The importance of the loss as a pitching stat/my problem with WPA.

Okay, so, the Jays pretty much stole a win that was getting stolen from them.  Follow?  Me neither.  Basically, the Jays hit about a thousand line drives and were robbed on many occasions by some pretty good defense from the Angels' infielders.  This game probably should have been a 4-run or 5-run win for the Jays based solely on the amount of chances they had to score (1-for-11 RISP, 9 LOB).  Having said all that, the Angels pitching staff gave up 0 earned runs.

Erick Aybar made an error in the 10th, and then botched another taylor-made double play ball, which eventually led to Torii Hunter fucking the dog on the walkoff fielder's choice to 2nd base, allowing Mike Mccoy to score the winning run, giving Scott Downs the loss.  Downs' line of [1.1IP, 2 hits, 1 run, 0 ER, 1k] doesn't really portray just how effective he was yesterday, especially against a team who has a pretty complete scouting report on him, but an error and two fuckups (I'd have given Hunter a throwing error) not only gives Downs' a loss, but also earns him a -.140 WPA.

I don't really know exactly how WPA is calculated or calibrated, but I'm fairly certain that defense isn't taken in to account for it.  That seems fine for position players, but for a pitcher to go out there and do his job effectively, only to have his team take a crap or dump on the field seems pretty unfair to me.

This is obviously an extreme example, and for the most part, your guys with the highest WPA in a game will get the Zaunhead be the most valuable, but I'd be pretty shocked if anybody who watched that game, Scott Downs included, said anything at all similar to "Scott Downs just wasn't very good in last night's game," which is equivalent to saying that Downs' really hurt his teams chances of winning that game by 14%.

Speaking of Scott Downs, and I mentioned this earlier this season when the Angels were in town, I'd like to take a second and address every Jays fan that was at the game yesterday.  I don't give a fuck what Scott Downs does, don't you fucking dare boo him ever again.  This isn't Josh Beckett or Jered Weaver or Alex Rios or some other douche who takes too long or gets mad at hitters when they're successful against him or handcuffs hometeams with terrible contracts; this is Scott Downs.

Remember?  The guy who used to single-handedly make close Jays games bearable?  Remember when the other team would rally late in the game, and we'd be sitting there panicking?  Do you know who got brought in to the game to remedy that situuation?  Scott Downs did.  So he threw a pickoff attempt to first base-- it happens.  It's part of baseball.  Scott Downs was a class act the entire time he was in Toronto, he contributed more than half the team (from the bullpen, mind you), and blossomed in to one of the best relievers in baseball in front of our very eyes, and it was our team who didn't offer him the longterm contract that he deserved.  Stop being fucking idiots and appreciate the game.  Boo the people who deserve to be booed, cheer the people who deserve to be cheered, and shut your fucking mouths when you're too goddamn stupid to do anything else.

Stuff

Settling down now...  Ricky Romero was excellent yesterday, as always.  He gets a Zaunhead, which he seems to do every single time he goes out to pitch.

We felt the wrath of Jhan John again yesterday, when Brett Lawrie was forced to bunt.  That's your second best hitter, John.  Don't do that anymore.  But shit, it worked, so I must be wrong here.  No but seriously, that was fucking stupid, especially since Jose Molina was given the chance to swing the bat immediately afterwards.  I had a talk about bunting with my dad the other night.  "It's good baseball" he said.  When asked to further explain what made it good baseball, he kind of shrugged.

Yunel Escobar is still out, which means that we're still getting a nice healthy dose of Mike Mccoy up top.  Escobar doesn't really have a timetable for a return, as he's still lacking range of motion in the left arm.

Brett Cecil has been cleared to start tonight.  He cut his finger on a blender for some reason last week.

Cecil was rumored to be making his final start of the season last week, which could very well make his start tonight is last.  If that happens, expect Kyle Drabek to fill in.  Gregor Chisolm wrote last night that Farrell believes Drabek will get a start before the end of the year, and that seems like the only logical spot to stick him in there, unless they just want to go with a 6-man rotation.

Within that same piece, Jonathan Diaz is expected to get a callup within the next couple days.  He was pretty good in spring training this year, if I remember correctly, which doesn't really mean much of anything, but whatever.  It says that Farrell isn't expecting anymore callups, but I read the other day that Moises Sierra told someone that he was expecting one this week, despite the contrary being said in this piece.  I think it was Dave Gershman who said that, but I don't remember.  Might take a while to find that tweet.

Edit-- That was fast.

Ricky Romero: Slumpbuster

For those of you who don't know the actual meaning of the word "slumpbuster," the above image should probably at least narrow it down.  You see, the photoshopped Ricky Romero makes this clever, since all he does is goes out and pitches well and wins ballgames, when other pitchers proceed to lose them.  Though I suppose Wade Davis could get his face on there as well.

But what if it was Brian Tallet that did all this?  The Jays have yet to lose since Brian Tallet has been activated and placed on the active roster.  Has your mind been blown?  I know mine has (note: n't).  But seriously, I'm still holding out hope that Tallet doesn't throw a single pitch for the Jays this year.  There are two days left until roster (potentially) expand, and I'm really hoping that a bullpen arm or two can come up.  It's not like this is anything that actually matters; I'm just a bitter little boy who has a lot of rude things to say about people I don't know from behind a computer screen.

Speaking of guys I'd like to never see again in my life, DeWayne Wise played CF again last night, doing absolutely nothing of value.  Don't get me wrong, Mike Mccoy isn't all that good either, but I'm not sure this one is even close.  I guess it doesn't really matter too much though... it's not like both Colby Rasmus and Rajai Davis are going to be simultaneously injured for the rest of eternity.

JP Arencibia gets his first Zaunhead in fucking forever.  He had 3 hits, including a really funny triple that Matt Joyce misplayed in right field.  I think he raised his batting average to the Aaron Hill zone.

Before anyone thinks I'm serious about that statement, let's not forget that JP is a rookie who has 20 homeruns this year, and has the highest ISO among catchers in baseball, let alone rookies, and has a .253 babip, as opposed to Aaron Hill who peaked in his 2nd full season.  JP is also a catcher, so any offense that he contributes is complete gravy.

Alex Anthopoulos Alert!  The Jays have just announced that they have signed seven international free agents, though a couple of these probably happened a little while ago and are only being announced now, such as Roberto Osuna, the nephew of former Major League fireballing reliever Antonio Osuna.  I'm pretty sure I linked to a spanish newspaper article like a month ago, breaking this one, so I dunno, maybe there's some contractual reason that this couldn't be announced/made official until now.

This series of signings shows that the Jays are, in fact, willing to spend money, and is a testament to AA's dedication to scouting and international free agency.  The Jays signed Dawel Lugo for $1.3MM earlier this year, but people smarter than myself speculate that both Osuna and Wuilmer Becerra both signed for more than that.  Tyler Beede could not be reached for comment.

The Return of Brian Tallet

Yes folks, tonight is the night.  Not the night where Tampa Bay stops being here, not the night that Ricky Romero avenges the death DFA of Wil Ledezma, no friends... none of that.  Well. actually, both of those things are rather likely to happen, but that's not what I was going to talk about.

Nope, tonight is the long-awaited... nay, much anticipated... no, critically feared return of THE Brian Tallet.  He takes Wil Ledezma's spot on the team of "Lefty who can't get anybody out".  I actually remember defending this idiot once.  Yes, one lefty who throws mid-90's with an ERA of about a billion has been replaced with the lefty who throws mid-80's with an ERA of about a billion.  Granted, Tallet's shittiness, very similar to Ledezma's shittiness, has been almost entirely within the AL East, so Tallet has been shitty against better competition.

Some Brian Tallet "Did you know?" for you, my loyal readers:

• Did you know that Brian Tallet is really fucking awful?
• Did you know that Brian Tallet was once traded for a guy named Bubbie Buzachero, a trade that the Blue Jays undoubtedly lost, despite Buzachero never having made it to the big leagues?
• Did you know that Brian Tallet has an ERA of 8.31, which is way worse than I would do, despite not having played baseball competitively for the last 9 years?
• Did you know that Brian Tallet's career WAR is 0.5, most of which being taken up by various mustaches and sideburns?
• Remember in my last post where I briefly spoke about WPA?  Well instead of WAR, I prefer to use WPA for relievers, due to the context of the stat.  Did you know that Brian Tallet has a career -4.09 WPA, despite being used in fairly low leverage situations for the better part of his entire career?
• Did you know the stench of dog's bowel movements are measured by a metric called "The Brian Tallet scale", due to how dogshit Brian Tallet is?

I beg of you Ricardo Romero-- be good tonight.  We don't want to see Brian Tallet pitch for this team ever again.  We don't wanna see this guy with a huge lead, because he'll just Brad Mills lose it, and we don't wanna see him pitch with a huge deficit, because that means that there's a huge deficit.  Don't even get me started about close-ish games.