Building it up Just to Burn it Back Down

I either quoted The Arcade Fire, Linkin Park, or nobody just now.  That doesn't really matter a whole lot either way-- just needed a title.  Anyway.

Baseball Prospectus gives the Toronto Blue Jays a 3.7% chance at making the playoffs this season.  That is not a very big number.  Sports Club Stats gives them a 0.3% chance.  That's a smaller number.  Cool Standings has them at 2.8%.  That's a number somewhere in between the first two.  ESPN also gives them 2.8%, which is the same number as the last one, which leads me to believe that they have some similarities within their formulae.

Some quick math, for the non-believers.  Last year, division winners won an average of 94.3 games.  In 2011, division winners won 96.6 games. In 2010, 93.3 wins.    Using those three years as a sample certainly isn't exact science by any stretch, especially when we consider the Wild Card, but you get the idea, and it's probably an irrelevant study to go back much further just to narrow down the number that we're looking at.  90 wins probably isn't going to get it done.  Let's call 93 wins the benchmark here, just to be conservative, as long as we know that it doesn't guarantee anything.

The Jays currently sit at 16-24, leaving 122 games to play in the 2013 season.  The Jays would need to go 77-45 down the stretch in order to make it to that 93-win plateau.  That's a .631 winning percentage.  A .630 winning percentage, extrapolated to a full year, is a 102-win season.  That's a big number.  I'm not saying that it's impossible, just that there's somewhere in the 0.3-3.7% likelihood of it happening, and that doesn't consider the injury situation at the moment.  The Jays essentially need to take 2-of-3 in every series for the rest of the season.

It's not entirely out of the question-- playing above .500 against the division, and sweeping the Astros, Twins, Mariners, White Sox and Royals for the rest of the year ought to do it.

Alright.  I'm done humoring you.  This season, for all intents and purposes, is over, barring a miracle that begins really, really soon.  All the talk in the preseason was that the Jays would evaluate their options at the deadline, and be able to add pieces and payroll if it makes sense.  It's probably not going to make sense.  What will likely make sense, and therefore happen, is the selling of assets, not the buying.

Who goes?  Who are the likely partners?  Who are the targets?

***********

We can begin with who won't be traded.  There is still a core here that can compete next year.  Jose Bautista, Edwin Encarancion, Melky Cabrera, Jose Reyes and Brett Lawrie seem pretty locked in to place.  RA Dickey, Brandon Morrow and Mark Buehrle are pretty likely to stick around as well-- Dickey and Morrow are controlled and are (probably) not as bad as their stats to this point in the season would indicate. Buehrle's contract is one of those borderline "unmovable" ones.  I'm sure if someone wants Buehrle, they could pry him loose without a whole lot of effort, but it seems unlikely to me.  Melky Cabrera, JA Happ, and JP Arencibia have some degree of trade value, but all are under control for 2014, and would be entirely reasonable options for a team hoping to contend next season.  Maicer Izturis is signed on for three years (albeit cheaply), and would be a surprise to go anywhere.

The bullpen is made up mostly of young, controllable guys; Delabar, Rogers, Janssen, Santos, Cecil and Loup are all either under contract, or still under team control at least through next season.  All are assets, to a degree, but again, would be of reasonable use for a team looking to contend next year.   Of all the names mentioned so far, Janssen is probably the most likely to be moved, in my view, given the proclivity of certain GM's to overpay for a "proven closer".

***********

That leaves Colby Rasmus, Emilio Bonifacio, Rajai Davis, Adam Lind, Henry Blanco, Mark Derosa and Munenori Kawasaki on the position player side, and Josh Johnson, Ricky Romero, and Darren Oliver as pitchers.

Rasmus looks like a decent candidate to be moved.  Anthony Gose, among others, is waiting in the wings in AAA.  He's shown some life offensively, albeit in the hitter-friendly PCL, to go along with his excellent defense and baserunning value.  He'll probably never hit at a league-average clip, but there's still value there, especially as a CF.  If someone wants to take a flyer on Rasmus, there's definitely a replacement or two kicking around.

Adam Lind, suddenly, has the ability to take a walk.  With no defensive ability, and extreme platoon splits hindering his ability to hit lefty pitching, there's limited trade value, but to a National League team who could use a bench bat or plug-in for a 1B/DH, Lind could be a useful rental player.  We never know who will get injured between now and the deadline.

Bonifacio and Davis are both bench players, but can provide value in their own special ways.  Bonifacio is one of the fastest players in the league, and can play all over the diamond somewhat respectably.  He can pinch-run, provide utility defense, and is a better hitter than most pitchers, which is really useful to a NL team.  Doubtful he'd fetch much, but who knows.  Davis is also fast as shit, but he also hits lefties very well.  Davis will be a free agent after the season, while Boni will be arbitration eligible for the final time.  Pros and cons to both.

As for Muni, Derosa and Blanco, there's probably not much there to move.  Derosa has played well in limited action, and as a 39-year old guy who will probably retire soon, it would be nice to trade him to a contender down the stretch and give him one last shot at a ring.  I'd be jettisoning Blanco before too long if I were in charge, and getting Josh Thole up here.  Muni might get DFA'ed once Jose Reyes returns from injury, but he's shown some respectable on-base skills, especially for a SS, so he might be worth keeping around.  Regardless, nobody is going to pay anything for a light-hitting 32-year old middle infielder.

On to pitchers; the most interesting case is Josh Johnson.  Johnson was a good season away from an $80MM+ contract, but has found himself on the disabled list with arm troubles, hindering his odds at a big multi-year deal greatly.  As such, it's not as likely, or worthwhile, to offer him a qualifying offer at the end of the year in order to obtain draft pick compensation.  If he can recover to something resembling his typical form, he'd be one of the more valuable options on the market at the deadline.  Hard to say what's going to happen, but if AA is in win-now mode, I would expect that he'd make a trade and try to find something useful for the present (i.e. MLB-ready player), rather than for the future (draft pick).

Darren Oliver is in the same boat as Mark Derosa-- he's old, probably ready to retire, but still has some value left in his arm.  May as well flip him to a contender at the deadline as a favor.

Romero has $23MM left on his contract, and is in AAA.  Someone might take him, but only if they can get away with paying him next to nothing.

**********

It may be mid-May, but this season is about as close to over as it can get.  It's probably a little scary, as far as thoughts are concerned, but if things don't get fancy in a real hurry, AA should probably consider getting a headstart on the trade market.  Even if it's not early anymore, it's still early; the trade deadline is still 2.5 months away.  There's still another month or so to get back above .500, which should probably serve as a reasonable barometer of where this team is.  

Teams rarely give up on the year before the all-star break, and all it earns them is a worse draft pick, and now, a smaller draft bonus pool.  There's no use in finishing the year with 78-84 wins, other than the self-respect that you can have for not being the absolute most embarrassing team in baseball, which the Astros have pretty much locked up.

This situation is probably a little bit different-- Reyes will be back soon, and the rotation ERA is sure to improve (hopefully!), so even in the event of a sale of everything other than the 15 names listed at the top (i.e. Rasmus, Oliver, Lind), the bulk of the value is going to come from those 15 guys, and the difference between the tradees and their replacements isn't going to be some vast chasm.

Tank Nation!

Pointing Fingers

Not gonna shit on you, Ricky.  It's not your fault.  A respectable start against a bunch of 19 year olds probably shouldn't have been grounds for a call-up in the first place.

It really is unfair of the Jays organization to send Ricky down to A-ball to get some work done, make one start, and then expect him to be able to take the mound in a pinch, expecting him to eat up a bunch of innings since the bullpen has been overworked.  Mechanical changes don't just happen overnight-- humans don't really work that way.  Muscle-memory, and the like.

Yeah, it was kind of unfortunate that Josh Johnson went down with a triceps injury, and that Mark Buehrle has not been very effective over his first five starts, or that the Jays bullpen has thrown more innings than every team other than the lowly Houston AAAstros.  I guess the Jose Reyes injury compunds those issues, in the sense that the offense is going to suffer in his absence, putting more pressure on the pitching staff.

This team needs starters to go deep in to ballgames.  Bad starts happen to every team, and they've happened a lot to this one in particular.  But Ricky Romero is still an asset.  An asset that is being paid something in the range of $23MM over the next three years, and as recently as one year ago, he was the alternate face of the franchise, next to Jose Bautista.  Perhaps we should treat him a little better.

I really don't think anybody (within their right mind, anyway) had reasonable expectations when it came to Romero, after being called up.  He fucked around with his mechanics in the minors, and made one start, after all.  We should really know better, by now.

We, as an internet baseball community, tend to believe in statistics and pretty much only statistics to quantify any beliefs that we have.  At least that's the stereotype that dinosaurs cast upon us.  Nonsensical statements like "get out of your parents' basement" and "if you actually watched the games, rather than just reading the scoresheet, you'd know that..." are probably a little less common now than they were a few years ago, with the rising popularity of advanced metrics, but they're certainly still out there.  It's just that it's pretty impossible to quantify the impact that leadership, grit, perseverance or confidence have on a team of adult professional athletes over the course of a season.

The Romero situation is one that, regardless of any statistical evidence pointing otherwise (if it exists, somewhere), proves that these players aren't just words with numbers beside them on a boxscore; these are actual humans, with feelings and emotions and brains.  Ricky Romero really shouldn't have been brought up to pitch last week, no matter how good his start in A-ball was (he was probably just brought up because he was the 6th man on the depth chart and was on something resembling regular rest; not because he had a good start in A-ball, but I digress).

The Jays announced this morning that they've DFA'ed Edgar Gonzalez again, and have optioned Ricky Romero to AAA-Buffalo, selecting the contracts of Mickey Storey and Ramon Ortiz to take their places.  The Gonzalez thing, I can live with-- need a fresh arm.  The Ortiz and Storey thing is probably correct too, depending on freshness and availability.  But at this point, those moves are just righting the wrong that was made by calling Romero up to face Seattle this past week.

Romero had a really shitty year in 2012, and started off 2013 by being demoted, after being told all spring that the fifth spot in the rotation was his.  We're now a month in to the year, and he's been demoted again.  I don't know the guy personally, but I'll guess that he didn't really need to be demoted twice in the first month of the year.  Tthese last 14 months have had to be really, really shitty for a guy that was once treated as a face of the franchise.  They don't just make bobbleheads out of nobody.  They don't put nobody on big posters and jerseys, and so on.  They don't give $30MM to nobody.

Ricky Romero is somebody.  He's a somebody with a few issues, as far as pitching is concerned, but this really isn't the way to fix them.

Is Casey Janssen Outsmarting Everybody? (With gifs!)

Probably not.  But let's get our imaginations going anyway, no?

Desmond Jennings struck out in the above still.  He did not swing the bat once.  According to Pitch Trax or whatever the fuck you wanna call that thing on the corner of the screen, there is one pitch inside the strike zone, and four outside of it.  Typically, when a player doesn't swing the bat in a given plate appearance that sees four of five pitches outside the strike zone, that player will saunter to first base.  In this case, Jennings walked back to the bench, shaking his head in disbelief at striking out.

Basically, Casey Janssen has been getting some calls, and it's part of the reason why he's gotten something like 25 straight batters out.  And it wasn't just this at-bat either.  Next hitter was Kelly Johnson:

That's a bad call.

So what's my point?  Well, let's get some pitch f/x up in this shit.  Marty Foster had a horseshit zone Tuesday night, as evidenced here, but it was consistently horseshit, and for both sides.

Is it just possible that Janssen noticed Foster's aggressive zone from the bullpen and decided to exploit that? Let's have a look at several other appearances.

May 6: Mike Everitt has a pretty consistent zone, and does a pretty good job if you consider the loose definition of the strike zone that pitch F/X has, with their typical zones for LHH and RHH.  I want to focus  on LHH zone for this one, specifically, the little shaded zone that is technically a traditional ball, but tends to get called a strike more often than not.  First the zone:

and now Janssen, vs. LHH-- who happens to be Kelly Johnson, again.  Johnson struck out looking, naturally:

Nothing egregious, but nibbling effectively for certain.  When you consider the zone for the rest of the night, those calls are pretty consistent.  If it was a strike on the first pitch, it may as well be a strike on the third and fifth pitches as well, especially if it's been a strike all night long.  And now for a huge gif of the three strikes in question.  Just because.  I've left in examples of body language.  Note not only Johnson's severely rustled jimmies, but also Janssen walking off the mound, very cocksure of what he has just done to a former friend and teammate.

Sweet.

April 15:

Tony Randazzo is pretty consistently wide against lefty hitters, and Janssen gets himself a couple of calls.  First, Randazzo's LHH zone, then Janssen's zone v LHH, with two pretty generous called strikes:

May 10

Last one.  Janssen threw 11 pitches in this outing, and got 7 called strikes.  Good lord.  Dana Demuth's zone against lefties:

Again, pretty stretched out.  Janssen, against Fielder, Martinez and Dirks-- all lefties:

I'll point out that this game was played outdoors, in Detroit, in the rain, in early April.  It was probably fucking cold and the umpire may very well have been ready to just go home.

Janssen has been so effective to this point that he's thrown an average of 12 pitches per appearance, which doesn't exactly lend to a whole lot of data.  Eliminate swings and called strikes that are very clearly good strikes (i.e. takes), and we're getting a little short on evidence either supporting or opposing my theory.

I suppose the absence of certain data is probably a bit glaring.  An umpire with a more conservative zone should theoretically lead to Janssen being slightly more aggressive within the strikezone, but I don't really see that much in the rest of the pitch F/X data for Janssen's appearances.

Ultimately, it's hard to say whether or not Janssen is doing all of this purposely, or if he's just getting a few extra calls here or there.  It's certainly possible that he's seeing some bigger-than-normal zones and is expanding his zone, but I don't think there's any real way of quantifying it for sure.  

I do plan on keeping my eyes peeled, since Janssen is pretty much must-see TV right now.  Considering a perfect game, of which, 23 have ever happened in the majors, is 27 consecutive outs, Janssen is doing something pretty special so far this season.  Janssen has retired 25 straight batters, leading back nearly a month ago.  Yeah, maybe he's getting a bit of help from the umps, but maybe, just maybe, we've got ourselves a nerd with some pinpoint accuracy, a sharp eye from the bullpen, and the wherewithal to exploit an edge.

Go Time: Striving for Excellence

Ricky Romero will head out there tonight with the hopes of extended the Jays win streak to four against the Tampa Bay Rays.  Given that he'll be up against the Rays, I'm sure Danks theory will be in full force.  Here's hoping that the new Ricky Romero isn't the same as the old Ricky Romero, but that Joe Maddon hasn't figured that out.

If you've no idea what I'm talking about, basically Ricky Romero has, and has always had, a reverse platoon-split, getting righties out at a much better clip than lefties.  All kinds of lefties in the Rays lineup, but no Matt Joyce, oddly enough.

About last night now-- another nice little fight back, and JA Happ, aside from having a slight fracture behind his ear, and needing stitches there as well, also happened to tweak his knee, apparently.

Happ says he got stitches and there's a fracture in his skull behind ear, says it's nothing serious. Doc will check knee later. #Bluejays
— Mike Wilner (@Wilnerness590) May 8, 2013

 That's a relief.

Speaking of relief, assuming Happ misses a start or more, something's going to need to happen with the rotation.  Looking at the schedule moving forward, the rotation will continue as normal through the end of this week, with Dickey going tomorrow, then Morrow and Buehrle getting the first two games against Boston on Friday and Saturday.  Sunday will be Happ's spot in the rotation, which could be filled in any number of ways.  The Jays have an offday Monday, and another the following Thursday, so if someone needs to work on short rest, everything else can level itself off after a couple days.

Shy of that, the depth in Buffalo is shoddy at best; Justin Germano, Ramon Ortiz, or Claudio Vargas could be called up for a spot start, but jeeze.  I'd prefer the option of calling up an extra reliever and letting Brad Lincoln go for as long as possible, letting the bullpen cover the whole thing.  It makes sense with the two offdays in the week, even if that reliever happens to be one of the aforementioned Germano, Ortiz or Vargas, using them for mop-up purposes if need be.  Mickey Storey and Joel Carreno are two other options. Carreno has started in the past, and Storey has thrown 17.1IP over 9 appearances in Buffalo, so he can certainly be abused a little bit of needed.

The other options are guys like Sean Nolin or Deck McGuire, but that seems unlikely as well; the former is just off the DL and has made 1 appearance so far this year, the latter is apparently terrible now.

[Update- Edgar Gonzalez has been added to the 40-man and called up.]

Stuff
Andrew Stoeten at DJF is back with the latest "Dear John" letter.  Always classic.  One part in particular is the mentioning of Adam Lind facing Cesar Ramos in a rather important situation last night.  Now, if you'll refer to my twitter, I was rather vocal about pinch hitting Rajai Davis for Lind in that particular spot.  Davis is good against lefties, Lind is not.  Simple enough.

My best guess, and I'm not really sure what's the right move here, is that Davis would have hit for Rasmus and taken over in CF, so as to not burn through the rest of the bench, had Lind not ended the inning.  Mark Derosa had already entered the game by this point, so the only options left other than Davis were Bonifacio and Blanco, neither of whom are very useful at all these days.  By pinch hitting Davis for Lind, you then need to yank Rasmus as well once the inning doesn't end, assuming a strikeout, pop-out, shallow flyout that doesn't score a run, etc.

My only real issue with the whole thing, in hindsight, is that Cesar Ramos must pitch to at least one batter, since he was brought in specifically to face Lind.  We don't know for sure what Joe Maddon would have done had Lind not ended the inning, and Davis pinched for Rasmus, but he probably would have brought in a righty, which not only loses the platoon advantage, but also remove Rasmus' defense at the expense of Rajai's non-Rasmus defense.

Of course, Rajai may have had diarrhea and may not have been available to hit, so it's tough to speak in certainties here.  And the Jays won, so it's all water under the bridge.  Still, had Lind not grounded in to an inning-ending double play, and Rajai came up for Rasmus, I doubt this would have been as big a deal as it was made out to be.

Elsewhere, this is how a human brain processes a 100MPH fastball.  Cool stuff.

Deadspin has a surreal Steve Carlton story.

Anthony Gose did a straight steal of home last night.

Lineups
Jays
Lawrie
Cabrera
Bautista
Edwin
JPA
Davis
Derosa
Izturis
Bonifacio

Romero

Rays
Jennings
Johnson
Zobrist
Longoria
Loney
Escobar
Scott
Lobaton
Fuld

Moore

Go Time: Nine Lives

About last night.  Sweet.  A real nice effort in making the comeback.  It's games like that that make me want to hold out the tiniest glimmer of hope for this team.

After all, we're going to need to see a stretch of baseball akin to nothing we've seen from any team as of yet this year just to get things back to shouting distance of the wild card, let alone the division.  I'm talking a 15-game winning streak, or at least something like 20-of-24.  Those stretches are typically made up of a game or two that probably should have been losses, but weren't.

Look at the Moneyball A's of 2002, who won 22 straight.  I can definitely remember a game late in that streak where Billy Koch blew a save by giving up a 3-run HR in the top of the 9th, only for the offense to bail him out in the bottom of the 9th with three of their own.  Colorado in 2007 were 77-72 with two weeks left in the season, and went ahead and won all but 1 game through the 2nd round of the playoffs, including the tie-breaker to determine the wild card.  They allowed 2 runs in the top of the 13th, only to fight back and score three of their own in the top half.

Sometimes, you just need a little bit of nonsense.

As far as Mark Buehrle is concerned, if you remove the third inning of yesterday's game (I'll stop myself here; we're not going to get in to the habit of cherry-picking innings from games, or reducing our sample sizes), he wasn't nearly as bad as his line would suggest.  6 of 9 hits, and 1 of 2 walks came in that 3rd inning, and all of those games came around to score.  Aside from that, 3 hits and 1 walk over the other 5 innings will do just fine.  Not to sugar-coat, because Buehrle has been ugly so far, yesterday included.  Just saying that this instance was more of a big, ugly, hairy blip, rather than a 3.1IP stinkfest.  Nice job by Oliver, Rogers and Janssen to shut things down from the bullpen.

I'd also like to point out that despite the low batting average, Jose Bautista was on base three times last night, and that the Toronto Blue Jays baseball organization earned a ghastly SEVEN walks last night.

Stuff
Rob Neyer for Baseball Nation analyzes the chances at the two big AL disappointments to this point-- Our own Toronto Blue Jays and the Anaheim Angels.  Unsurprisingly, Neyer gives the Angels better odds, thanks to their schedule.  The Astros are the only team with a worse run differential than the Jays and Angels, and they happen to be in the Angels' division.  The Mariners, also in the AL West, have Joe Saunders pitching semi-regularly.

Jose Reyes is standing on his own feet, apparently.

Shi Davidi says things as well:

Sergio Santos says he's thrown 3 bullpens, expects to pitch in game Thursday. Still feels triceps issue a but, but is strong enough to pitch
— Shi Davidi (@ShiDavidi) May 7, 2013

Dustin McGowan to start rehab stint next week. Seeing good results from weighted ball program.
— Shi Davidi (@ShiDavidi) May 7, 2013

Drew Hutchison to throw live BP in three weeks. Kyle Drabek to start BP next week or week after. Both happy with progress
— Shi Davidi (@ShiDavidi) May 7, 2013

As I've said many times before, if you want more about the weighted ball velocity program, check out Kyle Boddy's site Driveline Baseball.

E60 is about perfect games tonight.  Trailer.

Someone found a copy of Bo Jackson's scouting report.

Lineups
Jays
Lawrie
Melky
Bautista
Edwin
JPA
Lind
Rasmus
Izturis
Muni

Happ

Rays

Jennings
Roberts
Zobrist
Longoria
Scott
Rodriguez
Loney
Molina
Escobar

Hernandez (Fausto Carmona)

Go Time: Not All Bad

Good one.

If only Joe Saunders pitched every night.  Serves him right for not being on the Orioles anymore.  That's how #magic works, idiot.

Stuff
A couple of important things here today.  For starters, and pardon that pun, Josh Johnson is probably out until late May, which sounds like it's farther away than it really is.  Jon Morosi tells us that Johnson will likely miss the next three weeks or so.  That sucks, right?

Sam Miller for Baseball Prospectus give the Jays (and others, but who cares?) a non-zero chance at the playoffs, using the 2012 playoff teams as his example.  Certainly makes some sense, but yeesh.  "Non-zero" wasn't what we were hoping for a month ago.

Blanco tonight, instead of JP, to catch Buehrle.  Let's see if he can figure that one out.  On the bright side, Ben Zobrist gets a night off.

[Update-- Oh.  Well now I feel bad.  Zo is missing tonight's game due to a death in the family.]

Lineups
Jays
Lawrie
Cabrera
Bautista
Edwin
Lind
Rasmus
Izturis
Blanco
Muni

Buehrle

Rays
Jennings
Johnson
Roberts
Longoria
Loney
Rodriguez
Scott
Molina
Fuld

Hellickson

Go Time: Still Alive

Holy crap.  I've been busy.  Work just kept on sneaking up on me and kept happening until like 8:00PM pretty well every night this week, or at least until pretty close to game time.  I assume you all have some other outlet to get caught up on recent Jays news, but if not, you're probably giving me too much credit, and other Jays blogs/websites not enough.

It's Dickey Day in Canada, presented by Scotiabank today.  Here's hoping his back and neck don't have him any grief and that he can get in to the 7th or 8th inning, because this bullpen usage is getting a little absurd.  The Jays have the third most innings thrown by the bullpen so far this year, behind only Houston and Pittsburgh.  They're right in the middle of the pack as far as bullpen ERA is concerned, so it's not that they aren't effective or anything (Casey Janssen's pure awesomeness is probably skewing those numbers towards the positive), it's just that it would be nice to not have to go to the bullpen early and need to use Aaron Loup for two innings every other day.  So yeah, get 'em Dickey.

It was encouraging to see Ricky Romero have a couple nice innings last night.  He appeared to be looking down at his finger after every pitch in the 4th, so I'm wondering if there was a blister or a fingernail problem or something.  I figure they mentioned that on the broadcast, but I was listening to the game on the "Park" setting on MLB.TV (which has got to be one of the most beautiful inventions ever, by the way), so I dunno.

Finally, I'm growing a bit concerned with Melky Cabrera.  The guy was never going to repeat his numbers from the last two years, thanks to some unsustainable babips, but holy shit, does he ever look lost out there right now?  He's striking out a bit more than usual, but he isn't hitting for any power whatsoever, with a .042 ISO.  The scary thing is that there isn't really any difference in the numbers that tend to predict a bounceback-- plate discipline numbers look relatively similar to the last few years, and there's nothing about his batted ball profile that suggests that he's been unlucky.  I'm sure there's a lot of small sample noise in there, but whatever.  He's certainly had a couple of ugly swings this week, so hopefully there's a little adjustment or two to be made.  Maybe I'll go back and look at some videos of last season and see if there's anything that I notice  STEROIDS!