Weekend Up!: The Trop is as the Trop does (read: the Jays lost another series)
On Springer's scare, a broken offence, Ryu's return, a hopeful Saturday, Jano!, Teo!, Manoah, adjustments, Robbie Ray, Joey Votto, prospects, a fresh Blue Jays Happy Hour, and more!
Well that sure as hell wasn’t a lot of fun, was it? But I guess we’d better talk about it.
Here’s Weekend Up!
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Down: Friday: Jays 2 - Rays 5
The less said about this one the better, but I suppose there were a few things worth noting here. First of all, George Springer gave everyone a giant scare, injuring his ankle on a Brandon Lowe "triple" in the bottom of the second.
It didn’t look too bad on first blush, and Springer stayed in the game, taking an at-bat the following inning. However, he was lifted for Raimel Tapia when it came time for the Jays to play defence in the bottom of the third, eliciting all kinds of understandable dread.
That dread continued, even after the club reported the injury as a just mild ankle sprain and called him day-to-day — understandably so, given Springer’s history, and the club’s history of accurately reporting Springer’s injury status. Fortunately he was able to return to the lineup here on Sunday.
What wasn’t fortunate about this one was pretty much everything else. The Jays wasted another seven excellent innings from Kevin Gausman, who finished his half of that inning with a line of two earned runs — one being the result of Lowe’s “triple” — on just two hits and one walk, with eight strikeouts.
Unfortunately, Gausman would end up back out on the mound to start the bottom of the eighth, at which point his numbers would go a bit sideways. This was doubly unfortunate because he potentially wouldn’t have been out there had the Jays’ snake-bitten offence been able to take advantage of the outstanding situation they found themselves in after Vinny Capra, Santiago Espinal, and Tapia all managed to single to lead-off the frame.
That trio managed to plate one run, tying the ballgame at two. And the Jays were, at that point, looking at Bo Bichette, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., and Teoscar Hernández due up with runners on first and second with nobody out.
The game seemed ready to be broken open, and the Jays were primed to start putting their awful start to May behind them. Alas, it didn’t quite happen that way.
Bichette struck out on five pitches — albeit some pretty good ones from new Rays reliever Andrew Kittredge.
The “scuffling” Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (who entered Sunday’s play with a wRC+ of “just” 124 for the month of May) then grounded into a double play.
Gausman, who at that point was at just 90 pitches for the day, returned for the eighth. His first pitch was belted by Mike Zunino for a double (after video replay determined it had stayed in the yard). An infield single and a proper single followed. The Rays had taken the lead. They’d tack on a couple more off of Tim Mayza, and the rest of the game was academic. Woof.
Up: Saturday: Jays 5 - Rays 1
If you only looked at the highlights of this one you would have missed how absolutely tense it was — and what an incredible exhale the Jays’ four-run eighth provided for the struggling team.
The story for the first part of this one, however, was the return of Hyun Jin Ryu.
The biggest part of that story was his fastball. And not just the fact that he was throwing it harder than when we last saw him — though he was, averaging season-high 90.3 mph — but the fact that he was much more comfortable throwing it than in previous outings. Of the 71 pitches Ryu threw, 38 were fastballs. His previous outings had seen him use the pitch 37% and 34% of the time respectively, whereas in this one he threw it 53.5% of the time.
Only one other time in his Blue Jays career had Ryu thrown his fastball as much — a seven earned run disaster against the White Sox at Rogers Centre last August. And he's never thrown his cutter so little as a Blue Jay, using it just 7% of the time.
I'm not sure that's a pitch mix that's going to work for him all the time going forward, but the nature of Ryu is that opponents are never going to be quite sure what they're going to see from him on a given day anyway. More important than that — and even more important than the fastball velocity, which on average is slightly higher now in 2022 than it was in 2020 if you can believe that! — was Ryu's location. He managed to do a good job of keeping his fastball away from the heart of the plate against right-handers, but the really important step forward was with the changeup.
Here’s Ryu’s changeup location to right-handed hitters in his first start of the year against Texas (left), and in his second start of the year against Oakland (right).
And now here’s where the changeup was located to right-handers on Saturday.
A thing of absolute beauty!
Now, granted, Ryu only went through the order twice — something that might become more common for him in the final two seasons of his contract — lasting just 4 2/3 innings. But in that span he allowed just one run on four hits and a walk, striking out three. Keep doing that and we'll take it!
Of course, there were a couple other things of beauty in this one, too. And I don’t just mean the lineup shakeup that we saw (though I do live seeing Vlad hitting in the two spot!).
Like a little bit of power, finally!
That Teoscar homer to lead off the eighth inning was the first run scored by either team since the first inning. Five batters (and one more run scored) later the Jays would add another — this time of the two-run variety.
Welcome back, Jano!!
Amazingly, prior to the game I went over to Props.cash — player prop research made easy! — because I thought the visualization of Jansen’s recent spate of home runs would be truly hilarious. Granted, “recent” isn’t quite the right word, seeing as his homer binge began last year and continued prior to his trip to the IL back in April. Still, the idea that he added another bomb to a chart like this is pretty incredible.
He’s gone deep six times in his last nine games (technically now ten, given Sunday’s pinch hit at-bat). You love to see it!
Anyway, the Jays and their fans could finally breathe easy after this one. You know, for a day at least. Especially since Jordan Romano would come in to close this one out looking much, much more like his normal self than he did when we’d last seen him (i.e. giving up a walk-off blast to Aaron Judge on Tuesday in the Bronx)!
Down: Sunday: Jays 0 - Rays 3
They say you have to be lucky to be good, and good to be lucky. Well, a better hitting team than these Jays are at the moment would likely have had better luck in that fateful three-run bottom of the sixth. Or at least wouldn't continually be in a position where every bad bounce looms massively over every game.
Heading into Sunday's finale the Blue Jays were a pitiful .210/.280/.323 as a team in May, giving them a 77 wRC+. Somehow three teams have been worse — though with the second half of the month only just about to begin, the Jays still have time to catch the Tigers, Cubs, and A's in terms of futility. And they took a good step toward doing so in another painful display at the Trop, going 5-for-30 as a team with one walk and just one extra base hit.
George Springer was back and looked healthy, albeit at DH. Alek Manoah did Alek Manoah things — only one of the three runs he allowed was earned, though his teammates still wouldn't have scored enough to win even if the other two hadn't come across. Vladdy (12) and Santiago Espinal (9) extended their hit streaks. Trevor Richards, Ryan Borucki, and David Phelps looked good in relief. Alejandro Kirk threw out a runner. But otherwise there sure wasn't a whole lot to write home about in this one.
They at least weren't the Reds, I guess?
Cincinnati no-hit the Pirates and still lost on Sunday. Which feels like something these Jays might actually be capable of! In fact, as bad as their offence was, the stupid Rays were hardly any better. Tampa was 6-for-31 on the day, with no walks. A rare Matt Chapman error, a bloop single, and a broken bat hit through a giant hole in the shift made the difference. Problem is, the Jays' lineup is supposed to be full of difference-makers. Or at least half full!
I'm getting into "bad things are bad, and I noticed!" territory here, which I loathe, but there really isn't much else to say about this one.
They'll hit. But when?
On the positive side of that question, we're already seeing some strategic shifts, I think, which should help. And which may have come out of the team meeting called by Springer after the club’s dismal mid-week series in the Bronx.
Per Shi Davidi of Sportsnet, Springer explained:
“This is a young team. That's not an excuse, but sometimes they're going to go through growing pains and you've got to learn to fight through stuff and face a little bit of adversity and all that good stuff to come out better on the other side.
“A lot of people forget that this is the second year for a lot of really, really core players on this team. They have to adjust to the league and the league's already adjusted to them and adjusted to how the Blue Jays like to hit and play. There's going to be a natural kind of regression period before it goes back up. I've been a part of it. You've got to keep going.”
The “young team” stuff doesn’t do a whole lot for me — the only regulars with fewer than 1,000 career plate appearances at this point are Santiago Espinal and Alejandro Kirk (also, Charlie would get absolutely roasted for saying a thing like that) — but I think the stuff he’s saying about the league adjusting and the team needing to adjust back makes a whole lot of sense.
I wrote last week about how patience is a virtue in these situations. But as the losses mount, that’s a tough thing to maintain even for fans — and we’re not the ones out there trying to distinguish in a split second between 96 mph fastballs and wipeout sliders.
Anyway, now it’s on to face the Mariners, who will hopefully be good for what ails this group. Nowhere to go but up, I suppose!
Other notes
• Speaking of the Mariners, they’ll be without Robbie Ray for the series with the Jays this week. Last year's AL Cy Young winner — who has seen a dip in velocity and poorer strikeout and walk rates this year so far — pitched Sunday on regular rest after the M's used an off-day on Thursday to skip Chris Flexen in the rotation and move him to Monday against the Jays instead. An indication that Ray won't be entering Canada for a Rogers Centre homecoming this series? I guess we'll soon find out.
Flexen takes on Yusei Kikuchi on Monday. José Berríos gets Logan Gilbert on Tuesday, and Wednesday's game will feature Kevin Gausman and Marco Gonzales. Now let's score these pitchers some runs, Jays!
• Joey Votto is on a rehab assignment with the Louisville Bats, which should put him on track to join the Reds when they come to Toronto on the weekend — potentially for the last time of Votto’s career. He also got to wear a stupid minor league theme jersey! (Hat tip to Emma Baccellieri, whose tweet I would simple use here if Substack’s software didn’t crop out the image from the one she’s QTing).
• Coming out of spring training, Yimi Garcia was basically slotted in as the Jays' de facto closer on nights when Jordan Romano was unavailable. He has hasn't exactly been awful so far, but now has just eight strikeouts in 13 1/3 innings. In 2020 and 2022 combined he struck out 79 batters in 72 2/3 innings. I'd like to see that version, please! (I suspect the Jays would too!)
• A couple tidbits from Shi Davidi over the weekend, as he notes that Angus Mugford has left his job as the director of the Jays’ High Performance department to become a senior VP with the New Jersey Devils. Not sure how to feel about that one.
Shi also tells us that hotshot prospects Ricky Tiedemann and Yosver Zulueta are, according to “rumblings,” going to be promoted to High-A Vancouver after their recent dominant outings for Low-A Dunedin.
• Turns out Tiedemann and Zulueta aren’t the only dominant pitchers on the D-Jays roster. On Saturday night, three Dunedin pitchers combined to strike out 24 members of the Tampa Tarpons.
A thing like that is difficult to wrap one’s mind around, so Joe Trezza of MLB.com presented it another way:
“They allowed seven batters to reach in the shutout, issuing five walks and allowing two singles. Only three other batters put the ball in play. Blue Jays pitching struck out every hitter in the Tarpons lineup at least once, two twice, two thrice and three four times.”
• Of particular note was the performance of Nick Frasso, who was making his return from (a modified version of) Tommy John surgery. According to reports before he was drafted in the fourth round last year, Frasso was sitting 92-95 with his fastball and occasionally touching 97. He struck out eight in three innings of work, allowed just one hit, no walks, and lit up the radar gun at 100 multiple times. Yowza!
• Lmao Rangers
Texas Rangers @Rangers
Six years ago today... https://t.co/zogtTs8ArQ
Blue Jays Happy Hour 2.0 - Episode 6
Lastly, it wasn’t an especially happy time to talk about the Jays, but we did a live post-game episode of Blue Jays Happy Hour at the conclusion of Sunday’s finale. Which is to say that I did it, as Nick was unavailable for this one. Thanks to everyone who called in and offered up questions in the chat!
You can listen to the episode — and come join us next time we go live (hopefully after a damn win for once) — by downloading the Callin app!
You can also always find the show after the fact on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and in your podcatcher of choice via this RSS link.
Next up: Monday, 7:07 PM ET: Jays vs. Mariners (Yusei Kikuchi vs. Chris Flexen), TV: Sportsnet One, Radio: Sportsnet 590
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Seriously, what is going on with the offence. Ugh.