Thursday 25 April 2013

Go Time: Anger Hangover


I noticed something yesterday.  I think it all began with my little Network-inspired-but-not-really-Network-related rage yesterday, that basically got my own jimmies a little rustled.  I had infected myself with my own AIDS, so to speak.

Now, I'll start by pointing out that I really don't get mad at pretty well anything.  I don't have much of a temper, and I never did.  I was always quite a bit smaller than all the others growing up, and a little kid with a temper is bound to learn a lesson by way of violence pretty quickly.  As result, I've always been pretty able to keep my cool and not really ever get emotional about anything, good or bad.

But man, does watching the Baltimore Orioles succeed get my blood boiling.  I was just irrationally mad yesterday, all day long.  I wrote yesterday's post, and was antsy.  Then I read this, just to remind myself that the Orioles are going to should be mediocre at best this year, given that they went ahead and didn't add anything to their team this offseason, and are going with an even worse pitching staff (i.e allowing Miguel Gonzalez, Chris Tillman and Steve Johnson to throw a bunch of innings this year).  Except they won the first two games of the series by one run.  Deep breath.

It felt like Dickey threw 5 pretty good innings on Monday, and really only gave up a bunch of soft liners in that one inning where things went wrong.  Markakis just sort of randomly stuck this bat out on an 0-2 pitch on Tuesday to win it, and the little threatened meltdown of the O's scoring 3 in the 8th, the Bautista errory thing, and the part of the JJ Hardy single before the Rajai Davis deletion just felt like enough to throw myself off the patio.

Fortunately we got ourselves the TSN turning point with the Davis assist, so I don't have to kill myself, and we're good to go.  Having the O's bullpen (nevermind the best pitcher on the team) blow that one by walking in the winner was the icing.  Things are good.  Now let's keep the bats in motion.

Stuff
This video is something about JP Arencibia and his approach, and Tom Verducci trolling the SABR community again, but that doesn't really matter.  What does matter is Dirk Hayhurst giving us an amazing impression of John Gibbons.

I'm only linking to this because of how terrible and ridiculous it is, but here is the steaming pile of Verducci article that Blair and Dirk are referencing in the video linked above.  Basically, Verducci doesn't like how many walks Joey Votto, a major league baseball player, is taking.  He'd rather Votto swing the bat and get extra-base hits when guys are on base in front of him, which is something Votto hasn't done yet in 2013.  Tom Verducci, of course, is not a major league baseball player, and Joey Votto has avoided making outs better than anybody else in the league.  Aaaaand just in case anyone was wondering who ranks first in win probability added (i.e. clutch performance) since 2010...  Votto also has a career .412/.528/.751 slash line in high leverage situations, according to fangraphs.  Basically, Tom Verducci just picked n Joey Votto and stuffed his fat fucking foot in his own mouth.

I'm amazed that this hasn't broken the internet yet, but best gif ever.

Finally, from the housekeeping department, Adam Lind's wife gave birth to their second child yesterday, and as result, the Jays have placed Lind on the paternity list, which is sort of like a little mini-DL without an injury or whatever, in that it opens up a roster spot for 1-3 games.  The Jays have called up Brad Lincoln to take the roster spot.  With the addition of Lincoln, plus the re-arrival (I guess?) of Aaron Laffey, the Jays are back to having an 8-man bullpen.  The bullpen has been taxed a bit lately, and the Jays have needed to use the bullpen more than just about any other team, so I guess this kind of makes sense for now, but I was still surprised to find that they went with a pitcher instead of a position player.

With the injuries and performance issues to both teams, we're seeing some whacky looking lineups.  Vernon Wells batting fourth, Ichiro hitting behind Francisco Cervelli, MUNI batting 2nd.  Jose Reyes needs to come back.

Lineups
Jays
Davis DH
MUNI SS
Bautista RF
Edwin 1B
Cabrera LF
JPA C
Rasmus CF
Lawrie 3B
Izturis 2B

Buehrle

Yankees
Gardner CF
Francisco DH
Cano 2B
Wells LF
Cervelli C
Ichiro RF
Nunez SS
Overbay 1B
Nix 3B

Hirok P

Wednesday 24 April 2013

Go Time: Surely You Jest


I think we're all getting tired of this little charade that we've been putting up with since the start of April.  We know the Jays are good.  We know that RA Dickey is good.  We know that Jose Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion, Melky Cabrera (and so on) are good.  We know that Colby Rasmus isn't the best player on the team, nor is it right that Casey Janssen is the pitcher with which the Jays have derived the most value.  Brandon Morrow is not a replacement level pitcher.  This is not a true-talent .381 winning percentage team.

Further, we know that Miguel Gonzalez is not good.  We know that Chris Tillman is not good.  We know that there is absolutely no way that the Baltimore Orioles should be winning 100 straight games when they lead after 7, or have a 28-2 (or whatever the fuck it is) record in 1-run games since the beginning of last year.

These things that have happened all should not have happened.

I'm bored of it.

Enough.

Stuff
Alex Burnett spoke with Shi Davidi recently, saying that he wasn't happy about being DFA'ed mere days after being claimed by the Jays, and feels even worse for Casper Wells, who got the same treatment multiple times.  Burnett has shipped his car across the country multiple times, and has a pregnant wife, who has moved around just as much as he has over the last few weeks.  Sounds stressful.

Speaking of claims and DFA's... The Jays have DFA'ed Ramon Ortiz in order to make room on the roster for Aaron Laffey.  As mentioned yesterday, Jose Reyes was transferred to the 60-day DL, which opens up a spot on the 40-man roster, but they still needed to make a move to fit Laffey on the 25-man.  DFA'ing Ortiz will allow the Jays to claim someone else now, as there are only 39 people on the 40-man roster.  AA has spoken up about all of his roster claims, saying that he wants to field a good team in Buffalo.  Makes sense.

Lineups
Jays
Davis LF
Boni 2B
Bautista RF
Edwin 1B
Cabrera DH
JPA C
Rasmus CF
Lawrie 3B
Izturis SS

Morrow P

O's
McLouth LF
Machado 3B
Markakis RF
Jones CF
Davis 1B
Hardy SS
Reimold DH
Flaherty 2B
Teagarden C

Stinson P

Tuesday 23 April 2013

Go Time: Dickey Day


As I mentioned yesterday, I'm a 100-some-odd pages in to Dickey's book, and am very much enjoying it.  I'd also quite enjoy a dominant performance from the guy, since all he seems to do is win at life.  Two good starts in a row, despite lingering neck/back issues.  He says he's ready to go though, so it sounds like go time to me.

Stuff
The Jays have claimed Aaron Laffey from the Mets.  Laffey was DFA'ed after making four mediocre appearances with the Mets this year.  He threw 100-ish innings with the Jays last year, both from the bullpen and the rotation, and was modestly effective, given the fact that he was a minor-league depth guy to begin the year.  Jose Reyes has been transferred to the 60-day DL, which isn't a big deal since that's about the minimum amount of time he was going to miss anyway.

John Gibbons has dicked around a bit with the lineup tonight, sticking Adam Lind in to the 2-hole.  I'm contractually required to bite my tongue for the next 12 days regarding Adam Lind and anything negative about him, but I can certainly question John Gibbons' decisions about putting a guy with questionable on-base skills in his 2-hole, save for a 3 game sample this past weekend, when Melky Cabrera was sort of the ideal guy for that role.  Regardless, Richard Griffin had this gem of a tweet:

Buck Showalter counters with a DH batting 9th.

The Jays will go up against Miguel Gonzalez tonight.  I'd quite literally take Gonzalez against the Jays every day of the year-- the guy isn't good, and has come from out of nowhere to put up some respectable numbers.  By respectable, I mean a 3.25 ERA last year, and a 4.00 ERA so far this year, and not the 4.38 FIP or the 82.6 LOB percentage from last year, of the 6.02 FIP this year.  After last night's Tillman debacle, I'm cool with a complete railroading tonight from the Jays' offense.

Lineups
Jays
MUNI SS
Lind DH
Bautista RF
Edwin 1B
Cabrera LF
Lawrie 3B
Rasmus CF
Izturis 2B
Blanco C

Dickey P

Orioles
McLouth LF
Machado 3B
Markakis RF
Jones CF
Davis 1B
Weiters C
Hardy SS
Flaherty 2B
Reimold DH

Monday 22 April 2013

Go Time: Stories

So I wrote that Vernon Wells thing on Thursday, before heading off to the airport.  Spent Thursday through this morning (Monday) in Toronto, and naturally, took in a few ball games.  I have not been on the internet since submitting that post, which I kinda-sorta read through before leaving.  Jeesh.  Either way, I've quite literally missed everything that's happened other than the four Jays' games that occurred since I left.

Went to the Friday game and drank my sorrows away, which certainly loosened my tongue a bit.  Caught up with a few friends, chirped some people, yelled at anyone who was standing in front of me doing the wave, and just generally consumed too much alcohol.  Whatever, it was fun.

Saturday was more or less a write-off, but we walked around and ate at the Hard Rock-- just nothing major.

Went to the Sunday game as well, this time meeting up with 10 other family members (plus the six in my party) and took up a good chunk of a section in the 500's.  Nice reunion, real fun atmosphere, and finally, a victory.  Picked myself up a Jose Reyes jersey, and got a Dickey one for my dad.  That was my 6th Jays game lifetime, and I've got a 3-3 record, so to speak.

One thing we did, besides eating and drinking and meeting up with family, was head down to the Ontario Science Centre, which has the video game exhibit going on for another little while.  Highly, highly recommended. Of course, I went with a bunch of girls, who certainly appreciated the exhibit, but only for about 20 minutes, rather than the 7 hours that I would have preferred.

I picked up RA Dickey's book in the airport this morning, and blasted through the first 100-or-so pages on the plane.  Definitely enjoying it so far.  If anyone has either of Dirk Hayhurst's books, and would like to organize a swap at some point in the future, I'd certainly be interested.

Melky Cabrera looked really, really good at the plate over the weekend, which was great.  I also told a friend of mine that I wouldn't say a mean thing about Adam Lind for two full weeks if he were to successfully draw a fourth walk yesterday.  So, congratulations Adam Lind.  You have two weeks, and I suggest you use them wisely.

Stuff
The recently DFA'ed Casper Wells has been traded to the Oakland A's for cash.

Some dick working for the Yankees was found to be kicking people out of the Dome this weekend.

Lineups
Later

Thursday 18 April 2013

Has Something Changed in Vernon Wells?


Abstract
Of course not.  Nevertheless, he's currently hitting .295/.381/.591 on the season with three HR's and a 12% walk rate through 50 AB's.  Yes, folks, that is a really small sample.  Let's bear that in mind as we soldier on.  And are we ever about to soldier on.  This is going to be a whole lot of words about Vernon Wells and his fifty (FIFTY!) plate appearances this year.  Oh, by the way, he'll be playing in Toronto this coming weekend.  That's why I'm doing this.

Intro
Wells is striking out at a 14% rate, which is fairly close to his career norms, but pretty well everything else is going rather nicely for him in 2013: walk-rate is up to 12%, against 6.6% career.  He's homered in 6% of plate appearances this year, against 3.something for his career.  He's got a .416 wOBA, versus .339 for his career (and sub .300's the last two years).  His OBP and SLG are up 58 and 123 points, respectively.

It seems unlikely that he's just gone and found something, at age 34, to just immediately fix all the problems that have plagued him for the last two years, much less five of the last six.  Typically, when a player shows a massive sudden improvement, especially at age 34, we can just point to babip and call it a day.  That's not really the case here.  Wells has a career babip of .280, which might be skewed downward a bit considering his super low babips of 2011 and 2012 (.214 and .226 over a combined 800-ish PA's), but as a guy who hits a lot of flyballs and popups, his babip should certainly be lower than average.  His 2013 babip is .293-- a boost over his career norms, but certainly nothing that's going to attribute to someone practically doubling their year-to-year wRC+.

Looking a little deeper at his stats, I'm seeing a bit of an outlier in his plate discipline numbers, particularly at the amount of pitches he's seen within the strike zone.  Just 37% of pitches he's seen to this point in the season have been what pitch f/x would classify as a strike (against 47% last year, and 50.6% career), if he hadn't otherwise swung at them.  That's a pretty easy way to increase a walk rate, and being ahead in the count makes it more likely to get a decent pitch to hit.

Given Wells' proclivity to 'swang', as it were (Wells has swung at over 33% of pitches outside the zone over the last four years), that's probably a worthwhile adjustment for opposing pitchers to make, regardless of how effective it's been so far this year.  He's still swinging at 33% of pitches that are outside the zone, but 33% of the 62.5% of pitches outside the zone is a lot more called balls than 33% of the 53% (2012) or even 49.4% (career) from the past.

Walk rate: debunked.  He's no more patient than he used to be.  Throw a few more strikes, but not many more.  Enough strikes that he's still swinging at everything, but not so many that he's not still getting balls to swing at.  He's taking more bad pitches from a linear basis, in that a greater number of pitches are outside the zone, but he still only swings at 1/3rd of them; there are just more pitches outside the zone for him to not swing at.

From within that same link, Wells, as you can remember from his Blue Jays days, really likes to swing at the first pitch, regardless of velocity or location or changeup down-and-away.  I don't know if there's a better way to figure this out, but as teams have faced Wells more throughout his career, they've thrown him fewer strikes, since he swings at everything. First-pitch strike percentage has stayed about the same, but the rate of total pitches within the strike zone has steadily decreased, and thus, a higher rate of non-first pitches [i.e. #2 through infinite within a given PA] are strikes as pitchers get ahead 0-1.  I think that's what that means anyway, but I may be confused, and just wishing for that to be true so that Vernon Wells can go back to being terrible, at which point I won't need to question everything in my existence.  I dunno.

Part of what I wanted this post to be was me going back and watching all of Vernon Wells' 2013 plate appearances, but then I realized that such a thing would be torturous and would take like 4 hours, given load times, let alone the amount of time it would take to write about them all.  I'd do such a thing for Barry Bonds or 2002-2009 Ichiro or non-Seattle Adrian Beltre.  But for Vernon Wells?  Good lord.  I'm not even getting paid for this.  Beyond that, I've got no idea what could be accomplished from this study.  I think most hits and homeruns and walks are just pitchers putting a ball where they shouldn't, so my natural reaction is going to be "pssh, anyone could have hit that" or "it wasn't difficult to not swing at that ball."  Is this something worth doing?  Ultimately, I don't know.  I'll probably find out halfway through the exercise, when I half-ass the rest of said exercise.

Method
Naturally, I cherry-picked some of Wells' AB's as the ones to watch, based mostly off the end result.  I'm sure there are some pretty important aspects to, say, the walks, strikeouts, popouts and groundouts (especially the strikeouts and walks) but whatever, shut up, I'm not watching those.

#1-- Vs. Jon Lester, April 1: Of the 8 pitches Wells gets, only two of them pitchF/X would classify as a strike. That paves the way for him to swing at four of the pitches Jon Lester throws.  Something about old dogs.  You'll notice that there isn't a "4" on that grid-- that's because the fourth pitch Lester threw was so terrible that pitchF/X didn't even pick up on it.  It was a 55' curve that eventually ended up fairly close to hitting Vern on the bounce.  You'll also notice that pitches 6,7 and 8 are way outside the zone, and that this plate appearance ended up as a walk.  For most normal batters, 6 of 8 pitches outside the zone means that the umpire forgot how to count, and that nobody else noticed either.  In this scenario, Vernon Wells is at the plate.  That third pitch was actually a liner down the 3b line, that probably should have been a double, for the record.


#2-- vs. Clay Buchholz, April 3: Clay Buchholz misses narrowly with the first pitch, a two-seamer that looked an awful lot worse than the end result, and then throws one right down the middle of the plate with his second.  I'm not entirely convinced that Wells wasn't taking all the way on that first pitch, but either way, it was a halfway reasonable pitch that didn't miss by much, yet Wells lays off.  Maybe he has changed.  Either way, that second pitch was not difficult for a professional baseball player to handle.

#3-- vs. Clay Buchholz, April 3: First pitch swinging.  Buchholz nibbles, and Will Middlebrooks is not a gazelle.  We don't really get a great angle at how terribly Middlebrooks attempts to play this one, but it's safe to say that this is not his best moment of trying to not look like a gazelle.  He kind of falls over himself out of frame, as you can sort of see at the end, but this was more so the best angle for the ball and defensive attempt, and less so the best angle at watching Middlebrooks flail around hilariously.  Regardless, this is a hit, mostly because no defensive player touches the ball until it's too late.


#4 vs. Alfredo Aceves, April 3: Not sure what you need from me here.  ESPN's HitTracker suggests that this one went 367 ft., and would have been a HR in 22 parks around the league, with Yankee Stadium being one of them.  Again, Wells is a professional baseball player, and many, if not most, professional baseball (position) players would have done something fairly similar to what Wells did with this beachball.

#5: vs. Max Scherzer, April 6: We've got liftoff.  Wells takes not one, but two pitches that aren't terribly far from being strikes, allowing him to get ahead in the count and capitalize on a pitch in the middle of the zone.  Both were two-seamers, which tail in to RHB's.  If this is actual analysis, we may have had our breakthrough: Wells may be chasing more pitches that begin in the zone and break out, rather than pitches that are tailing in.  I'm using this at-bat, and possibly another one or two that I've watched today (i.e. #2 vs. Buchholz) as my sample for such a claim.  As for #3, this ball was middle-in, which is not down and away.

#6: vs. Max Scherzer, April 6.:  Going back to my cliffhanging question that ended the last at-bat, that I also happen to have edited out for some reason, no, nothing has changed.  Swings and misses, sandwiching a fastball in the dirt.  During this at-bat, Ken Rosenthal is doing a quick voiceover, talking about how Vernon spent the winter watching tape of his at-bats dating all the way back to 1999, trying to discover why he isn't a good hitter anymore.  Sweet, sweet irony.  Al Alburquerque would walk Wells in his next PA, with four pitches that were not ever anywhere close to being strikes.

#7, vs Ubaldo Jimenez, April 8: Ubaldo Jimenez, to this point in the game, had thrown 17 pitches, 7 of which were strikes.  He had given up 3 runs already, still in the first inning, and was maxing out his fastball at 89, with the odd one showing up in the 84 range, assuming the pitch tracker was calibrated correctly.  I wasn't at this game, and even if I was, I'd have probably been sitting too far away to hear it, but there was probably a point in time where someone said something along the lines of "Hey Vernon, this guy is throwing way softer than normal, and he's all over the place."


#8 vs Jason Hammel, April 13: Hammel had struck Wells out in the third inning, throwing 5 straight fastballs and then getting him to chase an offspeed pitch down and away.  Shocker.  Here's the next AB.  Both pitches are 84MPH breaking balls middle in.  Once again, Vernon Wells is a professional baseball player and probably should be hitting at least one of these balls in to the LF stands.  Vernon Wells hit one of these balls in to the LF stands.

Conclusion

This is the conclusion because I don't feel like watching Vernon Wells plate appearances anymore.  Given my desire to not do this study anymore, the conclusion is where I will wrap up all I've witnessed in to a tight little package that wraps up the previous paragraphs and evidence used within said paragraphs.

The main thing that I learned, or, more succinctly, remembered, about Vernon Wells is that he is a guy who gets paid to play baseball, and is way better at hitting than I am.  Regardless of how terrible we say some people are at baseball, and Vernon Wells certainly qualifies under that heading, hitting meatballs and not swinging at pitches that are several inches off the target apparently isn't that tough, especially for someone who is paid to do that.  If he wasn't at least good at doing that, he would probably be paid to not do that, since he needs to be paid now, regardless of skills.

The only real headway we made during this otherwise useless endeavor is (a) confirming that Vernon Wells can still hit a ball down the middle of the zone for a homerun sometimes, and (b) people aren't throwing Vernon Wells as many strikes as they used to. I don't know what percentage of walks are due to a pitcher just not having any command at all for a brief moment in time, and what percentage is the batter being selective with good discipline and taking close pitches.  I do know that Alexei Ramirez walked in 2.6% of his plate appearances last year, so that's probably a pretty good starting point.  We could say that 2.6% of Wells' walkrate is the pitcher's doing, and about 4% of Vernon Wells' walkrate is a personal ability, and the remaining 6% is just a bunch of noisy garbage that hasn't normalized itself yet, because people are unintentionally throwing fewer strikes (and/or swingable balls) to Vernon Wells.

Wednesday 17 April 2013

Go Time: Happablap


It's time, once again, for interim staff ace JA Happ to go be consistent.  Here's hoping that he tears up the White Sox batters like Kleenex at a snot party.  Here are your things that you need to know, on this, the eve of Dickey Day.

Stuff
MLBTR tells us that Alex Anthopoulos is really active on the waiver wire.  I already knew this.

Shi Davidi tells us that Jake Peavy was almost traded to the Jays this past offseason, before all the Marlins mayhem and the RA Dickey trade went down.  The Jays would have given a minor prospect for Peavy and $4MM, which basically means that they'd have gotten Peavy on a 1-year, $18MM contract.  Peavy instead signed a 2-year, $29MM deal with the White Sox in lieu of having the White Sox decline his $22MM club option.

Jose Bautista is out of the lineup once again tonight, which, I suppose, isn't a huge surprise, given his inability to pinch-hit late in last night's game.  No big panic here, I guess, assuming this doesn't snowball the way Sergio Santos' shoulder did last season.  And of course, the Yankees are in town this weekend, so he doesn't really need to be back until the Jays play a halfway respectable team.  Right?

Lineups
Jays
Davis RF
Cabrera LF
Arenicbia C
Edwin 1B
Lawrie 3B
Rasmus CF
Derosa DH
Izturis 2B
MUNI SS

Happ P

White Sox
De Aza CF
Keppinger 2B
Rios RF
Konerko DH
Dunn 1B
Viciedo LF
Ramirez SS
Flowers C
Greene 2B

Fucking Quintana P, that creep can roll man.

Tuesday 16 April 2013

Go Time: Lawrie Day

I would chop up the Dickey Day picture and hastily turn it in to Lawrie Day, but I'm posting this shit from work as it is, so fuck it.

We'll get to see Brett Lawrie tonight.  Finally.  Been a few months.  He'll probably hit a homer.  And make a great defensive play at 3B.  And really, what more can we ask?

Stuff
Getting Blanked gives Muni some .gif love.  I was planning on doing this, but instead I went to sleep and then watched tv.

Bluebird Banter passes along that Jeremy Jeffress has cleared waivers.

Jose Bautista is going to sit out another one tonight.  Bonifacio will play RF again.

Finally, I've got another one of those posts with some actual content cooking up.  Might get it up tonight, or maybe tomorrow night, but it's going to involve me watching all of Vernon Wellseses plate appearances since becoming a Yankee and trying to figure out what the fuck is going on, since he's hitting .324/.405/.629, somehow.

Lineups
Jays
Bonifacio RF
Cabrera LF
Arencibia C
Encarnacion DH
Lind 1B
Lawrie 3B
Rasmus CF
Izturis 2B
MUNI SS

Johnson P

Whites
De Aza CF
Keppinger 2B
Rios RF
Dunn 1B
Konerko DH
Gillaspie 3B
Viciedo LF
Ramirez SS
Gimenez C

Axelrod P

Lawrie up, Santos out


Brett Lawrie has been activated from the DL, and seems rather likely to play tonight.  As result, Sergio Santos has been placed on the 15-day DL with a shoulder strain.

Sportsnet caught up with him after last night's game (audio only).

Santos says that the arm had been flaring up a little bit, and that the rest he had a few days back certainly helped, but, much like Lawrie's situation, they decided that it's better to miss two weeks now then to miss more time later.

Ramon Ortiz's promotion and Casper Wells' DFA makes at least a bit more sense, now that we know what we know.  I wouldn't be surprised if Ortiz is/was there to be a bit of a swingman or janitor just in case things went nasty for Buehrle, so there may very well be another move coming; after all, Ramon Ortiz is Ramon Ortiz, and Brad Lincoln, Justin Germano and Mickey Storey are all stashed away in Buffalo right now.

Monday 15 April 2013

An Exercise in Hilarious, Early Stats


One of my favorite things about being this early in the season is the hilarity of some of the numbers generated by the small sample size of stats that can be found within the first 12 games of the year.  Joey Votto, for example, has walked 20 times in 59 plate appearances, as of the moment in time at which I clicked the thing that made that stat be in front of me.  In spite of this, it took me a surprisingly long time to find a picture of Joey Votto taking a pitch.  I suppose taking a pitch isn't really something worth taking a picture of, much less posting it on the internet.  Seems like the kind of shot that you'd take, only to look back upon it and think "Bah.  Nothing happened." and just fucking delete it.

It's a pretty boring event, really.  Just a guy standing there.  With a stick.  Ready to hit something.  And then just nothing happens.  Would you watch a youtube video of a guy standing there, brandishing a weapon, but definitely not using it?  Not on purpose, you wouldn't.  Think of it this way: describe the game of baseball in a sentence or two.  A guy has a ball and he throws it, and then a guy has a bat and he uses it to try and hit that ball and then he runs and everybody's happy.  A walk just really sounds like someone's not doing their job.

Anyway, I'm trailing off.  There's usually someone who sucks really bad, and does absolutely nothing offensively for the first few weeks, to the point of having a slash line that looks like .123/.177/.155, or whatever, in which the OBP is higher than the SLG.  I don't think I've ever seen a slash line that had OBP>SLG and did anything other than laugh or ridicule the guy.

Well.  Joey Votto is currently hitting .289/.542/.447 on the season.

People always joke about teams going 162-0, or Bryce Harper being on pace to hit 324 HR's or whatever.  Nobody laughs anymore, because it isn't funny.  What I do find funny is that, despite being 12 games in to the season, there are some (batting title qualified) people who haven't drawn a walk yet.  Six of them, in fact.  That's the kind of thing I'm looking for here.

My favorite highlights:

Strikeouts

  • Twins CF Aaron Hicks has 46 plate appearances, and has struck out in 20 of them.  He has the most strikeouts in baseball right now, but that's probably only because he's gotten more plate appearances than Brett Wallace, who used to be a top prospect, and now has 17 strikeouts in 26 plate appearances.  Wallace is the proud owner of the aforementioned hilarious OBP>SLG slash line of .042/.115/.042, which is apparently marginally better than Hicks' line of .047/.109/.047 (-58 vs. -61 wRC+)
  • Rick Ankiel hit the first homerun of the 2013 MLB season in his first plate appearance.  In the 22 plate appearances since, he has struck out 17 times, walked 0 times, and has earned a single, double and HR.  Despite having only four plate appearances that resulted in him not striking out, he has 8 RBI's.
  • A few familiar faces in slots # 4, 5 and 19.  JPA, Colby Rasmus, and Emilio Bonifacio have struck out 18, 17 and 14 times respectively, drawing 1, 4 and 1 walk in the process.  Emilio Bonifacio is batting lead-off for the Blue Jays.
  • Maicer Izturis is the only player with 20 or more plate appearances without a strikeout.  He has two walks as well.  Aaron Hill has 1 strikeout (and 5 walks) in 42 plate appearances.  He's come a long way.
Walks
  • Jay Bruce has walked twice.  Both intentionally.  Dom Brown has three walks, with two being intentional.
  • Joey Votto has walked 20 times over 59 PA's, or 34% of all PA's.  As far as I know, Barry Bonds is the only player to ever eclipse a 30% walk-rate in a season (twice, in 2002 and 2004).
  • Torii Hunter is one of several players yet to draw a walk, but I single him out because he has more plate appearances than any of the other non-walkers, with 55.  He's batting .407 on the year.  I happen to know that both Brandon McCarthy and Ross Detwiler both have drawn 1 walk in 4 and 6 PA's, respectively.
  • Shin-Soo Choo has apparently been hit by 7 pitches in 60 plate appearances (11.6%).  What. In the electrical fuck?  He was hit 14 times last year over 686 PA's.  Trevor Plouffe and Jason Heyward rank tied for second, with 3.  I can't even find a ridiculous small-sample pace that hasn't come close to normalizing yet to beat that.  Ben Francisco has been beaned once in 10 PA's, good for 10%.
Miscellaneous
  • Max Scherzer has a 4.91 ERA, and a FIP under 2.
  • AJ Burnett has 27 strikeouts in 17 innings.
  • Neither Paul Maholm nor Barry Zito has given up an earned run yet.  Maholm has a FIP of 2.06, and Zito has 2.71.  Edwin Jackson has given up a lot of earned runs.  11 of them, in fact, over 16 innings.  His FIP is conveniently sandwiched between that of Maholm and Zito (2.56).
  • Other FIP vs. ERA outliers include Vance Worley (10.59/2.99), Carlos Villanueva (0.64/3.49), Bud Norris (1.69/4.03), Ross Detwiler (0.69/4.22) and Jake Westbrook (0.00/4.59).
  • About Westbrook-- 10 walks, 11 hits, 4 strikeouts over 15.2 IP.  0 earned runs.
  • Jose Mijares has beaned two batters over 1.2 innings of work.  Hector Rondon has 2 over 4.2 innings.  Doug Fister and Roberto Hernandez have 3 over 13ish innings.
  • Brett Myers has given up 8 HR's over 16 innings.
  • Cliff Lee, Adam Wainwright, Zach McAllister, Kyle Lohse and Bartolo Colon are the only qualified pitchers who haven't walked a batter yet, though McAllister has beaned a guy.
  • Four pitchers have 3 hits, including Barry Zito and Adam Wainwright, both of whom have pitched outrageously well.  Jackie Bradley Jr., Jonny Gomes, and Pedro Alvarez also have three hits in 35, 22 and 43 PA's respectively, while definitely not being pitchers.

Go Time: Bizarro Buehrle


Mark Buehrle tonight for the Jays.  He's been less than impressive, to this point as a Blue Jay, giving us an ERA over 10 through two starts and 9.2 innings.  He's not the kind of guy that's going to blow you away or take your head off or anything, and it's only 2 games in to the year, so just in case I wasn't sounding like a broken record already, there's no need to panic at this point.

The thing with Buehrle is that I don't think I really ever thought of him as a Marlin, during his brief stint playing in Miami.  When I think of him, I just envision him in a White Sox uniform, despite the fact that he's a pitcher for the team that I write about, wear, think about, play as on video games, and generally cheer for.  And now, he'll face those very White Sox, as a member of the Jays.

Cute.

He'll face Gavin Floyd, who still isn't a Blue Jay!

Stuff
Danny Knobler of CBS Sports is reporting that Jose Reyes could be out for two months, and not the three months that was originally reported.

RA Dickey was featured on 60 Minutes last night, and was a guest on Q with Jian Ghomeshi on CBC radio today.

Casper Wells was DFA'ed today in order to make room for Ramon Ortiz.  In related news, I banged my head on a wall today.

I have something else cooking up, but I'm going to make a separate post about it, I think.  A quick taste of it, though:  Emilio Bonifacio strikes out a lot.

Bautista is going to miss tonight's game.  He's apparently been suffering through some back spasms.  That's fucking stupid.

Lineups
Jays
Bonifacio RF
Cabrera LF
Arencibia C
Encarnacion 1B
Lind DH
DeRosa 3B
Rasmus CF
Izturis 2B
Kawasaki SS

Buehrle P

[Note: Jesus Christ.]

White Sox
De Aza CF
Keppinger 3B
Rios RF
Konerko DH
Dunn 1B
Viciedo LF
Ramirez SS
Flowers C
Greene 2B

Floyd P

Sunday 14 April 2013

Go Time: Brooooooooooms


Quickly now.

Looky here; one win away from a sweep and a .500 record.  .500!  12 games in to the season!  Morrow!  Dickey!  Muni!  Do it!

We get to see the new Ervin Santana, which is much better than seeing the old, somewhat effective Ervin Santana.  That's basically me saying that Ervin stinks now.

He's been good so far this year, but let's not go crazy with those two start outliers.  A 3.21 ERA through 14 innings would suggest that he's been good so far, but:

  • 4.32 FIP
  • 93% strand rate
  • Walk and strikeout rates that are dramatically better than his career norms.
  • No change in HR-rate
Sounds like a nice little regression is on the way.

Stuff
Brett Lawrie didn't leave Dunedin to do his minor-league rehab in Buffalo, as was expected.  It seems as though the team is considering moving Lawrie to 2B for the time being, and leaving Bautista at 3B, since nobody else has really decided to take the ball and run with it at 3B in Lawrie's absence.  I'm talking mostly about Boni and Izturis.

The Jays have apparently checked in on Tyler Pastornicky as a potential replacement for Reyes.  Pastornicky was part of the (first) Yunel Escobar trade and was originally drafted by the Jays.

Lineups
Jays
Bonifacio CF
Cabrera LF
Bautista 3B
Encarnacion DH
Arencibia C
Lind 1B
Davis RF
Izturis 2B
MUNI SS

Morrow P

Royals
Gordon LF
Escobar SS
Butler DH
Perez C
Hosmer 1B
Cain RF
Johnson 3B
Dyson CF
Getz 2B

Saturday 13 April 2013

Jose Reyes, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Muni


I can already tell that this post is going to be all over the place, based solely off of the random direction of thoughts currently in my brain, so let's just get in to it and see how much sense it makes later.

Life without our best player-- and frankly, let's face it; Jose Reyes is our best player-- begins tonight.  Not sure how long that's going to be, though Alex Anthopoulos and the twitter doctors all seem to think that it's anywhere from 1-3 months as a best/worst case scenario.  The result is Munenori Kawasaki.

Munenori Kawasaki is pretty terrible at baseball, relative to the other 1200 or so people who make up the various 40-man rosters, but, as mentioned many times before since he signed a minor-league deal with the Jays, he is certainly the most giffable player in baseball.  For all intents and purposes, moving forward, refer to this paragraph when I accuse anybody present on a major league (or even professional) baseball roster of being terrible at baseball.  He's terrible relative to his peers.  Who cares though?  Gifs!

Basically, what I'm trying to say here is that for absolutely no reason other than my nerddom and love of funny Asian people, I really like Munenori Kawasaki.  Not so much as a ballplayer, but as a person.  A person who happens to be a ballplayer.  A bad ballplayer, but a ballplayer all the same.

What Muni does well for the Jays is provide bench depth.  That was once a job reserved for whichever of Emilio Bonifacio or Maicer Izturis weren't playing, but both are probably going to be cast in to most lineups in wake of Reyes' absence, at least until Brett Lawrie returns.  To boot, Izturis is struggling with a foot issue after fouling a ball off the other night.  Gotta have Muni.

Both Bonifacio and Izturis have had some pretty hilarious moments defensively so far, which is apparently an area that Kawasaki can help with late in games.  He had better be able to help defensively anyway-- .192/.257/.202 career slash line, albeit over a terribly small sample.  Of course, we can't forget about Mark DeRosa either.  DeRosa has arguably been better than both Izturis and Bonifacio to this point.

As for Reyes, obviously we hope that he'll be back as soon as possible, and healthy and as awesome as ever.  He started the season about as well as anyone could have ever hoped for, putting up 0.6 WAR in just 10 games.  Obviously this pace wasn't really ever sustainable (.435 wOBA!), so it's tough to say what we're going to be missing out on, even if he's only out for a month.  ZiPS rest-of-season (ROS) only liked Reyes to end up with another 3.8 WAR, which I suppose we could try and extrapolate to figure out how much this will cost, thanks to our good friend math.

Those ZiPS ROS projections are based off Reyes playing another 129 games.  3.8 WAR over 129 games makes 1 WAR per ~34 games.  The Blue Jays will play 34 games between now and May 19th, which is just over a month.  That ought to ball park it.  Call it a WAR every month.  Izturis, Bonifacio and DeRosa, platooned correctly, aren't replacement level players by any stretch, so if you're some math dick living in his parents' basement who doesn't watch the game and only reads about baseball off a stats sheet the way I do, this isn't a massive catastrophuck of a problem.  Yeah, it sucks, especially since he's the only person on the team who is hitting and getting on base at the moment, but it's going to take more than this to fuck everything up.

The season is still a long one, regardless of who is hurt or how hurt he is.  We're less than 1/16th of the way there.  Sit down.  Have a beer.  Take your pants off and relax.  Panic at the all-star break.

Friday 12 April 2013

Go Time: Pay Attention


So.  About that question I asked earlier... Turns out Edgar Gonzalez has not only been DFA'ed already, but he's already cleared waivers and has been outrighted to Buffalo.  What do I know?

That leaves plenty of room for Casper Wells to join the club tonight in Kansas City.  Good.  Now if only we can get a decent performance from a starter so we don't need to see some shitty mopup dick like Gonzalez.

Stuff
RA Dickey is going to be on 60 Minutes, and someone posted a trailer to my facebook.  But Dickey sucks now! so I'm not going to link to it because he sucks!  Nah, here.

This is the best photoshop I've ever seen, mostly because of how topical it is to my musical interests, Blue Jays interests, and internet interests.

Other than that, I'm watching the Masters.

Lineups
Jays
Reyes SS
Cabrera LF
Bautista RF
Encarnacion 1B
Arencibia C
Lind DH
DeRosa 3B
Rasmus CF
Bonifacio 2B

Happ P

Royals
Gordon LF
Escobar SS
Butler DH
Perez C
Moustakas 3B
Francoeur RF
Cain CF
Tejada 1B
Johnson 2B

Mendoooooooozzaaaaaaaaaaa P

Important Question of the Day

Why the fuck hasn't Edgar Gonzalez been DFA'ed yet?

Thursday 11 April 2013

Go Time: Fister? Destroy Her



Had planned on watching today's game from the comfort of my god damn couch, and had an idea for a nice big post about the awesomeness of Jose Reyes, but I ended up getting called in to work, so that appears to be out the window.

It's supposed to rain all day in Detroit, which really begs the question as to why they don't have (at least the option of) an indoor/covered stadium there, given the geography.  If it's too cold to play outside in Toronto, it's too cold to play outside in Detroit, if you ask me.

Speaking of cold, did you see how great a job Detroit did at holding that 5-run lead yesterday?  Yeah.

Stuff
The Jays have claimed Casper Wells off waivers from the Mariners, and have DFA'ed Alex Burnett to make room/  Burnett was just claimed the other day from the Angels, if I'm not mistaken, but the sheer amount of waiver claims that the Jays have made in the last 6 months are really making me dizzy.  Either way, Wells' addition probably means that we're about to see the end of the 8-man bullpen horseshit.

For Wells' part, he was DFA'ed from Seattle to make room for Jason Fucking Bay, of all people, despite actually having some use.  He can play all three outfield positions, and has hit lefty pitching to a .264/.349/.489 line over his short career.  The Jays will face lefties Chris Sale and Jose Quintana this weekend against the White Sox, games that both Adam Lind and Colby Rasmus can now safely be penciled to the bench for.  Rajai Davis was previously the only other outfielder on the bench, though Brett Lawrie's return will help that as well, with Izturis or Bonifacio coming off the bench to provide some utility.

Speaking of Lawrie, look for him to be back in about 10-14 days, according to John Lott.  Lawrie was taking BP recently, and has been fielding grounders as well.

Tuesday 9 April 2013

Go Time: Back to Work


Jose Bautista returns to the lineup today, albeit at DH.  Good.  It's a Jose Bout-time.  Let's get a quick preview in before first pitch.

Three day games in Detroit this week, which is kind of weird.  It's presumably because Detroit is too far north to be playing night games outside, but that might just be me.

Stuff
National Post has a thing about Brett Cecil getting his velocity back, thanks to the use of a weighted ball program.  Pretty sure Steve Delabar is doing the same kind of thing, which caused a revival of sorts in his career.  If you've never seen me link to any of his stuff, Kyle Boddy of Driveline Baseball does all kinds of stuff like this, including working with a bunch of high school kids helping them gain velocity and stuff.

Speaking of Kyle, he writes for the Hardball Times on occasion, as I'm sure you've seen linked before.  Well, if anyone noticed anything whacky with Ubaldo Jimenez last week against the Jays, Kyle has a look at some mechanical changes.

JP Arencibia compared coaching styles of John's Gibbons and Farrell, in a talk with Sid Seixeiro, which Stoeten tackles over at DJF.

Lineups
Jays
Reyes SS
Cabrera LF
Bautista DH
Edwin DH
JPA C
Rasmus CF
Davis RF
Izturis 3B
Bonifacio 2B

Morrow P

Tigers
Jackson CF
Hunter RF
Cabrera 3B
Fielder 1B
Dirks DH
Avila C
Peralta SS
Kelly LF
Infante 2B

Sanchez P

Monday 8 April 2013

Jays Claim Gomez, DFA Bush


The Jays have ended the Dave Bush experiment, as awesome as it was, and have claimed infielder Mauro Gomez off waivers from the Red Sox.  Bush has been DFA'ed, as result, so now the Jays will have 10 days to trade, release or outright him to the minors, assuming nobody claims him off waivers over the next two days.  Which... uhh, yeah.  He gave up four homeruns yesterday.  Bison.

Gomez is 28, and is from the Dominican Republic, which probably explains a whole helluva lot.  He got 50 plate appearances last year with the Red Sox, and hit to a .275/.324/.422 line over that little sample.

Ultimately, this is probably a better use of a roster spot than Bush, and probably Jeffress too, given the command issues.  We can always call him "Gomey" if all else fails, but anytime he shows up and does something good, he can always say something like "MAUR!" with pictures of fat kids and cake and stuff.


Sunday 7 April 2013

Go Time: Dickey Day

Google is telling me that this is an original idea, sponsored by Scotiabank.  And rightfully so, since this is a National holiday or sorts.

Alright, good talk.

Saturday 6 April 2013

Go Time: The Aftermath of the Worst Ever


I don't know how I could do it, but I would really like to look up the worst individual games ever played for this franchise, because what Emilio Bonifacio did last night was probably the worst thing to ever happen to a single Blue Jay ever.

WPA certainly wouldn't work, because practically any blown save of 2 or more runs would have to outdo Boni's performance, simply thanks to the leverage index.  Boni's first two strikeouts and his first error, for example, probably didn't have a massive impact on the outcome of the game last night.  Seems to me as though the other two errors and the other two errors were pretty egregious, at least in comparison.  I'm currently at work, and definitely don't have the time to look such a thing up, nor can I imagine it being all that fun after about 40 seconds, but it might be a project for when I get home.  Still, I can't imagine anyone having a worse game, other than possible doing the exact same thing he did defensively, and grounding in to a bunch of double plays instead of just striking out with guys on base.

Kind of ironic too, that we were all praising Boni for the weakest hit double in franchise history, less than 24 hours earlier.  Again, I'm at work, so I won't do it, but it would be a nice exercise to find all the nice things that were said about him after that hustle double, and to contrast them with all the terrible, vitriolic statements made last night, after three errors and 4 strikeouts, batting in the 2-hole, behind Jose Reyes, who got on base 4 times.

Elsewhere, I thought Josh Johnson was okay, but I'd really like to see a starter get kind of deep in to a game.  Janssen, Oliver and Delabar should all be ready to go after being unavailable for yesterday's game, and Sergio Santos and Aaron Loup didn't pitch last night either.  Cecil, Jeffress and Rogers can come or go as they please, I guess, but I don't think there's a huge worry about any of them.  Rogers looked fucking horrible last night and should probably be DFA'ed to get a position player up here to fill the bench, especially with Jose Bautista still questionable for today's tilt.

By the way, Jose Bautista is questionable for today's tilt, according to Shi Davidi, who says Bautista will either not play, or will DH.

I don't see lineups yet, so fuck it.  Good luck JA.

Friday 5 April 2013

Go Time: Johnson Day



Meet Josh Johnson.  Specifically, meet those numbers.  He's a good pitcher.  A really good pitcher.  Our really good pitcher.  Good to see you.

Johnson is the proud owner of a career 3.15/3.20 ERA and FIP.  Those numbers are good.  He's also the owner, probably slightly less proud, of a strikeout rate and walk rate that have worsened over each of the last two seasons.  Those are bad things.  Most projections have his k-rate steadying, while his walk-rate improves over the course of this season.  That's a good thing.  Since becoming a regular, Johnson has only reached the 200 inning plateau once.  That's a bad thing.

There are some good aspects to him being on our team, and there are some less good aspects of him being on our team.  Such a thing is fairly typical when it comes to baseball, pitchers and humans in general.  When he's on, he's pretty awesome.  When he's not on, he's probably injured.  It would be nice to see him healthy.

You know who else it would be good to see healthy?  Jose Bautista.  He left last night's game after rolling his ankle over on first base, grouding out in the 8th inning.  Last I heard was from Ben Nicholson-Smith (formerly of MLBTR and currently of Sportsnet), who passed on that Bautista and Gibbons will decide before the game, after the training staff has a look at the ankle, whether or not he'll play tonight.  He won't miss much time, if any.

And finally, John Farrell comes to town tonight.  If I had my own way, I'd just not even acknowledge him, because if I were him, I'd want to be booed by the Toronto crowd.  Let's just move on and be finished with it.  I mean, he's got things bad enough as it is already; he's coaching the Red Sox.

Stuff
Where has this guy been all my life?  Cashew Mirman is back with another Blue Jays 8-bit adventure.  Give him a follow on twitter while you're at it.  Anthony Gose apparently ran in to through a wall last night too.

Actual story about Gose running through a wall.

Drew analyzes Mike Trout and Emilio Bonifacio, hustling.

Finally, I'm thinking about making a gif of every Sergio Santos breaking ball this season, if I happen to get bored some day.  Here's a preview of that.


If not, at least ones where he makes someone look silly.

Lineups
Jays

Reyes SS
Bonifacio 2b
Cabrera LF
Encarnacion 1b
Arencibia C
Davis RF
Rasmus CF
DeRosa DH (!!!!!!)
Izturis 3B

Johnson-P


Red Dicks
Ellsbury CF
Nava DH
Pedroia 2B
Napoli 1B
Salty C
Middlebrooks 3B
Victorino RF
Bradley Jr. LF
Iglesias SS

Doubront P

A Quick Look at Buehrle


Well that wasn't really what I was expecting now.  Mark Buehrle, or "Turbo" as he's affectionately known around these parts, got beat up pretty hard last night, to the tune of 6 earned runs over 5.1 innings.  Fortunately, the Jays offense bailed him out pretty royally, putting up 10 runs on 5 HR's.

I was pretty surprised to see Buehrle head back out there to start the 6th, given his performance through the first five, but what do I know?  Either way, this would have been one of those situations where you'd see a lot more people really begin to question John Gibbons, had the Jays not won this game.

Buerhle definitely missed the glove a lot; whether it was nerves or adrenaline or just a rough night, I dunno.  It was only one start, I guess, he just seemed like he was all over the map to me, and getting a three-run lead back in the fifth seemed like a gift.  With an 8-man bullpen, there was probably enough man-power back there to pull Buehrle.


Buehrle certainly isn't, nor has he ever been, for that matter, a guy who can just bomb it down the middle and get guys to swing and miss.  His fastball topped out at 87.5 MPH last night, and was sitting right around 85.  That's some Brad Mills stuff right there.

Ultimately, I don't really know if I have a point that I'm trying to reach here; haven't decided yet.  If I had to choose one, it would probably be to get the ball down.  I can't imagine it's all that useful to focus on a single start, much less a small subset or results-oriented locations from that single start, but there are definitely some mistakes made on both of the red ones, and probably all three of the orange ones, let alone some of the flyouts and popouts.



Kudos, though, to Gibbons for sticking Delabar in to that situation, and not Rogers or Jeffress or Cecil, the way Farrell probably would have.  It always felt like Farrell just kind of lumped guys in to specific roles (i.e. mop-up, a guy to hold leads, a guy to pitch defecits, etc.), and since it was only the 6th inning, he wouldn't have put in a guy like Delabar, regardless of the leverage of the situation.  Delabar was probably the right guy to enter the game at this point, as he was the most likely to get a strikeout or two in a situation in which a strikeout or two were needed.

Little things.

Thursday 4 April 2013

Go Time: Turbo



If you weren't aware, Mark Buehrle works fucking fast.  If you weren't aware again, I have terrible issues with not calling people by their actual names.  If you couldn't figure this out yet, I'm going to try to anoint Mark Buehrle with the nickname "Turbo".  If it doesn't stick, I'm sure I'll come up with something worse.

What else?

I guess Jose Bautista made some comments about umpires being mediocre and making him look bad.  That's one way to put it.

Other than that, uhh... it was at Reynolds' shoulders, so I don't think there's a whole lot to worry about here. Just moving on, I suppose.

Lineups
Jays
Reyes SS
Cabrera LF
Bautista RF
Edwin DH
Lind 1B
JPA C
Derosa 3B
Rasmus CF
Boni 2B

Buehrle P

Indianos

Bourn CF
Cabrera SS
Kipnis 2B
Swisher DH
Brantley LF
Santana C
Reynolds 1B
Chisenhall 3B
Stubbs RF

Myers

Wednesday 3 April 2013

Go Time: Morrow's Bid for Vengeance


So this is happening.

Remember how Morrow was the best pitcher on the team last year?  Let's fucking do it.  I personally will not be drinking tonight, but if anyone feels like playing the home version of the drinking game, drink every time someone mentions how terribly disrupted the Indians' hitters' timing will be tonight, having faced a bunch of 74 MPH knucklers yesterday, and a bunch of 92 MPH heaters tonight.  As if these people aren't professional baseball players.

It'll be against Ublowdo too, which is probably good news.

Stuff
John Gibbons says that Henry Blanco will, in fact, catch Dickey's next start.  That will be this coming Sunday in Fenway.

That's all I needed to hear.

Lineups
Jays
Reyes SS
Cabrera LF
Bautista RF
Edwin 1B
Lind DH
Arencibia C
Rasmus CF
Izturis 3B
Bonifacio 2B

Morrow P

Indians
Bourn CF
Cabrera SS
Kipnis 2B
Swisher 1B
Brantley LF
Santana C
Reynolds DH
Chisenhall 3B
Stubbs RF

Jimenez P

On Supressing the Urge to Kill

Thanks the ever-amazing @ChadMoriyama
So that wasn't very good.

It would be all kinds of simple to just blame that on JP Arencibia not catching the ball a bunch of times, and call it a day, but that would probably be pretty lazy.  After all, Dickey certainly walked a bunch of guys, and the Jays didn't exactly have a base-runner after what seemed like the fourth inning, from within my drunken haze.  The 4th is right around when Masterson seemed to find himself a bit, as far as control went.

I don't think there's any real need to play the blame game here-- there are 161 more games to be found within this season, and even the best team this season is probably going to lose somewhere around 60 of them.  We'll not worry about something so menial as a loss.

As far as some specifics, I suppose we'll go bullet-point by bullet-point:


  • JP Arencibia/ Henry Blanco: I don't think this was really all that much of a surprise, and we'll be seeing Henry Blanco fairly often when it makes sense.  It's going to make sense less often than we think, however.  For example, anytime there's a day-game following a night-game, the backup catcher tends to get one of those starts.  Assuming Blanco catches every other Dickey start this year, a quick look at the schedule suggests that Blanco will play two of three in the upcoming Boston series.  Dickey will throw game three (Sunday) of that series.  If Blanco is to catch Dickey and only Dickey, we'll see JP catch in both Friday night and Saturday afternoon's games.  Not saying that such a thing can't, or shouldn't happen, especially this early in the year, but it's something to think about.
  • R.A. Dickey: It gives me diabetes to think of all the little variables at play here.  I just have faith that he'll figure it out.  JP's still learning and adjusting, and I'm sure Dickey is too.  I don't think he's ever pitched in a sold-out dome stadium before, but things seemed to iron out a bit after three innings.  Again, long season.
  • Sergio Santos: That slider.  Probably going to .gif a few of those later if I don't see it done already.
  • Brett Cecil: Did I see 94 on the gun?
     Mother of God, I did.  9 of 11 pitches were thrown for strikes too.  Not exactly nibbling though.  Take what you can get, I suppose. 
  • Adam Lind: I'm getting tired of shitting on this guy.  I really am.  I'm even trying to be nice to the guy, pointing out all of the positives from within the sea of negatives.  With that in mind, let's flash back to the 3rd inning of yesterday's game.  This is how the Jays' half of the third inning began.
    • - M. Cabrera singled to right, M. Cabrera to second on right fielder D. Stubbs' fielding error
    • - J. Bautista walked
    • - E. Encarnacion walked, M. Cabrera to third, J. Bautista to second
Within those two walks, Masterson is gifted two called strikes from the umpire, and is just generally all over the fucking map.  To this point in the game, Masterson had thrown 60 pitches, 27 of which were balls, before retiring a batter in the 3rd.  Naturally, Lind fucking flails away at the first pitch, which, also naturally, is outside the zone by a good 5 inches.



I just want Josh Willingham on my team.

Quote of the night comes from a guy on the internet, concerning the Lind GIDP-- "[S]tandard Asdrubal making the ball hit right at him look impossible."  Really.

See you guys later tonight.

Tuesday 2 April 2013

Go Time: Dickey vs. Cleveland


It's become a bit of a tradition in my household to get really, really drunk on Blue Jays' opening day and just have a big party with a bunch of food and friends and whatnot.  "Beer-an-inning" has always been my rule, but last year got a bit out of hand, what with the 15 inning stretcheroo that we got last year.

Not only that, but it really seems like all of my go-to invitees are either busy with infant children, or are simply living really far away.  Plus, it's not like everybody is ready to drink on a Tuesday at the drop of a hat.

So, my friends, I ask of you one favor: let's get hammered together.  I present to you the home version of the ESD Opening Day Beer-Drink.  There is an element of chance to this, so that we can all have that one friend who just gets way too hammered and then we can laugh at him all the way to the emergency room.

Universal Rules:  These are rules that we must all drink to.
  • Take a drink every time the Jays score.
  • Take a drink every time Pat Tabler says something stupid, illogical, or really old fashioney baseball-like.  Examples include someone being "an RBI guy", bunting being a good idea, and of course "big and strong".  If someone "plays the game the right way," that counts for 2 drinks.
  • Take a drink every time Jose Reyes come to bat.  Because we have to celebrate.
  • Take a drink every time R.A. Dickey gets a swinging strike.
  • Take a drink every time a Blue Jay draws a walk.
  • Take a drink every time Buck Martinez does that weird half-laugh, half-air-leak.
  • Take a drink every time you hear that stupid "Stadium Love" song or commercial or whatever the fuck.
  • Take two drinks for every passed ball.
  • Finish your beer if Adam Lind faces a lefty pitcher.
  • Finish your beer every time the Blue Jays hit a homerun.
Personal Rules: For each of these, pick one or the other.  If your event occurs, take 1 drink.  For example, if I pick (a), I only drink when (a) is mentioned, but not when (b) is mentioned.
  • When someone mentions (1) the R.A. Dickey trade, or (2) The Marlins trade.
  • When someone mentions (3) Mark DeRosa's veteran presence/leadership, or (4) Henry Blanco's veteran presence/leadership.
  • When someone mentions (5) JP Arencibia's horrible defense and general presumed malaise with the Dickey knuckleball, or (6) mentions how amazingly well Henry Blanco is at handling Dickey.
  • When (7) Buck mentions a former Blue Jay, former teammate, or former roommate; or (8) when Tabler mentions a former Blue Jay, former teammate, or former roommate in an anecdote that is otherwise useless.
  • When the PA guy or the organist or whatever plays (9) The Addams Family song, or (10) that other one, that goes "DIN DUN DIN DUN *clap* *clap* *clap clap clap*
  • (11) Ground rule double, or (12) Triple.
  • When (13) a Dominican does the "Lo Viste" thing-- a peace sign with the index and middle fingers to the side of the eyes-- or (14) the Jose Bautista/Edwin Encarnacion bicep flex celebration.
  • When someone mentions the (15) '92 World Series, or (16) the '93 World Series.
  • If you're playing with friends, pick a number, 1-9.
    • For every run in that particular inning, take an extra drink.
    • If a player in that particular batting lineup slot (either team) scores a run at any point in the game, take an extra drink.
    • If a player in that defensive position (i.e. 6= shortstop, 8= CF) makes an excellent defensive play, take a drink.
Oh!  And the 4th inning is the beer inning.

Stuff
Here's your official roster, if you've been asleep, under a bridge.

Lars Anderson has been traded to the White Sox for cash.  He was DFA'ed the other day when the Jays claimed Alex Burnett and Clint Robertson off waivers.

R.A. Dickey and John Gibbons had a presser yesterday, if you feel like that.

Other than that.... uh... Mercy is for the weak.

Lineups
Blue Yays
Reyes SS
Cabrera LF
Bautista RF
Edwin 1B
Lind DH
Arencibia C
Rasmus CF
Izturis 3B
Bonifacio 2B

Dickey the best.

Indians
Bourn CF
Cabrera SS
Kipnis 2B
Swisher 1B
Brantley LF
Santana C
Reynolds DH
Chisenhall 3B
Stubbs RF

Masterson

Monday 1 April 2013

Predictions

Going to throw out some predictions, and look through Pinnacle Sports and see what kind of fun little wagers we can find.  Ready? Go.

Division Winners:

AL East: Toronto Blue Jays
Al Central: Detroit Tigers
AL West: Oakland A's
AL Wild Cards: Angels, Rays

NL East: Washington Nationals
NL Central: St Louis Cardinals
NL West: San Francisco Giants
NL Wild Cards: Reds, Braves

World Series: Nationals

AL Cy Young: Justin Verlander
NL Cy Young: Stephen Strasburg

AL MVP: Evan Longoria
NL MVP: Joey Votto

Bets that I would consider, from Pinnacle:

1321 Chicago White Sox [to win the ALC]   8.980
1355 St. Louis Cardinals [to win the NLC]   3.980

        1203 Arizona Over 82.5 Wins     1.962
        1209 Chicago Cubs Over 72.5 Wins     1.909
1211 Chicago White Sox Over 81 Wins     2.210
1259 Washington Over 92 Wins     2.040

1001 Atlanta Braves  [Win WS]  15.600
        1002 Arizona Diamondbacks [Win WS]   53.790
1020 Oakland Athletics [Win WS]   33.660

Because I love longshots.

Over-Unders (Some aren't listed, so I'll just toss in a number):

ATL (87.5)-- Over
ARI (82.5)-- Over
BAL (78.5)-- Over
BOS (83)-- Over
CHC (72.5)-- Over
CWS (81)-- Over
CIN (91)-- Under
CLE (77.5)-- Under
COL (70.5)-- Under
DET (92.5)-- Over
HOU (Predicting 56)
KC (77.5)-- Under
LAA (91.5)-- Under
LAD (Predicting 85)
MIA (63)-- Under
MIL (Predicting 81)
MIN (67.5)-- Over
NYY (Predicting 81)
NYM (Predicting 74)
OAK (84.5)-- Over
PHI (84)-- Under
PIT (77)-- Over
SD (74.5)-- Under
SF (88)-- Under
SEA (77.5)--Under
STL (86)--Over
TB (86)-- Over
TEX (predicting 87)
TOR (89)-- Over
WAS (92) Over

Have fun everybody, and remember: mercy is for the weak.