Three Up!: Jays @ Yankees - Game 5/162
On Kikuchi, the catching situation, cold bats, and more!
The Blue Jays played game two of a four-game set in New York and, uh… it was a pretty forgettable one. Particularly for starter Yusei Kikuchi and his battery-mate Tyler Heineman.
So let’s talk about it!
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It was just one of those games for the Jays in the Bronx here on Tuesday night. If you watched this one you won’t be surprised to learn that tonight we’re going with three down!
Down: Yusei Kikuchi
No, the Jays don’t have an issue in their starting rotation. The odd dud can happen to anyone, and starters are particularly vulnerable right now, after the compressed spring training the league just went through. I don’t think it’s surprising to have seen some early struggles here — even if Yusei Kikuchi’s counterpart in this one, the Yankees’ maddening lefty Nestor Cortes, certainly didn’t have an especially difficult night. There’s no reason to change what we think about this group.
But when it comes to Kikuchi — who, to be fair, was given a tough assignment here, throwing for the first time to newly promoted catcher Tyler Heineman (who, I assure you, we’ll get to) — what we always thought, or at least should have, is that some patience is required.
That, too, continues to be true, as Kikuchi struggled out of the gate in this one. giving up hard contact all over the place while leaving a ton of pitches — particularly his slider (yellow) and cutter (brown) — out over the plate.
Kikuchi needed a couple of great plays from outfielders Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and Teoscar Hernández to get out of the first unscathed, and even though the runs he did manage to surrender were somewhat unlucky — a home run that wouldn’t have left the yard in any other park…
… and a brutal throwing error from his catcher (which, again, we’ll get to) — he can’t exactly feel hard done by here. It was ugly.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that there may be a fairly simple way out of this for Kikuchi. As noted in manager Charlie Montoyo’s comments after the game, once the lefty started to throw his four-seam fastball more, things began to improve for him.
As noted in the tweet above, none of the twelve balls in play that Kikuchi allowed on Tuesday came on the four-seamer. The velocity on the pitch was up, at 95.5 mph on average, compared to a 2021 average of 95.1 mph. And I think it’s safe to say that the Jays will probably be trying to get him to throw it more often. He used his four-seamer just 32% of the time in this one, which is down even from his 2021 mark of 35%.
For a guy who, as many noticed when he was acquired, has an arsenal that Statcast sees as most similar in terms of velocity and movement to 2021 Robbie Ray, more fastballs certainly makes sense. Ray threw his four-seamer 60% of the time last season, on his way to the AL Cy Young award — a significant bump from the 51% rate he threw it at in 2020.
The time for Kikuchi to start leaning on it more was yesterday. And while I don’t imagine we’ll see him get up to 60% usage in his next start, I certainly expect to see that number go up. There’s no other direction for him to go after an outing like this one!
Down: The catching situation
There is no need to get ridiculous about the Jays’ catching situation right now, but it’s obviously not in a great spot. And, unfortunately, that was by design. Sort of.
No, the Jays obviously didn’t plan on Danny Jansen being injured and out for “several weeks” with an oblique strain. They very much would not have chosen that outcome for their top backstop!
It also wasn’t by design that top prospect Gabriel Moreno was unable to get out of Venezuela because of visa issues earlier this spring, which cost him a whole lot of valuable time working with the Jays’ big leaguers in Dunedin.
But with Jansen hurting, Moreno in no position to be rushed to the majors just yet, and Reese McGuire traded, they’re down to Alejandro Kirk and a couple of guys who — had they both been here — would have started the year as the number five and six catchers on the depth chart. Not ideal!
Yet while Jansen is a good player who has shown flashes of his long forgotten offensive potential this year and at the end of the last one, let’s maybe not make him into the guy holding everything together for this team, huh? The Jays won 91 games in 2021. Jansen made just 205 plate appearances.
And while McGuire is certainly better than Heineman — if we use Steamer600, which doesn’t account for playing time and simply projects a full season of plate appearances for every player, McGuire’s 2.8 WAR easily tops Heineman’s 0.8 WAR — feeling like losing a guy like him is in any way a problem is a pretty incredible luxury!
Yes, the Jays could use McGuire right now, mostly because… well… he probably wouldn’t have been out there doing anything as stupid as this — especially in a tight game with his starting pitcher actually showing some signs of life after a rough few innings!
Yet we know why McGuire isn’t here! First and foremost, it’s that he’s just not very good either. Defensively, sure. And right now, with that one glaring example of Heineman’s potential deficiencies being really the only thing we know about him, I suppose having McGuire’s glove would be comforting. But we’re talking about a guy with a 79 wRC+ over 404 career plate appearances, which is probably even flattering, based on his minor league track record.
Really, he’s had a few brief spurts — pun intended — of batted ball luck that have driven his otherwise meagre production.
Maybe you could say that about most guys, but I don’t think anybody should be believing in those peaks more than they do the troughs — which seems to have been precisely where the Jays were at, both when they designated him for assignment last year, and when they took a chance on Zack Collins (and his one remaining minor league option) a few weeks ago.
Had they waited on making that deal, it may not have been available to them later on. And when McGuire was inevitably sent down, they’d have ended up with nothing.
Now, based on his first few plate appearances with the Jays, it sure as hell looks like Collins isn’t going to be much more than nothing himself, but they see something there that they like. And something is, at least the last time I checked, better than nothing.
What that move meant, of course, is leaving themselves a little bit exposed in the event that Jansen were to get hurt before Moreno was ready to pitch in. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what’s happened.
But here’s the thing: it won’t be as bad as it seemed during Tuesday’s game. Kirk will get the majority of starts with Jansen out, and while he’s maybe not the greatest defensive catcher in the world, let’s not forget that he was also getting fairly regular starts for this team down the stretch in 2020, as they successfully pushed for a playoff spot. Heineman will probably won’t do anything as boneheaded as that pickoff throw again. And Moreno had a couple of hits in his season debut for Buffalo here on Tuesday — plus he made a nice sliding catch on a foul ball, and threw out a would-be base stealer as well.
(Of course, the catch was partly because he lost the ball in the first place. Still impressive though!)
Collins and Moreno may not be switching spots in the next few days or anything like that, but it may not be very long before that happens. Then, in a few weeks, when Jansen returns, ideally Heineman gets optioned back down and we never have to talk about him or McGuire again. Looking forward to it, personally!
Down: The cold bats
Nothing to see here, really. But going 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position isn’t great! Especially after going 0-for-7 in Monday’s win.
Meh.
Other notes
• A good point here, I think. Like I say, it was a forgettable game, and the offence was pretty nonexistent, but this team will keep putting itself into positions to win, even if it doesn’t happen every night.
• Don’t get me wrong, while I’m completely unbothered by the Collins-McGuire deal, I’m under no illusions as to how it looks at the moment. Which… uh… yeah…
I do think the Jays clearly have some ideas as to how to get more out of his bat, though. Not sure if what we’re seeing is him responding slowly to an adjustment quite yet — he’s always been prone to strikeouts, if never not quite like this!
• The defensive improvements have been noticeable!
• Dan Syzmborski does great work for FanGraphs, including his most recent one, which is on pitching breakout candidates for 2022. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a bit of a chuckle when I saw a big picture of Yusei Kikuchi on their tonight. (I still think he’ll be right in the long run, though!)
• There were a couple roster notes from prior to the game that are worth passing along. One is that Ryan Borucki threw a 30-pitch simulated game on Tuesday, as he gets closer to a return. The other is that Nate Pearson, who is farther away due to his ongoing battle with mononucleosis, but was able to throw from 90 feet.
• Like I was saying!
• Lastly, before the game I joined Jason Strudwick on Edmonton’s TSN 1260 to preview the just-underway Blue Jays season. Have a listen!
Next up: Wednesday, 7:05 PM ET: Jays @ Yankees (José Berríos vs. Gerrit Cole), TV: Sportsnet One, Radio: Sportsnet590
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Brief spurts...
47 standing ovations.
This season is all about the vibes for me and I'm getting serious Socrates Brito vibes when I see Zach Collins at the plate.