3 Up 3 Down for Blue Jays vs. White Sox
The Toronto Blue Jays had a day off on Thursday, a day to wash away the stink of a lifeless and near scoreless sweep at the hands of the Minnesota Twins.
Taking the time off likely did the team some good, as they came into the weekend’s three-game set against the Chicago White Sox and immediately put more runs on the board in the 1st inning than in the entire series prior.
It wasn’t all happiness and homers all weekend long, as some of the biggest question marks on the team only became larger, but enough good things happened to make it a considerable step up from the Twins series that served as a relative rock bottom of the recent past.
Here are three positive and three negative takeaways from the weekend series against the White Sox.
3 Up
Vladdy starts to catch up - Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s at-bats are still the main attraction in the lineup right now, and the weekend’s sessions offered the largest sample of positive signs we’ve seen yet this season.
After hitting enough groundballs to make even the most levelheaded and patient among us reach lightly for a collar tug, Guerrero Jr. finally got back to flashing the swing that produces effortless line drives all over the field.
He looked especially comfortable on Saturday, getting on base all four times in his four trips to the plate, with two walks and two hits, the last of which being an effortless opposite field soft line drive. Guerrero carried that momentum into his first at-bat on Sunday, ripping a double to make it five straight plate appearances without recording an out.
Charlie Montoyo has moved him up to the second spot in the lineup, and Guerrero has responded by putting together his best at-bats of the season. He should stay there for, well, several years, if we’re being honest.
His timing is getting closer and closer to catching up to the level of what’s been expected, and he looks more comfortable every time he steps into the box. An extended stretch of production feels like it isn’t far off for the 20-year-old phenom.
Grichuk / Anderson pays off - Earlier this season, Tim Anderson and Randal Grichuk had a little back-and-forth on Twitter about proper bat flip etiquette that served as a fun jumping off point for both sides of the “respect the game” / “let the kids play” debate.
Both players backed their words up on Friday night, when Grichuk hit a 1st inning 3-run home run and Anderson responded with a solo shot in the 7th. Grichuk stuck to a classic no-flip, head down trip around the bases while Anderson executed a casual flip toss and broke into a leisurely home run trot.
The subtle showcase brought out the best in both men, as each of them added a second home run in the series over the next two games.
Baseball needs as many of these little rivalries as they can produce, and having both players involved put their swings where their tweets are made for a fun subplot in an otherwise non-rivalry situation. Nobody even needed to get intentionally hit with a pitch to prove a further point!
Shuffling the deck - After the extremely rough going of the last road trip and home series, the team had a clear need to address some of the biggest problem areas on the 25-man roster. The starting rotation was falling apart, and few teams had received such little support from their regular outfielders.
The team may not have made big splashes to fill those gaps, but they did show willingness to act on the issues and try something new after the experiments clearly failed and desperation wasn’t far off.
Sócrates Brito was designated for assignment on Friday after failing mightily to stake a claim to a major league spot. He hit .077/.163/.291 over his 43 plate appearances. Jonathan Davis hit well at Triple-A since his return from a spring ankle injury, and earned the call up. Davis provides room for Grichuk to get days off from playing CF while also getting a chance for Davis to prove he can hang at the next level.
Internal battles for playing time are crucial to this stage of the Blue Jays franchise, as players will have to earn the right to slot into the major league lineup every day.
The acquisition of Edwin Jackson is likely some pretty uninspiring pitching news - more on that later - but again, it at least shows that the team prefers to be proactive in their pursuit of solutions rather than trying to find an unlikely internal fix.
3 Down
Stroman frustrated - Marcus Stroman stated his case to be kept in the Saturday’s game strongly as Montoyo came to give him the hook in the 7th inning, and Stro’s subsequent animated follow up with pitching coach Pete Walker drew some headlines.
Nobody will ever accuse the Blue Jays ace of not being passionate, and Montoyo said after the game that he hopes all of his pitchers are upset when they are asked to leave games. Stroman had given up a trio of singles in the inning, but was insistent that he could induce a groundball to get his team out of the inning with minimal damage.
The White Sox immediately took advantage of Stro’s replacement, Derek Law, scoring a run on a Tampa Bay Rays-like safety squeeze thanks to Law’s inability to field the ball clearly - a method of scoring likely doubly annoying for Stroman, who is among the best fielding pitchers in all of baseball.
I personally would’ve liked to see Stroman try to get the out - the bullpen had been called on in an opener situation the game prior and few pitchers are better at getting ground balls - but I understand Montoyo’s decision to try to limit the damage to just the one extra run.
Aside from being pulled, it would be equally understandable if Stro was frustrated by another lack of support from the lineup, who once again failed to score a single run while he was on the mound.
Rotation stretched even further - Clay Buchholz has been far from stellar in his limited time in the Blue Jays rotation, but perhaps the only thing scarier than the proposition of his sub-90 mph stuff and lack of an out pitch taking the hill every fifth day is the wondering how else the team can fill that role.
The Blue Jays purchased veteran journeyman Edwin Jackson - who you may remember from every team ever - to try to patch this hole over temporarily.
The opener strategy worked just well enough on Friday to beat the White Sox, but Montoyo and the front office appear uninterested in making it a regular part of the routine going forward.
Jackson managed to mostly limit the damage he took last season, but it remains to be seen, like Buchholz, how much smoke is left in the 35-year-old’s smoke-and-mirrors act at the major league level.
Jansen still fighting it - The expectations for Danny Jansen’s season may have been a little clouded by his strong stint at the back half of the 2018 season. He had a .247/.347/.432 line over 31 games between August and September, doing enough to set himself up with the starting job behind the plate to begin the 2019 season.
With a nearly identical amount of plate appearances to start this campaign as end the last, Jansen is having a much tougher time acclimating to the majors. An 0-for-7 series sees his average drop to .169 on the year, and he’s flashed very little power, without a home run to his name this year to go with just four doubles.
There’s a sizeable difference between making an impact as a late call up and handling a starting job for a full season, and Jansen is still finding his way. There’s a lot more that comes with handling an entire pitching staff and bullpen that has fluctuated wildly just a handful of weeks into the season, and finding time to work on your offensive game can be a challenge.
He’s too good of a hitter to stay this stuck in a slump for long and the team is still dedicated to giving him plenty opportunities to figure it out. His defence has had some positive flashes, but it is his skill with the bat that landed him a starting role in the majors at 24 years old.
The Blue Jays schedule gets a little wacky again next week, as they fly all the way across the continent on the off-day Monday for a two-game set in San Francisco, before meeting these same White Sox again in Chicago for a four-game weekend series without a day off in between. They’re about to play 16 games in 16 days, so hopefully they enjoy Monday’s rest while they can.
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