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I missed that he had previous MLB experience at a quick glance, but even so that only adds an extra 15 innings to his totals. In 2020 he was torched by lefties to the tune of a .475 wOBA vs only .230 for righties, but that hasn't been the case up to this point in 2021. Either was Jays are in tough tonight and I still stand by my original point that they should be playing the hot hands instead of playing matchups here.

Fangraphs splits page shows identical .267 wOBA vs lefties and righties. https://www.fangraphs.com/players/drew-rasmussen/25385/splits?position=P&season=2021

Rasmusssen has no discernible platoon splits so there really isn't any reason one of Jansen or Kirk should be in the lineup.

Yeah can't say I like that either. With Grichuk hitting well lately I really don't see any reason to be playing Dickerson in center field either with the lack of familiarity with position he has displayed and factoring in that he's been struggling a bit at the plate lately.

Too bad you just bumped it up to the top though by complaining about it being bumped to the top of the forum. Which led to me bumping it to the top of the forum by responding to your complaints about it being bumped to the top of the forum.

It is absurd how hot this lineup is right now top to bottom. For the month of September the only regular that isn't raking is Springer which is understandable since he's playing on one good leg at the moment. The clubs WRC values for the month are as follows: Gurriel 267 Jansen 266 Teoscar 265 Semien 198 Guerrero 197 Kirk 192 Grichuk 192 Valera 189 Bichette 159 Lamb 100 Springer 77 Dyson 40 Dickerson 19

I like this current pen as well. The overall effectiveness obviously depends on all of Merryweather, Pearson and Borucki managing to pitch up to their capabilities, but thankfully all of the dead weights have been removed from the roster. We don't have to suffer through any Dolis, Thornton, Chatwood or Hand outings at this point.

Bo has great contact skills to there's no concern with his k rates, but I have a hard time thinking that he wouldn't be well served to develop a little better plate discipline. He's constantly behind 0-2 due to his extremely aggressive tendencies, and despite a good two strike approach he would be far better off if he were able to lay off of more bad pitches and him himself in more hitters counts. It's a true testament that he's able to still produce a 118 WRC+ despite being in the top 10 in swinging at pitches off the plate, but I'd love to see what he could do with any kind of improvement in selectivity. I really think the key for him to fully unlock his potential at the plate is going to be forcing pitchers to give him more pitches on the plate that he can do damage with. I'd rather see him have hit his ceiling which is more like MVP caliber player rather than being capped at 4 or 5 win player he likely will continue to be if he continues hacking away. I looked up Gurriel's plate discipline numbers for the first two months of the season vs from June 1 and onward, and he's made a dramatic improvement in swinging at pitches off of the plate. He's improved from swinging at 41% of pitches off the plate earlier on to a more manageable 34% during his hot streak. During this period he's basically doubled with WRC+ for the later period compared to earlier, as the first two months his WRC+ was only 78, vs 143 for June 1 and onward. That's a rather powerful suggestion of how much it can improve a players outcomes at the plate when they stop swinging at everything that comes their way.

Now we just need Bo to do the same thing. It would be very interesting to see a breakdown of his plate discipline metrics over this timeframe as well. Overall for the season his chase percentages aren't really much different compared to previous years, but I bet the chase rates have improved markedly during his sustained hot streak.

Reese's second half WRC+ of 78 vs 294 for Jansen and 139 for Kirk might have something to do with his reduced playing time as well.

Who cares what his swing looks like? As long as he's squaring up baseballs like he is lately the results are going to show accordingly. When Jansen is at his worst he hits a ton of lazy fly balls with nothing behind them, but for this season he's producing career high hard hit rates, average exit velocities, and barrel percentage. There looks to have been a change to approach as walk rate is down and k rate + popup rate is up, while he's also pulling the ball more as well. His results have typically lagged behind expected results, but at the moment WOBA and xWOBA are pretty much identical, so he's finally being rewarded whereas most seasons he's typically seemed to be pretty unlucky.

33 runs in their last 10 innings is even more impressive.

The Jays have passed the Yankees on Fangraphs playoff odds graph now with Jays up to 60.2% and Yankees down to 57.0%.

I'm guessing we won't hear another peep from this guy about this series and how the A's are playoff bound instead of the Jays.

Taking the lazy dismissive stance again I see. I challenge you you to present statistical backup to prove that Ryu is pitching better than Matz is for the second half of the season. I don't care right now what each guy has done in the past. It's extremely lazy "analysis" to point to BABIP as a reason for poor performance for a pitcher who has given up 7 runs in 3 separate games. Are you are going to try to convince me that Ryu is the world's unluckiest man and not a soft tossing pitcher missing his spots contently and getting shelled as a result? Good luck.

You can take your condescending tone and shove it up your ass for all I care. Who says I don't understand FIP? I just think there are far better metrics available as there are far too many outliers for FIP as compared to actual ERA, and Ryu's recent performance is a perfect example of this. My preferred pitching metric is actually xERA but I simply quoted ERA as it is perfectly indicative for how poorly Ryu has been pitching in the second half and how well Matz has been pitching by comparison. Look at Robbie Ray for instance. He's a perfect example of the shortcomings of FIP for measuring pitcher performance. If a guy is consistently outperforming or underperforming compared to their FIP values then is it really that valuable in the instance for measuring their actual performance? Bring on the debate, I get the feeling you would rather make lazy assumptions and tske the easy way out instead of actually carrying out an intelligent conversation.

Do you have a point here? Ryu's FIP for the second half is much better than his ERA but I hope you aren't going to point to that as an indication he's actually been pitching well. He's been getting his face pounded in basically every other start going back a month and a half. If that pattern continues it would be a very foolish move to start thean in a playoff game.

Based on what I've seen this season and especially recently I would absolutely start Matz over Ryu. Have you already forgotten the stinker Ryu threw up against the Rays last playoffs? That's what Ryu has been pitching like recently a good chunk of the time. You can point at projections all you want like Ryu's past performance somehow erases how damn poorly he's been pitching lately, but I choose to actually pay attention to what's happening this season and more importantly recently when making my decision.

Jansen does look like he's likely made some adjustments during his time in AAA. I think the Jays have some great swing doctors in AAA, they've managed to really help out Gurriel, Teoscar and Tellez in the past to make adjustments and hit better at the major league level. It's not out of the realm of possibility Jansen has been able to make some tweaks as well to unlock more performance. He's crushing the baseball right now, until this stops there is no reason he shouldn't be receiving regular playing time.

Is looking at projections like they are set in stone while simultaneously ignoring what has actually happened on the field smart in your view? Matz is rolling right now and has thrown up 7 very solid consecutive starts, whereas Ryu is a total crapshoot and has had 3 awful starts out of his last 7. If this trend continues through the rest of September would you trust Ryu to get a playoff start assuming the club makes the playoffs this season?

They already broke the bank on another older second baseman in LeMahieu. Although Semien would be a great fit to play short stop for the Yankees...

Jansen's WRC+ for May was all of 98. His turnaround didn't really start until June.

Can't say I'm a big fan of neither Kirk or Springer being in the lineup. At least both will be available to pinch hit later in the game if needed.

Why should we care about what projections say when reality has been something completely different? Ryu has been torched for 7 runs in 3 of his last 7 starts totalling only 21 innings, whereas Matz has been pitching like a solid number 3 if not better.

Is Matz really the Jays worst starter? By basically every available metric he's pitched better than Ryu this season, and his numbers are comparable across the board to each of Berrios and Manoah.