As the title of this post describes, it's been a real roller coaster ride for a lot of teams in the mlb this season especially the Blue Jays, Dodgers, Angels, Royals and, to a lesser extent, Nationals. Most of these teams were expected to achieve greatness this year because of offseason trades, major free agent signings or just how complete their team looked after a couple less major signings.
Of course the trades refers specifically to the Blue Jays and the Royals, while Kansas City did pull off the same magnitude in trades as the Blue Jays have it's been a similar ride for the fans. For the first month or so Kansas was performing great, though players like Eric Hosmer weren't hitting to well, but they were stringing together wins and keeping in the top 2 in the AL Central, which was an amazing feat considering where they were last year. Then as of late the rest of their bats have cooled down and their pitching has dropped a notch as well settling them down to the bottom of the AL Central, which is disappointing for the fans I must say, and I feel their pain. This is because the Jays have seemed to have the reverse of Kansas, at least to an extent. That is that they started out playing terribly, making errors left, right and centre, not hitting well, and not pitching well. Currently I can't say they've turned it around but they've been slowly showing signs of life in each of those categories, their no longer making stupid errors, the bullpen has been performing pretty well and the bats are better than they were. However the bats have been up and down, if you look at their batting avg with runners in scoring position over the last week or so it's been one step forward two back.
Then we look at the both LA baseball franchises who are both in hot water due to poor performances after seriously increasing their payroll over the off season. The Angels dropping $125 million dollars on Josh Hamilton, after dropping more than that on CJ Wilson and Albert Pujols the year before and the Dodgers signing Hyun-Jin Ryu, Zack Grienke and re-signing Brandon League for a total of $205.5 million dollars. Now the poor performance I've been more surprised with is the Dodgers and thats because their starting 3 pitchers (Ryu, Grienke and Kershaw) have been anything less than spectacular, their offence has just been off so far, which is a bit disappointing. Where as the Angels in my opinion made a series of poor signings, signing Pujols wasn't a bad idea but for the amount of money they dropped it was a terrible idea (he's been dropping in production, though not by huge amounts) and he's getting old and any player will start to drop in skill as they age (see whats happened to Roy Halladay). The CJ Wilson signing I had no problem with since he was pitching well for the Rangers and going to Angels Stadium meant he'd be in a MUCH better park, which would only work better for him. Now the Josh Hamilton singing in my opinion was the worst thing they could have done, not only is Hamilton a strikeout machine but he went from the 3rd best hitters park to the 3rd worst hitters park (not to mention his stats at Angels Stadium were horrific, and when people say its a small sample size thats bull shit, we're talking nearly 200 at bats). Overall both teams dug themselves into a hole at the beginning of the season and have shown some life only to be shot back down into losing games again.
The last example, the Nationals are in a very similar situation, from listening to baseball podcasts and news online I know that going into the season almost everyone in the baseball world was expecting the Nationals to either make it to the World Series or take it. Now the reason for this was because they at a first glance had a very 'complete team' that meaning they had 3 guys who could easily be a closer to cover the 7-8-9 innings and they also had their first 3 starters who could easily be aces on other staffs and their 4-5 starters if they performed well would easily be 2-3 guys in other pitching staffs. Now outside of their pitching they had good defence with guys like Zimmerman, LaRoche and Harper in the field and the same guys for offence. Now where it all went wrong, first off LaRoche hadn't been hitting the way he was expected to, Zimmerman had been having throwing issues, all of their starters except Strasburg and Detwiller have been having trouble, and like I expected some of their other 'offensive producers' were counted on too much (ie. Jason Werth, who is Werthless in my opinion). Now since the entire team hasn't collapsed they are still in 2nd place in the NL East but they are barely playing over .500 and the reason they are 2nd with that winning % is because all of the other teams in the NL East aside from Atlanta are terrible with a capital T.
Now what do I expect to happen with these teams? Well I think the Angels are going to come up short and not make the playoffs again because even if they can play to their potential from here on out the Rangers and Athletics have been playing much better from the start and they have too much ground to cover. The Dodgers and the Blue Jays I expect to be able to get back into things, since they are similar in the fact that they have one part of their team working on full cylinders while others are not (starting pitching for the Dodgers and the bullpen for the Blue Jays). If either team manages to get to .500 or better by the All Star Break I can see them potentially winning the division because with both teams since no one in either division is running away with it, it's pretty evenly spread. Though if they don't I think the best they can hope for in that situation is 2nd or more likely 3rd in the division and considering how well 3 of the 5 teams in the NL Central and AL West have been playing I don't thing they'd get the wild card either. Now the Royals I think are unfortunately going to fade away, they may be able to make it back from the abyss and make 3rd in the NL Central but I don't think they will get any higher, this is because the afore mentioned hitters are still not showing any signs of turning things around, which is necessary for the Royals to turn it around and finally their starting pitchers are showing signs of becoming mortal (specifically Guthrie and Shields). Lastly the Nationals, I expect they will get back into the groove of things especially since most of their games will be against the other weak NL East teams but considering how well the Braves have been playing I doubt they will win the division, more like they will make it by Wild Card. Either way we'll just have to wait and see what happens.
-Eric
Friday, May 31, 2013
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Bird Watch: Seeing Some Progress, Standing Pat and Surprising Outings
Ok so been a couple of days since the last post but here some changes in the Blue Jays, Cardinals and Orioles have been seen in the last few games. First off the Jays have been on a up and down this past 3-4 games, some games they demolish the competition, some they don't score all that much and then just like Tuesdays game they do a little of both. Of course what I'm talking about is hidden by what you see in the box score and that is that despite the large number of runs scored in that outing the overall offensive performance was almost lacklustre. Now why is that? It's because despite hitting 12 times, we were still 4 for 12 with runners in scoring position and Bautista and Encarnacion both made throwing errors that cost a run each, so if those didn't happen we likely would have won the game. As for Mondays game the same was pretty much true, the only difference was that Buerhle pitched a better game than Morrow did and the Braves were held to 3 runs over the entire game. What this tells me is that at the least Buerhle is back in game mode especially because Atlanta has one of the most offense heavy teams and unless your a power/strikeout pitcher it's harder to get through their hitters. Basically we need an improvement in pitchers, though like I previously said we have a series of pitchers coming off the DL from last year soon so I expect that to come soon.
Then theres the Cardinals, who haven't had anything out of the ordinary going on, nothing out of the ordinary going on with the team, their pitchers both starting, bullpen and closer are dominating the hitters they face. As well their hitters are getting a good read on the ball and putting it in play and are still holding onto the lead in the entire MLB and ever since they lost Tony LaRussa and Albert Pujols I have a new found respect for them because they still manage to dominate and make getting into the playoffs seem effortless, no matter what they have coming against them they almost always seem to pull through.
Finally, the Orioles. Like the Blue Jays, they've been up and down in recent games. They barely lost a game against the Jays on Sunday, they beat the Nationals into the ground on Monday and then on Tuesday pulled the reverse of Mondays outcome. Now there isn't much to say about the first two games as they were well played, no real issues on defence or offence but Tuesdays game was pretty ugly. Not only did they only get 3 runs on the board and only 6 runners in scoring position against a sub-par starting pitcher (Nathan Karns) but their new call up, Kevin Gausman, gave up 7 runs with no strikeouts and 1 walk. All in all it seemed like Gausman left the pitches hanging over the plate where the Nationals hitters could just cream it, hence the 3 home runs. Though I don't think this effects Gausman too much since he's currently replacing Wei Yin Chen, and considering the state of the rotation of the Orioles he still has more chances to prove if he can hold a spot so keep watching Kevin Gausman, I'm sure he'll find his groove.
-Eric
Then theres the Cardinals, who haven't had anything out of the ordinary going on, nothing out of the ordinary going on with the team, their pitchers both starting, bullpen and closer are dominating the hitters they face. As well their hitters are getting a good read on the ball and putting it in play and are still holding onto the lead in the entire MLB and ever since they lost Tony LaRussa and Albert Pujols I have a new found respect for them because they still manage to dominate and make getting into the playoffs seem effortless, no matter what they have coming against them they almost always seem to pull through.
Finally, the Orioles. Like the Blue Jays, they've been up and down in recent games. They barely lost a game against the Jays on Sunday, they beat the Nationals into the ground on Monday and then on Tuesday pulled the reverse of Mondays outcome. Now there isn't much to say about the first two games as they were well played, no real issues on defence or offence but Tuesdays game was pretty ugly. Not only did they only get 3 runs on the board and only 6 runners in scoring position against a sub-par starting pitcher (Nathan Karns) but their new call up, Kevin Gausman, gave up 7 runs with no strikeouts and 1 walk. All in all it seemed like Gausman left the pitches hanging over the plate where the Nationals hitters could just cream it, hence the 3 home runs. Though I don't think this effects Gausman too much since he's currently replacing Wei Yin Chen, and considering the state of the rotation of the Orioles he still has more chances to prove if he can hold a spot so keep watching Kevin Gausman, I'm sure he'll find his groove.
-Eric
Friday, May 24, 2013
The Year Of The Prima Donna Umpires
Ok so I write this post as I watch the Jays game on Friday and I just gotta say WOW at the home plate umpire Dan Bellino. Now I've read a couple articles on umpires, and not just how they are crap at getting calls but how they have just a bad situation all together, their travel timeline is hellish at best, the good umps generally go unthanked, etc. Now even though you take that into account you can't bring that onto the field, at any job out there you can't just let what happened during the day get the best of you and get overly emotional because of it. Basically what I'm saying is that yes, umps do have it rough in terms of getting from game to game, but is it an excuse for making terrible calls? Not really, now I do understand that close calls may be a bit more understandable because a lack of sleep and getting to the field with barely any time to spare would do that to anybody but some of the recent calls have been so blatantly obvious that everyone in the stadium knows what the right call was expect the ump.
So obviously the reason I'm writing this post is because Brett Lawrie got thrown out of the game in the 3rd inning, the argument of course was over the last 2 pitches being strikes instead of balls. Now I watch these games on MLB.TV and for the most part they have a pitch tracker on the screen during every at bat and I could see the first questionable pitch was a ball above the zone, though I'm willing to give that to the ump because Wieters is good at framing pitches and easily brought it down a few inches. Though that second pitch was nearly in the dirt so calling it a strike was ridiculous, but the worst of it was that he threw out Lawrie for throwing his gloves and helmet. I of course know that umpires are supposed to show a bit of discretion in terms of players reactions to their calls but that was just ridiculous because he blew an obvious call and Lawrie didn't exchange words with him, which in some cases haven't gotten players thrown out. It honestly seems to me like umpires are just getting worse and worse thinking their the centre of the damn universe on the field, even more reason why we need to increase replay or just get a different system into the game other than umpires. I mean MLB even came out and said that umpires generally miss 20% of calls, now I don't think umpires or referees in any other high end American sport miss that high percentage of calls and this year has been a lot worse than what I'm used to seeing last year I was used to seeing a couple blown close calls a week or so but now its become common place to see them once or twice a game. And of course this is not including missed strike/ball calls (which have been coming in in droves).
But thats not everything we've had some down right stupidity from umpires in the league this year, for instance the blown home run call by Angel Hernandez in Cleveland, what should have been a game winning home run for the A's ended up being a ground rule double. I watched that game and even the announcers said when the umpiring crew went to review it 'oh it's a home run' and then when they umps came back out and made the call everyone in the stadium was stunned because of the ridiculous of the call. Now this isn't the end, we also had that switch by the Astros manager, so lets set the stage here. Its the Angels vs. the Astros and the Astros manager Bo Porter made a switch for a new reliever, in kind Mike Scioscia player the match ups and made a switch for a pinch hitter....then Bo Porter made another pitcher change. Now for this you need to understand that in the official rules a pitcher MUST face at least one batter before he can be taken out (of course to avoid a consistent switching between managers). So Scioscia came out and called to the umpires who allowed it, which isn't just terrible because they blew an obvious call but because they don't know the rules that their supposed to be enforcing!
So there are those big ones during this year (and yes there have been others, just not as of as large significance) but in addition to this there have been over reactions by umpires as well which were ridiculous. Aside from tonights example in the Jays game is the bit with David Price of the Rays and the umpire Tom Hallion, now in this situation the umpire made some questionable calls and after Price finished the inning I guess he walked off looking a bit perturbed (he didn't look pissed to me) and as a result Tom Hallion went over and yelled at him as he entered the dug out. Now the matter is still under review but Price claimed that Hallion told him to 'throw the fucking ball over the plate', this of course is completely uncalled for as Price did nothing wrong. After this exchange Jeremy Hellickson and Matt Moore both shouted a bit at the umpire because they thought what he did was uncalled for, and what does Hallion do? He throws Hellickson out of the game. Over reaction, I certainly think so. Though this wasn't the end of it because after the game Price told reporters what happened, and when confronted by the same reporters Hallion told them that he did not say that and that Price is a liar, and there you go Hallion makes one mistake by swearing at a player for no good reason they he goes off and questions their character. From there the whole thing picked up steam with Hellickson, Moore and Price all posting on twitter what they thought of the situation and as a result both Price and Hallion were fined and Hallion could very well be suspended or fired for his actions if the investigation into the matter comes back negative for him.
All in all it seems that more and more of these incidents are creeping up and it needs to be fixed ASAP, umpires are starting to think that they own the game and they are the most important person on the field. Now I don't know enough about the inner workings of the umpiring system in the MLB to suggest improvements however I recommend that anyone interested in this take a look at this article by Jayson Stark that outlines 8 ways that umpiring can be improved in the MLB and I agree with every suggestion he has made.
-Eric
So obviously the reason I'm writing this post is because Brett Lawrie got thrown out of the game in the 3rd inning, the argument of course was over the last 2 pitches being strikes instead of balls. Now I watch these games on MLB.TV and for the most part they have a pitch tracker on the screen during every at bat and I could see the first questionable pitch was a ball above the zone, though I'm willing to give that to the ump because Wieters is good at framing pitches and easily brought it down a few inches. Though that second pitch was nearly in the dirt so calling it a strike was ridiculous, but the worst of it was that he threw out Lawrie for throwing his gloves and helmet. I of course know that umpires are supposed to show a bit of discretion in terms of players reactions to their calls but that was just ridiculous because he blew an obvious call and Lawrie didn't exchange words with him, which in some cases haven't gotten players thrown out. It honestly seems to me like umpires are just getting worse and worse thinking their the centre of the damn universe on the field, even more reason why we need to increase replay or just get a different system into the game other than umpires. I mean MLB even came out and said that umpires generally miss 20% of calls, now I don't think umpires or referees in any other high end American sport miss that high percentage of calls and this year has been a lot worse than what I'm used to seeing last year I was used to seeing a couple blown close calls a week or so but now its become common place to see them once or twice a game. And of course this is not including missed strike/ball calls (which have been coming in in droves).
But thats not everything we've had some down right stupidity from umpires in the league this year, for instance the blown home run call by Angel Hernandez in Cleveland, what should have been a game winning home run for the A's ended up being a ground rule double. I watched that game and even the announcers said when the umpiring crew went to review it 'oh it's a home run' and then when they umps came back out and made the call everyone in the stadium was stunned because of the ridiculous of the call. Now this isn't the end, we also had that switch by the Astros manager, so lets set the stage here. Its the Angels vs. the Astros and the Astros manager Bo Porter made a switch for a new reliever, in kind Mike Scioscia player the match ups and made a switch for a pinch hitter....then Bo Porter made another pitcher change. Now for this you need to understand that in the official rules a pitcher MUST face at least one batter before he can be taken out (of course to avoid a consistent switching between managers). So Scioscia came out and called to the umpires who allowed it, which isn't just terrible because they blew an obvious call but because they don't know the rules that their supposed to be enforcing!
So there are those big ones during this year (and yes there have been others, just not as of as large significance) but in addition to this there have been over reactions by umpires as well which were ridiculous. Aside from tonights example in the Jays game is the bit with David Price of the Rays and the umpire Tom Hallion, now in this situation the umpire made some questionable calls and after Price finished the inning I guess he walked off looking a bit perturbed (he didn't look pissed to me) and as a result Tom Hallion went over and yelled at him as he entered the dug out. Now the matter is still under review but Price claimed that Hallion told him to 'throw the fucking ball over the plate', this of course is completely uncalled for as Price did nothing wrong. After this exchange Jeremy Hellickson and Matt Moore both shouted a bit at the umpire because they thought what he did was uncalled for, and what does Hallion do? He throws Hellickson out of the game. Over reaction, I certainly think so. Though this wasn't the end of it because after the game Price told reporters what happened, and when confronted by the same reporters Hallion told them that he did not say that and that Price is a liar, and there you go Hallion makes one mistake by swearing at a player for no good reason they he goes off and questions their character. From there the whole thing picked up steam with Hellickson, Moore and Price all posting on twitter what they thought of the situation and as a result both Price and Hallion were fined and Hallion could very well be suspended or fired for his actions if the investigation into the matter comes back negative for him.
All in all it seems that more and more of these incidents are creeping up and it needs to be fixed ASAP, umpires are starting to think that they own the game and they are the most important person on the field. Now I don't know enough about the inner workings of the umpiring system in the MLB to suggest improvements however I recommend that anyone interested in this take a look at this article by Jayson Stark that outlines 8 ways that umpiring can be improved in the MLB and I agree with every suggestion he has made.
-Eric
Bird Watch: Count Down To Destruction, A Strange Habit and Continued Flight
Ok then, first off sorry for the lack of post lately, things have been a bit busy, with that said lets get right into it. In this I'm going to be covering all 3 of the birds, first off looking at the Jay's recent games (series in Tampa and Thursday's game against Baltimore), the Orioles newly called up prospect Kevin Gausman, his first outing and the odd habit he has, and the continued winning of the Cardinals keeping them above all other teams in all of the MLB (and of course why that is).
Alrighty so first off we have the Jays, not their last set of games from the start of their series against the Rays went with them winning the series 2-1 and now they've taken the first game of a 4 game series against the Orioles at home. Now when we look at these 4 games there are good and bad things to take away from it, on the positive side our pitching has been performing much better as Dickey, Buehrle and Morrow managed to pitch pretty damn well in the games they started, in addition it seems we're also getting a glimpse of improved defence down the middle with Bonifacio at 2nd. Now this surprised me a great deal, and it should surprise you too if you read my 'extra stats' post, now what's shown this? Well it's the number of double plays that have directly involved Bonifacio, Kawasaki and Encarnacion/the pitcher the first two being some of their bigger defensive issues. The number of them is 6 double plays involving those two players, which is a good indication that their defensive ability at their respective positions has improved. Now another positive is that our bullpen has been performing well, with the exception of casey Janssen but I expect that would be because of his 18 days of no activity. Now on to the negatives! Ok so first off the Jays are falling into the same pit fall that they fell into for the majority of the start of the season, not being able to make anything happen at the beginning of the game. All of the Jays games against the Rays were only 1-2 run games that were won late in the game and in each of them they only managed to get 8 or less hits, which is not the number we should be expecting from this kind of offence. J.P Arencibia continues to swing at terrible pitches outside of the zone, though Colby Rasmus is slowly but surely getting better at holding back on his swing. The last of the negative things I could pick out was Jose Bautista's attempt at stealing 2nd two games in a row and each time being thrown out by a mile, I'm not sure if it was a product of desperation since they hadn't been hitting very well for the past few games or if he just wanted to get something on the board but both times it was a stupid move to make and he should have shown better judgement.
Now why I tabbed the Jays portion of this post 'count down to destruction' is because I personally believe that their chances to get into the post season are pouring away and if their not at or within a game or two of .500 by the time May comes to an end I'm sure they won't make it. However the game on Thursday was different from the games against the Rays, but was a bit deceiving because despite being high scoring, most of those came on hits or homers after multiple walks and later in the game, meaning they were having the same hitting problems. Either way the Jays need to keep this winning up and pick up the pace with hitting if they plan on making the playoffs.
Ok then we've got the other end of the Thursday game, the Orioles. So the Orioles a couple days ago called up one of their top pitching prospects, Kevin Gausman, now if you payed attention you might've seen Gausman pitch during spring training and he did a pretty good job at it and Thursday's game was no exception he kept the game flowing at a fast pace, his control was good (he only walked 2 batters) and struck out 5. Now the line he left may not sound good, a 7.20 ERA, 7 hits, and a home runs, however we must remember that this was his first pitching performance at the major league level, hell he hasn't even played at the AAA level either and the main thing to remember about this is that he was unbelievably solid for the first 3 innings of work and only started to falter in the 4th and 5th. And even then he only gave up 4 runs, which anyone would consider a good performance by a 2nd or 3rd pitcher in the rotation of a standard team. Now then theres the odd thing I read about early in the game, Gausman has a habit much like most pitchers do and that is that he eats a powdered sugar doughnut between innings he pitches. A bit strange huh? But heres where it gets interesting because when he first arrived in the clubhouse after being called up guess what was sitting in his locker courtesy of CF Adam Jones? 1500 powdered doughnuts and a hostess sign in and above his locker. Guess Gausman will have to make sure he stays in the majors so he can finish all of those doughnuts.
Now then just a brief bit on the Cardinals because not much has changes. First they continue to lead the NL Central with a recored of 30-16, now while its great their in the lead in their division, they also have the highest winning percentage in all of the MLB by one game (the second highest being the Texas Rangers). Now while this is amazing, one of their key young pitchers, Jaimie Garcia went down earlier in the week and is going to have season ending surgery. Now any team would consider this a huge blow to their post season chances, but not the Cardinals, why is that? Well it's because they keep their farm system stocked to the brim with high quality pitching and hitting prospects, I mean look at their latest call ups Shelby Miller, Trevor Rosenthal, Don Kelly, Allen Craig, Pete Kozma and Matt Adams whoa are all tearing it up. Thats not all though, much like the Tampa Bay Rays, the Cardinals are very careful about developing their young pitchers to provide a low chance that they will be injured within the first few years of playing at the major league level and making sure they are indeed ready to take on hitters at the major league level. Now I may not be a fan of teams like the Cardinals or the Rays but I do respect their managers and GM's for being able to produce such potent minor leaguers and develop them in a way that makes them even more of a threat when they eventually make it to the majors.
-Eric
Alrighty so first off we have the Jays, not their last set of games from the start of their series against the Rays went with them winning the series 2-1 and now they've taken the first game of a 4 game series against the Orioles at home. Now when we look at these 4 games there are good and bad things to take away from it, on the positive side our pitching has been performing much better as Dickey, Buehrle and Morrow managed to pitch pretty damn well in the games they started, in addition it seems we're also getting a glimpse of improved defence down the middle with Bonifacio at 2nd. Now this surprised me a great deal, and it should surprise you too if you read my 'extra stats' post, now what's shown this? Well it's the number of double plays that have directly involved Bonifacio, Kawasaki and Encarnacion/the pitcher the first two being some of their bigger defensive issues. The number of them is 6 double plays involving those two players, which is a good indication that their defensive ability at their respective positions has improved. Now another positive is that our bullpen has been performing well, with the exception of casey Janssen but I expect that would be because of his 18 days of no activity. Now on to the negatives! Ok so first off the Jays are falling into the same pit fall that they fell into for the majority of the start of the season, not being able to make anything happen at the beginning of the game. All of the Jays games against the Rays were only 1-2 run games that were won late in the game and in each of them they only managed to get 8 or less hits, which is not the number we should be expecting from this kind of offence. J.P Arencibia continues to swing at terrible pitches outside of the zone, though Colby Rasmus is slowly but surely getting better at holding back on his swing. The last of the negative things I could pick out was Jose Bautista's attempt at stealing 2nd two games in a row and each time being thrown out by a mile, I'm not sure if it was a product of desperation since they hadn't been hitting very well for the past few games or if he just wanted to get something on the board but both times it was a stupid move to make and he should have shown better judgement.
Now why I tabbed the Jays portion of this post 'count down to destruction' is because I personally believe that their chances to get into the post season are pouring away and if their not at or within a game or two of .500 by the time May comes to an end I'm sure they won't make it. However the game on Thursday was different from the games against the Rays, but was a bit deceiving because despite being high scoring, most of those came on hits or homers after multiple walks and later in the game, meaning they were having the same hitting problems. Either way the Jays need to keep this winning up and pick up the pace with hitting if they plan on making the playoffs.
Ok then we've got the other end of the Thursday game, the Orioles. So the Orioles a couple days ago called up one of their top pitching prospects, Kevin Gausman, now if you payed attention you might've seen Gausman pitch during spring training and he did a pretty good job at it and Thursday's game was no exception he kept the game flowing at a fast pace, his control was good (he only walked 2 batters) and struck out 5. Now the line he left may not sound good, a 7.20 ERA, 7 hits, and a home runs, however we must remember that this was his first pitching performance at the major league level, hell he hasn't even played at the AAA level either and the main thing to remember about this is that he was unbelievably solid for the first 3 innings of work and only started to falter in the 4th and 5th. And even then he only gave up 4 runs, which anyone would consider a good performance by a 2nd or 3rd pitcher in the rotation of a standard team. Now then theres the odd thing I read about early in the game, Gausman has a habit much like most pitchers do and that is that he eats a powdered sugar doughnut between innings he pitches. A bit strange huh? But heres where it gets interesting because when he first arrived in the clubhouse after being called up guess what was sitting in his locker courtesy of CF Adam Jones? 1500 powdered doughnuts and a hostess sign in and above his locker. Guess Gausman will have to make sure he stays in the majors so he can finish all of those doughnuts.
Now then just a brief bit on the Cardinals because not much has changes. First they continue to lead the NL Central with a recored of 30-16, now while its great their in the lead in their division, they also have the highest winning percentage in all of the MLB by one game (the second highest being the Texas Rangers). Now while this is amazing, one of their key young pitchers, Jaimie Garcia went down earlier in the week and is going to have season ending surgery. Now any team would consider this a huge blow to their post season chances, but not the Cardinals, why is that? Well it's because they keep their farm system stocked to the brim with high quality pitching and hitting prospects, I mean look at their latest call ups Shelby Miller, Trevor Rosenthal, Don Kelly, Allen Craig, Pete Kozma and Matt Adams whoa are all tearing it up. Thats not all though, much like the Tampa Bay Rays, the Cardinals are very careful about developing their young pitchers to provide a low chance that they will be injured within the first few years of playing at the major league level and making sure they are indeed ready to take on hitters at the major league level. Now I may not be a fan of teams like the Cardinals or the Rays but I do respect their managers and GM's for being able to produce such potent minor leaguers and develop them in a way that makes them even more of a threat when they eventually make it to the majors.
-Eric
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Interesting Occurrences
So the games that went on during Wednesday and earlier this week had some pretty interesting things that happened, and some good, some crazy and some not so good.
One of these such things that is probably the most broadly covered is Mike Trout hitting for the cycle, now hitting for the cycle, for those who don't know, involves getting on base by every hit scenario that being hit a single, double, triple and a home run all in the same game. Sounds difficult right? Well it is, however probably not as hard as you may think, so lets look at some other rare occurrences in baseball and compare how many times they've happened. Ok so the cycle has been hit for a total of 294 times since the first one was hit by Curry Foley in 1882, now if you look back at all of the players who have hit for the cycle, it seems there are about 3-4 cycles on average hit every year, though some years have had that number inflated (ie. 2009 when it was hit 8 times). Now some other rare events in baseball, the perfect game, stealing home plate, pitching and hitting triple crowns, a no hitter and for good measure let's include the win of a Cy Young and MVP in the same year.
Alright first off the perfect game, now to date this feat has only been achieved 23 times, and this is over the entirety of baseballs existence, and makes it fairly incomparable to hitting for the cycle, though the number of times this occurs seems to be increasing at a slow pace as we saw 3 perfect games pitched in 2012 by Phillip Humber, Matt Cain and Felix Hernandez.
Next we have stealing home, now this one isn't something you see very often and in all honesty of all the baseball games I've seen I can probable count the times I've seen it happen on my hands. But despite what I believe and what you might this actually happens A LOT more often than you think. As of now there doesn't seem to be a record of all the players who did but I can tell you there is a list of 38 players who have stolen home a minimum of 10 times over their careers, Ty Cobb sits atop that list with 54 steals of home. So again this can't be compared to hitting for the cycle because oddly enough, it happens to often.
The Triple Crown, now this thing is totted by the old guard of baseball statistics as the end all be all for talented hitters and pitchers, now I think thats a load of shit to some extent because there are several factors that the stats it uses doesn't take into account but I'll save that for another post. Now the hitters triple crown doesn't go anywhere near that, just like the perfect game, it's been achieved only 16 times and before Miguel Cabrera won it last year (barely though) it hadn't been won for 45 years, so thats a wash. The pitching triple crown falls into a similar area being won 38 times since it's inception, however it hasn't been as absent from baseball as the hitters triple crown has been. So again no real comparison to hitting for the cycle.
Ok next is winning the Cy Young and MVP in the same year, which we already saw happen recently when Verlander won them both in 2011. Ok so first thing we have to take note of is that the Cy Young didn't come into existence until 1956, which ironically was the first time someone won both the Cy Young and MVP, that player being Don Newcombe. Over the years it happened a total of 9 times, making it even more rare than the perfect game, a bit shocking but plenty of baseball writers view pitchers as having a less impactful job on the team when compared to a big power hitter on the team, though I disagree with this. Again way to far off to compare to hitting for the cycle
Now the last, pitching a no-hitter. Well it seems we've got a winner here, since the start of baseball a total of 279 no hitters have been thrown by pitchers, though over the last decade or so there has been a drastic increase in no hitters being thrown every year. Back in the 70's and 80's you'd be lucky to see one or potentially 2 each year, but in 2012 we had 8 thrown and 6 previously in 2010. The other part that is comparable with hitting for the cycle is the number of times a player achieves this in their career, if we look at all the no hitters thrown, elite level pitchers throw only 2-3 over the course of their career, which seems to be in line with how many times elite level hitters go hit for the cycle in their career as well.
So we have some context now for how rare a player hitting for the cycle is but theres one additional thing that you should take away from what Mike Trout accomplished, and that is that he becomes the youngest player in AL history to hit for the cycle. It's just another huge thing that Mike Trout can tick onto his baseball resume, and it seems him and Bryce Harper are going to represent a ridiculous surge of young players in the MLB.
-Eric
One of these such things that is probably the most broadly covered is Mike Trout hitting for the cycle, now hitting for the cycle, for those who don't know, involves getting on base by every hit scenario that being hit a single, double, triple and a home run all in the same game. Sounds difficult right? Well it is, however probably not as hard as you may think, so lets look at some other rare occurrences in baseball and compare how many times they've happened. Ok so the cycle has been hit for a total of 294 times since the first one was hit by Curry Foley in 1882, now if you look back at all of the players who have hit for the cycle, it seems there are about 3-4 cycles on average hit every year, though some years have had that number inflated (ie. 2009 when it was hit 8 times). Now some other rare events in baseball, the perfect game, stealing home plate, pitching and hitting triple crowns, a no hitter and for good measure let's include the win of a Cy Young and MVP in the same year.
Alright first off the perfect game, now to date this feat has only been achieved 23 times, and this is over the entirety of baseballs existence, and makes it fairly incomparable to hitting for the cycle, though the number of times this occurs seems to be increasing at a slow pace as we saw 3 perfect games pitched in 2012 by Phillip Humber, Matt Cain and Felix Hernandez.
Next we have stealing home, now this one isn't something you see very often and in all honesty of all the baseball games I've seen I can probable count the times I've seen it happen on my hands. But despite what I believe and what you might this actually happens A LOT more often than you think. As of now there doesn't seem to be a record of all the players who did but I can tell you there is a list of 38 players who have stolen home a minimum of 10 times over their careers, Ty Cobb sits atop that list with 54 steals of home. So again this can't be compared to hitting for the cycle because oddly enough, it happens to often.
The Triple Crown, now this thing is totted by the old guard of baseball statistics as the end all be all for talented hitters and pitchers, now I think thats a load of shit to some extent because there are several factors that the stats it uses doesn't take into account but I'll save that for another post. Now the hitters triple crown doesn't go anywhere near that, just like the perfect game, it's been achieved only 16 times and before Miguel Cabrera won it last year (barely though) it hadn't been won for 45 years, so thats a wash. The pitching triple crown falls into a similar area being won 38 times since it's inception, however it hasn't been as absent from baseball as the hitters triple crown has been. So again no real comparison to hitting for the cycle.
Ok next is winning the Cy Young and MVP in the same year, which we already saw happen recently when Verlander won them both in 2011. Ok so first thing we have to take note of is that the Cy Young didn't come into existence until 1956, which ironically was the first time someone won both the Cy Young and MVP, that player being Don Newcombe. Over the years it happened a total of 9 times, making it even more rare than the perfect game, a bit shocking but plenty of baseball writers view pitchers as having a less impactful job on the team when compared to a big power hitter on the team, though I disagree with this. Again way to far off to compare to hitting for the cycle
Now the last, pitching a no-hitter. Well it seems we've got a winner here, since the start of baseball a total of 279 no hitters have been thrown by pitchers, though over the last decade or so there has been a drastic increase in no hitters being thrown every year. Back in the 70's and 80's you'd be lucky to see one or potentially 2 each year, but in 2012 we had 8 thrown and 6 previously in 2010. The other part that is comparable with hitting for the cycle is the number of times a player achieves this in their career, if we look at all the no hitters thrown, elite level pitchers throw only 2-3 over the course of their career, which seems to be in line with how many times elite level hitters go hit for the cycle in their career as well.
So we have some context now for how rare a player hitting for the cycle is but theres one additional thing that you should take away from what Mike Trout accomplished, and that is that he becomes the youngest player in AL history to hit for the cycle. It's just another huge thing that Mike Trout can tick onto his baseball resume, and it seems him and Bryce Harper are going to represent a ridiculous surge of young players in the MLB.
-Eric
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Extra Notes On The Last Jays Post
Ok, so being in an angry mood with the Jays I went into some of the stats for each player to figure out why this team has been so bad, while I don't have a definitive answer to that I did find some things.
The Bonifacio/Izturis Defensive Infield: Ok so first off here until the man upstairs nabbed Kawasaki, Izturis and Bonifacio were sharing duties at 2nd and SS, Bonifacio was the prime candidate at 2nd and Izturis was at SS the majority of the time. Now this was the first mistake, if you look at their past fielding stats you would see that Izturis, when starting at SS has made 23 errors over his career, now this doesn't sound like much considering how long he's been around but theres only 11 he's made at 2nd and he's getting older, which inevitably means more errors. So we should be putting him where he has a better defensive history in the first place. Next Bonifacio, who has 16, 17 and 12 errors made over his career at 2nd, 3rd and SS respectively, giving him a fielding percentage at each spot of under .970, which is NOT GOOD for a major leaguer. On the flip side however his number of errors at any of those positions is still more that he has made when covering all outfield positions combined! Now granted the OF stats are on a smaller sample size, but it makes sense, plays in the outfield are more made because of a players speed to get to the ball and catch it, where as the infield requires more accurate and quick throwing that fast feet, which is what Bonifacio has become known for. The summary here? Keep Izturis at 2nd, he'll do better defensively there, and keep Bonifacio as a utility OF or SS is absolutely necessary since again he's better defensively at those positions.
J.P Arencibia As A Power Hitter: Now this couldn't be further from the truth, Arencibia has a Josh Hamilton approach at the plate 'swing at everything and ask questions later'. His first full year (2011) with the Jays saw him have 443 at bats and strike out 133 times, thats a strike out percentage of just a little over 30%, which was about 12% over the league average for strike outs. Now in 2012 what happened to those strikeouts? Well they increased by 1.5% and if you look at his OBP his walks decreased too, and then this year his strike out % has again gone up, but by an additional 3% and walks are down again. He needs to get his head straight at the plate and not just swing at everything he wants to. Now I'm sure some out there will talk about how he's been belting in home runs so lets look at his power stats as compared to another power hitter, Edwin Encarnacion. Now if we look at J.P's SLG % (a great indicator of hard hitters) he generally sticks in around mid to low .400 where as Edwin, even when he doesn't hit a huge amount of home runs on the year, is still at high .400 or better during the years Arencibia has been around. Then additionally Arencibia's OBP is abysmall due to his lack of walks and Encarnacion's is nicely saddled in the mid .300 where it should be. The Summary? Keep Arencibia the hell away from the 3-4-5 position in the batting order until he gets better plate discipline and learns how to take a fucking ball.
Brett Lawrie, Da Fuq?!: So I'm was just as confused as everyone else because after coming back from injury in the WBC Lawrie hasn't been able to get it together at the plate. Now a big part of that is likely because of the injury and because he missed out on Spring Training, and yes that is a big deal because you don't have your coaches and trainers observing you and telling you where you need to improve so he's pretty much getting that out now. I've got good and bad news in this part though, first is that, even though its not by a huge amount, he's getting walked more than he has been in his last full season and since he hasn't been selective at the plate as of late that means that pitchers must be throwing balls a fair distance out of the strike zone at him (a pretty big note of lack of control or the pitcher being scared of the batter, either of which is good). However he's striking out more, but again that is the lack of Spring Training adjustment, however in the other hand he's on pace to hit a lot more home runs than last year, so there is reason to be optimistic about Lawrie going forward. Summary? Lawrie should have skipped the WBC but he'll get better soon.
The Bullpen: Now this is a hot button topic for me since I personally believe that the bullpen has been responsible for quite a few of our loses, specifically Aaron Loup. Now when we look at the stats for our bullpen, we've got Steve Delabar whose fairly clean, has allowed 6 runs, 5 earned and struck out 28. Now I like to to see a low unearned run rate from the bullpen, why you ask? Well that means that the pitcher is handling the pressure situations well (ie. when he comes in to a bases loaded situation). Then we have Darren Oliver, now Oliver has never been a strike out guy so 11 K's don't surprise me and he's allowed 9 runs 6 earned, again a good earned:unearned ratio there. Next is Esmil Rogers one of our long relievers, Rogers is one of the guys you bring in to cover for the starter if he comes out early in addition to Loup, Cecil and on some occasions Delabar, and since he doesn't have the same stuff as a starter he has an inflated ERA of 5.95 and 13 runs, all earned. So Rogers is a bit of a hiccup in the bullpen, however when you look at his game record giving up runs isn't consistent for him, they seem to be isolated games where he allows 2-3 runs in an inning. So he's not as bad as his stats make him out to be, plus he does a good job of keeping his pitch count down, which is good for multi-use during a week, which is what we want from a reliever in terms of availability to pitch in a week. Now we have Aaron Loup, now he has 11 runs, 7 unearned, and this is a red flag to me because not only does that mean he's not handling the pressure situations terribly well but he doesn't have the strikeouts to make up for it and nearly every game I see him in he inadvertently gives up an unearned run. Not to mention him and Rogers are the only guys to give up 1 hit an inning, and lets not forget Loup is being brought in with runners on base usually so that 1 hit can be the difference between getting out of a jam and letting in another run, where as Rogers isn'e being brought in during those type of situations so his multi hit innings don't have as much of an impact on the game. Then finally we have Brett Cecil, if you were talking to the me of last year or earlier I'd be flaming Cecil because of how terrible he had been as a starter and unreliable he was as a reliever but he seems to have found his own this year, he's easily our best or second best reliever in the bullpen with a stellar ERA only 6 runs allowed, all earned, and less than a hit per inning. Summary? Find someone better for the pressure situations than Loup, perhaps try Delabar in there as he has the strike out rate to succeed in that spot, and wait out till Luis Perez comes back then put him in the long reliever spot over Rogers as he is MUCH better at it.
Casey 'Invincible' Janssen: Now this one came as a surprise to me, I've been watching the Jays since I was 3 years old and I remember when Janssen first came into the organization, he was talked about as a future starter but didn't pan out so they fed him to the bullpen where he was mediocre for years but then Santos gets injured and BAM he's an elite closer. To draw comparison he's like the Fernando Rodney of the 2013 season, anyway Janssen has stats that everyone wants in a closer at least a K/9 of 9 (which has steadily increased from 2 years ago to where it is today) a terrific K/BB rate (13/0), low amount of hits and walks (4,0) a control of his pitch count (he's only had 1 outing where he threw more than 15 pitches). Not to mention theres not a blown save in sight, which is commendable as a lot of pitchers have buckled under the pressure of the team losing consistently. Summary? Janssen's performance seems legit, most if not all of these stats have shown progression over the last few years, which means he hasn't just jumped to a new level where most analysts would consider that unsustainable. So basically if the Jays can get the game to him intact they have a great chance of getting the win.
The Starters: Honestly theres not much to talk about here, every bad outing our starters have had has an easy to see reason for failure, though you would hope they would overcome these things. Saturday Morrow was coming back from 13 days of rest, which would throw off any pitcher, R.A Dickey had been battling neck/back soreness during his slump, which was hampering his ability to throw the knuckler hard like he usually does and if you know anything about the knuckleball the slower ones have less movement and thus are easier to hit. And of course if a knuckle ball of 82 mph doesn't catch right and doesn't have movement it's like hitting a change up or a weak fastball where as a 72 mph or lower knuckler is more like hitting a batting practice pitch. Then theres Buerhle, now lots of people have been shitting on this guy but he's been pitching better than you think. He's still got that defensive prowess thats gotten him countless golden gloves, he's getting people out though he's having abnormal innings here and there where he loses a bit of his command and gives up runs, but those are of lower occurrence than his good innings. Then our filler guys Ortiz and Jenkins, not much to say, both have been great though Ortiz being a ground ball pitcher only relies heavily on the fielding so we just have to hope the infield is at it's best when he takes the mound. Then our guys who are out on the DL, Happ has been nothing but great he's been our most consistent pitcher since day one, has a half decent ERA and WHIP and is providing a nice balance of ground balls, fly balls and strike outs. On the other hand Johnson has been struggling a bit, but thats not to say he's been terrible because his last 2 starts before the injury were promising and could easily put him as a reliable # 3 or 4 pitcher in most rotations. Summary? Stop worrying about the starting pitchers, their fine, the offence is being bad and thats what is causing bad innings for our starters, worry about them!
Waiting In The Wings: Ok so one thing that many fans seem to be overlooking is who we've got looking to come back from injury soon, that being Dustin McGowan, Kyle Drabek, Luis Perez and Drew Hutchinson. All of whom were stellar pitchers for us last year until they all got knocked out of the season at the same time, not to mention they are all expected back around the same time (a week or so apart from each other). That of course means we should have them all ready to go by the earliest we could get Reyes back, which will make for an interesting situation going forward. Summary? We've got reinforcements on the way...........a lot of em.
The rest of the offence and defence for the team has been more or less a wash, Encarnacion has been great, Bautista has been improving, Lind has been much better from last yr and the year before, Cabrera is turning it around (and with an injured leg no less), Rasmus is being Rasmus no surprise there, DeRosa is surprisingly been good in clutch situations, and Kawasaki, while not perfectly on the defensive side, has done a fantastic job working the count and getting pitchers to throw him a lot of pitches and keep a positive energy on/off the field and with the fans. All in all, like I said in the previous Jays post, they need to get to around (within a game or 2), at or above .500 by the end of the month if they want to have any hope of making the postseason and if some of this stuff can be taken into account by the front office and Gibby, we'll have a better situation going into the rest of the month.
-Eric
The Bonifacio/Izturis Defensive Infield: Ok so first off here until the man upstairs nabbed Kawasaki, Izturis and Bonifacio were sharing duties at 2nd and SS, Bonifacio was the prime candidate at 2nd and Izturis was at SS the majority of the time. Now this was the first mistake, if you look at their past fielding stats you would see that Izturis, when starting at SS has made 23 errors over his career, now this doesn't sound like much considering how long he's been around but theres only 11 he's made at 2nd and he's getting older, which inevitably means more errors. So we should be putting him where he has a better defensive history in the first place. Next Bonifacio, who has 16, 17 and 12 errors made over his career at 2nd, 3rd and SS respectively, giving him a fielding percentage at each spot of under .970, which is NOT GOOD for a major leaguer. On the flip side however his number of errors at any of those positions is still more that he has made when covering all outfield positions combined! Now granted the OF stats are on a smaller sample size, but it makes sense, plays in the outfield are more made because of a players speed to get to the ball and catch it, where as the infield requires more accurate and quick throwing that fast feet, which is what Bonifacio has become known for. The summary here? Keep Izturis at 2nd, he'll do better defensively there, and keep Bonifacio as a utility OF or SS is absolutely necessary since again he's better defensively at those positions.
J.P Arencibia As A Power Hitter: Now this couldn't be further from the truth, Arencibia has a Josh Hamilton approach at the plate 'swing at everything and ask questions later'. His first full year (2011) with the Jays saw him have 443 at bats and strike out 133 times, thats a strike out percentage of just a little over 30%, which was about 12% over the league average for strike outs. Now in 2012 what happened to those strikeouts? Well they increased by 1.5% and if you look at his OBP his walks decreased too, and then this year his strike out % has again gone up, but by an additional 3% and walks are down again. He needs to get his head straight at the plate and not just swing at everything he wants to. Now I'm sure some out there will talk about how he's been belting in home runs so lets look at his power stats as compared to another power hitter, Edwin Encarnacion. Now if we look at J.P's SLG % (a great indicator of hard hitters) he generally sticks in around mid to low .400 where as Edwin, even when he doesn't hit a huge amount of home runs on the year, is still at high .400 or better during the years Arencibia has been around. Then additionally Arencibia's OBP is abysmall due to his lack of walks and Encarnacion's is nicely saddled in the mid .300 where it should be. The Summary? Keep Arencibia the hell away from the 3-4-5 position in the batting order until he gets better plate discipline and learns how to take a fucking ball.
Brett Lawrie, Da Fuq?!: So I'm was just as confused as everyone else because after coming back from injury in the WBC Lawrie hasn't been able to get it together at the plate. Now a big part of that is likely because of the injury and because he missed out on Spring Training, and yes that is a big deal because you don't have your coaches and trainers observing you and telling you where you need to improve so he's pretty much getting that out now. I've got good and bad news in this part though, first is that, even though its not by a huge amount, he's getting walked more than he has been in his last full season and since he hasn't been selective at the plate as of late that means that pitchers must be throwing balls a fair distance out of the strike zone at him (a pretty big note of lack of control or the pitcher being scared of the batter, either of which is good). However he's striking out more, but again that is the lack of Spring Training adjustment, however in the other hand he's on pace to hit a lot more home runs than last year, so there is reason to be optimistic about Lawrie going forward. Summary? Lawrie should have skipped the WBC but he'll get better soon.
The Bullpen: Now this is a hot button topic for me since I personally believe that the bullpen has been responsible for quite a few of our loses, specifically Aaron Loup. Now when we look at the stats for our bullpen, we've got Steve Delabar whose fairly clean, has allowed 6 runs, 5 earned and struck out 28. Now I like to to see a low unearned run rate from the bullpen, why you ask? Well that means that the pitcher is handling the pressure situations well (ie. when he comes in to a bases loaded situation). Then we have Darren Oliver, now Oliver has never been a strike out guy so 11 K's don't surprise me and he's allowed 9 runs 6 earned, again a good earned:unearned ratio there. Next is Esmil Rogers one of our long relievers, Rogers is one of the guys you bring in to cover for the starter if he comes out early in addition to Loup, Cecil and on some occasions Delabar, and since he doesn't have the same stuff as a starter he has an inflated ERA of 5.95 and 13 runs, all earned. So Rogers is a bit of a hiccup in the bullpen, however when you look at his game record giving up runs isn't consistent for him, they seem to be isolated games where he allows 2-3 runs in an inning. So he's not as bad as his stats make him out to be, plus he does a good job of keeping his pitch count down, which is good for multi-use during a week, which is what we want from a reliever in terms of availability to pitch in a week. Now we have Aaron Loup, now he has 11 runs, 7 unearned, and this is a red flag to me because not only does that mean he's not handling the pressure situations terribly well but he doesn't have the strikeouts to make up for it and nearly every game I see him in he inadvertently gives up an unearned run. Not to mention him and Rogers are the only guys to give up 1 hit an inning, and lets not forget Loup is being brought in with runners on base usually so that 1 hit can be the difference between getting out of a jam and letting in another run, where as Rogers isn'e being brought in during those type of situations so his multi hit innings don't have as much of an impact on the game. Then finally we have Brett Cecil, if you were talking to the me of last year or earlier I'd be flaming Cecil because of how terrible he had been as a starter and unreliable he was as a reliever but he seems to have found his own this year, he's easily our best or second best reliever in the bullpen with a stellar ERA only 6 runs allowed, all earned, and less than a hit per inning. Summary? Find someone better for the pressure situations than Loup, perhaps try Delabar in there as he has the strike out rate to succeed in that spot, and wait out till Luis Perez comes back then put him in the long reliever spot over Rogers as he is MUCH better at it.
Casey 'Invincible' Janssen: Now this one came as a surprise to me, I've been watching the Jays since I was 3 years old and I remember when Janssen first came into the organization, he was talked about as a future starter but didn't pan out so they fed him to the bullpen where he was mediocre for years but then Santos gets injured and BAM he's an elite closer. To draw comparison he's like the Fernando Rodney of the 2013 season, anyway Janssen has stats that everyone wants in a closer at least a K/9 of 9 (which has steadily increased from 2 years ago to where it is today) a terrific K/BB rate (13/0), low amount of hits and walks (4,0) a control of his pitch count (he's only had 1 outing where he threw more than 15 pitches). Not to mention theres not a blown save in sight, which is commendable as a lot of pitchers have buckled under the pressure of the team losing consistently. Summary? Janssen's performance seems legit, most if not all of these stats have shown progression over the last few years, which means he hasn't just jumped to a new level where most analysts would consider that unsustainable. So basically if the Jays can get the game to him intact they have a great chance of getting the win.
The Starters: Honestly theres not much to talk about here, every bad outing our starters have had has an easy to see reason for failure, though you would hope they would overcome these things. Saturday Morrow was coming back from 13 days of rest, which would throw off any pitcher, R.A Dickey had been battling neck/back soreness during his slump, which was hampering his ability to throw the knuckler hard like he usually does and if you know anything about the knuckleball the slower ones have less movement and thus are easier to hit. And of course if a knuckle ball of 82 mph doesn't catch right and doesn't have movement it's like hitting a change up or a weak fastball where as a 72 mph or lower knuckler is more like hitting a batting practice pitch. Then theres Buerhle, now lots of people have been shitting on this guy but he's been pitching better than you think. He's still got that defensive prowess thats gotten him countless golden gloves, he's getting people out though he's having abnormal innings here and there where he loses a bit of his command and gives up runs, but those are of lower occurrence than his good innings. Then our filler guys Ortiz and Jenkins, not much to say, both have been great though Ortiz being a ground ball pitcher only relies heavily on the fielding so we just have to hope the infield is at it's best when he takes the mound. Then our guys who are out on the DL, Happ has been nothing but great he's been our most consistent pitcher since day one, has a half decent ERA and WHIP and is providing a nice balance of ground balls, fly balls and strike outs. On the other hand Johnson has been struggling a bit, but thats not to say he's been terrible because his last 2 starts before the injury were promising and could easily put him as a reliable # 3 or 4 pitcher in most rotations. Summary? Stop worrying about the starting pitchers, their fine, the offence is being bad and thats what is causing bad innings for our starters, worry about them!
Waiting In The Wings: Ok so one thing that many fans seem to be overlooking is who we've got looking to come back from injury soon, that being Dustin McGowan, Kyle Drabek, Luis Perez and Drew Hutchinson. All of whom were stellar pitchers for us last year until they all got knocked out of the season at the same time, not to mention they are all expected back around the same time (a week or so apart from each other). That of course means we should have them all ready to go by the earliest we could get Reyes back, which will make for an interesting situation going forward. Summary? We've got reinforcements on the way...........a lot of em.
The rest of the offence and defence for the team has been more or less a wash, Encarnacion has been great, Bautista has been improving, Lind has been much better from last yr and the year before, Cabrera is turning it around (and with an injured leg no less), Rasmus is being Rasmus no surprise there, DeRosa is surprisingly been good in clutch situations, and Kawasaki, while not perfectly on the defensive side, has done a fantastic job working the count and getting pitchers to throw him a lot of pitches and keep a positive energy on/off the field and with the fans. All in all, like I said in the previous Jays post, they need to get to around (within a game or 2), at or above .500 by the end of the month if they want to have any hope of making the postseason and if some of this stuff can be taken into account by the front office and Gibby, we'll have a better situation going into the rest of the month.
-Eric
Bird Watch: Could That Have Been Any Worse?
Ok so I find it near impossible to put a positive spin on Saturday's game, so I'll keep this short. First off we had a decent amount of players getting on base but just like the team was doing last month we had no one capable of bringing in the base runners. The there was our defence, now there is some understandable stuff to this since a few weren't caught by Cabrera, and I expect thats in part due to the hamstring injury. However the main problem we had was that we had 2 errors (unbelievably simple stuff) that just made me want to cry, Izturis throwing the ball a couple feet above Lind's head in a routine double play, and then Lind dropped a a ball that was just dribbling to him (THOSE SHOULD BE EASY TO GET!). Then to put the cherry on the cake Morrow dropped a ball as well. So theres that portion of the team but then there was Bautista in the top of the 1st, we had 2 on and Bautista got picked off at 2nd. First off that should NEVER happen and it was when Lind was at bat, who has been our most productive player this whole year, in terms of hits, taking walks and not swinging at bad pitches. Now Brandon Morrow, for fucks sake! Look at how he pitched closely and he did not pitch well at all, 1 strike out, 7 hit and 5 runs (2 of which were home runs), overall Morrow had a problem with location as the balls that were hit were hit hard and were in bad locations, otherwise those home runs would have been ground balls. Finally one of the people who I've been having a heart attack when they come to the plate J.P Arencibia. Now I recognize that J.P has some decent power potential as a catcher but he has THE WORST plate discipline of any catcher I've seen, in this game and last game I've seen him chase pitches that were 1-2 feet out of the strike zone and we're talking that distance outside the zone away from him (he'd have to lean out of the box to hit some of these), to echo some other fans, J.P is NOT a hitter to put 4th in the batting order. Of course theres the rest of the offence too:
-Brett Lawrie: He needs to calm the hell down at the plate, it's like he is a month behind in the Jays improvement and is just free swinging and not being selective on pitches at all.
-Emilio Bonifacio: He's not been terrible he's just hitting into the wrong places, he's gotten better at picking pitches and not striking out as much but still could use a little improvement on hitting pitches to the right spots or better pitches that will be more directed into infield/outfield holes
-Maicer Izturis: Not much to say here, not sure anyone was expecting anything offensively from him, certainly not me
-Colby Rasmus: Same problem as Lawrie, try to kill the ball and the sad thing is that he has the same potential as him, that being he could be a 20/20 or 20/30 guy easily if he got his shit under control (that being 20 HR/ 20 SB)
-Melky Cabrera: Now this guy is just putting the rest of the teams offence to shame. Why is that? Well it's because he is hitting .354 since the beginning of May WITH A HAMSTRING INJURY! Where as Lawrie who is hitting .171 on the month or Arencibia who is hitting .189 on the month.
So in summary it seems the team took 3 steps forward the a running leap backward. In my mind the time for them to potentially be playoff bound is diminishing by the second, if they aren't at least at .500 or almost at .500 by the end of the month I think their screwed. And in the sense that the best they will likely get is 3rd in the AL East and that may be pushing it if Boston jumps back and chances are some of these players may get traded by the deadline *coughBonifaciocoughIzturiscough*. I'm still going to watch the Dickey v. Sabathia game but it's getting to a point where I don't want to watch the Jays games because of how disappointing it's been as of late.
-Eric
-Brett Lawrie: He needs to calm the hell down at the plate, it's like he is a month behind in the Jays improvement and is just free swinging and not being selective on pitches at all.
-Emilio Bonifacio: He's not been terrible he's just hitting into the wrong places, he's gotten better at picking pitches and not striking out as much but still could use a little improvement on hitting pitches to the right spots or better pitches that will be more directed into infield/outfield holes
-Maicer Izturis: Not much to say here, not sure anyone was expecting anything offensively from him, certainly not me
-Colby Rasmus: Same problem as Lawrie, try to kill the ball and the sad thing is that he has the same potential as him, that being he could be a 20/20 or 20/30 guy easily if he got his shit under control (that being 20 HR/ 20 SB)
-Melky Cabrera: Now this guy is just putting the rest of the teams offence to shame. Why is that? Well it's because he is hitting .354 since the beginning of May WITH A HAMSTRING INJURY! Where as Lawrie who is hitting .171 on the month or Arencibia who is hitting .189 on the month.
So in summary it seems the team took 3 steps forward the a running leap backward. In my mind the time for them to potentially be playoff bound is diminishing by the second, if they aren't at least at .500 or almost at .500 by the end of the month I think their screwed. And in the sense that the best they will likely get is 3rd in the AL East and that may be pushing it if Boston jumps back and chances are some of these players may get traded by the deadline *coughBonifaciocoughIzturiscough*. I'm still going to watch the Dickey v. Sabathia game but it's getting to a point where I don't want to watch the Jays games because of how disappointing it's been as of late.
-Eric
Friday, May 17, 2013
Bird Watch: Well That Could Have Gone Better
Ok so a little more of a quick post from the end of the game today. So the pitching performances first off. Buerhle did a great job, and yes a guy at Buerhle's age and skill set doing what he did over 6 innings was good. Now I'm sure people will be saying 'but Eric he allowed 5 runs!' while that may be true in terms of how the stats interpret what happened in the game I completely blame Aaron Loup for those extra 2 runs, why you ask? Well look at the pitch that Brett Garden and Jayson Nix hit to drive in those 2 runs, they were fastballs piped right down the middle, something you ABSOLUTELY NEVER DO when their are players in scoring position, because of course your looking to keep the ball in the infield to prevent that runner at third from coming home. If I'm being honest Aaron Loup gives me a heart attack whenever he comes up because it seems like when he takes the mound he's running through a check list 'practice pitches, check, let in runs previous pitcher left on base, check'. He seems to be incapable of coming in when their are players on base without letting in a run (he allows runs that are unearned so thats why his ERA isn't in the trash). On the other side though Kuroda pitched amazing, the location of his pitches and control was spot on for the first 6 innings but in the 7th and 8th he started to falter and unfortunately the Jay's offence couldn't take full advantage of it.
So let's break down the last 3 innings when they had a chance to make a comeback. Ok so top of the 7th, in the box score it says that Bautista popped out to SS Jayson Nix, but if you watched the game you'd know that despite getting out Jose made Kuroda throw 8 pitches to get that out. And as everyone knows the more pitches a pitcher throws the more tired he gets and the more prone he is to make mistakes. Then Edwin comes up and singles to left, so it looks like we're getting somewhere, then unfortunately Arencibia comes up, I'm not knocking him but his plate discipline today was just terrible. And he struck out swinging on a couple pitches quite a ways out of the zone that could have potentially gotten him a walk. Now Adam Lind comes up and ends up being the last out of the inning, but on the other hand Lind, like Bautista, worked the count and made Kuroda work for that final out of the inning. So the first half of the 7th comes and goes and we lost an opportunity to get 1-2 runs in.
Next The bottom of the 7th comes and this is where shit hit the fan, 2 players got on base (and I wasn't sure what to make of that bunt by Suzuki. I will say though that Romine should have been an easier out as he is just not that great of a player to begin with. But it happened. So here I would think they'd go for a double play but as I said before Loup piped a fastball right down the middle to give Gardner a single and drive in Suzuki, then he did it again with Niz and FINALLy he got Cano to line into a double play. And in my opinion if your within 3 runs of tying the game you still have a chance but one it gets to the point where your beyond that and in the last 2 innings your pretty much screwed. Especially since the Yanks can call upon the Sandman (Mariano Rivera) when they need to.
Ok the top of the 8th comes up, Lawrie strikes out swinging but at the very least he didn't do so on terrible pitches but it is hard to imagine how he missed a couple of those ones since they were fairly open in the strike zone and he did chase one outside of the strike zone. Colby Rasmus comes up, same story, chased a couple balls and grounded out. Finally Bonifacio comes out, now Emilio worked the count, forced Kuroda to throw a lot of pitches but didn't get enough power on the bay to drive it into the outfield, not gonna blame him for that but wasn't good timing for it.
Bottom of the 8th was rather uneventful as well, Rogers replaced Loup (shouldn't have put him on the mound in the first place though). Wells strikes out swinging (Rogers' control is looking good), Francisco flies out to short centre, then Overbay singles and a wild pitch moves him forward, though it didn't really matter since Rogers struck out Adams.
Top of the 9th and no Mariano Rivera, in fact they put up a call up so all of sudden we have a chance, especially because the last set of games the Jays haven't let up on young or struggling pitchers. Kawasaki comes to the plate and very unlike him, strikes out, wasn't very happy about this as Kawasaki is usually the best guy for getting the pitcher to throw tons of pitches. Next up Cabrera steps to the plate and singles to left, FANTASTIC I thought. But they Bautista flies out, and yea the plate discipline faded a bit there, next up Edwin and unlike Bautista he didn't loose any composure and doubles bringing Melky to 3rd and leaving 1st open for whoever is up next. But then Arencibia steps up again and I put my face in my hands, and of course he does what he did most of the game, chased 2 pitches that were WAY out of the zone (I'm talking about a 1/3-1/2 a foot on the outside corner) and ends up being caught on a fly ball in foul territory by the catcher. And that of course meant game over.
Now these 3 innings were the worst of it for the Blue Jays offence, we had some guys get on base but for the most part the power hitters couldn't get them in, despite Kuroda or Claiborne have wobbly control in those last 3 innings. Now the odd thing is that usually this kind of thing happens because the leadoff man doesn't get on and as a result the power bats try to smash the ball for a home run instead of just getting on base, but Melky got on base nearly every time and when he did get out he was working the count and getting Kuroda to throw many pitches and he's working through an injury for fucks sake. In addition Kawasaki got picked off in the 3rd, which in my mind was a terrible thing since we were already behind and getting hits, not to mention runners in scoring position was a problem. In the end, with the exception of Arencibia chasing pitches and that pick off of Kawasaki the Jays offence was alright for the first 6 innings but they couldn't grab opportunity when they had a chance during the 7th 8th and 9th innings when the pitchers were at their weakest and we had men on base. Hopefully the team can salvage a win tomorrow as Morrow steps back onto the mound back from the neck spasms he was having.
I will say that even though I sound like I'm being hard on the team in this post, I really think that if they can even continue playing to HALF the potential they showed over the last 5 games they can get into the playoffs, because when you look at things happening from now on, we've got the pitchers who had Tommy John coming back within the month, we've got Reyes coming back a little later than that and Josh Johnson and perhaps J.A. Happ at the same time. We're going to be getting some serious reinforcements soon so they team just needs to hold things together and win some more games.
-Eric
So let's break down the last 3 innings when they had a chance to make a comeback. Ok so top of the 7th, in the box score it says that Bautista popped out to SS Jayson Nix, but if you watched the game you'd know that despite getting out Jose made Kuroda throw 8 pitches to get that out. And as everyone knows the more pitches a pitcher throws the more tired he gets and the more prone he is to make mistakes. Then Edwin comes up and singles to left, so it looks like we're getting somewhere, then unfortunately Arencibia comes up, I'm not knocking him but his plate discipline today was just terrible. And he struck out swinging on a couple pitches quite a ways out of the zone that could have potentially gotten him a walk. Now Adam Lind comes up and ends up being the last out of the inning, but on the other hand Lind, like Bautista, worked the count and made Kuroda work for that final out of the inning. So the first half of the 7th comes and goes and we lost an opportunity to get 1-2 runs in.
Next The bottom of the 7th comes and this is where shit hit the fan, 2 players got on base (and I wasn't sure what to make of that bunt by Suzuki. I will say though that Romine should have been an easier out as he is just not that great of a player to begin with. But it happened. So here I would think they'd go for a double play but as I said before Loup piped a fastball right down the middle to give Gardner a single and drive in Suzuki, then he did it again with Niz and FINALLy he got Cano to line into a double play. And in my opinion if your within 3 runs of tying the game you still have a chance but one it gets to the point where your beyond that and in the last 2 innings your pretty much screwed. Especially since the Yanks can call upon the Sandman (Mariano Rivera) when they need to.
Ok the top of the 8th comes up, Lawrie strikes out swinging but at the very least he didn't do so on terrible pitches but it is hard to imagine how he missed a couple of those ones since they were fairly open in the strike zone and he did chase one outside of the strike zone. Colby Rasmus comes up, same story, chased a couple balls and grounded out. Finally Bonifacio comes out, now Emilio worked the count, forced Kuroda to throw a lot of pitches but didn't get enough power on the bay to drive it into the outfield, not gonna blame him for that but wasn't good timing for it.
Bottom of the 8th was rather uneventful as well, Rogers replaced Loup (shouldn't have put him on the mound in the first place though). Wells strikes out swinging (Rogers' control is looking good), Francisco flies out to short centre, then Overbay singles and a wild pitch moves him forward, though it didn't really matter since Rogers struck out Adams.
Top of the 9th and no Mariano Rivera, in fact they put up a call up so all of sudden we have a chance, especially because the last set of games the Jays haven't let up on young or struggling pitchers. Kawasaki comes to the plate and very unlike him, strikes out, wasn't very happy about this as Kawasaki is usually the best guy for getting the pitcher to throw tons of pitches. Next up Cabrera steps to the plate and singles to left, FANTASTIC I thought. But they Bautista flies out, and yea the plate discipline faded a bit there, next up Edwin and unlike Bautista he didn't loose any composure and doubles bringing Melky to 3rd and leaving 1st open for whoever is up next. But then Arencibia steps up again and I put my face in my hands, and of course he does what he did most of the game, chased 2 pitches that were WAY out of the zone (I'm talking about a 1/3-1/2 a foot on the outside corner) and ends up being caught on a fly ball in foul territory by the catcher. And that of course meant game over.
Now these 3 innings were the worst of it for the Blue Jays offence, we had some guys get on base but for the most part the power hitters couldn't get them in, despite Kuroda or Claiborne have wobbly control in those last 3 innings. Now the odd thing is that usually this kind of thing happens because the leadoff man doesn't get on and as a result the power bats try to smash the ball for a home run instead of just getting on base, but Melky got on base nearly every time and when he did get out he was working the count and getting Kuroda to throw many pitches and he's working through an injury for fucks sake. In addition Kawasaki got picked off in the 3rd, which in my mind was a terrible thing since we were already behind and getting hits, not to mention runners in scoring position was a problem. In the end, with the exception of Arencibia chasing pitches and that pick off of Kawasaki the Jays offence was alright for the first 6 innings but they couldn't grab opportunity when they had a chance during the 7th 8th and 9th innings when the pitchers were at their weakest and we had men on base. Hopefully the team can salvage a win tomorrow as Morrow steps back onto the mound back from the neck spasms he was having.
I will say that even though I sound like I'm being hard on the team in this post, I really think that if they can even continue playing to HALF the potential they showed over the last 5 games they can get into the playoffs, because when you look at things happening from now on, we've got the pitchers who had Tommy John coming back within the month, we've got Reyes coming back a little later than that and Josh Johnson and perhaps J.A. Happ at the same time. We're going to be getting some serious reinforcements soon so they team just needs to hold things together and win some more games.
-Eric
Bird Watch: Make Or Break Situation
Well the Blue Jays have continued to hold up their improvements, the offence is doing a good job of getting runs but not just through home runs, they are being more selective at the plate, striking out less and getting hits where they can, no matter if they be singles, doubles, triples or home runs. In addition Buerhle and Dickey seem to be turning things around and our call ups to replace Happ and Johnson (Ortiz and Jenkins) have been on a roll as well. However now is when the real test for this team begins, why is that you ask? Well because tomorrow we start a 3 game series with the Yankees who are on a 7-3 record of their last 10 games, followed by a 3 game series against the Rays who are at the same last 10 game record as the Yankees and then another series against the Orioles (basically all the AL East teams that are performing well at the moment). So it's really going to come down to these 3 series' to show whether the Jays can make that big step and keep their playoff ambitions alive. So let's look at the match ups for the next few games.
The Yankees Series
-Friday: Buerhle vs. Kuroda: Now this is a rematch from late April, with the exception that the Yanks have Granderson back so their offence could be pumped up a bit depending on his condition after coming back from the DL (sometimes players need time to re-adjust). When we look at that last game the offence performed rather poorly, and for those who say Buerhle was terrible you forget that even though he gave up 3 runs in the 3rd inning he did get back in the groove and take them down for about another 3 innings. So with the improvement we've seen in his performance (the 3-2 win over the Red Sox and the 8-7 win over the Rays, again you have to see that he only gave up runs in one inning and still came back and shut down the other team for another 3 innings, most pitchers would just fall apart after that) I have some confidence that he'll pitch well for the team and the better playing of our fielders will more than likely help with defence.
-Saturday: Morrow vs. Phelps: Ok so this on it's own looks like a pretty Toronto sided game, though I'm sure some are worried about Morrow's health. Now if your one of these people look at some of the articles where they interview Morrow or the Jays staff and you'll see that they pushed back his start a second time as a precautionary measure and he had been feeling better a couple days back so this was just a way of making absolutely sure he'd be ready for the start. He's still be doing his usual prep and workouts so there is no worry on that front. As for the Yankees starter, David Phelps hasn't been anything special so far and I honestly don't expect him to be, the Yanks have a good 1,2,3 in Sabathia, Kuroda and Pettite but the back end of their rotation can look a bit atrocious at times, the reason for games won with those pitchers on the mound is due to 2 things, the first being their strange offence (who the hell would have thought Vernon Wells would EVER be productive again?) and the second being Mariano Rivera. Basically even if the opponent scored a lot they were generally able to get the lead, hold it into the 9th and then the Sandman shut them out.
-Sunday: Dickey vs. Sabathia: Now this match up isn't so clear cut, Dickey made a BIG step forward last match when he struck out 10 and only allowed 2 runs on 6 hits and 2 walks, which is much more in line with his Cy Young seasn last year. As well Sabathia has a bit up and down, for the most part he has been consistent on allowing around 2-4 runs per game, but the hits+walks that he allows has fluctuated from 6-12 or so and sometimes the strikeouts are there and sometimes their not (last game he struck out 10 but the one before that only 2). If both players are playing to their best then we'll have quite the intriguing pitchers duel, though I have a feeling that the Jay's rejuvenated offence may be able to overcome the Yankees on this one as they are leaning on a fairly mediocre catcher (and the team has been using their speed a lot more as of late) and despite their island of 'misfit toys' performing offensively they aren't showing anything on the defensive side that makes me imagine that the types of hits the Jays offence have been getting off into the holes in the infield/outfield will go unplayed.
The match ups haven't been posted for the Rays games yet but I imagine it'll be an interesting time, especially with Alex Cobb and Matt Moore on such a hot roll as of late and even if David Price wasn't injured it would be unlikely that we'd play him considering how where they currently are in the use of their rotation.
-Eric
The Yankees Series
-Friday: Buerhle vs. Kuroda: Now this is a rematch from late April, with the exception that the Yanks have Granderson back so their offence could be pumped up a bit depending on his condition after coming back from the DL (sometimes players need time to re-adjust). When we look at that last game the offence performed rather poorly, and for those who say Buerhle was terrible you forget that even though he gave up 3 runs in the 3rd inning he did get back in the groove and take them down for about another 3 innings. So with the improvement we've seen in his performance (the 3-2 win over the Red Sox and the 8-7 win over the Rays, again you have to see that he only gave up runs in one inning and still came back and shut down the other team for another 3 innings, most pitchers would just fall apart after that) I have some confidence that he'll pitch well for the team and the better playing of our fielders will more than likely help with defence.
-Saturday: Morrow vs. Phelps: Ok so this on it's own looks like a pretty Toronto sided game, though I'm sure some are worried about Morrow's health. Now if your one of these people look at some of the articles where they interview Morrow or the Jays staff and you'll see that they pushed back his start a second time as a precautionary measure and he had been feeling better a couple days back so this was just a way of making absolutely sure he'd be ready for the start. He's still be doing his usual prep and workouts so there is no worry on that front. As for the Yankees starter, David Phelps hasn't been anything special so far and I honestly don't expect him to be, the Yanks have a good 1,2,3 in Sabathia, Kuroda and Pettite but the back end of their rotation can look a bit atrocious at times, the reason for games won with those pitchers on the mound is due to 2 things, the first being their strange offence (who the hell would have thought Vernon Wells would EVER be productive again?) and the second being Mariano Rivera. Basically even if the opponent scored a lot they were generally able to get the lead, hold it into the 9th and then the Sandman shut them out.
-Sunday: Dickey vs. Sabathia: Now this match up isn't so clear cut, Dickey made a BIG step forward last match when he struck out 10 and only allowed 2 runs on 6 hits and 2 walks, which is much more in line with his Cy Young seasn last year. As well Sabathia has a bit up and down, for the most part he has been consistent on allowing around 2-4 runs per game, but the hits+walks that he allows has fluctuated from 6-12 or so and sometimes the strikeouts are there and sometimes their not (last game he struck out 10 but the one before that only 2). If both players are playing to their best then we'll have quite the intriguing pitchers duel, though I have a feeling that the Jay's rejuvenated offence may be able to overcome the Yankees on this one as they are leaning on a fairly mediocre catcher (and the team has been using their speed a lot more as of late) and despite their island of 'misfit toys' performing offensively they aren't showing anything on the defensive side that makes me imagine that the types of hits the Jays offence have been getting off into the holes in the infield/outfield will go unplayed.
The match ups haven't been posted for the Rays games yet but I imagine it'll be an interesting time, especially with Alex Cobb and Matt Moore on such a hot roll as of late and even if David Price wasn't injured it would be unlikely that we'd play him considering how where they currently are in the use of their rotation.
-Eric
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Bird Watch: Well That Just Happened
Ok so the seems Sunday's game where the Jays dominated the Red Sox wasn't necessarily a fluke as they went on to do it against the San Francisco Giants 10-6 (though the back end of the bullpen blew 4 runs so if it were the usuals, that being Janssen, Oliver and Santos, chances are it would have been 10-2). And surprisingly Dickey was solid, now I don't mean I was expecting him to be shit for the rest of the season, on the contrary I thought he would get close to his Cy Young form from last year, I just thought it would take a bit of time since he was 'working through' back and neck soreness that was hampering his ability to throw his knuckler at 80+ MPH. But after his first couple innings he dominated the game, got 10 strikeouts and limited the Giants to only 8 base runners in the 6 innings he pitched, which is a huge improvement over the bad starts he's had previously this season. Other good things about this game are that again, just like Sunday's game, the offence just demolished the opposing pitcher every player who started the game got at least 1 hit except Blanco, but he's there more to catch Dickey than provide the team with any significant offence.
As well the Giants decided to give Melky Cabrera a World Series ring, now when I heard this I thought it was VERY strange (and I still do) because they kept him out of the line up after he returned from his suspension and didn't use him in any playoff games. It honestly seemed like they were trying to spite him (and don't get me wrong, I don't like players who cheat with performance enhancing drugs at all, but when you look at Melky's numbers during his time with Kansas and then with the Giants there wasn't a huge increase in power numbers and with the rate that he's hitting now he could easily get back to those numbers this year). The testosterone didn't seem to be doing much to enhance his batting ability. Anyway it just seemed extremely odd that they would go through all facets to keep him out of the playoffs and their field and then just try to make nice half a year later, it kinda felt like that kind of situation where a bully is being forced to apologize to a kid he bullied by his parents.
So tomorrow we've got for the Jays, Ramon Ortiz vs. Ryan Vogelsong (who has been on a downward trend) so we'll see if they can continue to get their offence to crush the ball.
On the side of the Cardinals, not much going on, their Tuesday game against the Mets was for lack of a better word 'meh', they had a rookie pitcher going against Dillion Gee, who has been bad as of late and they beat them 10-4, but in typical rookie fashion their pitcher broke down in the 6th and gave up 4 runs. And Monday's gave wasn't all that dissimilar either Lynn went in gave up 3 runs on 7 innings and they won it 6-3. No crushing offence or stellar pitching performances in either game, guess they had to level out after those 2 ridiculous games Wainwright and Miller pitched last week.
Though tomorrows game for the Cardinals ought to be a little more interesting as we have Shelby Miller going up against Shaun Marcum who recently came back from surgery (and he's shown he can be near ace level before). So look forward to catching that game.
-Eric
As well the Giants decided to give Melky Cabrera a World Series ring, now when I heard this I thought it was VERY strange (and I still do) because they kept him out of the line up after he returned from his suspension and didn't use him in any playoff games. It honestly seemed like they were trying to spite him (and don't get me wrong, I don't like players who cheat with performance enhancing drugs at all, but when you look at Melky's numbers during his time with Kansas and then with the Giants there wasn't a huge increase in power numbers and with the rate that he's hitting now he could easily get back to those numbers this year). The testosterone didn't seem to be doing much to enhance his batting ability. Anyway it just seemed extremely odd that they would go through all facets to keep him out of the playoffs and their field and then just try to make nice half a year later, it kinda felt like that kind of situation where a bully is being forced to apologize to a kid he bullied by his parents.
So tomorrow we've got for the Jays, Ramon Ortiz vs. Ryan Vogelsong (who has been on a downward trend) so we'll see if they can continue to get their offence to crush the ball.
On the side of the Cardinals, not much going on, their Tuesday game against the Mets was for lack of a better word 'meh', they had a rookie pitcher going against Dillion Gee, who has been bad as of late and they beat them 10-4, but in typical rookie fashion their pitcher broke down in the 6th and gave up 4 runs. And Monday's gave wasn't all that dissimilar either Lynn went in gave up 3 runs on 7 innings and they won it 6-3. No crushing offence or stellar pitching performances in either game, guess they had to level out after those 2 ridiculous games Wainwright and Miller pitched last week.
Though tomorrows game for the Cardinals ought to be a little more interesting as we have Shelby Miller going up against Shaun Marcum who recently came back from surgery (and he's shown he can be near ace level before). So look forward to catching that game.
-Eric
Monday, May 13, 2013
Bird Watch: Well That Was A Odd Swap
So the Sunday games have come and gone and, while I expected the Blue Jays to win, I wasn't expecting a blowout like what happened and I can say I sure wasn't expecting the Rockies to return the favour and nearly silence the Cardinals either.
So what can I gather from the Toronto vs. Boston game? Well first of all seems the Blue Jays offence is firing on all cylinders again. First off is that Dempster isn't a terrible pitcher who'd allow the number of runs he did on a regular basis, then as well he's on the Red Sox who have a pretty nice defensive outfield and a solid manager and catcher calling the pitches. The Jay's offence just seemed to get the better of them, they worked the count, crushed the ball where they could and the fast players were smart about snagging the extra base, with exception to Edwin getting caught at 3rd. What I was surprised most about was that Bonifacio hit a home run, so let's break down Bonifacio's experience in the majors. First off he was drafted Diamondbacks who brought him up for 11 games but didn't do much of anything, which was also the case in the following year with the Nationals. After this he was sent to Florida and joined the Marlins in 2009, however just like his previous seasons 2009 and 2010 with the Marlins were lacklustre at best.
Then in 2011 he surprised plenty of people by significantly increasing his AVG, OBP, OPS and managed to steal 40 bases, an impressive feat for someone who's highest stolen base total until then had been half of that not to mention he had a 26 game hitting streak in July and hit in 30 out of 31 games in the month. Now many people would down play his 2012 season with the Marlins because his AVG, OBP and OPS increased but keep in mind he was out for about a month of the season and stole 20 bases by May 21st, when he went down with an injury and was on pace for 80 steals. Now again people would argue that he didn't get anywhere near that and while that may be true I think it was more because the injury was to his thumb, which if you've watched Bonifacio is the way he slides (head first) and obviously any player requires time to work back from an injury. Then on top of that was the fact that he was taken out for the rest of the season due to injury in early September meaning he missed a whole month where he could have likely stolen atleast another 10+ bases oh and did I mention the NL leader in stolen bases for the year was only at 44 and Bonifacio was at 30 despite missing 2 months of the season?
Now I'm not going to say that Bonifacio is going to explode sometime this season but I do think once he gets his hitting completely under control, after all a hitters adjustment to the AL can be a bit of a pain, he'll steal a good number of bases and help the Jays push for the AL Was title.
Ok so then the Cardinals game. Now I'm not actually going to focus on the performance of the Cardinals here, they played pretty average with exception to Jaime who got clobbered on the mound. No what I'm going to talk about is the Rockies, now I really have no idea why the Rockies bolted out of the gate this but it seems to be working, usually they are trailing in the NL-West by this time any other year but right now they are only 2.5 games out of first and their pitching is performing well at home and on the road. Though I gotta ask, why do we think the Rockies suck? I mean they have 2 premier hitters/fielders in Carlos Gonzalez and Troy Tulowitzki, not to mention the rising star Dexter Fowler and their young players Josh Rutledge and Willin Rosario. So from that I guess the target for criticism would be their pitching, which is true for the most part, in past years their starting rotation has been unstable and unable to hold games and I imagine it doesn't help having Coors Field being your home field, since it is the most home run prone field there is. Now over the off season the Rockies got a new GM, Walt Weiss who seems to be making a difference in their clubhouse. I mean they traded their best pitched in mid 2011, Ubaldo Jimenez, to the Indians (and BOY WAS HE SUCCESSFUL!). But to be honest none of the players they got in return have come up and delivered at what is expected of them as prospects, but they've managed to persevere.
Now lets take a look at their rotation, when you look at their stats their one two combo has been doing a stellar job as both Chacin and De La Rosa have only had one bad outing and it seems that despite the both of them not having great K/9 or K/BB rates the fielders seem to be making up for that with solid defensive play. Now the other 3 in the starting rotation are another story, their pretty much your standard run of the mill pitchers, they are on a fairly regular basis giving up 2-4 runs per game, and from their record it seems that the Rockies offence is doing a good job of putting up enough runs to keep up or better with the runs that the back end of their rotation gives up as most of them still have a winning record at this point. Then outside of their rotation is the bullpen, now again their bullpen isn't something to write home about but Rafael Betancourt is a solid veteran closer who is perfectly capable of holding down the 9th inning and in the off season they traded for the Astro's closer Wilton Lopez, which shows me that Betancourt could become trade bait to improve the starting rotation even more by the trade deadline. Either way the Rockies this year are sure to be an interesting team to watch.
-Eric
So what can I gather from the Toronto vs. Boston game? Well first of all seems the Blue Jays offence is firing on all cylinders again. First off is that Dempster isn't a terrible pitcher who'd allow the number of runs he did on a regular basis, then as well he's on the Red Sox who have a pretty nice defensive outfield and a solid manager and catcher calling the pitches. The Jay's offence just seemed to get the better of them, they worked the count, crushed the ball where they could and the fast players were smart about snagging the extra base, with exception to Edwin getting caught at 3rd. What I was surprised most about was that Bonifacio hit a home run, so let's break down Bonifacio's experience in the majors. First off he was drafted Diamondbacks who brought him up for 11 games but didn't do much of anything, which was also the case in the following year with the Nationals. After this he was sent to Florida and joined the Marlins in 2009, however just like his previous seasons 2009 and 2010 with the Marlins were lacklustre at best.
Then in 2011 he surprised plenty of people by significantly increasing his AVG, OBP, OPS and managed to steal 40 bases, an impressive feat for someone who's highest stolen base total until then had been half of that not to mention he had a 26 game hitting streak in July and hit in 30 out of 31 games in the month. Now many people would down play his 2012 season with the Marlins because his AVG, OBP and OPS increased but keep in mind he was out for about a month of the season and stole 20 bases by May 21st, when he went down with an injury and was on pace for 80 steals. Now again people would argue that he didn't get anywhere near that and while that may be true I think it was more because the injury was to his thumb, which if you've watched Bonifacio is the way he slides (head first) and obviously any player requires time to work back from an injury. Then on top of that was the fact that he was taken out for the rest of the season due to injury in early September meaning he missed a whole month where he could have likely stolen atleast another 10+ bases oh and did I mention the NL leader in stolen bases for the year was only at 44 and Bonifacio was at 30 despite missing 2 months of the season?
Now I'm not going to say that Bonifacio is going to explode sometime this season but I do think once he gets his hitting completely under control, after all a hitters adjustment to the AL can be a bit of a pain, he'll steal a good number of bases and help the Jays push for the AL Was title.
Ok so then the Cardinals game. Now I'm not actually going to focus on the performance of the Cardinals here, they played pretty average with exception to Jaime who got clobbered on the mound. No what I'm going to talk about is the Rockies, now I really have no idea why the Rockies bolted out of the gate this but it seems to be working, usually they are trailing in the NL-West by this time any other year but right now they are only 2.5 games out of first and their pitching is performing well at home and on the road. Though I gotta ask, why do we think the Rockies suck? I mean they have 2 premier hitters/fielders in Carlos Gonzalez and Troy Tulowitzki, not to mention the rising star Dexter Fowler and their young players Josh Rutledge and Willin Rosario. So from that I guess the target for criticism would be their pitching, which is true for the most part, in past years their starting rotation has been unstable and unable to hold games and I imagine it doesn't help having Coors Field being your home field, since it is the most home run prone field there is. Now over the off season the Rockies got a new GM, Walt Weiss who seems to be making a difference in their clubhouse. I mean they traded their best pitched in mid 2011, Ubaldo Jimenez, to the Indians (and BOY WAS HE SUCCESSFUL!). But to be honest none of the players they got in return have come up and delivered at what is expected of them as prospects, but they've managed to persevere.
Now lets take a look at their rotation, when you look at their stats their one two combo has been doing a stellar job as both Chacin and De La Rosa have only had one bad outing and it seems that despite the both of them not having great K/9 or K/BB rates the fielders seem to be making up for that with solid defensive play. Now the other 3 in the starting rotation are another story, their pretty much your standard run of the mill pitchers, they are on a fairly regular basis giving up 2-4 runs per game, and from their record it seems that the Rockies offence is doing a good job of putting up enough runs to keep up or better with the runs that the back end of their rotation gives up as most of them still have a winning record at this point. Then outside of their rotation is the bullpen, now again their bullpen isn't something to write home about but Rafael Betancourt is a solid veteran closer who is perfectly capable of holding down the 9th inning and in the off season they traded for the Astro's closer Wilton Lopez, which shows me that Betancourt could become trade bait to improve the starting rotation even more by the trade deadline. Either way the Rockies this year are sure to be an interesting team to watch.
-Eric
Saturday, May 11, 2013
Bird Watch: Well That Was An Odd Start To The Weekend
Ok so what I'm referring to in the title should be fairly obvious, first we had a rather strange performance by the Blue Jays on Friday where their starter for the day only gave up 1 run. Now don't get fooled by this Ortiz may have done well but he did so while allowing 4 hits, not that big of a deal, and walking 5 and if you watched the game he didn't exactly have the best control out on the mound. The strangest thing I found was that news sites were pumping up Ortiz's outing as a great sign and then also throwing Lester's 1-hit complete game as a huge deal as well. This isn't pretty far from the truth because like I said if you watched the game you could see Ramon Ortiz didn't have that great of control and ended putting a lot of people on base, he was bailed out by the defence a few times and made a pickoff error. Then as well the same goes for Lester, he didn't have the greatest control either, the Blue Jays offence just clicked into 'swing for the fences' mode again and didn't get , which can be seen by the fact that he only got 5 K's on the whole game, which is less than his usual K/9. Either way it was a bit annoying to see the Jays take a step back after doing much better in the series against the Rays, but then came the Saturday game.
I had looked at the match up of pitchers a few days ago and figured the Red Sox would probably have it in the bag since they mashed Buerhle before but surprisingly he only allowed 1 runs on 5 hits and 2 walks, the polar opposite of his last outing. Now I haven't gotten a chance to watch the game as of yet because of the time difference between Australia and North America but I plan on it and just from looking at the box score I can see that more than half of the line up had a hit of some kind and 3 players who earlier in the season would lack any plate discipline took a walk or two. Now thats good news for the development of the offence, and Darren Oliver and Casey Janssen did a great job of closing them down, remember Oliver's run was unearned and was a function of the fielding error by Kawasaki so I wouldn't pin it on him since it was an infield fly that was missed and gave up the run. All in all though it seemed to be a good game since unlike a lot of games played the Jays were able to come back, score a run in the ninth and win it.
Now we have the Cardinals over Friday and Saturday, and boy was that a surprise and not the offence on either games but Adam Wainwright and Shelby Miller, both of which who managed to throw complete games. Now Shelby Miller threw his 9 innings while only allowing 1 hit, the first batter of the game, and then retiring 27 batters in order with no problems and striking out 13. Now when any pitcher strikes out 10 or more batters its impressive but when you do it against a team thats hot and hitting like crazy like the Colorado Rockies it looks even better. Now the Cardinals were lucky they got this performance from Miller and thats because Garland did a pretty good job for the Rockies and the Cardinals offence was only 2 for 10 with runners in scoring position meaning they didn't get those big hits when it really mattered. Overall stellar pitching performance that makes more of a case for Miller to become a permanent fixture in the Cardinals rotation.
Then came the Saturday game and Adam Wainwright stepped on the mound and if you read my last post involving Wainwright you should have been expecting something good but what he did was much better. He worked through 9 innings allowing no runs, 2 hits and 1 walk. Unfortunately he wasn't able to top Miller's performance the previous day but similar to the Friday game it was good the Cardinals had that work from Wainwright since they were again pretty bad at hitting with runners in scoring position, 4 for 15 to be exact. Just another stellar outing by Wainwright showing that he was deserving of that extension that he signed earlier in the season.
And then just to top off pitching performances that were extremely noteworthy we look at the Met's Matt Harvey. Just like Shelby Miller Harvey is a rookie getting his first starting chance in the majors and boy has been wrecking shop on the mound, and this week was no exception. Harvey, going up against the White Sox managed to take a perfect game into the 7th, and usually would be taken out at that point but not Harvey. He continued on and took the game through to the 9th before handing the ball over to closer Bobby Parnell to close it out and the Met's scored in walk off fashion in the bottom of the 10th. Now this was impressive as there aren't many one hitters or perfect games that were taken into extra innings, you can count them on one hand, then like Miller he stuck out a crap load of batters, 12 to be precise, making for eye opening pitching by the rookie.
It's like I told my father at the start of our fantasy baseball season, 'this is going to be the year of the prospect' and I think it's only just begun at that.
-Eric
I had looked at the match up of pitchers a few days ago and figured the Red Sox would probably have it in the bag since they mashed Buerhle before but surprisingly he only allowed 1 runs on 5 hits and 2 walks, the polar opposite of his last outing. Now I haven't gotten a chance to watch the game as of yet because of the time difference between Australia and North America but I plan on it and just from looking at the box score I can see that more than half of the line up had a hit of some kind and 3 players who earlier in the season would lack any plate discipline took a walk or two. Now thats good news for the development of the offence, and Darren Oliver and Casey Janssen did a great job of closing them down, remember Oliver's run was unearned and was a function of the fielding error by Kawasaki so I wouldn't pin it on him since it was an infield fly that was missed and gave up the run. All in all though it seemed to be a good game since unlike a lot of games played the Jays were able to come back, score a run in the ninth and win it.
Now we have the Cardinals over Friday and Saturday, and boy was that a surprise and not the offence on either games but Adam Wainwright and Shelby Miller, both of which who managed to throw complete games. Now Shelby Miller threw his 9 innings while only allowing 1 hit, the first batter of the game, and then retiring 27 batters in order with no problems and striking out 13. Now when any pitcher strikes out 10 or more batters its impressive but when you do it against a team thats hot and hitting like crazy like the Colorado Rockies it looks even better. Now the Cardinals were lucky they got this performance from Miller and thats because Garland did a pretty good job for the Rockies and the Cardinals offence was only 2 for 10 with runners in scoring position meaning they didn't get those big hits when it really mattered. Overall stellar pitching performance that makes more of a case for Miller to become a permanent fixture in the Cardinals rotation.
Then came the Saturday game and Adam Wainwright stepped on the mound and if you read my last post involving Wainwright you should have been expecting something good but what he did was much better. He worked through 9 innings allowing no runs, 2 hits and 1 walk. Unfortunately he wasn't able to top Miller's performance the previous day but similar to the Friday game it was good the Cardinals had that work from Wainwright since they were again pretty bad at hitting with runners in scoring position, 4 for 15 to be exact. Just another stellar outing by Wainwright showing that he was deserving of that extension that he signed earlier in the season.
And then just to top off pitching performances that were extremely noteworthy we look at the Met's Matt Harvey. Just like Shelby Miller Harvey is a rookie getting his first starting chance in the majors and boy has been wrecking shop on the mound, and this week was no exception. Harvey, going up against the White Sox managed to take a perfect game into the 7th, and usually would be taken out at that point but not Harvey. He continued on and took the game through to the 9th before handing the ball over to closer Bobby Parnell to close it out and the Met's scored in walk off fashion in the bottom of the 10th. Now this was impressive as there aren't many one hitters or perfect games that were taken into extra innings, you can count them on one hand, then like Miller he stuck out a crap load of batters, 12 to be precise, making for eye opening pitching by the rookie.
It's like I told my father at the start of our fantasy baseball season, 'this is going to be the year of the prospect' and I think it's only just begun at that.
-Eric
Friday, May 10, 2013
Sometimes Even Famous People Can Help Restore Faith In Humanity
So I'm not sure if you heard about the Todd Frazier home run story from a little while back but whether you have or haven't its getting told again. So the Reds have a bat boy who happens to also have down syndrome, which in my mind is fantastic giving an opportunity to a guy like that is great in my mind. Now one day this bat boy, who apparently talks fairly often with Todd Frazier and considers him a good friend as does Todd, says to him 'C'mon hit me a homerun, I love you' and what does Todd proceed to do but belt a long ball into the stands and it just left me with a happy feeling seeing the face of those two. With a world where so much crap goes on, Todd Frazier, a top notch baseball player, who really isn't obliged to pay attention to fans or others who like his play, goes out and is a stellar human being.
Now if you think thats all I got, your dead wrong because something I got a little watery eyed over happened this week. So at a Dodgers game in San Francisco there was a boy in the crowd at the ground level on 3rd base side named Joshua Jones, a die hard Dodgers fan. Now to the naked eye theres nothing out of the ordinary about Josh but that is wrong, and thats because Josh has been battling cancer and a little while before the game was informed by doctors that he likely wouldn't live more than 3 months. Now that would get anybody down in the dumps, so being the caring people they are, his parents and friends pooled together some money to get those ground level tickets to the Dodgers game to cheer him up a bit. Now what happened next started as expected but got overwhelming. So at the end of the game Steven Jones, Josh's dad, spoke with the third base coach to see if he would come over and talk to Josh, since Josh loves Matt Kemp. And it over comes Matt Kemp, he motions to sign the ball that Josh has as he exchanges some words with him and thats when the unexpected happens. Kemp, who I figured was more mentally preoccupied with his recent struggles at the plate, take off his cap and gives it to Josh. Now at this point I'm thinking well thats really nice of him, then he literally gave him the shirt off his back. Thats right Kemp took off his game Jersey and handed to Josh, oh but thats not all because he then proceeds to take off his cleats and hand em over as well, he then shakes their hands talks a bit and heads off.
Now all I can think is WOW now that is an athlete who has his head on straight, even when he's having problems of his own he goes out and makes the day of a 19 year old kid with not much time to live. Very classy Matt and it's again nice to see that even the real high end players care a great deal about their fans. Overall after reading these two stories and watching the associated videos I can say I'm feeling a little more upbeat. (links to the videos below)
-Eric
Matt Kemp Gives Ill Fan Some Souvenirs
Frazier Clubbing a HR for the Batboy
Post-Game Interview With Todd And Batboy Teddy
Now if you think thats all I got, your dead wrong because something I got a little watery eyed over happened this week. So at a Dodgers game in San Francisco there was a boy in the crowd at the ground level on 3rd base side named Joshua Jones, a die hard Dodgers fan. Now to the naked eye theres nothing out of the ordinary about Josh but that is wrong, and thats because Josh has been battling cancer and a little while before the game was informed by doctors that he likely wouldn't live more than 3 months. Now that would get anybody down in the dumps, so being the caring people they are, his parents and friends pooled together some money to get those ground level tickets to the Dodgers game to cheer him up a bit. Now what happened next started as expected but got overwhelming. So at the end of the game Steven Jones, Josh's dad, spoke with the third base coach to see if he would come over and talk to Josh, since Josh loves Matt Kemp. And it over comes Matt Kemp, he motions to sign the ball that Josh has as he exchanges some words with him and thats when the unexpected happens. Kemp, who I figured was more mentally preoccupied with his recent struggles at the plate, take off his cap and gives it to Josh. Now at this point I'm thinking well thats really nice of him, then he literally gave him the shirt off his back. Thats right Kemp took off his game Jersey and handed to Josh, oh but thats not all because he then proceeds to take off his cleats and hand em over as well, he then shakes their hands talks a bit and heads off.
Now all I can think is WOW now that is an athlete who has his head on straight, even when he's having problems of his own he goes out and makes the day of a 19 year old kid with not much time to live. Very classy Matt and it's again nice to see that even the real high end players care a great deal about their fans. Overall after reading these two stories and watching the associated videos I can say I'm feeling a little more upbeat. (links to the videos below)
-Eric
Matt Kemp Gives Ill Fan Some Souvenirs
Frazier Clubbing a HR for the Batboy
Post-Game Interview With Todd And Batboy Teddy
Thursday, May 9, 2013
Bird Watch: Damn Those Sneaky Cardinals
So over the past few weeks I've been hearing bits and pieces about the St. Louis Cardinals, however most of it was centred around a few subjects: The potential end of Carpenter's future as a starter, Edward Mujica's performance as closer and the new prospects in the Cardinals rotation, bullpen (Trevor Rosenthal and Shelby Miller) and how amazing Adam Wainwright has been. Now what I missed was that those sneaky birds have managed not only to get ahead of the competition in the NL Central but they've also managed to secure the best record in baseball. WHEN THE HELL DID THAT HAPPEN?! Ok so lets break all this stuff down.
The end of Carp's career as a starter. Now I understand where this is coming from because Carpenter has not been able to pull through a full season for a while without being sidelined with a fairly nasty injury, and I'm sure some Cardinals fans might be thinking this is blasphemy and Carp will be able to do anything. Now I don't believe this HOWEVER Carp used to play for the Jays and first as a ex-Jay I'm hoping he manages to turn everything around when he gets back, but during those years of watching him I know he has an extreme ethic and a dedication to what he does, which is why he's continued to be a very solid starter despite all of these injuries. So even if he does end his career as a starter I have a huge amount of faith that he will find a way to become dominant in that role. I mean it's not like his stuff has diminished in a bad way like it has for say Tim Lincecum.
Next up Edward Mujica as the closer. So Mujica has done a pretty nice job sneaking into the closer role after Motte was set down by injury, which turns out has ended his season and likely a bit into next season, and Boggs was faltering in the role BIG time. Now his stuff has been pretty electric as most of his saves as he has gotten a few strikeouts in each of his opportunities and on top of that even when he's allowed a run or two, which hasn't happened often, he's managed to get his head back in the game and close the door. Now that last part is a very important aspect of being a closer because one run can throw your teams lead out the window in save situations and you have to be able to not let hits or runs effect you mentally and just pitch your tail off to get out of the inning. So kudos to Mujica, though at this rate Motte may have a problem getting his job back when he returns.
Shelby Miller and Trevor Rosenthal. Now these two were the talk of the town during spring training as their fight to get into the starting rotation seemed like a bar fight, one day one of them would pitch amazing then the next day the other would do something just as good. Though that didn't continue forever as only Shelby Miller made it into the rotation. Now evaluators believe that both of these guys will be impact pitchers at some point in there careers and honestly St. Louis is one of the best places for young pitching prospects because the staff their knows how to properly develop them into players who will produce stellar results in the future. I mean look what Jaime Garcia, Lance Lynn and Adam Wainwright are doing now, all of them home grown in the cardinals organization and all of them either currently looking like ace level pitchers or soon to be at that level. The only place that I can think of having a better pitcher development staff is Tampa Bay, and I don't think I need to say much about that considering how many amazing pitchers have come out of that team.
The amazing Adam Wainwright. Ok so this isn't terribly news because he is only a couple years removed from 2 seasons where he put up high enough numbers to be one of the runner ups for the NL Cy-Young, unfortunately for him the competition those years was stiff as those were the year Tim Lincecum had his career year and Roy Halladay pitched his perfect game and post-season no-hitter the following year. However it seems like since returning from Tommy John he's seen improvement, now don't get me wrong I know he was mediocre in 2012 but it seems like a trend that it takes pitchers about a year to get back into the swing of things and regain their form and thats definitely the case with Wainwright as he's currently at a record of 4-2, an ERA of 2.72 a K/9 (strikeout per 9 innings for those who aren't stat-inclined) and a K/walk ratio of 16! (and one of those walks was intentional). So as you can see he's off to a stellar start and those stats listed are very important ones as it shows a pitchers ability to consistently get strikeouts in a game and not walk batters so keep your eyes on Wainwright as he is poised to have another explosive season.
Overall it seems the Cardinals are beating the odds, and injuries, as it would seem an getting a head of the competition and I say good on em. I was never a big Cardinals fan but then I read Tony LaRussa's book 'One Last Strike' and it put into terms how much he cared for his players and how involved he was in the clubhouse outside of the game and made me like the team a whole lot more. If you have yet to read it I suggest you pick it up. So in short, keep your eyes on the Cardinals as the season progresses, theres plenty of reasons to.
-Eric
The end of Carp's career as a starter. Now I understand where this is coming from because Carpenter has not been able to pull through a full season for a while without being sidelined with a fairly nasty injury, and I'm sure some Cardinals fans might be thinking this is blasphemy and Carp will be able to do anything. Now I don't believe this HOWEVER Carp used to play for the Jays and first as a ex-Jay I'm hoping he manages to turn everything around when he gets back, but during those years of watching him I know he has an extreme ethic and a dedication to what he does, which is why he's continued to be a very solid starter despite all of these injuries. So even if he does end his career as a starter I have a huge amount of faith that he will find a way to become dominant in that role. I mean it's not like his stuff has diminished in a bad way like it has for say Tim Lincecum.
Next up Edward Mujica as the closer. So Mujica has done a pretty nice job sneaking into the closer role after Motte was set down by injury, which turns out has ended his season and likely a bit into next season, and Boggs was faltering in the role BIG time. Now his stuff has been pretty electric as most of his saves as he has gotten a few strikeouts in each of his opportunities and on top of that even when he's allowed a run or two, which hasn't happened often, he's managed to get his head back in the game and close the door. Now that last part is a very important aspect of being a closer because one run can throw your teams lead out the window in save situations and you have to be able to not let hits or runs effect you mentally and just pitch your tail off to get out of the inning. So kudos to Mujica, though at this rate Motte may have a problem getting his job back when he returns.
Shelby Miller and Trevor Rosenthal. Now these two were the talk of the town during spring training as their fight to get into the starting rotation seemed like a bar fight, one day one of them would pitch amazing then the next day the other would do something just as good. Though that didn't continue forever as only Shelby Miller made it into the rotation. Now evaluators believe that both of these guys will be impact pitchers at some point in there careers and honestly St. Louis is one of the best places for young pitching prospects because the staff their knows how to properly develop them into players who will produce stellar results in the future. I mean look what Jaime Garcia, Lance Lynn and Adam Wainwright are doing now, all of them home grown in the cardinals organization and all of them either currently looking like ace level pitchers or soon to be at that level. The only place that I can think of having a better pitcher development staff is Tampa Bay, and I don't think I need to say much about that considering how many amazing pitchers have come out of that team.
The amazing Adam Wainwright. Ok so this isn't terribly news because he is only a couple years removed from 2 seasons where he put up high enough numbers to be one of the runner ups for the NL Cy-Young, unfortunately for him the competition those years was stiff as those were the year Tim Lincecum had his career year and Roy Halladay pitched his perfect game and post-season no-hitter the following year. However it seems like since returning from Tommy John he's seen improvement, now don't get me wrong I know he was mediocre in 2012 but it seems like a trend that it takes pitchers about a year to get back into the swing of things and regain their form and thats definitely the case with Wainwright as he's currently at a record of 4-2, an ERA of 2.72 a K/9 (strikeout per 9 innings for those who aren't stat-inclined) and a K/walk ratio of 16! (and one of those walks was intentional). So as you can see he's off to a stellar start and those stats listed are very important ones as it shows a pitchers ability to consistently get strikeouts in a game and not walk batters so keep your eyes on Wainwright as he is poised to have another explosive season.
Overall it seems the Cardinals are beating the odds, and injuries, as it would seem an getting a head of the competition and I say good on em. I was never a big Cardinals fan but then I read Tony LaRussa's book 'One Last Strike' and it put into terms how much he cared for his players and how involved he was in the clubhouse outside of the game and made me like the team a whole lot more. If you have yet to read it I suggest you pick it up. So in short, keep your eyes on the Cardinals as the season progresses, theres plenty of reasons to.
-Eric
Bird Watch: Looks Like One Of Them Has An Injured Wing
Ok, so seems like I was right about what I said about Romero on my post about his last start. He seems to be starting to get it back but he's still a work in progress, how can I tell? He did a pretty nasty job pitching today, only lasted 1/3 an inning and gave up 3 runs on 4 hits and 2 walks, not to mention the first 2 batters were walked. Now I applaud John Gibbons on pulling Romero so quickly and despite the pretty bad loss I believe understand the reason for the moves or at least can see a motive for them.
Ok so first off people must wonder why Romero got the hook so quickly. Well he's only had one start at AAA level and as we could see from the second half of his first start, he does still need time to work his stuff out and you could see a visible change in his delivery. He was throwing well during the first 3 innings striking out 1 per inning until the 4th, and then we could see that he was landing on his leg differently and it seemed like his landing leg was a lot more stiff when he threw, additionally he looked like he was overthrowing some pitches and I imagine that would be because it was his first game of the season. So seeing him go downhill in his second start isn't that much of a surprise, he reverted to his old delivery in the 4th inning of his first outing and has only had 1 start in the minors to test his new one.
Second off people are without a doubt thinking that the relievers used were atrocious, now while this can't be any more true, since they gave up a fair amount of hits and runs. However this is good because our more solid relievers have been rested and are prepared to take on the game tomorrow, now why is that important? Well that is because tomorrow R.A Dickey is taking on the reigning AL Cy Young winner David Price, so if he is in form runs are going to be a luxury and if Dickey falters we will need our solid relievers to hold the game as is.
These things are good not only because we'll be prepped for tomorrows game but it shows that Gibby is putting more thought into things, which I'm sure people were beginning to question. Now the other upside is that our bullpen will get a big upgrade come around the All-Star break. Why is that you ask? Well thats because around that time Kyle Drabek, Drew Hutchison and our premier long relief man Luis Perez will be coming back from Tommy John. Then of course theres the good news that Santos seems to be making good strides in his rehab and Drew Hutchison is on the 'heavy ball program' that has been given the thumbs up by many of our successful relievers this year as well as our ex manage John Farrell.
So theres even more reason to have a positive outlook on the future for the Jays, yes we still have a ways to go before we can really believe that they are still capable of making the playoffs but I think they can easily finish above .500, which is a good place to start.
-Eric
Ok so first off people must wonder why Romero got the hook so quickly. Well he's only had one start at AAA level and as we could see from the second half of his first start, he does still need time to work his stuff out and you could see a visible change in his delivery. He was throwing well during the first 3 innings striking out 1 per inning until the 4th, and then we could see that he was landing on his leg differently and it seemed like his landing leg was a lot more stiff when he threw, additionally he looked like he was overthrowing some pitches and I imagine that would be because it was his first game of the season. So seeing him go downhill in his second start isn't that much of a surprise, he reverted to his old delivery in the 4th inning of his first outing and has only had 1 start in the minors to test his new one.
Second off people are without a doubt thinking that the relievers used were atrocious, now while this can't be any more true, since they gave up a fair amount of hits and runs. However this is good because our more solid relievers have been rested and are prepared to take on the game tomorrow, now why is that important? Well that is because tomorrow R.A Dickey is taking on the reigning AL Cy Young winner David Price, so if he is in form runs are going to be a luxury and if Dickey falters we will need our solid relievers to hold the game as is.
These things are good not only because we'll be prepped for tomorrows game but it shows that Gibby is putting more thought into things, which I'm sure people were beginning to question. Now the other upside is that our bullpen will get a big upgrade come around the All-Star break. Why is that you ask? Well thats because around that time Kyle Drabek, Drew Hutchison and our premier long relief man Luis Perez will be coming back from Tommy John. Then of course theres the good news that Santos seems to be making good strides in his rehab and Drew Hutchison is on the 'heavy ball program' that has been given the thumbs up by many of our successful relievers this year as well as our ex manage John Farrell.
So theres even more reason to have a positive outlook on the future for the Jays, yes we still have a ways to go before we can really believe that they are still capable of making the playoffs but I think they can easily finish above .500, which is a good place to start.
-Eric
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Bird Watch - Oh What a Cute Bird............WTF Why'd You Throw a Rock At It?!?!?
Ok so the title of this post is just supposed to lighten the mood. I do realize how serious what happened to Happ in the game was, and I wish him all the best, not only because he's seems like a pretty hard working, stand up guy, but up until now he's been the most consistent player we've had on the Jays roster. Now thats saying a lot since he came into spring training expecting to be in the bullpen then as spring training came to a close it looked more like he was heading down to triple A buffalo, not something any established major league starter wants to have to do, but he pulled himself up and managed to snag a spot in the rotation by performing the best I've ever seen since years ago when he was with the Phillies. Personally I appreciate that kind of work ethic and I hope all of the other Jays fans out there appreciate it as well because without it we would have had to send an unprepared Ricky Romero into the season as our #5 or even one of the unexperienced guys in our bullpen.
There is something positive to be taken from the game however, and it's back to the whole 'mentality of the team' thing I talked about in my last post. And that is that the Jays despite that insane injury game back to win the game, when Happ got hit players on both sides were shocked and the players on the Jays side could have honestly gone one of 2 ways. They could have become depressed and downtrodden for the rest of the game because a key player was knocked out in a horrendous way, or they could take the 'let's win this one for Happ' mentality. Thankfully they seem to have chose the second because they came back and won the game 6-4. And as I've said before the offence again wasn't trying to kill the ball, they were consistently getting it in play. Mind you there were a couple innings and at bats where someone would hit into a double play or would hit/swing at a bad pitch but it was light years better than what has been done before, so all thats left is to hope this streak continues and the Jays keep recovering their game.
-Eric
There is something positive to be taken from the game however, and it's back to the whole 'mentality of the team' thing I talked about in my last post. And that is that the Jays despite that insane injury game back to win the game, when Happ got hit players on both sides were shocked and the players on the Jays side could have honestly gone one of 2 ways. They could have become depressed and downtrodden for the rest of the game because a key player was knocked out in a horrendous way, or they could take the 'let's win this one for Happ' mentality. Thankfully they seem to have chose the second because they came back and won the game 6-4. And as I've said before the offence again wasn't trying to kill the ball, they were consistently getting it in play. Mind you there were a couple innings and at bats where someone would hit into a double play or would hit/swing at a bad pitch but it was light years better than what has been done before, so all thats left is to hope this streak continues and the Jays keep recovering their game.
-Eric
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Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Bird Watch - The Jays Take Flight
Ok so after Monday's Jays game I believe that the team is moving in the right direction, why you ask? Thats because despite falling back 7 runs early in the game the offence was alive the whole game, they hit so much that they ate into the Rays bullpen and overall came back from a 2 run difference to win the game. So considering my new enthusiasm I'm going to be doing a daily 'Bird Watch' post every day I manage to catch a Jays game (which should be every day). In addition I might move it around to include the Orioles and Cardinals at some time as they are both teams that are playing very well, with either lack of key players (Cardinals) or a limited budget compared to other teams (Orioles). So look forward to it!
Now back to the Jays game. Obviously I expect many fans like myself were very positive with how the game started, Buerhle wasn't walking a lot of people or giving up hits. Then the third inning came around and it seemed like it was a never ending onslaught by the Rays, 7 runs in one inning, I was near ready to smash my head on my desk. I kept tuned in though and then it was as if the lights went on and we scored 3 in the next inning and Buerhle had the inning go 3 up and 3 down. The next inning was unremarkable but if you were paying attention you could see that our players were taking a lot more pitches and weren't swinging at first pitches either, which as I previously mentioned in yesterday's Blue Jays rant, has been our achilles heel for ages, we end up with the most home runs in the league but it's at the cost of a consistent offence. In addition I think it was VERY good that it wasn't just Encarnacion and Bautista leading the way, since that would just mean the people we expect to drive in runs are doing so, but we had the brunt of the runs we scored in the 3rd and 5th by Rasmus and DeRosa, people we don't often see produce in the way they did during games.
Now by this time we were up to a 2 run deficit (7-5) but again despite a negative game Buerhle sat down the opposition 3 up 3 down no problem. Now things were getting better because by the 7th we had already forced the Rays to go to their setup man (Farnsworth), who not to long ago was the teams closer and fairly effective at it, so you could tell we were getting into their bullpen early. So our offence smacks some more hits, steals a couple of basis but ultimately goes down without improving the score. Now while a bit down that we didn't continue the rally we had going I did take notice that it didn't even take an inning to get Farnsworth out of there again another positive to eat into the bullpen. From here Esmil Rogers took control and cleared out the 7th and following this the offence turns on again, getting 2 of the first 3 hitters on base. And then Joe Maddon did something a bit strange, he brought on Fernando Rodney in the top of the 8th. Now I'm not going to question the actions of someone like Joe Maddon who is honestly one of the best managers in the game considering what he is able to do with the players he has, at least in my opinion, but every time see a manager bring out their closer earlier than the 9th inning or with a run deficit it usually goes VERY wrong. Which, fortunately for me and other Jays fans, it did. We fought back to be back only one run, Darren Oliver had a pretty clean 8th and then Rodney so kindly allowed us to score our 7th and 8th runs and to finish it up Casey Janssen sat down all 3 of the starting batters.
Ok so thats more or less a long winded version of the box score. What I did notice in this game were some things similar to the last game against the Mariners. First off Gibbons did a much better job of managing the guys on base and getting them to steal at great times and frequently at that, which is one thing I've always thought Joe Maddon does a fantastic job at (taking the pitchers attention away from the hitter causing him to fuck up), in addition the offence was consistent again with 12 hits over the game and good plate discipline telling us the Seattle game wasn't a fluke. Then as well NO ERRORS on our part and an overall positive attitude, I mean can you imagine what its like being on a pro sports team and all of a sudden having to overcome a 7 point lead, I give all of the Jays a tip of my hat for being able to come back offensively and mentally to win that game and look forward to tomorrows event with Happ vs. Hernandez (former Fausto Carmona, for those who don't know).
-Eric
Now back to the Jays game. Obviously I expect many fans like myself were very positive with how the game started, Buerhle wasn't walking a lot of people or giving up hits. Then the third inning came around and it seemed like it was a never ending onslaught by the Rays, 7 runs in one inning, I was near ready to smash my head on my desk. I kept tuned in though and then it was as if the lights went on and we scored 3 in the next inning and Buerhle had the inning go 3 up and 3 down. The next inning was unremarkable but if you were paying attention you could see that our players were taking a lot more pitches and weren't swinging at first pitches either, which as I previously mentioned in yesterday's Blue Jays rant, has been our achilles heel for ages, we end up with the most home runs in the league but it's at the cost of a consistent offence. In addition I think it was VERY good that it wasn't just Encarnacion and Bautista leading the way, since that would just mean the people we expect to drive in runs are doing so, but we had the brunt of the runs we scored in the 3rd and 5th by Rasmus and DeRosa, people we don't often see produce in the way they did during games.
Now by this time we were up to a 2 run deficit (7-5) but again despite a negative game Buerhle sat down the opposition 3 up 3 down no problem. Now things were getting better because by the 7th we had already forced the Rays to go to their setup man (Farnsworth), who not to long ago was the teams closer and fairly effective at it, so you could tell we were getting into their bullpen early. So our offence smacks some more hits, steals a couple of basis but ultimately goes down without improving the score. Now while a bit down that we didn't continue the rally we had going I did take notice that it didn't even take an inning to get Farnsworth out of there again another positive to eat into the bullpen. From here Esmil Rogers took control and cleared out the 7th and following this the offence turns on again, getting 2 of the first 3 hitters on base. And then Joe Maddon did something a bit strange, he brought on Fernando Rodney in the top of the 8th. Now I'm not going to question the actions of someone like Joe Maddon who is honestly one of the best managers in the game considering what he is able to do with the players he has, at least in my opinion, but every time see a manager bring out their closer earlier than the 9th inning or with a run deficit it usually goes VERY wrong. Which, fortunately for me and other Jays fans, it did. We fought back to be back only one run, Darren Oliver had a pretty clean 8th and then Rodney so kindly allowed us to score our 7th and 8th runs and to finish it up Casey Janssen sat down all 3 of the starting batters.
Ok so thats more or less a long winded version of the box score. What I did notice in this game were some things similar to the last game against the Mariners. First off Gibbons did a much better job of managing the guys on base and getting them to steal at great times and frequently at that, which is one thing I've always thought Joe Maddon does a fantastic job at (taking the pitchers attention away from the hitter causing him to fuck up), in addition the offence was consistent again with 12 hits over the game and good plate discipline telling us the Seattle game wasn't a fluke. Then as well NO ERRORS on our part and an overall positive attitude, I mean can you imagine what its like being on a pro sports team and all of a sudden having to overcome a 7 point lead, I give all of the Jays a tip of my hat for being able to come back offensively and mentally to win that game and look forward to tomorrows event with Happ vs. Hernandez (former Fausto Carmona, for those who don't know).
-Eric
Monday, May 6, 2013
Sunday Jays Game
Alright, I can safely say I am feeling a lot more positive about the Blue Jays after yesterday's performance against the Mariners. Though I'll note that I was absolutely livid after the game on Saturday and Friday. Now Saturday's game wasn't just bad because the offence couldn't put anything together, it was bad because the pitching was bad and the hitting was bad among other things. Now lets break down the weekend Seattle series and the signs we've seen.
Friday's game:
If you should have noticed anything about Friday's game it's that being down in Triple A is working for reforming Ricky Romero, now I'm not saying he's back to his fantastic 2011 form but he's showing glimpses of the ace-like Romero we saw before. So I think he needs a bit more time down there to tie off any loose ends and get him to 100%, though that is when Johnson gets back since Romero will more than likely get a moral boost being able to play with everyone again for a period of time. In addition the defence was quite a bit better, we've been riddled with errors lately and as a die hard Jays fan it's been driving me crazy so this is nice to see. Though our offence was again pretty abysmal though I can say that it is nice that we weren't completely shut out by King Felix, which is what I was sort of expecting.
Saturday's game:
Now this one was hard to watch, I think an writer for the Toronto Star put it best that "the Jays looked lost"and thats just what I felt like as well. The offence slumped like crazy as per usual and this is just my opinion but I think the slumping offence has just been causing a snowball effect. The offence can't produce so the starters put more pressure on themselves to be perfect and end up working themselves into a hole, guess we won't see if I'm right until the offence produces like Sunday on a consistent basis. Now R.A. Dickey pitched pretty well, with the exception of that nasty 4th inning, either way we have to take this with a grain of salt. One thing I feel a lot of people seem to neglect when they talk about pitchers or hitters performances during a game is where the player is at mentally now this, after reading his book, can be said in spades about Dickey, the man has been through a lot of ups and downs in his life and having Jays fans boo him on several occasions, when THEY think he hasn't done enough, I'm sure is gonna hit him somewhere. So I guess my point here is the overactive fans aren't really helping a lot by booing their team, and I've never understood why fans boo their own team.
Sunday's game:
Now going into Sunday I was in a state where I thought 'well looks like we're back to the same old barely under .500 Blue Jays'. There were some really good things that I saw and heard, specifically from the broadcasters, and there was somethings that were a tad worrying as well. The good things are that first off, WE WERE HITTING! Getting a 15 hit game was a god send and then about half way through the game Jack Morris started talking about how he saw guys like Bautista and Encarnacion not just working on driving the ball out of the park in batting practice but just putting it in play. Now hearing that got me really happy, I mean you know what team is employing that very same strategy? THE RED SOX. Take a look at the Red Sox lineup, it's full of guys who have high avg, good amount of multi-base hits, some speed (with the exception of Napoli (not much), Pedroia (quite a bit) and Ellsbury (ALOT)) and a couple power guys (but no power hitters worth writing home about). But they keep winning games at an alarming rate, why? Thats because they've got their pitchers silencing the opposing offence and their hitters are constantly putting the ball in play, not always over the fence but their constantly getting on base. Ok so that was the first of the good omens the next was that the defence seemed a lot tighter and hopefully Gibbons has realized Bonifacio has never been that good an infield defence, now just cross your fingers that Izturis doesn't fall to pieces again, though personally I'd love to see Kawasaki move to 2nd when Reyes comes back and thats because he's got better defence that Izturis and despite not getting runs left right and centre he knows how to work a count and get 8+ pitches out of a starter each at bat, which is very valuable. Now the only negative thing I saw in the says during that game was Morrow's control over his pitches in the middle few innings (4-6), it was flying all over the place and 5 walks is not something you want as a started for any team, though I was interested when I heard that J.P Arencibia may have been doing a mediocre job of marking (giving Morrow a reference pt of where he wants to throw the ball) and not taking into account how much Morrow's slider and other pitches were moving (about half a foot most of the time).
Either way despite the control issues he righted that ship and struck out a couple more, so overall we can take this as a positive we must remember in the immortal words of fantasy analyst Matthew Berry "They did what a good team is supposed to do, dominate a bad team". So like I say oh so often take this victory as it is, it's not something to go crazy and think the Jays are back in prime form, its also not something to just ignore and think it's far to late to fix the season. Fans should look at this as a step in the right direction, the fact that batters are making changes to their routine during batting practice is a good start and I'm sure with more runs per game pressure will ease up on our starters and the bullpen.
-Eric
Friday's game:
If you should have noticed anything about Friday's game it's that being down in Triple A is working for reforming Ricky Romero, now I'm not saying he's back to his fantastic 2011 form but he's showing glimpses of the ace-like Romero we saw before. So I think he needs a bit more time down there to tie off any loose ends and get him to 100%, though that is when Johnson gets back since Romero will more than likely get a moral boost being able to play with everyone again for a period of time. In addition the defence was quite a bit better, we've been riddled with errors lately and as a die hard Jays fan it's been driving me crazy so this is nice to see. Though our offence was again pretty abysmal though I can say that it is nice that we weren't completely shut out by King Felix, which is what I was sort of expecting.
Saturday's game:
Now this one was hard to watch, I think an writer for the Toronto Star put it best that "the Jays looked lost"and thats just what I felt like as well. The offence slumped like crazy as per usual and this is just my opinion but I think the slumping offence has just been causing a snowball effect. The offence can't produce so the starters put more pressure on themselves to be perfect and end up working themselves into a hole, guess we won't see if I'm right until the offence produces like Sunday on a consistent basis. Now R.A. Dickey pitched pretty well, with the exception of that nasty 4th inning, either way we have to take this with a grain of salt. One thing I feel a lot of people seem to neglect when they talk about pitchers or hitters performances during a game is where the player is at mentally now this, after reading his book, can be said in spades about Dickey, the man has been through a lot of ups and downs in his life and having Jays fans boo him on several occasions, when THEY think he hasn't done enough, I'm sure is gonna hit him somewhere. So I guess my point here is the overactive fans aren't really helping a lot by booing their team, and I've never understood why fans boo their own team.
Sunday's game:
Now going into Sunday I was in a state where I thought 'well looks like we're back to the same old barely under .500 Blue Jays'. There were some really good things that I saw and heard, specifically from the broadcasters, and there was somethings that were a tad worrying as well. The good things are that first off, WE WERE HITTING! Getting a 15 hit game was a god send and then about half way through the game Jack Morris started talking about how he saw guys like Bautista and Encarnacion not just working on driving the ball out of the park in batting practice but just putting it in play. Now hearing that got me really happy, I mean you know what team is employing that very same strategy? THE RED SOX. Take a look at the Red Sox lineup, it's full of guys who have high avg, good amount of multi-base hits, some speed (with the exception of Napoli (not much), Pedroia (quite a bit) and Ellsbury (ALOT)) and a couple power guys (but no power hitters worth writing home about). But they keep winning games at an alarming rate, why? Thats because they've got their pitchers silencing the opposing offence and their hitters are constantly putting the ball in play, not always over the fence but their constantly getting on base. Ok so that was the first of the good omens the next was that the defence seemed a lot tighter and hopefully Gibbons has realized Bonifacio has never been that good an infield defence, now just cross your fingers that Izturis doesn't fall to pieces again, though personally I'd love to see Kawasaki move to 2nd when Reyes comes back and thats because he's got better defence that Izturis and despite not getting runs left right and centre he knows how to work a count and get 8+ pitches out of a starter each at bat, which is very valuable. Now the only negative thing I saw in the says during that game was Morrow's control over his pitches in the middle few innings (4-6), it was flying all over the place and 5 walks is not something you want as a started for any team, though I was interested when I heard that J.P Arencibia may have been doing a mediocre job of marking (giving Morrow a reference pt of where he wants to throw the ball) and not taking into account how much Morrow's slider and other pitches were moving (about half a foot most of the time).
Either way despite the control issues he righted that ship and struck out a couple more, so overall we can take this as a positive we must remember in the immortal words of fantasy analyst Matthew Berry "They did what a good team is supposed to do, dominate a bad team". So like I say oh so often take this victory as it is, it's not something to go crazy and think the Jays are back in prime form, its also not something to just ignore and think it's far to late to fix the season. Fans should look at this as a step in the right direction, the fact that batters are making changes to their routine during batting practice is a good start and I'm sure with more runs per game pressure will ease up on our starters and the bullpen.
-Eric
Saturday, May 4, 2013
The Controversy Over The Red Sox
So this week there was an event that happened during a Blue Jays game that surprised me. Now I'm not referring to Buchholz using something to slick the ball, I'm talking about Jack Morris and Dirk Hayhurst making the accusations without any absolute evidence. Now first thing I've come to accept is that nearly ALL pitchers have something that they use to improve grip, though this may not always be something that gives an incredible advantage but just a small bit more of movement or better grip can be the difference between a strikeout and a home run. Now before you label me a Red Sox hater or anything I don't plan on flaming Buchholz here (hell I have him on a couple fantasy teams and need his production =P). What I am going to do is run over a few observations/arguments/facts for and against Buchholz cheating and just a little summary of what I make of everything.
For Clay Cheating:
-The radical change in skill from 2011/2012 to this season
-The pictures of him wiping 'something' off his arm
-Strange behaviour
Against Clay Cheating
-Changing of Red Sox staff
-It's rosin on his arm
-Defence by Dennis Eckersley
Ok so first lets take a look at the first pair of arguments. Now nay sayers of Buchholz's ability would say 'well he was terrible before how can he be this amazing now?'. Now there is only a little validity to this claim and that is because, in part, of the change in the red sox staff, why?, because if you look closely at Buchholz's history he was pretty fantastic in 2010 but then dropped off in 2011 and 2012. Now in 2010 John Farrell was the pitching coach and according to interviews both him and Lester had a very good history with him and trusted him a fair bit so obviously when bringing in another new face to act as pitching coach would make these two guys a little uncomfortable when, since they had been developing their stuff with John for so long. Now Buchholz's 2011 started off good but he had a season ending injury that pushed him out in June, now he did have a decent W-L record during the time he pitched (6-3) but an ERA of 3.48, which is about average but in a lot of cases, especially when your dealing with a young player dealing with his first major injury they may try to cover it up/pitch around it and won't let anyone in until it is unavoidable. I mean if your work was doing something you loved and all of a sudden something happened that threw your future in that line of work into turmoil you'd probably try your best to work around it right? So theres an explanation for the 2011 season and the 2012 season is even easier to explain, that clubhouse was more toxic than an unkempt nuclear reactor, Bobby Valentine just made the atmosphere awful for those players and as a result nearly all of the Sox players had pretty bad years. So I think we can pretty much say that the argument that this level of talent is 'Buchholz-like' can just be thrown out the window.
Next up we've got the pictures Dirk Hayhurst posted on twitter, now I took a look at these photos and believe yea there is potential that something sinister could be happening, why? Well thats because not only do the pictures show him rubbing something onto his index and middle fingers, and no other parts of the hand, but you can see his left arm 'glistening' and his right arm is fairly dry. Now why does this have any relevance? Well it does because Buchholz and Farrell tried to explain it saying he had rosin on his arm, but rosin is a white substance that is supposed to absorb and prevent the development of moisture, not create it. So it seems a bit fishy that his left arm would be fairly wet looking and his right being dry. Though I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist because this is all conjecture, there is no absolute proof and it could be explained I mean if Buchholz said, 'Oh I was wiping my forehead on my left arm between innings', that would be a logical counter argument.
In addition to this most sites covering this issue have specifically called what they believed Buchholz could have been throwing as a spitball (not a shineball or emery ball) and from what I know about spitballs the substance that is applied to the ball is supposed to disturb the usual wind flow around the ball giving it more multi-directional movement. Now I obviously can't see every direction a ball breaks on a computer screen but Buchholz's movement on his pitches didn't seem to out there or over the top, which is what we'd expect of a spitball. Now again this has to be taken with a grain of salt because I don't know how much additional movement can be attributed to a foreign substance (even a little can make a difference). So this argument is one that has to be more closely looked at before anyone can make a sound judgement on this incident, and it doesn't hurt that ex-starting pitcher/closer and hall of famer Dennis Eckersley came to his defence as Dennis knows just as much, if not a tad more than Hayhurst and Morris (though thats in my opinion because he performed great at both starter and closer positions).
Finally we have Buchholz's 'strange behaviour' now this is a tad more subtle and will likely make me sound a bit like one of those people who believe 911 was some giant government conspiracy. Anyhow what I'm sure many baseball fans know is that there is a rosin bag on the mound that every pitcher can use to get a better grip on the ball and the situation in Toronto had the bag present and the dome was closed so the bag would not be wet or useless. This of course begs the question, why even bother putting some on your arm if you've got a bag of it to use right behind you?
So my final thoughts on this are that everyone needs to look at this objectively, I know Red Sox fans are going to stand by Buchholz for better or worse and I'm sure there will be a contingent of Jays fans up in arms, but the evidence for this is somewhat solid in areas and very flaky in others. Overall someone really needs to sit down and analyze everything before anyone, including myself, MLB, sportswriters or any fans should make any definitive judgements on Buchholz or the people who brought up the allegations (Jack Morris and Dirk Hayhurst). In addition if your interested in this whole debacle then I suggest reading up on these articles on Sports Illustrated, Bleacher Report and ESPN
-Eric
For Clay Cheating:
-The radical change in skill from 2011/2012 to this season
-The pictures of him wiping 'something' off his arm
-Strange behaviour
Against Clay Cheating
-Changing of Red Sox staff
-It's rosin on his arm
-Defence by Dennis Eckersley
Ok so first lets take a look at the first pair of arguments. Now nay sayers of Buchholz's ability would say 'well he was terrible before how can he be this amazing now?'. Now there is only a little validity to this claim and that is because, in part, of the change in the red sox staff, why?, because if you look closely at Buchholz's history he was pretty fantastic in 2010 but then dropped off in 2011 and 2012. Now in 2010 John Farrell was the pitching coach and according to interviews both him and Lester had a very good history with him and trusted him a fair bit so obviously when bringing in another new face to act as pitching coach would make these two guys a little uncomfortable when, since they had been developing their stuff with John for so long. Now Buchholz's 2011 started off good but he had a season ending injury that pushed him out in June, now he did have a decent W-L record during the time he pitched (6-3) but an ERA of 3.48, which is about average but in a lot of cases, especially when your dealing with a young player dealing with his first major injury they may try to cover it up/pitch around it and won't let anyone in until it is unavoidable. I mean if your work was doing something you loved and all of a sudden something happened that threw your future in that line of work into turmoil you'd probably try your best to work around it right? So theres an explanation for the 2011 season and the 2012 season is even easier to explain, that clubhouse was more toxic than an unkempt nuclear reactor, Bobby Valentine just made the atmosphere awful for those players and as a result nearly all of the Sox players had pretty bad years. So I think we can pretty much say that the argument that this level of talent is 'Buchholz-like' can just be thrown out the window.
Next up we've got the pictures Dirk Hayhurst posted on twitter, now I took a look at these photos and believe yea there is potential that something sinister could be happening, why? Well thats because not only do the pictures show him rubbing something onto his index and middle fingers, and no other parts of the hand, but you can see his left arm 'glistening' and his right arm is fairly dry. Now why does this have any relevance? Well it does because Buchholz and Farrell tried to explain it saying he had rosin on his arm, but rosin is a white substance that is supposed to absorb and prevent the development of moisture, not create it. So it seems a bit fishy that his left arm would be fairly wet looking and his right being dry. Though I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist because this is all conjecture, there is no absolute proof and it could be explained I mean if Buchholz said, 'Oh I was wiping my forehead on my left arm between innings', that would be a logical counter argument.
In addition to this most sites covering this issue have specifically called what they believed Buchholz could have been throwing as a spitball (not a shineball or emery ball) and from what I know about spitballs the substance that is applied to the ball is supposed to disturb the usual wind flow around the ball giving it more multi-directional movement. Now I obviously can't see every direction a ball breaks on a computer screen but Buchholz's movement on his pitches didn't seem to out there or over the top, which is what we'd expect of a spitball. Now again this has to be taken with a grain of salt because I don't know how much additional movement can be attributed to a foreign substance (even a little can make a difference). So this argument is one that has to be more closely looked at before anyone can make a sound judgement on this incident, and it doesn't hurt that ex-starting pitcher/closer and hall of famer Dennis Eckersley came to his defence as Dennis knows just as much, if not a tad more than Hayhurst and Morris (though thats in my opinion because he performed great at both starter and closer positions).
Finally we have Buchholz's 'strange behaviour' now this is a tad more subtle and will likely make me sound a bit like one of those people who believe 911 was some giant government conspiracy. Anyhow what I'm sure many baseball fans know is that there is a rosin bag on the mound that every pitcher can use to get a better grip on the ball and the situation in Toronto had the bag present and the dome was closed so the bag would not be wet or useless. This of course begs the question, why even bother putting some on your arm if you've got a bag of it to use right behind you?
So my final thoughts on this are that everyone needs to look at this objectively, I know Red Sox fans are going to stand by Buchholz for better or worse and I'm sure there will be a contingent of Jays fans up in arms, but the evidence for this is somewhat solid in areas and very flaky in others. Overall someone really needs to sit down and analyze everything before anyone, including myself, MLB, sportswriters or any fans should make any definitive judgements on Buchholz or the people who brought up the allegations (Jack Morris and Dirk Hayhurst). In addition if your interested in this whole debacle then I suggest reading up on these articles on Sports Illustrated, Bleacher Report and ESPN
-Eric
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