Stray Thoughts... - Pain Delay

Shohei Ohtani makes his first post-debacle visit to the Jays tonight, but I'm not quite done thinking about the dumb Royals series and how it fits into the team's big picture issues. (And much more!)

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Well, at least we already know the series we’ll look back at despairingly if the Jays miss the playoffs by a game.

I tweeted this already but liked the line enough that I don't mind repeating it here, especially because it gives me the chance to add something I should have in the first place: or two games, or three games.

The Jays had won four series in a row heading into Kansas City this week, and won the first of their four-game set with the Royals too. But that momentum was halted in its tracks as they dropped three straight winnable games.

The problem that underpinned all three was, of course, the club's maddening lack of offence. The Jays have scored five runs or fewer in each of their last 17 games, and have only scored more than five three times this season. That means they've done so in just 11.5% of their games so far.

It's a problem, and fans can be forgiven for believing that what they've seen so far has been the thirteenth month of the slog that was the 2023 Blue Jays’ season more than it's been the first of 2024. It has certainly felt that way. Though, largely, I would contend that that's because the 2023 Jays were underappreciated in their time in a way that it might take a few more years to register.

I'll try to keep this tangent brief, because I recognize I might be the only one who sees value in bringing it up while we're being treated to objectively dogshit baseball nightly from an organization that continuously appears more and more stuck in a malaise that only sweeping changes can release it from¹, but the 2023 Blue Jays were decidedly not this.

The 2023 Jays topped five runs 34.5% of the time—better than once every three days. The 2023 Jays scored 4.6 runs per game, not 3.7 like the team is so far in 2024. The 2023 Jays were great with RISP over the last two months of the season, so any struggles in that area are not a continuation of last year—no matter how many Twitter accounts that have figured out fans will smash that like button if you just post a negative Blue Jays RISP stat want desperately to elide that fact. For whatever faults they may have had, the Vlad and Bo that the '23 Jays had posted a 118 and 125 wRC+ respectively, not 103 and 79.

So far 2024 has looked to me a whole lot like what people allowed themselves to believe 2023 was.

Why am I bringing this up? Well, obviously one reason is that pushing back against the onslaught of negativity that comes out of this fan base—you know, calling it things like a pointless waste of energy that people hide behind as either a defence mechanism or just to make others as miserable as they are—continues to be an annoying little hobbyhorse of mine. (You can skip fully one half of the “It's so over / We're so back” stuff and not be worse off for it, I promise you!) But the main one is that it strongly suggests that the offence here can't possibly be this bad.

Things will get better—probably much better—even if offence around the league continues to be down. It will “progress” to the mean.

Will it be as good—truly a cursed phrase—as the 2023 offence? We don't know. And that even being aspirational at this stage is a pretty serious indictment of the lineup and the people who've been insisting for a year that internal improvements are just around the corner. But even if it doesn't, even if they manage to just convert more RISP situations into runs, that might still be OK.

For it to work, though, they'll have to get out of their own damn way. And in Kansas City that didn't happen.

If we're looking for reasons beyond the offence for Thursday's rain-shortened 2-1 loss, the officials who let the game happen in the bizarre manner that it did have to take the brunt of the blame, I think. But don't think we didn't see you arguing to keep the affair going because your team was down while the pouring rain soaked the uncovered infield beyond the point of recovery, Mr. John Schneider.

Don't also act like we didn't all scratch our heads, Johnny, when you left Dan Vogelbach in to face a lefty on Wednesday, with two on and nobody out in the sixth, rather than going to Justin Turner. Again, the bigger problem here was that the team isn’t hitting, but in that case maybe take potential runs when you can get them and trust your pitchers to hold a lead, huh? Why did having Vogelbach available later suddenly become such an issue here when he’s barely been able to get off the bench in games in the first place? (The whole unforced error that was having Addison Barger play in left field for the first time in his life—IKF started 28 games in left and 29 in centre last year!—is one of those too-clever-by-half moves that bears the stink of Ross Atkins’ collabo-brain, so I absolutely give Schneider a pass on that one. Though I do so while being reminded of the phrase “a camel is a horse designed by committee.”)

Tuesday, of course, wasn’t about Schneider or the front office—or if it was, it was only tangentially.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. missed a routine catch on an inning-ending play that cost the team three unearned runs. We'd have barely talked about it if the offence had managed score more than twice—but, of course, they didn’t, and Vlad was part of the inept performance too.

Now, I don't think he was nearly as big a problem as many seemed to believe. He crushed the game's farthest- and hardest-hit ball—a 110 mph wallop that would have been a homer in four ballparks and otherwise had an expected batting average of .980—and got nothing for it. He also took a lot of heat for grounding into a double play which, frankly, was stupid. Maybe understandable, because fans have been so aching for runs over the last year-plus, but stupid.

Vlad's ground ball rate is a little high right now—just a touch above where it was in 2022—but his launch angle is right in line with his career average. Yes, he's slow, and that doesn't help with the GIDPs. Yes he was among the league leaders last season, and yes, whoever the team broadcaster for some reason lets run their SN Stats account has a weird fixation on his worst qualities, but the reality is that good hitters—hitters that are rightly given the opportunity to hit behind their team's best on-base guys—end up grounding into a lot of double plays. Vlad has three GIDPs right now, which is the same number as Juan Soto, Pete Alonso, Marcus Semien, Freddy Freeman, Paul Goldschmidt, and some guy named Ohtani. The MLB leaders, with seven apiece, are Bryce Harper and Aaron Judge.

You can say that Vlad isn't as good as those hitters, and you can say that Vlad shouldn't be getting as many opportunities to hit into those double plays until he straightens himself out. That's all valid. But GIDPs alone do not a bad player make and oh-my-god this thinking and the harping on this truly needs to stop.

Blue Jays fans driving off into the sunset until the next rebuild is complete.

Anyway! As I was saying, Vlad's struggles are on Vlad, but you'd like to think the organization would be better equipped to help him pull out of them than they've shown the last two years. That's not to be all "Fyre Gullermo!" about it, or whatever nonsense those with a conception of coaching that hasn’t progressed beyond little league are out there bleating about the staff. I mean, even the best organizations can't just magically get a struggling talent right—see the Dodgers and Cody Bellinger, for example. But the Jays don’t just talk a big game about having resources for players, they made getting the most out of the guys who are still here a central pillar of their offseason. Maybe that’s because Edward Rogers closed up the purse strings on them, but at this point I’m not sure they’ve earned the benefit of the doubt on that.

Whatever’s going on, however we’ve arrived here, it sure would be nice for the Jays to do something to make this not feel like 2023 all over again, and to recapture a little bit of excitement, wouldn’t it? Going from 2022’s ugly playoff collapse, to the most frustrating contending season since 2016, to another dumb playoff sweep, to the least inspiring offseason in years, to coming out so flat it feels like they’re lucky to be 13-13 is a lot to overcome on that front.

And yet a couple more runs in KC and we wouldn’t feel quite the same about this month. George Springer’s wRC+ jumped from 81 to 105 in just two games against the Royals, then back down to 99 over the course of five innings. We're still at a stage where everything can look very different very quickly. That's worth remembering, even if it's impossible to deny that the vibes aren't good—and impossible not to see why that's the case.

But what's done so far is done. It's time to turn the page. The Jays’ last homestand was a success, it will be good for them to be back, and all they have to do on this one is face... *checks notes*... the Dodgers and the team that just beat them in three of four.

Cool cool cool cool cool cool cool.

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Quickly…

• I started the above section with something I’d already said on Twitter, so why not this section as well?: I couldn't care less if anyone boos Ohtani or not tonight, but I'm pretty sure the number of people that do boo who could look at the two organizations and honestly say they'd make a different decision than he did will be awfully small.

• What’s better than a camel designed by committee? Two camels designed by committee! Which is to say that Addison Barger will be starting in left field again here on Friday night. It couldn’t go worse, I suppose. Plus, to yet again repeat something I tweeted, though IKF can handle the outfield well enough to allow Barger to play in his more natural spot at third, I will give the Jays that it’s a tough thing to balance when you need to be perfect defensively to win games.

• Does the fact that the Jays, both this year and last, actually keep winning games in this configuration actually validate their heavy tilt toward defence, difficult as it can often be to watch? I don’t know but I’d sure like to see them hit some goddamn dingers.

• That said, I think a lot of people forget how much they absolutely hated watching bullpen meltdowns and shaky wins every night back in 2021.

• (The previous bullet point was brought to you by the fact that having good pitching, defence, and hitting at the same time is apparently too much to ask.)

• People like to hate on Fanatics and the debacle that this year’s MLB uniform rollout has been, but have they considered that they’re out here doing the lord’s work?

• I’m just now realizing that I haven’t said much yet about Alek Manoah’s latest Triple-A start being a disaster, Bowden Francis being out, Wes Parsons and Mitch White being gone, and Yariel Rodríguez being on some kind of an innings limit because he didn’t pitch competitively at all last year. Uh… OK: it’s bad.

• Notice I didn’t mention Ricky Tiedemann’s name there? Well that’s because the news on him isn’t bad! John Schneider told reporters prior to tonight's game that the club's top prospect has “ulnar nerve inflammation” but no tear, and can begin throwing again in seven to 10 days. Huge.

• That said, especially considering the pitching depth issues I mentioned above, it’s worth pointing out here that losing Tiedemann would have been less a blow because of what he could have provided this year, or even next year, but because of his long-term development. Perhaps that goes without saying, but I’ve seen more than one person make the suggestion that the Jays don’t need to re-sign free-agent-to-be Yusei Kikuchi since Tiedemann is coming to take that spot in the rotation next year anyway. Not only does that ignore, you know, the entire history of pitcher health and performance, it ignores the fact that Tiedemann threw just 62 innings last season and only 78 2/3 after turning pro the year before that. Even if he gets back on track and pitches the maximum number of innings they’ll allow him to this year, he’s not going to get to a place where next season he’d be ready to assume a full starter’s workload. Re-sign Yusei yesterday.

• Schneider also gave updates on Manoah (he’ll start Tuesday for Buffalo) and Chad Green, who they hope will be able to start throwing in the next week.

• The Jays’ 2022 top pick, Brandon Barreira is also out injured, and will soon be seeing noted Tommy John specialist Dr. Keith Meister—the Keith-meister! Not as crucial, especially given his tumbling prospect status, but not what you want.

• Hey, but at least Sem Robberse is pitching really w—ohhh… right.

• I’d do the Jordan Hicks trade over again regardless, by the way. The hitter everyone coveted just wasn’t out there, and with the Jays’ 40-man crunch it wasn’t clear they’d be able to hold on to Robberse anyway. (St. Louis put both him and Adam Kloffenstein on their 40-man ahead of the Rule 5 draft this winter.)

• The Hicks deal and the Barger-in-LF thing are both reminders that this organization isn’t nearly as risk-averse as a lot of fans believe, I’d say.

• Housekeeping: Thanks for all the feedback regarding me potentially switching the site over to Ghost (or something similar) in the near future. There are a great number of you that I haven’t replied to yet, but I saw your messages and appreciate the encouragement. Again, not something that will be happening imminently—and again, please don’t wait for a move if you’re considering becoming a paid subscriber!—but I feel good to have got the feedback, and hope that if things do eventually change it won’t come as too much of a surprise!

• Lastly, a friendly reminder to take deep breaths.

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1. People think I'm too easy on the front office because I don't simply go along with the unthinking mob, so let me be clear: It’s become very difficult to see how there would be any value lost if this organization had a fresh pair of eyes in the GM’s seat, and just about as difficult to believe there wouldn’t be value gained.