So now that Vernon has added 2B and 3B to his resume, what will we see this series? SS? C?

Like come on, how can this lineup win any games?


1) CF B.Gardner
2) SS J.Nix
3) 2B R.Cano
4) LF V.Wells
5) DH B.Francisco
6) 1B L.Overbay
7) 3B D.Adams
8) RF I.Suzuki
9) C A.Romine

I mean, I understand that the murderer's row of ex-jays in the 2/4/5/6 spots is unstoppable, but come on now.

The answer is pitching. The Yankees are not scoring more runs than the Jays but they've allowed about one run less per game.

Kuroda looks very good early on, and he has a great track record against Toronto. The Jays probably have very little margin for error tonight.

I don't get it.  Down 3-0, runners on 2nd and 3rd nobody out. Loup on, Delabar warming and nobody else.  Do you really want to have no options other than Delabar if the score is 5-0  going to the 7th?  If so, why do you have 3 low leverage RHPs in the pen?

3-0 against Kuroda tonight was probably already a low-leverage situation.

I agree with that actually.  If Gibbons wanted to give Loup and Delabar work, it would have been better to take Buehrle out earlier.

April 2nd: 1-4 Loss: 3 Passed Balls, 1 Unearned Run, 4 Hits 4 BB. Starter pitched well. Defense was lacking and Offense was woefully inadequate. April 3rd: 2-3 Loss: Oliver 1R/0ER, Santos 1R/ER, 1 Unearned Run, 5 Hits, 4 BB. Starter pitched very well, but not much else went right. Something similar happened April 5,14,16, 20, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, May 2 and 9. These were all winnable games, either or also, Relief, Defense, Offense cost Toronto games when the Starting was good.

I don't think Kuroda is that good, but something was different. I didn't see much, so I don't know if Umpires were giving Kuroda "the NY Strike", or did the Offense revert? I'm unsure whether Buehrle pitches the 7th, but after the first hit, he's pulled, and not for Loup.

Sorry about the double post, chaos ensues when rushing renews.

Looking back it is clear Buehrle had 6 innings in him and no more.  But how to tell?  He was under 100 pitches, just 2 runs allowed, and given this is New York you want to get whatever you can out of your starters.  But the pen was exceptionally well rested and Buehrle has not been the best lately.  The trick is for the Jays to find a way to tell when a pitcher is starting to wear down.  Maybe Buehrle is now a 90 pitch pitcher.  However... when checking the stats before this game for 2013 you see an OPS of 986 from pitches 51 to 75 then it drops to 667 for pitches 76-100 and 429 for beyond 100.  But, again, sample size issues as beyond 100 pitches has occurred for just 7 PA, while the previous two 25 pitch groupings have 51 batters each.  Last year his OPS against jumped to 834 for pitches 76-100 then dropped to 601 for the 35 batters he faced after pitch 100.  Pre-75 he was 717 or less.

Buehrle seems to me to be a 5-6 inning pitcher now.  He is an old 34 it seems and if the pen is rested then yank him ASAP, but if it is a big lead and/or the pen needs rest then push it but try to avoid that as much as possible as odds are the results won't be pretty.

I continue to be unspeakbly frustrated that the damnable Yankees get servicable offense from that roster. It's enough to make me believe that there are, in fact, baseball gods and that their only joy in life is to do things like this to the rest of the league.

Kuroda was excellent last night. We keep hearing how pitchers need power stuff to succeed in the AL East. Power stuff may help but being able to command multiple pitches succeeds at least as well, and Kuroda had excellent command. Much like Casey Janssen he put a lot of pitches exactly where he wanted them. This allowed him to pitch ahead, keep hitters off balance, cause weak contact and his catcher to frame a few for strikes as well.

Buehrle may have been done after six innings but Melky misplayed the first hit of the inning and then Ichiro bunts. If Adams wasn't on base Ichiro probably doesn't bunt and maybe Buehrle has two outs and no one on.

I continue to be unspeakbly frustrated that the damnable Yankees get servicable offense from that roster. It's enough to make me believe that there are, in fact, baseball gods and that their only joy in life is to do things like this to the rest of the league.

I know.  I predicted teh Yankees would be unexplainably good before the season began.  It's just what they do.

It's so typical that the offense scores 0 runs and this thread is dedicated to questioning the timing of Gibby's pull on Buehrle. I wouldn't have wanted to see Buehrle pulled down 2-0 at 90 pitches, and I'm guessing he would've been pretty upset if that was the case. I agree with Gerry that if Melky makes a decent play on the leadoff double by Adams it's very likely an out and the inning would've looked much different. As it is Buehrle had a good fight vs. Romine but I wasn't a fan of the slider Arencibia called for on Buehrle's final pitch; it was flat and up and the rookie hammered it after just missing Buehrle's previous hanging slider.

Melky's inability to move cost the Jays at least twice last night. I wonder how much worse Lind would be out there, and if that would put Lind's back at risk for an injury. If not they might want to strongly consider giving Melky a break from the field to get better. If his bat hadn't gotten hot while Reyes & Rajai are on the DL Cabrera probably would've been placed on there himself.

My point wasn't that.  It was about how roster construction (the 8 man pen) and usage interact.  If you are going to manage the pen as Gibbons did  (and I am not taking issue with that), why would you want 3 low leverage RHPs on the roster?  As I said, it would be nice to have Negrych and Thole up, as they are the kind of hitters who might be able to succeed against Kuroda.  The combination of Anthopoulos' fascination with the "relief pitcher" and Gibbons' conventional approach to overall pitcher usage (giving starters maximum opportunity to win the game) simply does not work.  It does not help that one or both of them is set on the idea of Arencibia as full-time catcher.

Last night's game would have been tough on any view of it.  Kuroda was dealing, and the best that realistically could have been achieved would have been a few more LH hitters taking him up the middle and the other way and maybe getting him out in the 7th inning in a close game. 

Minor point, but I was disappointed by Kawasaki's getting picked off first early in the game. This was clearly a game in which the Jays were going to have to battle, make Kuroda work, minimize mistakes, etc. Did the Jays players not get briefed properly on Kuroda's move? I'm not saying it was a pivotal play, but giving away that out (especially after a tough PA in which Kawasaki, in contrast to Bonifacio's one-pitch out in the preceding PA, made Kuroda throw seven or eight pitches) made Kuroda's life just a bit easier early on, when he was attempting to establish his rhythm and build momentum. After that play, it was smooth sailing all the way for Hiroki.

"....it would be nice to have Negrych and Thole up, as they are the kind of hitters who might be able to succeed against Kuroda...."

Among the hitters who failed against Kuroda yesterday were the following: Bautista, Lawrie, Rasmus, Lind and Arencibia. (Two of those five are LHB.) To suggest that Negrych and Thole would "succeed" better against Kuroda than those five established major-league hitters is to take your love of AAA hitters to a bizarre extreme. Of course you can always say these kinds of speculative things because they are impossible to disprove -- there's always the remote possibility that Thole and Negrych would hit better against Kuroda than anyone in yesterday's lineup -- but it doesn't have the benefit of logic.

Boy.  Thole has been a better hitter than Arencibia against RHP over his MLB career.  Kuroda does better against RHBs than LHBs.  Worse yet, Kuroda has quite good command and is perfectly capable of throwing the ball low and away where Arencibia is vulnerable. Saying that Thole is a better matchup than Arencibia against Kuroda has nothing to do with his AAA line (except the AAA line suggests that he is over the concussion). 

I don't know how Negrych will do.  Maybe he will hit like Jayson Nix or Jarret Hoffpauir did when they were here, but nonetheless I am pretty confident that he will hit better than Bonifacio and Izturis have been doing. 

"....Thole has been a better hitter than Arencibia against RHP over his MLB career..."

You have to reach back to 2011 to make this case, and even then (and in 2010) the difference between JPA and Thole against RHP was fairly marginal. And a lot has changed since 2011, including Thole's concussion.

Nope.  Over their careers, Arencibia is .218/.270/.434 against RHP and Thole is .275/.345/.347.  That includes Thole's concussion season. The club can keep sending out Arencibia 4 days in 5 with his home runs, strikeouts, poor receiving and calling, and so on, or it can move in another direction. 

When a team consistently underperforms, one can blame bad luck/injuries or whatever.  After a while, that gets old and the "luck is the residue of design" saying of Branch Rickey seems to resonate more.

"Over their careers, Arencibia is .218/.270/.434 against RHP and Thole is .275/.345/.347."

What's that in wOBA?

wOBA vs RHP career

Arencibia - .303
Thole - .307

wOBA vs LHP career

Arencibia - .311
Thole - .234