The Power of Three?
The Blue Jays played yet another nail-biter on Tuesday, holding on to beat the Brewers in Milwaukee. Yusei Kikuchi overcame an uneven performance from home plate umpire Quinn Wolcott to pitch five traffic-laden shutout innings. Yimi García continued his outstanding season with an overpowering four-out save. And newly minted leadoff man Spencer Horwitz was 2-for-4 with a walk and an RBI.
Good performances all—and there were others. But that's not why I'm rushing together a quick late night post without really knowing the point I'm ultimately going to make with it. The reason I'm doing that is because of a seemingly innocuous insurance run that the team scored in the ninth inning.
George Springer led off the frame with a walk. Isiah Kiner-Falefa flied out to right field. Davis Schneider hit into a fielder's choice that forced Springer at second. Horwitz walked. And then Danny Jansen pulled a double into the left field corner, cashing Schneider.
Had that not happened—and had Yimi gone on to close out the game anyway—the Jays would have won 2-0.
Remarkably, that would have meant this was already the 26th game this season in which the Jays had scored two runs or fewer. Somewhat less remarkably, considering how hard it is to win while barely scoring runs, it would have been just their second victory in such games. (You can see all of those results below. Count them if you want! I think I did it about 17 times myself, because what’s coming next is kind of mind-blowing—or at least felt that way when I first saw it…)
Instead of this game being the Jays’ 26th with two runs scored or fewer, Jansen’s RBI double gave the team a 3-0 win. They therefore remain just 1-24 in those games. That’s the bad news.
The good news is that they’re still hanging around the .500 mark, and currently find themselves at 33-34 overall.
And the seemingly bananas news is that those two records mean that in games when they’ve scored three or more runs the Blue Jays are 32-10.
THREE RUNS! 32-10!
THEY SHOULD DO THAT MORE.
Now, that's pretty obvious. Scoring runs, we all know, is good. Anyone could have told you that without looking at a single statistical quirk. Anyone could also tell you that a whole lot of any team's losses are going to come in games when they struggled to put runs on the board.
I mean… the man makes a good point here…
I guess the question I have now that I’m thinking about it a bit more is, is this meaningful? Because it certainly feels very Jays-y. It certainly seems to underline the fact that it was negligent for this front office to not add more offence over the winter. Though, on the other hand, maybe it's telling us that the Jays are a whole lot closer to having a good offence than we realize, and that banking on internal improvements may not have been as crazy as it's seemed.
But is this sort of record even any different than what you'd find with other teams?
I honestly have no intention of doing a full-on research project throughout the night here, but we can at least look at a few other examples. And for this, let's focus on the teams in the race for the third AL Wild Card spot that I was looking at earlier in the week. Here goes...
• The Twins lost 5-4 to the Rockies on Tuesday, taking them to 35-32 overall. They are 0-20 when scoring two or less, meaning that they're 35-12 when scoring three or more.
• Boston fell 4-1 to the Angels on Tuesday, dropping them to 3-20 when scoring two or fewer. They are 30-13 when scoring three or more.
• Detroit also lost 5-4 on Tuesday, in their case to the Nationals, taking their record to 32-34. They are 3-17 when scoring two or less, meaning they're 29-17 when scoring three-plus.
• The Rays are 4-21 when scoring two or fewer, and with a 5-2 win over the Cubs on Tuesday they now sit at 32-35 overall. That means they're 28-14 when scoring three or more.
• Texas is in the process of getting beat up by the Dodgers as I'm writing this, so we'll just take their numbers through Monday. When scoring two or fewer through Monday they were 2-21, versus a 31-34 record overall. So, when scoring three or more they're 29-13.
• Lastly we have Houston, who beat the Giants 3-1 to go to 31-37. They're 1-21 scoring two or less, meaning they're 30-16 scoring three or more.
I've gotta say, I'm not feeling like this is as meaningful a stat as it appears when you just see that eye-popping 32-10 mark for the Jays. But let's follow through and look at a crappy little table of what we just learned…
The Jays do seem to have been better served than these other clubs when scoring three-plus runs so far this season, but does that mean that going forward they'll be significantly better off if they start scoring more? Are they a juggernaut waiting to be unleashed if they can just produce a little more offence? I don't think we can say that.
But I'd sure as hell like to see them give scoring more runs a try and see what happens. No harm no foul, right? (Hey, and speaking of which, that's a phrase I think would also be worth keeping in mind when you consider which simpleton tweeted this stuff out into the world in the first place. *COUGH*)
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You wearing Khakis? 😀
Coming at this from a slightly different direction, if they’re down by 3, I go do something else. This is the first season (and I hope the last), that I’ve ever done this. No faith in the offence.
And it compounds because then Schneider will naturally rely on lesser bullpen arms. Not that those guys are any worse than previous versions of the pen. Just that it makes it even less likely that the offence can overcome the initial deficit and whatever the relievers give up. Or at least that’s what it feels like to someone who has no faith in the offence.