Jays are a team built out of character?

North_of_Border · Post #1 » by **North_of_Border** » Thu Apr 6, 2017 11:42 pm

I think this spring Gibbons said that the Jays are a team built to live and die by the home run. I agree with that, it's clear. Jays will try to hit it long or die trying.

However, they don't have enough long ball players to sustain that style for a whole season. The only guys you can really rely on to give you big Homer numbers are Donaldson.... and maybe Morales. That's it though. The rest of em are washed up or not good enough. I'm talking Tulo, Martin, Jose. See where I'm going.

If the Jays want to be a true home run dependent team, look at Baltimore. They never have a dominant rotation. Yes they have an elite pen. But it's their offense that carries. An offense that lives and dies by the long ball. What the Jays think they are built for. Which they are. But just don't have the talent to show it.

Now I'm not saying they should start playing small ball all the sudden. Because this team is NOT built for that either. At this point you gotta keep doing what you are now. But it just seems futile.

Opinions?

Skin Blues · Post #2 » by **Skin Blues** » Fri Apr 7, 2017 10:27 am

My opinion: this idea that we live and due by the home run is getting tired. The most important aspect of scoring runs is getting on base, followed by hitting for power. Here, from last season, is the AL sorted by team OBP. Here is the year before. We are among the best teams in the league at getting on base. It is such a terrible argument to make, to say that we need more small ball and slap hitters which would destroy our overall run scoring. Some people will get a boner thinking back to that one time a team bunted a leadoff double to third base and then scored him on a weak groundout to SS, yet couldn't care less about boring walk followed by 2 K's and then a double. A run is a run is a run. I know some of you are thinking "but, but..." and you're wrong. I'm sure there are some VHS tapes of 1980's baseball available at Value Village if that's the type of game you like to watch.

phillipmike · Post #3 » by **phillipmike** » Fri Apr 7, 2017 1:33 pm

If you think we are only a HR team then nothing should have changed.

Jays HRs:
2014: 177
2015: 232
2016: 221

Difference between 2015 and 2016 is that Jose Bautista hit 40 and then 22 HRs. The 18 HRs lost there would have put us with better totals than 2015.

We lost 70 HRs last season from EE, Saunders and Upton. Last season Morales had 30, Pearce 13 in 302 PAs and Carrera had 6 in 310 PAs then add in Bautista's 22 in 517 and Travis' 11 in 432 and the Jays can easily make that up with health and their new additions alone.

I am not huge on projections and even less on FG's Depth Charts' predictions as they expect (32 HRs from Donaldson and only 26 from Morales - i expect around 35 for both) but they project the Jays to hit 220 HRs in 2017. Their batting WAR last season was 23.4 and they are projected to be around 23.7.

In the end we hope Carrera proves he is a starter or Pompey becomes a decent starter and we can get better numbers from Pearce exclusively at 1B vs Smoak.

There isnt and shouldnt be a whole lot of difference from 2016 to 2017 with regards to our offense.

The_Hater · Post #4 » by **The_Hater** » Fri Apr 7, 2017 1:48 pm

The Jays hit a lot of HR's the past 2 seasons, I suspect they will be among the MLB leaders again.

I disagree that they only get bombs from 3 positions though, if Smoak is at 1st and Pearce in LF, they have 15+ HR potential from 8 positions and 30 HR potential from 4. That's a lot of power.

North_of_Border · Post #5 » by **North_of_Border** » Fri Apr 7, 2017 8:58 pm

The_Hater wrote:The Jays hit a lot of HR's the past 2 seasons, I suspect they will be among the MLB leaders again.

I disagree that they only get bombs from 3 positions though, if Smoak is at 1st and Pearce in LF, they have 15+ HR potential from 8 positions and 30 HR potential from 4. That's a lot of power.

A lot of those will be Empty power though.

Think of how Smoak hits. He either hits a Homer or just strikes out. That's what the Jays lineup is like. Excluding a few guys of course.

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The_Hater · Post #6 » by **The_Hater** » Fri Apr 7, 2017 10:30 pm

North_of_Border wrote:
The_Hater wrote:The Jays hit a lot of HR's the past 2 seasons, I suspect they will be among the MLB leaders again.

I disagree that they only get bombs from 3 positions though, if Smoak is at 1st and Pearce in LF, they have 15+ HR potential from 8 positions and 30 HR potential from 4. That's a lot of power.

A lot of those will be Empty power though.

Think of how Smoak hits. He either hits a Homer or just strikes out. That's what the Jays lineup is like. Excluding a few guys of course.

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Smoak sucks. I felt dirty even typing His name.

But what's empty power? The Jays led the league in walks and OBP in 2015 and still have a lot of high OBP guys. If you're looking for high BA, this is the wrong team. But that's highly overrated by most fans anyways.

Either they score runs or they don't and I still think this team will score more runs than the 2016 version.

LLJ · Post #7 » by **LLJ** » Fri Apr 7, 2017 10:38 pm

In baseball, guys strike out a lot more often than they hit. It's the optics that are making our strikeouts worse than they seem. If all those other good teams in the MLB had better hitting technique than us, they'd be averaging 10 runs a game going by how badly we compare to them by our fans.

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