Stray Thoughts... - What a Difference a Day Makes
On double-digit runs, the Corbin experience, Yesavage's timeline, BJ Birdy, Brandon Valenzuela, injury updates, Okamoto, podcast stuff, Louis Varland, and more!
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The Blue Jays’ bats have come alive, and all it took was getting away from the stupid, excellent Dodgers. And, uh, the White Sox.
We’ll have to wait and see whether this actually lasts, of course. But ten runs on 14 hits, a ton of hard contact, a couple of nukes courtesy of Daulton Varsho and Brandon Valenzuela that left the yard (a career first for the latter), Vladdy hitting piss missiles over outfielders’ heads. It was good stuff at Rogers Centre on Friday night.,
And it wasn’t only good because the Jays were able to yet again produce a glorious come-from-behind victory, this time bailing out veteran starter Patrick Corbin, who delivered a shaky debut, allowing four runs on six hits and a walk in just four innings of work. It was good because it’s still so early in the season that the game meaningfully moved the overall picture of the team’s offence forward.
The Jays began the day 19th in baseball by team wRC+ at 93. Now they sit 10th at 104. By ISO they went from 28th (.113) to 16th (.133). And by WAR for position players they went from ninth (1.6) up into fifth (2.4).
Vladdy alone took his wRC+ from 131 all the way up to 154, which is, obviously, a hell of a lot more like it.
The Jays have won back-to-back games, and now sit tied in the AL East race with the Rays and Orioles for second place at 6-7. They’re all just two back of the Yankees, who are suddenly losers of three straight.
It is, of course, preposterously early to be looking at the standings, but I think there’s some good perspective to be gained by it at the moment, considering how ugly things felt there just a minute ago.
And rotation help is on the way! I wrote in Friday’s piece that I was a little concerned about Trey Yesavage’s timeline, given that he only reached 52 pitches in his rehab outing on Thursday, but John Schneider put that notion to rest not long after, telling reporters pre-game that they’ll be targeting getting “close to” 70 pitches for him when he gets into another minor league game in the middle of next week. That’s extremely encouraging, and means that he’ll probably need only one additional rehab start after that if all goes well.
The Patrick Corbin Experience may only last for a couple more starts, in other words.
Hell, maybe even just one.
Corbin is currently in line to start next in the finale of the Jays’ upcoming midweek Brewers series, then again on the 21st, in the middle game of the series in Anaheim. My guess is that the Jays would prefer to not be quite so aggressive with Yesavage, but
But if they were willing to call Yesavage up after just one more rehab start, he could quite easily take that one with little alteration to his schedule. He threw Thursday, so could go on five days’ rest on the 15th, and again on five days’ rest on the 21st.
My guess is that they probably wouldn’t want to be quite so aggressive with him just yet, and the absolute best case scenario would probably have him only capable of 85 pitches by then, but maybe you’d prefer that to whatever Corbin could give you. And with an off-day at the end of the road trip, he’d also get an extra day of rest before his next start, which would come at the beginning of the home series with Boston at the end of the month.
We’ll know more once we see the date selected for Yesavage’s next one—and right now, because of weather, they don’t even know for sure which affiliate it will be with—as well as how Corbin fares in Milwaukee. I can’t exactly say that his work on Friday left me brimming with hope for that one though!
Flipped the Birdy?
To the delight of many longtime fans, the Jays announced ahead of Opening Day that, as part of their 50th anniversary season celebrations, they were bringing back “vintage” mascots for select games throughout the year. There was the early SkyDome-era turtle, Domer. Ace’s former (and canonically Quebecois, imho) partner in crime, Diamond. And, of course, the one who started it all, the legend, the shit disturber, BJ Birdy.
“How and why this reunion has happened,” I wrote at the time, “I don’t yet know, but I would love to get to the bottom of it.”
Well, it turns out, there actually wasn’t a reunion to speak of. The CBC’s Haydn Watters reported on Friday that all of this was news to Kevin Shanahan, the creator of BJ Birdy, and the man who still owns the rights to the character.
“It would have been nice if they would have contacted me and asked or at least informed me,” says Shanahan, whose contentious 20-year mascot career ended unceremoniously in 1999.
“Maybe they thought they had the rights. Or maybe they thought I lost the rights. Or maybe they're just celebrating BJ. Hopefully they’re not marketing him,” he says, putting a good-natured spin on what seems to have been a pretty enormous oversight on the club’s part.
Like, I know 1999 was a long time ago, but it’s baffling that nobody in the organization appears to have to known the story of the bitter end of that relationship—it was well documented in the various local newspapers at the time—or even did a cursory Google search about the history, where the whole story is right there on Wikipedia.
So now we go from a long-ago wrong finally being surprisingly righted, to this becoming a story of the Jays screwing over their most beloved mascot a second time. Come on!
When CBC News reached out to the Blue Jays for comment, they were eager to pass along their contact to give to Shanahan.
“Our intention has always been to honour the legacy of BJ Birdy, and we remain eager to connect directly with Kevin,” said Andrea Goldstein, Blue Jays spokesperson.
“We had hoped — and still hope — to work together, so the club can properly recognize and include him in these milestone moments.”
Goldstein did not respond when asked if the club owns the rights to BJ Birdy or why it didn’t contact Shanahan before reviving the bird.
Whoops!
Quickly…
• We talked about Yesavage’s return timeline above, but it also sounds as though José Berríos isn’t very far behind him. Schneider also gave an update on him pre-game Friday, explaining that Berríos had thrown two innings against live hitters that day, and will likely get into a minor league rehab start next week, with the goal of reaching 50 pitches.
• I don’t think I even mentioned Alejandro Kirk in my previous post, but of course the Jays got pretty good news on him this week too, with his timeline being only a matter of weeks rather than months. Still not great, obviously, but add that to there seemingly not being any ligament damage in his now surgically-repaired thumb and you can easily feel like this is a better outcome than it could have been—or than it may have looked like at the time. He’ll need about six weeks, and Schneider told reporters Friday that it’s unclear as yet whether that means he’ll just be ramping up baseball activity by then or if he’ll actually be ready for games. Fingers crossed that it will be the latter.
• Perhaps even better news on the injury front is that, here on Saturday, Schneider told reporters that Max Scherzer, after that blip last week, is all set to go for tomorrow’s finale, and expected to put in a full day’s workload. Noice!
• It’s still a bit early to get a read on Kazuma Okamoto and how he’s acclimating to the big leagues so far. Right now if feels like he’s a bit exposed at the plate, seeing more right-handed pitching that he might if Addison Barger was healthy and able to take a few reps at third base away from him, and I find it especially striking to see how tough a time he’s had making contact around the edges of the zone compared to some of his teammates. FanGraphs has a few interesting new leaderboards this year, some of which break down players’ plate discipline by zone—on pitches over the heart of the plate, in the shadow zone, the chase zone, and then waste pitches. When we look at the shadow zone, Okamoto is really standing out in a negative way. All of his teammates have a contract rate of at least 75% when swinging at such pitches, but Okamoto is way down at 59.5%, which is currently in the bottom 10 of qualified batters. Something to definitely monitor as he progresses.
• On a positive note regarding Okamoto, however, we have his strikeout rate. At 36.4% it’s still much too high for a guy who struck out just 11% of the time in Japan last season, but it is at least moving in the right direction. Over his first seven games, Okamoto struck out in 48.4% of his plate appearances. In the six games since he’s down to just 20.8%. Unfortunately, the production over these last six hasn’t been there for him in the same way it was in that first week, so it doesn’t feel so much like this has been a positive stretch. But I think his increasing comfort with balls and strikes is more important than anything else that’s gone on with him in this last week. I’m still confident the production will come.
• I still can’t believe they had Jack Morris throw out the first pitch before Game Seven.
• Doesn’t matter to me how much of a loss you have to take on Anthony Santander, I think George Springer should be the DH for the Toronto Blue Jays until he decides he doesn’t want to play anymore. I am also offering Kevin Gausman the same privileges. (Well, not being the DH, obviously. You know what I meant!)
• That’s it. That’s the stuff right there.
• As a member of the Blue Jays, Varsho has produced a 119 wRC+ against left-handed pitching, and has just a 91 mark against right-handers. This, to me, feels exceptionally wrong.
• Speaking of Varsho, don’t we have better things to do than to petition for him to change his terrible walk-up song?
• ZERO COINCIDENCES DETECTED.
• When Louis Varland is good, hoo boy is he ever good. Because he had that wobble when he first arrived, and wasn’t always completely perfect in the playoffs, I think we maybe don’t appreciate this. But right now, according to Pitching+ model, Varland has been the 7th best reliever in baseball this season. That puts him in a virtual tie with teammate Tyler Rogers. Rogers, I should add, is the MLB leader in Stuff+ among relievers, too.
• Speaking of Varland, on this week’s Patreon-exclusive bonus episode of Blue Jays Happy Hour, Nick and I spent a bit of time talking about the unusually large gulf between how good Varland looks when he’s good, and how bad he looks when he’s bad. Plus, because we were sick of the doom and gloom surrounding the team prior to these last two games, we went through the Jays’ entire roster and rated each player based on likeability. Below is a quick preview to whet yer whistle. T\o listen in full find us at Patreon.com/BJHH.
• Speaking of Nick, don’t sleep on the fact that he’s often doing the radio pre-game show on the Fan590—as he will be today—and taking calls afterwards. Fun stuff!
• Lastly, I think Brandon Valenzuela’s first ever big league home run deserves a little more love than just that quick mention off the top. Not only did he really get ahold of it, he did so in a really big spot, putting the Jays ahead 5-4 after having trailed 4-0 at one point. Great stuff for the youngster—who may currently have a 41.7% strikeout rate, but now sports a 115 wRC+. Here’s to many more in a long career. And, especially, over the next six weeks or so. What a beaut!
• ALRIGHT NOW LET’S GET THIS SERIES VICTORY IN THE BOOKS ASAP. JOE RYAN? WELL, HE’S GOING TO BE JOE CRYIN’ BY THE END OF THIS ONE. HUH? HUH? GET IT? GET IT? LET’S GOOOOOO!!!
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