Blue Jays (17-16) vs Braves (17-17) - May 11-13

[SharoneWright]

Bring in Chatwood!

[The_Hater]

Bring in Chatwood!

I don’t think that’s allowed in the rules.

[SharoneWright]

Buck, That’s just dumb. No one’s worried that Swanson could score on a single.

[SharoneWright]

So, Chatwood was ON . Like, ON. You should never assume any reliever you bring in is going to be on. And you have a guy who can throw three or four innings. Let alone two innings. So you decide to roll the dice and bring in somebody new? Are you insane? Go with a hot hand who is reliable. Why do you manufacture drama?

[The_Hater]

So, Chatwood was ON . Like, ON. You should never assume any reliever you bring in is going to be on. And you have a guy who can throw three or four innings. Let alone two innings. So you decide to roll the dice and bring in somebody new? Are you insane? Go with a hot hand who is reliable. Why do you manufacture drama?

RP’s are used in 1 inning spurts late in games, you know this so there’s no sense gripping in hindsight.

Our bullpen has been incredible this season through a ton of injuries and fans still want to pile on Montoya for how he’s handling it. That’s ridiculous.

[SharoneWright]

So, Chatwood was ON . Like, ON. You should never assume any reliever you bring in is going to be on. And you have a guy who can throw three or four innings. Let alone two innings. So you decide to roll the dice and bring in somebody new? Are you insane? Go with a hot hand who is reliable. Why do you manufacture drama?

RP’s are used in 1 inning spurts late in games, you know this so there’s no sense gripping in hindsight.

Our bullpen has been incredible this season through a ton of injuries and fans still want to pile on Montoya for how he’s handling it. That’s ridiculous.

Bah.

No reason to switch and burn Romano tonight. None. Other than “that’s how RP’s are used”.

[Randle McMurphy]

The point isn’t what he did on pitch 6, it was that he swung on pitches 4 and 5 when they weren’t even close.

I’m not worried about Vlade, he gets himself good pitches to hit.

Grichuk is what he is. A streaky hitter that goes up and down throughout a season, but more or less ends up slightly above average by the end.

We don’t know quite what Vlad is yet at all. Have only seen a month of that elite production.

Of course Grichuk is streaky, that was my entire point to begin with.

As for your previous post on Vlade, it hasn’t aged well in the last 40 minutes. We know what he is, he’s a stud.

When he hits the ball in the air, which he had stopped doing over the past week and a half and which he didn’t do during his first two years in the bigs.

[Randle McMurphy]

So, Chatwood was ON . Like, ON. You should never assume any reliever you bring in is going to be on. And you have a guy who can throw three or four innings. Let alone two innings. So you decide to roll the dice and bring in somebody new? Are you insane? Go with a hot hand who is reliable. Why do you manufacture drama?

He used Chatwood for 2 innings in their last win too. Eh, it worked out...barely. Romano still has no idea where his FB is going.

[GoRapstheoriginal]

JAYS WIN! JAYS WIN! WOOHOO! HOORAY!
! ! !

[Randle McMurphy]

Davis really does seem to be a bad baserunner.

He’s had some real blunders this year but he blamed Rivera for that one after the game which is hardly surprising either.

[JaysRule15]

Man, it would be nice if we got the same Romano from last year.

[Schad]

When he hits the ball in the air, which he had stopped doing over the past week and a half and which he didn’t do during his first two years in the bigs.

From May 1 - 10, he hit 25 fair balls. He hit eight pull-side, nine straightaway, and eight opposite field. His average launch angle was one degree below his seasonal total. Yeah, his results on those pulled balls weren't good, but we're literally looking at six pull-side grounders in 39 plate appearances there. I don't think that's quite a portent of doom.

[Randle McMurphy]

When he hits the ball in the air, which he had stopped doing over the past week and a half and which he didn’t do during his first two years in the bigs.

From May 1 - 10, he hit 25 fair balls. He hit eight pull-side, nine straightaway, and eight opposite field. His average launch angle was one degree below his seasonal total. Yeah, his results on those pulled balls weren't good, but we're literally looking at six pull-side grounders in 39 plate appearances there. I don't think that's quite a portent of doom.

https://fairservice.substack.com/p/vlad-is-slumping-and-i-think-we-know

Even the greatest Vlad fan of all today noted the increasing GB rate the past few weeks. Nobody is saying it portends doom (would he be doomed to be very good instead of a top 5 hitter in the league?) but you’d rather see him keep doing the opposite (hitting the ball in the air) instead of the very thing that kept him from elite status the last few years.

The most important development of this season so far is Vlad’s development with the bat. The rest is really quite secondary.

[vaff87]

When he hits the ball in the air, which he had stopped doing over the past week and a half and which he didn’t do during his first two years in the bigs.

From May 1 - 10, he hit 25 fair balls. He hit eight pull-side, nine straightaway, and eight opposite field. His average launch angle was one degree below his seasonal total. Yeah, his results on those pulled balls weren't good, but we're literally looking at six pull-side grounders in 39 plate appearances there. I don't think that's quite a portent of doom.

https://fairservice.substack.com/p/vlad-is-slumping-and-i-think-we-know

Even the greatest Vlad fan of all today noted the increasing GB rate the past few weeks. Nobody is saying it portends doom (would he be doomed to be very good instead of a top 5 hitter in the league?) but you’d rather see him keep doing the opposite (hitting the ball in the air) instead of the very thing that kept him from elite status the last few years.

The most important development of this season so far is Vlad’s development with the bat. The rest is really quite secondary.

One thing I noticed in his final at bat tonight, was that his stance was slightly more open than I remember it being when he was scorching hot earlier in the season. I’m not the most attentive person, so I could be wrong.

[Schad]

https://fairservice.substack.com/p/vlad-is-slumping-and-i-think-we-know

Even the greatest Vlad fan of all today noted the increasing GB rate the past few weeks. Nobody is saying it portends doom (would he be doomed to be very good instead of a top 5 hitter in the league?) but you’d rather see him keep doing the opposite (hitting the ball in the air) instead of the very thing that kept him from elite status the last few years.

The most important development of this season so far is Vlad’s development with the bat. The rest is really quite secondary.

We're literally talking about a sample such that it's being largely driven by a couple games. For kicks, let's take a look at Fernando Tatis' 15-game rolling GB%:

Link.

That's much more dramatic! He's approaching 60%, and is at 66% from May 1st on. Is that a sign that Tatis is turning into a pumpkin? Not really, no. Groundball rate varies pretty wildly on a rolling basis with a narrow focus...here's his career chart, rolling 15 games:

Link

Vlad's doing the thing most hitters do at some point: he's missing on his timing slightly, and the result is some less-than-optimal contact...he's still hitting the ball hard, because Vlad, he just isn't squaring it up consistently. But the big driver of Vlad's problems in his previous two seasons is that he hits too many grounders by trying to pull the ball, because he is ideally a gap-to-gap hitter. That's where a lot of his power is found, and he has been much more able to keep the ball off the ground when he doesn't try to pull it.

He isn't pulling the ball especially much at the moment. There really isn't anything that stands out as a significant worry here.

[Randle McMurphy]

https://fairservice.substack.com/p/vlad-is-slumping-and-i-think-we-know

Even the greatest Vlad fan of all today noted the increasing GB rate the past few weeks. Nobody is saying it portends doom (would he be doomed to be very good instead of a top 5 hitter in the league?) but you’d rather see him keep doing the opposite (hitting the ball in the air) instead of the very thing that kept him from elite status the last few years.

The most important development of this season so far is Vlad’s development with the bat. The rest is really quite secondary.

We're literally talking about a sample such that it's being largely driven by a couple games. For kicks, let's take a look at Fernando Tatis' 15-game rolling GB%:

Link.

That's much more dramatic! He's approaching 60%, and is at 66% from May 1st on. Is that a sign that Tatis is turning into a pumpkin? Not really, no. Groundball rate varies pretty wildly on a rolling basis with a narrow focus...here's his career chart, rolling 15 games:

Link

Vlad's doing the thing most hitters do at some point: he's missing on his timing slightly, and the result is some less-than-optimal contact...he's still hitting the ball hard, because Vlad, he just isn't squaring it up consistently. But the big driver of Vlad's problems in his previous two seasons is that he hits too many grounders by trying to pull the ball, because he is ideally a gap-to-gap hitter. That's where a lot of his power is found, and he has been much more able to keep the ball off the ground when he doesn't try to pull it.

He isn't pulling the ball especially much at the moment. There really isn't anything that stands out as a significant worry here.

Tatis doesn’t have the worrisome history of pounding the ball into the ground at the rate Vlad did last year, so that’s not exactly an apples to apples comparison either. There are good reasons to at least be on the lookout for Vlad falling into his old patterns. Him rolling over more the past few weeks might be the first sign of that. Or it could just as easily be nothing.

I’m not overly worried about the best hitter in the team (and I think anybody would be a fool to think that a guy who hits the ball as consistently hard as he does and strikes out as little as he does won’t eventually figure it out over a full year at this level) but I certainly don’t think he’s completely in the clear simply based on one month of MLB elite production.

[Randle McMurphy]

From May 1 - 10, he hit 25 fair balls. He hit eight pull-side, nine straightaway, and eight opposite field. His average launch angle was one degree below his seasonal total. Yeah, his results on those pulled balls weren't good, but we're literally looking at six pull-side grounders in 39 plate appearances there. I don't think that's quite a portent of doom.

https://fairservice.substack.com/p/vlad-is-slumping-and-i-think-we-know

Even the greatest Vlad fan of all today noted the increasing GB rate the past few weeks. Nobody is saying it portends doom (would he be doomed to be very good instead of a top 5 hitter in the league?) but you’d rather see him keep doing the opposite (hitting the ball in the air) instead of the very thing that kept him from elite status the last few years.

The most important development of this season so far is Vlad’s development with the bat. The rest is really quite secondary.

One thing I noticed in his final at bat tonight, was that his stance was slightly more open than I remember it being when he was scorching hot earlier in the season. I’m not the most attentive person, so I could be wrong.

I haven’t noticed but could be. In all likelihood his timing has just been a bit off for a few weeks but we’ll see.

[Schad]

Tatis doesn’t have the worrisome history of pounding the ball into the ground at the rate Vlad did last year, so that’s not exactly an apples to apples comparison either. There are good reasons to at least be on the lookout for Vlad falling into his old patterns. Him rolling over more the past few weeks might be the first sign of that. Or it could just as easily be nothing.

That's the point, though: he isn't rolling over the ball at a particularly high rate, even in that recent stretch. As much as anything, he's been hitting too many grounders up the middle. That's not an approach issue, that's just Vlad getting slightly on top of the pitches that he was hitting as screaming liners previous. His pull% is effectively unchanged:

Link

If he starts to get pull-happy, that's worth noting. I spent the first two years of his career banging on about the fact that the groundball outs were a product of him trying to pull the ball too much, so it's something I'm pretty mindful of. But this isn't that.

[Metallikid]

So, Chatwood was ON . Like, ON. You should never assume any reliever you bring in is going to be on. And you have a guy who can throw three or four innings. Let alone two innings. So you decide to roll the dice and bring in somebody new? Are you insane? Go with a hot hand who is reliable. Why do you manufacture drama?

Charlie "Fixing Something That Isn't Broken" Montoyo

[Parataxis]

So, Chatwood was ON . Like, ON. You should never assume any reliever you bring in is going to be on. And you have a guy who can throw three or four innings. Let alone two innings. So you decide to roll the dice and bring in somebody new? Are you insane? Go with a hot hand who is reliable. Why do you manufacture drama?

RP’s are used in 1 inning spurts late in games, you know this so there’s no sense gripping in hindsight.

Our bullpen has been incredible this season through a ton of injuries and fans still want to pile on Montoya for how he’s handling it. That’s ridiculous.

That's how he's USING them. It doesn't have to be how they're used though. There's no rule that says relievers need to come in for just one inning. Especially not when it's not a high leverage situation (not yesterday, but in earlier decisions)

Out bullpen has been amazing, but they could be managed better. There have been some very questionable substitutions - not just in hindsight (indeed, they often work out regardless) but at the moment too.