Ugh. The Jays lose three of four in Kansas City.
Plus some injury updates (and the week ahead)!
The Jays lost three of four in Kansas City and now it’s off to Fenway and then the Trop. Whee!
So let’s talk about it!
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3 x 3 x 3
The Jays played a pair of games on Saturday, plus one more here on Sunday, and I haven’t written since before they all started, so let’s rewind a little bit and catch up on the weekend’s action with a little three up, three down — times three!
• Saturday: Game 1 (Jays 5 - 1 Royals)
▲ Steven Matz
He may not have been facing the greatest of lineups (though these Royals are certainly better than the last few years), but Steven Matz was brilliant once again. He's allowed just three runs (earned or otherwise) over 18 1/3 innings so far.
Could the Mets have screwed up by letting this guy go? Hmm. Well, it doesn’t sound like something the Mets would do, but maybe!
▲ Santiago Espinal
We didn’t see Santiago Espinal filling in for Cavan Biggio at third base in Saturday’s game two or on Sunday, which was a shame. I do understand it, because the Joe Panik is a left-handed bat and the Jays are sorely lacking in those — especially with Biggio ailing. But Espinal provided difference-making defence at third in the early game on Saturday, including starting this excellent 5-4 double play when it looked like Rafael Dolis might unravel in the ninth.
He looks like a shortstop playing third, unlike Panik and Biggio, who look very much like second basemen playing third. Espinal’s got three hits in eight plate appearances so far this season, too.
It’s way too early to start seeing him as potentially more than the utility guy the Jays think he is, but he keeps acquitting himself well every time he’s called on. Interesting guy.
▲ Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (obligatory)
With all due respect to Jonathan Davis, who hit his first home run of the season in this one, I’m going to have to go a different way with our last up arrow for Saturday’s first game. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. had nine home runs over 60 games in 2020. He's got four already in 18 games here in 2021, and through 67 plate appearances is slashing .389/.507/.667 with 11 walks to just 11 strikeouts. That, my friends, is very good.
In this one he went 2-for-3 with a walk, a home run, two runs scored, and an RBI. Ho hum.
▼ The seven-inning no-hitter rule
It’s a moot point, because Matz didn’t quite get there, but this idea we kept hearing on Satuday that a seven inning no-hitter doesn’t count as an actual no-hitter? Bull. Shit.
Did the pitcher complete the game? Did he give up any hits? Did the game go the full number of innings as per the league’s rules? Then it’s a no-hitter. Not Steven Matz’s fault Rob Manfred and company decided to make seven-inning doubleheader games official. Stop being toadies, Elias Sports Bureau!
▼ Lourdes Gurriel Jr.’s defence
Was this the game where Gurriel positioned himself poorly or took some severely questionable routes to the ball, or was that all of them lately?
There was definitely an RBI double from Andrew Benintendi that went over Gurriel’s head in this one. "The left fielder, Gurriel Jr., showing no respect to Benintendi,” remarked the Royals’ TV broadcast, “playing him shallow like he's a Punch and Judy hitter.”
I’d say that I don’t know what’s been going on with Gurriel lately, but actually I do know! He’s not a great defender! I’ll grant that UZR says he’s 1.1 runs above average over more than 1,000 career innings in left, but DRS has him six runs below, and the number of times I feel I watch him have to chase a ball to the wall every week tells me to believe the latter.
I don’t think think anything needs to be done about this, per se. He just needs to get better — and I think he’s capable of doing it. He’s not awful. But I’ve talked to people — perhaps swayed by the occasional great throw — who think he’s actually good. Yeah, no.
▼ Rafael Dolis
He’s probably — probably? — just got to pitch his way out of it, but man alive, Dolis is a tough pitcher to watch when he isn’t throwing strikes.* Which is always. He managed to close out this one in just twelve pitches! But the first four of those were balls, the fifth hit the batter, after which point he was completely bailed out by Espinal’s outstanding double play.
This sentiment seems about right to me:
*Also when he is.
• Saturday: Game 2 (Jays 2 - 3 Royals)
▲ The pitching, I guess?
Jays hurlers only allowed a pair of runs through six innings, so they had to be doing something right? I guess? Tommy Milone only lasted 2 1/3 innings and allowed a pair (one cashed after he left the game), which isn't great, but at least as good — maybe even better — than you could expect from Tommy Milone. Anthony Castro, Ryan Borucki, and Trent Thornton kept Jays in the ballgame. And even Joel Payamps, until he hung a centre-cut thigh-high slider that Salvador Pérez walloped, felt like someone who isn't going to fill the fan base with dread every time he takes the ball. I don't know!
▲ The cold bats looking for a second like they might have started heating up?
Rowdy Tellez had a pair of hits in this one, which made it his third straight two-hit game in a row. Alejandro Kirk had an RBI double, giving him four straight games with a hit after staring the season 0-for-his first six games. Lourdes Gurriel Jr., though he was hitless, managed a key sac fly, and in the earlier game had knocked in a pair of runs on a first-inning double, following up on Thursday's two-hit performance.
Am I grasping here? Yes. I'm grasping. But, believe it or not, these were some of the strongest signs of life this trio had showed here in 2021 so far.
▲ Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s speed
Sure, Vladdy’s bat has been a revelation thus far, but another huge plus of the physical transformation he underwent over the winter is the fact that he’s now a whole lot more fleet of foot.
In the fourth inning of this one, Vlad showed off his new wheels, going first to third on a Tellez single after having taken a walk to lead off the inning. He then scored on a Gurriel Jr. sac fly, racing home from third base to beat Jorge Soler’s strong throw from right. I don’t think he’d have been able to pull off either play last season.
▼ Getting walked off
We’ll start our down arrows for this one at the end of the game, because — hoo boy — that was brutal. Joel Payamps may well have a future as a big leaguer, but not if he throws 79 mph sliders that cross the plate where this one did (emphasis mine).
▼ Whatever it was Rowdy was trying to do here
Tommy Milone almost escaped unscathed after giving up a leadoff triple to Jarrod Dyson. Then this happened. Woof.
▼ Bunting with two strikes
In the fifth inning of this one, with Joe Panik at first base an nobody out, Jonathan Davis attempted to bunt. After taking a ball he attempted to bunt again. Then, with two strikes already against him, he attempted to bunt a third time. The ball went foul and he was called out.
Bunting is the wrong choice most of the time. It was especially egregious there, given that Davis has the foot speed to beat out a double play ball, and the fact that in the day's earlier game he'd gone 2-for-3 with a home run.
It was unbelievably, offensively egregious that he'd continue doing so with two strikes.
After the game Davis jumped on a grenade meant for his manager, telling reporters that the bunt sign was off when he chose to keep trying to lay one down with three strikes, taking responsibility for the decision himself. The thing about that is, even if it's true, I highly doubt that he'd have done so if his manager had a different view of two-strike bunts. Charlie Montoyo has been clear in the past that he will let his batters take three shots at getting the bunt down if that's what he's being asked to do. If, instead, Montoyo had a less ridiculous attitude toward two-strike bunting — say, for example, he forbade it because it's stupid — maybe Davis doesn't do that there.
The problem with all this isn’t just that it is a slightly worse strategy than the alternative, or that it really mattered all that much. If Davis had been allowed to swing away with two strikes the outcome of the game probably wouldn’t have changed. But it’s needless stupidity. It’s giving fans one more reason to grouse about a guy — the manger — who is always going to be groused about, and whose job it should be to minimize the grousing. Managers today are PR figures as much as they are tacticians. Maybe more.
There are a lot of Jays fans who don’t think much of Montoyo as a manager, and based on the limited range of things we can see about him, like his in-game strategy, you can’t exactly say they don’t have a case. Clearly the Jays disagree. Their opinion seems to be that the good we don’t see far outweighs the bad that we do. It’s their right to think that way, and I personally tend not to doubt them, but what I don’t understand is why telling Charlie to stop doing this doesn’t seem to be on the table. It’s not like we don’t see other areas where Montoyo’s autonomy gets reined in (lineup construction, off-days, pitcher usage, etc.).
The benefits of sitting him down and putting an end to this are clear: a) he stops doing it, and b) it stops blasting a self-inflicted hole through consumer confidence. So what on earth is the problem here?
• Sunday (Jays 0 - 2 Royals)
▲ Robbie Ray
He didn’t make it easy on himself, but Robbie Ray gutted out five important innings for the Jays on Sunday. You can’t say a bad thing about a performance like that. (No, wait, you can absolutely say a bad thing about a performance like that — see below).
He didn’t have his best stuff, striking out just three batters over five innings. He didn’t have his best control, walking six. Six! But in the Robbie Rayest of Robbie ways, he managed to get the job done. Full credit to him for that.
▲ Two-walk Kirk!
There weren’t a lot of offensive bright spots for the Jays on Sunday afternoon. Know how you can tell? I'm giving an up arrow to a guy who didn't even manage to get a hit.
Alejandro Kirk went 0-for-2 on the day, but for the first time since his season debut on April 4th he managed to pick up a walk. And not only did he pick up one walk, he picked up two!
That makes it the first multi-walk game of his young career. It also doubles his career walk total, which has now gone from two all the way up to four.
If that all sounds a bit sarcastic, that’s because it very much is. But it’s also probably a good sign. In each of his three minor league stops in 2018 and 2019, Kirk walked more often than he struck out. And while his strikeout rate so far in the majors has continued to be nicely below average, the walks haven't been there to this point.
Granted, we're talking about a guy who has yet to reach 100 plate appearances in his young big league career. There was always plenty of time for statistical weirdness to even out, and for his excellent ability to control the strike zone to show up in more than just low strikeout totals. But he came in to Sunday's action with a 4% walk rate for his career, and if that trend continues it would put a huge onus on his ability to generate a high BABIP in order to be a viable big league hitter — something that, as one of the slowest players in the league, he’ll likely have difficulty doing. Kirk needs to walk a bit in order to reach the offensive heights he's capable of. So, even if he didn't get it done with his bat on Sunday, he’s one of the few Jays hitters who can walk away from this one feeling good.
▲ Randal Grichuk
Look, it was either this or praising the fact that Tanner Roark hasn’t been nearly as big and immediate a disaster pitching out of the bullpen as should have been expected.
▼ Robbie Ray
Yes, today’s starting pitcher gets both an up and a down arrow, because while he gutted his way through an incredibly tense five innings, the damage he miraculously avoided incurring would have all been self-inflicted. We got the pumpkin version of Robbie Ray on Sunday. The version that we all hoped had disappeared after his excellent spring training. Ray's ERA for the season now stands at 1.80, but his FIP is 5.56 and his walk rate of 8.1 per nine innings is somehow on (very early) pace to be the worst of his career — an impressive achievement considering his mark last year was 7.8.
The Jays don't need the Ray we saw this spring — at least not as long as Steven Matz is pitching as well as he has been — but they are a far more impressive team with him than without. And while it might, in a vacuum, be easy to give him a mulligan because of the way his spring training ended and the fact that he's not too far removed from bruising his elbow, it would be even easier if we hadn’t seen this movie before.
▼ T.J. Zeuch
Look, I know the Jays are thin in the bullpen, and that T.J. Zeuch has delivered more than anyone could have asked for already in 2021. I still have some serious doubts as to whether a pitch-to-contact guy with such limited ability to miss bats can succeed as a major leaguer in this era, but he’s here, and he wasn’t the worst option Charlie Montoyo could have gone to at the start of the seventh inning on Sunday. (*COUGH* Roark *COUGH*)
But about that!
Hard to argue. Especially having seen the results of Zeuch’s outing. (Not that Dolis is especially confidence-inspiring at the moment!)
▼ The cold bats
If I were the Toronto Blue Jays, I would simply hit the goddamn baseball.
Injury updates (and the week ahead)!
Just quickly, here are a few injury updates that the Jays announced prior to the start of Sunday’s misery.
• Charlie Montoyo confirmed something that Ross Atkins had said in an MLB Network Radio interview on Sunday, which is that George Springer (quad strain) and Teoscar Hernández (COVID-19) are both making progress. They could both return to the lineup next weekend against Rays, Montoyo said, but we shouldn't expect to see them against Boston mid-week.
• Per the MLB Network Radio interview with Atkins, Springer is almost 100%, doing all baseball activities, running, getting reps in the cage, and feeling great doing so.
• Regarding Teoscar, per Atkins, he's healthy and symptom free, the club is just ensuring that "he's safe to enter our environment."
• Pete Walker held court with reporters on Zoom on Sunday morning and also had some tidbits. The first of which is good news regarding Nate Pearson, who will throw a live BP session this week, with the plan being to get him up and down a couple of times. "His velocity is there. His breaking stuff is there. We're excited that he feels good," Walker said.
• Walker also had good news on reliever Jordan Romano, who is progressing well and is expected to be activated once eligible on April 25.
• Tyler Chatwood is also expected to return this week.
• Timelines are not yet imminent for Ross Stripling, Thomas Hatch, or Julian Merryweather. So it's not all good news.
• Hatch will follow the same steps as Pearson has been, which has basically involved starting his ramp-up over again, like he was back to the beginning of spring training.
• And now, lastly, a quick look at the week ahead...
MON: OFF
TUE, 7PM ET @BOS: Ryu (LHP) vs. TBD
WED, 7PM ET @BOS: TBD vs TBD
THU: OFF
Oh, and keep your eyes peeled for a call-out for questions in the next day or so, as I’ll be taking another dip into the ol’ mail bag sometime this week!
I've been thinking about all these injuries, not just for the Jays, but in general. With pitchers it's not surprising given how hard so many are throwing these days. This sort of thing has been well documented by others ,but throwing hard doesn't seem to lend itself well to a lot of innings pitched or longevity in general. In the case of position players, these guys are so incredibly athletic and fit now, but I wonder if this athleticism lends itself to going all out too much...leading to more injuries?
Sometimes I pine for the good old days when players were chubby, drank and smoked...and seemed to play a lot more games each year. Oh, and had moustaches and nicknames and had massive chaws in their cheeks with all sorts of discoloured drool over their uniforms.
Hey! Minor comment/request - some of us watch the games later (or even the next day, if it's a late game/we're busy). Would it be possible not to spoil the outcome of game in the headline? I was actually just about to watch today's game when I checked my email and saw that we lost from the subject line. Cheers!