Stray Thoughts... - Not-so-S***** Connects

The Blue Jays' City Connect uniforms have finally arrived. Some quick second thoughts on those. PLUS: Manoah, IKF, Ryan Burr, the HR jacket, the White Sox, Rogers Centre's power outage, and more!

Image via the Toronto Blue Jays/@BlueJays

After years of speculation and at least a full weak of leaks, the Blue Jays finally officially revealed their brand new City Connect uniforms on Thursday evening, and I’m not going to lie: when seen in full, with the numbers and other elements, in a professionally shot image under good lighting, with proper colour balance, actual details, and photographed on better equipment than an iPhone 11, they look pretty good.

I mean, granted, what on earth do I know? But compared to the “leaked” knock-off that everybody had been freaking out about for the previous week, I think the real ones come off great. A huge improvement.

That’s not to say that I think they’re perfect, they’re just a hell of a lot better than whatever this is…

I still don’t love that they found a way to slap the maple leaf on the hat—no, I don’t care that it’s on the flag of Toronto—or that the socks and undershirts had to be red. They didn’t! I still think the horizontal lines on the CN Tower make it look too much like the actually horizontally-lined (sort of) Berlin TV Tower. But that’s fine. The skyline reflected in Lake Ontario thing? It works for me. The purple that you can’t see in the cheap one with the completely wrong buttons? It helps.

You obviously don’t have to agree with me on any of this. That’s why there’s pineapple and pepperoni, as Chuck Swirsky used to say. And you may be thinking this is a bit of a turnaround from some of the things you’ve seen me tweeting in the build-up to Thursday. Well, here’s something else I said about it, earlier this week on the podcast:

I thought the Boston ones were stupid. I was like, “Why are the Red Sox yellow?” Then they give the overview of: “Here's why we picked these certain elements. Here's why this makes sense with what we're trying to do here.” And give an overall picture of what they're trying to do. It did kind of bring it home and make it make more sense to me. And that one I don't nearly dislike as much as I did on first blush. That kind of thing can happen. I will still be open-minded until we really see the presentation and have some time to think and live with it—maybe see a player in it.

Still don't think I'm going to like the hat.

Frankly, as a part of the total package, the hat works better for me than on its own, and than I thought it would. And on everything else I’ve fairly quickly come around. I didn’t even need to read about nonsense elements like the “hyperized birdhead” to get there. (Frankly, I could have used reading less about how they’re essentially built to look like the players are standing under a black light. Better be sure to wash these ones thoroughly, boys!)

Part of the reason why is that, as I said above, we’re now seeing professionally made, professional quality stuff. I know that there were some more recent leaks of product that looked closer to genuine, but I think a lot of what people based their early judgments on was the picture above. It would be a shame if those opinions crystallized when they weren’t even looking at the real thing.

Or… well… OK, I don’t actually care. People can like them or not. I have a little bit of sympathy for the marketing folks who tried to keep this stuff under wraps, I guess. But I’m certainly not here to scold anyone doing the leaking. If you see one of these things mistakenly released into the wild, of course you’re going to put it online. Of course you’re going to retweet it. It probably would have made for a better launch if we hadn’t all been talking about the damn thing for a week—and often about a lesser version of it. But… I don’t know. They’re pretty alright.

Ultimately, it’s just a shirt. No need to sweat it too much—you know, as long as it’s not a blatant and otherwise pointless cash grab trying to sell Canadianism with the subtlety of a Tim Hortons coffee cup, like their red abominations. And these aren’t that. They also aren’t their primary uniform. They’ll wear them a few times a year. They’re not going to hurt you.

Time for some stray thoughts…

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Manoah-mentum halted

The rollercoaster that is the Alek Manoah Experience has given Blue Jays fans another case of whiplash this week. Manoah was removed from his start against the White Sox on Wednesday after just 1 2/3 innings due to what the club is calling “right elbow discomfort.”

I don't think I have to tell anyone how ominous that is as an initial diagnosis for a pitcher, but some of the other details are just as dispiriting. For example, Sportsnet's Shi Davidi described Manoah as emotional in the aftermath of the Jays' 3-1 win—and first series sweep of the year—which doesn’t make it sound like a situation without serious gravity. “Yeah, it sucks,” he said.

That is, of course, an understatement, for both him and for the Jays.

But OK, let’s rewind a bit. Manoah's start in Detroit a week ago felt like a step backwards after he had previously twirled a pair of gems that had the ghosts of 2022 stirring, but it honestly wasn't even all that bad. Sure, he gave up a solo shot in the bottom of the second inning, and ended his day with a walk and a two-run homer—I'm not saying he was great!—but the three-run fourth inning was when things really got out of control for him, and much of the fault for that lies at the feet of his defenders.

After a leadoff double in the fourth, IKF mishandled a tough ball at third base, which was ruled (probably fairly) a single. Then, after a walk, Daulton Varsho and Kevin Kiermaier misplayed a flyball that allowed a run to score and setup a bases loaded, no outs situation. In total in the fourth, Manoah allowed a double, walked a guy, and hit a batter, so he was hardly faultless. But for me the outing actually did little to undo the positive vibes he'd been building.

However, it turns out that behind the scenes things weren’t quite as rosy.

Referring to the arm discomfort he experienced in Chicago, Manoah told reporters, including Jay Cohen of the Associated Press, that he didn’t bounce back from the Detroit start the way he'd hoped.

“Felt it after my start in Detroit and tried to do everything I can with the training staff through the week,” he explained. “Threw a bullpen a couple days ago, kind of felt fine. I felt like I was able to go out there and compete and give the team a chance, and just wasn’t able to.”

“Kind of felt fine” does not exactly make it sound like it felt fine. And yet obviously Manoah pushed on, with the team's blessing. Here's how MLB.com's Keegan Matheson wrote about the brief outing on Wednesday:

Early on, he felt like he was guarding his elbow, because when he would fully extend through a pitch, there was a “pinchy” feeling.

“I just mentally told myself, ‘Stop thinking about it,’” Manoah said. “It’s just a little achy. It’s fine. It mostly bothered me when I extend, so I think that mentally, when I told myself not to think about it, I didn’t guard it and I got more extension than I was on the previous pitches.”

One can surmise that Alek very much felt that “pinchy” feeling on his final pitch of the game, as he hopped off the mound, and catcher Alejandro Kirk immediately got up and motioned to the dugout. Joe Siddall on the Sportsnet broadcast explained, “It sounded like he yelled something in frustration. You wonder if maybe something's been bothering him and he really felt it on that pitch. Wincing a bit.”

Joe seems to have had it just about right. Partly, I’m sure, because guys pitch through discomfort all the time. Chris Bassitt, for example, had pitched through neck spasms just two nights earlier.

But the neck ain’t in the “Tommy John zone,” and I think it’s fair if fans are wondering how well this was handled by the Jays and Manoah. Or if it might have been handled differently had the club possessed anything resembling starting pitching depth at the moment.

I obviously don’t know, and I obviously hope that Manoah—who went for an MRI on Thursday—will be out for as short a spell as possible, and that a surgical solution won’t be necessary. In the meantime, Bowden Francis was up to 60 pitches over 3 2/3 innings in a rehab start on Tuesday night, Ricky Tiedemann threw a bullpen that afternoon, and Yariel Rodríguez will make a third rehab outing here on Friday. Help is coming, if you want to call it that. But losing Manoah for an extended stretch, even though he seemed like he might be a write-off as recently as a month ago, would be a real blow—especially so soon after getting such a strong glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel for him.

Sucks, indeed.

You can’t spell mea culpa without IKF

OK, you absolutely can—and, indeed, must—spell mea culpa without IKF. Nevertheless, I must give some credit where it’s due, because the Jays’ much maligned winter signing of Isiah Kiner-Falefa has proven to be a pretty good one so far.

So far.

I’m not trying to sound ominous, or to take anything away from him. I just remember having to say I was wrong about Whit Merrifield for four full months last season, before he turned to absolute garbage and took his July 31st wRC+ of 118 all the way down to 93 by season’s end. I can’t say I enjoyed that he produced a 44 wRC+ over the season’s final two months—during which he was handed nearly 200 plate appearances!—but it did make me feel a little less crazy for how down on him I’d been prior to the season.

Anyway, IKF may have a similar downfall in him—I’m not actually admitting I was wrong here just yet—but I’ll at least point out something interesting about his recent mechanics: he seems to have switched full-time to using a toe tap, rather than the pronounced leg kick that we saw from him earlier this season. And by earlier in the season, I mean all the way up until his most recent hot streak.

My search of this stuff has been far from comprehensive, but here’s what I’m seeing:

IKF was on a brutal 0-fer that began on May 12th when he stepped to the plate against lefty submariner Tim Hill late in the Jays' 9-3 win over the White Sox on May 20th. He’d been using the leg kick all the way until his previous at-bat, but in this one he went to the tap. Nothing of significance happened—he struck out—and so, perhaps because of this, the following day he was back doing the leg kick. At least to start.

This, you may recall, was the Garrett Crochet game. One of the few bright lights on this season’s White Sox, Crochet carved the Jays all day, ultimately throwing six shutout innings with just two hits and one walk. IKF, meanwhile, saw his hitless streak stretching toward 0-for-20. He continued to use the leg kick into his second at-bat against the White Sox starter…

On the 0-1 pitch, however, he gave the tap another try. And what it produced was one of just four hard hit balls that Blue Jays batters managed off of Crochet, and the farthest-hit ball of the game—a screamer that wasn’t able to quite get over Tommy Pham’s head in straightaway centre field.

IKF struck out in his next at-bat, but was obviously impressed by the result there. He kept the toe tap—and continued using it into the following day, when in the fifth inning he broke what had become an 0-for-22.

He’s been doing it—and red hot—ever since.

Specifically, he’s now on an eight-game hitting streak over which he's managed three doubles, a triple, two home runs, five RBIs, a stolen base, zero strikeouts, a .367 ISO (Aaron Judge currently sits at .328), a .400/.471/.767 slash line, and a 247 wRC+ over 30 plate appearances.

Obviously that's an absurdly small sample that can't possibly be meaningful, even if we can point to a mechanical change that may be driving those outstanding results. But the streak has genuinely changed IKF's overall numbers in a significant significant way. He exited the Crochet game with a 76 wRC+. When he suits up to face the Pirates on Friday that number will be at 110, making him the fourth-best hitter on the Blue Jays, slightly ahead of Daulton Varsho (109), and behind only Jansen (163), Vlad (136), and Schneider (110).

That’s the good news. Here’s the bad: Do a quick search for “Kiner-Falefa toe tap” and you’ll find that he’s been tinkering with this stuff for a very long time. As far as I can tell from these two Pinstripe Alley posts, he wasn't using either a tap or a kick in 2021 in Texas, though he'd been using one sometime before that. He added a kick in early 2022 with the Yankees, but ultimately settled into a more of a tap. In 2023 he went back to the leg kick. And now, it seems, he's once again in toe tap town.

Like I say, it’s easier to believe in a player having a dramatic change in his results if there’s something mechanical behind it, but I’m not sure that applies the same way to a guy who has been going back and forth with this stuff for so long. The second of those Pinstripe Alley piece even talks excitedly about how he might have been turning his 2023 season around after a tepid start because he’d gone back to the kick. IKF went from a 26 wRC+ last April to 117 in May, after adding it. He even had a 98 wRC+ in June and a 127 in July, before falling off as the season went along, producing just a 71 mark in the second half and finishing the year at just 82.

Obviously no one is expecting his current streak to continue forever, and hopefully at least some amount of these gains can stick but, with context, I think that we should probably should temper our expectations here. Ride that hot hand though!

A transaction!

On Thursday evening, Sportsnet's Shi Davidi reported that the Jays have acquired 30-year-old Triple-A reliever Ryan Burr from the Phillies. There's no indication of what's going the other way yet, but it's presumed to be be cash considerations.

Burr was signed as a minor league free agent this winter, meaning he wasn't on Philadelphia's 40-man roster. That might make it seem as though the Jays will just be able to stash him in Buffalo, but it would be quite odd for him to have been available if there wasn't some sort of a clause in his contract allowing him to opt-out if not on the big league roster by a certain date. One would guess, then, that the Phillies had no intention of bringing him up, chose to send him to a team that would, and that he'll find a place in the Jays' bullpen fairly soon. With Alek Manoah potentially about to hit the injured list, that could be his chance. And since Burr still has two minor league options remaining, from there he would enter the mix with the likes of Nate Pearson, Zach Pop, Génesis Cabrera, and, until he gets back on track, Erik Swanson.

Some background: Burr was originally a Diamondbacks prospect. He was traded to the White Sox in 2019 for international bonus pool money, and ended up making 66 appearances for them over parts of four years, posting a 4.08 ERA. After a year in the Rays system, this year in the Phillies' system has been the best of his pro career so far, as he's posted a 2.16 ERA over 15 appearances and—more importantly—has struck out 29 and walked just five in 16 2/3 innings. And since we know from his big league stints that his fastball averages 95 mph, I'd say there's at least a chance that could be something there.

Either way, if I'm Joel Kuhnel, I'm probably not feeling great about my spot on the 40-man right now.

Quickly…

• The 2015 Jays turned their season around by taking a team nap between games of a doubleheader in D.C. Last year, Cavan Biggio turned his season around because he “started having some sex,” as Buck Martinez famously explained. So, yeah, I fully buy that the home run jacket is the key that has unlocked the run-scoring potential in these 2024 Toronto Blue Jays. You’re damn right I buy it. (Pay no attention to those White Sox behind the curtain!)

• The White Sox certainly were a balm for what had been ailing the Jays, but credit to the their hitters for getting done what they needed to, and looking a whole lot better lately. You can only beat who’s in front of you. And I must point out that by scoring 6+ runs in three of six games against Chicago over the last two weeks, the Jays are above average among White Sox opponents. (They have allowed 6+ in 26 of 57 games so far, or 45.6% of the time, and obviously the Jays’ hit the 6+ mark 50% of the time against them. SEE?).

• Speaking of 6+ stats, the Jays have now done so in five of their last 10 games, after doing so just seven times in their first 45. Progress!

• Interesting point about the Jays’ most important hitters not pulling the ball in the air as much as they should, or have in the past, from theScore's Travis Sawchik: it means that they're not taking full advantage of the Rogers Centre's new dimensions. I suppose that’s obvious, but their reluctance to avoid the deeper parts of the park puts them at a double disadvantage because, for some reason, it’s become harder to hit the ball out of the ballpark there overall. In an excellent thread on why the building isn't playing as hitter-friendly as many expected, Sawchik explains that, according to baseball physics expert Dr. Alan Nathan, “for every foot the fences were brought in, they needed to be raised by a foot to keep the ballpark home run neutral.” In right-centre, for example, the fence has come in 16 feet but only been raised by four. And yet home runs at Rogers Centre are a problem, and just for Jays hitters…

• Elsewhere in the thread, Travis shows us changes in how far the ball is travelling relative to the MLB average since well before the renovations. Stark stuff!

• The 2022 data is particularly interesting to me there, because that was the first full year that the team used a humidor to store game balls—something that was installed in mid-2021. I definitely would have guessed that the humidor had something to do with this. Frankly, I still might. And yet it didn’t appear to have an impact on how far the ball was travelling then. Have they tweaked it since 2022? Was it jostled when moved during the renovations? Is it calibrated for the metric system? What’s going on here?

• In 2020, MLB recognized seven different Negro Leagues that existed from 1920 to 1948 as Major Leagues. This week they've announced that they are now absorbing those leagues’ available statistics into the official MLB historical record, meaning that some major portions of the record book have been rewritten. For example, the legendary Josh Gibson will now be considered MLB's all-time leader in batting average, slugging percentage, and OPS.

On the surface this may seem like a great and overdue step forward, but it's also certainly pretty ahistorical. MLB, after all, is the league that deliberately excluded some of the greatest players in the history of the sport.

Bradford William Davis has a great thread on what is obviously a complex subject, in which he contends that the standard of play in Black organized baseball of the time may have been higher than in MLB’s, and that we therefore ought to “decenter MLB as the historic standard bearer” of baseball excellence rather than doing the opposite (as is being done here). And the Chicago Tribune's Shakeia Taylor, among other insights, hits on what seems to me to be the key point of contention: “Major League Baseball is a corporation, a brand. They do not own all baseball. All baseball is not played under their brand.”

Considering why these particular players were never playing under MLB’s flag only underlines how deeply weird the league's messaging is on this. It's a great and important cause to lift up these players and their stories and the history, but I think it's obvious why people are uneasy with this—and not just the dumb racists!

• Extreme old man yells at cloud moment from me here but we really don't have to do the tiny microphone thing, Blue Jays. It's maybe not as absurd as the YouTuber-talking-into-a-lav-mic thing, but it's not a whole lot better. And it's just so easy to naturally produce content that you end up cringing at years down the line. No need to overtly do something that you're so obviously going to be embarrassed by in five years!

• Lastly, José and Edwin are in town and hanging out. So, when you think about it, I suppose the City Connect launch was a win regardless of what you thought of the clothes.

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