Opposing pitchers can't keep Eric Sogard off the bases. They can only hope to keep him in the ballpark.

Yes Sogard is a hitting machine:). Also on the plus side, Tellez looks much better defensively than last year.

That play in LF definitely didn’t look as bad as last night’s but I was surprised that it wasn’t caught. You do need to be in the park to see where Hernandez started and the jump he got to assess how bad the play was. You have a better shot at OF assists if you let everything fall in front of you first :). (Just a joke)

Terrific outing for Thornton thus far.

You can't send a healthy Galvis on that play, let alone Galvis with a sore hamstring. That single was so sharply hit that I don't even think most speedsters could have realistically scored.

I know how the Jays are struggling to score, but that was obviously the wrong call.

100% agree. It’s ok to be aggressive in that situation and send him when the chance of success is less than 50%, but that was “remote chance of success” territory.

After Teoscar’s 0/4 and Smith Jr.’s 2/4 today, Teoscar is running about 300 points of OPS behind the Baltimore outfielder. With Alford struggling, the Jays are currently in need of some quality outfield candidates for the next few years.

Trent Thorton now has a 4.08 ERA, 4.00 FIP and a 3.93 xFIP with solid strong K/9 and BB/9 rates. He has a 0.337 wOBA against a 0.349 xwOBA so he has been a tad bit lucky, but he looks generally like a mid rotation piece now.

Thorton is young and is still figuring things out at this level.
He has a good fastball, a cutter, a changeup and that nice curveball.
Thorton not recognizing Maile calling for a pitch out was funny.
There's no way he could have pitched a full 9 inning no-hitter, so I'm less concerned about the ball dropping. There was a risk of collision there and that's the worst possible outcome.

I think that closes the book on Sanchez's commentary until the next time he takes the mound.
Taking  Pannone out of the pen is going to sting a bit, but nobody will miss Hanson pinch running for Guerrero.

I was kind of hoping they would use an opener for Pannone, given how well hes pitched out of the pen it might help him.

I find the following interesting:

Lineup:
Smoak, Grichuk, Mckinney, first round picks.
Sogard: 2nd round.
Jansen: 10th round.
Tellez: 30th round.

Bench:
Maile: 8th round.
Drury: 12th round.


Rotation:
Stroman, Sanchez, Buchholtz: first round.
Thornton: 5th round.

Bullpen:
Hudson, Gaviglio: 5th round.
Giles: 7th round.
Panonne, DereK Law: 9th round
Mayza: 12th round
Tepera: 19th round
Biagini: 26th round.

so I'm less concerned about the ball dropping. There was a risk of collision there and that's the worst possible outcome.

Brought back memories of this:

"Troy Tulowitzki didn’t hear Kevin Pillar call for the ball. Pillar didn’t see Tulowitzki wave him off. Each kept his eyes skyward. Pillar was running hard. He did not see Tulowitzki in his path."

It is annoying to see an article saying that the bunt 'worked'.

They didn't win because of the bunt. They won because of the error.

As much as it pains me to admit, there is a benefit to smallball of pressuring the defense/pitcher that is not really accounted for very well by analytics.

A lots of hitters are very poor bunters and a lot of pitchers are very bad fielders.
The whole Paulino meltdown was about a guy competing for a bullpen spot not remotely interested in fielding balls.

What I don't like about the bunt is batters not doing it properly.
Not only does Charlie use the bunt a lot, he calls for it with 2 strikes, so no point in fouling 2 bunts to get a chance to swing.

I prefer a doctrine of the mean, as Aristotle would say. A middle ground. Wasn't a big fan of the slugging strategy from last team and not a fan of extreme small ball.

For me it's gotta be an organic balance with rest of team build. Tampa can be more small ball like they usually are because of their pitching. This year they are more balanced after adding more power.

My only beef with the manager right now is forcing Vlad to hit lower in the line up to let guys like Grichuk get better pitches to hit, but that has seemed to help Grichuk get going so no complaints from me.


I don't think Montoyo is a small ball guy. I think he is leveraging it more than he wants to because it's the better decision with the weak hitting line up he has. If he gets a better line up or better performance from some of his players slumping right now and still bunts this often then I would feel justified criticizing his calls. Right now it seems balanced on paper to me with the slugging results of his team.

The team struggled early on because of a lack of plate discipline.
Guerrero is doing the same to a lesser degree.
Hopefully, it's just young players learning to feel comfortable.

April numbers usually don't mean much.

Still sucks that the Jays are the only team so far to go to Anaheim and face 3 decent starters

I don't know if it is accurate to say Montoyo is employing a small ball strategy. For example, the team only had 11 SB attempts this year. They're not a fast team but they also don't seem to hit and run very often.

Montoyo just seems to like the bunt. It can be a fine play in certain situations. The 12th inning of a 0-0 game with a very cold batter at the plate seemed like a good opportunity to me.

A couple of notes from Ross Atkins:

1- Gurriel will start taking some OF reps in Buffalo so he can move around field as needed.

2- It is possible that Clayton Richard will be ready when Jays next need a 5th starter in 2 weeks

It’s about time they tried Gurriel in the outfield. The entire org is lacking capable OF’s, and the big league corners are currently occupied by two players who likely will not be long-term regulars (unless Teoscar’s 2017-18 power and April plate discipline merge at some point). It’s a no brainer to move him there, and I think it will help him as a player. He’s clearly not an infielder.

Alen Hansen designated for assignment. Contract of RHP Derek Law purchased from Buffalo.

It's a start. Now bring me the head of Socrates Brito.

Hopefully the front office is engaging in Dialogues about moving Socrates.

I'm pretty sure Mick never did a Hall of Names on the theme because it turns out that philosophers don't make good baseball players. Our Socrates may lead all philosophers in career hits for all I know.

Socrates scouting report:

Hit 30 / Power 30 / Speed 60 / Field 50 / Throws 50 / Baseball IQ 80 / Ethics 80

How do I work this?

It's like Socrates is trying to dribble the ball before playing it.
Maybe the Raptors can use him.

I wonder if Pompey will ever come back.
I'd take Davis in a heartbeat and then switch him back in a couple weeks once Gurriel can play the outfield at the Brito level.

I'm not sure if Pannone's start was worst than SRF's.
It's too bad they couldn't pull him after 2 innings.
There's a good chance the next starts goes to Clayton Richard.
I'm not sure if that's good or bad.

On the plus side, Luciano is trending in the right direction and Law is like a giant Stroman who can only go 2 innings. 

Not to be too OCD but Smith Jr. hit his sixth HR today, and he has upped his OPS to .860. I’m not saying he will prove to be a great player, but he is playing significantly better than any Jays outfielder is, he is costing the O’s the minimum salary, and he is fully controllable. Viewed in this light, the Smith trade coupled with the Grichuk extension looks like a non-trivial waste of money and a mistake on the part of the front office.

The FO has been adding some good talent to the farm and it has made some good value additions (like Shoemaker), but at times they play too defensively / scared for my liking. I did not like the Grichuk extension at the time and I do not like it now.

Hadn't been to the statcast xwOBA leaderboard until I saw a link tonight at MLBTR's article about Rockies sending down Tyler Anderson and his 10th-worst xwOBA (.414) of the 302 pitchers listed. Rest of the worst includes at least 3 guys who've been optioned back to the minors plus a DFA.

OK, whose the best of the 302 pitchers so far this year? Whoa!!!

https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/expected_statistics?type=pitcher&year=2019&position=&team=&min=50

That 50 fielding score for Socrates must be from Plato.

What can you expect from a guy living in a cave?

Who thought Smith would play this well? All we could get for him is some devalued IFA money. Kudos to Smith for vastly outplaying everybody's expectations, but that happens sometimes.

If you follow the link I just posted, the pitcher with the best xwOBA in baseball was a guy purchased for cash. Obviously 29 other teams made a mistake on that one?

The FO’s job is to correctly evaluate players, especially those in its own system. In a rebuilding year in which the team had such poor outfield depth that they felt they had to give a fourth outfielder (Grichuk) a $50m-plus extension to ensure he remained in TO, they probably should have waited a bit longer to see what prime-age Smith had to offer before cutting him loose.

The FO may need to rethink its love of hard-hitters (Morales, Teoscar, Grichuk) whose other limitations severely circumscribe their overall value. Smith Jr.’s performance may fall off in the coming months, but his strong start does call into question why the FO felt the need to “lock in” Grichuk for the next five years when it could have received equivalent or better performance from one of its own farmhands for a tiny fraction of the cost of that contract.

Name one front office that hasn't traded a player that exceeded expectations elsewhere? Happens to good FO's and bad Fo's

Per 150 games, Grichuk has been a 3 WAR player so far in his career. The contract is a good one. Smith's a tough one to figure out. His minor league numbers don't suggest the kind of big league player he's been so far. I'd say he probably can't keep this up. Other teams felt so too, or they would have offered more for him when he DFA'd.

As a Blue Jay, Grichuk has been worth 2.4 WAR in 156 games (595 PA). He has not been a particularly good hitter for them (his career year was five years ago), and he has next to no OBP buffer to protect him from even an incremental decline in his hitting ability. And while his defense has been OK statistically, I would not be handing out a five-year extension for his defensive decline years. For all of these reasons, including the Smith issue, I don’t think it was a good contract.

It is still very early in the season and I will remind everyone that at this point last season Solarte had a 0.268/0.350/0.537 slash line with a 10.7 BB%, 15.0 K% and a 0.368 ISO%. While I think Smith has likely improved as a player, I still think he is currently producing above his abilities.

That must have been before yesterday because Pannone was up there at 129th.
Giles is 9th.

Still, Luciano is 174th and Thornton 175th, that is somewhat  encouraging for the future.
Shoemaker is 201th, what did he do wrong?

People forget that Smith was moved out to create a path for Pompey.
The FO must have been in discussions with San Francisco all spring long, so when they finally got the Pillar trade done, they had to go get another outfielder.

Smith Jr’s never had a minor league season as good as his YTD in Baltimore, so it’s hard to fault management for letting him go. I think Grichuk was a necessary signing as at current course and speed, they are going to struggle to find one or two good outfielders anywhere in the system as good as him, much less three. (Not that he’s that good!)

What frustrates me is on one hand they have aggressively signed a middling OF’er due to a lack of depth in the system, but aren’t moving on Stroman- who is only a year older than Grichuk- despite a similar lack of SP pitching depth in the system.

Scott, #1 in lowest xwOBA yesterday is the same as #1 when I just checked now. Yeah, it hasn't updated for the 6 batters he faced last night.

It's still early to make decisions. They still have Borucki, Shoemaker and a bunch of middling prospects to evaluate. The picture could look very different at the end of the year. Even the guys they'll draft this year will have a chance to reach while this core is in place.

Now is the time to sell high and buy low.
When the team is contending you can't buy low.

I don't think anybody would mind if they extended Stroman, but Stro by himself isn't bringing people to the park either.

D Smith Jr is having a good year in Baltimore.Maybe a career year. He had 87 ABs (rookie status) with the Jays and played for us until 25 years old.
This year in Baltimore, 121 ABs, 6 Hrs, 22 rbi and ok Bb/K numbers. I always thought his offensive numbers in the minors were solid. His offensive ML numbers for us were good but SSS. Lets see what he can do with 500 ML ABs this year.

I don't believe I ever criticized him, most likely because I cannot evaluate defense. That is where he was weak, bad or just not good enough, I cannot tell. T Hernandez has failed to catch fairy routine fly balls, Collabelo also had trouble with fly balls. Hernandez and Collabello could be useful as 1B/DH because they had strong power/hitting skills. Both made errors in the OF that hurt the Jays. Maybe Smith also made OF errors that hurt the Jays.

Regarding Smith's defense, could he catch a routine fly ball? Make an adequate throw? If he can do this he is still not Wow!!.

Urena is following a similar path as Smith Jr. He is not getting the chance. There are others ahead of him and he is young and needs everyday ABs. Once again I don't know how to evaluate him as an overall player. But IMO he has been better than F Baretto.

Put me down as agreeing with Dan Gordon that the Grichuk contract is a good one. Calling him a 4th OF is totally out of line with past and current production and ability. As for Smith, I would have liked him to have had a better opportunity but these things happen with every organization. He is an ok player but will likely not be able to sustain his present production rate. It is time to cut bait with Brito and promote Jonathan Davis.

One month does not a season make. I think many here need reminding of that.

2018 April OPS numbers....
Teoscar Hernandez 1.054
Curtis Granderson 983
Kevin Pillar 903
Luke Maile 874 (heh, doubt anyone bought that)
Yangervis Solarte 848
...
Kendrys Morales 499
Randal Grichuk 435

There are many I skipped who are secondary (Gift Ngoepe was dead last for example) but the point should be clear. April is not a full season, nor does it tell you who is best. It is a data point that helps, but should always be taken with a lot of grains of salt. A bit better than September stats, a lot better than spring stats, but still not a full picture.

As far as I am concerned, he's the Marco Scutaro of today.

That may be a greedy ask, but would be a nice gift to the team. Lots of parallels, to be sure.

You do have to root for a guy whose head is in the game. I didn't think much of Galvis before -- and there is still lots of air yet to come out of that balloon -- but I do enjoy seeing a guy who is paying attention and doing what he can with what skills he has. When so many players seem to have their heads up their asses, it is refreshing to see the thinkers succeed. That's why I was a Rance Mulliniks fan back in the day.

Yeah, John, definitely too much overreacting to one month stats here imo.

Smith is not worth crying over. He's not good. Sogard/Galvis are bench players on a good team.

The front office doesn't need to sweat a hot start by Dwight Smith Jr. He might turn out to be an average major leaguer, and I hope he does.

I think the front office needs to look for buy-low candidates. Guys I would target:

- Miguel Sano
- Corey Seager
- Tyler O'Neill
- Ian Happ
- Tyler Beede

Unsure of the cost but they're players I would be interested in.

I think Happ  is the only gettable one from your list finch. He strikes out a ton and isn't doing great at all. I wouldn't give up much he might news a full rework of his approach which is a crapshoot and something he'd have to buy into.
Sano's still going to get q shit after his injury rehab. Hes young, cheap and has huge power potential
Seager's in the same boat but back in majors. Hell get time and cost a ton if the team moves on.I suppose Beede's available,  but has been awful in MLB  hell get expensive when the Jay's start to get good same reason that sf might want to get rid of a rare young player. I wouldn't give up much for him.O'Neill might be blocked but def has warts. I'm worried he'd cost a lot.

Was going to mention prior to the game what Barker brought up. Vlad is doing a Kendrys Morales impersonation. Great exit velocity wasted on ground balls.

To be fair pitchers are amped and dialed in for Vlad. I don't see Tatis or Senzel or any other prospect in baseball getting pretty much 95% of their pitches on the edges. There's always mistake pitches and centred pitches except for Vlad. I watch our players get these pitches before and after Vlad but the opposing pitchers seem dialed in against him.

He needs to adjust to the league and probably could use the protection in the line up more than Grichuk. And No, Rowdy Tellez isn't any sort of protection.

I do think Greenfrog is obsessed with DSJ - it's one month. I also think he's onto something with his comment about this front office being obsessed with hit velocity. Velocity is no good when you don't hit the ball...

Hypobole, you're killing us with your cut paste link. If any poster didnt cut and paste his link into their browser the answer to the top pitcher is Sam Gaviglio.

I'd move him to the 3rd spot if he starts walking a lot.
That hasn't happened.
A hitter who hits a lot of ground balls is not a good fit to hit behind the best on base guys.

With Drury playing right field, they might need another bullpen arm more than an outfielder, if they finally cut bail on Brito.

"if they finally cut bail on Brito"

Looking more like "when" than "if".

Very nicely written story on Matt Shoemaker at FG.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-unstoppable-matt-shoemaker/

DeSclafani produced -0.5 bWAR his rookie season then was traded for Mat Latos, who gave the Marlins -0.1 WAR. Cinci kinda won that trade.

Accounting in trade evaluation is certainly open to interpretation, isn't it?  The Buehrle trade certainly has its challenges that way.  Buehrle himself had some positive aspects not covered by bWAR; Marco Estrada credited Buehrle with helping him develop his change, and he was a mentor to Stroman especially. And how far you go along with successor trades like the Latos/DeSclafini and Reyes/Hoffman/Tulo  ones are another issue. 

Sogard and Mulliniks. Hadn't thought of that, but yes.

But no. Mullinks was Rance Mulliniks - i.e., a much better hitter than Sogard - when he was 21 years old and hitting .269/.329/.365 with the Angels. He'd add a little more doubles power and a little more patience to that as he grew into his peak years, but he could always hit. His problem was he couldn't play shortstop, which was where his teams kept trying to put him.

It does look like both the Dickey and Buehrle trades ended up as net negatives to a considerable degree.

Sure, except for that whole finishing in first place in 2015, which probably wouldn't have happened if you swap out Dickey and Buehrle (26-19, 413 IP) for Syndergaard and Alvarez (9-11, 172.1 IP). I don't know what that's worth and you can argue that if it doesn't end in a World Series title it was all in vain. It was still lots of fun.

Miami still hasn't made it back to 80 wins since that trade.

A very specific type of trade "winnings".

Price on the IL with elbow issues. Wonder if he’s getting close to the end of the line as a front-of-the-rotation starter. Still three years and $96m left on his contract *after* this year.

Rance Mullinicks was a very good hitter for quite a few years for the Blue Jays. Starting in 1983, his yearly OPS was .840, .823, .836, .757, .871, and .870. Eric Sogard is not going to come remotely close to that. He has a career OPS of .642 and is about to turn 33.

Eric Sogard is not going to come remotely close to that.

Not sure whose post this is in response to. Has anyone here suggested that Sogard would be as good as Mulliniks?