Stray thoughts... (Volume 2)
On hot dogs, John Schneider's job security, Paul DeJong, Brad Hand, Bo's rehab, Joey Votto, playing the Reds, that Amish kid, Jay Jackson, Jeff Hoffman, and more!
Look, I’m not going to do this every day. I need to say that up front. I also am not going to start only doing this either, I’m pretty sure. But I’m not going to lie to you, yesterday’s Stray Thoughts post felt pretty good coming out of the hand.
Blog-like without having to be comprehensive. In-depth without requiring a 17 hour writing slog. Team-focussed, but not bogged down by feeling the need to go over individual plays everybody’s already seen. When five or six o’clock hits, whether I’ve said everything I wanted to or not, I can just send it off,
I must say I kinda liked it. And the feedback on it was pretty good too. Thanks everyone!
So, what the hell? Let’s do it again!
Here’s another batch of stray thoughts…
I’ll be honest here, friends. This site keeps the lights on for me, but it isn’t a cash cow. And I could live a lot more comfortably than I do right now if I was willing to put some of my work behind a paywall and push a bunch readers who are on the fence into becoming paid subscribers. But, the thing is, I know that times are tough for a lot of people and I really don’t want to become inaccessible to anyone. So, if you can afford it, and you value what I do and aren’t already a paid subscriber, I’d ask that you consider upgrading your free membership to a paid one. Thanks. — Stoeten
Schneider on the hot (dog) seat?
After taking a look at some of the data provided by Sportsnet’s Shi Davidi regarding the Jays’ best-loved reconstituted-meat-related promotion, BlogTO's Jack Landau calculated that “the 495,624 hot dogs eaten by Jays fans during Loonie Dogs Nights in 2023 would form an unbroken 74.34 kilometre-long tube of meat capable of stretching from Casa Loma to Niagara's Horseshoe Falls.”
Fascinating stuff! But did you know that if you took that kilometres-long tube of meat and brought the ends together, you'd create a circle the exact circumference of the stupefyingly colossal grain of salt you ought to take Bob Nightengale's recent assessment of the Blue Jays' managerial situation with.
Writing about the "managerial carousel" in his USA Today column back on Sunday, Nightengale runs down his list of potential managerial openings this coming winter, which apparently includes the Blue Jays.
"John Schneider's future is uncertain if the Blue Jays are sitting home in October," he writes.
I mean, all of our futures are uncertain, Bob. More to the point, I’m not sure we really have to worry about this just yet—what? are we afraid of the Mariners?—and I’m also going to guess that, virtually no matter what, Ross Atkins isn’t going to choose to dump a giant boiling cup of coffee in his own lap this winter.
Given the way he handled the Anthony Bass situation, I suppose it’s possible. But were he to elide responsibility again and give another the manager the ol’ heave-ho, I think even the most ardent unable-to-figure-out-that-the-last-guy-did-all-the-same-stuff-they-hate-because-it’s-coming-from-the-”collaboarative-process” Schneider-haters would probably start to notice.
Of course, there’s a very easy way to avoid all this.
DeJunwatchable
It is absolutely mind-blowing that Paul DeJong had a 95 wRC+ on the day the Blue Jays traded for him, whereas Whit Merrifield, when the Jays acquired him last year at the trade deadline, had a wRC+ of 76. Things can sure turn around quickly in this sport, can’t they? *COUGH*
But before we start being too kind to—and patient with—DeJong, I think it’s important to remember that these players were brought in for very different reasons. Whit arrived largely because Santiago Espinal’s bat went south in the second half of last year and Cavan Biggio was giving the team absolutely nothing. He was a veteran utility option who could play in a bunch of spots if needed, and had some pretty good years on his track record, though not especially recently. Also, based on what’s happened since, there was possibly something in his swing or approach that the Jays thought they might be able to fix. (Shhh, I know we’re not supposed to credit the hitting coaches with anything.)
DeJong, on the other hand, was essentially brought in to fix a very temporary problem over a very specific timeframe. Bo Bichette was hurt, Espinal hadn’t looked great on either side of the ball all season, an extra shortstop was going to be needed anyway, and here was a guy with a very good glove who could chip in a little with the bat while Bo was out.
Bo is virtually irreplaceable, but DeJong had showed himself able to provide value in his own right, even if he got to it in a very different way. On the day of the trade he was 13 runs better than Bo by outs above average, at +8 to Bichette’s -5. (Note: It's important to always use whichever defensive metric best fits your narrative, so with the Jays this year it's OAA for shortstops, DRS for outfielders). His fWAR, which uses OAA for its defensive component, was 1.5.
A perfectly sensible de—OH MY GOD
Nothing against DeJong, who I’m sure could really provide infield stability for some podunk team like the Pirates or the Hartford Yard Goats, but this is absolutely horrific. Nearly a full win below replacement in a cool 13 games. That’s hard to do!
Compared to the illustrious Blue Jays career of Brad Hand he’s… uh… this guy:
You can’t Hand any bigger than that! Epic Hand-ing. Man, it’s been tough to watch, because he really does seem like a stand-up guy, and we know that—even if not necessarily great, or even good—he’s better than this.
Mostly, though, it’s been tough because the Jays absolutely needed him to be better.
My Blue Jays Happy Hour cohost, Nick Ashbourne, took a deeper look at this in a piece here on Thursday for Sportsnet. Specifically, he zeroed in on how, no matter how you slice it statistically, having DeJong out there for two weeks instead of Bichette has basically cost the Blue Jays one full win in the standings. And with the stupid Mariners still pointlessly hanging around in the wild card race, that win could obviously be incredibly important in the long run. Oof. Swing and a miss.
BuffalBo buffalBo BuffalBo buffalBo buffaloBo buffalBo BuffalBo buffalBo
I was able to refer to DeJong’s Blue Jays career in the past tense up there—”the Jays absolutely needed him to be better”—because, mercifully, it appears as though it’s coming to an end. No, probably not with a DFA, because he’s still a pretty handy glove to have around, but with the imminent return of the team’s most valuable player.
Bo Bichette went 2-for-3 on Wednesday night in Buffalo, and showed off his pain-free knee in particular while flying around the bases to score from first on an Ernie Clement double in the bottom of the third.
“It felt good,” he told MiLB.com's Brian Frank about the play. “I’m not going to lie, I was hoping I’d be stopped. But it was a good first day to be able to go first to home for sure.”
He added that his plan for the rehab assignment was to "go a hundred percent and see what it felt like," and that his knee passed the test. It seems a certainty that he'll be joining back up with his Blue Jays teammates in Cincinnati. PRAISE THE LORD.
And Bo's wasn't the only notable performance in Buffalo on Wednesday, either.
Orelvis Martinez smashed his third home run in five games on his way to picking up a pair of hits, and Chad Green brought his own slop bucket of filth as he picked up three strikeouts (and an unearned run) in an inning-and-a-third. Orelvis will have to wait, but Green should be making an excellent Blue Jays bullpen even excellent-er in the very, very near future.
Votto still bangs
When it was announced a couple years ago that MLB was changing the schedule, and that starting this season AL and NL teams would play each other every year (alternating home parks), one of the first people I think a ton of Canadian ball fans thought of was Joey Votto.
The only good public figure to ever come from Etobicoke, Votto turns 40 next month, and is in the final guaranteed year of the contract he signed with the Reds back in 2012. He has a $20 million club option for next season, with a $7 million buyout, and with his best days at the plate behind him, and the Reds—exciting and fun as they've been at times this year—still owned by cheapjack scum, it's far from out of the question that this could be Votto's last ride.
Sadly, the schedule-makers didn't send the Reds to Toronto this season, meaning that last May's nice but too-early send-off at Rogers Centre may stand as Canadian fans' last chance to have seen Votto in person on home soil. And it means that this weekend's series in Cincinnati may be the last chance to watch him face his hometown club. A team fans have pined for him to join for as long as I've been doing this job.
That's a testament to his remarkable career and longevity. But maybe not as good a one as the lineups in the tweet below!
Ancient history is right! Man alive.
I seem to recall something else about that last Jays-Reds series in Cincy…
Going Pennsylvania Dutch
Speaking of the Cincinnati Kid, let’s talk about the Kansas City Kid, also known as the fan who caught—and possibly interfered with—Mike Moustakas’s crucial game six home run in the 2015 ALCS. Also also known as “that Amish lookin’ motherfucker,” and I’m sure several other epithets.
I’ve seen this kid’s face on my Twitter timeline more often than I would have preferred lately—the preferred number of times being zero—presumably because of all the 2015 chatter that arose from the weekend’s José Bautista ceremony (which, of course, I talked about yesterday). It never doesn’t bother me when Jays fans bring this guy up, but maybe not for the reason you’d expect.
The reason? It was a home run. It was a danged home run!
Look at how deep into the glove the ball first hits!
Look at where the glove is when the ball comes in!
I’m sorry, but that thing’s bouncing off the top of the wall if there’s no glove there, and therefore is clearly a home run per Kauffman Stadium’s ground rules. Now, can we all please start correctly directing the entirety of our scorn toward home plate umpire Jeff Nelson for the Ben Revere strike call in the bottom of the ninth???
Quickly…
• Great stuff from my friend and former colleague, Kaitlyn McGrath of the Athletic, who catches up with Jays reliever Jay Jackson, who has really put himself on the map this year with a breakout season at the ripe old age of 35. Better still, he tells Kaitlyn that his newborn baby, JR, continues to make great progress in a Utah hospital. Prayers up!
• Extremely funny, and utterly unsurprising, words from former Jays prospect—and Tulo trade alumni—Jeff Hoffman, who spoke to Mike Wilner on the most recent episode of Deep Left Field this week, explaining one of the lesser appreciated reasons it has been so difficult for the Colorado Rockies to develop pitching.
In Colorado they don't have the resources in place to help their pitchers, so you're pretty much on your own. It's sink or swim. That's pretty much it. They don't even have their own philosophies straight up there. So it's not anything, really, on the pitchers themselves. They just don't have the tools in place to help them.
• According to Héctor Gómez of Z101 Digital in the Dominican Republic, “a person very close to the investigations into the case of Wander Franco” has told him that “it will be very unlikely” that the Rays star “will play in MLB again, judging by the results of the investigations that are currently being carried out, which directly commit him to the accusations against him.”
Nothing to joke about with this one, so let's just move on.
• 10/10 tweet. No notes.
• Lastly, yes. Yes, I do like it.
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Casa Loma to Niagara Falls by tube? Via Paddington?
For what it is worth, I love these notes-style posts.