Weekend Up: Built for October
On a big weekend, the standings as the final regular season week begins, Manoah, the stupid Trop, Sportsnet broadcasting the playoffs, Gausman, Baltimore weather, Stripling, and more!
The Blue Jays entered this weekend’s home series against the Red Sox with a playoff spot already clinched, but two distinct possibilities ahead of them. One was backing into October, sliding down the Wild Card standings, then heading out on the road as a first-round underdog in either Tampa, Seattle, or Cleveland. The other was asserting themselves, looking like one of the most dangerous teams bound for the playoffs, and controlling their own destiny.
They chose the latter.
None of this will ultimately mean a whole lot. Much can change before Friday — particularly with José Berríos, Mitch White, and probably Yusei Kikuchi slated to start their final three games of the regular season, beginning tonight in Baltimore. And, as we learned in 2020, a three-game playoff series can be over before it even feels like it’s started. But, oh man, the vibes around this team coming out of this Red Sox series are as good as they’ve been all season.
So let’s talk about it! Here’s Weekend Up…
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You’ve heard the Alek Manoah facts by now, I’m sure. You likely saw the performances. You probably have the Jays’ place in the standings already memorized — and if not, here you go…
Lookin’ good! And so, with our thoughts already turned to Baltimore and the start of the final series of the regular season (weather permitting), we’re going to do this version of Weekend Up a little differently than usual. In a timely fashion? Absolutely not! Lol. Just more big-picture focused…
Up: A series sweep
It’s pretty amazing what an incredible exception to every rule Alek Manoah seems to be. Doesn’t have his best stuff? Still wins. Hasn’t reached 130 innings before in his career? Jumps to nearly 200. Batted ball luck roasting Gausman and Berríos all year? Not Manoah! Alejandro Kirk’s game calling an issue for Mitch White? Not for Manoah! Yusei Kikuchi can’t pitch to save his life? Not when following Manoah!
The Big Lad set the tone for the weekend when he took the ball on Friday night, giving his team six shutout innings while walking two and surrendering just a pair of hits. It feels like we say that Manoah “didn’t have his best stuff” a lot, but rarely is that quite as true as it was on Friday. He generated just over half the number of whiffs in six innings as Kikuchi did in three, was down 1.9 mph on his fastball velocity, and had four inches less horizontal break on his slider than average. And yet he further cemented himself not just as the Jays’ most important starter heading into the playoffs, but as a pitcher so far ahead of his teammates that the silly chatter about potentially using him in game 162 in order to secure home field advantage has already been rendered moot.
A series on the road for these Blue Jays, increasingly remote as that possibility is, would be a disadvantage. A series with Manoah unavailable would be a catastrophe.
And so, despite this being a great series for several Blue Jays — Teoscar Hernández and Whit Merrifield come to mind, in particular — it’s Manoah who ultimately stood out for me.
He and catcher Alejdandro Kirk were profiled in a piece here on Monday by FanGraphs, which looked at their incredible success this season in the “shadow zone” — that ambiguous area around the strike zone where the difference between a ball and a strike is nearly impossible to judge. Manoah has been one of the best pitchers at making use of that area of the plate, and as the piece explains, he’s been especially good this year in large part because his strengths at throwing to the shadow zone play to Kirk’s strengths as a framer.
Incredible to think that the most important players on the most successful Blue Jays team since at least 2016 might not be Vlad, Bo, or George Springer, but these two!
Also here on Monday, Manoah has been named the AL Pitcher of the Month. And deservedly so.
Up: No trip to the Trop!
Something that I suspect wasn’t entirely front of mind for Jays fans basking in the good vibes of the team’s weekend performance, but nonetheless is making a huge contribution to the renwed feelings of hope that now surround this team, is the fact that with Tampa Bay’s loss on Sunday afternoon there is now no way that the Rays can finish ahead of the Jays. In no scenario will Toronto have to travel to the dreaded Trop for a Wild Card round series.
Now, I like to think that the House of Horrors reputation the building has earned among Jays fans is maybe a little unfounded. Or, at least, that there’s less to be afraid of here than our brains sometimes tell us. The Jays went 4-5 in Tampa both this year and last — a perfectly respectable record on the road against a strong team! Much of the bad memories were born out of rebuilding years for the team, of which there have been many! But… uh… there’s not much arguing with the facts on this one. The Jays have had one winning season there since going 6-3 against the Devil Rays in 2006.
(The final Blue Jays win there that season saw A.J. Burnett get the win, improving his record (naturally) to .500 at 5-5. Scott Kazmir struck out 10 Jays over five innings of work, but relievers Jon Switzer and Brian Meadows coughed it up.)
Anyway, look at this mess!
2022: 4-5
2021: 4-5
2020: 3-6 (incl. playoffs)
2019: 2-8
2018: 2-7
2017: 4-6
2016: 5-5
2015: 3-6
2014: 6-4
2013: 4-6
2012: 1-8
2011: 3-6
2010: 3-6
2009: 1-8
2008: 2-4
2007: 4-5
2006: 6-3
As much as I would love to see the Jays to go to the Trop and win a series, just so that we’d never have to talk about this again, I have to admit that avoiding that possibility — at least in the first round — is probably for the best.
Up: Sportsnet playoff broadcasts!
All due respect to the folks who call the game on the radio, who do a great job in a medium that’s truly built for baseball, but maybe my favourite thing about the Jays-Red Sox series this weekend was Dan Shulman’s announcement near the end of Sunday’s game that Sportsnet will be producing their own TV broadcasts for the team’s run throughout the playoffs.
Dan, unfortunately, won’t be in the booth — though he’ll be doing radio work for ESPN, which will include the Jays’ first round series — but Buck and Pat will have the call, with Hazel Mae alongside them at field level.
I was pretty enthusiastic about this when it was first announced…
…and I feel exactly the same way about it today.
There’s a reason why Tom Cheek’s “touch ‘em all, Joe” radio call resonates more than whatever was uttered into the CBS microphone during the TV broadcast when the 1993 World Series ended. Local announcers are part of the team. Part of the experience of being a fan. Part of the family. Cheek undeniably made a great call in that moment, but part of what makes it so iconic is that it was him, and not Pat O’Brien, or Bob Costas, or whoever. This was our voice of summer calling our moment. That’s pretty special stuff.
I’m sure you’ll be able to find the US national broadcasts if you really want to hear John Smoltz talk about how much he dislikes baseball for four hours. So everybody wins here! Personally, I think that having home team broadcasts continue throughout the playoffs is so simple and perfect that I can’t actually believe MLB did it.
And Sportsnet’s broadcasts are really good! I know there are folks out there who can get annoyed sometimes with Buck and Tabby and their various foibles — I’ve definitely been one of those people! — but you don’t have to flip around MLB.tv, or watch the various games parcelled off to YouTube or AppleTV+, for very long to start to understand how good we have it here.
It gives me absolutely no pleasure to come off like I’m sucking up to massive corporation behind it all, but the work Hazel did during the Jays’ playoff-clinching celebration on Friday night was world class. The job that Jamie, Joe, and their various other pre-game and between-inning hosts do is consistently excellent. Stats are integrated into broadcasts more seamlessly and digestibly than they’ve ever been before. At the Letters is great! Chris Black’s tweet threads are great! Buck and Pat are legends. Dan is second to none. Etc., etc., etc.
I couldn’t blame a single person for loathing Rogers Communications on principle, if not for the way they ran their baseball team for the first 20 or so years of ownership, but this is a great reward for a lot of people who do outstanding work all year, and we as fans are the beneficiaries of it.
10/10. No notes.
Three down!
▼ Everybody seems to be saying all the right things about Kevin Gausman’s cut middle finger, which forced him out of Sunday’s game for precautionary reasons, but that seems, uh, less than ideal! Probably best to go out and win the Wild Card round in two games, eh? Give those lasers more time to do their work.
They continue to say the right things here on Monday, thankfully!
▼ The Jays were forced to skip batting practice on Monday because of the rain in Baltimore — a situation that forecasts say will only get worse on Tuesday as the remnants of Hurricane Ian plop themselves (technical term) over the area for the early part of this week. It’s a weird situation, especially because these Jays games are kind of important in terms of determining who plays where when the playoffs start on Friday. As important as coming through that Boston series with a sweep rather than having to rely too much on Berríos, White, and (likely) Kikuchi to close out the regular season with enough wins to ensure the top Wild Card see? Maybe not. But still pretty important!
▼ With the Jays having ensured that they won’t finish in the third Wild Card spot, they’ve also ensured that they won’t be in the side of the American League playoff bracket featuring the Yankees. The Jays can only be in the series between the 4th and 5th ranked AL teams, the winner of which will face the Houston Astros in the second round. The Yankees will face the winner of the series between AL Central champions Cleveland and the lowest-ranked AL Wild Card team, and as much as it’s slightly terrifying to think of the possibility of Yankees fans ending up with bragging rights by virtue of a playoff series win, I really think they’d be a much more favourable opponent. Houston is really good! And, frankly, Houston doesn’t deserve to have to face a team as good as the Blue Jays in the ALDS. What are we even doing?
Quickly…
• Speaking of Sportsnet’s TV broadcasts, Ross Stripling was an absolute natural during his segment on Sunday’s broadcast — particularly given the circumstances (i.e. his teammates constantly fucking with him). I thought his comments on how he prepares for games — interrupted by a ball in play and, I think, a banana — were exceptionally insightful.
Yeah, so that's been a process that I've added to as I've gone. When I first got in the big leagues I thought I was smart enough to handle as big a workload as I could take, which is like, 'What does a guy hit against 2-1 sliders with one out?' or, you know, just crazy things, trying to just remember anything and everything on the mound that I possibly could ... and I would just get too bogged down on the mound trying to incorporate too much information. I've really been able to, now, narrow it down to exactly what I want, which is basically: fastball lanes that are safe, which offspeed are the best, which one gets ground balls, which one gets swing-and-miss, where do I go with two strikes, where do I go early in the count, can I get ahead with the breaking ball, is he passive, is he aggressive. I get with Buschmann, Pete, and Jano or Kirk, whoever's catching me, and we put a good plan together. It's not too much information where I'm thinking about too much on the mound. I'm still in attack mode, but I've got a really good plan of what I want to do and what I want to execute out there.
• My friend and former colleague, Kaitlyn McGrath of the Athletic, has a great piece up looking at how the Jays could potentially setup their Wild Card series roster. Seems about right!
• Since it’s kind of a thing at the moment that I’m typing this, I think it’s worth mentioning that @BlueJaysWeather is a great follow!
• Lastly, don’t forget that Nick and I will be talking about all things Jays, and whatever permutations of the standings have to happen by then, at some point pre-game on Wednesday (time TBA). Be sure to get the Callin app and follow us on there so you can tune in live!
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I want someone to tell me why Manoah shouldn't get the Cy Young. Yes there's Verlander and Valdez who both are surrounded by a stellar cast and a fantastic team - Manoah has more innings than Verlander at least. Wins are pretty even and don't count any more seemingly? Cease is very comparable. I'm not sure what the criteria are to be honest and I don't think Manoah will get it...but there's a strong argument there surely?
Baseball should be played indoors as God intended.