Stray Thoughts... - We're All Fawning Fan Boys

On wins, wins wins!, Anatomy of a Good Time, Michael Kay's giant forehead, David Popkins, playoff odds, deadline thoughts, minor moves, words of warning to the White Sox and A's, and a whole lot more!

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The Blue Jays’ magical run continues, as on Sunday they won their eighth in a row—in the form of a third straight nail-biter over the Los Angeles Angels—to complete the franchise’s first perfect 7-0 homestand and maintain their grip on first place in the American League East.

It was, I have to admit, a fairly ordinary game of baseball—one which might not have felt at all out of place during one of the more ordinary seasons we’ve all become rather accustomed to around here. Kevin Gausman bent but didn’t break, the great Mike Trout toiled for an ultimately hopeless cause, both teams should have scored more runs than they did, Brendon Little walked a guy, and before you knew it, there was Jeff Hoffman closing it out with a seven-pitch inning. Ho hum.

Ordinary, that is, save for a couple of sequences—including one that extended from the top to the bottom of the fourth—that made it unmistakably clear that the B*seball G*ds are still smiling on our boys.

Let’s examine.

The fourth inning got underway normally enough, with a lead-off single from Taylor Ward, a Jo Adell walk, and then a Logan O'Hoppe strikeout. Nothing to write home about there. But then, after the second pitch to the next batter, Luis Rengifo, Alejandro Kirk saw Adell taking far too big a lead off of first base and snapped a throw down to Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

Unfortunately, Kirk’s throw was an uncharacteristically bad one, straying into foul territory, and the Angels’ threat was left undiminished.

And, not only did the threat continue, it got much worse.

On the very next pitch, Rengifo knocked a grounder out to shortstop—a potential double play ball.

But, possibly because of the runner skirting the ball directly in front of him, or because he was thinking about turning two before he had it secured, Bo Bichette scooped it up…

…but then lost it on the transfer.

“Everybody’s safe!”

Now, I recognize that there have been times during this recent winning streak when it has felt more like reality was about to step in and bring all these good Blue Jays vibes to an end than it did here. I mean, they needed to go to extra innings before securing wins against the Angels on both Friday and Saturday, and I seem to recall a blown 8-0 lead during last week’s Yankees series, too. Nevertheless, the trouble here was real—bases loaded, one down—despite two earnest chances to record big outs on either side of a single pitch.

Not great!

And yet—would you believe?—it would not matter. Of course you would!

Up next was right fielder Gustavo Campero, and after he waved at a splitter low-and-away to kick-off his at-bat, Gausman fed him another one.

Campero swung again, but could only manage to tap it. The ball bounced harmlessly back to the pitcher. A gift.

Gausman caught it in stride, tossed it home for the easy force, Kirk made a much better throw down to first, and suddenly there were three outs.

No harm, no foul, no runs.

Gausman was pumped, to say the least.

Bo, meanwhile, had been spared his blushes. Cosmically, everything had evened out. But, since this is the blessed 2025 Toronto Blue Jays we’re talking about, that wouldn’t be enough.

Bichette was the lead-off batter in the bottom half on the inning, and after fouling off a cutter on the first pitch he saw from Angels starter Ty Anderson…

…he got a meatball changeup…

…and absolutely launched it…

…while seemingly looking Anderson directly in the eye for a second there. LOL!

Yeah, Bo was a little hyped.

Even the Statcast stick figure version of him was!

There’s that power that power we need from him! Off the bat at 109 mph, and with a launch angle of 32°, the ball travelled 408 feet, hitting off the facing of the second deck, and bouncing down into the home bullpen.

The Jays were on the board. But they weren’t done being smiled upon from above quite yet.

Later in the frame, Myles Straw doubled off the third baseman’s glove…

…and then was cashed on a two-out Joey Loperfido single to put the Jays up 2-1,…

…but the Angels would scratch out a second of their own in the top of the fifth.

So, now, fast forward to the bottom of the sixth, with the game knotted at two apiece, and once again Bichette was leading off. He took a five-pitch walk to bring up Kirk, who had weakly popped out to his fellow catcher in his previous at-bat—back in the fouth, while we were all, Sportsnet broadcast included, admiring Bo’s home run.

Frustratingly for Kirk, he very nearly did it again in this plate appearance, swinging at a 1-0 cutter from Anderson that came way inside and skying it over toward the third base dugout.

The catcher, O’Hoppe, and left fielder Taylor Ward third baseman Chad Stevens both raced for it, neither backing off…

…and though the ball was playable, O’Hoppe’s leg caught Stevens’ foot, and he took a scary tumble at the last second, slamming against the padded rail by the camera pit near the dugout steps.

Fortunately O’Hoppe was OK and able to continue, but the ball rolled back toward the infield, giving Kirk a reprieve from what should have been an out—and could have been an inning-altering one.

On the very next pitch, Anderson went back to the exact same spot with the cutter, and Kirk swung again. Only this time he dunked a single into left-centre.

Bo adroitly went first-to-third on the play…

…prompting Sportsnet’s Dan Shulman to offer a nice little tidbit on the Jays and baserunning.

It has been, according to John Schneider, an almost daily with everybody—all the position players—about the need to run the bases better. Aggressively, but smart baserunning, too. And Schneider talking about internal numbers they've got—and he was frank about it. He was saying, after a month or six weeks, they were saying to the players, “Hey guys, worst baserunning team around. Can't be the worst base running team around.” And they feel, and they say the numbers back it up—that they've got—that there has been significant improvement.

Once again the Jays were in business. And after the next hitter, Davis Schneider, looked at three not-particularly-close pitches to get ahead 3-0 on Anderson, he was given the green light…

…got a pitch to hit…

…got off his fastest swing of the year, according to Arden Zwelling in his post-game interview with Schneider…

…and knocked in what would ultimately prove to be the game-winning run.

Easy!

Or, perhaps I should say, easy when you’re the 2025 Blue Jays.

And even though every team in the American League East won on Sunday, all that means is that the Jays still hold a three-game lead atop the division. With visits to the pathetic White Sox and A’s all that’s left between now and the All-Star break.

What a world! Now, finally, here are some stray thoughts…

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Kay-fabe

A lot of Jays fans seem to have built up some real animosity toward Yankees play-by-play man Michael Kay, but I’ve got to say here that I don’t really know why that is. And I say that not because I am about to appoint myself as some grand defender of Kay—SIKE!—but because I honestly couldn’t tell you the last time I actually hated myself enough to subject myself to him.

I know I’ve heard him, I know I’ve groused about him, I know which stupid team he furrows his stupid giant forehead about professionally. I’m sure I’ve popped off about him saying some kind of goober bullshit while scoreboard watching multiple times in the last couple of decades. Somewhere deep in my mind I definitely know Michael Kay completely sucks. I just haven’t bothered to care enough in recent years to have any real clarity about my dislike for him, is all.

Seems like he’s still a real clown, though!

Aaaaand… maybe this is fish in a barrel, but so what? In case you missed it, there’s been a bit of a war of words going on lately between YES Network’s Kay and Sportsnet’s Jamie Campbell.

The short version is that Kay said a bunch of dumb shit, Campbell lightly roasted him, and so the incredibly thin-skinned Kay said a bunch more dumb shit.

The long version begins here:

After the Jays won 12-5 on Canada Day, they were a single win away from being in a tie with the Yankees for first place in the AL East. The following day, on his ESPN NY radio show, Kay tore into his Yankees team for having squandered what on May 28th had been a seven game lead in the division. And, in a portion of a nearly 10-minute monologue that went viral, he had some things to say about the Blue Jays.

The Blue Jays are not a first place team, I'm sorry. If you look at the run differential, the Yankees' run differential is +105. The Blue Jays, after a 12-5 win, finally got into the positive yesterday. They're plus four. Do you realize that they should be a .500 team because of a +4 run differential. And the Yankees should have at least four or five more wins with a +105 run differential. They're not playing great baseball, I'm sorry. They're not.

You can listen to just this specific section here.

I’ll get into all of this horseshit more deeply below, but what’s more important for the setup—because “radio dumbass talks out his ass” is hardly a news story—is that Jamie got wind of these comments and, when the Jays completed their magnificent sweep of the Yankees two days later, decided to bring it up.

We have been asked about the broom relentlessly these last couple of days, so here it is, because we just witnessed something that has not been done in the history of the Blue Jays, sweeping all four from the Yankees here in Toronto. First time. And I can think of a certain Yankee broadcaster, in fact, who is going to have to go on his show tomorrow and admit that the Blue Jays are a first place team, because the standings prove it.

Extremely, extremely simple stuff to understand here. Yankee dipshit says “the Jays aren’t a first place team,” it goes viral, the Jays take over first place, Jays guy ribs him by saying that the guy will now have to admit that they are, in fact, literally a first place team.

Magnanimously take the loss, then? Apparently not if you’re Michael Kay!

On Sunday, he addressed what should have been non-troversy by showing his entire ass. Let’s go through it with a fine-tooth comb, FJM-style, shall we?

Kay began…

What I would say to Jamie is, I can easily say the Blue Jays are a first place team, because I'm not a fawning fan boy, I'm a broadcaster.

Hell yeah. We’re one sentence in and this is already amazing. Kay saying he’s not a “fawning fan boy,” is clearly a dig at Campbell and his broom. He’s a “broadcaster.” In other words: a professional.

The thing about that is, first of all, he’s not beating the “not a fawning fan boy” allegations when the internet can easily find receipts to the contrary. Which is exactly what @Hockey_Is_All did, pointing out Kay’s fanboy dig at Vladimir Guerrero Jr. after the Yankees clinched the AL East after a win at Rogers Centre in September 2022.

“And, you know, it really is nice for Vlad Guerrero to let the Yankees celebrate in his house.”

Neutrality! Impartiality! You love to see it. LOL.

Secondly, if Kay was as professional as he thinks he is, he’d know that Campbell waves the broom every time the Jays sweep a series, and that he broadcasts from a very accessible set on the concourse amid the throngs of Jays fans during home games, interacting with fans constantly. Fans who “asked about the broom relentlessly” as the possibility of sweeping the Yankees became more real—a context clue that could have told him that the broom wasn’t meant solely for him, had he actually listened to Jamie’s words instead of obviously getting hot under the collar at the mildest of public rebukes.

If he was such a professional he also—foreshadowing!—wouldn’t say all the garbage he’s about to say.

And the bottom line is they are, in fact a first place team. Also, the whole narrative has been skewed by people who misinterpreted and didn't hear everything that I said on my radio show.

Oh? We all saw the clip, my man. I’ve quoted it in full above, and the next line uttered after “I’m sorry, they’re not,” is “And one final thing about Anthony Volpe.” LOL.

But OK, what did we miss?

I was talking about the Pythagorean Theorem of run differential, which would indicate that the Blue Jays should not have a record as good as they have.

That is, indeed, the way that people who don’t really understand run differential would think about it. But Run differential isn’t a thing because it shows us how many games a team “should have” won, it’s a thing because it’s a better predictor of what a team will do going forward than their actual record. Or, at least, it is when you have some understanding of how to apply it. That makes it an easy shorthand for a team’s true talent level, but what people often miss is the fact that, like anything else in statistics, sample size matters.

Back in 2014, Russell A. Carleton—the Pizza Cutter!—dove into the question of when run differential actually becomes meaningful in a piece for Baseball Prospectus. Or, LOL, is that Baseball Prospective? (Wait for it.)

Carleton used every team season since 1962 (when the schedule was expanded to 162 games) and examined the correlation between a team’s run differential after each game and its record at the end of the season. Using a correlation of .70 as his benchmark for the point at which the results become believable—”For the uninitiated,” he added, “0 means that there’s no relationship between the two numbers, and 1 means there’s a perfect relationship between them”—he found that to come about around mid-May.

However! He wasn't quite done yet.

“But those who read that closely are probably thinking, yeah, the reason that the correlation is so good is that those 40 games are baked into the end-of-the-season numbers,” he continued. “In some sense, we’re comparing something to itself, which usually produces a pretty strong correlation. What if we wanted to know how long it took until we could be independently sure that the team’s run differential is real?”

To do this he used “a more complicated method called Cronbach's alpha”—gory mathematical details indeed—and after running the calculations told us that “it suggests we can make some reasonable conclusions about a team's true talent level by the All-Star break.”

So, if we accept Carleton’s threshold for believability, it’s really only around now that run differential is starting to be meaningful about a team’s true talent level. And there are layers of complexity beyond even that.

But don’t worry, Mike. If you really want to insist on doing it the dumb way, how about this: since May 1st, the Yankees have a Pythagorean winning percentage of .574. The Jays are at .573.

In fact, I was complimenting the Blue Jays that they've exceeded the expectations that the numbers would put on them.

Lmao. No, you absolutely were not. Straight-up gaslighting.

I never said that run differential is more important than wins and losses, of course it's not.

Nobody said you did, Mike! You used run differential to imply the Jays are a bad team so you could use the Yankees’ losses to them as a cudgel. Which is fine enough, really. The Yankees losing to the Jays was definitely very funny and they should be roasted for it.

But Baseball Prospective [sic], places like that, they take the run differential and they try to figure out exactly—exactly—what the record would be.

Don’t blame me! It’s those nasty statisticians’ fault! They’re simply too good at their jobs!

And the Blue Jays have exceeded that, with their gritty, gutty style of play.

We love a backhanded compliment, don’t we? Please, Mr. Yankee sir, can we have some more?

And one final thing, it's kind of funny, if you think about it. Imagine, Nancy, imagine if Jack Curry was waving a broom on the Yankee post-game show. He would probably be called into the office and shortly fired after that.

Yeah, and until this year your backwards-ass reactionary organization of off-duty cops would have done the same to a player with facial hair. Maybe this is a you problem.

Now, I love Toronto, it is a cosmopolitan city, it is one of the greatest cities in the world for me. I think it's great. You're waving a broom on a post-game show, you're turning it into Mayberry R.F.D.

I’m sorry, I wasn’t born during WWII, I don’t get the reference.

I just don't get it, I don't understand it. You should be proud of the fact you're in first place.

Pride? Sounds a little too close to being a fawning fanboy if you ask me.

And one final thing. You shouldn't hang on to the rim three minutes into the third quarter of a basketball game. Feel good about sweeping the Yankees. Feel good about winning all these games in a row. Feel good about being in first place. But to hang on the rim this early? Let's hang on the rim in October. That's when you hang on the rim.

Big talk about October from a guy repping a team that gets there every single year but hasn’t won a World Series since before the first fuckin’ Avatar movie was released.

Sit down!

Quickly…

• OK, one more Kay-related piece of business, because Jamie, ever the gentleman, has responded to the remarks from Kay that we just went over. “I should point out that I have always had great respect for Mr. Kay,” he tweeted. “That’s a tough market, and he’s endured. We haven’t been able to say ‘first place’ around here for a while. Just having a little fun!”

Pure class.

• In the less classy category, how about whoever decided that George Springer shouldn’t be named an American League All-Star? I can’t get too up in arms about it, because a) I don’t care, and b) surely he’s going to get an invite as an injury replacement anyway. But that’s just silly stuff. We’re talking about the 12th-best hitter in baseball by wRC+ in the first half!

• Less classy than even that? Rosie Dimanno! HEYO! Though her latest for the Toronto Star is actually fine, I just mean… you know… all the other stuff.

Anyway, speaking about the 12th-best hitter in baseball by wRC+, is that who Rosie could be… uh… speaking about here?

“It’s something we’ve been talking to Bo about,’’ continued Schneider. “What I love about this group is, no one cares where they hit. Honestly, a couple of years ago we felt pigeonholed into using guys in certain spots. It’s not the case this year.’’

Which, however inadvertently, is the clearest look-see that’s been offered into what was going so badly wrong with this team a year ago.

Springer certainly doesn’t seem like that kind of a guy, and I hate to speculate, but Rosie doesn’t give us much choice, does she? She should probably just say what she actually thinks she knows about clubhouse fissures over the last couple of seasons, rather than hinting at it all the time.

Regardless, it certainly was noticeable that, despite producing just a 93 wRC+ across those two seasons, Springer batted leadoff in 224 games, while the Blue Jay with the next highest mark did so in just 30.

For the record, I think it’s absurd to believe that somebody being adamant about hitting in a certain spot could undermine a team so completely. So I’m sticking with roster construction as the reason those teams didn’t work. OK, moving on…

• Also in Rosie’s piece is a rather interesting quote from Bo Bichette.

“Honestly, with the ups and downs we’ve had as an organization in the past six years — super high, super lows — and getting to the point where we’ve gotten now, it would be really tough not to see it through,” he told her. “It would be tough for me to leave.’’

Feel free to stay, Bo!

• One of the big reasons for the Jays’ offensive resurgence, which Springer and (to a lesser extent) Bo are emblematic of, is, of course, new hitting coach David Popkins.

As always with these things, it’s more complicated than one magic man arriving in town and fixing—or breaking—everything. The players have a ton to do with their own success, obviously. Lou Iannotti is also new coach on the hitting side. The Jays are always tweaking their internal processes and the way they deliver information to hitters. And if Popkins has talismanic powers they sure disappeared last year—or, at least, so the Twins thought.

Still, right now? What’s not to like?

“It’s just the freedom to let guys take aggressive swings when they want to take aggressive swings and it’s OK to miss, it’s OK to chase when you've earned the count or the scenario where you can get your best swing off and the situation calls for it,” Popkins told Shi Davidi of Sportsnet for a piece over the weekend. “A lot of guys, they get into situations and are afraid to be embarrassed swinging and missing or chasing a bad pitch, and their swings get a little more reserved, they don’t allow themselves to be the dangerous athletes that they are. We let guys fail, we let guys work through certain things and with that you get aggressiveness, you get fearlessness.”

Hell yeah, let’s go!

• Maybe the Twins don’t regret their decision but at least one Twins fan certainly does…

• Sticking with Sportsnet, we’ve got another great one from Shi, who looks into the—Atkins-haters look away!—collaborative approach the Jays are taking when it comes to the upcoming draft. It will be an interesting one for new amateur scouting director Marc Tramuta, who took over the job from Shane Farrell back in November and—considering how well the Jays’ 2024 crop of pitching selections has done already—suddenly looks like he might have bigger shoes to fill than anyone would have expected at first.

Meanwhile, Ben Nicholson-Smith continues to crush pitches in his wheelhouse when it comes to his trade deadline coverage, most recently looking at past deadlines in the Shapiro-Atkins era to anticipate the precise kinds of moves the Jays will be looking to make. Before that, he gave us 68 names—sixty-eight!—that ought to be on Jays fans’ radar as July 31st approaches.

• In summary, Ben tweets: “Every year Jays have bought under Atkins they've added 3+ players incl. 2+ pitchers & a bat. Jays like years of control. They haven't given up anything they really regret.”

• Can’t say I love anything to do with what we’ve been hearing about Max Scherzer’s thumb since he returned to the rotation. I can say that I’ve loved just about everything Eric Lauer’s done lately. I can also say that I loved how Lazaro Estrada pitched in his big league debut on Saturday—big innings to help a tired ‘pen. And while it was tough that he ended up getting optioned for a fresher arm just a day later, he more than made his case for another shot later on. Aaaaand, that’s pretty much all I’ve got about Friday and Saturday.

• The thing about Estrada getting another shot at some point is… will he even be here? The Jays have a very healthy 40-man right now, which is a good problem to have, but nevertheless a problem. Case in point: Will Robertson.

A Statcast darling who looked like he had maybe found another gear at Buffalo this season, and had a cup of coffee in the big leagues in June, ended up squeezed off the roster over the weekend, catching a DFA in order for the club to activate reliever Ryan Burr.

I don’t think Robertson has a ton of value or anything—relatively positionless, plenty of strikeouts, pretty boom-or-bust, 28-years-old in December—and for his sake it would probably good to move on to an organization that has more of a path to the majors for him than exists here anyway. Put him in Colorado and watch the laser show, I don’t know. But (presumably) losing him underscores the Jays’ need to take some of the talent on their 40-man and turn it into big league calibre upgrades and a little bit more breathing room there than they have currently. Deals incoming!

• Oh, wait, a couple more Friday/Saturday things, the first being: Braydon Fisher, holy hell!

• Also: Scherzer’s stuff looked good. If he can just manage to command it better, I think that’s better than just the back-end starter we expected as his floor. Also if he can get healthy. Please just get healthy, Max!

• Thirdly, we may be getting close to mea culpa time for yours truly on the issue of a certain Chad Green.

• If you’re a piece of shit who feels the need to say something negative to @BlueJays for writing a tweet in Korean and you follow me on there, congratulations on getting blocked.

• Today in “Things You Love To See”:

• OK, I think that’s more than enough from me today!

White Sox and A’s… WELCOME TO THE MEAT GRINDER. LET’S GOOOO!

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