Weekend Up!: The Summer of George continues as the Jays take another series against the Astros
On Kikuchi's tinkering, Vlad and Champan's Friday blasts, kids on the field, Berríos battling, Vlad and Charlie vs. the Ump, Gausman's brilliance, Springer's catch, prospects, news, notes, and more!
The Blue Jays closed out an impressive 14-8 April on Saturday, and on Sunday started May off on a winning note as well. They’ve yet to lose a series this year, despite some incredibly tough competition so far. (Let’s not bring up the run differential just yet, eh?).
So let’s talk about it! Here’s Weekend Up!
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Down: Friday: Jays 7 - Astros 11
The 2021 Toronto Blue Jays were 42-5 when scoring seven or more runs. You’d think that would be enough offence to win a ballgame just about that often, too. Yet so far in 2022 the Jays are have just a 1-2 record when scoring that many, with their thrilling come-from-behind victory on opening day the only notch in the win column in such games.
You can’t even just shrug your shoulders and call Friday’s effort “just one of those days,” either. Starter Yusei Kikuchi remains very much a work in progress. And while he took the advice of literally everybody by throwing his fastball more in this one, it didn’t exactly instantly unlock his potential the way we all had hoped. Kikuchi didn’t make it out of the third inning, surrendering four runs on four hits and three walks and needing 66 pitches to get through just 2 2/3 innings (albeit while striking out four).
How he got there was actually quite interesting. Though Statcast identifies his second-most used pitch as Kikuchi's dreaded cutter, in his report on the game for Sportsnet, Shi Davidi refers to it as a slider — and a new version of it to boot. Looking into the numbers, it definitely possesses different characteristics than both the cutter and slider we've been used to seeing. At an average of 88.8 mph, it 2 mph slower than his usual cutter, but 4 mph harder than the slider. It had five inches of additional drop than the usual cutter does, but dropped 11 inches less than the slider. It also moved horizontally more than the cutter normally does, but about the same as the slider.
In short, it's somewhere in between the two pitches — offerings that, in this outing, he didn't use at all. It was 59% four-seamers, 23% for the new slider, and 18% for the changeup. That's it. And that's by design. As was the fact that Kikuchi ditched the hitch in his windup that he uses.
"We made a minor tweak with the leg kick," Kikuchi said through interpreter Kevin Ando, as reported by SI’s Mitch Bannon. "Just more of a fluid, one motion leg kick that we began to work on a couple days ago in my bullpen. Tonight, just went out there and went with it because it did feel great."
A couple days ago!
On the new pitch, Kikuchi added, via Davidi:
“That's another thing that Pete Walker and I have actually talked about, increasing the velocity on that slider. So just getting a better feel for that, working at it each and every day, just to put me in a better position by gaining more fuel on that pitch.”
In other words, we seem to have moved beyond just tinkering here. And that's going to require some patience, unfortunately. Getting the feel for what amounts to a new pitch, while pitching from an adjusted windup, and trying to make a four-seamer he only threw 36% of the time in 2021 a reliable enough pitch to use upwards of 60% of the time going forward is a lot!
There were some positives to take from Kikuchi's outing, however. One was that his changeup was particularly effective when he was able to locate it well, generating whiffs on four of five swings (though the other was Yuli Gurriel's RBI double in the third). Another of Kikuchi's changeups went for a called strike, too. Sadly, many of them also ended up in the dirt.
Location was a problem with the fastball, too. As Joe Siddall put it at the end of Sportsnet's telecast, too many of the four-seamers were non-competitive. You can see that rather clearly from this zone plot of Kikuchi's heaters to right-handers.
Now, it’s a little bit backwards to look at that chart as a good thing, but Kikuchi threw just 43.6% of his four-seamers in the zone in this one, but never in his career has he finished with a mark below 51%. With more repetition of the hitch-less delivery, you’d have to think that more of those will find the zone. It all might just come together yet.
And you sure hope it does! Because not only is it not fun to watch Kikuchi fighting himself out there, it sucks to waste offensive performances like this one.
I mean, when Matt Chapman blasts a two-run shot off the facade of the 500 level…
…after Vladimir Guerrero Jr. had already hit a somehow-maybe-even-more-impressive 114.4 mph three-run missile (which wasn’t even his hardest hit ball of the night!)…
…you probably should be winning that game! Whether a couple of rally-disrupting 11-year-old kids got tackled and escorted off the field or not!
Oh, and in case you missed that one, here you go:
Note to kids and incredibly aggressive security staff both: Absolutely do not ever do this.
Up: Saturday: Jays 2 - Astros 1
George Springer led off the bottom of the first of Saturday’s tilt with a wall-scraper of a home run — the 46th leadoff home run of his career, putting him into a tie with Jimmy Rollins for sixth all time — and bashed another in the third, which would be all the offence the Blue Jays needed in this one. Uh… somehow.
The Astros felt like they were constantly threatening Jays starter José Berríos in this one, yet he routinely managed to escape. In the first there were a pair of lineouts with expected batting averages of .860 and .570 respectively. In the third there was a two out mini rally (double, walk) that ended in a 384 foot flyout with an xBA of .570. In the fourth a Yordan Álvarez blast was followed by a walk and a single before Berríos rallied (including showing off some fine glove work the get the lead runner at third on a bunt) for three straight outs. The fifth started with a pair of singles before Berríos recovered and stranded them. And the sixth saw runners reach on a Bo Bichette error and a single that forced Berríos from the game, as Adam Cimber was brought in to end the frame.
In all, one run over 5 2/3 innings on seven hits and two walks, with five strikeouts, is a fine enough looking line. But it was hairy! The Astros were 0-for-9 with runners in scoring position.
And, uh, I think it's safe to say that Berríos hasn't quite been firing on all cylinders just yet.
I mean, we’ll take the outcome. And it’s a credit to him — and the Jays’ defence — that he’s been able to survive all that. Plus, he hasn’t exactly been a Statcast darling for a few years anyway, and the results always do come. But, uh, I’m about ready for the Berríos we saw last summer to show up.
Of course, a game like this one would have been less hairy if anybody other than George Springer had been able to muster some offence for the Jays.
Granted, that’s tough to do when you’re Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and “dealing with (his) production being affected by someone else’s mediocrity,” as the great José Bautista once put it.
Young Vlad isn’t nearly as prone to demonstrative outbursts as Bautista was — and neither is his manager — but umpire Nic Lentz’s strike zone definitely managed to get him hot. And got Charlie out of the dugout to prevent his superstar from getting ejected, getting himself tossed instead.
You can understand why.
Charlie was no worse for the wear, it turns out, taking the stage with a guiro at Lula Lounge in the west end following the win.
Vlad, on the other hand, was 0-for-4 with a pair of strikeouts and three runners left stranded. Turns out it's harder to hit when the zone is big enough to include pitches that far off the plate — something it certainly feels is happening a lot to him this season. Give him some superstar calls already, blue!
Anyway, the bullpen, as they’ve been asked to do quite often already this season, shut it down the rest of the way. Adam Cimber, Tim Mayza, and Jordan Romano combined for 3 1/3 innings of shutout ball, allowing just one hit and one walk between them. Romano, who needed just nine pitches to bury the top of the Astros order in the ninth, and whose fastball was 1.8 mph harder than his average this year, was particularly impressive.
Up: Sunday: Jays 3 - Astros 2
The Jays finished up with another one that ended up a nail-biter, but it didn’t exactly feel like one most of the way. Kevin Gausman continues to make the Blue Jays’ front office look like geniuses, just as his splitter keeps making the best hitters on the planet look foolish.
Gausman was ridiculous. He wobbled a tiny bit in his final two frames, thanks to a Chas McCormick triple in the sixth and some poor batted ball luck in the seventh, but on the whole it was another brilliant outing. Seven innings, ten strikeouts, two runs on six hits and — once again — no walks.
Per @MLBStats, Gausman has now joined Cy Young (1906) as the only pitchers (min. 20 IP) to begin a season with five straight starts of zero walks and zero home runs allowed since the World Series era began in 1903. Codify adds that Gausman is now the only pitcher in MLB history to record 30-plus strikeouts, no walks, and no home runs over the span of a full month. I’m not sure what else needs to be said about him beyond that — though there were a couple of excellent pieces on him published this week: one from David Adler of MLB.com, who breaks down a bunch of ridiculous stats and facts about Gausman’s splitter and his ability to get hitters to chase it, while in another David Singh of Sportsnet richly tells us about Gausman’s journey as a pitcher and the development of the splitter’s central role in it.
There was, of course, more to this game than just Gausman’s performance. There was Bo Bichette hitting a two-run opposite field home run to break up Framber Valdez’s no-hitter and erase Houston’s 1-0 lead in the bottom of the sixth — bumping his wRC+ all the way up to, ah, 63 in the process. Then, after Houston evened things in the top of the seventh, there was Santiago Espinal’s clutch RBI single to score Matt Chapman from second and make the Astros pay for a rare error from their excellent young shortstop Jeremy Peña (who was otherwise frustratingly surehanded all weekend).
But the most crucial play was saved for the ninth. And who else would make it but the superstar former Astro patrolling right field?
Working for a second straight day, Jordan Romano was less effective than on Saturday. He needed 21 pitches to get through the ninth inning, 14 of which were fastballs, and none of which produced a swing-and-miss. He also, after a one out double from Kyle Tucker, needed some help from his teammates.
Enter George Springer.
That ball was 100.4 mph off the bat of Alex Bregman and it travelled 338 feet. The expected batting average on it was .610, so not exactly an impossible catch. But given the situation? The fact that he needed to get everything he possibly could out of himself to get there? And the awareness that he had to get the ball back into the infield as quickly as possible to prevent the runner on second from advancing any farther than one base? Yeah, I'd say it was pretty unreal.
“I already gave him like three hugs,” Charlie Montoyo told reporters (including Shi Davidi of Sportsnet) after the game.
Kevin Gausman added: “George is incredible. He'll put his whole body on the line. He'll run right into the wall for you, even on a foul ball, like you saw today ... to have a guy like like that out there is is huge.”
You can say that again, Kevin. A fully healthy Springer from day one has been a magnificent thing to watch so far.
JAYS WIN!! And with the win they’ve guaranteed home field advantage over the Astros in any tiebreaker or seeding scenario!
Other notes
• With rosters shrinking from 28 to 26 on Monday, the Jays needed to make a pair of roster moves after this one, and did so by optioning Bowden Francis and Gosuke Katoh down to Buffalo. Katoh, in particular, is a great story, and it’s a shame to see him go, but I think there’s a very good chance he’ll be back at some point. (Francis, it should be noted, was up with the big club briefly to replace Tayler Saucedo, who has landed on the 10-day IL with a hip issue.)
• Not getting sent down? Vinny Capra, who was added to the 40-man and called up earlier in the weekend as a replacement for Cavan Biggio. Presumably, that’s because Capra has feasted on lefties as a minor leaguer, including producing a gaudy .493/.541/.866 line against them over 75 plate appearances last season (which he mostly spent at Double-A New Hampshire). Yankees starters Jordan Montgomery and Nestor Cortes, who are both slated to face the Jays this week, throw from the left side.
The other part of the Capra thing, however, is that Biggio is going to need his 40-man spot back once he’s able to come off of the Covid-19 injured list. That means someone is likely going to have to get designated for assignment, and that very well could be Capra. Both those things likely explain why it was him and not, say, the red hot Samad Taylor, who got the call.
• One way Capra could get a reprieve here is if the Jays instead choose to place Nate Pearson on the 60-day IL. Pearson was in Toronto this weekend, getting in “a light side session” before heading down to Florida continue building up. Could that process, plus a rehab stint, take a month? If so, maybe that’s the play they make here instead.
• Also worth noting on the injury front over the weekend, Teoscar Hernández had a live BP session against Hyun Jin Ryu, with Danny Jansen catching. Hernández seems the closest to returning, and is now headed to Buffalo on a rehab assignment — though Shi Davidi notes that he may end up in Dunedin instead, should weather threaten the Bisons’ midweek games. He seems on track to join up with the Jays next weekend in Cleveland.
Ryu pitched three innings in that sim game, so he’ll still likely need to be built up more before he returns, meaning a rehab assignment may be on the cards for him as well.
• So, uh, the Jays might have some real pitching prospects in the system, eh? Back on Tuesday, Sem Robberse threw seven innings of two-hit shutout ball for High-A Vancouver, walking just one and striking out seven in the process. Here on Sunday, Robberse's teammate Trent Palmer threw six perfect innings with eight strikeouts. And joining them soon may be Ricky Tiedemann, who has been outstanding thus far for Low-A Dunedin.
Because he's pitching in parks that are equipped with Statcast's Hawk-Eye cameras, Tiedemann is definitely getting noticed — though it's not just eye-popping data that's behind his buzz. On Friday, Tiedemann threw five perfect innings of his own, striking out nine in the process. Prettttty, prettttty, prettty good.
Ethan Sands of MLB.com produced an excellent profile of Tiedemann in the wake of his start this week. And Jesse Roche of Baseball Prospectus wrote about him prior to the five perfect innings, saying that "outside of Jackson Jobe, Tiedemann may possess the loudest stuff in Low-A," and noting that the 19-year-old, for now, primarily has a plus changeup and a wicked mid-90s fastball with extreme run. "That type of movement at that velocity is uncommon, if not unheard of," he says. Buckle up.
• Mitch Bannon of SI tweets that this year's draft bonus pools have been finalized, and that the Jays have the 15th largest, at $8.4 million. He adds that they'll have five picks in the top 100 (23, 60, 77, 78, 98), with two of those being compensation picks for the losses of Robbie Ray and Marcus Semien.
• Happy to not have to watch Luis Garcia’s delivery again until at least October!
• Lastly, Nick and I did another live, post-game episode of Blue Jays Happy Hour on Sunday. Check out this post for all the details — including a new RSS link you can use to subscribe in Google Podcasts and other apps you may not have been able to find it in so far!
Next up: Monday, 7:07 PM ET: Jays vs. Yankees (Ross Stripling vs. Jordan Montgomery), TV: Sportsnet One, Radio: Sportsnet 590
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It's almost like we are stealing wins. There's no way we should be winning some of those games! It almost feels like we are a bit of a house of cards and could start a long losing streak any moment except that won't because we are getting some truly amazing pitching and timely hitting. And the good news is that things should get better!