The Jays continue their home series against the Tampa Bay Rays and their non-David Price, non-James Shields pitching, sending staff ace Ramon Ortiz to the hill, hoping to find just one small corner’s worth of pixie dust left in his bag, as he turns 2013 into the first year in which he’s made at least three Major League starts since he was a member of the Minnesota Twins back in 2007.
Uh… fingers crossed? Uh… I dunno. Yunel Escobar, everybody!
Leading off, as always (or usual), it’s today’s edition of the Getting Blanked Podcast– which for the duration of the season will be coming at you daily! We’re not double posting this year, but I’ll be sure to include the link in the first Daily Duce or Game Threat that follows the post going up over at Getting Blanked. Otherwise, you can find the podcast at Getting Blanked on iTunes, get it via the RSS feed we have setup, or like Getting Blanked on Facebook in order to get each day’s podcast straight into your news feed (if we bother to post it). While you’re at it, go ahead and like DJF on Facebook, too.
BlueJays.com tells us that Fred McGriff will represent the Jays at the Rule 4 Draft, which will take place on June 6th.
Not quite the blockbuster that the title makes it sound like, but Tom Maloney of the Globe and Mail writes that trade winds seem to be swirling around the Jays, as they continue to find it difficult to make up ground in the AL East.
Elsewhere from Maloney at the Globe, we hear that Alex Anthopoulos dismisses criticism of John Gibbons, and also get a deconstruction of the season so far, which… yeah.
And, for good measure, one more from Maloney, who looks at the fantastic at-bat Adam Lind had against Jake Odorizzi yesterday.
Interesting stuff from Marc Hulet of FanGraphs, as he wonders openly whether Sean Nolin is the next Jays saviour.
“A piece of paper on Gibby’s desk lists the starting pitchers for the next few games,” tweets Brendan Kennedy of the Star. “For Friday it reads, ‘Jenkins?’ ”
Kenned also tweets that Josh Johnson “will start again in Dunedin on Sat. Gibby says he’ll prob need a 3rd rehab start. ‘But we’ve been known to make some adjustments.’ ”
Speaking of tweets, earlier today @DrewGROF passed along this gruesome bit of news: “Brett Lawrie versus ‘soft’ pitches in 2013: .282 OPS. Oh Pee Ess.”
Think teams haven’t got that message yet? Think again. Gamereax has a nifty GIF of Hiroki Kuroda throwing Lawrie five straight sliders. Ugh.
Yesterday, after hitting a mostly meaningless, yet still somewhat unnerving, ninth inning home run to pull the Rays to within two runs of the Jays, Yunel Escobar made the same “safe” gesture at home plate as he did when he hit a game-tying blast in the seventh inning of a game during the Jays’ last series in Tampa.
Apparently this was a thing?
At least for some people it was. Gregg Zaun and his acolytes, for example:
@gumpscott what do you expect? childish behavior
— Gregg Zaun (@greggzaun) May 20, 2013
A quick Twitter search for “Escobar” and “classless” finds several more tweets (as does any search of Escobar’s name), while Curtis Rush of the Toronto Star used Storify to pick out a few other instances of fans getting upset about it.
Another week, another Griff Bag, another hijacking. Sound about right? Because there’s a new slice of read-submitted insanity up at the Toronto Star, and… much like last week… what else do you really want us to do here on a the first morning of the week? Try to come to grips with how awful the Jays have looked against the effing Yankees this season?
Fuck that. Let’s just let Griff’s readers get under the ol’ skin and watch the magic happen (or not happen, as the case may be).
As always, I have not read any of Griffin’s answers.
If there’s a question you’d like me to answer, email it to askrich@thestar.ca and maybe he’ll select it for a future mail bag. Fingers crossed!
Q. Hi Richard Stoeten,
Been reading your column/blog for years, enjoyed it immensely.
Question for the mailbag:
Is the decline of Ricky Romero unprecedented? In the sense that within the span of two seasons he went from having a 15-win/2.92ERA season in 2011 and in 2013 he has struggled in Single-A Dunedin and after two starts in Buffalo he seems to be overmatched in AAA ball.
How can someone so fundamentally lose the skills and talents that got them to the position to get a $30-million contract as a professional athlete. I know we’ve seen pitchers somewhat unexpectedly fall apart before but it’s mainly been relievers (Gagne, Axford, BJ Ryan, etc).
From a 15-win season to being barely able to strike the kids in A-ball out is mind blowing.
Thanks,
Mike
The Romero thing is undeniably weird, though not unprecedented. The old timers will remind you of Steve Blass, who had five better-than-decent seasons with the Pirates in the late 60s and early 70s, then suddenly, inexplicably forgot how to throw strikes. Recently there have been valuable pitchers like Rick Ankiel, Dontrelle Willis, and Jonathan Sanchez– all of them, like Romero, left-handers, oddly enough– who lost the ability to throw strikes. Granted, that isn’t a huge group for Romero to have seemingly found himself in, but this king of thing does happen (and while Ricky’s ERA and win totals are impressive, those just aren’t good enough metrics to base saying he was better than any of that group on).
Has it really happened to the Jays’ one-time ace, though? For me it’s still too early to tell. Yes, the early returns have been ugly, and I know a lot of fuckfaces out there want desperately for validation of their ignorant knee-jerk thoughts from various points along the way that Romero is finished, but it really is still only less than 20 innings across all levels in 2013.
Plus a brutal Spring Training.
Plus a full season as one of the worst pitchers in all of baseball.
Plus an entire career of not being able to get lefties out, which has probably got to be the biggest concern of all, actually. I don’t think coincidentally, in Romero’s best season, 2010, he faced the lowest single-season percentage of left-handed batters of his career, and had his most success against lefties, though they still hit him to the tune of a .343 wOBA. Twenty-five per cent of the batters he faced that year were lefties, but by the time of his dreadful 2012, the rate had climbed to 32%. Couple that increase with the .390 wOBA left-handers posted against him– which actually isn’t terribly out of line with his career rate, as from 2009 to 2011 lefties put up a .363 wOBA– and you have all the makings of the disaster that we saw.
So, for all the talk about mechanics or confidence, the fact is, regardless of whether he can throw strikes, with the book being out on him, it actually doesn’t sound entirely implausible, assuming that clubs other than the Rays employ managers competent enough to have noticed the splits, that his days as a useful big leaguer truly are over.
But the mechanics, for whatever it’s worth, are new right now, Romero did pitch in 2012 with an elbow that required surgery, and he’s struggled with command problems once before, spending three seasons at Double-A– mostly while being labelled a gigantic J.P. Ricciardi bust– from 2006 to 2008, before turning into a very productive big leaguer.
The Jays owe him $15.6-million for the next two years, plus whatever remains of this year’s $7.5-million, so he’s going to get all the time he’ll need to try and figure himself out. No, he can’t even get minor league hitters out right now, but I would certainly hesitate to just assume that it’s always going to be that way. Time will tell, but even if he does regain the ability to throw strikes, you sort of have to think that his issues against left-handed hitters, now even better known, will make it very difficult to return to the form we once saw.
Hang on, this is an afternoon game? Anthony Gose is up with the Jays for some reason, but not in the lineup. Apparently this is something resembling big news. I don’t know. Happy Bastille Day.
Playing third base!?!??!
Today very well could be the first day of the rest of our lives, as the Jays head into the Bronx needing only *COUGH* a sweep of the division-leading Yankees to get them to *COUGH* four games below .500.
Yes, getting back into the race will be a damn difficult thing, but if the pitching can keep on pitching– and Mark Buehrle is certainly coming off his best performance of the season to date– and the hitting can keep on hitting like it has, why the fuck not? I mean, Vernon Wells can only be the best team in the division’s top hitter and super-utility man for so long, right? RIGHT???!??!?
The Jays don’t necessarily need to keep the good times rolling tonight against the near-mint Big Hirok, but… they kind of do. The lineup still looks like it’s capable, though, with #GibbyTheBest continuing to place Jose Bautista in the two-hole. We shall see…
Well, you shall see, at least. Haven’t decided yet, personally, if Mark Buehrle starts are once again safe to take in, given my condition (my condition, of course, being unease with shitballers and an inability to stop telling people on Twitter to go fuck themselves when they start turning into hopelessly negative fucking insufferable suckholes about goddamn everything).
Leading off, as always (or usual), it’s today’s edition of the Getting Blanked Podcast– which for the duration of the season will be coming at you daily! We’re not double posting this year, but I’ll be sure to include the link in the first Daily Duce or Game Threat that follows the post going up over at Getting Blanked. Otherwise, you can find the podcast at Getting Blanked on iTunes, get it via the RSS feed we have setup, or like Getting Blanked on Facebook in order to get each day’s podcast straight into your news feed (if we bother to post it). While you’re at it, go ahead and like DJF on Facebook, too.
At Getting Blanked, Parkes takes a break from tradition and gives Ten (Not So) Stray Thoughts On A Friday, and tells the story of the ten most influential moments on his fandom, including the retelling of how this blog began, and his turn to the dark side.
Great stuff from John Lott in the National Post, who talks to Brett Lawrie about his hands– specifically, Lawrie’s renewed focus on making sure his hands are in the right place when he’s ready to throw them. Lawrie, for whatever little this is worth, has six hits and a walk in his last four games, including a home run and a pair of doubles.
In another interesting piece, Lott talks to Casey Janssen about the hard work he does game-planning to face certain hitters. Whatever he’s doing, it’s obviously working.
Speaking of closers, Bill Lankhof of the Toronto Sun takes a look at what it takes to be one.
Gregor Chisholm tweets that Dustin McGowan has been moved up to Triple-A after a couple of scoreless performances for Dunedin. No word if Ricky Romero, who walked six in less than four innings yesterday, will be the reciprocal move– and, in fact, it hasn’t been rumoured at all. But… it’s just… y’know…
