Weekend up!: A wild end to a long, strange trip
On a crazy finale, road trip takeaways, Berríos, Bassitt's velo, Kikuchi positives, Romano's blip, Kirk's drop, Chapman, Kiermaier, Vlad, Bo, prospects, the week ahead, and more!
The Jays are finally heading home. After a 10-game season-opening road trip, which the team salvaged by taking four straight from the Royals and Angels late in the week — mercifully sparing us from the absurd overreactions that surrounded the club when they sunk to 1-4 — they are ever-so-close to finally opening up new-look Rogers Centre, with all its bells, whistles, social spaces, and grotesquely expensive foodstuffs. Win or lose, Tuesday should be incredibly fun.
Less fun? Every single one of the losses the Jays were handed during their sojourn.
Yes, the negative overreactions were absurd — unless we’re talking about ones to Brandon Belt’s start, because… yikes — but it’s not like they didn’t come from a genuine place of frustration.
Now that we can look back on the trip with at least a little bit more perspective — not to mention relief, following the team’s bonkers 12-11 extra innings win to finish it up at 6-4 — I think it’s useful to do that. For one, consider in the most basic way possible how the losses on the trip piled up.
1. Gausman gets brutal luck
2. Bassitt gets shelled
3. Berríos gets shelled
4. Berríos isn’t great/Cimber gets Trouted
Then, of course, there was Sunday’s near-loss, in which Kikuchi got some brutal luck, then got Trout/Ohtani’d, (then did some typical Kikuchi things), after which the team made an incredible comeback only for Jordan Romano — of all people! — to fall apart and force a nervy ending.
The team has been a little wasteful of a hot offence, sure, but for the most part the pitching outcomes I’ve listed here aren’t going to happen regularly.
No, really!
Yes, we’re all a bit scarred by the way José Berríos has begun his post-extension career with the Jays, but — and this is not an endorsement of how he's pitched! — outings like the his first two starts of 2023, in which he's given up six and eight runs, were much rarer last year than it feels. Certainly not rare enough! He gave up four runs or more eleven times in 2022. He gave up two or fewer 15 times.
Again, he has to be better. He had the worst ERA among qualified pitchers last season and has sucked so far in this one — including at the WBC! But it's not guaranteed loss night when he takes the ball, even if it understandably feels that way right now.
Bassitt redeemed himself somewhat in his second outing — which probably deserves more said about it than I’ll write in this piece (though obviously Sunday’s insanity deserves a ton of attention_. I will, however, note that, for all the talk about his velocity issues, Bassitt hasn’t been that far off — at least in terms of his four-seamer (92.0 mph) — than where he was last April (92.2).
Meanwhile, Kikuchi can take positives from Sunday's rough result (or at least the early part thereof). Romano simply had a blip. Gausman, though bad luck was a hallmark of his season in 2022, does not walk around with a cloud around his head — well, at least not one that produces rain — so he should be fine.
We’re maybe not quite at this stage just yet, in other words…
Also worth remembering are the sorts of things that frustrated fans hate to hear at this time of year, but are almost always worth hearing anyway.
Over the last five seasons combined, 78% of teams finished with a winning percentage between .400 and .600. This means that most teams win two and lose two for every five games they play. That's a lot of losing! When it happens it sucks, for sure, but in the grand scheme it’s more OK than our instincts sometimes tell us when it happens.
That said, the Jays being at 6-4 feels a whole lot better than 5-5, doesn’t it? Especially with the stupid Rays banking wins against awful teams and currently sitting at 9-0. And especially after pulling it out of the fire at least three times in the finale against the Angels.
Somehow the win probability chart above doesn’t even do the game justice, I don’t think. The Jays looked certain losers until their outburst in the sixth, came very close to unravelling in the bottom of the ninth, and then again two or three times in the bottom of the tenth — I don’t care what the blue portion of the line says.
So let’s talk about it! Here’s three up, three down…
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Down: Yusei Kikuchi
I noted above that there were positives to take from this outing for Kikuchi, and I really do believe that there were. Yet I can't in good conscience put someone in the "Up" column after six runs, all earned, on nine hits — three of which were home runs — in just 4 1/3 innings.
That said, I'd rather highlight the encouraging-ish stuff.
Positive number one: All three of the runs the Angels scored in the first were earned, but only due to a tough break and a quirk of the rules. As the second batter of the game, Mike Trout reached out and smacked a bouncer up the middle that likely would have been easily fielded by Santiago Espinal had Kikuchi not tried and failed to make a play, deflecting it to Bo Bichette, and taking enough off of the ball to ensure Trout had time to race to first safely. A fielders choice later and Daulton Varsho lost a two-out Anthony Rendon fly ball in the sun and let it drop for a "single" that scored the game's first run.
Kikuchi wasn't blameless for what followed — he left a 1-0 changeup to Hunter Renfroe in an awful location...
...which he clubbed into the seats to make it 3-0 == but that was really his only mistake of what should have been a pretty good inning.
Positive number two: Though the 4 1/3 innings obviously doesn’t look great, Kikuchi’s pitch count was elevated by the extra batters he had to face in the first. It could have looked like a much different outing if he’d gotten out of it sooner, as he should have. Also, doing so might have meant not seeing Trout and Ohtani again until the fourth inning. Instead they came up in the third.
Positive number three: In that third inning Kikuchi again surrendered runs, but they were somewhat tough to fault him for, too. Trout got a favourable call on the third pitch of his at-bat, eventually hitting a — *extreme David Bowie voice* — 3-2 slider at just 84.8 mph into centre.
Ohtani then did one of those Ohtani things, staying back on an 89 mph left-on-left slider off the plate inside and somehow muscling it out to left-centre, making the score 5-0.
“It’s is ABSURD that he hits THIS pitch 400+ feet out to LEFT CENTER,” tweeted former pitcher Dallas Braden about it. “This is either a take or a foul ball for a lot of other guys. This dude turns it inside out like a dirty t-shirt & pumps it outta the yard. Just silly.”
Positive number four: Though a solo home run given up to the number nine hitter, rookie catcher Logan O’Hoppe, doesn’t exactly help the narrative that this was a step in the right direction for Kikuchi, what we also saw here were six strikeouts in 4 1/3 innings — helped by 14 whiffs, the most of any Blue Jays starter so far this season — and just a single walk.
Obviously the sample is tiny, but Kikuchi has issued just two walks over 9 1/3 innings since the season began — and since the end of a Grapefruit League campaign where they were quietly an issue for him despite some otherwise good results. We’re doing a lot of squinting here, yes. Not that anyone is saying that he’s going to produce results like Robbie Ray, I’m certainly not at the following level of best-case-scenario hope for him just yet (for one thing, his percentage of pitches in the zone isn’t actually that much different than last year)…
…but I don’t think believing there’s a slim possibility this could still happen is entirely crazy, either.
No, really!
Down: Jordan Romano
We don't need to dwell on this one a whole lot, I don't think. Romano's fastball command was erratic and it led to a laborious 31-pitch, three-run inning from two hits, two walks, and a hit-by-pitch.
The velocity was there — though the hardest fastball of the game was actually thrown by Yimi Garcia, who unleashed one that Statcast registered at 98.8 mph, the hardest pitch he's thrown as a Blue Jay — the swing-and-miss was there, it was just not Jordan’s day command-wise. Not fun. Ugly to watch. Moving along.
Down: The Alejandro Kirk play
Bottom of the tenth. Free runner on second. Bullpen down to the dregs. Trevor Richards is forced into the game to face the bottom of the Angels' order and somehow manages two strikeouts around a single hit sharply enough to hold the runner at third and keep the Jays' lead at 12-10. Next up is lead-off hitter Taylor Ward, with Mike Trout looming in the on-deck circle, and Richards cannot or will not throw a goddamn strike.
Mike Trout vs. Trevor Richards with the bases loaded and the game on the line. Not, uh, exactly the scenario you want.
But then, unbelievably, Trout took a less-than-perfect swing at the first pitch Richards offered him.
“And a fastball popped up!” an excited Dan Shulman belted as the camera angle switched and the shadows of Angel Stadium came into view. “Kirk back towards the screen. He... can't make the catch!!”
“One thing you have to do as a catcher when those pop-ups go,” longtime backstop Buck Martinez explained to Dan, “is turn and locate it before you move. He ran back to the backstop and flat-out over-runs the baseball. And once you do that, you're in trouble. You can't get back in time.”
Oof.
I say this not to pick on Kirk — who has been fortunate to have Brandon Belt around to take the heat off his own lack of production so far in this very, very early part of the season — but, oh man, what an absolute punch to the gut that was.
Giving Trout one pitch from Richards with the bases loaded is plenty. Giving him more than you have to is a recipe for disaster.
Ultimately, Richards walked him. John Schneider brought in Tim Mayza to face Shohei Ohtani with the Jays’ lead down to one. How they didn’t blow it from there felt miraculous.
Up: Matt Chapman
When the baseball world wakes up on Monday morning the leader in fWAR among all big leaguers, position players and pitchers both, will be Matt Chapman. It's taken him just 10 games to compile 1.1 WAR, powered by his all-world defence and a freakish start to his season at the plate.
In this particular game he managed three hits and a walk in six plate appearances, adding in a stolen base and five RBIs — four of which came on his game-changing sixth inning grand slam.
Chapman has never had a season in which his maximum exit velocity ranked below the 87th percentile and, except for 2021 — a year in which he was still recovering from hip surgery that ended his 2020 prematurely — he's never had a hard hit rate below the 92nd percentile, so it's not surprising that he's striking the ball especially hard at the moment. What's been remarkable has been how consistently he's done so.
So far Chapman’s soft contact rate for the year sits at zero. His hard contact rate of 66.7% is well above his career mark of 40.2%. Yes, his .586 BABIP shows there's an element of luck at play here, but he also seems to be seeing the ball and making swing choices extremely well. Of the pitches he's swung at in the strike zone, he's made contact on 92.9% — well above his career rate of 80.9%. He's not immune to chasing, but his 20.5% strikeout rate would be the best of his career if it held, and is considerably better than last year's 27.4% mark, or the 32-plus percent rates he put up the previous two seasons.
His 5.8% swinging strike rate looks incredible compared to his 10.8% career mark as well. As noted on the Sportsnet TV broadcast on Sunday, he's also making a concerted effort to use all fields — and, as the grand slam demonstrated, is plenty strong to go deep toward the right side. (Interestingly, he was at his best last season after he got much more pull-happy, producing a 131 wRC+ over the final four months of the season (52.0% pull rate), as compared to an 86 mark over the first two (39.2%).)
It's still too early to say what it all means, but even though the BABIP will obviously regress, if some of the other trends stay close to where they are, he’ll be a very interesting and very different hitter than we’re used to, and it will safe to say that this man is going to get paid next winter.
Up: Kevin Kiermaier
Look, it’s obviously much too soon for me to issue a mea culpa on my panning of the Kiermaier deal — both at the time and basically all winter and spring. “Tapia with a glove” is, I believe, where I landed. But I’d be lying if I didn’t acknowledge that he’s been a lot of fun and has looked like a great fit so far. I’d be very happy to be wrong on this one.
Now, obviously he’s not going to be sitting on a 161 wRC+ forever. His high-water mark over the last five seasons is just 101, so you can bet some troughs will come. But his hip looks fine, his defence seems as good as always, his speed and instincts on the bases have been game-changing at times, and he’s managed to pop up with some incredibly key hits — none more so than the pair of extra-base ones he managed on Sunday.
The first was a sixth-inning triple whacked down the right field line and into the corner, tying the game at six by cashing two of the Jays’ other speed-and-defence guys — Whit Merrifield, who at 28.6 ft/s is second only to Kiermaier (28.7 ft/s) among Jays by sprint speed, and Daulton Varsho, who has actually only been about a league average runner so far (27.0 ft/s), but gets great jumps and proved his bona fides earlier in the very inning in question with a drag bunt single off of reeling Angels starter Reid Detmers just one pitch after Chapman’s salami.
Then, in the top of the tenth, Kiermaier socked a ground rule double off of the hard-throwing Carlos Estévez to cash the free runner and put the Jays up by one. A batter later he read George Springer’s base hit into centre perfectly off of the bat, flying around the bases to make it 12-10 for the Jays — the run that would eventually prove to be the game winner.
What’s not to like?
Up: Health and Home
The Blue Jays’ two superstars were hit by pitches in this one — in not necessarily the greatest places, either! — and the fact that we don't have to talk about this at all might lowkey be the weekend's most important story.
Bo Bichette was certainly the luckier of the two. The shortstop, who sports a 178 wRC+ and is striking out at an impressively low 14% clip, had a 93 mph fastball from former teammate Ryan Tepera hit him in the hand in the top of the seventh. Fortunately it appeared to be, as Dan Shulman noted on the Sportsnet TV broadcast, a "glancing blow," and Bo was in relatively minimal discomfort as he made his way to first base.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. — who found himself on base three times on the day, going 2-for-5 in his other plate appearances, yet actually saw his wRC+ for the year go down to 217 in the process — was in considerably more pain than Bo when he took a direct hit on the toe from a Detmers slider in the sixth.
Crumpling to the ground and pounding on the dirt as fans hearts jumped to their throats, there appeared to be genuine concern about whether Vlad would be able to carry on. He did, and scored just a handful of pitches later on Chapman’s blast.
Both players stayed in for the entirety of the game, suggesting they’ll be fully ready to go when the team — after a merciful Monday off-day — makes what should be a spectacular return to the newly half-renovated Rogers Centre on Tuesday night.
Let’s gooooo.
Quickly…
• “The Blue Jays’ attempt to extend star pitcher Alek Manoah consisted of brief talks that never went anywhere. It’s believed they never got close on Vlad Gerrero [sic] Jr. either,” writes Jon Heyman in his latest for the New York Post — news that I’m sure will be received very reasonably and rationally by Jays fans.
• Nate Pearson dealt with some fastball command issues on Friday for Buffalo, but bounced back on Sunday with a clean inning-and-a-third of work, five whiffs, and a pair of strikeouts. He’s walked three in four innings so far and uncorked a couple wild pitches on Friday, but overall has surrendered just three hits and fanned eight over that span. With some consistency he could still be something. Really.
• Speaking of future bullpen options, Yosver Zulueta had a great season debut for Buffalo on Sunday. He went just three innings — “by design early,” MLB.com's Keegan Matheson explains — but allowed no runs on one hit and one walk, striking out six. Zulueta was only at 95-97 with his fastball on the day — Pearson and Junior Fernández were both 97-100 out of the bullpen — but Keegan suggests Yosver's fastball should tick up as the weather gets warmer. (He also managed eight whiffs, five of which came on the slider.)
• “I don't have slightest idea what to make of Berríos anymore and neither do you,” tweeted MLB.com’s Mike Petriello on Saturday. “But it's interesting tonight to see how he spotted slurve on bottom, edges. Nothing middle. Slurve got: 6 whiffs, 0 hard-hit balls. FBs got: 3 whiffs, 5 HH. Want to see him spam 70% slurve some game.”
• Slightly odd not to see Jordan Luplow — who appeared to literally be added to the roster because the Jays were due to see three left-handed starters from the Angels — not play a whole lot over the weekend. Seems a pretty strong indication that the club doesn’t really see him as a guy to give runway to as that right-handed bench bat they really could use. Which… fair enough.
• Probable starters for the Jays' three-game series against the Tigers this week: Tuesday: Alek Manoah vs. RHP Matt Manning; Wednesday: Kevin Gausman vs. LHP Eduardo Rodriguez; Thursday: Chris Bassitt vs. RHP Spencer Turnbull.
• After Detroit it's three home games with the stupid great-seeming Rays and then a tough six-game/seven-day trip to Houston then the Bronx. Fun! Nightmarish fun!
• Lastly, truly incredible to watch Jays fans see this tweet and finally experience another fan base envying their bullpen. (Not sure it’s deserved just yet, mind you. But give it a couple months and maybe!)
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I can never hear that song the same way again lol
“Three-twoooooooooooo sli-dahhhhhhhhh!”
Still holding out hope for Kikuchi and Berrios. Good write up!