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	<title>Toronto &#187; Tigers</title>
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		<title>Recap: Blue Jays 5, Tigers 4; The Real Troy Tulowitzki is Back</title>
		<link>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2016/07/07/recap-blue-jays-5-tigers-4-the-real-troy-tulowitzki-is-back/</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 08 Jul 2016 03:11:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matt Gwin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Recaps]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[blue jays]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Drew Hutchison]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Justin Verlander]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tigers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Troy Tulowitzki]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/?p=4468</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Two years ago, if I&#8217;d told you that Drew Hutchison pitched just as well as Justin Verlander, you&#8217;d have been ecstatic. Well, that happened today, but there was no ecstaticism to be found. Verlander isn&#8217;t much like his 2011 Cy Young and MVP award winning self these days; today&#8217;s game epitomized that. He struck out five [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Two years ago, if I&#8217;d told you that Drew Hutchison pitched just as well as Justin Verlander, you&#8217;d have been ecstatic. Well, that happened today, but there was no ecstaticism to be found. Verlander isn&#8217;t much like his 2011 Cy Young and MVP award winning self these days; today&#8217;s game epitomized that. He struck out five batters, but walked just four. He also gave up no home runs, but the Jays eke&#8217;d out six hits against him over 5 2/3 innings. Miraculously, that was enough to allow Justin Verlander to leave the game with the Tigers ahead and a shot at a win. How? As iterated earlier, Hutch had a similarly unfortunate performance.</p>
<p>In the strikeout and walk department, Drew Hutchison far outclassed his opponent: he struck out seven and walked just one over six innings. However, as he often does, Hutchison gave up a couple of fly balls that went a little too far. Since 2012, among pitchers with at least 400 innings pitched, Drew Hutchison&#8217;s 1.26 HR/9 is the 15th worst home run rate in the league. Some would argue that, despite the homers, today&#8217;s start marked a staunch improvement for the righty. It validates the &#8216;potential&#8217; that he still holds. Unfortunately, strikeouts have never been Drew&#8217;s issues; instead it is how hittable he is, and how many flyballs he gives up. There was no improvement in either of those two categories today.</p>
<p>Despite less than wonderful pitching for both teams, there was less scoring than you might expect. The Blue Jays tagged Verlander for two runs in the first. Then, with homers in the second and fourth, the Tigers propelled their way to a lead. That lead held until the eight, when the Jays nickelled and dimed their way to two runs. It started with a Zeke single, a Donaldson single, and a Martin walk mixed in a couple outs. That left the based loaded for the recently hot Troy Tulowitzki, who didn&#8217;t miss his shot at glory. Blue Jays win.</p>
<h3>Top Play of the Game by WPA</h3>
<p>Today&#8217;s top play was Tulowitzki&#8217;s aforementioned single to score two and take the lead. It earned the Jays a remarkable 51% edge in win probability added. While very high, that figure makes sense, as it likely would have been the Jays&#8217; last shot at a win. At that point there were two outs, and the bases loaded. Had Troy Tulowitzki not been able to score at least one run, Justin Smoak, Kevin Pillar, and Darwin Barney would have finished out the game. That trio doesn&#8217;t exactly inspire much confidence.</p>
<h3>Bottom Play of the Game by WPA</h3>
<p>Today&#8217;s bottom play also came in the 8th inning, just two batters before Troy Tulowitzki. Michael Saunders had come to the plate with Ezequiel Carrera on third, Josh Donaldson on first, and just one out. Had he gotten the ball out of the infield, the game would have been tied. Instead, he grounded out to first, with Miguel Cabrera going to home to get Ezequiel out on a fielder&#8217;s choice; a 20.6% reduction in win expectancy.</p>
<h3>The Real Troy Tulowitzki is in the Building</h3>
<p>Over his last six games, including today, Troy Tulowitzki has three home runs, nine hits, and a whole lot of confidence. In a post titled, &#8220;<a href="http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-blue-jays-are-smashing-people-again/" target="_blank">The Blue Jays are Smashing People Again</a>,&#8221; Jeff Sullivan detailed how Tulo&#8217;s contact rate has returned to form, and it may be the thing to turn his season around. Jeff theorized that Troy Tulowitzki&#8217;s early season experiment with the leg kick may have caused some contact issues. However, he&#8217;s now back to a toe tap, and it certainly seems to be working.</p>
<h3>Good Morning Baltimore</h3>
<p>On May 18th, the Blue Jays were seven games back of first in the AL East. Today, they are now just one game back of Baltimore. That&#8217;s a remarkable recovery. It has come as a result of a nice little hot streak. They&#8217;ve won 6 of their last 6; 8 of their last 10; and 14 of their last 22. No matter how you frame it, the Jays are on a roll.</p>
<h3>Up Next</h3>
<p>Tomorrow Aaron Sanchez will take on Mike Pelfrey of the Tigers. It&#8217;s the ultimate strikeout versus no strikeout matchup, and it&#8217;ll begin at 7:07 PM EST. The Jays have come close to sweeping all four of their four game series this season, but haven&#8217;t yet done it. With Verlander out of the way and Jordan Zimmermann on the DL, they&#8217;ll have the opportunity against the Tigers.</p>
<p><em>Lead Photo: Kevin Sousa-USA TODAY Sports</em></p>
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		<title>When Cats Fly: Tigers Preview</title>
		<link>http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/2016/07/06/when-cats-fly-tigers-preview/</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 06 Jul 2016 17:35:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[BP Toronto Team]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[blue jays]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tigers]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Toronto Blue Jays vs. Detroit Tigers July 7th  &#8211; July 10th Written by Matt Gwin and Tammy Rainey With the All-Star break just days away, the Toronto Blue Jays are riding a five game winning streak as the neighbouring Detroit Tigers come to town. But more than that, since they bottomed out at four games under .500 [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h2 style="text-align: center">Toronto Blue Jays vs. Detroit Tigers</h2>
<h3 style="text-align: center">July 7th  &#8211; July 10th</h3>
<p style="text-align: center"><em>Written by <a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/author/matthewgwin/" target="_blank">Matt Gwin</a> and <a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/author/tammyrainey/" target="_blank">Tammy Rainey</a></em></p>
<p>With the All-Star break just days away, the Toronto Blue Jays are riding a five game winning streak as the neighbouring Detroit Tigers come to town. But more than that, since they bottomed out at four games under .500 on May 18, the boys in blue are 29-16. That&#8217;s a .644 winning percentage. Over a full season that&#8217;s a pace that wins you 103 games. Even over the remainder of the season, that pace would lead to 96 wins. The Jays have quietly become one of the best teams in baseball of late. The Tigers come in fairly warm themselves, sporting a .618 winning percentage since June 1. But they also come in without some key players and offering up much more hittable pitchers.</p>
<h3>Pitching Matchups:</h3>
<h4>July 7th – 7:07 PM ET</h4>
<p><strong>Drew Hutchison  vs. Justin Verlander</strong></p>
<p>Blue Jays fans love to laud Drew Hutchison’s abilities. However, they’re missing one key point: he has never really been all that great. Some people think back to September 2014, when Hutch struck out almost 35 percent of batters he faced. That allowed him to finish the season with a 3.85 FIP, a mark of his ‘true potential’. As a result, 2015 was almost unanimously declared his breakout season…we all know how that went.</p>
<p>Now, as he has opened the minor league season with a high strikeout rate and a 2.78 ERA, people are believing again. I’m not going to tell you not to believe entirely; Drew Hutchison is only 26. But, I would tell you to look at the results, whether you prefer actual or peripheral. In no season has he had an ERA below 4.40, and in only one season has his FIP been that low. It’s time to temper expectations, as a good Tigers lineup is not going to be kind to him.</p>
<p>Verlander is somewhat quietly having a very interesting season. Notice how I said interesting, and not necessarily good. At present, he’s striking out batters at a higher rate than any season since his 2011 AL Cy Young <em>and</em> AL MVP campaign. But, his current 4.11 ERA is nowhere near the sparkling 2.40 mark that earned him those accolades. Why? Well, he’s giving up homers more frequently than he ever has. Some might think that these two things are mutually exclusive, but Verlander’s pitch charts would beg to differ.</p>
<p><a href="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2016/07/VerlanderZonePercent.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-4456" src="http://toronto.locals.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2016/07/VerlanderZonePercent.gif" alt="VerlanderZonePercent" width="450" height="450" /></a></p>
<p>As you can see, Justin is consciously working up in the zone with his fastball. If you can control it, and mix it in well with a glut of other pitches, a high fastball can be a valuable weapon. Verlander isn’t quite doing that; expect a dinger or two off the starter.</p>
<h4>July 8th – 7:07 PM ET</h4>
<p><strong>J.A. Happ vs. Mike Pelfrey</strong></p>
<p>Like a few other members of this starting staff, Happ continues to defy convention. Strikeouts go down, walks go up, home runs go up…ERA goes down? Up is down, down is up, and at some point I expect to see the Mad Hatter. With that said, to his credit, Happ has recently been more conventionally successful. In three of his last four starts, he left the game without giving up a homer, which is something that he’d only done in 6 of his 13 starts this season. In his last start, Happ also struck out 11 batters; his highest total since August 2014. You probably shouldn’t expect to see quite as good a performance this time around as the Tigers are a good fastball hitting team, and loaded with righthanded power hitters. As a result, you should see Happ go to his curveball and changeup more than he has in other instances this season.</p>
<p>As a Met, Mike Pelfrey was a bad pitcher. The Twins then signed him to a two year $11 million contract. As a Twin, Mike Pelfrey was a bad pitcher pitcher. The Tigers then signed him to a two year $8 million contract. What&#8217;s that thing that they say about insanity again&#8230;? In all seriousness, if Pelfrey can keep the the ball on the ground, as he sometimes does well, he may be able to work his way through five innings. With a strong Tigers lineup behind him, that may be enough.</p>
<h4>July 9th – 1:07 PM ET</h4>
<p><strong>Aaron Sanchez vs. TBD</strong></p>
<p>Having a pitcher who is too good to put back in to the bullpen is a good problem to have. As Sanchez has continued to dominate, it certainly hasn’t made the problem any easier. Let’s look at his last start, on July 4th against the Royals. Sanchez should not have gotten through eight inning on only 96 pitches…yet he did. He wasn’t striking batters out; nor was he grounding batters out. Instead, Aaron Sanchez gave up eight line drives, which is his highest total of the season. However, even when hits did fall, he had a nasty sinker in his back pocket, ready to get him out of a tough inning. Once again, the Tigers have a lineup of players primed to hit the fastball, but Sanchez tends not to alter his approach too much. In fact, the last time he faced them he threw 80 percent fastballs and struck out 12 in eight innings. So while we could see him throw extra curveballs and changeups to combat the power, clearly the fastball works for him.</p>
<p>The Tigers have yet to announce a starter for this game, but it looks like it could end up being Matt Boyd, the former Blue Jay and one of the trade pieces used to acquire David Price for last year&#8217;s stretch run. If it is him, the ball could be flying out of the yard. He is quite homer prone and the right-handed Jays power should give him fits.</p>
<h4>July 10th – 7:07 PM ET</h4>
<p><strong>R.A. Dickey vs. Anibal Sanchez</strong></p>
<p>While we generally think of R.A. Dickey solely as a knuckleballer, he actually throws <a href="//www.brooksbaseball.net/outcome.php?player=285079&amp;b_hand=-1&amp;gFilt=&amp;pFilt=FA|SI|FC|CU|SL|CS|KN|CH|FS|SB&amp;time=game&amp;minmax=ci&amp;var=pcount&amp;s_type=2&amp;startDate=03/30/2007&amp;endDate=07/07/2016”">four distinct pitches</a>: a fourseameam fastball, sinker, knuckleball, and changeup. In his last start, he threw at least once of each pitch, which isn’t something he does very often. In fact it was just the fourth time this year that he&#8217;d done it. I&#8217;ll admit, for R.A. Dickey, his pitch selection probably isn&#8217;t as important as his ability to control the knuckler on a given day. However, I&#8217;m a fan of when he mixes things up. It’s hard to say for certain, but it definitely seems to keep hitters off-balance. In some ways, it worked in his last start, as he struck out eight batters. However, he also struggled to keep the ball on the ground more than he has the rest of the season, which likely won&#8217;t change against Detroit, who has a lineup of fly ball hitters. Heed caution with the upper half of the strike zone, R.A.</p>
<p>To put it lightly, Anibal Sanchez has gone off the rails this season. He has a career worst walk rate, home run rate, ERA, FIP, and DRA. At the end of May, it had gotten so bad, that the Tigers resorted to putting him in the bullpen: a $16 million long reliever. Fortunately for Anibal, and unfortunately for the Tigers, starters Jordan Zimmermann and Daniel Norris have hit the disabled list. Now, out of necessity, he&#8217;s starting once again. In his last start, he lasted just 4.1 innings. In the start prior to that, it was just five innings. Against the Jays, in his current state, I&#8217;d be surprised to see him get out of the fourth.</p>
<h3>Additions and Subtractions</h3>
<p>The big news for Toronto is obviously the back-story on Marco Estrada. As much as the All-Star pitcher passionately wanted to stay off the DL and participate in the mid-summer classic, the team came to the wise conclusion that circumstances demanded some time off. Estrada won&#8217;t pitch again before the Jays host the Seattle Mariners July 22-24.  His place on the roster will be taken by the recalled Bo Schultz.</p>
<p>As mentioned above, the Tigers are without some key pieces. They&#8217;re currently missing slugging RF JD Martinez, replaced by Steven Moya, and they have also lost one of their better starting pitchers in Jordan Zimmerman.  His turn in the rotation had been turned over to former Blue Jay Daniel Norris but he, too, left with an injury early in his last start so the next man in line is another former Blue Jay, as detailed above, Matt Boyd.</p>
<h3>Keep an Eye On</h3>
<p><strong>Josh Donaldson<br />
</strong></p>
<p>Don&#8217;t look now but, after a mid-May slump (playing through a couple of mild injuries) took him off the radar for some people, Donaldson is not only back but having a better year than his 2015 MVP campaign. He&#8217;s on pace to match Bryce Harper&#8217;s 9.5 fWAR from last season JD had 8.7 last year), and to challenge Jeff Bagwell&#8217;s modern record of 152 runs scored.</p>
<p><strong>Michael Saunders<br />
</strong></p>
<p>As the newly christened &#8220;Captain Canada&#8221; continues to build his case for All Star election, it&#8217;s worth noting how remarkably consistent he&#8217;s been as a force in the Blue Jays&#8217; lineup. Since April 20 (early season fluctuations aside, in other words) his OPS hasn&#8217;t gone below .872 and has spend 56 of the intervening 65 games over .900.  Over the last month, he&#8217;s sporting a .998 OPS and shows no sign of slowing down.</p>
<p><strong>Drew Hutchinson&#8217;s Performance<br />
</strong></p>
<p>With the non-waiver trade deadline coming up in less than a month, Hutch&#8217;s start against Detroit tonight is critical for both him and the team. It&#8217;s bad enough that the Jays are so thin in SP depth (beyond Hutch the next men in line are Jesse Chavez and Joe Biagini and then things get really dicey) but the trade market is also very slim and adding an arm might be expensive. Hutch&#8217;s one inning relief appearance against the Indians, on short notice, may not have been the best representation of what he offers but it left a bad taste in the mouths of much of the fan base. However, he pitched well in his previous spot start and he&#8217;s been near dominant at AAA (10.8 K/9, 3.1 K/BB, 2.78 ERA, 1.06 WHIP). A good outing here would increase everyone&#8217;s confidence level.</p>
<h3>Probable Lineup</h3>
<table style="background-color: #ffffff;border-collapse: collapse;border: 1px solid #000000;color: #000000;width: 100%" border="1" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="2">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center">
<h3>Blue Jays</h3>
</td>
<td style="text-align: center">
<h3>Tigers</h3>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center">Ezequiel Carrera &#8211; RF</td>
<td style="text-align: center">Ian Kinsler &#8211; 2B</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center">Josh Donaldson &#8211; 3B</td>
<td style="text-align: center">Cameron Maybin &#8211; CF</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center">Edwin Encarnacion &#8211; DH</td>
<td style="text-align: center">Miguel Cabrera &#8211; 1B</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center">Michael Saunders &#8211; LF</td>
<td style="text-align: center">Victor Martinez &#8211; DH</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center">Russell Martin &#8211; C</td>
<td style="text-align: center">Nick Castellanos &#8211; 3B</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center">Troy Tulowitzki &#8211; SS</td>
<td style="text-align: center">Justin Upton &#8211; LF</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center">Justin Smoak &#8211; 1B</td>
<td style="text-align: center">Steven Moya &#8211; RF</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center">Devon Travis &#8211; 2B</td>
<td style="text-align: center">James McCann &#8211; C</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: center">Kevin Pillar &#8211; CF</td>
<td style="text-align: center">Jose Iglesias &#8211; SS</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p><em>via <a href="http://www.rosterresource.com" target="_blank">Roster Resource</a></em></p>
<h3>Final Thoughts</h3>
<p>Toronto has the opportunity to continue momentum into the break and beyond. They&#8217;ve gotten themselves ahead of Boston and have the Orioles firmly in their sights. Going into the break on a series win at home would feel good all around.</p>
<p><em>Lead Photo: Rick Osentoski-USA TODAY Sports</em></p>
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