Batter's Box Interactive Magazine: Toronto at Oakland, July 4-6

Yesterday's game was obviously a very difficult one for the Jays to even play. The death of a child is an unnatural thing, it violates the basic order of life itself. As young as they are, enough of the Jays have children of their own to sense very, very sharply what Mark Budzinski and his family are experiencing. Parents should not have to bury their children, ever. It's just wrong.

But the games go on. You will have noticed that the team's offense, after its early season scuffles, has come around, and then some. They scored 4.04 runs per game in April and just 3.92 runs per game in May. In June, though, they scored 6.07 runs per game. By now, only the Yankees have outscored them on the season, and the Jays have been steadily closing that gap.

Alas, the pitching went right off the rails in June. The team allowed 4.96 runs per game last month. It's a fifteen team league and only three teams have allowed more opposition runs. And the lack of depth is truly alarming. If anything goes amiss in the rotation - say Gausman isn't ready by Thursday - their best option looks like a 23 year old with 35 innings above AA. It's a concern! I'm not nearly as worried about the bullpen, because relief pitchers grow on trees and Atkins is already beginning to start shaking them to see what might fall into his clutches.

There was some hope that Danny Jansen might begin a rehab stint this week, and maybe even return for the games in Seattle. That is probably a little optimistic - still, it can't happen soon enough. Alejandro Kirk has made truly impressive strides as a defensive player this season, particularly with respect to receiving the ball. And while it doesn't really matter that much in the modern game, his throwing mechanics are also much improved. It speaks very well indeed for both Kirk himself, and the work that he's put in to improve, and for the coaching that has helped him get better (one assumes this is mostly Luis Hurtado.) But Kirk is still extremely inexperienced to be catching at this level. No AL catcher has done as little actual catching. Kirk's got barely 200 pro games behind the plate, and less than 100 of them in the majors. Most AL catchers had played twice that many games behind the plate in the minors before they even made it to the Show. Even Jansen, who is himself one of least experienced AL catchers, spent five seasons in the minors before first seeing the AL in his sixth pro season. Jansen has more games behind the plate in the majors than Kirk does as a pro. And Jansen isn't nearly as experienced as I'd like my catcher to be.

So I would like to say that Kirk is still as green as the grass, because it's true - but then what could I say about Moreno? (I'll just have to think of something.) The part of the game that still needs to grow for both young catchers resides in the dark arts of calling the game. Yes, one of those mysterious components of the game that we have no idea how to measure, and consequently tend to forget actually exists. But it exists, all right. And it's simply not a job you can delegate to the pitchers. Very, very few pitchers call every pitch themselves. They all reside somewhere between the two poles: the Buehrle (put down the sign, I'll throw whatever you call) and the Maddux (put down the sign for what I have already decided to throw next.) Just making good pitches is hard enough, and most pitchers - especially the ones with the least experience - are happy enough to leave much of the thinking to the catcher.

Yes, the catcher can study the scouting report for the other team's hitters, he can discuss all these things between innings with the pitcher and the coaches. He can and he does. But so much of this job still happens in the moment, as the catcher sees what his man's pitches are doing on this day, in this inning, and this at bat - and how the hitters are reacting to them, in the day, in the inning, in the time at bat. It's an equation that's constantly changing, quite literally from pitch to pitch. There's a couple of runners on, a 2-2 count, and you have all agreed that the best pitch to this hitter in this type of situation is a back-door slider. Swell - except the batter is looking for a breaking ball. You have noticed, haven't you? Or maybe he's not, but your guy on the mound has been hanging his slider since he came out of the pen. You've definitely noticed that. So what's next? You need an idea, it needs to be a good one, and you need it right now. And you need your pitcher - who's also noticed that his slider is hanging - to believe you, to trust that you do indeed have an idea of what we can do instead. And you don't get to stop and think about it.

It's the most important part of catcher defense by an order of magnitude. Any measurement of catcher defense that doesn't focus, first and foremost, on this part of the game can, and should, be thrown straight into the dustbin. (And the few methods that actually do attempt to account for it have no recourse but to haul out our old friend, Catcher ERA. Express your enthusiasm for that here.) We're doing our best. We have a much better idea now how much pitch framing helps your man on the mound. Quite a lot. Obviously, catching and throwing the ball is kind of a necessary skill, as is the mobility to chase after pop flies - but this right here. This is the ball game.

Well, Oakland is the worst team in the AL. Despite playing in one of the best pitcher's parks in the league, they allow even more runs than the Blue Jays. They do have a pretty good starting pitcher in Frankie Montas, who's at the top of every contender's wish list, and Paul Blackburn is having a nice season. Neither of those two are scheduled to pitch against the Jays. There's not a whole lot else. They've got two solid position players in RF Ramon Laureano and catcher Sean Murphy. I'd be worried that they were beginning to run Murphy into the ground (two catcher interference calls in the same inning?) except that it hardly matters what they do anyway.

Toronto at Oakland, July 4-6

Monday, July 04 2022 @ 12:45 PM EDT