Jose Molina Strikes Again!

[Note: Jose Molina had nothing to do with this, maybe except for the fact that he may have been in the vicinity at the time of the incident in question]

So yeah.  If you somehow missed it, Lawrie took a 3-1 fastball (#5) outside and began walking to 1st, only for umpire Bill Miller to call a late strike.  Lawrie reacted the way most people would at a questionable and late call, and slowly walked back to the box.  Lawrie then took a high change-up (#6) for ball 5 strike 2 strike 3 and ended up losing his shit at Miller for spite-ringing him up.

That Jose Molina sure can frame a pitch in the 9th inning!  And really, that's probably all we'd hear if Lawrie didn't go all Jon Rauch.

Anyway, this would have just pretty well blown over had the helmet not hit Bill Miller, but uhhh.... not so much.  It didn't look to me as if he was intentionally throwing the helmet at him, because why the fuck would you bounce it instead of just straight up biffing it at your target, but whatever.  There are a few angles of the incident out there and, to me, he was just throwing it to the ground without really giving a shit of where it was headed afterwards.

Buster Olney of ESPN (retardedly, imo) uses the Delmon Young incident of 2006, where Young struck out in a similar fashion to Lawrie, and then threw his bat at the umpire from the on-deck circle area.  These are two entirely different situations, based on the intent, but Olney thinks that Lawrie will probably get 8-10 games (Young got 50).

Umpires get evaluated all the time by the MLB for the purpose of having their best umpires calling the playoffs, and I'd be surprised if this piece of shit even gets considered.  At least he got what he deserved.  That beer cost like $14, and they stop serving in the 7th inning, so getting hit with that beer is like the perfect storm of shit.  Too bad it missed his face. (Zaunhead to that fan, by the way).  Oh yeah, but don't throw shit on the field.

Edwin gets a Zaunhead too for his homerun off Price.

Ooph

Just one bad inning, I guess.  A really, really bad inning, granted, but one bad inning nonetheless.  It really just appeared that nothing was going right for the Jays all night long-- whether it was the number of close calls that went the other way (I'm talking about bang-bang plays at 1st, the ball that landed on the line in LF that got called foul, or the odd ball/strike call), but those games happen all the time.  I'd like to talk mostly about that one dirty bastard of an inning though.

Source: FanGraphs

The Jays entered the 5th inning with a 63.2% chance of winning, by virtue of the 1-0 score.  Brandon Morrow, to that point, had allowed 0 hits, striking out 6 and walking 3.  Standard Morrow performance, really.  I don't think anybody really believed that he was going to get away with never walking anybody again the way he did in those 3 starts or whatever.

Will Rhymes lead the 5th off with an 0-2 double in to the corner, which was fielded gracefully by Eric Thames in left field.  After a Chris Gimenez sac fly, moving Rhymes to 3rd, Elliott Johnson knocked a run in with a single, so far so good.  Ben Zobrist reached on a groundball to second, where Johnson busted up a double play (kind of).  BJ Upton walked to get runners on first and second, before the wheels fell off.  Adam Lind booted a groundball, which allowed Ben Zobrist to alertly score from 2nd.  Morrow covered first for the clumsy fake first baseman and got upset when the close play went the other way.

JP Arencibia couldn't handle strike 3 to Carlos Pena, which allowed the runners to advance and the inning to continue.  Luke Scott and Sean Rodriguez followed up with hits to score the 4th, 5th and 6th runs to score, before Will Rhymes flied out to end the inning.  In total, the Jays' win expectancy dropped from 63.2% to 8.3% in an inning that featured a single earned run.  Morrow escaped the game with the loss, and a WPA of -.366, despite bringing a no-hitter in to the 5th inning.

Baseball is certainly a game in which you need to make your opponents pay for their mistakes, and the Rays did exactly that to the Blue Jays last night.  It is really, really difficult to win a game in which you give the opponent 5 outs in an inning, especially a team as good as Tampa.  Morrow really did deserve better.  He obviously gave up the hits and walks in that 5th inning, but the defense didn't exactly help him out a whole lot in terms of getting out of the inning without seeing the Rays get a crooked number on the scoreboard, or throwing a pitch in the 6th, for that matter.

Speaking of mistakes, Adam Lind is still on this team, and is hurting the club with his defense now too.  Spectacular.

The silver lining is that the Rays used 6 pitchers yesterday, and if the Jays can get the Rays in to the bullpen today, we might see a blowout or at least some shitballing.  The Rays will play the Red Sox after the Jays, so they'll hopefully have a taxed bullpen (assuming we're cheering for whoever leads the ALE to lose games, for the Jays' sake).

Anyway, the Jays didn't really bother scoring runs or anything throughout the rest of the game, so it doesn't really matter a whole lot either way.  Kelly Johnson was 2-for-5 and that's about the end of it.  I'll go ahead and give Morrow the Zaunhead, I guess, since nobody else went out of their way to earn one and I'm a big Morrow apologist.  He really should have been out of that inning at some point before the last of the 6 runs scored, which fucks around with his pitch totals and whatnot, so the -.366WPA doesn't really tell the whole story and it's kind of tough to give negative WPA to anybody but the pitcher when the fielders fuck him around, so meh.

Stuff
Henderson Alvarez pitches tonight against David Price, which kind of fucks with my plan of taxing the bullpen. Alvarez was supposed to be the subject of a Jeff Sullivan piece on SBNation today (yesterday?), but Brett Lawrie just kind of weaseled his way in to it.  Cliffnotes: Lawrie is pretty good at defense, as are the other Jays infielders, and that's helped out Alvarez (and other Jays pitchers) quite a bit so far this year.

RJ Anderson looks at Kyle Drabek for baseball prospectus (behind a paywall).  Basically, Drabek has the stuff to be a big league pitcher, he just isn't one yet because he's wild as fuck and has some pretty big mechanical flaws holding him back.  He says it better, and says more than that, but that's really the main jist of it.  Just read it to see what I mean.

Nowhere Plans' MLB Power rankings are up.  The Sports Illustrated ones are up too, which happen to place the Jays in 28th of 30 teams.  That's obviously retaded, and Tango looks closer to figure out how that can happen.

Joe Posnanski takes an interesting look at the early struggles of Albert Pujols.

Jeff Niemann is probably going to miss a few months after taking an Adam Lind liner to the leg and fracturing his fibula.  Adam Lind literally destroys Niemann.

Lineups
Jays
Johnson 2B
Escobar SS
Bautista RF
Edwin 1B
Francisco DH
Lawrie 3B
Rasmus CF
Mathis C
Davis LF

Alvarez P

Rays
Zobrist RF
Upton CF
Joyce LF
Pena 1B
Scott DH
Rodriguez 3B
Rhymes 2B
Molina C
Johnson SS

Price P

Big thumbs up to me for having this all written out literally two hours ago and not posting it.

Jays Rays

So they're in town.  No Evan Longoria, a healthy dose of Jeff Niemann, and a Jose Bautista who appears to be swinging the bat like the Jose we know.  We'll get Brandon Morrow tonight, too, so that's pretty good.  And the game starts in like 40 seconds so let's get this out of the way, no?

Jeff Niemann pitches for the Rays tonight, as mentioned, which pretty much means that Adam Lind will go 2-for-3 with a walk and a homer.  On a related note, Lind will bat 4th tonight.  Lind absolutely destroys Niemann, as far as his career goes.  I mentioned this last time Niemann started against the Jays, and then read it again earlier today, but there's no time and I lost it, but Lind is hitting something like .419 with 3 HR's in 42 AB's for his career against Jeff.  Spare thoughts on the situation:  Edwin will move to the 5-hole, for some reason, and nobody else in the lineup ever gets small-sample-size preferential treatment.  Whatever.

Edwin gets yesterday's Zaunhead for going 3-for-4 and leading the Jays in WPA by a country mile.  Again, the Jays didn't get a single walk, while Ricky Romero walked 5 over 5.1IP (Carreno walked 3 over his 1.2IP as well).


Stuff

Joel Carreno has been sent back to AA New Hampshire, and Evan Crawford was recalled.  The Jays claim that they would like more lefties for the upcoming Rays and Yankees series'.  I doubt he's going to get a whole lot of action, but a bunch of Rays and Yankees are struggling mightily this season vs. LHP's, apparently.  Hat tip to probably Stoeten for that little piece of info.

Gregor Chisolm (@gregorMLB) gave us a lot today on his twitter.  Among his notes:

• Dustin McGowan threw lightly today.  Still a ways to go before coming back, but he's ahead of schedule.
• Sergio Santos threw from 90 feet today, and will stretch it out a bit over the next few days.  He has no immediate timetable for his return, but it shouldn't be too long.
• Vladimir Guerrero will report to extended spring training tomorrow, if he didn't do so already.
• Carreno is going back to the rotation in AA, as opposed to the bullpen role he's been filling when in Toronto.
• Farrell was disappointed with .500 on the road trip against a weak schedule.  "We're a better team than that."  I personally don't think it's a disaster, but against the teams they played, anything less than 5-5 would have been a pretty big disaster, in my view.

Apparently Brett Lawrie is one of the best fielders ever?  Let's not lose our minds here, 76 games in to his career or whatever.  I'm pretty certain that anything less than 3 years of defensive metrics is more of less useless in terms of sample size, but hey, we can dream.

High fives!

Kyle at driveline baseball wants you to tell your little leaguers to keep the ball up in the zone, at least until they get to the big leagues.

The Rays placed Desmond Jennings on the 15-day DL today.  Good, nice and banged up.

Lineups
Jays

Johnson 2B
Escobar SS
Bautista RF
Lind 1B
Encarnacion DH
Thames LF
Lawrie 3B
Rasmus CF
Arencibia C

Morrow P

Rays

Zobrist RF
Upton CF
Joyce LF
Pena 1B
Scott DH
Rodriguez 3B
Rhymes 2B
Gimenez C
Johnson SS

Niemann P

Bautista Appears to be Back

So yeah, he's good at baseball again and everyone's happy.

I got drunk last night and forgot to Tivo the game, so I didn't exactly see anything other than the highlights.  I could have watched "Jays in 30" or whatever it's called, but Will Ferrell hosted Saturday Night Live last night, and it was truly awesome.  I'd go watch that if I were you.

As result of not seeing the game, I probably shouldn't comment on the fact that the Jays took 0 walks and struck out 9 times against P.J. Walters and the Minnesota pitching staff.  I mean, Brian Duensing is quite literally un-rosterable in at least 25 MLB systems.  I can only assume that Jays hitters saw Walters and just said "Holy fuck.  I'm going to crush everything." and just swung at a whole bunch of shitty pitches or something, and I'll probably just have to live with that opinion based on nothing.

It appears that Hutch did okay.  I'd really like to see him walk fewer people, especially against an offense as anemic as the Twins, but what can you do?

I'd really like to see the Jays fucking clobber the Twins at least once (i.e. today, please) the way they really should.  I'm not going to go out and say that the Jays should outright sweep the Twins in a 4-game set, because that's not really a realistic expectation, especially with the back end of the Jays' rotation getting the first three games of the series, but yeah.  This team should probably win a blowout against the Twins at least once in 4 games.  Having said all that, I really do expect Ricky Romero to go out there today and throw a 2-hitter.

Pink bats!

Lineups
Jays
Johnson 2B
Escobar SS
Bautista RF
Edwin 1B
Francisco DH
Lawrie 3B
Rasmus CF
Arencibia C
Davis LF

Romero P

Twins
Span CF
Dozier SS
Mauer 1B
Willingham LF
Doumit DH
Plouffe 3B
Komatsu RF
Butera C
Carroll 2B

Diamond P

"You Suck?" That's what your mother said last night Trabek

Yeah, if Drabek Kant* get out of the 5th inning against the Minnesota god damned Twins, I'm not sure what his use is, and he's probably never going to develop in to any kind of useful pitcher until this kind of control issue is figured out anyway, so how's about we just zip him right on down to Vegas and Halladay his mechanics and curveball, huh?

I mean, you guys thought Brett Cecil looked bad [sidenote: Brett Cecil looked pretty bad, and probably worse than Drabesy, but that doesn't matter].  Drabek just looked like a complete abortion out there last night, and I'd give him some kind of pass if he had actually looked good in any of his other starts over the last month, but the fact that he just misses the zone with every other pitch just lets opposing batters kind of stand there and take a couple pitches until all of a sudden, the second inning is over and Drabek's thrown 64 pitches or whatever it was.

Like I've said before, the last couple years, this kind of thing could happen-- let people learn what they need to learn in the bigs, let old relievers get their type-B status, give Adam Lind 600 shitty AB's to see if he can do something with the 50 good ones, etc.  This year, I don't think we can really justify not losing our minds when Drabek is going wild, or when Lind is as bad or worse than he's ever been while batting in the 4-hole. Other AL East teams aren't going to keep losing their starting CF, or allowing the Orioles to sweep them forever, so we've got to take advantage while the getting is good.

Drabek to AAA to either straighten out, or to become a reliever, please.  Villanueva can start, so can Carreno.  There are other youngsters down there, and Matt Garza is probably available.  Make it happen.

Stuff


*: My neighbor stopped by this morning (fucking early too, btw) to ask if the wifi network at my apartment is called "Cunt Salad".  "Yes," I told him, proudly, with a smile on my face.  "Well, my 8-year old daughter was on her iPhone this morning looking for internet, and asked me what cunt is.  Please change that." My network is now called "Kant Salad".

Jose hit two taters last night, so he's absolutely 100% good as new again, and will be an offensive force for the rest of the season.  Know how I know?  I have the internet.  He gets last night's Zaunhead.

John Axford blew a save last night, his first in like 50 attempts or something.  He trolled the media real nice too.

Apparently the Jays' whole bullpen is "battered and broken".  I figured that they meant that Coco sucks and Santos is hurt, but I guess the whole damn thing sucks!  What's worse is that this is the last word on sports, so you're not allowed to call them retarded for being retarded and using arbitrary endpoints over a 26 games sample size!

Lineups
Jays
It's not posted yet, and I'm going to go drink a bunch of beer, so I'm guessing.

Johnson 2B
Escobar SS
Bautista RF
Edwin DH
Thames LF
Lawrie 3B
Rasmus CF
Lind 1B
Mathis C

Hutch P


Twins
Span CF
Dozier SS
Mauer C
Willingham LF
Doumit DH
Plouffe 3B
Parmelee 1B
Mastroianni RF
Carroll 2B

Walters P

Buzzer Beater

Was really going to try and rush this one before the game got underway, but it looks like we're getting some kind of rain delay scenario, with the tarp going on the infield literally 2 minutes ago.  It looks like there are thunderstorms in the forecast, which pretty well means doubleheader tomorrow.  Doubleheaders usually mean that lineups get watered down, which, in my uneducated opinion, would increase the variance. In other words, watered down lineups should make it easier for the shitty old Twins to steal a game from the Jays.

And that, folks, is all I've got for you.

Lineups
Jays
Johnson 2B
Escobar SS
Bautista RF
Edwin DH
Thames LF
Lawrie 3B
Rasmus CF
Lind 1B
JPA C

Drabek T (thrower)

Twins
Span CF
Dozier SS
Mauer C
Willingham LF
Doumit DH
Plouffe 3B
Parmelee 1B
Mastroianni RF
Carroll 2B

Blackburn P

Free Money

Boy, them Twins are a tough group to play against, huh?  You just never know what you're going to see next.  I mean this in terms of having a hard time knowing just how badly they're going to fuck up, or what basic fundamental of baseball they're going to butcher next, when you least expect it.

Edwin Encarnacion was probably the main benefactor of the whole Minnesota "defense" fiasco, getting two free RBI's that he didn't really do anything for, the first on a routine groundball to short that Yunel Escobar just decided to score on, and the second on a popup in to the Bermuda Triangle area between the pitcher's mound and home plate, where people have struggled to defend dating back to the glory days of Ruth and Mantle.

If we can ignore Jose Bautista's new-found ability to still not get on base anymore, and Adam Lind's shittiness in general, the Jays offensive output was pretty awesome last night.  Brett Lawrie hit the ball hard a few times, and more or less put the game out of reach in the first inning and also happened to take two bases on a passed ball (thanks Ryan Doumit!), Colby Rasmus went 2-for-3 with a walk, and Yunel Escobar got on base 5 times, including 4 hits.

All of these items kind of overshadowed another pretty good outing from Henderson Alvarez, who threw 7 reasonably good innings, though the control wasn't quite what we've come to expect.  He walked 3 and struck out two, but of course, with Alvarez, we're looking more for groundballs, and less at the K:BB ratio.  We'd still like the K rate to come up (i.e. develop another pitch that isn't a fastball), but 14 groundballs against 1 line drive will certainly play.

I know I've written about this exact thing before, but again, I don't see how Alvarez can maintain this kind of performance.  SSS, but a babip of .212 and a strand rate over 87% just aren't sustainable stats, so the ERA will definitely rise.  The groundballs, double plays, and shifts could conceivably help keep his babip and strand rates stay above league average to a certain degree, I just hope he keeps working on stuff like finding a swing-and-miss secondary pitch or something, because you don't get to play Minnesota and Seattle very often.  I am glad that they're taking advantage of these games against the drivel teams though.

Speaking of getting starts against drivel, Kyle Drabek gets the ball against Minnesota.  He has been just fair in his last couple of starts, missing gloves and throwing strikes and balls at a pretty equal pace.  He really does need a game against a garbage lineup like this Minnesota one, and hopefully he just slams pitches straight in to the zone and lets them swing and miss.  I'd love to say that I have a lot of faith in Drabek as a major league pitcher going forward, but until he shows me that he can pound the zone and not miss absolutely everything down and away to righties, I'll not have that opinion.  I'd feel absolutely fine with moving Drabek to the bullpen or minors when Mcgowan and/or Cecil come back, or when the Jays acquire Matt Garza in a few weeks.

Stuff
Notgraphs is going crazy with the Bluejays content so far today.  Brett Lawrie twitter nonsense, and Sergio Santos party's hard.  This works nicely with the Fangraphs take on Vlad Guerrero.

Ricky Romero was on the MLB Network yesterday talking about a bunch of stuff like baseball, basketball, his dog, and twitter.

 

Apparently the Jays have checked in with the Phillies about the availability of Shane Victorino and Cole Hamels.  The Phillies don't expect to be sellers this year, according to Ruben Amaro Jr., GM of the sinking ship that is the Phillies franchise, but he's said that he's got to at least be mindful and keep certain doors open.  Both players are free agents after the season, and if neither gets extended, a trade could happen.  Victorino would be an upgrade over Eric Thames, and could send Jose Bautista to 1B to jettison Adam Lind from the lineup.  Hamels would instantly become the best pitcher on the Jays staff, and would be a very welcome addition for a playoff stretch if the Jays are still hanging around a few months down the road.