Well today seems like a good time to start a daily vs. post because Friday and the weekend games for the Blue Jays are against the Orioles. So I'm just going to give my run down of the game on both sides, positives, negatives and what to look the outlook for each team as the weekend continues.
Ok so lets start with the Orioles, so these guys had a pretty good outing, plenty of good plays made by the defence in the outfield and the infield, with exception to that line drive by Maicer Izturis in the bottom of the 9th that got by Flaherty and Markakis. Now this game seemed like a home run competition for both teams as both of them hit 3 of them over the course of the game, in the case of the Orioles Chris Davis, Ryan Flaherty and J.J. Hardy mashed one a piece out of the field. Their hitting overall was good quality as well since they managed to get a good number of hits off R.A Dickey (7) until the Jays bullpen came into play. On the mound Jason Hammel did a quality job despite the problems he's been having giving consistent outings but managed to only allow 4 hits, 4 runs, 1 walk and striking out 7, now the only issue he had was with the long ball, which is honestly what a lot of pitchers have problems with the Blue Jays as even counting the 2011 and 2010 seasons they had the most home runs as a team. The chink in the Orioles that drove them to defeat in the bottom of the 9th wasn't their defence it was their lack of a solid bullpen, with the exception of Jim Johnson of course. Now before anyone jumps on me about this look at the stats over the last few years for each of Baltimore's relievers used, all of them can be akin to broken toys as many of them were either relievers for bigger teams that gave up on them or starters that got moved in a trade to Baltimore. The first is the case of Tommy Hunter, and Brian Matusz, then the second refers to Darren O'Day and Pedro Strop. Now Tommy Hunter, a couple years ago, was the #5 starter for the Rangers and his performance as a starter definitely kept him in that position as he never really had a year with them with a above average, ERA or WHIP and the same goes for Brian Matusz as he was a starter for the Minnesota Twins but got dropped from the lineup and eventually let go. Then Darren O'Day and Pedro Strop were both relievers for the Rangers that got traded over in a deal that sent more senior relievers, like Koji Uehara and Mike Gonzalez, over to them and O'Day and Strop, the younger pitchers, over the Baltimore to develop and hopefully shine in the future. Now this strategy is not a bad one by any means, the Orioles aren't exactly a big market team but they do have a stellar manager in Buck Showalter and it seems like a good coaching staff as well, plus a great set of young players either making their way up or currently mashing in the majors. Overall the future looks bright for the Orioles, though the issue for them as of now is just that, getting more solid starting pitchers. Last year they managed to make the playoffs due to Buck's great managing in addition to their young pitching staff playing way above their heads, which can be seen in those same pitchers not having that level of success this year. So I don't hold out much hope for them to take this 3 game series against the Jays this weekend primarily because of this pitching deficiency and yea I know Miguel Gonzalez has been great but he doesn't have the track record to convince me he's going to continue this, however if they do get a solid number 1 starter by the trade deadline and get Wei Yin Chen back in the fold they could very well make the playoffs by either winning the division or by wild card given how close the AL East has been.
Now onto the Jays side, their improvements stayed in place, the offence was consistently hitting and getting on base then the rest of the team went 3 for 6 with runners in scoring position, which is just what they need to continue doing offensively to keep up this winning streak. The only gripes I have with their offence are Bautista, Rasmus and Bonifacio, now Bautista I've talked about before and it still seems he hasn't gotten it through his head that he needs to be more selective at the plate, I will however give him credit as he wasn't nearly as bad as the last few games but he still has a long way to go to get back to his usual self, luckily Encarnacion seems to be delivering what we expect from Bautista and more to make up for it. Then we have Colby Rasmus, now he's not as much of an issue in terms of bad plate discipline anymore because he has been showing some great improvement with making contact and striking out less however he still hasn't been very consistent with that change, as he went 1/3 with a walk and a home run in Wednesdays game and then went 0/4 Friday striking out once and hitting bad balls the other 3 times, not much that can be done as he more than likely will find that consistent form eventually just hope it's sooner rather than later. Finally we have Bonifacio, now he's the one that has been driving me insane and thats because I saw watched him play for the Marlins for a few years, hell I had him on fantasy teams strictly for the stolen base production, unfortunately for him he needs to be on base to start that, which he hasn't been doing well. Now this would sit fine with me if he wasn't killing it defensively at 2nd base, he's begun to prove that he can handle the position from a defensive stand point but because he's been showing nothing at the plate, and Izturis has, he might get knocked back into a Utility role and I'd hate to see a HUGE source of speed on their team go to waste like that. Thats all for the offence as the rest of the team played fantastically and it's worth while to note that, while he may not be the best offensive player, Munenori Kawasaki has brought this ridiculous energy to the Jays and has battled at every at bat he's had and then today he got rewarded as he belted a 2 run homer, the first of his career, to tie the game. In addition we had Lind and Encarnacion go yard on seperate occasions as well at key times in the game. Now the pitching, R.A Dickey collapsed again, started off strong but then the 6th rolled around and he gave up 4 runs one of which, was a 3 run home run by Chris Davis, to be honest it seems that Dickey is the lone starter that is still having trouble adjusting. Though I don't think we should be giving up on him, I think he will regain SOME of his form, thats right SOME but not all, when people looked at the trade for him they thought we'd be getting the numbers he posted in 2012 with the Mets, but thats very short sighted as he's moving for a fairly light hitting division, yea the Nationals have a crap offence, the Braves last year didn't have a potent offence, the Phillies had little to no run production from their stars last year, and the Marlins......well they were the Marlins, and he moved to the AL East the hardest hitting division. So there was some regression to be expected and honestly knuckleballers haven't really thrived in the AL East, though they can survive and produce above average results as we saw through all that Tim Wakefield did with the Red Sox. Before I go further I'd like to recommend that everyone reading this watch the documentary 'Knuckleball!' to better understand these types of pitchers as it'll give you a better idea of what to expect from Dickey, and just keep in mind he's a resilient guy whose fought for a place in the lineup for countless years and I doubt he's just going to perform like crap and not do anything about it. Ok thats enough about Dickey, the other side of the pitching is of course the bullpen for the Jays, which again was lights out, Cecil and Janssen went a total of 3 innings and didn't allow a baserunner and Cecil struck out 2 of the 6 hitters he faced. Now the Jays continue to look like they are going to roll with this streak they've got going and given that their more proven pitchers are coming up for the last games against the Orioles I think their in good shape to potentially sweep the series, if this game has demonstrated anything it's that the offence is in go mode and even if their down or the starter allows a fair number of runs they have the muscle to get back into and win the game.
-Eric
No comments:
Post a Comment