Three Up: Jays vs. Tigers (3/31/22)
On Alek Manoah, Piña Power, Julian Merryweather, Jordan Romano, and more!
The Blue Jays and Tigers played on a windy day in Dunedin, as the compressed Grapefruit League schedule winds down. Only five more left after this one.
So let’s talk about it!
⚾ But first let me take a second to try to earn a living. Because if you’d like to receive an immediate email every single time I post something on the site, or would like to upgrade to a paid membership in order to support what I do and help keep these posts free for everybody, you can do all that with just a couple of clicks and I’d be eternally grateful if you did! ⚾
The Blue Jays and the Tigers played a game on Thursday afternoon. The score didn’t matter. The winner didn’t matter. Here’s three up.
Up: Alek Manoah
Four innings, one hit, no walks, three strikeouts, a couple of hit batters, only one ball hit harder that 100 mph (and only two above 95 mph). Other than the length, this was a pretty typical Alek Manoah start.
Which is a crazy thing to say about a guy with just 20 big league starts under his belt, who at this time last year had never pitched above Low-A! And yet... well... this:
It was a bit unfortunate that the Jays scored four runs in the bottom of the fourth, which forced Manoah to have to sit just long enough for the Jays to decide not to run him back out for a fifth inning of work. That limited him to just 52 pitches on the day, which is just three more than he threw in his previous outing. That won’t help him much in terms of building up his arm for the regular season, but such is life in a compressed spring training like this.
Otherwise, it was — lol — vintage Manoah. The average exit velocity Tigers batters produced on eight balls in play was just 82 mph.
OK, so it’s not exactly a murderer’s row there. And Manoah was a little bit off his game in terms of being able to induce whiffs. But on any given day he seems to find a way to make it work, and if guys aren’t able to square him up, well, then that works too.
Also, “Good thing I’m fast, huh?” really was a great line.
Up: Piña Power
In their recent positional power rankings, FanGraphs had Blue Jays left fielders coming in at just 21st in baseball (one of the few categories where they weren't in the top 10 or higher). They note, however, that there's more to Lourdes Gurriel Jr. than meets the eye — something Jays fans have learned over several up-and-down season from the former shortstop. You obviously can't really do this, yet they note that if you "throw out his first 125 plate appearances (27 wRC+) and an 0-for-16 to end the season, and Gurriel had a .315/.363/.538 slash line with 19 homers in 400 plate appearances."
That's at least enough to dream on. Even to just have him start the year off on a better foot could be huge. And so far this spring he's looked on track to do that. Heading into this one he was 8-for-15 with three walks and just two strikeouts. What he hadn't done yet was show some power. That finally arrived on Thursday against the Tigers, as he cracked a 94 mph offering from Matt Manning at the top of the zone over the wall in left-centre.
Maybe even more impressive about the at-bat, however, was how Gurriel got there. After a called strike and a pair of fouls to start the plate appearance, he looked at three straight low-and-away curves to battle his way back to a full count and setup the homer one foul ball later.
He put together a similarly impressive at-bat against Manning in his next trip to the plate, going down 1-2 before working a walk with some impressive discipline.
Gurriel was a guy who, until we learned that he didn’t have an extra year of arbitration after his contract expires, was the subject of a lot of trade speculation. It’s never a good thing for a team to have a player for fewer years, but could that end up being a blessing for the Jays? I’m willing to believe it. He’s a fun guy to watch, and having a pretty eye-opening spring — even for a guy who we know can go on a heater.
Up: Julian Merryweather(‘s first inning)
Oh, wow, has Julian Merryweather struggled to stay on the field and been inconsistent on the mound of late? I didn’t know that! Thanks, internet!
Like, holy shit. Of course any hint of optimism about Merryweather is extended with the most extreme caution. But there’s a reason he’s been given all the opportunity in the world to get healthy and prove he can help a ballclub, and during the bottom of the fifth — i.e. before he came out for the sixth and surrendered a hard lineout and a golfed home run, undoing some of the goodwill he’d built the inning before — he showed exactly why.
In total, Merryweather threw 24 pitches, 20 of which were strikes. Tigers batters swung at 17 of those pitches, and though they did get three hits (one in the ill-advised second inning of work), he genrated eight swinging strikes.
Say what you will about Merryweather, his health, his inconsistency, all of that. We know. But eight whiffs on 17 swings? That's the kind of stuff that you can work with. That's the kind of guy who can really be a weapon. That's the kind of guy who you continue to have patience with.
I know, I know. But I'm not asking anyone to bank on it. I'm not asking for him to be thrown into high leverage spots right now. I'm just saying, appreciate that for the impressive thing it is and let's see where this goes.
Prepare to be disappointed again. I know!
Other notes
• Closer Jordan Romano, who had knee surgery in the offseason (which he’s fully recovered from), apparently rolled his ankle while walking his dog and is considered day-to-day with a “minor ankle sprain.” Fortunately, the Jays expect him to be ready for Opening Day.
Back in December, Rob Longley of the Sun met Otto, the dog in question. (Who is obviously innocent in all this!)
• Mitch and Ethan over at Sports Illustrated are consistently doing great work covering the Jays, just in case you’re not already reading them regularly. Ethan had a great one today, focusing on reliever Tayler Saucedo — who has impressed so far this spring — and what has often been a difficult mental health journey for him.
Saucedo, for his part, was very appreciative of the piece.
• Early Thursday afternoon, Andrew Marchand of the New York Post reported that the Yankees will be moving 21 games from team-owned network YES to Amazon Prime. These games will only be exclusive to Prime in their local market, so the move won’t affect any potential opponents, but it’s still really dispiriting. How do you grow the game if you’re making it so fans can’t watch?
• I already made this joke on Twitter (and was told it’s probably not all that short actually, but what the hell? I’m sure it’s a relatively short helicopter flight from Mar-a-Lago! *COUGH*
• Can’t disagree with this one!
• Hell yeah, baby.
• Saying this here means I’m going to be repeating it below, but whatever. Tomorrow’s game features Yusei Kikuchi, whose spring ERA sits at 9.64. He faces José Quintana, whose spring ERA is 16.20! Get ready for some offence!
• Lastly, 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: Friday: Jays @ Pirates in Bradenton (Yusei Kikuchi vs. José Quintana). TV: Sportsnet, Radio: MLB.com
⚾ Be sure to follow me on Twitter // Follow the Batflip on Facebook // Want to support without going through Substack? You could always send cash to stoeten@gmail.com on Paypal or via Interac e-Transfer. I assure you I won’t say no. ⚾
Hot take prediction. Kikuchi dominates tomorrow.