Three Up: Jays @ Pirates (4/1/22)
On Montoyo's extension, adding Phelps, tinkering Kikuchi, and more!
Break out the bongos. No, it’s not an April Fools gag. The Jays played the Pirates in Bradenton today, but first they had a little bit of business to take care of.
So let’s talk about it!
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The Blue Jays and the Pirates played a game on Friday afternoon. The score didn’t matter. The winner didn’t matter. Actually, there was no winner. Here’s three up.
Up: Charlie extended
I joked when I woke up and saw the news that I was glad to have missed all the Twitter takes about the Jays’ announcement that manager Charlie Montoyo has been extended through 2023, but honestly, after scanning around a bit, I didn’t see a whole lot of that.
Maybe that’s because it’s just an extra year tacked on in order to keep him from going through the season as a lame duck. Maybe it’s because I’ve muted or blocked a ton of the most virulent of the frothing anti-Charlie masses. Or maybe it’s because his leading a team to a playoff berth followed by a 91 win season has bought him a whole bunch of goodwill.
It should have!
But more than that, I think Charlie deserves a ton of goodwill simply because of the way his players seem to feel about him. His strategizing can certainly be frustrating at times, and that can’t just be waved away. But not only is that the product of a “collaborative process,” as Ross Atkins might say, much more than many armchair managers like to believe — as recent comments from new bench coach John Schneider, I think, make clear — it is also just the tip of the iceberg.
When I think of this extension, I think of what Teoscar Hernández said on that same telecast last Sunday as when Schneider spoke:
“I don’t really see Charlie as my manager, I just look at him as one of my mentors. And the team, his part of the thing, I don’t see that many managers having the relationship that he has with us as a player.”
Or I think of this comment from a recent Rosie DiManno piece about top prospect Gabriel Moreno, who arrived to camp late due to visa issues and was unable to get into a single Grapefruit League game before being assigned to minor league camp:
Instead he was called into manager Charlie Montoyo’s office and informed he’d been optioned, directed to the minor-league side of the development complex, with the less swanky clubhouse. Around the corner and a world away. Deep Fungo tells us Moreno required fatherly consolation from the skipper.
Because it’s Rosie it’s written with some ridiculously pointless flourishes, but you get the picture.
Could the Jays have found a “clubhouse dad” who knows not to bunt with two strikes? Perhaps. Perhaps. But it doesn’t take long listening to Atkins or Mark Shapiro to pick up on how much they value, and how much they think about, leadership and culture. And clearly they seem to not be bothered by having a manager who occasionally — with help from his coaches and whoever else is involved in pre-game planning — lands on the wrong side of a coin flip, or makes a decision that on the surface looks slightly less ideal than another decision he could have made. Clearly they think that the things he does behind the scenes far outweigh whatever shortcoming he may have as a tactical manager. And while that can’t — and won’t — absolve him from criticism the next time he does something profoundly weird, they’re the ones who’d know! They see it every day.
As do the players. And as long as Charlie has them on his side, I think it’s really hard to argue that he shouldn’t be here. It’s probably not as simple as saying that Charlie will be here for as long as Vlad wants him here, but… well… that might be a good way to think about it the next time you start feeling yourself getting worked into a lather!
So this one gets an “up.” Charlie is only as frustrating as you allow him to be. It’s good that he’ll be sticking around.
Up: David Phelps added to the 40-man
While he technically doesn’t have an Opening Day roster spot sewn up just yet, it’s hard to read the Jays’ announcement here on Friday that David Phelps has been added to the 40-man any other way.
Per Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet, Phelps had an opt-out in his minor league deal that prompted the Jays to act early, so I suppose there's still a chance that they cut him loose before the end of the week. And, frankly, on the surface his spring numbers don't look all that great — four hits and three earned runs allowed in just 2 2/3 innings of work, with a dearth of whiffs. But clearly he's been working on things, leaning heavily on his secondary offerings (in the two games Statcast provides data for). The stuff seems to be back after he was shut down in May of last year to have surgery on a lat strain, so I think the results are not really a worry.
He also doesn't necessarily sound like a guy who feels like he’s out there fighting for a job.
Per Ben, Phelps will earn a base salary of $1.75 million provided he makes the Opening Day roster. That money will become guaranteed if he does indeed go north with the club, and he'll be able to double that salary with a series of incentives based on the number of games he appears in.
Adding him leaves one 40-man spot still open for the Jays, which will presumably go to Greg Bird, though there’s a chance transactions could still be made as teams around the league get closer to making their final cuts.
As for the bullpen, there really only seems to be one or two spots still to be decided. Jordan Romano, Tim Mayza, Yimi Garcia, Adam Cimber, Trevor Richards, and Ross Stripling are locks. Phelps appears to be in that group as well. I tend to believe that Julian Merryweather will make the club, and I have to think that the best place for Nate Pearson is in a multi-inning bullpen role rather than in Buffalo. That leaves one spot, likely for a lefty, which ought to belong to Tayler Saucedo, who has allowed only one hit, no walks, and struck out eight in just 4 1/3 innings of work this spring. Andrew Vasquez and Ryan Borucki — who is out of options, and also had to be removed from the game here on Friday after stumbling on the mound — are also in the mix.
Up: Yusei Kikuchi
Yusei Kikuchi wasn't perfect in his third spring start for the Blue Jays, but it certainly felt like a step in the right direction. His velocity remains one to two mph down compared to last year on all four of his offerings, and he once again surrendered a home run, but over 3 2/3 innings of work he allowed just four hits and a walk, and just one run, as he struck out five — much better than the bloodbath against the Phillies his last time out, when he allowed five runs on six hits (including three home runs) and two walks, while striking out just two.
What was most interesting to me about this one, however, was that he hit a couple of batters — something he's only done 11 times in 365 2/3 career big league innings.
In and of itself that's just a footnote, but if we look at his Statcast page we find something rather interesting. On average his cutter had five more inches of vertical break than his average last season. In his previous two starts the pitch was much more in line with 2021.
It could just be a bad day with command. Or it could be that the tinkering has commenced.
To that point, I don't know if this was deliberate, but his spin rate was down on all of his pitches in this one compared to last year, and compared to his previous starts. Somewhat significantly so for the cutter (-112 RPM compared to 2020) and slider (-119 RPM).
Break-wise, the slider doesn't appear to have been especially abnormal, but he certainly did a better job of keeping them away from the heart of the plate than he did against the Phillies — even if it meant he threw some funky ones.
Again, it’s entirely possible he was simply having trouble locating and as such became more unpredictable than usual. But given who he is, and where he needs to get to, we know he’s going to be trying to do things a little bit differently at some point. He was always going to be a bit of a project. And at least this time the results on the surface were decent. (Though it must be noted that the Pirates don’t have a Bryce Harper. Hell, they don’t even have a Bryce Florie. Take it all with a grain of salt — and hope those velocities start to trend up a bit!)
Other notes
• Quintana, man. That creep can roll.
• Borucki would probably be wise to take an IL stint at this point. He's allowed two runs on four hits (one homer) and two walks so far this spring, with just two strikeouts in 3 1/3 innings.
• Another nice outing in this one for new father Adam Cimber, who Arden Zwelling profiled for Sportsnet in a piece published today. “I don't think there's a team in the league that would have been a bigger blessing to be traded to,” Cimber, who was acquired from the Marlins last summer (and still wears their colours on his glove), tells him. “We've got something pretty special going on this year and for years to come. So, I'm just thankful and blessed to be a part of it. I couldn't be any more psyched to be around this group.”
• What is it they say about any headline that ends in a question mark?
• A fading Belgium, a past it Croatia, and a Morocco team with a coach who won’t even put Hakim Ziyech in the squad? Yeah, I’d say that’s a pretty good group for Canada to have ended up in, all things considered.
• Lastly, no, seriously, I’m serious, I still haven’t forgotten about your mail bag questions! Feel free to submit some more if you’ve got them. I’ll be getting to it, uh… very soon!
Next up: Saturday: Jays vs. Phillies in Dunedin (José Berríos vs. Zack Wheeler). TV: Sportsnet, Radio: Sportsnet 590
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