Stray Thoughts... - Votto signs, Vogey shines, nerds whine

PLUS: Ernie Clement, Rosie vs. Ross, Manoah, Gausman, Tiedemann, Donaldson, Spring Breakout, J.D. Davis, Toby, and more!

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Hands up if you made Gerrit Cole cry last Friday night an—ah, no, no, not you Mrs. Cole. I’m sorry for the confusion, I wasn’t quite finished, please sit down—and then also hit another homer this Thursday.

It's obviously tough to get excited by spring stats, tough to get excited by a bench bat, and tough to get excited by the Blue Jays right now, but it feels like Dan Vogelbach is having a bit of a moment. Or, at the very least, he's making it difficult for the Jays to do anything but take him north with them to start the year.

The beefy slugger exited Thursday’s game with a pair of homers and a double in five games. He'd walked three times, scored four times, and was carrying a .250/.400/.833 line in 15 plate appearances. (These numbers changed after his appearance on Friday, of course).

Yeah, it's a tiny sample, and it's preposterously early, but Cole is Cole and Andrew Chafin—who surrendered Thursday’s bomb in Lakeland—is a real big league veteran. In fact, though he’s coming off of a bit of a down year, he’s the kind of lefty that Vogelbach would probably not be asked to face in a game of any meaning.

Baseball Reference's OppQual stat, which measures the quality of a player's spring opponents based on the previous levels they've played at, gave Vogelbach a 7.9 heading into Thursday's action (just a hair below Triple-A), which put him among the top 200 of more than 1,200 players measured so far—and that's before he faced Chafin and Kenta Maeda on Thursday, and Marcus Stroman and Clay Holmes on Friday.

In other words, though his lone hit in Friday’s game came off of neither of those veterans, he's not necessarily just feasting on kids. He’s doing everything he can to make the team, which I think is more than some players can say. (Looking at you, Eduardo Escobar.)

But does it matter?

Two of the biggest stories of the Jays' rather tepid offseason have been the way they failed to replace Matt Chapman's value at third base, and the way they're now counting on bounce back seasons from many of their holdovers. What I think has been discussed less is the loss of Brandon Belt.

Partly that's because the market for Belt seems to have barely rippled. And partly that's because a 35% strikeout rate and .370 BABIP aren't great indicators for a guy about to turn 36. It's so tough out there for those types that poor Joey Votto is recreating the Sad Keanu photo and getting propositioned by teams in the Intercounty League.* (UPDATE BELOW!)

Thing is, as frustrating as the 2023 Jays’ offence was, they’d have been a lot worse off without Belt. The Jays produced a 106 wRC+ as a team against right-handed pitching—a respectable mark good enough for eighth in baseball, though one that put them behind four of the five other AL playoff teams, with only the Orioles faring worse. Their leader in the split, by far, was Belt, who produced a 146 mark—the 11th best in baseball among hitters with at least 350 PA against right-handers. In second place among the 12 Jays hitters with at least 200 PA was Bo Bichette at 120. The only other of these players above the team's average were Danny Jansen (118) and Vlad (117).

Without the rebounds Ross Atkins seems to have staked his job on, Belt's absence is going to be felt. But Vogelbach can help close that gap—at least theoretically—having produced a 119 wRC+ versus RHP last year (in 303 PA). That was down from 148 in 2022 (377 PA), but up from his two seasons before that. His career mark in the split is 125.

But what’s his path to the kind of playing time that would allow him to make a real difference? The Jays have brought in Justin Turner to essentially replace Belt, and though he does technically own a third base glove, it seems increasingly clear he’s not going to be spending a lot of time there. In fact, in a piece this week for Sportsnet, Ben Nicholson-Smith suggests that that he really isn't even much of an option a first base, because “keeping the 39-year-old Turner healthy is a priority.”

The other thing about Turner is that, while he’s generally been a very strong hitter against RHP, his wRC+ in the split dropped to just 105 last year. And he’s never been a lefty-masher—his career numbers are slightly better against same-sided pitching, actually.

In other words, Turner and Vogelbach aren’t really a great fit as a DH platoon. It looks more to me like Vogelbach can simply be a cheap bit of insurance in case Turner doesn’t return to form against right-handers, and can take away a few ABs here and there—other guys will need DH days, so he won’t be a full-on backup in that spot—while also filling the late-inning bench bat role initially envisioned for him. That’s… fine and fits in with the way the Jays are looking to mix and match all over the diamond to mask their lack of genuine everyday players, it just means he’s probably not going to be able to be as helpful with respect to replacing Belt’s production against right-handers as his big spring and the chatter about it is making it look.

Joey Votto is coming to the Toronto Blue Jays!

There it is! The headline all Canadian baseball fans woke up hoping to read every day from 2007 until about early 2023. The aforementioned Cincinnati Reds legend, Etobicoke native, greatest Canadian hitter of all time, and most fun guy in baseball, Joey Votto, has signed a minor league deal and is on his way to join the Blue Jays in Dunedin.

ESPN’s Buster Olney had it first, and Votto himself confirmed it.

“I am excited about the opportunity to work my way back to the Major Leagues. It’s even sweeter to attempt this while wearing the uniform of my hometown team, the Toronto Blue Jays,” he tweeted.

Shi Davidi has the contract details:

Now, if you’ll pardon a brief dose of reality, this is a move that seems unlikely to have any more on-field impact than when the Jays brought in Vladimir Guerrero Sr., Johan Santana, or Dexter Fowler under similar circumstances.

Save for a bit of a dead cat bounce in 2021, Votto hasn't really been the guy that fans think of as Votto since 2018—a year in which his 130 wRC+ represented his worst mark (outside an injury-plagued 2014) since he was a rookie. Over the last two years combined he's been below league average (95 wRC+) and even worse than that against right-handed pitching (87). That's puts him noticeably above Isiah Kiner-Falefa (UGH!), but Votto unfortunately finds himself in that 1B/DH group mentioned above, and behind Vlad, Turner, Vogelbach, and probably even Spencer Horwitz.

BUT SO WHAT?

Seeing Votto in a Blue Jays uniform is going to be incredibly cool. Fans will legitimately be able to buy Blue Jays jerseys with Votto’s name on them. A few weeks with him making his quips to reporters and doing half-inning chats during Sportsnet broadcasts will brighten the dog days of spring immeasurably. There’s certainly no harm that can come from having him work with some of the team’s younger hitters. And hey, maybe they catch lightning in a bottle.

He’s old, you say? He’s bad? This is all just PR?

Shut up, nerd. Rare Atkins win.

What do we make of Ernie Clement?

While watching Santiago Espinal make a couple of tentative throws in the first inning of last Friday night’s Grapefruit League game against the Yankees, I couldn’t help but start thinking about the guy to his right: Ernie Clement.

I’ve mentioned Clement as a bit of an afterthought a few times lately, mostly because I’ve never got the sense that the Jays are taking him especially seriously. Getting optioned back to Buffalo two days after a thoroughly washed Paul DeJong arrived is a pretty strong signal to that end, I’d say.

If you look at his career numbers it’s not difficult to see why a team would be reluctant to buy in. But just how relevant are those numbers? In a piece for Yahoo Sports last September, Nick Ashbourne pointed out just how different a hitter Clement had been in 2023 compared to previous iterations—and, it turns out, just about anybody else.

When in the majors in 2022, Clement swung at 38% of pitches outside the zone, 49% of pitches overall, and had an 86% contact rate. When he returned to the big leagues in 2023 he was now swinging at 50% of pitches outside the zone, 57% of pitches overall, and had a 92% contact rate. Basically, he's started swinging at absolutely everything—particularly pitches outside the zone—while still making elite contact.

Here are Clement's ranks in 2023 out of 542 batters with at least 50 PA...

O-Swing%: 15th
O-Contact%: 4th
Z-Swing%: 127th
Z-Contact%-3rd
Contact%: 5th
Swing%: 21st

Nick ran the numbers on hitters with at least 40 PA since 2002, which resulted in 11,428 hitter seasons. Among those, he tells us that “there have been 398 seasons in which a hitter has managed a contact rate of 90% or better. Of those 398 seasons, just eight of them were produced by hitters who swung at at least 55% of the pitches they saw.”

Clement, in 52 PA last season, made it a ninth.

Now, this uniqueness hasn't exactly produced good results for other hitters. Nick's best analogue for Clement was 2021 Willians Astudillo, who managed just a 71 wRC+. Nick also brings up examples of “unnecessary outs when (Clement) chases pitches he won't be able to drive in favorable counts.” It’s an approach that genuinely doesn’t seem like it should be sustainable!

But on the other hand, maybe it can be more successful when you have Clement's speed (76th percentile in 2023) instead of Astudillo's (10th percentile in 2021). And, I mean, it’s kinda worked so far. Clement slashed a ridiculous .348/.401/.544 (136 wRC+) over 320 PA for Buffalo last year, .380/.385/.500 (144 wRC+) in the majors, and so far this spring is slashing .357/.400/.500 over six games.

And he’s out of options. And in 316 2/3 innings at third base as a major leaguer he's been worth +5 DRS and +6 OAA.

Should we maybe be taking him more seriously?

Oh, Rosie

To anyone who has paid attention to the Toronto Star over the years, Rosie Dimanno's track record of agonizingly purple writing and ignorance of and/or indifference to basic decency as a journalist and a person should be well-understood. There was the time she outed a sex worker (“for no apparent reason,” according to Jezebel), the time she defended racist sports logos (“by being weirdly racist,” the Huffington Post’s headline contended), the time she didn't identify herself as a journalist while cosplaying as homeless and printed a bunch of people's names (and also a bunch of insulting things about them), the time 62 of her Star colleagues called out a “hateful, racist reply-all email” she sent, the time she started a piece about the victim of an anesthesiologist on trial for sexually assaulting nearly two-dozen patients with a brutal “joke” that was dubbed the worst lede of all time (a sentiment agreed with by New York magazine), the time she—...well, I'm sure you get the idea.

And that's sort of the thing. There's really no need do run some elaborate a hatchet job on someone who is objectively bad. With a handful of links and just one paragraph I think I've said almost all I need to on the subject of this particular writer.

Note that I say “almost.” Because somehow none of this has ever been enough to get the Star to decide to stop printing her words, and so there was Rosie this week in the pages of the nation's largest newspaper, doing what she does best: dumbing down the discourse about the Toronto Blue Jays. Just absolutely shovelling heaping mounds garbage, conveniently stripped of any hint of scary nuance that might lead anyone to consider for even a second that perhaps one could think about this team in a way that isn’t negative to the most batshit possible degree. It’s practically a Greatest Hit album of Jays Takes for Angry Uncles.

Not only do you get the classics “Shatkins” and “Cleveland carpetbaggers,” you get Ross never does anything ballsy! Except when he does then we also hate that if it doesn't work out! … You get John Schneider should have been fired for what happened in Minnesota! … You get they've wasted generational talent, but also Vlad hasn't been good enough, but also WHY HAVEN'T THEY EXTENDED HIM? … You get taking Vlad to arbitration was dumb! .. You get they got used by Ohtani's agent! … You get the Jays got distracted by Ohtani and missed out on all those free agents that signed months later! … You get pivoting to defence was bad! … You get the playoffs aren't a crapshoot! … You get Atkins hasn’t earned the benefit of the doubt! … You get draft pick compensation and extra bonus pool money is “nothing”! … You get a whole preamble about Atkins ducking reporters (except for the times he didn't)!

And as an added bonus, only available through this very special offer, you get a whole bunch of big, extraneous words that it’s not clear the writer knows how to actually use!

Especially annoying, at least for me, is that you could have a real discussion and debate about a few of those things. Sure, many of them will fall apart under the gentlest interrogation, and I think I’m being very charitable about the upcoming characterization here but, like I say, the basic thrust of her piece—Ross Atkins hasn't been doing a very good job as GM of the Blue Jays lately—isn’t exactly hard to argue these days.

It’s just.. we really don’t need to be out here telling the lemon-suckingest cranks in the fan base that “Shatkins” is OK to use. And one kind of undermines the whole point of one’s hit-piece by calling Atkins and Mark Shapiro “Cleveland carpetbaggers” as they get set to embark on their ninth season in Canada. Kinda giving away they game there, pal!

And like… we're supposed to take it on faith that Rosie understands how the arbitration process works? (She doesn’t).

I can’t even take on faith that she understands the words she tries to use!

“Does this Jays regime, the carpetbaggers from Cleveland, even grasp its own organizational belittlement? Or the botchery that has been committed over the past three seasons, mismanagement and mis-general-managing that has characterized this waste of generational talent as exemplified by Bo Bichette and, yes, Guerrero, off-form as 2023 may have been, despite putting up 26 homers and 94 RBIs. Not quite Vladian, as management puts its faith in bounceback years up and down the batting lineup,  pivoting on the principle that the team’s rejuvenation will be driven by internal betterment.”

TRY LOOKING UP SESQUIPEDALIAN, ROSIE.

Or, actually, don’t. Because then you might use it in an article, and I already feel bad enough for the poor people who think they have to read this embarrassing stuff just to have their terrible, over-the-top, Podunk baseball opinions validated.

Quickly…

• One other reason I’m pleased about the Votto signing is because it happened just as I was struggling to start writing about the Thursday start from Bowden Francis, and how important he’s going to be considering the shoulder troubles Alek Manoah has been struggling with so far this spring. But is there really a whole lot more to say than that? Fans have obviously been hoping like hell for a Manoah return to form, but no one should have been counting on it. And I don’t think the Jays were. Francis dealt with some early traffic on Thursday, but then settled down and continues to look good. He looked good last year too. And in Buffalo. I think he’s a big leaguer. I think the Jays do too. (And, though the spring results haven’t been as tidy, I might even say the same about Mitch White.)

• Still on the Manoah front, I must say that I find it somewhat odd that I don’t seem to be hearing from Weight Weirdos as much as I was earlier in camp. Almost like we can’t ever tell through our TVs how much or little it affects stresses, mechanics, injury, or performance, so it’s ultimately a useless and kinda gross thing to have really strong opinions about. Wonder where I’ve heard that before?

• OK, OK, I’ll get off my soapbox. Moving on…

• Though the injury news on Manoah—who is unlikely to be ready for opening day after being scratched from a bullpen session Thursday due to ongoing shoulder soreness—hasn’t been great this week, things are looking better for Kevin Gausman. He told MLB Network Radio on Friday morning that he expects to be ready to start the season.

• While it might be tempting—unless you’re one of those types that start shaking with rage whenever someone says “it’s early”—to figure that it probably won’t be the end of the world if a couple starters miss a turn or two out of the gate, the season-opening road trip to the Trop, Houston, and the Bronx probably says otherwise. It would be nice to look comfortably like a playoff team by August for once, wouldn’t it?

• Because he only managed to pitch 68 innings last season, and just 78 2/3 the year before that, it's not realistic to think that Ricky Tiedemann will be making starts in the big leagues for the Jays this season—especially early on. But that doesn't mean we won't hear a drum beat for exactly that if he does well in his start Saturday against the Phillies in Clearwater. (Sportsnet @ 1:05 PM ET/Phillies crew)

• Josh Donaldson announcing his retirement probably deserves more than a mere bullet point way down here, considering how vital he was to the most interesting Blue Jays teams of the last 30 years. But, frankly, I liked him a whole lot better when he was our dickhead than when he was someone else’s. I also don’t think you put a guy who was here for fewer than four seasons, only two of which were healthy, on the Level of Excellence. Though the fact that it’s even a debate is a testament to his massive impact.

• Worth remembering:

• MLB? Promoting young stars? Yeah, I am absolutely going to watch the hell out of Spring Breakout.

• Here we have a couple of links worth your perusal: the latest newsletter from Future Blue Jays, which looks at a couple sleeper prospects, starts thinking way ahead to the net Rule 5 draft, and leans heavily on some great stuff about the Vancouver Canadians. We also have one from Thomas Hall of Blue Jays Nation, which looks at how the Blue Jays may be a fit for J.D. Davis, who could be made available now that the Giants have added 3B Matt Chapman. A TRADE WOULD BE NICE, ROSS! YOUR ROSTER IS WEIRD!

• And lastly, the best Jays news of the week was, of course, that young Toby Swanson should be heading home from the hospital within the next couple of days. In case you somehow missed it, the four-year-old was hit by a car in Clearwater Beach over a week ago and needed to be airlifted to hospital with life-threatening injuries. So, as awful and scary situation as it was, this seems to be a really, really good outcome.

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