Weekend Up!: Not even dead
On Vlad the villain, a rotation on a roll, Kikuchi, Belt, Manoah, Yimi Garcia, John Schneider, Kevin Gausman, Apple TV+, Santiago Espinal, RISP, Charlie Montoyo's imminent return, and more!
One week after handing the Tampa Bay Rays their first series loss of the season the Jays have done the same to the New York Yankees, escaping the Bronx victorious in two of three over the weekend — though it very much could have been a sweep.
The starting pitching for the club has been absolutely lights out through this most recent turn in the rotation. And while such a fact maybe doesn't quite put the fears Jays fans have about that all-important unit to rest, it certainly makes for some pretty numbers. (Which I'm copying here from @BrianSwane, because apparently Twitter and Substack are still fighting, which means I can't embed tweets.)
Bassitt: 6.1 IP, 3 H, 1 BB, 5 K, 0 ER
Berrios: 7.0 IP, 3 H, 1 BB, 3 K, 2 ER
Kikuchi: 6.0 IP, 4 H, 2 BB, 3 K, 1 ER
Manoah: 7.0 IP, 2 H, 1 BB, 5 K, 0 ER
Gausman: 7.0 IP, 3 H, 0 BB, 11 K, 0 ER
TOTAL – 33.1 IP, 0.81 ERA, 0.60 WHIP
Is that good? Because it really seems quite good. And while those five excellent starts have only led to three wins, considering all those games were on the road against the Astros and Yankees, I’ll absolutely take it.
And I'll take a slightly-less-titanic mid-week home series with the White Sox — who'll be bringing bench coach and former Jays manager Charlie Montoyo with them! — before a Thursday off-day and a weekend set with the stupid Mariners, too. A lot of not-so-great recent Blue Jays history is going to be dredged up over the next week, I'd wager. Be warned.
But before we get to all that fun stuff, let's talk about the Jays and Yankees! Here's two up, one down...
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Up: Friday: Jays 6 - Yankees 1
It's kind of wild that Yusei Kikuchi could pitch six innings allowing just four hits, two walks, and six hard-hit balls — his only blemish being an Oswaldo Cabrera home run that's an out in 19 big league ballparks — and my inclination about Friday night’s game is to talk about Brandon Belt instead.
But Kikuchi does deserve mention here. He did a great job of keeping his fastball around the edges and away from the heart of the plate, mixed changeups to help keep opposing hitters off balance, and threw a bunch of sliders that started outside to right-handers and ran in, which Yankees batters weren't able to do much with. (And some back foot-ish ones as well!)
The interesting thing about Kikuchi’s slider in this outing was that it marked the fourth straight game in which its velocity has increased. At 88.9 mph on average, it was the highest average slider velo that Kikuchi has ever recorded in a single game.
The chart below actually tells a pretty interesting story.
The Blue Jays always seemed to think that they could build a second Robbie Ray out of Kikuchi, but their stated philosophy is to not simply impose changes on their players. We can see that at the beginning of 2022, Kikuchi was throwing his slider in about the same velocity band as it had been in his previous two years with the Mariners, but relatively quickly they were able to convince him to start throwing a harder, more Ray-esque version of the pitch.
That was abandoned as Kikchui’s season went off the rails and he presumably simplified what he was doing and searched for comfort on the mound — or anything that might have righted the ship. But we can see now that he’s once again going with that harder slider. Intriguing!
But, you know, ho hum, Kikuchi was really good once again. He’s now 3-0 with a 3.80 ERA. WHAT ABOUT BRANDON BELT?
Well, actually, it's complicated.
Or maybe it's not.
Belt finally, uh, belted his first home run as a member of the Blue Jays on Friday, putting his team up 4-1 in a crucial series-opener at Yankee Stadium. Thing is, the pitch he hit was an 0-0 batting practice fastball (91.9 mph) that was, uh... not especially well located.
He can only swing at what’s in front of him, so good on him for giving this one a ride, but that hit alone shouldn’t have anybody believing he’s fixed.
OK, so what about his other hit?
After an eight-pitch battle with Albert Abreu, Belt hit a much better pitch — a 97 mph sinker with good movement! — to double in a pair of insurance runs in the eighth. Unfortunately, as far as trying to determine whether or not Belt is fixed goes, Aaron Judge very nearly caught that one, and very probably would have caught it in a park where he didn’t have to think quite so much about crashing into a wall.
The ball had an xBA of just .270. It would have looked rather more routine in a lot of places, I suspect.
That said, I’ve been a fan of the Belt signing since the moment it happened, and am certanly willing to give him more time to put it together here. It’s just… that doesn’t mean that I’m going to rush to call this a breakout game for him. It wasn’t.
However, if you're looking for silver linings here, Belt exits the weekend with exactly 50 plate appearances and the second 25 have gone much, much better (.304/.360/.565, 158 wRC+, 32.0 K%) than those awful first 25 did (.043/.120/.087, -44 wRC+, 60.0 K%). So… that’s at least something, I think. Maybe?
Hmm. Perhaps I should have stuck to only talking about Kikuchi.
Down: Saturday: Yankees 3 - Blue Jays 2
Man, a lot of people sure didn’t like that John Schneider chose to lift Alek Manoah after just 85 pitches on Saturday afternoon. And they especially didn’t like it when not-at-all-predictably-but-predictable-if-you’re-the-kind-of-person-who-constantly-predicts-doom-so-you-can-moan-about-it-and-say-“You-see?-This-is-what-I’m-saying!” he coughed up the game’s first two runs via an Anthony Volpe homer off of a pitch so poorly located it practically made German’s pitch to Belt the night before look like a work of art.
Ahh dead. Ahh red.
I’ll admit that I didn’t particularly like the decision to sit Manoah down and hand the ball to Garcia about 18 hours after he’d last pitched either! But, as is always the case when these things happen, there’s logic to be seen in the move.
The batters coming up for the Yankees in the bottom of the eighth were Jose Trevino, Oswaldo Cabrera, and Oswaldo Peraza — their 7-8-9 hitters. Having Manoah face three poor hitters isn’t especially dangerous but, as with most pitchers, there's a clear penalty to be paid when he sees a batter for a third time. For his career, Manoah's ERA jumps to 4.59 when going through the order a third time, compared to 1.67 the first time through and 2.73 the second. And, for what little it's worth, his third-time-through numbers this year have been particularly awful, though the sample there is so small as to be meaningless.
Is that penalty, on its own, an overwhelming argument to go to the bullpen there? Not really. But there's also the fact that the top of the order was looming, and there was little chance Manoah would have been allowed to face Volpe or — especially — Aaron Judge for a fourth time. A non-Jordan-Romano reliever was likely going to have to be ready to go anyway. That being the case, Scheider, Pete Walker, et al., probably felt like it was a better choice to just go ahead and give a fresh arm those outs — and then if he were to falter, they could at least be able to get Romano warm in time to face Judge and go for a four- or five-out save.
Add in the fact that making the move when he did allowed Schneider to let the previously struggling Manoah finish his day with a very, solid line — seven shutout innings with just two hits, a walk, and five strikeouts — and I think the appeal of a pitching change there is a lot more understandable than many Jays fans wanted to believe in the moment.
It would have worked, too! Just as long as Yimi didn’t give up a home run.
But, of course, he did.
Did Schneider have to do it? No. Did it have to be Garcia? No. Did it cost them the game? Partially, I suppose. But, to my mind, no more than the hitters' failure to cash runners all day, or Biggio's stupid awful bunt attempt in the top of the ninth, or Merrifield's fielding on Rizzo's opposite field double to start the ninth, or Romano simply not having it in this one.
It was a gut punch, especially considering just how important every game against division rivals will be this year, and how relentless it already feels like the AL East race has become. I might not have been able to remain quite so aloof about it had they not pulled out the series win on Sunday. Thankfully, from here all the vitriol seems kinda quaint.
Up: Sunday: Jays 5 - Yankees 1
Kevin Gausman struck out 11 Yankees over seven shutout innings of work, allowing just three hits and no walks on Sunday. He was outstanding. His ERA now sits at 2.84 for the season — creeping below his FIP (2.88) for the first time as a member of the Blue Jays. His velocity was down a little again, but it was typical Gausman brilliance: fastballs mostly up, freezing batters for called strikes or forcing them to spoil; splitters low for swing-and-miss; and a handful of sliders to keep batters honest.
The Yankees’ Clarke Schmidt went toe-to-toe with Gausman in a game that was sailing by until the top of the sixth, when an Anthony Volpe error gave the Jays their second baserunner of the night and an extra out to work with. One batter later and up stepped Vlad. I imagine we all already know how that worked out, but let's refresh our memories for a second, shall we?
Daulton Varsho would launch a no-doubter in the following at-bat, ending Schmidt’s day after 5 2/3 innings with no earned runs, just three hits and one walk allowed, but his team trailing 3-0 on the scoreboard. But, of course, it was Vladdy’s big hit that was the real story here — for a few reasons.
Reason one: It was practically a unicorn
What do I mean by that? Well, according to Statcast the ball Vlad hit had a launch angle of just 18°. Since the start of 2022 over 5,900 home runs have been hit in the major leagues. The number with a launch angle of 18° or below is just 56. So, it wasn’t really a unicorn, but fewer than 1% of home runs occur on balls hit with such a shallow angle. Vlad and Giancarlo Stanton are the only batters to do it with any kind of regularity. And he hit it at 113 mph off the bat, to boot. A ridiculous smash!
Reason two: It capped a typically outstanding Vlad weekend in the Bronx
Vlad went 4-for-11 over the weekend, with three of those hits going for extra bases — a double and two homers — giving him an OPS of 1.461 for the three-game set. He walked once, was hit by a pitch, and didn't strike out (meaning he's now walked 10 times and struck out 10 times in his first 99 PA of the season).
And this is nothing new for Vlad. Coming into Sunday's game he'd slashed .297/.357/.602 (.959 OPS, 161 wRC+) for his career in Yankee Stadium. He loves hitting there. Ironic, it turns out!
Reason three: Vlad’s now an S-tier Yankee Stadium heel
“And he has become a little bit more of a villain right now here in the Bronx,” intoned Dan Shulman on the Sportsnet broadcast as Vlad rounded the bases after his bomb. “This is the loudest booing we have heard over the weekend.”
The treatment Vlad receives from the Yankee faithful is, of course, not only because of his greatness on the field. It’s seems as though los Yanquistas are still chafing about comments the young Jays star made on a radio show in the Dominican Republic back in November — which he reiterated during this most recent visit to the Bronx.
“I like to play in New York, I like to kill the Yankees. I would never sign with the Yankees, not even dead,” he told the YouTube channel El Dotol Nastra at the time. And apparently he’s serious, because when asked this weekend about the comments he added, via an interpreter, “It’s a personal thing. It goes back with my family. So, that’s my decision. I would never change that.”
Neither his father, Vlad Sr., or his uncle Wilton ever spent time in the Yankees’ organization, nor has his cousin Gabriel, so I have no idea where this has come from, but it’s obviously delightful. Lol. Lmao.
As for the booing on Sunday, Vlad admitted he heard it — at least when rounding the bases.
"I mean, of course you hear it,” Vlad told reporters, such as Sportsnet’s Ben Nicholson-Smith, through an interpreter after Sunday’s game. “But they're not going to take the home run away from me. I'm just going to continue to run the bases and enjoy"
You love to hear it.
Of course, Vlad not wanting to ever play for the Yankees doesn’t mean a whole lot when there will still be numerous teams chasing him should the Blue Jays ever let him get to free agency. But why would they do that? He told Sportsnet’s Hazel Mae in a pre-season interview this spring that, “For me, I want to spend all my life here.” And yet, at least according to a Jon Heyman piece for the New York Post earlier this month, the Jays and Vlad “never got close” in extension talks.
When were these talks? Were they the most recent talks? We have no idea. We don’t even know for 100% certain that it’s the same Vlad, seeing as Heyman’s piece refers to him as “Vlad Gerrero Jr.”
Still, the Blue Jays should sign him to a massive, long-term extension already. Obviously. One of us! One of us! One of us!
UPDATE: Reader @twitchejnave points out a passage from Buster Olney’s 2004 book The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty: The Game, the Team, and the Cost of Greatness and theorizes that it may explain why there remains long-term animosity between the Guerrero family and the franchise. Seems plausible!
“There are going to be big changes,” Steinbrenner snapped. After the 2003 season, without soliciting an opinion from (then vice president and senior advisor Gene) Michael or (general manager Brian) Cashman, Steinbrenner negotiated a $39 million handshake deal with Gary Sheffield, a 35-year-old perennial All-Star with a reputation for complaining. It was a mistake, Cashman thought: the team had to get younger ... And when Sheffield wavered on his oral agreement with Steinbrenner, Cashman, seeing an opening, worked frantically to complete a deal with 27-year-old free agent Vladimir Guerrero. But with Guerrero on the verge of signing for the same annual salary as Sheffield and with one extra year on the contract, Steinbrenner killed the negotiations with Guerrero. Sheffield had capitulated, and Steinbrenner insisted, “I want him, I want him, I want him.”
Quickly…
• In case you missed it, I wrote in my previous Weekend Up about Manoah’s rough start against the Rays, and why I was actually kind of encouraged despite the poor results the outing produced. It’s much too soon for me to crow about this sort of thing, so I’m not doing that, but the signs were definitely there that more Manoah-like performances were coming.
• I also figured that Kevin Gausman would be fine in my recent piece about the Astros series, FWIW .
• The Jays had a tough one on Saturday, going 0-for-9 with runners in scoring position. So, because I knew there’d be people out there in crisis believing that RISP woes are somehow a unique problem to whoever is wearing the clothes of the Toronto Blue Jays, I looked something up. Heading into that game the league as a whole had produced a .259 batting average with RISP in 2023, after being at .253 in 2022. The Jays' marks? .261 in 2023 and .264 in 2022, the latter being the highest in baseball. (Feel better? No, me either.)
• I have absolutely no complaints about Friday’s Apple TV+ broadcast. (I didn’t watch.)
• Per Benny Fresh, though the X-rays on Santiago Espinal’s wrist came back negative after he was hit by a pitch in Saturday’s game, manager John Schneider says that the team is still going to send him for further tests when they return to Toronto.
• Speaking of the Jays returning to Toronto, they’ll be back at it on Monday night, hosting the Chicago White Sox for the first of three. As I mentioned above, this means the return of former manager Charlie Montoyo, who is currently Pedro Grifol’s bench coach. (Pedro Grifol is apparently the White Sox’ manager!)
• It will be interesting to see if there’s any kind of reception whatsoever from fans for Montoyo, though it’s not like many people are in the ballpark when the visiting bench coach gets introduced anyway, nor are bench coaches particularly active outside the dugout during games. Still, I’m curious. And, based on all the dumb “John Schneider is worse than Montoyo!” stuff I saw after Manoah was lifted on Saturday, mildly concerned it won’t be especially warm. He was fine! We’re all better off! John Farrell he ain’t.
• Sticking with the Jays and the White Sox, Chris Bassitt takes the ball Monday, when he'll be squaring off with veteran RHP Lance Lynn. In four starts so far, Lynn has allowed 18 earned runs on 29 hits and 10 walks over just 21 1/3 innings, meaning either he's Roarked and the Jays are going to light him up, or it's going to be an immensely frustrating day of bafflingly inept hitting. Tune in!
• Tuesday's game will see noted shitty dude Mike Clevinger take the hill for the White Sox, facing off against José Berríos. Clevinger was investigated by MLB during the offseason over allegations of domestic violence and child abuse made by the mother of his child. The investigation did not result in a suspension or a fine (he voluntarily agreed to be evaluated by treatment boards covering domestic violence and drugs of abuse, and to comply with any recommendations made by the boards). But then, for some reason, he decided to continue to draw attention to the situation by choosing Kanye's "Gold Digger" as his walk-up song when he made his home debut earlier this month.
When asked about it by reporters, Clevinger stonewalled. “Are you a music producer? No? OK. Well if you have a baseball question, I'm here for you,” he said.
This led Chicago sports radio station 670 The Score — an outfit Clevinger had, at some point in all this, threatened with legal action — to bring on legendary audio engineer Steve Albini (Nirvana, the Pixies, P.J. Harvey, etc.) to properly eviscerate him on air.
• Wednesday's game will be the Blue Jays' first mid-week afternoon tilt of the season, and will see ace Yusei Kikuchi go up against Chicago's hard-throwing but badly struggling right-hander Michael Kopech (6.97 ERA, 8.20 FIP).
• I suppose that makes Lynn their soft-tossing but badly struggling right-hander. The White Sox were a trendy pick to win the AL Central just a year ago! They're currently 7-15. What a disaster.
• Lastly, looking even farther ahead, the Seattle Mariners come to town next weekend for the first time since you know when, and the Jays will be looking to get some measure of revenge for you know what. Should be interesting! But it will presumably be less interesting if they take all three from the White Sox first. That would be my recommendation.
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You are my favourite Jays writer, and have followed you since the DJF days. No question at this time, just wanted you to know lol
The Montoyo situation has always interested me. When he was let go, there wasn't a peep from him. Nothing. There still hasn't been anything out there about his perspective on being fired and 'what went wrong' etc. Did no reporters reach out to him or did he just not want to talk? And I just read that there's no plans for him to front the media tomorrow. Maybe it's standard for ex-managers to fade away, but this seems extreme to me. It's definitely odd.