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
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