Toronto Blue Jays (48-44) at New York Mets (50-43) - July 23-25

[I_Like_Dirt]

Because this notion of the Jays offense as "too variable" seems to have taken root despite being completely devoid of evidence, here's every team in baseball ranked by the number of games where they scored 3 or fewer runs:

Jays - 33.
Astros - 35.
Angels - 36.
Rays - 38.
Giants - 38.
Red Sox - 39.
Reds - 41.
White Sox - 41.
Mariners - 41.
Braves - 41.
Dodgers - 42.
Athletics - 43.
Brewers - 43.
Tigers - 44.
Phillies - 44.
Cleveland - 45.
Diamondbacks - 45.
Orioles - 46.
Mets - 46.
Padres - 46.
Rockies - 46.
Yankees - 47.
Twins - 47.
Royals - 48.
Rangers - 49.
Cubs - 50.
Nationals - 51.
Cardinals - 54.
Pirates - 56.
Marlins - 58.


Would you look at that! Our feast-or-famine, only hits home runs (despite being second in the league in average) offense actually has the fewest off nights of anyone in baseball! It's almost like it was a nonsense narrative when our problems have absolutely nothing to do with our offense, which is excellent in just about every way.

You're better than this, schad. You're bleeding together a bunch of separate arguments to make a glorious straw man and throwing out a stat that doesn't show run variance at all. This team is absolutely dreadful in games decided by 3 runs or less and amazing when they're decided by 4 runs or more.

It's surely a variety of factors and luck is no small player among them. Montoyo is definitely a factor but is far too easy to point the finger at here. It could be roster construction where the best bats all thrive against similar pitching so they'll run up the score fast and go quiet at the same time too. It could be statheads calling pitching personnel in ways that the teams play more to catch up when behind while continuing to play for unneeded runs when they have the game in hand (I.e. valuing runs a bit too much over wins) could be playing a part here. And it could be neither of those things and nothing or something else entirely. I'm not sure why you're so adamant to admit that there absolutely isn't anything more going on here.

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[Schad]

This is a team of stat padders. They can clobber Texas, do reasonably well against middling teams, but they fold like a cheap suit in close late game. They are notoriously bad as a group in that regard.

Almost every team in baseball hits much worse against good pitching late in games, and hits better against bad pitching in blowouts.

Conversely, we're one of the best teams in baseball for hitting with two outs and runners in scoring position. Combing those two things, our numbers in high leverage situations are broadly similar to our numbers overall. And last year, we were significantly better in high leverage situations than we were overall, with most of the same group. It's basically noise.

We're also scoring 4.5 runs/game against the Yankees, Red Sox and Rays on the year, which -- while lower than our overall average -- is significantly more than those teams surrender to non-Blue Jays opposition.

People are just wildly overthinking this: our problem is that our bullpen sucks, and our starting pitching (while decent overall) is seriously prone to surrendering home runs, and consequently to blowing leads.

[s e n s i]

"Late & Close are Plate Appearances in the 7th or later with the batting team tied, ahead by one, or the tying run at least on deck." lol that's pretty circumstantial

.752 OPS vs. the league average of .731 OPS in all high leverage is probably more telling, given that hits in the bottom of the 6th inning with the game tied are equally important to hits in the top of the 7th inning with the game tied

[Schad]

You're better than this, schad. You're bleeding together a bunch of separate arguments to make a glorious straw man and throwing out a stat that doesn't show run variance at all. This team is absolutely dreadful in games decided by 3 runs or less and amazing when they're decided by 4 runs or more.

Your entire argument is that the team scores inconsistently, but they're actually arguably the most consistent scorers of runs in the league. The offense consistently keeps the team in games, in addition to having games where they run up the score. That's what makes it a good overall offense.

We're dreadful in close games because our bullpen keeps blowing games*, not because of some made-up nonsense about run variance that has absolutely no basis in the numbers.


*Note that bullpen quality is the one factor, other than sheer luck, that has significant correlation with winning or losing close games. How strange that we, a team with a sucky bullpen that keeps blowing leads, keep losing them! Must be the offense!

[I_Like_Dirt]

The Jays were also dreadful in close games at the start of the season when the bullpen was lights out. You could be right but it's not nearly as likely as you seem to think. Your lack of imagination is amusing to me if nothing else.


Edit:

I asked last time if anyone had any evidence about run variance because I didn't have any. Nobody has come out with any just yet either. Those numbers you posted don't indicate variance either way but who knows. This is a team that has mastered scoring meaningless runs, whether it's adding 5 more when they're already up 8 or turning a 6-1 game into a 6-5 game and then going hitless as soon as they get within 1.

[s e n s i]

This is a team that has mastered scoring meaningless runs, whether it's adding 5 more when they're already up 8 or turning a 6-1 game into a 6-5 game and then going hitless as soon as they get within 1.

so...just like every other team in the league that hits well against inning-eaters and hits poorly against good relievers?

[SharoneWright]

Your lack of imagination is amusing to me if nothing else.

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[Schad]

The Jays were also dreadful in close games at the start of the season when the bullpen was lights out. You could be right but it's not nearly as likely as you seem to think. Your lack of imagination is amusing to me if nothing else.

I asked last time if anyone had any evidence about run variance because I didn't have any. Nobody has come out with any just yet either. Those numbers you posted don't indicate variance either way but who knows. This is a team that has mastered scoring meaningless runs, whether it's adding 5 more when they're already up 8 or turning a 6-1 game into a 6-5 game and then going hitless as soon as they get within 1.

You haven't exactly detailed what "run variance" means in your estimation. I checked to see whether the Jays had an atypical number of games where they scored low run totals, and it turned out to be the opposite: they have the fewest number of games where they post a poor run total.

Tell me what you would consider to be a marker of run variance, and I'll run the numbers. Is it the number of games where a team scores 50% more or less than their seasonal average, maybe? Percentage of games scoring between 4-7 runs or something? Because to date, all you're saying is that the Jays have high run variance while providing zero evidence to that effect, and then brushing off evidence to the contrary. It's almost as if you've intentionally set up a non-falsifiable hypothesis because you know that actually defining the term will result in it being proven erroneous.

I will admit, though, that creating a term, declaring it to be highly meaningful, and then refusing to give any indication of what it means is very imaginative, so points for that.

[dagger]

This is a team of stat padders. They can clobber Texas, do reasonably well against middling teams, but they fold like a cheap suit in close late game. They are notoriously bad as a group in that regard.

Almost every team in baseball hits much worse against good pitching late in games, and hits better against bad pitching in blowouts.

Conversely, we're one of the best teams in baseball for hitting with two outs and runners in scoring position. Combing those two things, our numbers in high leverage situations are broadly similar to our numbers overall. And last year, we were significantly better in high leverage situations than we were overall, with most of the same group. It's basically noise.

We're also scoring 4.5 runs/game against the Yankees, Red Sox and Rays on the year, which -- while lower than our overall average -- is significantly more than those teams surrender to non-Blue Jays opposition.

People are just wildly overthinking this: our problem is that our bullpen sucks, and our starting pitching (while decent overall) is seriously prone to surrendering home runs, and consequently to blowing leads.

I don't think we're overthinking it. There are other issues. And when do the power arms come out?

Read on Twitter

[Schad]

I don't think we're overthinking it. There are other issues. And when do the power arms come out?

Man, that sounds bad! Let's look at another team, then, and see how it compares.

The Red Sox, against fastballs in excess of 95 MPH, by wOBA:

JD Martinez - .267.
Marwin Gonzalez - .245.
Bobby Dalbec - .229.
Jarren Duran - .197.
Franchy Cordero - .188.


The Rays:

Kevin Kiermaier - .275.
Wander Franco - .273.
Randy Arozarena - .261.
Manuel Margot - .255.
Francisco Mejia - .215.


The stat purports to show that the Jays are atypically bad against good fastballs. But if you look at other teams, what it actually demonstrates is that i) hitting good fastballs is tough for everyone, and ii) Biggio/Jansen aren't very good hitters. And that's about it.

[Schad]

I don't think we're overthinking it. There are other issues. And when do the power arms come out?

Read on Twitter

So, I just realized that I can actually run the numbers on this, and...we're one of the best teams in the league at hitting 95+ mph fastballs:

Link.

In addition to being the 5th-best hitting team against 95+, we're also 7th against fastballs under 95, the 4th-best team against offspeed stuff, and 1st against breaking pitches. We're just, generally speaking, good at hitting baseballs (except for Danny Jansen, who cannot hit anything, but luckily won't be asked to try to do so much more).