Stray Thoughts... - Simply: The Blue Jays

On playoff odds, impressive numbers, a soaring system, Will Robertson, Ernie Clement, Chad Green, John Schneider, Jeff Hoffman, Vlad Jr., Alek Manoah, Nick Sandlin, and more!

Your paid support makes independent, thoughtful, grass-fed, naturally raised, free-range coverage of Toronto Blue Jays baseball possible. Thank you.

The Blue Jays are off to Philadelphia for the final leg of a three city sojourn that began a week ago, following a 9-1 victory at home over those very same Phillies.

Since we last checked in with a batch of stray thoughts—and you’d better believe that, as long as this team keeps winning games and the conversation around them continues to not be absolutely spirit-breaking, we’re going to keep on doing so with this kind of regularity—they’ve picked up two more wins: a 10-9 nail-biter that shouldn’t have been after a day of teeing off on Miles Mikolas, and a surprisingly gentle cruise of a bullpen day that saw them once again do some business against a left-handed starter.

And that’s sort of the thing—or, at least, one of the things—about this delightful run the club has been on over the last few weeks: it’s starting to really show up in the numbers. And not even just the “since their 8-5 win to avoid a sweep in Anaheim back on May 8th” numbers, either. Their whole season numbers.

After putting up five runs (three earned) over five innings against Matthew Liberatore on Wednesday, the Jays now find themselves ranked second in baseball, behind only the stupid Yankees, with a 121 wRC+ versus left-handed pitching.

On an individual level, among 122 batters with at least 60 plate appearances against lefties, Ernie Clement’s 234 wRC+ ranks behind only Aaron Judge and Paul Goldschmidt (again, of the stupid Yankees).

Vlad (181) and George Springer (147) are in the top 25 on that leaderboard as well. And among guys who haven’t reached that 60 PA threshold, we have Davis Schneider (137) doing his lefty-mashing job, Alejandro Kirk (132) of course hitting well against everybody, Myles Straw (116) proving the haters (guilty!) wrong, and even Addison Barger (111) holding his own in the split.

But this isn’t just a lefty-mashing team by any stretch. The Jays are now up into eighth in baseball by wRC+ (106). Their 70 home runs have seen them move up to 16th. Their 296 runs scored ranks 14th. And by fWAR from their position player group they now rank sixth in MLB—and second in the American League.

And, if we do the kind of thing I said we didn’t need to, and throw out the month of April—cherry picking, but not to the extent it would be if we looked only from May 8th onward—they’re third by wRC+ (121), seventh in home runs, tied with the Cubs for second in runs scored, and by fWAR they’re first in baseball by nearly a full win over the Dodgers, and 1.2 WAR ahead of the Yankees.

Mind you, a lot of that WAR comes from defence, where as a team these Jays are a remarkable 6.2 runs better than the second place Braves and 11.7 better than the third place Brewers. But, as the old saying goes, a theoretical win is a theoretical win is a theoretical win.

So, yes, it’s a very good time to be the Toronto Blue Jays. And an even better time to start a business deleting fans’ old social media posts about the team.

Now, here are today’s stray thoughts—once again, “Quickly…”-style!

---

---

Quickly…

• It’s not just the Blue Jays’ big league team that is shining these days, either. On Wednesday, Baseball America posted a piece with—I shit you not—the title, “Blue Jays Farm System Soars, Especially On The Mound.”

Like… where am I? What year is this?

The piece begins by highlighting last year’s second-rounder, Khal Stephen, who looks like Vancouver's ace—for the time being—now that first-rounder Trey Yesavage has moved up to New Hampshire. Stephen has made four High-A starts so far, and has been just as good there as when he began the year at Low-A Dunedin, striking out 25 in 20 innings while posting a 2.25 ERA for the Canadians.

Also mentioned are Yesavage and Arjun Nimmala, of course. As well as Gage Stanifer, who “is emerging as another arm who has taken a leap”—and is now starting games, rather than piggybacking with Yesavage—plus Johnny King, and Juaron Watts-Brown. Add these exciting arms to the numerous guys making their way back from injury and maybe the system is turning around faster than a lot of folks realize—myself included.

• Speaking of Yesavage, his getting moved this quickly to New Hampshire is, perhaps, a bit aggressive. But, as you’d entirely expect, that’s very much by design.

“On the surface, it seems odd that the Jays are promoting Trey Yesavage to New Hampshire after all of 4 High-A starts. But from what I’ve been told, the added challenge of facing AA hitters is what he needs at this stage of his development,” tweets Jays prospect guru D.M. Fox. “Keeping in mind the biggest jump in the minors is from A to AA, Yesavage may get hit a bit at the new level, and he’ll have to make adjustments. The Jays are ok with that.”

• Meanwhile, Nimmala continues to have an incredibly strong season in Vancouver, especially considering that he is—say it with me, everyone!—the youngest qualified batter in the Northwest League.

This home run last night was his tenth of the season already, taking his slash line to .271/.377/.495. His strikeout rate is at an even 20% now, too. Exciting stuff. (Clip via MLB Pipeline)

• It was a shame that Will Robertson, who grew up a Cardinals fan just a couple hours away from St. Louis, wasn’t able to make his big league debut at Busch Stadium on Wednesday, despite having been just called up to the majors for the first time. I was going to say here that it may therefore be a even bigger shame how fleeting his time on the roster—and particularly the 40-man—will likely be, but after actually looking into it a bit more deeply, I’m not so sure that’s going to be the case.

Nathan Lukes is merely on the 7-day IL with concussion symptoms, and he should regain his spot in fairly short order. Max Scherzer will start in Buffalo on Friday, then need at least one more rehab start—BARRING SETBACKS—before rejoining the Jays and being removed from the 60-day IL. I would have thought those moves could have put Robertson’s spot in jeopardy, but the Jays’ 40-man is currently at 39, and that’s with Jake Bloss—who recently underwent Tommy John surgery—not yet having been moved to the 60-day IL. So perhaps Robertson continues to be an option for a while, even if it doesn’t feel like he’ll receive a particularly long opportunity to grab some kind of a big league role just yet.

• Drafted in the fourth round out of Creighton in 2019—where he was also a Blue Jay (or, more accurately, a Bluejay) and a teammate of Alan Roden—Robertson smashed 30 homers in 153 college games, then hit well in Low-A coming out of the draft, but has struggled as a pro since then, save for a decent repeat year at Double-A back in 2023.

That is, until this season.

TSN’s Scott Mitchell had him as high as 26th on his Jays top 50 back in 2020, but Robertson fell off his list ahead of that 2023 rebound and hasn’t returned. He did, however, get a shout out in Mitchell’s pre-2024 list.

“If things don’t click, he’ll go the way of Will Robertson, a 2019 fourth-round pick who has struggled to put the same profile together as he’s moved up the ladder,” he explained in his capsule for number 17 prospect Jace Bohrofen. “Interestingly enough, and I’m cheating here to get his name involved, Robertson actually had a decent run to finish out 2023 thanks to some swing changes and was considered for the back end of this list once again this winter after falling off previously.”

A year early, but it still seems prescient to have at least kept him on the radar. The Jays themselves clearly did, as Keegan Matheson of BlueJays.com noted in a piece this week:

Coming into the season, Robertson was highly thought of by the Blue Jays’ player development staff, but Toronto was already stacked in the outfield. Robertson kept working, though, because he knew he was in the middle of unlocking something.

Robertson had gotten away from his natural swing, much like Addison Barger a year ago.

. . .

Since then, Robertson has worked to let his natural athleticism take over again, something that hitting coach David Popkins has been trying to preach throughout the organization. Not everyone’s body moves in the same ways, so why should everyone be trying to do the same thing? Power is Robertson’s game. Lean into it.

With 12 homers in just 52 Triple-A games, and a .288/.408/.583 slash line, he’s certainly done that. But perhaps even more interesting, Statcast lists 337 Triple-A batters who have made at least 100 plate appearances this season, and among them Robertson’s 53.6% hard hit rate ranks 12th.

Definitely not the same considering the difference in the calibre of pitching, but for what it’s worth, only 36 qualified big league hitters have produced a hard hit rate above 50% this year.

• I can’t say I saw a ton of hue and cry about manager John Schneider not getting Robertson into Wednesday game in his home town, though I’m not sure if that’s because I’ve done a particularly good job of muting people who’ve weirdly convinced themselves they can intuit through their television when a baseball manager is making everyone around them suck through the sheer force of his presence, or if those people have simply gotten awfully quiet lately.

• Well, OK, I did see some groaning about Schneider turning to closer Jeff Hoffman for a fourth time in five days on Tuesday, especially after he—inevitably?—gave up a home run that cut the Jays’ lead to a single run. Thing is, I understand the groaning to an extent. Hoffman has been overworked lately, not performing to the level was saw in April, and you really do hate to have to use him in that situation. But he’s still your best reliever, had only thrown nine pitches the day before, was off the day previous, and had already been warming up in the top of the ninth anyway. Win the game in front of you—especially when he’s only going to be made unavailable for a single game due to the off-day here today. Seemed sensible to me.

• Less sensible, though I understand that the manager’s hands are tied a bit here, is continuing to roll with Chad Green quite as often as the Jays have been.

Green was an outstanding reliever in his years with the Yankees, and as long as you don’t think too much about all the money the Blue Jays are paying him you can’t help but feel bad watching him try to keep it together out there lately, but it's been rough.

The guy has got a career K/9 of 10.95, yet this is his second straight season with a mark below 8.0. His 20.8% strikeout rate is below average for a reliever, and if he doesn’t have that he doesn't have much. Well… outside of his currently unsustainable strand rate of 87.2%.

FIP normalizes a pitcher’s home run rate, using the league average for HR/FB (11%) instead of Green’s actual one (19%!), and yet he’s still at 5.94 this season! That’s the worst mark among the 127 relievers to have logged at least 25 innings so far this year. His expected ERA is bottom three among that same group, as is his -0.5 fWAR. His strand rate is in the top 15, though! And yet even with that his ERA is in the bottom 25.

To be clear, I’m not saying that the Jays have been terribly egregious in their usage of him or anything. They’re trying to avoid him when they’re ahead. They clearly see it too. And there aren’t a ton of better options behind him at the moment, so nothing necessarily needs to be done this very minute, I don’t think.

It's just... you know... it feels like it’s getting to be about that time. I mean, are we really sending Braydon Fisher back down when Nick Sandlin is ready to return?

Quickly quickly…

• Speaking of Sandlin, Sportsnet’s Ben Nicholson-Smith tweeted on Monday that the right-hander was slated for a rehab appearance in Buffalo on Tuesday. As far as I can tell, that didn’t happen.

• Erik Swanson probably needs to be mentioned here, too. Because hasn’t exactly been going great either. Free Tommy Nance?

• Don’t look now, but after six games in Buffalo, R.J. Schreck has a 50% hard hit rate, a pair of home runs, and .300/.440/.650 slash line. Not bad for a guy who—after he was acquired from the Mariners last summer in the Justin Turner deal—Baseball America ranked as the 77th best of 89 prospects moved at the deadline.

• Credit where it’s due, Spencer Turnbull. Credit where it’s due.

• Hey, so if Ernie Clement has been absolutely crushing lefties, but only has a 104 wRC+ overall, that must mean that his… oh… oh no… oh no no no no…

• Another year, another mystifying Vladimir Guerrero Jr. power-outage. Nick Ashbourne—who I’ll be recording a podcast with this very afternoon—dove into it for Sportsnet.

• Just about everything in his numbers, save for the 2.92 ERA, says this is a terrible idea, but if the Angels would be willing to move Yusei Kikuchi at the deadline…

• Re: the image at the top of this post, I just so happened to have a FanGraphs playoff odds graph saved from almost exactly a year ago—June 5th, 2024—and… yeah. This year’s one look better.

• Lastly, Brandon Wile of theScore passes along the following screengrab from Alek Manoah’s Instagram, telling us, “Really cool to see how Alek Manoah is tracking his recovery from elbow surgery.”

Can’t disagree!

• Alright, that’s it! Hope everyone enjoys the off day, doesn’t miss Blue Jays baseball too much this evening, and that the team still has all the same juicy momentum when they hit the field again in Philadelphia on Friday!

---

Twitter ⚾ Bluesky ⚾ Podcast ⚾ Facebook

⚾ Want to support without going through Substack? You could always send cash to stoeten@gmail.com on Paypal or via Interac e-Transfer. I assure you I won’t say no. ⚾