The bats struggle and the dam bursts on the bullpen as the Jays waste a great Stripling performance
On middling relief, an impressive Ross Stripling, potential prospect breakouts, Gabriel Moreno, Vlad's foot, Gosuke Katoh, Blue Jays Happy Hour's live post-game call-in podcast, and more!
I didn't write about last night's game as it was ongoing, or in the aftermath of it, because I didn't think anybody would mind not revisiting a loss like that so quickly. However, I do think there are some things worth dissecting from it, so here's three up!
Er… one big down and two up!
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Down: Middle relief
I tweeted about Trent Thornton after his outing in Houston back on Sunday, noting that despite his having a rather tidy line at the time — 1.00 ERA, 3.08 FIP, just four hits allowed with 33 batters faced — the "is Trent Thornton good now?" stuff seemed a bit premature.
Folks, I may have been on to something, as Thornton’s Statcast rankings today, after those three hard hit balls in Houston and giving up two runs on three hits against Boston on Wednesday, look like this:
Granted, only one of the three singles the Red Sox hit off him came particularly hard off the bat, but barely any swing-and-miss, too many walks, and a bunch of hard contact — even if not necessarily true barrels — is not exactly a recipe for success.
What exactly is a recipe for success for Thornton? I don’t know. And I’m not sure he or the Jays know either. His pitch usage has really been all over the place as he’s tried to find his footing as a big leaguer after a relatively good rookie year as a starter back in 2019.
You can see that this year he’s ditched the changeup and the cutter so far, relying much more on his slider — as he did in ‘19 — and using his sinker more than ever before. It’s early, but that pitch has truly not worked for him as yet. The only one he threw on Wednesday resulted in Xander Bogaerts’ inside-out single to lead off the sixth, and on the year opponents have produced and expected weighted on-base of .578 on it.
The 2021 season was not a good one for Thornton either, even though he produced very respectable strikeout (9.6 K/9) and walk (2.9 BB/9) rates. He was hit hard and hit constantly, as opponents slashed .321/.344/.526 against him and blasted 12 home runs in just 49 innings. Hitters have been less successful this year, but the walks are up, the strikeouts have disappeared (just six in 10 innings), and those indicators in his expected stats, exit velocity, and hard hit percent suggest he’s been more lucky than good.
With the number of pitchers teams are allowed to carry shrinking to 14 on May 2, and Hyun Jin Ryu not far off a return, one wonders if Thornton — who can be optioned without having to be placed on waivers — might see some time in Buffalo in the near future. At the moment Bowden Francis and one of Andrew Vasquez or Tayler Saucedo seem more likely candidates for demotion, but once Ryu and Ryan Borucki are healthy, Thornton’s spot could be in jeopardy.
Another guy who might soon find himself on the bubble is Julian Merryweather, who continues to get bafflingly poor results despite having the kind of stuff most pitchers could only dream of. The seven hardest thrown pitches in this one came courtesy of Merryweather, including five at 98, one at 99, and another at 100 (technically 99.6, but we’re rounding here!). He came out firing, too, pumping fastballs at J.D. Martinez, then after a high curveball to start off Enrique Hernández, hucking four more fastballs.
Both hitters doubled.
The thing about Merryweather seems to be that he doesn’t quite trust his secondary offerings — understandable given their inconsistently — which allows guys to sit fastball against him. Even a fastball as hard as he throws it can be smashed by big league hitters when they’re ready for it, as evidenced by the following chart:
You’re seeing that correctly. Merryweather has done a great job limiting damage with his secondary pitches, but his fastball is getting lit up to the tune of a .625 expected wOBA.
For context, in 2002, when Barry Bonds walked 32.4% of the time, struck out just 7.7% of the time, and slashed .370/.582/.799 — somehow a real thing that happened! — his wOBA was .544.
Might be time to stop using the heater 55% of the time, eh Julian?
Up: Ross Stripling
Ross Stripling was lifted after five innings and 84 pitches in this one, and if we didn't know that he threw just 61 in his previous start, as he continues to build up into more of a full-fledged starter role than the hybrid one he was pencilled into back in camp, we'd probably be upset that he wasn't allowed to go back out for a sixth.
Stripling allowed just one earned run on five hits and no walks, striking out seven. A very nice performance from anyone, let alone your sixth (or maybe fifth?) starter.
Strikeouts aren't exactly his calling card, but he sure found a way to keep hitters off balance in this one. He kept his fastball elevated...
...then absolutely painted with his changeup to left-handers...
...and had it falling off the table to righties.
In all, Stripling generated 17 whiffs on the day — the most of any pitcher in the game, and seven more than his opposite number, Michael Wacha — of which nine came on the fastball and six on the change. He had Red Sox hitters so discombobulated that he added a further eight called strikes on the fastball, plus four more from the six knuckle curves he mixed in over the course of the outing.
Sure, it just one outing, and that kind of strikeout stuff hasn't been there for him previously (he had just five in 10 innings this season coming into this one), but I very much need to see more of thise. It's too early to start demanding that he be kept in the rotation once Ryu is ready to return, but another couple performances like this one and the Jays will have a very, very interesting question to answer here.
Up: Some hitting prospects!
OK, let’s not dwell any longer on the particulars of Wednesday night’s game and instead move onto something a whole lot more interesting: early season prospect performances!
Because the Jays have certainly had some interesting ones. And, fortunately for us, FanGraphs has searchable leaderboards that allow you to include all prospects from any given organization. Here, for example, are the Jays’ “qualified” hitting prospects (i.e. they’re averaging at least 3.1 plate appearances per team game) with a wRC+ above 100 so far on the season.
Some interesting stuff there, if you can actually manage to see it. Some notes:
• Guys with astronomical strikeout rates in the minor leagues are far less interesting to me, even when they're going really well. Especially if they're not showing any ability to take a walk. Looking at you, Addison Barger and Rainer Nunez!
• An exception to that, of course, is when we're talking about a guy who is exceptionally young for his level. The Jays have been extremely aggressive with Orelvis Martinez this year, just as they were in 2020 when they brought him to their alternate site in Rochester as a teenager. Now 20, he is four years younger than the average hitter in Double-A, according to Baseball Reference. In that case, we'll give him some leeway here — especially since we saw last year that it took him a couple weeks to adjust to High-A, but then he took flight from there. It’s nice that he’s at least keeping his head above water, but the result aren’t exactly leaping off the page just yet. Still, be worried if his line looks like this at the end of the season — if even then! — not now.
• What's definitely catching my eye here is what we're seeing so far from a couple of guys the Jays had been willing to expose to the Rule 5 draft this winter: Samad Taylor and Logan Warmoth.
At 26 years old and nearly five years removed from his draft year, Warmoth is barely a prospect anymore — if he even is at all. But if he can walk nearly as much as he strikes out while putting up a .510 slugging percentage, like he’s doing right now, that's at least kind of interesting. I’m not sure it will ever translate to the big leagues, but if he keeps this up a bad team with a rental reliever to move at the trade deadline will surely be willing to find out.
Taylor is even more intriguing. Still just 23, he has 11 stolen bases in 12 tries over just 19 games this year. Add to that a preposterous 20.8% walk rate, a very respectable 19.4% strikeout rate, and enough pop in the bat to have produced six extra base hits so far, and you may really have something here. If he keeps it up, that's a guy you'll see in the majors at some point for sure.
And maybe there's reason to believe that he can. Taylor had a very thoughtful interview back in February with FanGraphs' David Laurila, talking about how the biggest changes he's made in the last couple of years, when his career has really taken on a new and impressive trajectory, have been on the mental side — including working extensively with the Jays' mental performance coach. As Yogi once said, half of this game is 90% mental. That's like 45%!
• Adriel Sotolongo has a pretty interesting line there, though at 24 he's certainly a bit old for A-ball.
• Spencer Horwitz is striking out more than we're used to seeing now that he's getting his first real taste of Double-A (he played four games there at the end of last season). Still, he seems to hit wherever he goes, including a head-turning .375/.460/.484 performance in last year's Arizona Fall League. A name to watch.
• Dasan Brown is still pretty raw, but nice to see him on the good side of the ledger here, even if the strikeouts are still very high.
• Nathan Lukes isn't a prospect at age 27, but seems to be building off of a solid spring training with some nice work in Buffalo (though the power isn't really there and the BABIP is crazy high).
• One player who you'll find noticeably absent here, of course, is Gabriel Moreno. The Jays’ number one prospect hasn't had enough plate appearances yet to qualify, but you may be surprised to know that even if he did, he wouldn't be on this list anyway as he's not above 100 wRC+. That felt wrong enough to me that I had to double-check it, but it's true. Moreno has just two walks in 40 plate appearances, and is slashing .289/.325/.395. He's still obviously an impressive hitter, and looks like he's going to be an incredible defender too, but even the help of a .344 BABIP isn't making his line pop. That's fine, of course, but it's probably a good idea to pump the brakes a little bit on the "his arrival is imminent" stuff, at least for the time being.
Other notes
• Ruh-roh. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. managed to stay in the game on Wednesday night after fouling a ball hard off the top of his foot, but he is out of the lineup here on Thursday. It definitely can’t hurt to give him a day off, but I shudder at the thought of him missing any more than that — as I’m sure we all do!
• Shudder:
• Want one more reason to shudder? Four simple words: Raimel Tapia cleanup hitter. Yikes.
• There is, I suppose, some logic in having Tapia hitting that high, as today’s Red Sox starter, Garrett Whitlock, has been slightly less awesome against left-handed hitters than righties this year. Lefties have produced a paltry .204 wOBA against him in 2022 so far, compared to a microscopic .114 for right-handed bats. Good luck in this one, boys!
• Someone teach Zack Collins to play first base, please!
• Some good did come out of Wednesday night’s game — other than Ross Stripling’s performance, of course. Right-hander Bowden Francis made his big league debut, and collected his first big league strikeout in the process. And Gosuke Katoh picked up his first major league hit — something his teammates were clearly extremely proud to be a part of.
Eight years in the minors! You love to see it.
• Oh jeez, you’re telling me Robbie Ray’s fastball is down 2.6 mph to 92.2 so far this year? Rode hard and put away wet, you say? Hope he turns that around.
• Lastly, don’t forget that Nick and I will be hosting a live edition of Blue Jays Happy Hour at the conclusion of Thursday’s Jays-Red Sox game. You’ll still be able to listen to it after the fact, but why do that? Come listen live by downloading the Callin app, and join in the conversation!
Here’s the page for the live room. And here’s some more information on the format switch and what you need to know to keep following us, in case you missed yesterday’s announcement.
NOTE: We’ll be doing it again after Sunday’s game too! And twice a week going forward!
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Next up: Thursday, 3:07 PM ET: Jays vs. Red Sox (Alek Manoah vs. Garrett Whitlock), TV: Sportsnet, Radio: Sportsnet 590
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Well, you answered my question that I had before I even started reading, "What's the deal with Merryweather? Throwing it harder than anybody else on the team, and still getting lit up?" It's sad, because my understanding about Merryweather was that he had 3-4 major league calibre pitches and that it was only his constant injury history preventing him from making a big breakthrough. So now I am beginning to wonder whether the cumulative injury toll has diminished his capacity to throw 3 (or even 2) good secondary pitches which, as Andrew points out here, diminishes the effectiveness of the electric fastball. A shame if true.
Merryweather needs at least one more good pitch. Sure Jordan Romano also has a lights-out fastball, but his slider is also first-rate and helps sets up the former. I hope Julian can regain this as it would be a shame to see him flame out.
I relish a timely out field apprehension as much as the next chap but yearn for the recrudescence of Master Seeds, as the deployment of Raimel Tapia in proximity to the upper crust of the line-up is a disconcerting state of affairs.