Three Up: Oh! A Man
On Manoah and The Narrative, Vlad's flip, Kirk's feet, the standings, the schedule, roster moves, lining up the rotation, Moreno, White, Hand, Kikuchi, the latest international amateur scandal & more!
Because of Tuesday’s loss, on Wednesday night the Blue Jays ran the risk of undoing all of the outstanding work they’d accomplished in Monday’s doubleheader sweep. Not only would failure to win have meant failing to to capitalize on a massive opportunity to put more distance between themselves and the pesky Baltimore Orioles, it would have meant failing to keep pace with the teams ahead of them in the standings, and failing to close the gap in the season series — an important potential tiebreaker, should it come to that, because the league did away with tiebreaker games when they expanded the playoffs from 10 teams to 12 — which the Orioles, as of Wednesday morning, led 7-to-5.
Fortunately for the Jays, one man was absolutely not going to let any of that happen.
Here’s Three Up…
Up: Alek Manoah
There has been a lot of moaning this season about the Blue Jays and their lack of pitching development in recent years. Much of that has been entirely valid, but a lot of it ignores a particular elephant in the room. Or, perhaps, some… uh… other kind of beast. (iykyk)
I’ll admit to having fretted a little bit about Manoah as the season has worn on. His Stuff+ took a dip after the All-Star break, and as he ventured into uncharted territory it has sometimes been hard to fully believe that the Blue Jays feel he can keep on going out there with no restrictions on him — or that they wouldn’t at least have maybe tried to give a bit of a break to a guy who blew past his career high for innings pitched sometime in late July, if the back of their rotation hadn’t been such an absolute mess. But obviously he has responded with aplomb.
The fact that Manoah only racked up five strikeouts belies just how utterly dominant he was on Wednesday night. He allowed just three hits on 95 pitches over eight innings of work, retiring 22 of the final 23 batters he faced, his only blemish being a single run scored in a mildly wobbly bottom of the first.
Manoah has done this kind of thing all season, but especially lately. Prior to the game I noted that he came into this one on the back of his best three-start stretch of the season in terms of earned runs allowed, as you can see in the following chart from Props.cash — player prop research made easy!
I guess we can now make that four, which was exactly what Manoah expected of his night all along.
When I started writing about baseball — or, more accurately, when I started to realize that there was an audience for the dumb things my friends and I were writing about baseball — I spent a lot of time poking at old school narratives and archetypes that were long overdue to be torn down. Moneyball was an inspiration in that regard. The blog Fire Joe Morgan was an inspiration, too. And while I'd say that we're far better off for pushing aside stupidity like trashing the objectively excellent A.J. Burnett for being a ".500 pitcher," likening managers to generals in battle, acting like teams that lose don’t want to win enough, or overly lionizing RBI Men who happen to have the good fortune of having teammates that frequently get on base ahead of them, I'd be lying if I didn't acknowledge that a guy like Manoah gets me thinking a little differently about at least one of those old, rejected tropes.
The pitcher with the will to win. With guts. With determination and presence and confidence enough to make up in spades for any other shortcomings he may have.
Of course, it doesn't hurt that he's really effing good.
Look beyond just the colour shades of those percentile rankings and you see something completely fascinating. Manoah is exactly league average at generating strikeouts, and about as close to average as you can get in terms of fastball velocity and at generating swing-and-miss. He's only really been elite at suppressing hard contact, and simply very good at everything else.
You'll see a lot more red if you go to the Baseball Savant pages of Max Scherzer, Shane McClanahan, and the like, and yet Manoah has been just about as effective this season. And you'd be just about as happy to have him starting a big game for your team, too.
What I think was far too often missed in those bygone days of shouting about “scouts vs. stats” was how often the two schools of thought actually align, or how much of the divide often came down to language. For example, those who watch Joe Siddall’s consistently excellent breakdowns of certain aspects of the game will have heard him eschew the term “pitch framing” but talk about the art of “receiving.” There was a great moment on Wednesday’s Sportsnet broadcast when Dan Shulman discussed leverage index with the decidedly more old school Pat Tabler, and while you could tell that he wasn’t familiar with this particular numer, Tabby obviously understands the concepts that underpin it.
When it comes to Manoah, the data does tend to back the narrative.
This season Manoah may have backed off in terms of strikeouts a little bit compared to last year, when his K% was in the 79th percentile, but he's done so in the name of pitching deeper into games — his average number of innings per start has gone from 5 2/3 in 2021 to 6 1/3 in 2022 — while entirely maintaining that elite hard contact rate (in 2021 he was in the 93rd percentile). And he does have more velocity than he shows, on average, because he does hold his best stuff back a little bit for later in games. On Wednesday, 15 of Manoah's 20 hardest pitches came in the fourth inning or later, with nine of those being in the sixth or later.
Per Sportsnet’s Arden Zwelling, 19 of the 28 batters Manoah faced were retired on four pitches or fewer.
The idea of an old fashioned bulldog pitcher growing into the game, pitching to contact except when necessary, and imposing himself on the game with mound presence as much as overpowering heat does have an awful lot of narrative stink on it — I’m thinking about a diesel engine here for some reason — but there is something to it here, I think.
It is absolutely not the only thing, of course. Manoah can be successful this because his slider is a true weapon. In the most recent Stuff+ update from Eno Sarris of the Athletic, Manoah — though his numbers have dipped somewhat over the course of the season —ranked 17th. That placed him just behind Julio Urías and Clayton Kershaw, and just ahead of Cristian Javier and Spencer Strider.
What that means, though, is that there’s something for everyone to like about this Manoah kid. Not least of which is the way that he refused on Wednesday to sink to the level of Bryan Baker or the gong show of an umpiring crew and simply buried the Orioles and got on the plane. Just like he’d planned.
Up: Everything else
OK, so maybe not everything else. The injury Lourdes Gurriel Jr. suffered while lunging at first base to beat a double play — which he did! which allowed the Jays’ first run of the game to score! — cast a bit of a pall over the proceedings. But hopefully his hamstring isn’t as bad as first feared, and the Jays have already weathered the worst of it by pulling out this victory before an off-day here on Thursday.
Beyond that, though, this was a fun one that never felt like it wasn’t in Manoah’s control.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. made me question his Gold Glove case in the first inning, when his inability to even knock down a ball a few feet inside the first base line led to a two-out run-scoring double off the bat of Ryan Mountcastle, who ended up at third base on the play. But Vladdy made up for that and then some with an incredible, Colón-esque behind-the-back flip to Manoah, who beat Adley Rutschman to the bag for the second out of the third.
And we got to see a couple displays of Alejandro Kirk on the basepaths, which is always a treat. (Audio via Mel Blanc/Hanna-Barbera Productions).
Kirk followed up a four-hit night on Tuesday with a three-hit night in this one, which hopefully means that he’s heating up. The hit that landed him on first base in the clip above was a two-out job with runners on second and third that pushed the Jays’ third run of the night across. Their fourth run came as a result of the play in the clip itself: Kirk bluffed a steal, Rutschman attempted to pick him off as he jumped back toward first, and the ball ended up down the line in right. Bo Bichette scored to make it 4-1 for the Jays. Kirk, perhaps fortuitously on both ends, ended up safe at second.
After that, with Manoah in a tremendous groove and Jordan Romano needing to get some work in in the ninth, it was basically game over.
Up: The Standings
It maybe wasn't the greatest possible night for the Jays in the standings, with the surging Rays winning to maintain a 1.5 game lead on them. But the Mariners lost, the Orioles fell to 4.5 games back, and the memory of that ugly series against the Angels continues to fade — and I'm sure will keep doing so until the first sign of trouble in the Rangers series.
The stupid Rays and the stupid Mariners continue to play very well, but the Jays are at least keeping pace, with all three now 8-2 over their last 10 games.
Here's a look at the wild card standings as they look on Thursday:
The Jays will get the Rays for five games at home next week, with the Orioles to follow for three — all of them massively important.
Only two series with non-AL-East teams remain for the club, a pair of games in Philadelphia in two weeks' time and their series in Texas that kicks off on Friday — which we learned on Wednesday will now feature one of the absolute best prospects on the planet!
Rangers prospect Josh Jung will also be there.
Roster moves! Lining up the rotation!
The Jays announced some roster moves prior to Wednesday’s game, and they were no mere minor ones. Teoscar Hernández was placed on the paternity list — perhaps a reason for his unusual edginess during the donnybrook on Tuesday night — with his return to the club planned to Saturday. Congrats, Teo and family!
Joining him in temporarily being off the roster is starter Mitch White. But those of you who love to be infuriated by baseball need not fret, as White will almost certainly be recalled to pitch in the doubleheader against the Rays on Tuesday.
As it stands, the Jays have Ross Stripling lined up for Friday in Texas, Kevin Gausman on Saturday, and TBD on Sunday. According to a tweet from Arden, as of Wednesday the club was still considering how to setup their rotation for the week against the Rays. He suggests that, because of the off-day here on Thursday, the club could go with Manoah on Monday, which would line him up to pitch against Baltimore next Saturday, as well as against the Rays and Yankees in the weeks ahead. Seems like a good idea!
What I think might happen here is this: Stripling and Gausman won't be available until Wednesday and Thursday against the Rays. If Berríos takes his turn on Sunday and the Jays keep Manoah on his turn on Tuesday, then two of the first three games against the Rays will be bullpen/Mitch White days (Monday, and one of the Tuesday games). Not ideal!
Also not ideal is the fact that if they keep Manoah on Tuesday and push Berríos to Monday, then it will be Berríos lined up for TB/BAL/NYY, while Manoah's third start in that run would be against the Red Sox.
Ideally, then, Berríos would be pushed all the way to Tuesday, we'll see a bullpen day on Sunday, and then White will be added to the roster to pitch in one of the games on Tuesday.
The Jays need not announce this yet, though, because something could change between now and Sunday. Including, but not limited to, the fact that if things go awry on Friday and Saturday in Texas, they could go to Berríos then to help stem the tide — questionable a move as that might be based on this season's performance.
Pop and Circumstance
Anywho! Heading the other way for White and Teoscar were catcher Zach Pop and number one Jays prospect Gabriel Moreno.
Moreno comes up with considerably less fanfare than when he first arrived back in early June, though he's been incredibly solid at the plate since returning to Buffalo in mid-August. Over 26 games (117 PA) he's slashed .304/.393/.441 with a pair of homers and eight doubles. He's walked 12 times (10.3%) to 19 strikeouts (16.2%), and produced a 128 wRC+.
I can't say that I know what the plans are for him during this recall, but Wednesday's injury to Lourdes Gurriel Jr. means that it's possible his spell won't be as brief as was maybe thought at first. If Gurriel doesn't need much, or any, time off, then it's possible Moreno goes back down when Teoscar returns. But it's certainly notable that, even though it was related to Monday’s doubleheader, Alejandro Kirk was behind the plate for a third consecutive day on Wednesday. Maybe this is a way to keep his workload from getting too out of whack. Giving Moreno some time to work with White, who will remain with the club rather than schlepping off to Buffalo, probably also couldn't hurt. Considering some of the issues the White-Kirk battery has seemed to have, getting someone else back there with the beleagured new swingman is something worth exploring.
Speaking of White, on our most recent podcast, I likened him to Brad Hand. You can take that a couple ways I guess, given that Hand was last season's big trade deadline disaster. But what I actually meant was to be kinder to White who, for whatever reason, Jays fans have seen the absolute worst of. This has, as with Hand, made some assessments of him as a pitcher — not his performance, which has been dogshit, but his abilities as a pitcher — perhaps a little overly harsh. It think it’s worth noting that Hand pitched to a 2.70 ERA over 16 appearances for the Mets after being jettisoned by the Jays last summer. He's got a 2.41 ERA in 50 appearances for the Philles this year. (Albeit with some pretty ugly peripherals, which... maybe it's just best if we never speak of Brad Hand again!).
Other notes…
• One option I didn’t mention in the rotation stuff above was Yusei Kikuchi. His continued presence in the bullpen is potentially another factor that would lead the Jays to line their rotation up as I suggest, as it would certainly be preferable to have him pitch a bunch on Sunday in Texas than to having anything to do with that Rays series. If he does that, though, it won’t be as a starter.
Honestly, I don’t hate this — and not just because it means as few innings for Kikuchi as possible. All year Kikuchi has seemed to struggle with fastball release, and I think there’s something to be said for having him throwing fastballs in a competitive environment more often than once every five days if the idea is to find some consistency with it. Maybe? I don’t know! Ugh.
Also, in four of his last five outings he’s actually been much more of a slider-fastball guy, rather than a fastball-slider one. Obviously with him it’s possible that he simply couldn’t find his release point and shied away from the fastball, but we definitely see more of those types of relievers these days. And, to a minimal extent, it might be working. Or, at least, his last three outings haven't been horrific. Over his last — lol — 3 1/3 innings he's allowed six hits (one a cheapie on Tuesday in Baltimore), but has walked just one batter while striking out seven. Obviously we're not at a point yet where anyone is going to want to see him come into anything close to a meaningful situation — Tuesday was egregious enough for most people, and that was the day after a doubleheader in which the starter couldn't get out of the third! — but progress is progress. Y'know, until it isn't.
• He’s pitching this year.
• Extremely good and satisfying thread here from Sportsnet’s Chris Black on various times Bryan Baker has been a complete weirdo to the Blue Jays.
• Let me be blunt: this is awesome.
• This, on the other hand, is absolute garbage. Jeff Passan of ESPN reports that a pair of teenage prospects in the Dominican Republic are suing the Los Angeles Angels in that country, alleging that the team reneged on verbal agreements to sign them. "A practice that has grown increasingly common amid a landscape with limited regulation by Major League Baseball," he says.
Amateurs who reside outside the scope of the MLB draft (which only includes players in the US, Canada, and Puerto Rico) and the agreements that MLB has with leagues in Japan and Korea, are generally termed international amateur free agents, or July 2 free agents — so named because that is the (usual) official signing date for each new prospect class. Increasingly we see more of these players coming from around the globe, like the Blue Jays' Dutch prospect Sem Robberse (who was recently the subject of an excellent and lengthy profile from Sportsnet's Shi Davidi), but the bulk of these players are still generally from the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. These players aren't allowed to sign contracts until they are 16 years old, though 15-year-olds are allowed to come to agreements with clubs provided they turn 16 during the current international signing period. Many, however, have handshake deals that teams are under no obligation to honour and, as Passan notes, seems to happen with some regularity.
In this case it's a couple of former Blue Jays executives — Angels GM Perry Minasian and senior director, international scouting, Brian Parker — caught up in it, though I think it would be very unfair to act as though they're the only ones involved in unethical practices in this part of the baseball world. They're also not the ones who contravened the rules by agreeing to deals with players before they were eligible — Billy Eppler's front office did that, another very common practice that MLB constantly turns a blind eye to. We hear reports of players "linked" — *WINK* — to clubs before they're eligible all the time.
But what is, in my opinion, most egregious here, and has spurred the lawsuit, is the fact that not long after Eppler was fired and replaced with Minasian in November 2020, the Angels decided to go another direction. Unbound by any formal agreement, Passan reports that "less than a month before the Jan. 15, 2021, signing date, Angels employees told Fañas and Pavon they would not offer them formal contracts."
Pretty gross, guys!
Though, in a way, maybe it can ultimately be a win for what’s right and good. There is video, which Passan tweeted, showing the what should have been a life-changing moment for Pavon. Filmed by an Angels employee in January of 2019, the 15-year-old Pavon is told “you are signed.” The deal was to be worth $425,000.
Passan writes:
The cases of Fañas and Pavon are the first known to have multiple hearings in the Dominican justice system, where the law gives greater weight to verbal contracts and their enforceability than the United States, according to lawyers who practice there.
The potential consequences of the civil actions, which were filed in May 2021 and have not previously been reported, are enormous beyond the millions of dollars in damages Fañas and Pavon are seeking. Hundreds of early deals are agreed to by teams and players each year but the practice would be far less prevalent if a judge deems them legally binding, four high-ranking team executives told ESPN.
Get their asses!
• Lastly, a reminder that Nick and I will be back live on Callin at a weird time for our next one: Sunday at 11:30 AM ET.
Be sure to get the Callin app and follow us on there so you can tune in live!
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