Not one new face -- how can we hope for anything different
One of the biggest off-season failures for Alex Anthopolous was his complete inability to replace Josh Johnson with someone who would put some serenity back into the rotation, instead electing to go with the (lack of) talent already existing on the team.
While the 'pen is seemingly loaded with talent, the starting rotation seems completely iffy, at best, with big question marks around Brandon Morrow, Drew Hutchinson, and Dustin McGowan. Meanwhile, RA Dickey's knuckler will continue to be inconsistently baffling while Mark Buehrle will be his usual #3 innings eater self.
It is this lack of a starting rotation featuring no true "ace", a decent #3, the potential of greatness never realized, and two number five starters, both of which are injury prone, will do in the Jays. Its insurance policy, once again, is the relief core, who I predict will be overtaxed and overburdened by short starts combined with Gibbons propensity to pull pitchers from games way too early.
And it will cost the Jays the season, and the only person you can fault for that is Alex. If last year wasn't going to be the year for the Jays to make the playoffs, this year is. Next year is the last year of the core of the team to be together, and they are not getting younger.
As Paul Beeston promised to its season ticket holders in 2012, "In the next five years, I would expect that we would be in it two to three times," Beeston said.
The problem is that it will take a miracle for this rotation to hold up this year.
The Starters
RA Dickey (14-13, 224.2 IP, 4.21 ERA, 1.217 WHIP in 2013) needs to have a much better year as the ace of this club. And with a knuckler, it is really difficult to know if this year will be any better than last. The Home Run was his enemy, 23 of 35 of them at Rogers Centre, and this is what truly killed him. With the WHIP being the same as they were during his 2012 year, it is the home run at home (that should be routine fly balls) that is hurting him. We will see if he makes an adjustment, but how do you adjust a knuckleball?
Mark Buehrle (12-10, 203.2 IP, 4.15 ERA, 1.315 WHIP in 2013) was consistent. There was fear that the AL East opponents would hurt him coming over from the NL, and that fear was realized. In 16 starts against the AL east, he went 2-8 with a 5.42 ERA and a 1.45 WHIP. This number must improve if the Jays wish to compete. Against the rest, he went 10-2 with a 3.56 ERA and a WHIP of 1.25 -- very different numbers indeed.
Brandon Morrow (2-3, 54.1 IP, 5.63 ERA, injured in 2013) is one question mark for this team. After being sidelined last year by a entrapped radial nerve, his spring didn't look all that well either until his appearance against the Mets in Montreal. We all remember his potential with his incredible one hitter on August 8, 2010 when he threw 137 pitches. And we know this guy has incredible stuff. From last year and the year before, I also see that he is a very smart pitcher, using different pitches to get outs especially when he knows that one of his pitches isn't working. And that's what I love about Brandon Morrow. I actually think that if he remains healthy, that he will have an incredible year. Just remember 2012, when, before his left oblique strain in early June, he had pitched three shutouts in 10 starts. He is more than capable.
Drew Hutchison (no action in 2013) is another question mark for the Jays. In 2012, before his Tommy John surgery, he featured #5 starter skills, going 5-3 with a 4.60 ERA. He has had a standout spring but he cannot possibly throw a full season as a SP. Still, I see some beginner's luck for Drew and a decent first half before his arm wears and the league figures him out. I expect that JA Happ or another AAA person will replace him around the all-star break.
Dustin McGowan (no meaningful action in 2013) is the final question mark for the Jays. The question mark is "why is he starting? With 4 innings of work in spring training and a maximum of 32 pitches pitched in an outing last year? For the Jays, it's a sentimental outing, a welcome back. Given the failures of Happ, Drabek, Romero, Stroman, and Rogers, I think this might be McGowan's ONLY start. Despite the obvious sentimental heartstrings being pulled, is it the best baseball move for the Jays? No. I predict Dusty to be relegated back to the 'pen (or to Buffalo) after two-three starts with a promotion from one of the Bison crews.
The relievers
Casey Janssen -- the closer. Janssen is not a hard thrower, but he's crafty and will continue to be the team's very capable closer. Going 34 for 36 in saves, he established himself as the closer in 2012 and will continue to shine.
Brett Cecil, with last year's all-star appearance completed his transformation from starter to reliever is complete. This lefty dumfounds lefties while right-handers tend to get big hits against him but he is still effective. Brett will be used later in games against left-handed batters and will be particularly effective in games when right-handers are starting and the starting lineups of the opposition are filled with left handed bats.
Steve Delabar, now in his third year with the Jays, is a capable right handed reliever with very nasty stuff.
Jeremy Jeffress has a 100mph fastball and only remains on the roster because he it out of options. Expect to see him in Jays where the Jays are not competing in a game (win or lose) or as a situational hitter against a right hand threat.
Aaron Loup -- the wiley left-hander and his eclectic side-arm delivery continues to throw off hitters and with his 2.45 ERA last year, he will be an important part of a bridge between the starters and the closers and the relievers or when the team is down.
Todd Redmond -- (long relief / spot starter) will likely be the #5 starter after the home opener. He started 14 games last year with 77 IP and a 4.32 ERA and did not have a terrible spring to demote him to long relief. The only reason I think Todd is not the #5 starter is because of the sentimentality of McGowan.
Esmil Rogers -- (long relief / spot starter) did not earn a starting role this spring with terrible performance. He will start in the bullpen and may return back to a starter role replacing either Dustin McGowan or Drew Hutchinson as a mid-season starter.
Sergio Santos is to be Casey's setup man with an impressive repertoire and the ability to strike out players.
The outliers
Look for JA Happ's return in mid-season. Kyle Drabek and Rickey Romero will need to have a string of excellent games in AAA to be promoted, and only in case of injuries to one or more of the starters. I expect Romero's return to be slow and will need to prove himself over a string of starts in Buffalo.
Chad Jenkins, Neil Wagner, Deck McGuire, and Sean Nolin are all relievers who right now are on the outside looking in. With the relief core being as strong as they are, I don't see them advancing to the majors unless there's many injuries.
Jays bullpen has lost six games so far, most in the AL
The bullpen has lost 6 of the 12 games this season, more than any other team in the AL. However, its bullpen is 7th in the AL in ERA at a very respectable 3.24.
The pen is also very hard worked with 72.1 innings pitched over 20 games. Let's look at each bullpen loss and see who is to blame.
April 3: Sergio Santos loses 3-2 in 11 innings.
A disappointing loss as Jose Bautista hits the game tying home run in the bottom of the 9th, in a game where the Jays manage only 5 hits. Sergio then gives up a home run in the top of the 11th to Mark Reynolds. When you score only two runs in a game, it's difficult to win.
Fault: lack of offence.
April 5: Esmil Rogers loses the game in the 8th. Boston wins 6-4.
This is the bullpen and Izturis' fault. Esmil game on with one out in the 8th, walked, gave up a double, and Napoli got the RBI for Boston to get the 5-4 lead on a play where Izturis couldn't field the ball and throw home. Gibbons then put on Jeffries in the 9th who gave up the insurance run via the home run. This was also the famous game where Bonifacio commits three errors.
Fault: the infielders and Esmil.
April 14: Darren Oliver loses the game in the 9th as KC beats Toronto 3-2.
This was Oliver's fault, but the Jays were unable to score more than 1 earned run against Santana. Bonifacio's throw to the plate could have been in time, but you can't fault Bonifacio early in the season for making an off-line throw when he never plays RF.
Fault: the lack of offense.
April 16: Steve Delabar loses the game in the top of the 9th. Chicago beats the Jays 4-2.
This may have been poor defense on Bonifacio's part as he couldn't catch up to a double that perhaps Colby or Rajai does. He took a terrible line to the ball. However, Delabar gave up two walks to open the frame, and you've get to expect at least one of those runs to score. Blame Delabar on this one, but once again, blame the Jays offense for failing to score more than 2 runs.
Fault: Delabar and lack of offense
April 20: Aaron Loup loses the game on his throwing error in the 11th as the Yankees win 5-3.
Aaron Loup makes a bad throw to third on an Ichiro bunt which costs him the game. And he gave up two lead off singles. Bad things happen. Blame Aaron on this one.
Fault: Aaron. But he took a shot at third to keep a double play in order.
April 22: Aaron Loup loses the game 2-1 to the Orioles in the bottom of the 9th due to Kawasaki error.
With runners on 1st and 2nd with two out, a standard double play ball eats up Kawasaki and he inexplicitly throws it to first but too late. Markasis then walks off via a nicely hit bloop single to left field. But once again, this is due to a lack of offense.
Fault: Kawasaki, lack of offense.
So whose fault is it?
When the bullpen is on average playing 3.6 innings per game and giving up an average of about 1.3 runs per game, that's pretty fantastic, really. When your defense is not making great plays (Bonifacio, Kawasaki, Izturis) behind you, you stand to lose. When the offense is not scoring any runs against pitchers that other teams manage to score on, you have to look at the anemic offense.
In all of these cases, the Jays are tied which puts the bullpen under pressure. The Jays have yet to blow a save, and this is incredible.
So spread the blame folks. This isn't the bullpen's fault at all. It's the lack of offense and poor defense behind them that puts pressure on them.
And the bullpen was not supposed to be the stars of this team. It was supposed to be the offense and the starting pitching.
What went wrong?
The Jays season looked promising enough: a great spring training at 25-7, with good performances by a number of starters, good performances by the starters, and a fairly healthy team, with McGowan the only culprit with a sore foot. The team was stronger than last year, with Brett Lawrie being the regular third baseman, a decent hitting Adam Lind, and a strong Colby Rasmus in center field. Bautista was back, and Encarnacion was also hitting well. Arencibia was back for his second full season, defensively much better. Anthopoulos went out and got proven bullpen in Darren Oliver, signed Casey Janssen to a two year extension, got back Jason Frasor, and acquired Cordero who had 37 saves for the Reds last year, and Sergio Santos who had 30 saves for the White Sox. Things were looking up.
And the fans bought into the hype too, buying 22% more tickets than last year (the rest of the league is up 4%) on the hopes of a team competing in the AL East vs a hurt Red Sox, a rebuilding Tampa Bay, and a mediocre Orioles team.
The team really received a one-two punch that did them in for the season. The one punch was losing three of their starters in one week, which I believe led to the demise of Ricky Romero due to the intense pressure for him to perform (the pressure he put on himself -- after the win at Miami on June 22, he has yet to win a game. The bats came to life however and left the team around the .500 mark with hope really slipping away game by game as they stayed roughly five games back of the wild card mark.
But the #2 punch happened on July 26th, when Arencibia broke his hand and Lind left the same night with a sore back. From that point, the team has hit a breaking point. Add to that outages by Brett Lawrie and Colby Rasmus and you have a team full of not-ready-for-prime time players to fill the spots. It is easy for good pitchers to pitch around a team when you have only four major league players in your line up. Snider's trade away didn't help team morale either.
Now the fans are blaming AA and Rogers for not spending the money on the Jays. Clearly, Rogers is afraid to sign blockbuster agreements. They dumped Vernon Wells' contract (fantastic move) and Alex Rios (good move). Bautista and Encarnacion's contracts are steals and most MLB analysts thing that those contracts are extremely good values for the Jays. They traded away Halladay. And I've explained in another post that the Jays activities represent about 1% of the total action within Rogers Communications, Inc, but the expectation is that they will be profitable. So, the fans are right. The only way that the Jays will spend some money is to build up the team slowly through value, and the team has indeed been making strides in that direction with their payroll slowly on the uptick to correspond with their revenue. The blame is fair, but do you want the Jays to be the New York Yankees? Do you want to spend an average of $63 for a ticket (current is $26)?
My view is that AA took a risk in not signing a veteran onto the pitching staff -- the rotation was too young, with three rookies and new rookies, and a fragile Ricky Romero and Brandon Morrow. His gamble failed. A veteran might have not been a good value on paper, but might have stabilized the rotation. I can't fault AA with the initial bullpen choices. Having both Santos and Cordero imploding was not predictable -- it was just bad luck, and it took Farrell time to realize that Janssen and Oliver was up to the task of closer/setup after giving Cordero a reasonable amount of time to prove himself (and fail). Add to that Perez's season ending injury which complicated matters. The depth at relief also took time to resolve, and the Jays pretty much tried everybody on the AAA and AA farm to see if they were ready -- all kinds of relievers came up from AAA and went back down. Chavez, Beck, Carreno, Coello, Andrew Carpenter, Crawford, Pauley, Richmond -- none were ready. Finally, the Jays settled on Loup and had to trade for Lincoln, Delabar, and Lyon -- because no one from the farm was able to step up to the task in the bullpen. And on the starting rotation, Cecil and Laffey make decent #5 starters to replace Drabek and Hutchinson, but there really was no one of Morrow's calibre that was able to step up to the task.
On the hitting side, Lind failed until his return from AAA. He went on waivers and no one claimed him. No one stepped up to the task of being a star left-fielder, and just went it looked like Snider was up to stay, he was traded for the necessary relievers. There were slow starts by Rasmus, Arencibia and Bautista, and both Escobar and Johnson have be somewhat lacklustre. Only Edwin has really really impressed.
Let's face it though -- the injuries would have been insurmountable to any team. I am sure the Yankees would be on a major slump if they lost Cano (their best hitter), A-Rod, Texiera, Granderson, and Russell Martin. The injuries are the culprit here.
And it is clear that the depth of the farm is not there. Many have come up from AAA and AA to pitch and have failed, necessitating AA to go out and trade Snider and Thames. The AAA hitters who have come up have all failed to impress with the exception of Moises. Had the farm been ready with major-league ready relievers and hitters, the Jays would be all right.
So, you ask the question, did AA make bad acquisitions and overhyped the farm system, or did the players fail the Jays in their performances in the MLB? I would blame the players. The farm system has improved vastly over the years in their records and their independent ranks as prospects. But really, the end indicator of the value of a player is their performance in the majors. So, I can't blame AA for the farm acquisitions, but I will blame the players as a whole for failing to step up at the major league level.
In the end, the Jays season went wrong due to a vast and unheard of number of injuries. And the players really didn't step up before the pitchers went down in mid-June. Besides Anthopoulos acquiring a veteran pitcher in the offseason, I really can't fault him for doing anything wrong. And as long as Rogers continues ownership of the Jays, and they will for a long time, their spending will be conservative in nature. I really believe that the Jays will pull the trigger at the trade deadline if they believe they will make the post season -- the increase in ticket sales, playoff games, and ratings will recover the cost -- it makes economic sense to do so. But it makes no sense to Rogers Media to spend $150 million on player salaries when the team is only pulling in $160 million in revenue. Until that point in time, expect AA to stay the course and make spending decisions based on value, not on emotion.
Injury and Insult?
When the Toronto Blue Jays came out of the preseason, they were looking hot. Brett Lawrie, at age 21, became the voice of the club, attracting young fans. Attendance is up over 20% (league attendance is up 5%). The preseason was great. Blue Jays fandom was looking for a good season, and the addition of the 2nd wild card represented great hope for the club. Your bench players were Visquel, Davis, and Mathis, which were upgrades over last year.
Rogers Media overhauled its messaging, stating that the the AL east was going to be closest in years, delivered some dramatic music, and off went the season, with a new closer in Sergio Santos and a very young rotation featuring Alvarez, Drabek, and Hutchinson in the back of the rotation.
This season is all about inconsistency. There was lacklustre hitting and blown saves in April. Lind, Bautista, Arencibia, and Yunel had poor starts. May was better but Thames and Lind were still awful. Walks were a problem. At the end of May, the Jays were 3 games over .500 and looking pretty good. Morrow was coming together. Hutchinson had adjusted and was starting to reimprove. Lind got demoted and up came Cooper or Gomes.
June started with optimism but then with the departures of Morrow, Drabek, and Hutchinson in the same week, it all started to unravel a bit. In came Cecil, Laffey, and Villanueva to pick up the slack, with only Carlos Del V doing excellent in the role. But despite the pitching outages, the Jays offense picked up the slack, and Bautista and Arencibia started hitting the cover off the ball to keep the ship afloat. Even Lind came back and was doing really well.
But then Bautista went down and alarm bells went off. The Yankees completed its sweep, and the Jays came back and completed the sweep against Boston, giving the fandom hope. Then Lind went down with back pain, and Arencibia suffered from a freak accident. Down were the #1, 5, and 6 hitters in the 2nd half (measured by OPS). Then Travis Snider got traded along with Thames and the #4 hitter was gone, leaving Rajai Davis and Edwin as the top two hitters on the team (2nd half).
So, what should Anthopolous have done? If you were the Jays upper management, what would you do.
First, realize that Anthopolous cannot simply go out and rent players, because alas (see previous post), AA reports to Rogers Media, which reports to Rogers Communications. The Blue Jays and Rogers Centre brought in 160 million in revenue last year. There will be increased revenue of about $12 million or so from increased ticket sales which AA will probably be able to use to purchase a pitcher in the off season.
And, really, even if AA went out and rented two batters (left field and 1st) and two starters (Garza, Dempster) where would hte Jays stand with 58 games to go. They have to pass 5 teams and win 5 more games then ALL of them, essentially having to win 2 of 3 to make the playoffs. Even the best team in baseball wins 3 of 5, so it would have taken luck and skill to pull them off. And the Jays would have given away its top prospects for a long shot possibility to have a 50/50 shot to make the post season. And Romero has fallen apart, going 1-8 since the Jays pitching debacle and an ERA approaching 9. So really, you can't blame AA for not going for broke at the deadline, and during the first three months of the season, you really can't pick up anyone.
No, not this year. Not this team. The team needed consistency and to perform better with the resources they had back in April. And now there are too many injuries and they are too far back.
In my opinion if AA can be criticized for anything, it's for not scoring a veteran starter in the last off-season. With Hutchinson, Alvarez, and Drabek being the back end of the starting rotation, everyone knew that there was a good chance that at least one of them would fail. And Drabek pretty much did, and the farm seemed to dry up. Carreno and Chavez didn't start well. Cecil is getting better, but has yet to perform, and while Villanueva is doing very well, the long reliever position suffered.
Snider and Thames' departure is a product of AA needing long term relievers, which is a result of Perez's season ending surgery, Villanueva's move to the starting rotation, and Santos' injury. I am sure that AA would have rather gotten a decent starter for both, but the market for starting pitching was just too expensive. The Jays will likely try to stretch out Lincoln again into a starter. Happ may also be a starter.
As for Snider (and Thames), the fans are sad to see him go, and most analysts are pretty critical of both the Jays and Snider of the inability to connect. The Jays didn't really give Snider a chance, and Snider really never proved himself at the major league level.
Once Bautista is back (hopefully at home by the end of next week), the Jays will send down Sierra and platoon Gose and Davis in left field or perhaps let Gose start in center and move Rasmus to left. The Jays will either go with six starters and seven relievers or five starters and eight relievers until the end of the year and leave a short bench for the rest of August (until the reinforcements can be added for September). Morrow will be back in three weeks, and perhaps we'll see Hutchinson in mid-September to take over for Alvarez who will be shut down.
In the end, the Jays will probably finish at .500 this year and the end result will be chalked up to injury and inconsistency. The fandom will argue about the effectiveness of Alex Anthopolous and John Farrell this year, but really, you gotta look at the injuries and the inconsistency, little of which are in Alex' control.
