With their starting rotation finally completely intact, the Blue Jays march into the oppressive, focus-shattering, jersey-melting Kansas City heat, where the Royals have won six of their last seven. The good news is that all four games are night games. The bad news is that the forecast calls for four straight highs above 100 degrees...
Tonight, Excelsior Springs homeboy Shaun Marcum comes home and faces the dreaded Gil Meche. Gilgamesh has been exactly what the Royals figured they were getting when they gave him A.J. Burnett money during the offseason: a legitimately above-average #2 starter in the American League. His 26.2 VORP puts him around 20th among AL starters, and the peripheral stats suggest that the gods have been entirely fair in awarding him a 3.96 ERA to this point. (One of the starters ahead of him in the VORP rankings is Excelsior Springs homeboy Shaun Marcum, with 27.0...)
Meche throws hard. His lively fastball lights up the gun around 94, and he's done a very good job of keeping it down in the zone this year. He must continue to do so - this has been one of the biggest factors in his making the Royals' front office look good. In the past, Meche has been a flyball pitcher, with varying degrees of extremeness (36.8%, 36.8%, 38.9%, 43.1%). This year he's actually been a groundballer (48.6%). Dayton Moore deserves some praise for seeing last year's average-ish figure as a trend rather than an outlier. Meche's improved fastball command has also seen his K/BB ratio rise to a career-high 2.43. Anyone who can combine a solid figure like that with solid groundball tendencies is going to be a tough pitcher. It'll be interesting to see whether those peripherals are for real, or if this is just an all-around career year for the 28-year-old Meche.
Meche's #1 out pitch is a dirty knucklecurve that sits around 80 and overpowers righties and lefties alike. It's a strikeout weapon on its own, but Meche also has the ability to pump high fastballs by hitters or get them with his moving changeup. He'll break out a slider once in a while to keep hitters honest, but the other three pitches are his bread and butter.
He was lit up by the Yankees in his last start, allowing 6 runs in 4 innings while walking 5 and striking out 2. His last three starts have all been losses, so he'll really be looking to get back into the win column tonight. But two of those starts came against the Yanks and the other saw him allow 2 runs in 7 innings to the Twins but get bested by Scott Baker. Alex Rios is 5-6 with two doubles, a triple, a walk and 0 strikeouts against Meche. Vernon Wells has three homers.
Saturday, slight 23-year-old righthander Leo Nunez (who turns 24 Tuesday) takes to the bump in his third start for the Royals. Since he's an outta-nowhere scrawny guy without the good face - he was a relief pitcher in the minors last year and started this year in that role, too - he has my unqualified support once the Jays are done with him. Nunez has taken a giant leap forward this year. Baseball America didn't even list him among the Royals' top 30 prospects before the season, but he posted a 0.87 ERA at AA and 2.74 at AAA (to go with a near-4 K/BB in five appearances), which prompted the Royals to turn him loose as their #5 starter. Hey, nothing to lose, right? If there is anything to lose, Nunez still has it - he's pitched 14 innings in 2 starts and a mop-up appearance and put up a nifty 1.93 ERA.
Nunez was going to be traded to the A's for Milton Bradley, but the trade was voided when Bradley was discovered to have an oblique injury.
Nunez has a frantic demeanor. He works very quickly with no runners on base, though he'll slow down occasionally for crucial pitches. His eyes give the impression that he's in some kind of deep trance. His delivery is half Shaun Marcum and half Sendy Rleal - it looks effortless until he you realize he's falling off the mound. His fastball sits around 92 or 93 and has noticeable life to it, running in on righty hitters when it's really working well. His offspeed weapons of choice are a slider that breaks on two planes but is tricky to control, as well as a changeup. He tends to stay away from the slider against lefties and the changeup against righties, which makes him effectively a two-pitch pitcher most of the time. He has a couple of problems which haven't manifested themselves yet in the majors but the Blue Jays seem pretty qualified to expose. One, he leaves the fastball up a lot. He was a serious flyball pitcher in the minors, and in his short stay in the majors he's put up a 25.9% groundball rate which would make Kei Igawa giggle hysterically. And two, his reliever-sized arsenal of pitches means that hitters will probably start to figure him out as the game goes on. In his last start, in which he lasted six innings against the Rangers, Nunez came out in full-bore strike mode, pitching to contact to try to keep his offspeed stuff under wraps as long as possible. It worked, as he pitched six scoreless innings. Nunez was probably aided a little by the fact that the game took place in suffocating 100-degree heat which probably pushed hitters to get their at-bats over with quickly.
Sunday, it's 26-year-old AL Jason Marquis Cup contender Brian Bannister, a flyballer who has enjoyed tremendous success despite not being particularly good at anything except avoiding hits. OK, that's a bit unfair. But he's a flyball pitcher with a very low strikeout rate and a solid walk rate who's given up fewer homers than he probably 'should' have.
Bannister is a smart cookie. His bag of tricks isn't overpowering - he has a 91 fastball, a cutter which is probably his money pitch, a slider, a curve, and a circle change which he perfected during a rehab stint last year, according to my trusty Baseball America prospect annual. But he lists Paul Byrd as a guy he'd like to emulate for his stupid-like-a-fox pitching style. Like Byrd, even if Bannister's not getting his offspeed stuff over for strikes, he's willing to pitch 'backwards' and prides himself on staying out of patterns. He has excellent composure, according to the Twins announcers who have seen him often this year, and he has confidence in all of his pitches: "One advantage is to have four different pitches and be able to go to any one of them any time. It gives you a lot of weapons and you kind of shape-shift throughout the game. And all of a sudden you're going to throw four curveballs and the guy is like, 'He's never done that before.' And that's part of it." I think Bannister is going to improve, even though his ERA will almost certainly go up in the near future.
No current Blue Jay has faced Bannister in the major leagues. Lefties have fared well against him - .263/.332/.423, 25 K, 18 BB - while righties have been stifled: .218/.256/.350, 33 K, 11 BB. This probably suggests that his changeup isn't quite there yet. Hopefully John Gibbons is aware of this and doesn't make the lineup too righty-heavy. It might be a good day to start Ray Olmedo.
Monday night, the Jays will send one of Roy Halladay, Jesse Litsch and Josh Towers to the hill. Since tonight's game is the first of 20 in 20 nights for the Jays, there is no need to worry about trying to set up the #5 slot in the rotation to land on an offday. Doc pitches against Baltimore and at LA of A and Oakland in the three subsequent starts regardless of when he takes this turn. The question is whether the Jays would rather have him face the Royals, or let Litsch or Towers face KC and then have Doc take on 6-0 southpaw Joe Saunders on Tuesday instead. Personally, I'd send Doc out Monday and let the Angels get a taste of Litsch instead. The Angels are the kind of speed-happy team that can spoil even the most brilliant Doc outing with a 3-2 win behind three cheapo smallball runs, and the Royals have horrendous career numbers against Halladay. Mike Sweeney, who's injured, is .152/.200/.303 with 7 strikeouts and 2 walks in 35 PA. This gives him a higher OPS against Doc than the rest of the current roster combined.
Whoever the Jays throw out there will be opposed by lefthander Odalis Perez. Although many mediocre lefties are practically guaranteed wins for the Jays, Perez isn't your average mediocre lefty, though his high-80s fastball and reputation for being 'crafty' might lead one to believe otherwise. Perez doesn't throw a lot of straight-up fastballs. He sustains small platoon splits because his two best pitches are a mid-80s cutter and a changeup, both of which are more effective against righties than lefties. He leans very heavily on the changeup, especially aganst righties, and throws it for strikes often. As a crafty lefty, he also possesses breaking stuff - a slider to keep lefties off the cutter, and a curveball to keep them off the slider.
The current Jays have underwhelming numbers against Perez. Lyle Overbay is 2-16 with 0 walks and 8 strikeouts. Frank Thomas is 3-4 with a jack and Reed Johnson is 3-5, but everyone else is a lot closer to Overbay than to those two.
The Blue Jays need to slap all four starters around, because the Royals have a very strong bullpen. (Really!) Closer Joakim "Boso Chulo" Soria was an inspired Rule 5 pick - he's been amazing. He's overpowered hitters primarily with his fastball and slider, but he's got numerous secret weapons that might portend a career as a starter. "Slugger" John Buck gives the scouting report on Soria: "It's hard to pick him up. His ball has a natural cut to it. Not as much as [Rafael] Soriano but it does have a cut to it. That's just his natural fastball. He has a great slider and curveball and can throw his change-up on any count. You have to kind of speed up your bat to get the head up to hit the cutter and, all of a sudden, he throws a changeup and it makes it difficult -- sitting in-between those two is a tough place to be as a hitter." Soria's frequent card-playing partner, Joel Peralta, says Soria has a natural stage presence and charisma to him: "Everybody likes him. He tells a lot of jokes in Spanish. He told two or three a day in Spring Training. Some of them were stupid but the way he told them was funny."
What's striking about this Royals pen is how deep it is. Peralta isn't the nominal setup man, but he throws in the mid-90s with a nasty slider. He has a changeup as a show pitch, but I remember seeing him make Manny Ramirez freeze up on a 1-2 change for a K in the Royals' season opener, so sit slider at your own risk. Then there's David Riske, who can also get into the mid-90s and finishes hitters with an overpowering change. Then there's Jimmy Gobble, a classic trashballing lefty specialist who registed 36 strikeouts to 3 walks against lefties last year (and 28/10 this year, which is definitely serviceable).
Then there's the other breakout star of the pen, Zack Greinke, who has seen his fastball hit triple digits since being converted to a relief pitcher and prompted Buddy Bell to compare him to Justin Verlander. Greinke says he likes how pitching out of the pen lets him forget about efficiency, which ironically has made him more efficient: "I have been getting them out with the first pitch instead of the last pitch. I am using my breaking ball more early in the count than I was in the past, because I probably throw that easier for strikes than I throw my fastball for strikes." Greinke has a 3.94 ERA and 49 strikeouts to 14 walks in 48 innings. As a starter, hitters hit him .338/.390/.579; as a reliever, he's holding them to .241/.297/.351.
First baseman Ryan Shealy has been rehabbing a hamstring strain. He was recalled from his rehab stint in AAA and may join the team this weekend, depending on how a physical examination goes. If he does, he'll likely steal hot-hitting utilityman Ross Gload's spot in the batting order.
Joey Renard Gathright, who can jump over a car, made a wall-slamming catch on Tuesday (second video). He's hit .354 out of the 8-hole with the Royals and will probably stick around on the roster when Mike Sweeney returns.
Since June 4, Alex Gordon has hit .288/.328/.454 with five homers. He's not going anywhere.
Tuesday's game was suspended for 36 minutes because of a power outage near Kauffman Stadium.
21-year-old Billy Butler (video) is the Royals' DH of the future who has a decent shot at being a career .300 hitter. He has a remarkable ability to go with the ball wherever the pitcher gives it to him and bash liners to all fields. Here is his spray chart for 2007 (click on 'all' to actually see the dots).
And yesterday's 1-0 win behind Kyle Davies was Buddy Bell's 500th career victory.
The Credit Section: All offensive stats, pitches per PA for pitchers and league average stats are from the Hardball Times. Pitchers' stats and leverage indices are from Fangraphs. Minor-league stats are from Minor League Splits and First Inning. K% and BB% are strikeouts and walks as a percentage of plate appearances; GB% + LD% + FB% = 100.
Tonight, Excelsior Springs homeboy Shaun Marcum comes home and faces the dreaded Gil Meche. Gilgamesh has been exactly what the Royals figured they were getting when they gave him A.J. Burnett money during the offseason: a legitimately above-average #2 starter in the American League. His 26.2 VORP puts him around 20th among AL starters, and the peripheral stats suggest that the gods have been entirely fair in awarding him a 3.96 ERA to this point. (One of the starters ahead of him in the VORP rankings is Excelsior Springs homeboy Shaun Marcum, with 27.0...)
Meche throws hard. His lively fastball lights up the gun around 94, and he's done a very good job of keeping it down in the zone this year. He must continue to do so - this has been one of the biggest factors in his making the Royals' front office look good. In the past, Meche has been a flyball pitcher, with varying degrees of extremeness (36.8%, 36.8%, 38.9%, 43.1%). This year he's actually been a groundballer (48.6%). Dayton Moore deserves some praise for seeing last year's average-ish figure as a trend rather than an outlier. Meche's improved fastball command has also seen his K/BB ratio rise to a career-high 2.43. Anyone who can combine a solid figure like that with solid groundball tendencies is going to be a tough pitcher. It'll be interesting to see whether those peripherals are for real, or if this is just an all-around career year for the 28-year-old Meche.
Meche's #1 out pitch is a dirty knucklecurve that sits around 80 and overpowers righties and lefties alike. It's a strikeout weapon on its own, but Meche also has the ability to pump high fastballs by hitters or get them with his moving changeup. He'll break out a slider once in a while to keep hitters honest, but the other three pitches are his bread and butter.
He was lit up by the Yankees in his last start, allowing 6 runs in 4 innings while walking 5 and striking out 2. His last three starts have all been losses, so he'll really be looking to get back into the win column tonight. But two of those starts came against the Yanks and the other saw him allow 2 runs in 7 innings to the Twins but get bested by Scott Baker. Alex Rios is 5-6 with two doubles, a triple, a walk and 0 strikeouts against Meche. Vernon Wells has three homers.
Saturday, slight 23-year-old righthander Leo Nunez (who turns 24 Tuesday) takes to the bump in his third start for the Royals. Since he's an outta-nowhere scrawny guy without the good face - he was a relief pitcher in the minors last year and started this year in that role, too - he has my unqualified support once the Jays are done with him. Nunez has taken a giant leap forward this year. Baseball America didn't even list him among the Royals' top 30 prospects before the season, but he posted a 0.87 ERA at AA and 2.74 at AAA (to go with a near-4 K/BB in five appearances), which prompted the Royals to turn him loose as their #5 starter. Hey, nothing to lose, right? If there is anything to lose, Nunez still has it - he's pitched 14 innings in 2 starts and a mop-up appearance and put up a nifty 1.93 ERA.
Nunez was going to be traded to the A's for Milton Bradley, but the trade was voided when Bradley was discovered to have an oblique injury.
Nunez has a frantic demeanor. He works very quickly with no runners on base, though he'll slow down occasionally for crucial pitches. His eyes give the impression that he's in some kind of deep trance. His delivery is half Shaun Marcum and half Sendy Rleal - it looks effortless until he you realize he's falling off the mound. His fastball sits around 92 or 93 and has noticeable life to it, running in on righty hitters when it's really working well. His offspeed weapons of choice are a slider that breaks on two planes but is tricky to control, as well as a changeup. He tends to stay away from the slider against lefties and the changeup against righties, which makes him effectively a two-pitch pitcher most of the time. He has a couple of problems which haven't manifested themselves yet in the majors but the Blue Jays seem pretty qualified to expose. One, he leaves the fastball up a lot. He was a serious flyball pitcher in the minors, and in his short stay in the majors he's put up a 25.9% groundball rate which would make Kei Igawa giggle hysterically. And two, his reliever-sized arsenal of pitches means that hitters will probably start to figure him out as the game goes on. In his last start, in which he lasted six innings against the Rangers, Nunez came out in full-bore strike mode, pitching to contact to try to keep his offspeed stuff under wraps as long as possible. It worked, as he pitched six scoreless innings. Nunez was probably aided a little by the fact that the game took place in suffocating 100-degree heat which probably pushed hitters to get their at-bats over with quickly.
Sunday, it's 26-year-old AL Jason Marquis Cup contender Brian Bannister, a flyballer who has enjoyed tremendous success despite not being particularly good at anything except avoiding hits. OK, that's a bit unfair. But he's a flyball pitcher with a very low strikeout rate and a solid walk rate who's given up fewer homers than he probably 'should' have.
Bannister is a smart cookie. His bag of tricks isn't overpowering - he has a 91 fastball, a cutter which is probably his money pitch, a slider, a curve, and a circle change which he perfected during a rehab stint last year, according to my trusty Baseball America prospect annual. But he lists Paul Byrd as a guy he'd like to emulate for his stupid-like-a-fox pitching style. Like Byrd, even if Bannister's not getting his offspeed stuff over for strikes, he's willing to pitch 'backwards' and prides himself on staying out of patterns. He has excellent composure, according to the Twins announcers who have seen him often this year, and he has confidence in all of his pitches: "One advantage is to have four different pitches and be able to go to any one of them any time. It gives you a lot of weapons and you kind of shape-shift throughout the game. And all of a sudden you're going to throw four curveballs and the guy is like, 'He's never done that before.' And that's part of it." I think Bannister is going to improve, even though his ERA will almost certainly go up in the near future.
No current Blue Jay has faced Bannister in the major leagues. Lefties have fared well against him - .263/.332/.423, 25 K, 18 BB - while righties have been stifled: .218/.256/.350, 33 K, 11 BB. This probably suggests that his changeup isn't quite there yet. Hopefully John Gibbons is aware of this and doesn't make the lineup too righty-heavy. It might be a good day to start Ray Olmedo.
Monday night, the Jays will send one of Roy Halladay, Jesse Litsch and Josh Towers to the hill. Since tonight's game is the first of 20 in 20 nights for the Jays, there is no need to worry about trying to set up the #5 slot in the rotation to land on an offday. Doc pitches against Baltimore and at LA of A and Oakland in the three subsequent starts regardless of when he takes this turn. The question is whether the Jays would rather have him face the Royals, or let Litsch or Towers face KC and then have Doc take on 6-0 southpaw Joe Saunders on Tuesday instead. Personally, I'd send Doc out Monday and let the Angels get a taste of Litsch instead. The Angels are the kind of speed-happy team that can spoil even the most brilliant Doc outing with a 3-2 win behind three cheapo smallball runs, and the Royals have horrendous career numbers against Halladay. Mike Sweeney, who's injured, is .152/.200/.303 with 7 strikeouts and 2 walks in 35 PA. This gives him a higher OPS against Doc than the rest of the current roster combined.
Whoever the Jays throw out there will be opposed by lefthander Odalis Perez. Although many mediocre lefties are practically guaranteed wins for the Jays, Perez isn't your average mediocre lefty, though his high-80s fastball and reputation for being 'crafty' might lead one to believe otherwise. Perez doesn't throw a lot of straight-up fastballs. He sustains small platoon splits because his two best pitches are a mid-80s cutter and a changeup, both of which are more effective against righties than lefties. He leans very heavily on the changeup, especially aganst righties, and throws it for strikes often. As a crafty lefty, he also possesses breaking stuff - a slider to keep lefties off the cutter, and a curveball to keep them off the slider.
The current Jays have underwhelming numbers against Perez. Lyle Overbay is 2-16 with 0 walks and 8 strikeouts. Frank Thomas is 3-4 with a jack and Reed Johnson is 3-5, but everyone else is a lot closer to Overbay than to those two.
The Blue Jays need to slap all four starters around, because the Royals have a very strong bullpen. (Really!) Closer Joakim "Boso Chulo" Soria was an inspired Rule 5 pick - he's been amazing. He's overpowered hitters primarily with his fastball and slider, but he's got numerous secret weapons that might portend a career as a starter. "Slugger" John Buck gives the scouting report on Soria: "It's hard to pick him up. His ball has a natural cut to it. Not as much as [Rafael] Soriano but it does have a cut to it. That's just his natural fastball. He has a great slider and curveball and can throw his change-up on any count. You have to kind of speed up your bat to get the head up to hit the cutter and, all of a sudden, he throws a changeup and it makes it difficult -- sitting in-between those two is a tough place to be as a hitter." Soria's frequent card-playing partner, Joel Peralta, says Soria has a natural stage presence and charisma to him: "Everybody likes him. He tells a lot of jokes in Spanish. He told two or three a day in Spring Training. Some of them were stupid but the way he told them was funny."
What's striking about this Royals pen is how deep it is. Peralta isn't the nominal setup man, but he throws in the mid-90s with a nasty slider. He has a changeup as a show pitch, but I remember seeing him make Manny Ramirez freeze up on a 1-2 change for a K in the Royals' season opener, so sit slider at your own risk. Then there's David Riske, who can also get into the mid-90s and finishes hitters with an overpowering change. Then there's Jimmy Gobble, a classic trashballing lefty specialist who registed 36 strikeouts to 3 walks against lefties last year (and 28/10 this year, which is definitely serviceable).
Then there's the other breakout star of the pen, Zack Greinke, who has seen his fastball hit triple digits since being converted to a relief pitcher and prompted Buddy Bell to compare him to Justin Verlander. Greinke says he likes how pitching out of the pen lets him forget about efficiency, which ironically has made him more efficient: "I have been getting them out with the first pitch instead of the last pitch. I am using my breaking ball more early in the count than I was in the past, because I probably throw that easier for strikes than I throw my fastball for strikes." Greinke has a 3.94 ERA and 49 strikeouts to 14 walks in 48 innings. As a starter, hitters hit him .338/.390/.579; as a reliever, he's holding them to .241/.297/.351.
First baseman Ryan Shealy has been rehabbing a hamstring strain. He was recalled from his rehab stint in AAA and may join the team this weekend, depending on how a physical examination goes. If he does, he'll likely steal hot-hitting utilityman Ross Gload's spot in the batting order.
Joey Renard Gathright, who can jump over a car, made a wall-slamming catch on Tuesday (second video). He's hit .354 out of the 8-hole with the Royals and will probably stick around on the roster when Mike Sweeney returns.
Since June 4, Alex Gordon has hit .288/.328/.454 with five homers. He's not going anywhere.
Tuesday's game was suspended for 36 minutes because of a power outage near Kauffman Stadium.
21-year-old Billy Butler (video) is the Royals' DH of the future who has a decent shot at being a career .300 hitter. He has a remarkable ability to go with the ball wherever the pitcher gives it to him and bash liners to all fields. Here is his spray chart for 2007 (click on 'all' to actually see the dots).
And yesterday's 1-0 win behind Kyle Davies was Buddy Bell's 500th career victory.
The Credit Section: All offensive stats, pitches per PA for pitchers and league average stats are from the Hardball Times. Pitchers' stats and leverage indices are from Fangraphs. Minor-league stats are from Minor League Splits and First Inning. K% and BB% are strikeouts and walks as a percentage of plate appearances; GB% + LD% + FB% = 100.
