Bumbling Blue Jays battle but fall short against Rays
On Wednesday night, manager Joe Maddon, in the Rays' narrow 6-5 win over the Jays, became the first opposing AL manager to have his actions toward Jose Bautista speak louder than his words, demonstrating the unbridled respect teams are beginning to have when it comes to the question “To pitch or not to pitch” to the red-hot Jays' slugger. The answer on this night was “no.”
“Listen man, he's in a different plane right now,” Maddon said. “It's a different stratosphere. It's a different league. It's a different everything. You're talking Barry Bonds. Of course I have not seen (Albert) Pujols up close and personal, but Mr. Bautista's reaching that realm right now.”
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“I know for us that we have to be risk-takers,” Maddon said. “It's up to the Jays how they want to be. We have to be kind of irreverent the way we play the game. We can't go by the book. We can read the book, but don't necessarily believe everything you read in the book.”
There's nothing new about the way Maddon has been managing his team. He once walked Josh Hamilton intentionally with the bases loaded and also issued three intentional passes to the Tigers dangerous Miguel Cabrera in situations where he represented the tying or go-ahead run. That's certainly not managing by the book.
“For me, it should be in the book,” Maddon said of his decision to put Bautista on. “It's not in the original book. You've got to remember the book was written back in the day when it took three singles to score a run. It took eight singles to come from a four (run) deficit. But it's different today. There's bigger, stronger guys, they hit homers up and down the lineup. The book definitely needs amendments. There's other chapters to be written, I think.”
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Right-hander Jesse Litsch had been scheduled to pitch the rained out game against the Tigers. Twenty-four hours later, he found himself on the mound facing the first-place Rays. Farrell prefers to move his rotation back and stay with the order, despite off days and rainouts. Perhaps that had something to do with Litsch's lack of focus, but more likely was the unfocused defence of his mates.
The Globe and Mail
Blue Jays pay for error of their ways
The Blue Jays (21-21) committed five errors in the contest – three in the second inning alone – that helped to gift-wrap a 3-0 lead for the Rays (25-18).
Two of the errors were committed by Litsch, who left the game after the fifth inning with his team trailing 6-1 and possessing one of the more diverse pitching lines in recent memory.
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Edwin Encarnacion was playing first base and turned that into a game-long adventure, committing his team-leading ninth and 10th errors of the season, including a throwing gaffe in the third that allowed the third Tampa run to cross.
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After hitting .352 in Triple-A, outfielder prospect Eric Thames was promoted by the Jays earlier in the week as an injury replacement for Adam Lind. The 24-year-old was supposed to make his major-league debut Tuesday night in Detroit but the game was postponed because of rain, delaying Thames’s big moment 24 hours. Admittedly on pins and needles, Thames was the designated hitter on Wednesday and he collected his first major-league hit and run batted in during the sixth when he rapped a solid single to centre that scored Aaron Hill from second, cutting Tampa’s lead to 6-4.
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While Bautista and his 16 home runs have been a delightful development for the Blue Jays, the lack of pop from the bats of Hill and Encarnacion has been a cause for concern. The duo chipped in with 26 and 21 dingers respectively last year, but this season through 42 games neither has yet to launch a round tripper. Hill came close to breaking the doughnut against Tampa, launching a drive in the sixth inning that hit about halfway up the wall in centre field and went for a double and scored Toronto’s second run. Hill’s sacrifice fly back in the fourth put Toronto on the board.
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Bautista blasted a grounder down the left side in his first at-bat in the first inning that was too hot for Tampa infielder Evan Longoria to handle. The single extended Bautista’s hitting streak to eight games and he has now reached base safely in 33 of his 34 games this season.
Bautista shows no signs of slowing down
Toronto Blue Jays slugger Jose Bautista has become the face of the franchise.
If he keeps up his current pace, he could soon become the biggest star in baseball.
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“In many ways he has been a one-man wrecking crew,” Jays manager John Farrell said Wednesday.
Bautista was named player of the month for April and is making a good case for May. The 30-year-old right-fielder had his first career three-homer game Sunday and had a total of five homers over the three-game sweep of the Twins.
“It's amazing and sometimes I can't believe it,” Bautista said of his production this year. “Like the series in Minnesota with the home runs. I felt like I was in a dream.”
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“It all traces back to a fundamental mechanical adjustment that Jose made late in the ‘09 season, when the home runs and the consistent hard contact really started to take hold,” Farrell said. “And once a player does that, the confidence just continues to grow. That's what we're seeing now.”
Pressure was high this year after Bautista signed a US$65-million, five-year extension in the off-season. He has taken the increased attention in stride and embraced his position as a team leader.
“He's very grounded,” Farrell said. “He hasn't forgotten the path he's travelled or where he's come from. It wasn't too long ago that he was with four, five or six different teams. He has found a home here in Toronto.”
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“He's a time bomb, that's just the way it is,” Detroit Tigers manager Jim Leyland said in a recent interview. “There's no question about it. He can go yard at any time. He's been an unbelievable player last year and so far this year.
“Bautista has shown he's one of the best in just pure power, just brute strength. The ball just jumps off his bat, that ball gets out so quick.”
Tampa Bay Rays manager Joe Maddon has also been impressed.
“Phenomenal is a pretty good word,” he said. “Absolutely different, almost unheard of, those kind of phrases. He's quite a force.
“The last time I saw anything like that was 2002 with the Angels going into the World Series against Barry Bonds, where every time he swung the bat it looked like it could be a home run.”
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Bautista leads the majors with 80 home runs in 224 games dating back to Sept. 1, 2009. St. Louis Cardinals slugger Albert Pujols is a distant second with 55 homers over the span.
“That bat comes through the zone, man it's pretty,” Boston Red Sox manager Terry Francona said recently. “I mean, if you're a baseball fan it's fun to watch. Unfortunately if you're on the other side, it's not.”
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“He's a smart guy, I just think he knows his swing now,” he said. “He doesn't let pitchers or other people take him out of his swing. He has a plan when he goes up there and he stays with his plan.
Alan Ashby delivers on radio and TV
Radio is supposed to be the ideal medium for baseball. With its languid pace, its storytelling and its inescapable daily presence from April till October, the summer game comes alive via radio. It’s also why so many of the best baseball radio voices have never been a perfect fit for the sport on TV. The increased structure and formality of TV can squeeze a talented radio voice. It’s why Jerry Howarth and Tom Cheek thrive on radio but never quite translate as well on TV.
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Ashby’s greatest strength is that he can be critical without coming off as shrill or partisan - a pitfall on occasion for Buck Martinez, the man Ashby filled in for. Last fall, as the Jays melted under Cito Gaston, Ashby got his points across without turning it into a battle of personalities. This spring, he’s been equally firm as, one after the other, Jays prospects found themselves back in Triple A. (Perhaps Ashby’s developed this technique after allegedly being fired by thin-skinned Houston owner Drayton McLane in 2005 for his critical remarks about the Astros.)
Toronto Sun
Jays Watch: No wiggle-room in AL East
At roughly the quarter pole in a 162-game season, the snapshot of the American League East is rather different than the off-season predictions.
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“I’m sure you can point to a stretch in the schedule of every team where they’ve performed less than anticipated,” said Toronto manager John Farrell. “I think it will come down to consistency and starting rotations. Later in the season we will look back and ask why a certain team separated itself from the group and I think that’s where we’ll be pointing to.”
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“I feel like we’ve started to get a little rhythm with the rotation,” he said. “The last times out, guys have started to get a little deeper, which gives us the ability to stabilize the game on so many different fronts.”
Farrell is talking about a domino effect. If the starters go deeper on a consistent basis, he will be able to reduce his bullpen from eight men to seven and add a position player to the roster to improve his offensive options.
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Farrell pencilled Aaron Hill into the cleanup spot Wednesday, flip-flopping he and Edwin Encarnacion.
“It’s part of our pursuit to find some stability in the middle part of the order,” said the manager. “Aaron has swung the bat well on the road trip.”
Neither Hill nor Encarnacion has hit a home run but both have made solid contact recently.
“With quality at-bats, (home runs) will happen in due time,’ said Farrell. “Whether it’s a two-run double or something else, we’re just looking for hard contact, which both are giving us.”
Jays' Glenn launching balls into orbit
All Brad Glenn wanted was a chance
He didn’t have an agent, a financial wizard and a living room full of advisors when he was drafted by the Blue Jays in 2009.
The Jays selected the Arizona University outfielder in the 23rd round, 700th over-all in North America.
Jays scout Dan Cholowsky gave Glenn a four-figure signing bonus within a week of the draft.
“My bonus? One thousand dollars,” Glenn said after arriving with the Dunedin Blue Jays in Bradenton on Wednesday. “So after taxes? Six hundred dollars maybe? I don’t know? But that was OK. I was just happy to get the chance.”
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His senior year he was sitting on a glass coffee table in a dorm room playing Mario Kart with his buddies. He stood, then sat down and the glass shattered cutting his hand for 40 stitches.
Still, he managed 43 homers in four years at Arizona and all he wanted was a chance.
Auburn manager Dennis Holmberg gave him one (“he always called me John Glenn rather than Brad Glenn, I think he was saying it wrong on purpose,”) and he hit eight homers in 2009, 17 a year ago at Lansing and he had 11 going into Wednesday’s game, including six in the previous 10 games.
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“It’s hard to find the raw power and strength he has,” said manager McCullough. “He’s on a good tear right now. The question is how well he adjusts and doing it for a whole season.
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Glenn credits Jays roving minor league instructor Anthony Iapoce, a hit at the annual Baseball Ontario Best Ever Clinic in Toronto this off-season, for improving his swing a year ago.
Drunk Jays Fans
This Thame It's For Reals: Thames To Debut
So last night was a bit of a bust, eh? And I'm thinking that the person most disappointed by the fact that the Tigers chose not to build a retractable roof on their stadium was Eric Thames, who was set to make his Major League debut last night. He'll have to settle for tonight, at the Dome, in front of a mid-week Tampa crowd. So... perhaps not quite a spectacular or visually pleasing as Comerica, but I'm sure it will do.
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I tend to be a bit of a cynical, unemotional **** a lot of times, but his enthusiasm beamed through the radio, and I gotta tell you... it was pretty terrific.
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Does it mean he'll be able to hit a baseball at this level? No. But... as much as I've preached patience for this club, and tried to be understanding as to the reasons why **** veteran placeholders like Juan Rivera continue to be run out there daily, it really is a little bit **** exciting to start seeing some of these kids from the system coming up.
Getting Blanked
Missing: Kyle Drabek’s Curveball
During last year’s Double A Eastern League playoffs, Keith Law wrote of Kyle Drabek:
His power curveball at 84-86 was a big league out pitch, with depth and a very sharp break — and he threw it for strikes in addition to burying it for swings and misses.
For a fan base that’s constantly searching for validation, Law’s endorsement of the Blue Jays’ number one prospect was received with the jubilation normally reserved for a home run off the bat of a certain right fielder in Toronto. If Drabek was the bonafide prospect that pundits were suggesting, the Roy Halladay trade might not have been as garment rending as it first seemed. Perhaps management’s number one priority wasn’t trying to ruin the baseball club after all
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For a hook that was supposed to be his Major League out pitch, it seemed strange that it would be abandoned over his last three starts.
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Aside: Pay no mind to the radar readings on Rogers Sportsnet’s Blue Jays broadcasts. The numbers’ reliability lays somewhere between a politician’s and a Bob Elliott’s unnamed NL scout’s.
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I’m sure that manager John Farrell and pitching coach Bruce Walton know best, but I’d be curious to understand the reasoning behind Drabek’s increased use of the changeup seemingly at the expense of his curve, which is the pitch that we heard such great things about while Drabek was a prospect.
At the very least, looking at all of his pitches allows us to mock what former Washington Nationals GM Jim Bowden recently said about Drabek:
Drabek has the competitiveness of his mom, the poise of his dad, and the athelticism of both. His velocity improved after the Tommy John surgery; he’s now throwing in the mid-90s with a wipe-out, spiked curveball and a developing changeup.
That “developing” changeup is actually being thrown a whole lot more than the “wipe-out, spiked” curveball of Drabek’s reputation.
Jose Bautista: Tremendous at Baseball, So-So at Math
If Jose Bautista continues hitting as he has thus far in 2011, he will create a cottage industry of Jose Bautista Stats Porn. Desperate souls shuffle into isolated booths, insert their toonies and Bautista’s isolated slugging and weighted on base average rolls across a fuzzy screen. Their souls lifted and lives affirmed, these downtrodden serfs re-enter the world with a spring in their step and a purpose in their being. The magic of Bautista knows no bounds.
The man himself recently dipped his toe into the stats nerd pool in conversation with Fox Sports’ Jon Paul Morosi, introducing a “new” stat which attempts to quantify offensive production. The results are…mixed.
During spring training, Morosi asked Jose Bautista which player he thought to be baseball’s best. As it was still spring training, Bautista offered Albert Pujols, unaware of his own ability to transcend the mortal plane. Then, in a discussion on the ways to measure a player’s production, Bautista attacked sanity like it was a fastball thrown on the inside half.
“The proper way is adding RBIs and runs scored and subtracting the home runs, because you’d get double credit for that,” the player explained. “Then you divide that by the number of games played.
“If your index is over 1, or close to 1, that’s amazing. If you had nine players like that on your team, then you’re scoring nine runs per game, and that’s never happened, ever, in the history of baseball.”
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Jose. Love ya brother. Your exploits already made my summer and it’s only May. I applaud your willingness to look beyond batting average and quantify things in a unique way. But the index you just created is **** crazy.
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Without getting nerdy at all, I can see one problem with your index: Chris Woodward has a non-zero (0.2) Bautista Index, despite not reaching base a single time all season. He pinch ran and scored on Johnnie Mac’s walkoff homer back on April 22.
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I really don’t know what else to say, Jose. If shooting the breeze with national columnists while thinking up oddly esoteric offensive indexes clears your head for hitting, please do not stop doing so. Deep thinking is a great way to exercise the mind.
Let me suggest some other mental gymnastics to keep you occupied and in the zone. Perhaps a unified field theory on pizza evaluation or explaining, once and for all, how a ball is fair when it strikes the foul pole?
SS Girl
RGM Girl
Random thoughts
The Encarnation experiment has to stop. The guy is an on-field abortion. 10 errors already? Get him out of there. I get that there haven't been a lot of options as of late, but now that Nix is back there's no excuse for him to play third ever again. He shouldn't really be on the field at all. At least he displayed some of his power last season, which arguably justified his presence on the field and in the lineup, but now there's no excuse. If he's doing anything but sitting or DHing, it's a big problem.
There are some good quotes in the Globe article about Bautista. The onslaught of praise for Bautista might get stale eventually, but it hasn't yet.
Finally, the Bautista index is, uh, interesting. I'll leave it at that.
Oh, the SS girl is actually pretty hot today. It's kind of weird. Anyway there's a link there if you want to check out the rest of the pics.
That's it for now, have a good one guys.
