Written by Richard Lee-Sam, Mike Passador, and Joshua Howsam
Struggling Nemeses
What’s more disrespectful to the game; flipping your bat, having an OPS of .612 just eight weeks into a newly signed six-year deal, or an earned run average over 10 at the end of May?
When you think of the recent rivalry between the Blue Jays and Rangers, three events come to mind; the Bat Flip, the Punch, and Donaldson’s slide to complete Toronto’s ALDS sweep last October. Obviously there will be some fans that want retribution for the punch to the jaw of Jose Bautista, and to those people I want to say this: let’s be adults here. Let’s be mature and not sink to their level. Let’s just pretend all of that didn’t happen and try to enjoy the team attempting to make up ground in the wild card race.
Just kidding, let’s talk about how terrible Rougned Odor and Sam Dyson have been!
Rougned Odor became a cult hero in Texas for swinging at Jose Bautista last year. He also became a cult hero in Canada for being awful at throwing to first base in the playoffs. Through his first 47 games this season, he has posted a measly .222 tAV. His VORP of -4.1 ranks tenth worst among players with at least 100 plate appearances this year. His exit velocity is up from last year, and his .229 BABIP will almost certainly improve, but Odor has been an all-around nightmare to start year one of a six-year, $49.5M deal.
There is no punch without a bat flip, and there is no bat flip without Sam Dyson, so we should be thankful for him. Jokes aside, the righty has actually been really good the past few seasons. From the 2014 to the end of last year, Dyson’s GB% ranked third among all relievers league wide, helping him post an ERA of 2.87 in just under 190 IP. There’s no secret that his sinker was the key to his success. In those three seasons, he threw it over 50 percent of the time. Per Brooks Baseball, Dyson’s sinker usage jumped from a range of 53-56 percent from 2014-2016 to 68 this through his first 15 appearances in 2017.
The problem is that hitters aren’t missing it like they used to. Dyson produced whiffs on 9.3 percent of sinkers he threw from 2014-2016 and that number has dropped to 3.3 percent this year. It’d be fair to assume that because of this, he’s generated more grounders, but even his ground ball rate on his sinker is down.
So it’s unclear what’s more likely to happen this series, Sam Dyson throwing a clean inning or Rougned Odor recording more than one extra base hit.
At least you’ll always have the punch!
Variety is the spice of life
While the Jays come into this series with some hot hitters, it’ll be interesting to see how they fare against the trio of Texas starters scheduled to toe the rubber at Rogers Centre.
The Jays were able to do some damage at Miller Park in part because they were facing a pair of starters who have remarkably similar pitch selection and velocity (over the course of their careers). Excepting some difference in their breaking ball movement, there isn’t much separation between Jimmy Nelson and Matt Garza. Their curveballs provide the biggest disparity, but Nelson threw just 12 on Tuesday while Garza only threw only six the day after. Aside from those handfuls of pitches, Toronto essentially saw the same pitcher two days in a row:
That will be a thing of the past against A.J. Griffin, Yu Darvish, and Andrew Cashner, as all three right handers feature a wider variety of pitches and showcase a much larger spread in both velocity and movement. While the Brewers above made it easy to break down pitches by type and frequency simultaneously, it makes more sense to compare each pitcher’s first, second, third and fourth most-used pitches against the Rangers. While Darvish has a wicked slider that should be used plenty, Griffin doesn’t even have one in his arsenal. Here’s how it shakes out, with the caveat that Darvish has several more pitches in his back pocket he could call upon if need be:
This mishmash of velocities, breaks, and repertoire means that the Jays might be caught off balance over the course of this series, particularly against secondary pitches. The juxtaposition of waiting for Griffin’s glacial curve while gearing up for Darvish’s nasty slider and Cashner’s speedy sinker across three days could be trouble for a team prone to disappearing offensively.
In fact, if A.J. Griffin seems painfully familiar to you it’s because he managed to shut down the Jays with 6.0 innings of 3-hit, 9-K baseball in his lone start against Toronto last season. Hopefully the team has learned their lesson and won’t be so judicious in their pursuit of that loping curve this time around.
This could make it tough for returning players to get their legs back underneath them. One day’s reality will be very different from the next, so there will be little chance for Toronto’s hitters to get in any sort of groove against three very different starters.
Familiar Faces
It would be almost negligent of us not to list three things to watch for in this series without including the returns of Josh Donaldson and Troy Tulowitzki. Tulowitzki hasn’t been seen since April 21st and Jays fans will have to go all the way back in their memories to April 13th to remember the last time they saw the Bringer of Rain in a Toronto lineup.
To say that the team has missed these two would be something of an understatement. Donaldson has been one of baseball’s best players since joining the team and while Tulo hasn’t exactly lived up to expectations, he has still been a productive member of the team and the anchor in the infield.
With the two star players on the shelf, the Jays have basically used a three-headed monster to fill in on the left side of the infield (with brief cameos from Russell Martin and Jose Bautista): Ryan Goins, Darwin Barney, and Chris Coghlan.
Notwithstanding his recent grand slam against the Brewers, Ryan Goins is hitting a measly .212/.266/.356, “good” for a TAv of .223. That’s the best mark of the three. Chris Coghlan checks in with a TAv of .220, with Darwin Barney trailing at a pathetic .205. And it isn’t as though those three players just had a bad few weeks. Their careers tell us that they are simply bad hitters. As such, even if Troy Tulowitzki somehow never improves on this year’s .295 OBP and .386 (both of which would easily be career worsts), he still represents a monumental upgrade over the replacements. Then when you reintroduce Josh Donaldson and his continued destruction of the American League (.374 TAv in this year’s tiny sample), you’re looking at a multiple win upgrade, just on offense.
Of course, Donaldson and Tulowitzki tend to provide a little bit of value on the defensive side of the ball as well. While you wouldn’t think that would necessarily be a big issue with the likes of Goins and Barney holding down the fort, you’d actually be mistaken. Ryan Goins has been objectively terrible at shortstop this year, with a -6 DRS (which projects to -26 over a full year). In particular he has had a lot of trouble when ranging up the middle, missing a lot of ground balls.
The other two guys haven’t been a whole lot better either; Coghlan checks in at -2 DRS (-16 pace) and Darwin Barney at -1 (-5 pace), mostly due to not being suited for 3B. While Donaldson slipped to 2 DRS last year (after posting double digits the previous two), that would still be a clear improvement. Add in Tulowitzki and his 11 DRS from 2016, and suddenly the infield becomes way better. With the current mishmash of starting pitches, any extra battet ball help will go a long way.
It will be interesting to see how the lineup shakes out, with Kevin Pillar and Justin Smoak putting up outsized numbers, not to mention the May resurgences of Jose Bautista and Devon Travis, but for the first time in weeks, the Blue Jays lineup will actually have length. It’ll awfully nice to see.
Lead Photo © Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports