The Long and Winding Road: Jays Finish a Long Road Trip to Open the Season.

That was a tremendously long road trip that started off a little shaky in Missouri (dropping two of three to the Cardinals, and the first game to the Royals) but the Jays rallied (ie remembered that the Royals are not that good) before moving the west coast for four against the Angels.

I really enjoyed the symmetry of the first two games— Mike Trout hits a homer on the first pitch he sees and then Bo Bichette cancels that homer with one of his own equals a Blue Jays win. Bo Bichette hits an early homer to put his team ahead and Mike Trout cancels it with one of his own equals an Angels win.

The game that was simultaneously the best as well as the worst was the 12-11 win on Sunday. The Jays were down 6-0, but stormed back with 10 unanswered runs. The Angels chip away thanks to a messy performance from the bullpen in the late innings, including a blown save from Jordan Romano. The game goes into extras.

And yes, a game that went into extras, in which a total of 23 runs were scored, only took 3 hours and 11 minutes. This probably will count as a “win” for the new rules, but it felt like 11 hours.

feel like I've been watching this game since Jesus died the first time

— findlay (@s_findlay) April 9, 2023

The bean counters and start heads want concrete numbers in this game, but so much of it is about perception. About feelings.

Feelings

Vlad, Dad, and Mike Trout 🤩

27s EVERYWHERE 🤗 pic.twitter.com/zkYn4tLZSF

— Toronto Blue Jays (@BlueJays) April 8, 2023

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Fun?

Vlad Guerrero Jr. hit a home run recently and he came back into the dugout and high fives all around. When Guerrero got to the end of the dugout, he hugged Tito LeBron, who then pantomimed putting a coat on him and Vlad shrugged his shoulders like he was adjusting the coat and flexed his muscles for the cameras at the far end of the dugout. It was clearly a reference to the homerun coat from last season.

The Blue Jays announced in the offseason that they were retiring the home run jacket. I know sometimes there were questions about the maturity level and there were talks that that was the reason both Teoscar and Gurriel had to go. However, all over the MLB app and all over their main page, they are talking about the various ways teams celebrate home runs and how it’s a beautiful thing. The Angels, for instance, inspired by the suggestion from Shohei Ohtani, have a samurai helmet. The Orioles have some sort of funnel thing that involves spitting water. There are cheese heads in Milwaukee there are all sorts of other things where teams are having fun, and celebrating home runs.

I just question Vlad's pantomime coat — how popular was the decision about the coat? Whose decision was it? Schneider? Shapiro? Other players? Is Vlad, the premiere homerun hitter on the team, staging a protest? And they just let him do it for obvious reasons?

MLB Stories - 2023 home run celebrations

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This Week’s Walkup

A Mixed-Bag to Start the Season

This was written prior to Sunday’s game. While I expect it will get better this season, it hasn’t gotten better yet. It actually got a little worse.

The season's first two games were mostly fun, especially in the opening game, but all of it was also kind of a hot mess. I enjoyed all the baserunning, all the bloop hits, and the quality pitching from Pop and Jordan Romano in Game One. A back-and-forth kind of game is especially fun when your team is triumphant.

Saturday's game was incredibly frustrating. They had endless chances to push runs across and didn't until late in the game, and then it was just one.

The Cardinals starter did not have command of any of his pitches. It started out well where the Jays were taking pitches and taking the walks but it felt like the pressure was starting to get to them and they were searching for that big hit that never came.

Kevin Gausman deserved better than what he got Saturday. He came with what he was supposed to do and I really wish the hitters had shown up and pulled him out of whatever small amount of trouble he got into.

It all just illustrated a certain core truth about baseball: One thing will be true one day (the Blue Jays can manufacture nine runs, are excellent baserunners, and pull their pitchers out of trouble) is completely different the next game (the Blue Jays, despite having stellar pitching, couldn’t manufacture any sort of offence, though they were given ample opportunity.) It’s why baseball is fun, and also the worst.

Buck Martinez declared that it was “time for the first homer” during a Guerrero AB early on in the Saturday game. So if they have some sort of homer drought, you know which well-coiffed broadcaster is to blame.

Meaningless Thoughts on the Eve of Baseball

It’s the most wonderful day of the year.

I started paying more attention to spring training baseball as the pre-season was winding down and I noticed that the record was pretty great. I had been reading updates and stories and paid some passing attention to the WBC (nice final at-bat, Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout. Way to melt my cold, cynical heart, making me actually see some value in this strange event.)

But then as I started to pay close attention to the actual games, the Jays dropped their last four games.

And while that was a downer way to end a pretty stellar spring, those games don’t count. Until today.

The hype videos are in place

The boys look good.

New boys. Previous boys.

The Star describes the boys.

There was some non-convincing discussion about who was going to be named Opening Day starter before it was announced that Alek Manoah, the completely obvious choice after he finished third in Cy Young voting in 2022, was getting the nod.

The announcement was filmed and shared by the Blue Jays on social media. I have some notes: John P. Schneider, I know you are a “sports dude” who likely doesn’t care about these things and extensively decorating your office might be presumptuous as you enter your only first full season as skip, but your office…other than what appears to be a nice picture of your family on the wall, it’s…sad. I know it’s in the basement of a concrete mausoleum, but there is no need for it to look like it’s in a basement of a concrete mausoleum. Men who save choking women should have a nicer space.

Also, that “hidden camera” angle they have used to capture the action makes Manoah look about 500 lbs. I know the kid is a big dude, but goodness.

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Have you heard about the new rules? There are new rules! You can read about them here.

My adult job involves communications, so I’m not just looking at what is said, but also looking at how people are writing and communicating information.

I do enjoy the “speed up the game” talk - people have been worried about how long a baseball game lasts for as long as there have been baseball games. Most baseball fans I know like how long the games are, the mix of lulls and highs.

There is talk about how the length of games is making people turn away from baseball- I would suggest that cheaper/more accessible tickets to games, better products (more teams playing to win, and not draft picks, no tanking) on the field and removing blackout restrictions on TV broadcasts.

But those things cut into bottom lines, so I guess the pitch clock will have to solve all of it.

The end of shifts is another major change, as shifting and defensive alignments have defined a lot of baseball over the past decade or so. I like this- banning shifts will “allow infielders to showcase their athleticism with great defensive plays”. I think the defensive plays have been plenty athletic, shift or no shift. It’s like the BABIP is a present for the hitters, so the infielders need a present, too. Everybody gets a cookie!

It just all feels a little “new hat”.

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And just because no one else notices these things besides me, Joey Votto, perhaps nervous about Chinese data theft or just realizes that he wasn’t born in 2005, has deleted his TikTok account. His Twitter and Instagram accounts remain.

And his chess habit from the winter has continued in the Cactus League.

Teo Traded

So it's been a couple of weeks since they made the big Teoscar Hernández for a couple of random Seattle relief pitchers deal. (And yes, I know, they are probably not random. But in Andrew Stoeten’s rather astute assessment, the numbers on Swanson in particular may only be flashy without close inspection.)

And I have sat and racked my brain to think about what the actual purpose of that was and it still doesn't really make sense. I mean, did they really just put a for sale sign on one of the most popular dudes on the team?

I appreciate the need for bullpen pitching. I recognize that in the Wildcard Series the Blue Jays were unable to secure a win because their bullpen basically fell apart. They were up big and they couldn't hold that lead. (Perhaps because the baseball gods enjoy mocking us, much of that lead was courtesy of Hernández. Teo went huge in his last game as a Blue Jay.)

While I recognize the need for that, I don't really think trading a frontline hitter and a core part of your offence for relief pitching. While a great bullpen is a key to playoff success, as was demonstrated most recently by the Houston Astros, relief pitchers are a volatile entity and can tend to fluctuate from great to shit year to year. The relief pitcher problem should really be a problem that money is thrown at. For an owner as rich as Rogers, maybe more problems should have money thrown at them.

It almost feels like the kind of move a team does when they just need to offload a guy, whether it’s because he’s toxic in one way or another, prone to injury or ancient with a big contract. But I haven’t heard any of that other than he’s spent a bit of time on the IL in 2022. An all-right-handed outfield might’ve also played into it. Hernández is also due to make $14.1 million in arbitration this year and due for free agency the following. But again, “payroll flexibility” is a word executives like to throw around when they think we aren’t paying attention or aren’t reading the business section. (The Globe and Mail very conveniently combines the two in its print version.)

There was also a bit of chatter that the Blue Jays off-loaded Hernández to make room in RF for George Springer and going out to sign Brandon Nimmo or meme king Cody Bellinger for CF. One would think that maybe securing such an outfielder before offloading a strength in your offence might have been prudent.

And yes, Cody Bellinger’s numbers have fallen off a cliff since he won the 2019 NL MVP, but perhaps we should be looking forward to the meme potential.

Cody Bellinger when he sees milk in a bag. pic.twitter.com/zMf0BsMXno

— Mike Beauvais (@MikeBeauvais) November 21, 2022

So let’s go see if the Jays can grab him because what else do we have in 2022? Fascism is on the rise, tech billionaires are exerting way too much power over the populace, inflation is out of control, and housing is out of reach.

Memes are all that remain. Memes and banter.

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A post shared by Teoscar Hernandez (@elchino242)

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Alek Manoah vs. Cricket

Alek Manoah, break out star of the 2022 Toronto Blue Jays, visited Serge Ibaka’s Youtube show this week. Manoah, who finished third in Cy Young voting, was game for all the different food on offer and Serge Ibaka pretty obviously knows nothing about baseball, which has it’s own kind of charm.

It was a show every time this kid stepped on the mound and it’s been quite a few years since the Blue Jays had one of those every five days. He should be good fun until he’s traded for random relief pitchers and payroll flexibility.

I’m just kidding. Remember, all we have left is memes and banter.