Stray Thoughts... - Number five in the AL East with several bullet points
On Vlad, Turner, Schneider, the other Schneider, Vogey, Varsho, the good old days, catchers, IKF, Buffalo, Yariel, Gausman, Bassitt, Berríos, Jackie Robinson Day, and more!
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The first week of the Blue Jays' home schedule is now in the books, and things appear to be looking up following a rather dispiriting start to April. After opening the season in late March in Tampa and splitting a four-game set while scoring 20 runs against the Rays, the bats came out flat in Houston to start the month. The Jays were no-hit by Ronel Blanco in their series-opener at Minute Maid Park, one-hit two days later, and in between they went down to their final out in line for a loss, only to have Davis Schneider pull off some magic, smashing a two-run shot—with Justin Turner (pictured) on base, of course—to lift them to their only victory of the series. A voyage to the Bronx yielded a just single win and two ugly losses, but the trip home to face Seattle and Colorado has proven more fruitful—albeit with some less-than-stellar moments, like the Cal Raleigh business and getting lit up by the lowly Rockies in game one of that series, mixed in.
The 12-4 Yankees come to town for three more starting here on Monday, and while we're still very much in a part of the season where a swing or two can make a such massive difference to the numbers that it's best not to take anything too seriously—witness, for example, the 186 point jump in Daulton Varsho's OPS over the course of just two games against the Rockies (he's now up to .608 on the season WHEEEEEEE!)—it would also do the Jays, the rest of the league—and, dare I say, humanity itself—a world of good if they didn't get rolled this week.
And with that mostly sufficient preamble out of the way, let’s get to some stray thoughts—which for this edition will be all bullet-pointed “Quickly…”-style! There’s quite a bit to catch up on…
• With the Yankees back on the schedule, it sure would be nice to see Vlad hit another cannon like he did in the Bronx last week. Normally I’d say something here like “if only to get the Jomboy Media folks to soil themselves again about home run celebration he does every. single. time. and is so well-known it’s literally on the cover of this year’s version of MLB The Show,” but I’d also like him to crank one for several other reasons. These include: scoring runs, improving the Vlad discourse, my own sanity and, you guessed it, Frank Stallone.
• Seriously, though. I’ve been known to dump on Jays fans somewhat (see below!), but this is real loser stuff right here. And these aren’t even supposed to be fans! (“He shouldn’t.” Lmao cry more.)
• Of course, who needs Vlad when Justin Turner is the best hitter I’ve seen in a Blue Jays uniform since Matt Chapman last April. (No, Davis Schneider doesn’t count. That was too up-and-down: three great games, two for his next 19, couple of great weeks, then couldn’t buy a hit until the last game.)
• I joke, but I will say that it's great to see Turner healthy and on an absolute heater to start the year—even if he hasn't been doing it with the kind of home run power this lineup could really still use. I'll also say—repeating something I said on Twitter the other night—that he might actually be the kind of ultra-rare player you could almost genuinely describe as clutch. Since joining the Dodgers in 2014, Turner has produced at a 135 wRC+ clip overall. With runners in scoring position that number jumps to 145. And if we go from the start of 2020 he's been a 125 wRC+ hitter, which jumps to 153 both with RISP and in high leverage. The results may actually line up with the narrative here. Now if only everyone could just remember how good the rest of the Jays were with RISP in the last two months of 2023!
• Of course, being “good” can mean different things. Yes, wRC+ (or OPS+, if you prefer that—and, truth be told, if the leaderboards and splits functions at Baseball Reference were the same as the ones at FanGraphs, I might prefer it myself, simply because everyone knows what OPS is by now and so I think it's slightly less esoteric and therefore not quite as impenetrable for people) does an outstanding job of synthesizing total offensive output into one easily digestible number, but I mentioned the Jays' lack of home run power above, and it remains a problem—especially with runners on. Though, as a team, the Jays have a 99 wRC+ with RISP so far this season, which puts them in a three-way tie for 16th in MLB, their .314 SLG in that split ranks 27th. They're also one of only two teams with just a single homer with RISP, and their 41 RBIs rank 22nd. Awful as RBIs are as a statistic in most contexts, this is one where it's kind of the whole point. Not that I have to tell anyone who has been watching this, but things in this area need to improve. Still.
• “Hard to improve when the big dumb idiot manager keeps holding the only good hitters out of the lineup,” you say? Yeah, well, keeping Turner out of the lineup on Saturday made sense for a number of reasons. One, he's 39 and is absolutely going to get days off—yes, even if the whole team just had one on Thursday. (Last year there were only 100 guys in the league—just over three per team—who even played 140 games, so... be serious. People really need to stop expecting every day to be managed like it's a must-win playoff game—and would do well to remember that they didn't exactly like the way the Jays did that last year either!) Two, Daniel Vogelbach had just two plate appearances in the week since he'd last started a game, and he can be a productive hitter against RHP in his own right. It's good to not let him rot on the bench. Three, Colorado starter Dakota Hudson was bad overall last season, but was especially bad against left-handed hitters, who slashed .305/.382/.455 against him. Four, Sunday's Rockies starter, Kyle Freeland, is a left-hander, as is Tuesday’s expected starter for the Yankees, Carlos Rodón. In other words, Vogelbach was going to get a start either Saturday or here on Monday, and while Turner could have played at third or Vlad could have been given the day off, it was kind of a pick your poison situation. Honestly no big deal.
• Also from the “it sure would be nice if people thought this stuff through before foaming at the mouth about it” file: Daulton Varsho sitting against Freeland on Sunday made complete sense too, even though he'd finally had a couple of strong games at the plate on Friday and Saturday. Buck Martinez made a good point about it on the broadcast, explaining that it was a way to help him maintain some momentum, rather than throwing him straight into a tough matchup (in which, let’s be honest, he was likely to fail). This gets to something that I think has been too often overlooked among the vitriolic set this year: a lot of the guys who fans are clamoring to see more of because they've been going well are going well in part because they've been shielded from unfavourable matchups. I’m not opposed to riding the hot hand sometimes, and I think people are right to believe Davis Schneider should be playing more, but Schneider the every day player would not have the numbers that the more selectively deployed Schneider does.
• I can't claim my position here is a matter of always trusting the team since they have more and better data than we do, because data can certainly be misapplied, but some fans act like decisions get made—by people with actual skin in the game!—specifically to ruin their day and without consideration for stuff like “the guy playing sucks and the guy sitting is good.” It's nothing new for fans to think they're smarter than the people in charge, but the farther we move away from the old days of managing by gut feeling into a world of proprietary data that leaves no angle unexamined, the less sense it makes being super confident about that.
• Being on team “John Schneider is probably not a complete bozo you weirdos” does not yet feel as lonely as it did being a defender of John Gibbons dating back to his first tenure—I swear to god, people pretzel-logic’d their way into getting mad about him fighting Ted Lilly, objectively one of the greatest things to happen to this franchise between 1994 and 2015—but speaking of things I tweeted lately…
• OK, moving on—though not too far away from my contrarian ranting, the Gibby Era, or things I've already tweeted about, because did you, uh, see that they brought back Hooked on a Feeling during the seventh inning stretch? At least for one of the games this week—I'm not sure if happened more than once, but I hope to hell it didn’t. Truly a disgraceful attempt at ripping off the Red Sox' “Sweet Caroline” thing with an absolute affront to music and good taste. They should have been embarrassed in the first place to have used the corniest crowd prompt imaginable, so bringing it back goes far beyond embarrassing. I was embarrassed to have it going through my ears—at least without the accompanying scene from Reservoir Dogs. Trash! Stop it!
• Alright, alright, some actual baseball stuff, starting with the fact that Alejandro Kirk has now managed to get his average exit velocity up to 88.2 mph, which is actually higher than where it was at last season. That's not good enough, I would say, but in last week's 10 offensive numbers piece I noted that at the time it was down at 85 mph, which meant a 10 mph drop-off since his 2020 debut. So, in fairness I thought I should bring it up. His 2-for-2 with two walks against the Rockies on Sunday—which included a 102 and 103 mph singles, with .730 and .530 expected batting averages respectively—certainly felt like a step in the right direction. Still, Danny Jansen’s return to the lineup will be a very welcome one.
• Speaking of Danny Bats, in 14 PA during his rehab assignment in Buffalo he's slashed .308/.357/.615 (142 wRC+). And he's not the only Buffalo hitter going well. Future Vegas Athletics All-Star Spencer Horwitz has been destroying International League pitching so far, slashing .395/.559/.535 (197 wRC+) with a Bonds-esque walk rate of 27%. Addison Barger is off to a strong start after a tough 2023, slashing .292/.414/.479 with some great exit velocities. Orelvis Martinez is also going well, and former (and future?) prospect Will Robertson has a ridiculous .407/.556/1.000 line through 36 PA. One of the few small positives of the whole Isiah Kiner-Falefa thing is that, at the very least, he can quite easily have his role diminished if one of these guys forces their way onto the team. It's too soon to start banging the drum for them, I think. But these are some encouraging early returns from an affiliate that promises to be fun all year—and, as MLB Pipeline noted last week, is one of the most loaded in baseball.
• Of course, nobody is looking to get IKF out of the lineup just yet. I don’t exactly think this means that the “IKF can't hit” people need to check themselves *COUGH*—he's got a career wRC+ of 82, so I don't care how marginally above average his average and OBP may be, power is major component of hitting unless you're truly elite at the other things, and nobody saying “can't hit” means “can't hit for average” like it's 1986—but he's certainly done well so far. To the point that maybe you wonder if it's Ernie Clement whose job could be in trouble if someone like Barger forced the issue. A lot can change in a couple of weeks, huh? Remember when people were saying Davis Schneider shouldn't come north because of his tepid spring?
• Sticking with Buffalo-related things, the Jays' rehabbing relievers—Jordan Romano and Erik Swanson—have completed their assignments with the Bisons and are “are expected to be activated off the injured list by Tuesday at the latest,” according to the Star's Mike Wilner. That will create a roster crunch in the bullpen, where there is one obvious candidate to be optioned in Bowden Francis, but not necessarily two. Nate Pearson has looked as good as we've seen him as a big leaguer so far this season, and was particularly good against the Rockies on Sunday, averaging 99.6 on his fastball and striking out all three batters he faced. He'd be a great weapon for the bullpen if he could keep this up, but he's been a little inconsistent—particularly with the difference-making velocity— and has options remaining, so my guess is that he ends up being the guy who gets sent down the QEW. At least until the next injury.
• Less good news from Buffalo recently, though it’s better news than some of the other news we’ve received regarding this player lately, came in the form of Alek Manoah's 3 1/3 inning start for the Bisons on Saturday. He only issued one walk, didn't hit a batter, threw 62% strikes, and got encouraging words from his manager and catcher Danny Jansen. However, his average fastball velocity was just 92.8—much like last year, a full mph below where it was in his dominant 2022 season—and he allowed four runs on eight hits. Yes, at this stage it's more about process for him than results, and he did maybe get BABIP'd somewhat, but I kind of find it hard to see this as a ton of progress. Could have been worse though, I suppose.
• Thing is, whatever happens with Manoah may not even matter all that much if Yariel Rodríguez continues to look like as much of a boss as he did in his big league debut. Rodríguez allowed just one run on four hits and two walks over 3 2/3 innings on Saturday, while mixing in hesitations, changing up his arm angle, using his full arsenal, and firing his fastball at 95.4 mph. It will be fascinating to see how the Jays manage his innings going forward, seeing as he didn't pitch competitively after last year's World Baseball Classic, and only threw 54 2/3 innings as a reliever in Japan in 2022, but for now he looks a whole lot like the fifth starter for the foreseeable future to me.
• Of course, Rodríguez may not be the fifth starter for long if there's something up with Kevin Gausman, who was roughed up again in his start Friday against the Rockies. But, honestly, I don't see a ton to be overly worried about here. Gausman's velocity came back up after dipping to 91.6 in his previous outing. He averaged 93.9 mph on his four-seamer in this one, which is down from last year's average, but is in line with or above his marks in five of his first seven starts last season. He also generated 18 whiffs, giving him a swing-and-miss rate of 41.9% for the game, which was his best of the season and better than all but two starts he made last year. The Rockies were on him a bit, and a number of his splitters and sliders were maybe too far from the zone to be competitive (his zone percentage was lower than in all but three of last year's starts), but it feels to me like it's all going to come together for him in due time. And considering his lack of a spring training, that's probably what we would have figured before his crazy good first start anyway.
• Speaking of boss-ass pitchers, iykyk…
• Elsewhere on the rotation front, Chris Bassitt has no time for your finger-pointing takes when it comes to the recent rash of pitching injuries. And he's right. “First and foremost,” he told Sportsnet's Shi Davidi over the weekend, “it is the players to blame for throwing the way that we're trying to throw. But for people to think that it's not the pitch clock, that's completely wrong, it is the pitch clock. Training-wise, how people push training, it is that, too.” It all comes back to the chase for velocity, and the way the whole industry pushes pitchers to throw harder and harder—younger and younger, too. Though I do tend to agree with Shi's colleague, Arden Zwelling, who argued on this week's episode of At the Letters that this has become a larger conversation than usual lately less because of the quantity of pitching injuries and more because of the quality of the guys who've gone down.
• I keep telling you, I absolutely do not want to “tap that app.”
• José Berríos has had some outstanding results so far this year, yet his percentile rankings remain a land of contrasts…
• Watching Edwin talk to Vladito about hitting on the bench every day? Love it. Or… well… I don’t exactly love that it seems kinda necessary at this point, but you know what I mean.
• Didn’t Joey Votto used to be in this organization?
• I know that Wes Parsons used to be in the organization. ICYMI, he was traded to the Guardians last week for international bonus pool money. But I mostly only remember this because of Blake’s tweet.
• Long but important Twitter thread here from Andrew Neilsen, detailing the issues he's had so far with the reconfigured Rogers Centre—and Ticketmaster—regarding wheelchair-accessible seats at field level—including a ton of background on the situation with accessible seating here and at Scotiabank Arena.
• Yusei Kikuchi is The Most Interesting Man in the World.
• Did I mention that Brian Serven was optioned to Buffalo and Danny Jansen activated here on Monday? Well, he was. (Though for some reason Alejandro Kirk will once again be behind the plate to open the series with the Yankees.)
• Josh Towers as the guest on the latest episode of J.P. Ricciardi’s podcast?!?! Ol’ Bergkamp would have had a field day! I hope Josh manages to stay within himself.
• Lastly, and speaking of the old DJF days, today is Jackie Robinson Day, and because I’m lazy—and I thought it was a cute-enough little tribute—let me take you back 13 years to what I wrote on this day in 2011.
You'll be seeing a lot more of the number 42 on diamonds across the continent tonight, and it's for a great reason, as Major League Baseball temporarily un-retires the number of civil rights and mangled-hat pioneer Jackie Robinson, who made his debut for the Brooklyn Dodgers 64 years ago today, April 15th 1947.
Though it can't be forgotten among the self-congratulation that the need for a Jackie Robinson wouldn't have come about were it not for the six decades of segregation that relegated African-American players to their own leagues, it's a proud day to be baseball fans, as the game pays tribute to not just one of its most important figures, but one of the most important people of the 20th century.
While movements are never the product of single individuals, for the courage and restraint that he showed, the incredible success he had, and the example he set, the Dodgers great was—ironically—a giant.
(Robinson is seen above as a member of the 1946 Montreal Royals, and seriously... what's with the hat?)
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"Future Vegas Athletics All-Star" Why you gotta do the Jewish James Loney like that?
Quick note on Turner - he always seems to start slow when it comes to Home Runs. Throughout his years in LA, his power kick in around June or July as the temperatures rise. I didn't pay close enough attention to his one year in Boston.