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.
UPDATE: POSTPONED
There will be a battle of initials and aces this afternoon, weather permitting. The Blue Jays will send R.A. Dickey to the mound while the Yankees counter with C.C. Sabathia. Rain falls in NYC, so we may have to wait for baseball today.
This can’t get any worse, right?
Big Hirok happens. Dreams of climbing to four games below .500 fell by the wayside on account of the Blue Jays getting owned by Hiroki Kuroda last night, which isn’t all that surprising seeing how Big Hirok pretty much owns everyone. Thus, here we are putting our faith in the rested back of Brandon Morrow as he’s set to face David Phelps and the Yankees in game No. 2.
I gotta say, Mark Buehrle wasn’t entirely shitty last night. I mean, we could be looking at a 4-0 loss as opposed to a 5-0 loss had Melky Cabrera not resembled a drunk bison roaming around the outfield while Brett Gardner stretched a maybe-double into a triple. Anyway, that’s enough about last night.
Morrow is coming off some extra rest due to a nagging back injury, but his last start was rather promising considering he made into this thing they call the eighth inning. Rarely charted territory for the 2013 Blue Jays starting staff.
The shitbags counter with Phelps. The right-hander has made three consecutive starts after beginning the season as a reliever. He’s nothing to scoff at, but he ain’t Hiroki fucking Kuroda either. How ’bout some bats today, ok?
