Weekend review, Charlie's choices, Vlad to the bone, the week ahead, Shapiro Speaks!, and more!
It maybe didn’t feel like it after Friday’s debacle, but the Blue Jays are on a roll, having won seven of their last eight games, despite running out the same disastrous bullpen that has been costing them games all month. So let’s talk about it!
But first, please indulge me while I attempt to make a living. Because if you’ve been sent here by a friend, or are an existing subscriber who would like to move to a paid membership so you can comment, ask questions the next time I open up the ol’ mail bag, or just plain old support what I do, click below to upgrade or become a subscriber. You’ll be helping keep all posts free for everyone, and I will be eternally grateful, too!
Let’s rewind to the start of the weekend and play a little catch-up. By which I mean three up, three down…
Thursday
My internet was rather frustratingly out for two days at the end of the week, and Thursday was one of those days. I could have found a way around that to have watched this game — much as I did to get the podcast up on Friday — but the Jays scored six runs in the first inning against a thoroughly crappy Orioles team, so it didn’t really seem all that necessary. Good win! Vlad is great!
Friday
Ugh.
▲ Vlad
You hate to see Vlad’s good work undone by other people’s mediocrity, as José Bautista might say. But at least Bautista’s problem when he gave that quote with the umpires and not anybody employed by his own team. Vlad’s not complaining, but you couldn’t blame him if he was — at least not on this night. He continues to be brilliant, and the Jays’ inability to find bullpen help continues to jeopardize everything he’s been working for, even if the two games since have been better.
▲ Springer Dinger
The Summer of George is only just barely back on track, and is being upstaged in a big way by his MVP-calibre teammate, but it’s great to see him shaking off the rust. Things will be real fun once he gets flying.
▲ Alek Manoah
He hasn’t yet really been the dominating guy we saw in spring or in Triple-A, but that’s fine and nobody really — really — expected that anyway. Really.
This is about where I’m at with him, too:
▼ Bullpen management
Charlie Montoyo doesn’t make decisions in a vacuum and clearly has plenty of qualities that the Blue Jays love and value more than his ability to always pull exactly the right strings with his bullpen management. But he also is the point man on a lot of decisions that, frankly, are pretty weird. I’m sure there’s plenty we don’t see that goes into certain ones, but as much as I find myself straining sometimes to avoid encouraging more of the dehumanizing vitriol heaped his way online, I wouldn’t be doing my job if I couldn’t acknowledge that.
Plenty of players failed to execute in Friday’s loss who have to take their own share of the blame. And clearly the front office desperately needs to find a way to provide the manager a better bullpen to work with. But did Charlie help or hurt the Blue Jays’ chances to win the game? I think he hurt them, and did so in ways that were clearly foreseeable.
Tyler Chatwood has been better lately, so going to him in the eighth was entirely fine, especially with the score 5-1. But Chatwood still absolutely needs to have someone ready to come in after three batters if it’s clearly not working — and that guy needs to not be Tayler Saucedo.
Granted, Saucedo has been very good in Buffalo this year — 21 strikeouts to just one walk in 16 innings — and he does a good job of generating ground balls. When he entered the eighth inning of game on Friday, with the Jays up 5-2 and runners on first and third and one out, a grounder or a strikeout would have been enormous. There was, therefore, some logic to the move I suppose. But that logic is betrayed by the fact that the team chose to go to someone someone so exceptionally green. Because as much as it would be nice if the Jays could simply bring up fully formed big league relievers from the minors, the jump from Triple-A to the big leagues is huge. And the manager should know this.
Saucedo’s a guy I’d be fine with seeing get a chance to work his way up the bullpen pecking order. Just, uh, maybe don’t drop him immediately into the deep end? And while he did get the ground ball that the Jays wanted in that moment, it was not the one they needed — an absolute rocket, 112.5 mph off the bat of Anthony Santander, which scored a run and again left the team in another first-and-third, one-out situation, this time with the score 5-3.
According to FanGraphs, the leverage index for the next at-bat was 3.35. That’s the highest number any Blue Jays pitcher not named Romano had seen since Rafael Dolis was walked off by the Red Sox in Boston nearly two weeks earlier. Saucedo can’t be the guy you have in that situation, especially if Romano is going to end up pitching in the inning anyway. But, of course, because of the three-batter rule, by then he had to be.
Maybe give the guy making his third big league appearance a chance at a clean inning to work with, eh? Sure, if you go to Romano there you’ll then have to pick your poison to close out the game. But if you end up losing by a lesser reliever’s hand doesn’t that still smell a whole lot better than losing because you coughed up your lead by locking Saucedo into facing three batters at the most crucial point of the game? It certainly does to me.
The other calls I’m much less bothered by, because, like I say, it’s a matter of picking your poison. People wanted to see Joel Payamps at various points of the game, but to me he’s just as likely to blow up as anybody else (and apparently was unavailable anyway). Trent Thornton isn’t my idea of a good relief option but I at least understand going to someone in the tenth — when there’s a runner now automatically placed on third base — who can generate some strikeouts and usually hasn’t been walking guys. (Coming into this one, Thornton in the month of June had produced 13 strikeouts and just one walk over 9 1/3 innings. He also had a 7.71 ERA and four homers allowed in that span, and was predictably bad again. But he also could have escaped it if Grichuk had simply made that catch.)
Still, for me it comes down to this: The manager, the coaches aiding him in making these decisions, and the under-talented group of pitchers at their disposal are being asked to walk a tightrope in every close game. To successfully do that, more than anything else, you to need to not get too goddamn cute about it. And if the rope starts wobbling a few steps from safety, you need to put your best foot forward then and there.
In general I don’t believe Montoyo’s bullpen decisions this year have been as obviously awful as a lot of fans seem to think, and I’ll fully acknowledge that it bothers me how perception of him has snowballed to the point where a significant portion of the fan base seems to think he’s legitimately a dumb person, or that if it were John Schneider using the same data and consulting with the same people that anything would be vastly different. But in the end they’re Charlie’s decisions, and too many of them haven’t been good enough. To the point where I can’t blame people — even the ones trying to be fair — for believing it could only get better with somebody else calling the shots.
It’s untenable to keep assuring fans that qualities we can’t see are so great and powerful that they wipe away whatever concerns arise from what we can see. So until the Jays start winning more games, or give the manager a better bullpen to work with, the perceptions that have already built are going to be very tough to shake.
How much will that matter? I doubt very much as long as we’re only talking about what the fans think. But if players start thinking about this stuff the same way fans do, the Jays could have a real problem on their hands. It will be interesting, as we start to move away from team staged Zoom interviews back toward much broader media access to the clubhouse, whether any fissures of that sort eventually emerge. It’s been a frustrating season so far, and having to talk once a week about something less than ideal that the manager did can’t possibly be helping.
▼ The Bullpen
This is obviously connected to the previous down arrow, but as much as it’s clear that Charlie needs to be better sometimes, it can’t be stated enough that any manager’s bullpen management is usually only as good as the relievers available to him. Right now Charlie’s not got a lot to work with.
Like… now Chatwood's got to rebuild a ton of trust after seemingly starting to turn his death spiral around, having allowed no hits and just two walks over 6 2/3 innings in his eight appearances prior to this one? Oof.
▼ Randal Grichuk
A ton had happened before this moment that could have swung the balance of the game back in the Blue Jays’ favour. Things that would happen after this moment could have done that, too. (Trent Thornton not losing Pat Valaika a pitch later to walk in the go-ahead run; Vlad not hitting into an unfortunate GIDP in the bottom of the 10th). But bruh.
Bruh.
You gotta make that catch.
Saturday
Now this was more like it.
▲ Vlad
Feels like this up arrow is basically automatic at this point. Vlad was 1-for-3 on the day with a pair of walks, but the one hit was a big one. A two-out two-run home run, which followed Bo Bichette’s two-out double, Marcus Semien’s two-out double, and preceded Teoscar Hernández’s two-out home run.
That’s a trick question, by the way. No one can pitch to Vlad.
▲ Hyun Jin Ryu’s first six innings
Ryu cruised through six innings, looking like a complete game might be possible for him. Then in the seventh, with his team up 12-0, he came a little unglued. Was he working on his changeup, as Pat Tabler suggested on the broadcast? Maybe! He threw 26 of them on the day, 11 of which came in his final frame. The most he threw in any other inning was five. So there was clearly something to what Tabby observed.
Whether he was or not, like everything else Ryu was throwing in the seventh, the change wasn’t working. The Jays tried to get him through the inning to spare the bullpen, but four runs later they had to lift him for Jacob Barnes. Before that he'd given the Jays six innings of two-hit, one walk baseball (though he only had struck out two).
▲ Literally everyone else (or close to it)
• Marcus Semien: 2-for-5 with a double and two runs scored.
• Bo Bichette: 3-for-5 with a double, an RBI, and two runs scored.
• Teoscar Hernández: 2-for-5 with a solo shot, three RBIs, two runs scored.
• George Springer: 2-for-5 with two RBIs and two runs scored.
• Randal Grichuk: 3-for-4 with a 3-run homer, an additional RBI, and a walk.
• Lourdes Gurriel Jr.: Almost threw a guy out again.
• Santiago Espinal: 2-for-4 with a run scored.
• Reese McGuire: 0-for-3 with a walk; caught a good game.
• Jacob Barnes: Four up, four down, with a strikeout.
• Joel Payamps: Got over his back troubles (?) with a clean inning, including a strikeout.
▼ Actually, let’s talk about Lourdes
Gurriel has scored a run in five of his last seven games, and had a 232 wRC+ coming into this one over the six games since the Jays started playing the Orioles and Marlins exclusively. His June, to be fair, has been decent. Unfortunately, those are some of the nicest things I can say about his season at this point.
Over 264 plate appearances on the year he's slashing .263/.281/.414. His wRC+ is 86. His walk rate is just 2.7%. He's a fun guy I'd like to see blossom here, and I still think could in time. But he would also look kinda good turned into something like a few months of Nelson Cruz and a relief arm from the dogshit Twins, wouldn't he?
▼ If Joel Payamps was hurt, why wasn’t he on the IL?
At the risk of exactly repeating the heading I’ve used for this portion of this post, uh, if Joel Payamps was hurt, why wasn’t he on the IL?
Paymps pitched only 9 1/3 innings between a meltdown against the Rays on May 24 and June 17. He then got eight days off before pitching again on Saturday. Manager Charlie Montoyo was asked about his availability after Friday’s disaster and said that his back has been “so-so” and that, though he was available, the team was hoping to avoid using him. Back injuries can be tricky, to be sure, but with the team in desperate need of relief help, is keeping a guy on the roster who can’t pitch really the move to be making here? Isn’t that, you know, exactly what the IL is for?
I understand that whoever was getting called up to take Payamps’ place wasn’t going to be a world beater, and I guess the fact that he pitched on Saturday means the issue wasn’t too bad. It just seems weird.
▼ Simeon Woods Richardson
Clearly it was a pretty good day for the Blue Jays if I’m mentioning Woods Richardson here. One of the Jays’ top pitching prospects, SWR got lit up in his start for Double-A New Hampshire. The 20-year-old gave up six runs on four hits and seven (!!!) walked over 2 2/3 innings. Obviously it’s just one start, so it isn’t anything to worry about, but notably bad for sure!
Sunday
There wasn’t a whole lot to dislike about this one, Luis Rivera’s send of Vladdy in the third and Cavan Biggio playing right field not withstanding, so we’ll go with six up…
▲ Ross Stripling
Another good one from Ross Stripling, who has only managed to lower his ERA to 4.27 on the season, but he's been brilliant since making significant mechanical adjustments after getting walloped by the Red Sox on May 19th. Over seven starts since then he's allowed just 11 earned runs (2.45 ERA) while striking out 39 in 40 1/3 innings and walking just 10. He wasn't quite as excellent against the Orioles on Sunday as in some of those starts. The strikeouts were down (three in five innings), the hits were up (six), and Patrick Murphy really bailed him out in the sixth. But Stripling gave the Jays five more very solid innings. His acquisition from the Dodgers last year for prospects Kendall Williams and Ryan Noda was looking for a long time like a rare trade loss for Ross Atkins and company. Not so much anymore. At least not for now.
▲ Jordan Romano
The whole bullpen deserves its due for this one (and will get it below), but Romano has to be singled out here. Not just for his performance Sunday, though he was once again good, pitching a clean ninth inning that he breezed through after a nine-pitch battle to lead-off the frame with Ramon Urias. As the club’s only reliable reliever of late he’s been a godsend. And he’s been doing it through some less-than-ideal circumstances.
▲ The rest of the bullpen
Getting your relievers to bridge the three innings between Stripling's exit and Romano's entrance while maintaining a three-run cushion against a bad Orioles team should be pretty routine. Of course, for these 2021 Blue Jays, such assignments have been anything but, so it's definitely noticeable when things go right. As mentioned above, Patrick Murphy did a good job bailing out Ross Stripling in the sixth. In the seventh, Murphy had his own wobble and was bailed out by Tim Mayza (who only faced one batter, but whose improvement of late was examined in depth by my podcast cohost, Nick Ashbourne, in his latest for Sportsnet). In the eighth, Anthony Castro struck out all three batters he faced. Were the Jays helped by some bad swings from the Orioles? Sure, probably. But full credit to them for getting the ball into Romano's hand with the lead intact. And let’s please see some more of that from Thony.
▲ Vlad
Two more hits, including an RBI double, and a run scored. Ho hum.
Also: LOL.
▲ Cavan Biggio
At 92.2 mph, Biggio's average exit velocity for the month of June is tied with June 2019 for the highest of his career. The number is definitely an outlier — he was at 87 in May, 88.3 in April, and averaged just 86.9 last season — and the sample is small, but it bears watching. The knock on Biggio, back when it was a little more fashionable to do so, is that he really doesn't do enough damage with his bat to justify being walked as often as he is. In April and May that seemed to be potentially bearing out, as his walk rate took a dip from his career norms and his production was sub-par. June has been a vastly different story, with his walk rate up to 17.2%, which is also exactly where his strikeout rate is at — a pretty significant change for a guy with a 26.7% career rate, and who was over 30% in each of the first two months of the season. We're only talking about 58 plate appearances here, so the prior concerns certainly haven't gone away, but he's got his season wRC+ back up to league average, and his mark for the month is 163. The fact that he's in the top 40 in baseball by average exit velocity (out of 267 batters with at least 50 PA) this month is, I think, an even better sign.
In this one he collected a walk and a pair of hits, include a two-run double in the fifth. If I were the Blue Jays I wouldn't stop making calls about potential third base upgrades, but a Biggio going this well is obviously a good thing for the Blue Jays, and lessens the urgency for a fix there — which should allow the Jays’ trade talks to focus on the obvious area of need in the bullpen.
▲ Reese McGuire
Speaking of potential mirages, Reese McGuire is forcing the Jays’ hand when it comes to what they do behind the plate over the next few weeks. His BABIP is unsustainable (.400), and he doesn’t offer much power, but after another good day at the plate on Sunday, picking up two hits, a walk and a run scored, his wRC+ is up to 125 over 92 PA. They’ve got to keep playing him until his bat cools off, even after Danny Jansen and Alejandro Kirk return.
McGuire isn’t the guy you clear a path to regular playing time for by trading someone like Jansen or Kirk, but prospect Gabriel Moreno certainly looks like he is. If McGuire ends up being the placeholder that allows you to trade one of those guys, that’s a pretty good problem to have.
The Week Ahead
The Mariners visit the Jays starting on Tuesday, with the dreaded Rays coming to Buffalo at the end of the week. (After that it's a trip to Baltimore for three and then three more with the Rays before the All-Star break.)
Pitching matchups:
• Tuesday: RHP Chris Flexen (6-3, 3.87 ERA, 50 K/14 BB/74 1/3 IP) vs. LHP Robbie Ray (5-3, 3.35 ERA, 103 K/20 BB/80 2/3 IP)
• Wednesday: LHP Justus Sheffield (5-7, 5.69 ERA, 54 K/29 BB/68 IP) vs. LHP Steven Matz (7-3, 4.26 ERA, 75 K/21 BB/69 2/3 IP)
• Thursday: LHP Yusei Kikuchi (5-3, 3.34 ERA, 87 K/30 BB/86 1/3 IP) vs. LHP Hyun Jin Ryu (7-4, 3.41 ERA, 72 K/19 BB/89 2/3 IP)
Worth knowing:
• Wednesday's game is will only be available to watch on YouTube. There will not be a Sportsnet broadcast of the game. Though radio listeners may get a special treat!
• With Thursday being a holiday of some sort, the Jays and Mariners will be playing some afternoon baseball with a 1:07 PM ET start.
Shapiro Speaks!
Jays president and CEO Mark Shapiro joined Scott MacArthur and Mike Zigomanis of Sportsnet 590’s Lead-Off on Thursday morning to talk all things Blue Jays. Here are some highlights!
On tough losses
Maybe not as urgent a question today as it would have been if we were doing this a week ago, let’s not pretend that all this couldn’t be very relevant again soon — especially if the Jays don’t make any additions to their bullpen before their upcoming series with the Rays.
The fact that we've been in every game means that a lot to most of our losses have been tough ones. We're not getting blown out very often, we're losing games late, they're one-run losses, they're gut-wrenching, heartbreaking losses. So I don't wake up after those feeling good. As much as I've been doing it for 30 years it still hurts to lose those, especially when we fought as hard to get to where we are. But I will tell you this, that decisions made emotionally, decisions made with short-term momentum, often are bad decisions. And the fact remains that when we pull back, listen to the more objective members of the organization talking about where we are, look at our run differential, look at the toughness of our schedule to date, the magnitude of our injuries, and some of the other challenges that we can't control — like not playing at a home, playing in two different minor league locations, not having the home crowd behind us, physically at least — I feel pretty good where we are. Feel that we have a good run in us this year. And most importantly I feel like this is a team positioned for a multi-year run of championship baseball. And that excites me, and I know that Ross, Joe Sheehan, Mike Murov, are working tirelessly to address the concerns this year and continue to fortify the team for the years to come. So I guess I'm there (with fans) in the moment, but feel extremely optimistic, extremely bullish on the Blue Jays and where we sit for a very exciting run of baseball.
Shapiro makes some fine points here, but I don’t think leaning on the possibilities of the coming years is something fans are going to want to hear. We can see the run differential too.
On adding to the bullpen
The million dollar question.
If I could share you the notes and the conversations that our staff are having day to day. It's just the understanding that we're in June and the trade market, again, looking back historically, there aren't a lot of trades — very, very few to happen now. And if they do happen now, the premium and price paid is extremely high. So those conversations are being had, they'll end up being the roots of the deals that will make between now and July 30th. And we will ultimately improve the team. Run prevention, as Ross has said multiple times. Some of that improvement can come from within. It's us learning how to win tight and late ballgames, it's us playing better defence, it's us getting healthier. And some of it will come from externally, as I'm very confident we will add pieces that help us win.
It’s good that Shapiro is confident, and I think fans should be confident too. It’s just the timing that’s crucial. And Shapiro is right that it’s hard to make deals at this stage. A concrete example of that is the recent story (here via MLB Trade Rumors) that the White Sox are in advanced talks with the Diamondbacks about third baseman Eduardo Escobar, and that Arizona is “on the verge,” according to USA Today’s Bob Nightengale, of a big-time sell off.
Signs of the market loosening up a bit? Sure. But Arizona has won just four times in their last 39 games, and now sit with the worst record in baseball at 22-57. And they're only just on the verge of dealing? That probably doesn't bode well for what teams that are closer to contention are going to be willing to do just yet.
Furthermore, part of the reason teams are that bad is that they don't have a ton of great players. There aren't a lot of guys to salivate over on that roster, particularly in the bullpen. The only guy whose fastball is averaging over 95 mph is Taylor Clarke, who is currently on the IL with a strained muscle in his shoulder area. Plus he doesn't really strike enough guys out and is usually more homer prone than he's been this season.
Does Caleb Smith move the needle? A 3.03 ERA and 67 Ks in 59 1/3 innings, but 30 walks — which was a major problem for him last year, as he walked 12 in 14 innings. Plus he's a lefty, which the Jays are pretty set for with Tim Mayza and (eventually) Ryan Borucki, and was demoted from the rotation after one start after struggling in it (and at the end of spring. OK, how about a struggling, 37-year-old Joakim Soria?
Not exactly game-changers. This is hard!
On Nate Pearson
Here’s the comment that made waves late last week.
Yeah, we've already had three opinions on it and we're going to get a fourth as well coming up. He's recently flown to get another one and we're going to get one following that. So it's just seeking to understand the root of the injury, making sure there's nothing else besides the groin going on. And yeah, listen, when one of your best, if not your best prospect suffers injuries you are concerned. But you also just focus your energy on helping him get healthy and get better with the confidence that when he is healthy he's a difference-maker.
Pearson has had almost as many repeats of this groin issue this year (three) as he’s getting medical opinions on it. I’m not sure what to read into that — whether the Jays are trying to avoid surgery, just aren’t hearing what they want to hear, or really are just gathering as much information as possible — but nothing of it can be good!
Nick and I talked about this on Friday’s podcast, but we’re at the point where you have to start worrying about this being another lost season for Pearson. No, I don’t think that means you take a potential front line starter and decide he’s a reliever from here on out, but you certainly have to think about a bullpen role for him in the majors at some point — provided he gets healthy. I mean, at this point it’s not like the project of getting him built up to a full starter’s workload is going to go anywhere this year.
On improving the defence
In this case we do all the analysis, we have a department that does that and tells us where we can be better, and where we need to be better. I will tell you that some of the areas, if you look historically, young players get naturally better defensively. That is one area where, as they transition, as they field more balls under the pressures of a major league environment, as they adapt and adjust and settle in and move towards not just the beginning of their major league career but the prime of their major league career they will become better defenders. You can look back at Hall of Famers like Derek Jeter and Mike Schmidt. I've spent a lot of time when I was farm director managing my own patience with the transition to the major league level of, especially, young infielders. But clearly it doesn't take analytics, it doesn't take objective metrics to understand that third base, corner outfield, are the areas where we have been below average and need to be better.
Not much to disagree with in that assessment, though I don’t think defending will be the Jays’ Achilles heel as long as there are five or six gaping holes in the bullpen. Plus, they’ve got a pretty nice defender in Santiago Espinal, who is doing enough with the bat at the moment to push for some playing time. (Why we see so much Joe Panik I’ll never quite understand.)
On George Springer missing nearly three months
Soft tissue injuries are tough, because you definitely rely on both the experience that the athlete's had and how he's feeling. Looking back at two things, one, George has never had anything like that happen in his entire career. He's had muscle strains that have sidelined him for a couple days, and that he's played through — been able to play around. So, we rehabbed it conservatively, shut him down, got him back to feeling good. All of the objective tests, like measuring his speed, which we can do better than ever right now, as he was rehabbing showed that he was 100%. But obviously he was still somewhat injured and he reaggravated the injury. So, the second time around, like any learning organization, or learning person does, we took the experience from the first time and said, 'OK, this something he had not experienced, we're going to force him to go more slowly, to go conservatively. We're going to evaluate the injury more substantially than we did last time' — with both biodex testing, which would be a strength test, as well as scans. We were determined to be certain that he was healthy before he returned. So, it's not that we weren't determined the first time, it's that we worked off experience, mostly his experience and what he was saying, and historically how he'd handled injuries. And it was apparent that that wasn't good enough. Again, the injuries, I'm sure you know, are systemic throughout the industry right now. I think we're dealing with an unprecedented level of especially soft tissue injuries due to a shortened season, an interrupted season, ramping up, ramping down, things that we've never dealt with as professional sports before.
While a lot of this is undoubtedly true, it kind of elides the fact that the Jays employ a 30-person High Performance department — people whose jobs include, presumably, getting this kind of stuff right the first time. A hell of a lot easier said than done, I’m sure. Injuries can obviously be incredibly fickle, and this one happened exactly as the team was embarking on a new long-term relationship with their $150 million man, and I’m sure that relationship was a factor. Or I at least hope that, as a “learning organization,” their experience with Josh Donaldson was drawn upon. Still, the whole affair was a bit of a gong show, especially considering the investment the Jays have made in trying to keep their players healthy.
Anyway, glad he’s back!
On Gabriel Moreno playing third base
The Jays’ top catching prospect played his first ever pro game at a different position last week, getting written into New Hampshire manager Cesar Martin’s lineup card at third base. Interesting, no?
Just keeping his bat in the lineup. I wouldn't read into that. He's a natural infielder that we can converted to catcher as he transitioned to pro ball. I think any time you've got the opportunity and the chance to develop an offensive centre-of-the-diamond player that you keep him in the centre of the diamond, you don't move him to the corners quickly. But versatility in today's game allows us to keep his bat in the lineup. I've been through the same thing with Carlos Santana and Victor Martinez in Cleveland; you keep them at catcher as long as you humanly can, because the opportunity to have a run-producing centre-of-the-diamond good defensive player is game-changing as you build the team.
So I may have had this backwards when I spoke about it on the podcast back on Friday. I wondered — wish-casted is more like it — whether Moreno might be making himself into too important an offensive prospect to keep behind the plate, where the attrition rate is high. If we can read anything into the names Shapiro throws out here — and, rightly or wrongly, you’d better believe I’m doing just that — the Jays obviously think incredibly highly of him as an offensive prospect. They just also clearly think that he’s that much more of a weapon for as long as he can stay behind the plate. I’d say they’re right about that.
Usually you don’t hear teams talk about planning for what will come in the years after a catching prospect needs to move off of the position. Usually their bats won’t play anywhere else. That the Jays might think this way about Moreno is incredibly exciting.
Future Blue Jays had a great piece over the weekend about Moreno, and though they’re more ready to bet on his defence than his bat at this point, clearly there is a whole lot to like.
On sticky stuff
There is a safety dynamic to it, something that I think can be dealt with by a universal tackiness of the baseball, which we spent two years exploring and hopefully will be able to roll out next year. But there's also an abuse of the safety measures which provide an unfair advantage, and that's what major league baseball's trying to crack down on right now.
It’s somewhat odd to me that MLB recognizes that there’s a safety issue with having pitchers throw baseballs that don’t have anything applied to them to help improve grip, and yet they’re cracking down on the practice anyway. Or… well… it would be somewhat odd if it didn’t seem clear that the league feels this is a good way to sow division among players union members (“cheaters” vs. non-”cheaters”) and to sway public perception away from the players. Things that seems quite relevant given that the league and the union are headed toward labour war when their current collective bargaining agreement expires in December. And it’s especially odd seeing as it seems like the league has a solution that’s nearly ready to be implemented, and really just could have waited for all this. Or… well… it would seem especially odd if they weren’t clearly gearing up to make implementing a wholly new baseball one of the many parts of next winter’s negotiations. Ugh.
On returning to Toronto this season
I feel different than last year. The conversations that we're having with public health at all three levels. The level of engagement with the federal government has been much more extensive. I think we've all got more experience to draw from. The border remains a significant challenge. We've got to figure out how to manage public health, not do anything to create additional risk to Canadians, around the border. But also acknowledge the fact that almost all of our players are fully vaccinated, the majority of player that we play against are fully vaccinated, there's a track record and a precedent of not many cases happening in the U.S. both from stadiums, contact tracing from over 10 million fans that have watched games, as well as players that are playing the games. So the risk is certainly going down, and as the risk goes down we are aggressively pursuing the opportunity to come back here. The challenge probably lies not so much in figuring out how to do that, it's timing. We've got two natural junctures, July 30th and August 20th. We can't just unilaterally make a decision, in other words it's not me or Ross or any one person making a decision, it's us MLB, the Players Association, and our players, considering what that would mean, as well as getting that approval from the federal government, the ministry of health, the ministry of immigration, and all the different stakeholders that are involved in that decision. So it's complex, it's not easy, everyone's been supportive and positive. I think the trends here suggest that there's a chance that could happen this year.
Vaccines work. It’s only a matter of time before the picture here looks good enough to allow the Jays to return home — and players, their families, and opponents, to not be bound by additional draconian protocols, which the players association might object to. But if it’s going to happen for the Jays this year, it’s only going to be just barely.
How great would that be though?
On Vlad
If you could have been alone in a room with Ross and I as the pressure mounted to bring him to the major leagues — two former farm directors, both of whom have seen a lot of great players, maybe not as great as Vlad, but certainly some Hall of Fame calibre players transition to the major leagues — seeing the expectations that were on a 19-year-old in this market, which is an incredible market. We were cringing. Because development transitions to the major leagues, especially for players that young, are just not smooth. They're not a linear path. They have a jagged upward trajectory. And they involve not just a transition from a talent perspective, but also a maturation has to happen. And that means discipline, routines, learning to handle those pressures, learning to handle this environment. And so, I think that, if you look back, the expectations that people had for him were founded in his potential, and what he's fulfilling right now, which is an elite offensive player and a good defender as well. And a leader, which has been cool to see on our team. But it takes a process. It takes patience. It takes moments that make you question and doubt. And that's all part of his learning. So what you saw along the way was natural, what you saw along the way was learning and maturation, and what you're seeing now is a devastating potential franchise offensive player. It's what we thought we had when he was a minor leaguer, and it's certainly what we're seeing, and excited to watch every night. I worked with a general manager named John Hart when I was coming up and John used to talk about offensive players that cause (fans) to be afraid to leave their seat and don't want to go to the concession stand. The greatest offensive players, you want to be certain that you don't miss anything, and Vladdy is one of those players. When he's close to hitting you're rooted in your seat, or you're rooted to the TV, or you're rooted to your phone or your laptop because you don't want to miss that at-bat. Every single at-bat.
“Maybe not as great as Vlad, but certainly some Hall of Fame calibre players.” 👀
"Why we see so much of Joe Panik" ... I think somebody thinks the left handed bat is more important for being left handed than it is.
I think the 3-batters rule is a failure, and not only because I get no enjoyment out of watching Chatwood come out of the bullpen and immediately unintentionally walk the next batter with 4 pitches, and then load the bases. Or hit somebody. A pitcher with no control is a menace, and we really need to be able to pull them earlier. Do you get the sense that players and front offices agree with me? or not. And can we get the rule removed? It didn't make the games faster.
Aug 20 opening for a playoff run could be pretty wild