We had targeted Justin (Lehr, new Blue Jays MiLB Pitching Director) a couple times in the past couple years. We had heard really good things about him; he's got a really interesting background. And he has been all of that and more.

That, to me, is pretty interesting. Or, at least, it’s interesting that the Jays had been eyeing Lehr for years now. That they’re thrilled with the job he’s done so far seems only natural, considering all the good development stories we’ve been hearing from that group.

And I find it especially interesting because there really isn’t a whole lot that we know about Lehr, or what may have been behind this drive to acquire his services. Just about every “article” about him since he’s arrived in Toronto cites the major league stops he had back during his pitching days, then loses the scent once he disappeared into the coaching world, notes that he’d been with the Giants most recently, and then basically ends there. (I use quotation marks around “article” here because there are exceptions to this in the form of… you know… actual, professional pieces—like this one from Keegan Matheson of MLB.com, and another from Shi Davidi for Baseball America, both of which we’ll return to below).

My first thought was that maybe Lehr’s arrival had something to do with David Bell, the former Reds manager—and former Giants vice president of player development—who was officially hired by the Jays back in November. Lehr’s hiring had actually been reported nearly a month earlier, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the two weren’t connected. And there was indeed overlap between the pair in the Giants organization, with Bell being hired in October 2017 as Vice President of Player Development, and Lehr joining the organization as their Rehab Pitching Coordinator just a couple months later. Bell and Lehr were actually both members of the 2006 Milwaukee Brewers too—though not at the same time. (Lehr pitched his way down to the minors after a couple months and never returned; Bell didn't arrive until the trade deadline.)

Interestingly, also among that same batch of Giants hirings in late 2017 was Matt Buschmann, who would join the Jays as their bullpen coach just a year later. Buschmann would have the role of Director of Pitching Development—a similar title to Lehr’s current one—added to his duties starting in 2020. He stepped away from the organization in January 2023.

Frankly, I’m not sure we ever got the full story on that departure, to be honest. Though I am sure that it’s none of my business. But… yeah. Interesting! And perhaps it was around when Buschmann left that the Jays began to turn their attention to Lehr? And Bell?

Curious minds (me) want to know!

Either way, there are some clear connections there, I'd say. But don’t take that to mean there’s any kind of a through line back to the bad old days that got the Jays’ pitching pipeline into the mess that necessitated these personnel changes. There is plenty of evidence that they’re approaching their pitching prospects with a different mindset now that Lehr’s here.

“Among the issues identified internally (by the Blue Jays last winter) was a priority imbalance between pitch design/stuff and pitchability,” wrote Shi in his BA piece back in January, “and the latter is among Lehr’s teaching tenets.”

“To simplify the vision,” Lehr told him, “we have to be really good at laying the foundation of good-count leverage. Without that good foundation of count-leverage and managing counts, it’s really tougher to solve for damage if they’re not putting themselves in good position.”

“Ownership of the strike zone,” is the way he put it to Keegan. “As smart as we can be, if we’re not pitching in good counts, it’s really difficult to make adjustments to damage or suppress runs with free passes. Our mantra has been that we own the zone first, before we get technical in terms of pitch design and things like that.”

That last bit seems, to me, to really get to the heart of the matter. And all this jibes with the comments from Sclafani in the Future Blue Jays piece, too.

“I think we’ve done a decent job at helping guys gain velocity and introducing new pitches and helping their current pitches improve a little bit and pick up,” he explained. “But, you know, we were doing that, and it felt like we lost some of the focus on the nuances—count leverage, and first pitch strikes and really just going at guys and helping guys understand who they are and why they're successful.”

Lost some of the focus on nuances, sure. That’s one way to put it. And, keep in mind, this is all very much above my pay grade. But maybe another is to say there was too much emphasis on velo gains and spin and pitch design and unlocking “stuff”—possibly in ways that add undue strain on young arms—before making sure prospects had the right kind of foundation to do so efficiently? And smartly? And less stressfully? In ways that will be useful when they can’t just beat more advanced hitters with stuff?

“We're getting ahead of a lot of guys. I think we're third or at least top five in overall strike percentage in the minor leagues,” Sclafani says. “That's starkly different than it has been in the past.”

Quickly…

• Just going to put these right here…

• It absolutely rules that when I Googled “Bowden Francis” earlier to make sure that I hadn’t missed some kind of update on his status and clicked on the “News” tab, the first link served to me was from something called “Blue Jays Insider” and is titled “The Toronto Blue Jays seem to be done with Bowden Francis after latest update.”

“Done with.” By which they apparently mean they might option him once he comes off the injured list.

The piece, for some insane reason, cites an article from Zombie Newsweek which itself heavily quotes from a Fansided writer offering such biting analysis as “Francis has struggled recently, particularly giving up runs and walks, leading to short outings,” and “All in all, the team needs to consider alternatives.”

Slop on slop on slop on slop. What on earth are we doing here?

• Love to have learned that, in college, Justin Lehr was the number two starter at USC behind Barry Zito! He really helped Logan Webb become one of the best and most durable guys around, too.

• Still thinking about that Andrés Giménez play from the other night. Man alive.

Not exactly surprised that this hasn’t quite caught on yet, though.

• Speaking of Alek Manoah (weren't we at some point?), according to John Schneider—via Arden Zwelling—the 2022 Cy Young finalist was up to 95 during a 25-pitch live batting practice session earlier this week. “Best he’s felt in a while,” Schneider said. Love it!

• Speaking of injury updates, we have this one on Daulton Varsho. And, hey, you know, when he comes back it will kind of be just like making a big acquisition at the trade dea—*spontaneously combusts in shame*

• I hate to keep bringing this up, because it makes it seem like I don’t like the guy or appreciate what he’s doing, but there are 216 batters who’ve had at least 150 plate appearances against right-handed pitching this year, and 205 of them have produced a better wRC+ than Ernie Clement. We really need to do a better job of thinking in terms of splits sometimes. And in this case it works both ways! There’s no shame in stressing that he’s been an absolute monster against lefties!

• People are indeed saying…

• FanGraphs just released a mid-season update to the “projections-fueled” top pitching prospects list they do on the RotoGraphs side of things, ranking pitchers by their peak MLB ERA projection based on a whole sophisticated methodology that I won’t get into here but you can read if you check out their piece. Number two on the list, behind Chase Burns and ahead of Jacob Misiorowski? Your boy Trey Yesavage.

• Imagine if the Jays actually got good at the whole “developing players” thing???

• Yowza…

• That’s right, I said it.

• Cito Gaston at Christie Pits for the Maple Leafs game this Friday? That absolutely rules.

• OK, and that just about does it! Now how about we see the good Gausman today and win this series, HUH?!?!

*Since 2023

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