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
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