Three Up!: Extra Winnings!
On a step in the right direction again for Berríos, terrific Bass, Chapman and UZR, Springer, Romano, Gausman, Blue Jays Happy Hour, and more!
The Blue Jays had to scratch and claw and bullpen — and defend — their way to an extra inning victory over the Red Sox at Fenway Park on Tuesday night. But they did it. And did so behind a second straight encouraging José Berríos start — one that actually felt like a José Berríos start, complete with his trademark early wobble followed by ever-increasing dominance as the game went on.
So let’s talk about it! Here’s three up…
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Up: Jose Berríos
I’m sure it didn’t hurt that Berríos was throwing about 1 mph harder than his average for the season, and held that velocity through the game, too. In fact, the fastball to strike out J.D. Martinez in the sixth — the second-last batter he’d face — was the hardest pitch Berríos has thrown all year, lighting up the radar gun at 97.2 mph.
You’d love to see that trend continue, but velocity isn’t everything for Berríos. He produced his second highest average velocity of the year in this one, trailing only his disastrous turn on opening day. He’s also made all kinds of tweaks and changes in recent weeks, which at least for a couple of starts have really done the trick. Sportsnet’s Arden Zwelling did a great job of detailing those changes in his latest, and included the following GIF, which shows the difference between Berríos’s windup between an early-season start at Yankee Stadium, and his start there last week.
“It’s really about his timing,” pitching coach Pete Walker is quoted by Arden as saying. “When your hands move so much prior to release, there's always an issue of timing. And I think it affected him and his release point on his breaking ball.”
Walker talked about “cleaning up” some of Berríos’s movements, simplifying them, and also, as Arden astutely points out, hinted at the possibility that Berríos had previously been tipping his pitches — something that’s been chattered about at various points throughout the season.
“We’ve tried some different things,” Walker explained. “When you’re manipulating the ball. Where you’re manipulating the ball. How you're coming out of your glove, whether it's high or low. Your arm path, your arm swing. You know, if there's ever anything going on with any tipping within the delivery, this would help to simplify it. It might alleviate some of that.”
Sounds good to me. But I think you’ll forgive me if I say that I’m still going to need to see more from Berríos before I fully believe that he’s back to where he should be. It’s been five times so far this year — literally five times! — that he’s appeared to right the ship, and each time it’s only lasted a short while.
Here’s hoping this one finally takes!
Anyway, this game featured a whole lot more worth talking about that just Berríos’s performance.
Up: The Chapman flip
Matt Chapman's UZR this season is 0.9, making this the worst season of his career according to that metric, both cumulatively and by UZR/150. What's weird about this to me is the fact that Chapman, despite having made only five errors this season, is calculated as having an ErrR (error runs above average) of -0.5, when last year his six errors led to him having a 7.1 ErrR. What's weirder still though — and what will thankfully prevent us from having to dig into the intricacies of UZR's formula — is the fact that this is the metric that likes him the best!
According to both DRS and OAA, Chapman has been bog average at third base this season. He’s been zero runs below or above average according to both. As such, the Baseball Reference version of WAR, which bases its defensive calculations on DRS, calculates Chapman's wins above replacement to just 2.6. According to fWAR he’s been worth 3.2 wins. (UPDATE: I originally called fWAR UZR-based, which it used to be, but that is no longer the case. FanGraphs announced back in April that they’ve switched the fielding range component of their version of WAR to Statcast’s OAA, rather than UZR, which ignores plays in which the fielders are shifted. No, really! Tom Tango explained the concepts behind the new model in a 2020 blog post.)
Anyway, here’s a completely insane play that Chapman made on Wednesday night, starting an inning-ending double play with the Jays down 2-0 in the bottom of the third and the Red Sox poised to threaten again.
Yes, that’s a backhanded flip to second base from at least a third of the way toward third — i.e. about 30 feet. According to Sportsnet’s Chris Black, Statcast calculated the flip at 37.4 mph. That’s 60 km/h. If that baseball had been on a bike going that fast John Tory would have found a way to issue it a ticket by now.
I get that one incredible play does not a great defensive season make, and I understand that the metrics we use were created specifically to eliminate the inherent biases of the eye test, but on the other hand: come on!!
That’s one hell of a play, and it’s crazy to me that Chapman — who last year won a Gold Glove behind an 8.7 UZR and +10 DRS — can be hitting nearly as well as he did in 2019 (121 wRC+ vs. 125), when he deservedly got MVP votes, and yet be a full win behind where he would be after 116 games played at his 2019 WAR pace.
He’s still, uh, really, really, really good. And I’d be willing to bet that there are a whole bunch of more sophisticated proprietary metrics employed by teams out there that would say so.
Up: Wow, that’s terrific Bass!
Anthony Bass's return to the Toronto Blue Jays got off to a somewhat inauspicious start. Three days after the trade deadline, he took the ball in the ninth inning of an easy Jays win in Minnesota and, after a strikeout of Tim Beckham, hung a slider to Jake Cave that was absolutely crushed to centre field. The run didn't matter — the Jays still won 9-3 — but Bass's performance didn't exactly win over any of the Jays fans who were underwhelmed by his being the club's most crucial trade deadline acquision, or felt that they had learned all they needed to know about him back in 2020.
It has been a very different story since then.
Since that re-debut, Bass has logged eight innings over nine appearances for the Jays. Over that span he's allowed just three hits (all singles), three walks (one of which was intentional), and zero runs while striking out eight. He's looked exactly like the guy he had been for the Marlins, which was one of the best relievers in baseball. And on Wednesday night, in the bottom of the eight of a 2-2 game, he demonstrated that just about as well as possible.
With left-handed hitters Alex Verdugo and Rafael Devers due up, the Jays elected to go to lefty Tim Mayza to start the frame. The thinking on that one was right, but the results weren't. Verdugo weakly hit a 2-2 fastball on the ground up the middle for a single, then after a J.D. Martinez lineout, Devers singled the other way, down the line and almost into the corner before it was cut off by Lourdes Gurriel Jr., who threw to third, holding Verdugo but allowing Devers to advance to second.
With Mayza having now faced his three batters, the Jays were free to bring in someone else, and it was Bass who got the call. It was an inspired choice.
Over the course of his career, Bass's slider has consistently been his best pitch, particularly to right-handed batters…
…and because of that he has continually increased his reliance on it.
Enrique Hernández learned this the hard way, as he was fed four of them in a row, and swung through all but the one furthest to the outside.
After an intentional walk to the left-handed hitting Franchy Cordero — a sensible move seeing as Bass this year has been fine against left-handers (they've hit .240/.293/.360 against him) but great against righties (.154/.202/.205) — up stepped Bobby Dalbec.
Jays fans on Twitter love — love — to point out when they think one of their players has an uncompetitive at-bat. Well, here was one that would have elicited the same response from Red Sox fans, I think. Dalbec didn't lift the bat off his shoulder for the first two pitches, both sinkers, before he went fishin' — DO YOU GET IT? — for a slider that he completely missed.
Seven pitches, two strikeouts, bases left loaded. Hook, line, and sinker! Er… slider.
Other notes…
• I could have just as easily given George Springer an “Up” section as well, because not only did he drive in the winning run with a scorching double off the Green Monster on the first pitch of extra innings, he has just been stupidly good on the whole since coming off the IL. Like insanely good.
• We all groan about the load management stuff, and it’s been tough sometimes watching Springer grind through another season of injury, but when he’s healthy and on his game there are few better on the planet. The difference he makes to this lineup is absolutely massive.
• I need to mention Jordan Romano, too. The Jays’ closer made it look easy in the tenth inning, stranding the free runner at second base (and another at first after issuing Devers an intentional walk, for good measure), securing the win for the Jays. And he did so throwing primarily sliders — a pitch that he’s been leaning on more and more as the season has worn on, as my Blue Jays Happy Hour cohost Nick Ashbourne points out in a deep dive on the pitch in his latest for Sportsnet.
• The Jays will look to sweep the Red Sox on Thursday night, and have a good chance of doing exactly that, as they’ll be sending Kevin Gausman to the hill. Gausman has somewhat notoriously been getting BABIP’d this season, with opposing hitters producing a .360 batting average on balls in play against him. That’s the highest mark 53 among qualified starters, and the second highest among 94 pitchers with at least 100 innings so far — trailing only the Patrick Corbin’s desiccated corpse.
One way to combat that is through with defence, which the Blue Jays are decidedly not doing here on Thursday, as they’ll be sending Raimel Tapia out to play in centre field for the finale at Fenway. Fortunately for Gausman, he’s done a masterful job all season of limiting the damage potential of his sideways BABIP, not only by striking out a ton of guys — he ranks sixth in the AL with 149 Ks in 129 2/3 innings — but also by not filling the bases with additional runners because of walks. We can see in the chart below from Props.cash — player prop research made easy! — that he’s walked more than one batter just five times in 23 starts. And after having a bit of a mid-season hiccup on the walk front, has gotten back to his incredibly stingy ways in recent starts.
• Here’s something fun that I think might be up the alley of a lot of folks out there. If you’re on Twitter you may have seen some of the incredible, Toronto-centric, multi-tweet historical threads put together by Adam Bunch, an award winning writer and storyteller who formerly taught history at George Brown College. If you’re not on Twitter, or not familiar, his latest is a great place to start:
Starting this Sunday, Adam will be running an online course examining the history of baseball in Toronto, From Sandlot to SkyDome: The History of Baseball in Toronto.
He explains:
"Baseball was being played in Toronto more than a century before the Blue Jays were born. In this online course, we'll explore the game's evolution in our city — from the days when it was a working class sport played by "undesirables" to Joe Carter jumping for joy in front of 50,000 screaming fans. Along the way, we'll meet everyone from con artists and kidnappers to eccentric millionaires and feminist icons — the people who've made Toronto baseball what it is… and helped transform our city in the process."
As you can tell from the thread above, Adam is full of incredible stories and incredibly detailed in his work. The four week course runs every Sunday at 8 PM, beginning August 28th — i.e. this week!
Check out Adam's website for more details, how to register, payment options, etc. It will undoubtedly be a fun and fascinating trip into the history of the city and the sport we love.
• Lastly, don’t forget that Nick and I will be back live here on Thursday night, with a brand new Blue Jays Happy Hour following the final out of the finale between the Jays and Red Sox (first pitch 7:10 PM ET).
Be sure to get the Callin app and follow us on there so you can tune in, drop us a question in the chat, or give us a call. See you then!
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A thought about the wild card race: I think the structure risks making WC3 a better landing place than WC2, creating an incentive for mini-tanking at the finish. It’s already clearly true in the NL. Closer call in the AL, but if WC1 and home field are out of reach, the Blue Jays could easily prefer facing the AL Central winner to whichever of TB or Seattle gets hot enough to win WC1 in a tough field.
Love the Laraine Newman still. Didn't have to look it up, watched it Live....and many times after.