This team has been really painful to watch the last few games, I just want to see the ball in play every now and then.

Twins putting plenty in play.

I really hate bad strikes calling, especially at home.

Needless to say, but Willie Mays, as great as he was, would not have hit 800 HRs if only he hadn't played so long at Candelstick Park. Over his career, Mays hit a home run every 18.9 plate appearances. He was a little better at both of his major home parks: a HR every 17.2 at the Polo Grounds, every 17.4 at Candelstick.

Of course, if he'd played for the other New York team in the NL, who know what might have happened. Mays hit 28 HRs in just 248 PAs at Ebbetts Field. That's a homer every 8.9 plate appearances (his slash line in Brooklyn was .355/.419/.786).

The Dodgers did get even with Mays when they moved into Chavez Ravine. No one could hit there. Not even Willie (.266/.373/.444).

What the ump did to Drury was brutal. Good for Montoya getting tossed.

I only saw the condensed game, but it seemed like a mix of many things going wrong:

1. Stroman, who has been excellent, was missing the spots that were set up and the twins were killing those misses (and they didn't even seem that "bad" of misses in terms of where they were).
2. The outfield is not the best at getting good jumps, good routes, etc.
3. A lot of not great plate appearances.
4. A lot of questionable calls from the umpire.

I guess the only plus was 2 of Vlad's strike outs looking were showing good batting eye is the strike 3 was not in the strike zone.

Mike, this may be why he was looking at his hand, from The Athletic:

After the game, Stroman said he just lacked a feel for his pitches, particularly when the ball was leaving his hand.

“Just didn’t have feel,” he said. “Arm and body feel great. It’s just one of those things, every one of my spinning pitches was up in the zone, just kind of spinning, so had no grip at the end of my delivery there."

Thanks, hypobole.  I should read the Athletic before posting.  The broadcast crew did not comment on it at the time- I wonder if the radio guys did. 

From The Beaverton:

"Biggest fix: The Blue Jays might end up more likely to sell than buy, and with the trade of Kevin Pillar to the Giants earlier this season, Toronto's brass seems to be anticipating that direction. But with the arrival of Vladimir Guerrero Jr., there is a window here to replenish a vanishing species known as the Blue Jays fan. The pitching has been good, so what jumps out is the across-the-board weak rankings in the outfield. The entrenched regular there is Randal Grichuk.

Potential solution: Denard Span, free agent"

Oh, wait, no, this isn't supposed to be a joke, it's actually ESPN drek behind a paywall!

Attendance Update:

MON (2): 11376
TUE (2): 16247
WED (2): 15544
THU (1): 45048* (home opener)
FRI (3): 21356
SAT (3): 22818
SUN (3): 18389

TOT (16): 19941 (#19)

overall number goosed a bit by having the extra weekend series.

Jon Heyman, long noted shill for Scott Boras, is on the Denard Span train, apparently in a sign that he is growing his shilling operation to service other agencies as well.

Any chance the Jays revenues fall low enough that the Jays become a Competitive Balance pick club?

The Dodgers acquired Travis d'Arnaud and apparently intend to carry him on the MLB roster but use him at 1B and LF. If anyone understand this, please weigh in.

LA has Muncie and Freese at 1B. They have outfielders galore although Pollock is injured (surprise!). And when has d'Arnaud hit so well that his bat can forgive his presumably bad defense (at positions he hasn't played)?

I thought the competitive balance pick had a factor in it around market size, to prevent large market clubs like the Jays from ever getting one? I may be confusing this with some of the MLB revenue sharing deals.

Two parts, Nigel. Yes, one is 10 smallest market sizes. Other is 10 lowest revenue teams. Total will not be 20 teams though, because there will be overlap - some teams will be both.

Don't know how accurate this is, but from Stoeten:

"Following Monday’s game, noted member of the Jays Twitterverse, @james_in_TO, pointed out something incredible: “in the last 3 seasons there have been 1516 batter seasons where the batter saw at least 150 pitches,” he tweeted. “Vlad Jr ranks 1516th for % pitches seen over the heart of the plate at 14.3% (23 of 161 after tonight) – the next lowest is 17.5%.”

and this easily verifiable nugget:

according to Fangraphs, heading into Monday Vlad had seen the lowest percentage of pitches in the strike zone this season (33.3 per cent) of anyone in baseball with at least 30 plate appearances.

Thanks hypobole.

On May 25, 1951, after 35 games with the Minneapolis Millers (American Association, AAA), Willie Mays (age 20) was called up to the NY Giants. He was hitting .477 (8 homers). He went 0 for his first 14 at-bats in the majors. He hit his first homer (off Warren Spahn) on the 28th, and then gradually got himself settled in. So much so that he was Rookie of the Year in the NL.

Vlad-watchers might take some solace in this.

Re: Willie & Vlad

Mays lacked Vlad’s confidence at first, and didn’t think he was ready for the majors, and told manager Leo Durocher he wasn’t coming.

(In respect for Durocher’s “eloquence”, I won’t use asterisks for any of his vocabulary.)

Durocher asked Mays what he was hitting. Mays said .477.

“Well,” said Durocher, “do you think you could hit two fucking-fifty-five for me?”

After his 0-for-12, he finally got his first hit off some guy named Spahn. In Leo’s immortal words, “I never saw a fucking ball leave a fucking park so fucking fast in my fucking life.”

A fine inspiration for Vlad… I hope.

I loved reading your post. Very descriptive. Thanks JohnL.

And Berrios was terrible for multiple stretches the past few years until he put it all together.

Don't look now, but Ken Giles has the 7th best xwOBA in the majors, with a few questionable lads in front of him such as Sam Gavigilo. He also has the 7th best WAR and 12th best K/9 amongst relievers. At this point he is setting himself up at the best reliever available at the trade deadline.

Yes, Giles is one of the best relievers in baseball. That's why I'd like to keep him. If you trade him, you're just creating one more hole to try and fill somewhere else, like a game of whack-a-mole. They'll need a closer when they are hopefully competitive in 2020/21/22. If they trade Giles, who's that going to be? I see nobody in the organization who's likely to fill that role, so you'd just end up having to trade for somebody.

Pat Murphy?

Let's see... the kid breaks off his 0-12 in his last AB last night. So he gets today off and Socrates Brito is in right field.

This is going to work. Guaranteed.

I think Hector Perez, David Paulino and Sean Reid-Foley have closer stuff and are looking like questionable starters at this point.

On the bright side, Guerrero will be rested and focused to go after the Pale Hose pitching which isn't that great. Hopefully.

The way our hitting has been recently, Brito will fit right in.

"What do I get if the Jays lose- free tickets to a Yankee game or an Ace plush toy?"

It used to be cuttlefish.

Until I won and never got my cuttlefish.

Suddenly, cuttlefish became lost in the mists of time.

I'm less bitter than I used to be.

The way our hitting has been recently? I'm not sure of the "recently" qualifier there:) Sub .300 team OBPs are earned not gifted - you have to have Brito in there to make it work.

This batting order looks really bad tonight. Could be shutout #3 in a row. Of course, they'll probably go out and score a dozen. On TSN, I heard them say the Jays want Vladdy to have 48 hours of rest, so he gets the day off before a scheduled off day. I don't get it. Unless he's still hurt.

I agree that guys like Paulino, Perez, & Reid-Foley have the potential to possibly become a closer at some point. Potential is a long way from actually doing it, though. They all have serious issues, particularly throwing strikes. I certainly wouldn't be banking on one of them to make it. Last I looked, they were all struggling badly.

I need to hear the lecture!!! You are not as bad as you are when in a slump or as good as you are when on a hot streak.

Hoo boy this is a shameful roster.

This batting order looks really bad tonight.

Must be one of those days that ends in a 'y'.

I do understand the frustration but this is what 90 loss or more rosters perform like. It just is.

But, Nigel,the Twins seem to have built a very good team and they didn't lose more than 90 games, except for 3 years ago, 5 years ago, 6 years ago, 7 years ago and 8 years ago.

Hypobole-I’m not sure what your point is or your objection to what I said. My point was simply that bad teams often play badly, it’s just the nature of the beast - nothing more nothing less.

Nigel, first, I agree with your post 100%.

My post was attempt at humour, while also pointing out the Twins became good by being very bad, though I certainly hope our rebuild doesn't last nearly as long as theirs.

To further the point, most good teams now have suffered through "shameful" 90+ loss rosters to help them get to where they are now.

I am proud to play my small part in this year's attendance decline.

Ah, got it. I guess I’m more agnostic about the causal connection between historical 90 loss seasons (or whatever your mark of ineptitude is) and future success. The nature of success cycles certainly make your point true but I don’t see the draft advantage of finishing in the bottom 5-10 teams as being nearly as pronounced in baseball as it is in the NHL or the NBA. In my view, payroll is the name of the game and not a lot else matters over the long term.

Just assume that hypobole's posts are always a passive aggressive shot at me. That's always the safe bet.

Nigel - agreed on that. Sucking in baseball helps for getting top picks but the spread from pick #5 to #25 isn't anywhere near what it is in other sports.

Pick #5 has just 2 guys over 50 WAR (possible HOF in Dwight Gooden and Mark Teixeira) none over 60. 4 more in the 40's, and 2 in the 20's. A total of 12 with 10+ (just 4 in the 10's).

Pick #15 has 1 over 60 (Chase Utley), a high 40's (Jim Rice), 2 in the 30's, 1 in the 20's, 3 in the 10's. So 8 with 10+. Not as good as #5 but a higher peak with a HOF'er and another near HOF.

#25 has an all-timer in Mike Trout (66.9 WAR so far), a 40's in Chuck Knoblauch, 1 more over 20, and 3 in the 10's. So 6 for 10+

#35 sees 2 50's in Johnny Damon, and Mark Langston, plus 1 in the 20's. Wow, did that drop.

By pick #45 we see just 2 with 10+ WAR - neither cracking 20.

So clearly while lower picks can get better players (Trout for example) the higher the pick the more likely you are to get a solid ML'er (10 WAR = Rickey Romero). On the current team we see Smoak at 7.5, Stroman at 11.3, Sanchez 9.8, Shoemaker 7.0, Buchholz 17.8, Giles 6.2 - checking the guys with the most success. None have 20 yet, just 2 with 10+ so getting to 10+ is a big deal. Of course, Roger Clemens did that in just his first season here (damn he was good then). 20 is hard. Just 28 hitters reached 10+ WAR as a Jay, 13 got to 20. Just 20 pitchers got to 10, 7 to 20 (including Clemens in just 2 years). Dave Stieb is the only player (pitcher or hitter) to get to 50 as a Jay. So the standard I used here was quite high but when drafting you aren't after the Justin Smoak types, you want the John Olerud (3rd round, 50+ WAR lifetime) type who are near impossible to get once they reach the majors.

I've come to the belief that this rebuild will not be a Yankee type rebuild with "compete" teams in 2020 and 2021 like everyone says including Atkins. This rebuild will take 3, 4 or maybe 5 years...it will be 2021 (two years away) when we have a roster full of prospects and at that point we will see how far away they are from competing...you better hope they stock pile more talent in the minors than the other teams because free agency isn't gonna produce the missing pieces on the future teams.

Not very optimistic of Shapiro and Atkins anymore just from seeing what they've done this past season compared to other front offices around the league both in competition and rebuild.

I think they're style is "balanced" all across the diamond but the problem is they are balanced with bad players and have no good players just one guy who may project out to be good. What's the term when there's so much crap that the good stuff gets smothered? That might apply here.

If Shapiro is so good at player development then send him to Buffalo where he can develop players BEFORE they come to the big leagues. I think I want my money back.

Ugly your post is the only one coming off as passive aggressive. I think Hypo has dry/dark humour, if you think he's slighting you you can ask like Nigel did rather than responding with a passive aggressive message yourself...

Not always,uo you're not the person owes me the cuttlefish.:)

Yeah this team is awful, but as Nigel pointed out, this is what teardown rebuilds look like. This team has had more rookie games played this year than any other team in baseball - 130 going into tonight and the most by a Jays team since 1977.

Maybe some guys make to contention, most won't, but this is time to find out. Nothing shameful.

Baseball is streaky. Players get hot and cold.
Most prospects don't become good players.
This team hasn't developed a position player during the AA tenure.
Now they have a whole bunch coming up and it's not going to be instant success.


bWAR for position player:
Sogard 1.1 (not sustainable)
Grichuk 0.6 (on pace for a 3 WAR season)
Galvis 0.5 (we should be happy if get 2 WAR)
Smoak 0.4
Urena 0.4
Drury 0.1 (still not sure if there's something here)
Tellez 0.1
Guerrero 0 (can only go up)
McKinney -0.1
Hernandez -0.2
Gurriel -0.3
Jansen -0.4

It is clearly the rookies dragging the team down and there's another wave in Buffalo.
I feel the same about Urena as I felt about Smith Jr. Just leave the guy up until he struggles.
Then he'll have something to work on in AAA and if that doesn't happen, where's the problem?

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/files/2018/10/Cuttlefish.jpg

Despite this brutal stretch of baseball, there are positives, if one cares to look.

Stroman is Stroman. Meeting expectations.
Sanchez is healthy.
Thornton exceeding expectations.
Giles has been terrific.
Gaviglio been good as the long requested (here) long man.
Luciano exceeding expectations.

Jansen/Maille have been really good defensively. Of the 63 catchers with 40+ innings at FG, both are top 10.
Rowdy - solid LD rate. Exceeding expectations vs LHP in limited exposure.
Smoak - Career best OBP.
Sogard/Galvis/Drury - all solid IF defense.

Thanks for the early report card hypobole.

IMO we should consider not giving Atkins a grade yet. He is working on a long term project.

Gaviglio has pitched some 2 & 3 inning games and 1 4 inning game. That has value as a way of making the pen "deeper".

I can see Panonne also becoming a similar long reliever.

Neither I believe are being successful by being "throw it as hard as you can" for 1 or 2 innings type pitchers. But I don't know.

We do have some of our college draft picks succeeding as SPs. Z Logue in NH. Quite a few in A+ and A.they could become effective long relievers.

How valuable would that make our pen with 4 such relievers? Every season is a marathon. Pitching staffs fall apart.

Just after I posted that, Jonathan Davis led off the game with a home run.  I guess he really wants Socrates Brito's job.

dalimon i'm pretty sure my post was just plain aggressive.

That’s what I’d like to see too Mike. My current view is that the OF is where most of the near term questions are (there are other questions/problems like the pitching staff for which there aren’t any near term solutions). The team has one major league OF. All of Hernandez, McKinney, Davis, Alford, Gurriel and Biggio (Pompey if he can ever get healthy) might have some future role in the OF. I’d like the team to spend 2019 in Toronto and Buffalo trying to figure that out. Dump Brito. Get Gurriel playing every day in the OF. Get Davis and Biggio up and into the OF rotation (unless they commit to Biggio as a 2B). I fear none of them are more than 4th OFs but let’s find out.

Pannone has been optioned down to Buffalo.

Will Vlad Guerrero be the first player to ask management if he can go back to AAA?

This is Year 4 of the current regime. Toss out the first two years and this makes Year 2.

Attendance

2019: 11
2015: 14
2009: 31


So Ricciardi inherited an awful attendance situation and steadily improved it year after year, until his 2009 when it all fell apart, and he was immediately replaced.

similarly, Anthopolous inherited an awful attendance situation and steadily improved it year after year, until he was unceremoniously dumped due to spending too much of Rogers money on payroll.

Uniquely under Rogers, Shapiro is the first one to inherit an awesome attendance situation, and the first one to oversee a steady year after year decline in attendance. He's managed to oversee a plummet from an elite attendance situation to one of the worst in franchise history, in just 4yrs.

This is an interesting test for Rogers - never before have they shown faith in an FO after experiencing either steep drop in attendance or a steep spike in payroll.

Attendance

2019: 11 sub-20k (61%), 6 sub-15k (33%)
2018: 9 sub-20k (11%), 0 sub-15k (0%)
2017: 0 sub-20k (0%), 0 sub-15k (0%)
2016: 0 sub-20k (0%), 0 sub-15k (0%)
-----Shapiro------
2015: 14 sub-20k (17%), 2 sub-15k (3%)
2014: 25 sub-20k (31%), 6 sub-15k (7%)
2013: 9 sub-20k(11%), 0 sub-15k (0%)
2012: 26 sub-20k (32%), 7 sub-15k (9%)
2011: 43 sub-20k (53%), 16 sub-15k (20%)
2010: 50 sub-20k (62%), 29 sub-15k (36%)
---Anthopolous---
2009: 31 sub-20k (38%), 9 sub-15k (11%)
2008: 6 sub-20k (7%), 0 sub-15k (0%)
2007: 5 sub-20k (6%), 0 sub-15k (0%)
2006: 14 sub-20k (17%), 0 sub-15k (0%)
2005: 16 sub-20k (20%), 1 sub-15k (1%)
2004: 36 sub-20k (44%), 10 sub-15k (12%)
2003: 35 sub-20k (43%), 11 sub-15k (14%)
2002: 43 sub-20k (53%), 16 sub-15k (20%)
---Ricciardi---


So Ricciardi inherited an awful attendance situation and steadily improved it year after year, until his 2009 when it all fell apart, and he was immediately replaced.

similarly, Anthopolous inherited an awful attendance situation and steadily improved it year after year, until he was unceremoniously dumped due to spending too much of Rogers money on payroll.

Uniquely under Rogers, Shapiro is the first one to inherit an awesome attendance situation, and the first one to oversee a steady year after year decline in attendance. He's managed to oversee a plummet from an elite attendance situation to one of the worst in franchise history, in just 4yrs.

This is an interesting test for Rogers - never before have they shown faith in an FO after experiencing either steep drop in attendance or a steep spike in payroll.

Joey Gallo becomes the 1st player ever to hit 100 home runs before hitting 100 singles - he's at 93. Russell Branyan, the next closest, already had 172 singles by the time he hit his 100th HR.

IIRC the JP era saw a large number of discounts (e.g. toonie Tuesday) and cut ratrate flex-packs. When AA took over and
with Beeston that culture was changed. The team on the field is a major factor but within the JP era there seemed to be a culture of "cheap entertainment". Perhaps, I'm overstating it but that jumps out as a memory.

christaylor’s memory of ticket discounting matches mine. I believe the story was the Jays also counted freebies in attendance, contrary to MLB policy. It was Beeston who changed that, which explains the attendance drop starting in 2009.

Thank guys on explaining how the attendance numbers are unreliable.

Someone will come up to fill Pannone's spot on the roster.

Normally, I'd assume it's a pitcher, but it's a weekend home series, so they don't need a pitcher right away.
There's no pitcher on the 40 who is ready to come up at the moment, however, they can move Shoemaker to the 60 IL to create a spot.

Maybe that old lefty who throws a knuckler?  Ryan Feierabend is 33, so even I will agree that he's old for AAA. .

Much of the board seems a bit shell-shocked about Vladdy's start - Brito seems to be trending with the fanbase more than Vlad.

But Craig Edwards at FG isn't worried. Quick summary - if Vlad's still struggling after 600 PA's, then worry.


https://blogs.fangraphs.com/lets-freak-out-about-vladimir-guerrero-jr/

So far Vlad has 41 PA and has hit 162/244/189.

In Barry Bonds first season (1986) he had a 38 PA stretch in games 24-32 where he hit 176/263/265 and shortly after a 53 PA stretch going 122/170/245 (games 41-52). In fact his whole season totals for age 21 was 223/330/416. Sure didn't look like a future super-star of super-stars then. His first real WOW season was at 25 (170 OPS+, MVP) In fact from 1989-1993 he hit 310/433/595 for a 185 OPS+ (just pre-steroid era, and he was 100% clean then according to pretty much everyone).

So a slow start isn't a killer by any stretch. Heck, at 20 Bonds was in A ball hitting 299/383/547 which Vlad slaughtered at 19 in AA/AAA 381/437/636 so I wouldn't worry just yet. Heck Vlad was in A/A+ at 18 323/425/485 so he is well ahead of Bonds and if he can produce anywhere near Bonds I'll be super-happy even if he sucks this year and ends up around a 100 OPS+ in the end.

Last Jays prospect I can think of who came up full time at 20 was Lloyd Moseby in 1980 who hit 229/281/365 73 OPS+ as a rookie. From 83-88 he hit 272/353/444 114 OPS+ in CF with 2 years of WAR of 6+ (83/84 ages 23/24) but was done at age 31 in Detroit (2 years there after his Jays career ended).

Guys who reach at 20 generally are killer talents but it takes time to adjust to the majors. A-Rod was up at 18 and had a 16 OPS+ then, at 20 should've won the MVP with a 358/414/631 line at SS 9.4 WAR overall but drunken writers gave it to Juan Gonzalez (3.8 WAR) who had a lower OPS while being mediocre in RF but drove in 144 vs A-Rod's 123. Pretty stupid voting. What is funny is A-Rod was 2nd for WAR to Ken Griffey Jr who came in 4th with his 9.7 while being a Gold Glove in CF. So glad voters are much more intelligent now than then.

There is no reason to think anything at all about 41pa.

Uo, right, but a lot of people are thinking everything from overhyped to hitting coach has already ruined him.

Yeah I stopped reading and listening to Toronto sports media over a decade ago. I don't think I've missed much.

Guerrero is getting lots of pitches on the corners and most of them are called strikes.
It's still early to make an adjustment,  the coming series should be interesting for him.
At some point, he might need to learn to foul pitches that are too close to take, something that he didn't need in the minors. I'm not worried at all. Unlike Brito, he has a very nice swing.

I guess they could also move Phelps to the 60DL, so there's no real crunch yet.

Bad teams don’t have 40 man roster “crunch” problems - in order to be a bad team your 40 man roster must be filled with bad players. You may have a hoarding problem but that’s a separate issue.

Hoarders.

Now that sounds about right.

Many well defined words being used. Bad team, hoarders and 40 man crunch due to the strategy of hoarding players that are evaluated as bad. So it looks like the strategy is successful.

A Hanson qualifies in the above category. His 43 ABs was not a long enough trial compared to 150 ABs. However this trial had the success of him passing through waivers (DFA). If he stays with the Jays there is opportunity for potential value.

Reports suggest Clay Buchholz will not start tonight due to an "elbow issue". Daniel Hudson will be the opener.

I assume then that a pitcher will be up to replace Pannone.

The quality of Perez’s FB will buy him time and opportunity-and I’m in favour of lottery ticket prospects-but I like your 649 odds better. There just hasn’t ever been any sign of progress from Perez on his control issues.