Archive for the ‘Rotation Battles’ Category

McGowan Won’t Be Ready For the Start of the Season

Posted by Andrew Stoeten under Brett Cecil, Dustin McGowan, Injuries, Kyle Drabek, Rotation Battles on Mar 28, 2012

Gregor Chisholm lays the following tweet on us:

Not exactly surprising news, but actually… potentially great news.

No, not because of any sort of newfound ill will towards McGowan and his contract, or his guaranteed rotation spot when healthy, but because it potentially extends the battle for the Jays’ last spot between Brett Cecil and Kyle Drabek.

I don’t think Drabek looked quite as good yesterday against the Yankees as some of the reports on him suggested– getting bailed out of one inning on a great throw to the plate from Colby Rasmus, and having Andruw Jones hit him hard, but foul, in the fourth, after a hard A-Rod double and a walk to Ibanez– but he looked plenty OK. And while I’m well aware that velocity isn’t everything, and that I’m basing this view on scant looks and whatever information has come out of camp, I’d bet on Drabek having better success right now in the big leagues than Brett Cecil.

I don’t know that the Jays will be willing to make the switch by the time McGowan gets back, but anything Drabek can do to show that he’s progressing beyond last year’s disasterfuck is probably a good thing, in terms of letting the club feel confident in pulling the plug on Cecil once he starts repeatedly getting his ass handed to him.

Speaking of, Cecil pitches today, but it’s in a minor league game, in order to hide him from the OriLOLes [note: really?], who he’s scheduled to face early in the season. Ryan Tepera, who is apparently a real thing, gets the start for the Jays Major Leaguers, with eight of the club’s nine Opening Day hitters in the lineup against Baltimore’s Dana Eveland.

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Layin’ Down the Law (Again): Yesterday’s News

Posted by Andrew Stoeten under Dustin McGowan, Eric Thames, Keith Law, Kyle Drabek, Position Battles, Prospecting, Rotation Battles, Travis Snider on Mar 16, 2012

After yesterday’s heavy dose of realism, Jays fans demanded that Keith Law, the obliterator of all their little hopes and dreams, come forth and defend his absurd views on Dustin McGowan!

Or… probably it was just his contract with TSN Radio. Or maybe they just asked.

Either way, KLaw hit the airwaves– the free, public airwaves that I can quote anything from with a clear conscience, I should add– this afternoon and elaborated on what he saw yesterday when he took in the epic Grapefruit League tilt between the Jays and the Astros in Kissimmee.

And, actually, he skipped a lot of the stuff about McGowan. Or… probably I just tuned in a little too late to catch it.

What I did hear was pretty seriously awesome, especially where two the players I’d like to see the Jays not dick around are concerned: Kyle Drabek and Travis Snider.

He also talked Anthony Gose, Travis d’Arnaud, about the back of the rotation in general, and followed up his piece from yesterday with some activity in the comments.

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So… McGowan and Drabek Both Pitched Today

Posted by Andrew Stoeten under Dustin McGowan, Kyle Drabek, Rotation Battles on Mar 15, 2012

Far be it from me to actually give too much of a shit about the ins and outs of every spring training game– especially those with three weeks still to go until Opening Day– but with both Dustin McGowan and Kyle Drabek pitching today, at the very least their performances warrant some scrutiny. Y’know, as much as anybody’s performance does at this point in the spring. Or in a game against the damn hopeless Astros.

ESPN’s Keith Law was at the game and tweeted out some stray observations, including an assertion that McGowan, who pitched first, looked “very ordinary so far.”

That, however, was early on, and by the end of the outing, McGowan had come around.

The Fan’s Mike Wilner echoed the sentiment that McGowan improved as his day went on. “He looked very good after the first inning,” he tweeted, “not so great in the first.” On the day McGowan went three innings, giving up one hit, an unearned run, walking one and striking out three, which on the whole is pretty successful. However, he threw 46 pitches, 27 for strikes, according to Wilner. That rate is close to the percentage of strikes he threw in his 21 innings in the Majors last year, which I think we can agree simply isn’t going to cut it– however, we’re talking about such small sample sizes here that just an extra strike or two one way or the other changes the way the rate looks pretty significantly. Still, it’s hardly doom and gloom, and any day that McGowan finishes where he’s still healthy remains, at this point, a pretty damn good day.

Not only that, Richard Griffin of the Toronto Star points out that McGowan threw a bullpen session between today’s start and his previous one, the first time he’s been able to do so since since 2008.

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So… What Was Cecil’s Velocity?

Posted by Andrew Stoeten under Brett Cecil, Rotation Battles on Mar 14, 2012

For all the ballyhoo about Brett Cecil’s velocity this spring, I figured that after yesterday’s start against the Twins we’d have some new data to scrutinize. But damn it if I haven’t been looking all over the place to find some information on where Cecil’s fastball was sitting and coming up empty.

Now, I’m no fucking Geeves here, but all my searching has turned up is this single tweet about a Jerry Howarth comment from friend (and occasional foe) @NorthYorkJays:

So… there was a stadium gun?

But… wait, was Howarth even at Cecil’s start yesterday? Because I was only able to listen to the shitty Twins feed on MLB.com. And wasn’t the club’s entire media horde over at the maple circle jerk at Al Lang field?

I don’t know. But I find it more than a little bit curious that the main question any right-thinking fan would have wanted answered yesterday– where Cecil’s velocity is at– seems to have gone unanswered, except for a comment from Jerry, buried in the endless stream of live radio.

Unanswered, that is, as far as me and any Google or Twitter search for “Brett Cecil” and “fastball,” or “velocity,” or the numbers 86 through 90, is concerned.

I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist– and Occam’s razor would suggest I’m probably just doing a shit job of searching– but… I don’t know. It’s weird. Isn’t it? And very obvious why the club would prefer that fans weren’t hanging on every pitch of every Cecil start to see what the radar gun says.

Which isn’t to say that fans should want to scrutinize a pitcher’s velocity too heavily at this point in camp, it’s just odd that when they’d legitimately want to, they seemingly can’t. Did the media folk simply decide that the Canada wank was a better, more sellable story? Perhaps it’s as simple as that.

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Think Floyd: Pitcher at the Gates of Dawn

Posted by Andrew Stoeten under Brett Cecil, Gavin Floyd, Rotation Battles on Mar 13, 2012

Like a Syd Barrett acid trip gone into “Interstellar Overdrive” (OK, I’ll stop), this Gavin Floyd business refuses to subside, with my ‘Merkin friend, Scott Merkin of WhiteSox.com contacting ChiSox GM Kenny Williams for a tasty non-denial denial.

“I am not looking to move him,” Williams said in response to an email. Well then, I guess that’s settled, huh?

Meanwhile, Gregor Chisholm of BlueJays.com debunks the innuendo at his North of the Border blog with some exasperation. “Why this is actually news, I’m not sure,” he writes, “but since every time one of these reports surface south of the border it garners a lot of attention it becomes necessary for the Toronto media to respond in some way.”

Chisholm, quite fucking rightly, explains that “the fact that these reports are coming out now should suggest nothing other than that Anthopoulos is once again doing his due diligence.”

He feels that the rotation is essentially set– with both management’s and John Farrell’s love of Henderson Alvarez cementing his spot, and Dustin McGowan’s lack of options cementing his, leaving Brett Cecil as the biggest question mark, with Kyle Drabek somewhere behind him. Beyond that the Jays depth is mostly in terms of prospects, who might not be ready to help if injury or poor performance derails one of the main six. “Anthopoulos will continue to monitor the market for another starter because it’s just the smart thing to do,” Chisholm writes, “but pulling the trigger on a deal when there’s still three weeks to go until Spring Training is another matter entirely.”

Superficially the Floyd stuff maybe fits in with what we’ve been hearing out of Dunedin, but the rumours of Brett Cecil’s demise have surely been exaggerated. Yes, the velocity in his first spring start wasn’t where anybody wanted it to be, but it’s too soon to say it’s definitely going to say that way, and the Jays will probably give him an excess of rope this spring, because, as Gregor points out, they were quite pleased with the dedication he showed over the winter, after coming to camp having lost 35 pounds.

Cecil starts this afternoon in a split squad game against the Twins, according to the AP. Should be interesting…

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