max silver

Good to see Stripling locked in after the rocky start. Just gotta keep the game close so we can see some more late game heroics.

Goddamn umpires have been brutal this year.

Man that was a really fun game to watch. It's really a treat to watch Ryu deal like this when he's really on his game. One highlight of the game for me was when Ryu called out the pitching coach to go over strategy when a pinch hitter was brought in for the Braves, I don't think I've even seen that before in a game. Charlie continues with the maddening decision making, letting Ryu swing the bat with 2 strikes with a runner on base. This is from a manager who forces his position players to bunt, even with two strikes and after the hitter has shown that he is anything but comfortable with bunting. Chatwood is giving me shades of Dwayne Ward with the lockdown 8th innings in back to back games against the top of the order. It's great that Teoscar has come back from his covid infection looking like the monster he's been last season and the last 4 months of 2019 as well. Even before tonight's game he was at 146 WRC+ since his return from the covid list. On top of that I think he's improved his defense a great deal as well, there are far less of the brain cramps in the outfield so far compared to what we've seen in the past.

With the large cash outlay spent on position players in the offseason it feels like just a little more spending on the rotation would have made for a far more complete team. Perhaps the budget was basically tapped out, or a little extra room was left for deadline additions, but seeing how little guys like Odorizzi and Walker signed for left me feeling pretty surprised. Even if everything would have broken perfectly the rotation still looked like an obvious area of weakness in an otherwise very well built ballclub. The position player core for the year is very solid other than the need for better infield depth, and the bullpen looked like it had a chance to really lock down the opposition, even after the loss of Yates this was still the case. But the rotation is all that was remaining in building a team which was built to truly compete right away in 2021. Maybe Pearson figures things out with his command and Manoah can help the team sooner rather than later, but neither of those looks to be sure things.

Obviously this is with the benefit of hindsight, but it feels like the Jays front office missed a bit of an opportunity to solidify the rotation on the cheap by passing on signing Walker. He signed for relative peanuts all things considered, and was vocal in expressing his desire to stay with the organization. Of course the early results aren't bulletproof, he won't keep up the .226 BABIP forever and xERA is alot higher than actual ERA so far, so it's very possible he's been the beneficiary of good batted ball fortune so far. His stuff seems to have ticked up a fair bit as he's added a tick of velocity and he's striking out batters at a career high clip as well, but with the new deadened ball it's hard to say how much of the new success is new offseason training methods and how much of it is attributable to the new baseball. Atkins is on the record as wanting to provide opportunities for the young starters, with Pearson, Manoah, Hatch and Kay as obvious younger candidates. And they were looking to give Roark a chance to rebound as well, but with the rash of injuries and continued failure of Roark the lack of another starter acquisition has really hammered the bullpen early on.

Tsutsugo has never shown an ability to hit major league pitching so I wouldn't really consider it a bounceback if he eventually figures it out. Hopefully for his sake Yoshi is willing to accept a minor league assignment to give himself a chance to figure things out against lesser competition.

It's been amazing how stout this bullpen has been despite the injuries. They are missing basically a full collection of back of the bullpen types and keep shutting down the opposition. Another crazy thing is how Ray has been finding success with basically one good pitch this season. His fastball is top grade quality but his breaking pitches are all s*** right now and are getting hammered. If he can find at least one decent breaking pitch then he has a good shot to trim the home runs back a bit and go on a really nice run.

Yeah that was such a bad decision. Especially seeing how Pearson was brought into a blowout and absolutely destroyed the Rays in the following game.

Yeah I've been impressed considering this is his season debut. This could be a very nice addition given the rash of bullpen injuries.

Teams are going to figure out eventually that you don't run on Gurriel.

Big play gunning down the runner.

Bo is a cornerstone player, I think some patience is going to pay off to allow him to work through some stuff at the major league level. I think the tools are there to be a good major league shortstop, he just needs to continue working, just like Marcus Semien had to do as young player.

If Nate showed anything like this in his AAA start he wouldn't have been called up to start with. Kay didn't exactly pitch great either so there's no perfect solution here with respect to whether Nate should pick up more AAA innings or work on his command issues in MLB.

You do know that young players can only improve defensively if management doesn't panic and actually gives them a chance to work on their defense right?

f*** me this game is over.

I saw one 98. Last season it seemed as the game went on he was able to add a few ticks of velocity in later innings, he certainly didn't last long enough today for that to happen. And I doubt he was letting the ball go with maximum intensity as he attempted to guide the ball into the strike zone.

There's a dramatic difference between fine and great. I said the stuff looked fine, not like he was offering up peak level Pedro Martinez offerings.

What did he throw, like 90% fastballs? And something like 75% of those were balls. No reason for hitter's to offer at offspeed stuff for pitcher that can't find the strike zone and is constantly being 3-0.

I think the stuff was fine, he couldn't actually locate his pitches into locations which would allow for swings and misses.

He didn't appear to reinjure himself at least.

Gotta at least knock the damn ball down Rowdy.

Holy f*** first pitch strike. Didn't know that was possible.

If Jansen ends up hurt the Jays are in very bad shape, gotta be smart and protect the starter from injury here. Unless you want to see more of Reese Mcguire.

Nice job Bo. He's has Kevin Pillar plate discipline but thank goodness for the 70 grade hit tool

Not smart to play your starting catcher day game after a night game.