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A perfect 4-0 night for the affiliates with two one-run victories.

Buffalo 2 Lehigh Valley 1

Back-to-back RBI doubles by Logan Warmoth and Nash Knight in the seventh inning helped the Herd get past the Phillies affiliate. Cullen Large—who scored the tying run on Warmoth's double—had two hits as did Warmoth who is hitting .391 in the month of July. Knight reached base twice by drawing a walk. Kevin Smith had a base hit but Alejandro Kirk was 0-for-4.

Thomas Hatch put together five innings of one-run ball on three hits. He struck out six and did not walk a batter. Ryan Borucki and Travis Bergen gave up a hit but struck out one in their shutout innings with Bergen getting the win. Curtis Taylor and Hobie Harris put up two more bagels to earn the hold and save respectively.


New Hampshire 11 Hartford 5

Vinny Capra's two-run double snapped a 5-5 tie in the seventh to help the FC's defeat the Rockies affiliate. He also had an RBI single and a two-run triple as part of a 4-for-5 night. Jordan Groshans and Otto Lopez had three-hit nights with Groshans drawing a walk. L.J. Talley belted his 5th home run of the year and added a double. Kevin Vicuña had two hits while Austin Martin was 1-for-3 with two walks and a hit by pitch.

Elvis Luciano allowed five runs in five innings but only three were earned on seven hits and two walks. He struck out four in his 80-pitch outing that included 48 strikes. Johnny Barbato walked two but struck out the side in the sixth to get the win. Joh Harris, Graham Spraker and Kyle Johnston put up donuts over the final three frames with Harris getting a hold.


Vancouver 3 Hillsboro 2

An RBI single by Eric Rivera in the eighth was the difference as the C's took round one in the 'Battle for the Boro'. Sebastian Espino had an infield RBI single and Davis Schneider socked a home run to get Vancouver on the board. Spencer Horwitz had a there-hit night and Ronny Brito had a pair. Tanner Morris had a hit and two walks.

Luis Quinones battled control problems by walking the bases loaded in the first inning but managed to escape without any runs scoring. He would walk five and give up a run on four hits but struck out five over four innings. Brandon Eisert got the win with three innings of one-run ball on three hits, a walk and a plunk while striking out three. Justin Maese locked it up with two perfect frames and struck out one to get his fourth save. Ryan Gold picked off not one but two runners at second base behind the plate.


Dunedin 9 Clearwater 1

Dunedin had 11 hits and eight walks as they laid the smackdown on the Phillies affiliate. Addison Barger homered, singled home a run, drew a walk and stole a base while Orelvis Martinez clubbed a two-run homer, his ninth of the year. Harrison Ray and Steward Berroa both had two hits and a walk with Berroa stealing two bases to give him 16 on the season. Dasan Brown was 1-for-5 with two RBI and a stolen base.

Nathaneal Perez pitched the first three innings and gave up a solo home run among two hits and two walks while whiffing two. Elixon Caballero got the win with two scoreless frames. Rafael Monsion and Gabriel Ponce sandwiched Julian Valdez's two shutout innings with a goose egg of their own.


*** 3 Stars!!! ***

3. Jordan Groshans, New Hampshire

2. Thomas Hatch, Buffalo

1. Vinny Capra, New Hampshire
Capra Puts A Cap On Hartford | 53 comments | Create New Account
The following comments are owned by whomever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.
jerjapan - Wednesday, July 14 2021 @ 06:25 AM EDT (#402469) #
Logan Warmoth is having his best season as a pro - and he's a straight OF at this point, starting in CF most often - no games whatsoever on the IF this year. 

Elvis Luciano is still just 21.  Given that he's had the weirdest career of any prospect I can remember, he definitely has a chance to pitch in TO by the end of next season. 

Vinny Capra appears to be a completely different player this year - his K% is up 10% from 2019, at 29.3 currently, but his ISO is up 135 points, at .215, and is OPS is over 1000. 

Anyone have an opinion on these guys?
hypobole - Wednesday, July 14 2021 @ 09:14 AM EDT (#402476) #
Found this on Fisher Cats twitter yesterday:

New shift rule starts today in Double-A.

In addition to the existing rule of all infielders remaining on the infield dirt...two infielders are now required on each side of second base.
tercet - Wednesday, July 14 2021 @ 02:25 PM EDT (#402490) #
Jackson McClelland got released from AAA, I guess the Jays figured his command would never command around despite being able to throw 100mph.
Glevin - Wednesday, July 14 2021 @ 02:42 PM EDT (#402491) #
Really don't understand the push to ban the shift. Big issue in baseball is lack of balls in play. This doesn't help at all and just punishes innovation. Who benefits? Some pull hitters who can't adjust? I just don't understand anyone who looks at the shift and thinks "we need to ban this".
Nigel - Wednesday, July 14 2021 @ 02:47 PM EDT (#402493) #
Glevin - I agree completely that this is actually counter productive to encouraging contact but I bet that Buck Martinez will be applauding this on the next broadcast.
scottt - Wednesday, July 14 2021 @ 02:50 PM EDT (#402495) #
McClelland is third worse in ERA behind Kay and Casey Lawrence.
4.4 walks per 9, average is 3.5. Ty Tice was at 18. (SSS)
Only 6.1 K/9, which is worse than Zeuch.
Milone is at 5.6, Payamp, Dolis and Tice have terrible numbers in small samples.

Paul D - Wednesday, July 14 2021 @ 02:53 PM EDT (#402496) #
I used to be opposed to banning the shift, but I think I'm more neutral now. When you see just how much the shift has suppressed BABIP... I'm open to the idea of making a change.
Kasi - Wednesday, July 14 2021 @ 02:59 PM EDT (#402498) #
If hitters could adjust and just hit the ball the other way well they would have done that. Turns out when you're facing 95+ velocity all the time you just can't adjust to this. You hear dinosaurs like McCown go over this about how the hitters of yesterday could do this but then he brings up exceptional guys like Yount. Well sure he could do that but there is a reason he is in the hall of fame. Most regular batters just can't, if they try to hit the ball the other way they screw up their approach and just aren't successful at it. For all the talk as well about how you could just get an easy hit by bunting to the shift we've also seen with the Jays this year how many batters just suck at doing bunting and can't even lay one down.

I'm fine with the 2 fielders on the dirt and on either side of 2b. What is going to happen is whatever way they're shifting the batter from the other field is basically going to be on top of 2b and might shift a bit while the pitch is coming. It will look more like the baseball we're used to.
scottt - Wednesday, July 14 2021 @ 03:27 PM EDT (#402500) #
The Jays have hit the other way well.
When the ball was flying out of Dunedin's right outfield, the Red Sox took only game to adjust and won the series.
Then the Rays made the adjustment just from watching the tapes and swept the Jays.

Manfred describes it as making "the game look like what it looked like when I was 12 years old".
I guess he was 12 during the steroid era.
Except, pitchers were hitting back then.

Part of it is tilting the game in favor of older players who can walk, hit homerun but don't run well.
That fits both the universal DH and the 2 players on each side of second base rule.

Me, I like watching the young players who are not affected by the shift.
Most of those are born outside the US, incidentally.


Kasi - Wednesday, July 14 2021 @ 04:32 PM EDT (#402502) #
I think its a bit of a stretch to call that disastrous week just a product of the Rays and Sox making an adjustment on hitting the other way. Partly it was bullpen ofc, but a lot was just Jays hitters having awful approach in late inning scoring situations.
uglyone - Wednesday, July 14 2021 @ 07:02 PM EDT (#402506) #
I'll say it again - if they had thought of the shift decades ago they'd be outraged at any attempt to ban it now.

It fits in much more with old school baseball type strategy than new schoo, imo, (I.e. in my mind it fits right in 2ith bunts and hit and runs and situational baseball and all that jazz) and on top of that it onky punishes new school hitting approaches and rewards oldskool hitting approaches.

Fascinating to me that the old school set hate the shift so much.

Spifficus - Wednesday, July 14 2021 @ 07:51 PM EDT (#402507) #
Ted Williams wishes this were true.
Chuck - Wednesday, July 14 2021 @ 08:24 PM EDT (#402508) #
I used to be opposed to banning the shift, but I think I'm more neutral now.

Isn't "hey, not fair standing where I'm going to hit the ball" within spitting distance of "hey, not fair throwing me a pitch I can't hit"?

Gerry - Wednesday, July 14 2021 @ 08:29 PM EDT (#402509) #
Orelvis has two home runs tonight in his first two at-bats.
Kasi - Wednesday, July 14 2021 @ 08:58 PM EDT (#402510) #
The point of the changes here isn't to be fair. Its to combat the fact that the fanbase of baseball is older than any sport and is not bringing in new people. And one thing old and young do seem to agree on is the general 3 outcomes approach we see now just isn't fun to watch. One thing isn't going to fix it and yes pitching needs to be dialed back. Sticky changes is a big part of it, its also possible moving the mound back a foot could happen too.
uglyone - Wednesday, July 14 2021 @ 09:10 PM EDT (#402512) #
Get rid of the mound. It's an inauthentic artificial advantage handed to the pitchers for no real reason.
uglyone - Wednesday, July 14 2021 @ 09:14 PM EDT (#402513) #
I can't think of any sport that has any position handed an advantage that is anything similar in effect to a pitching mound.
Kasi - Wednesday, July 14 2021 @ 09:18 PM EDT (#402514) #
They could try another incremental change there, say drop the 10 inch mound to say 7. Could give a similar bump to what hitters got in 68.
uglyone - Wednesday, July 14 2021 @ 09:56 PM EDT (#402516) #
Just rip off the bandaid. We never had mounds in the playground.

Why exactly are there pitching mounds anyways?
Gerry - Wednesday, July 14 2021 @ 10:35 PM EDT (#402521) #
Groshans taken out of tonight's game (again) after two at-bats.
cascando - Wednesday, July 14 2021 @ 10:58 PM EDT (#402522) #
I can't think of any sport that has any position handed an advantage that is anything similar in effect to a pitching mound.

The bowler gets a running start in cricket. What other sport has that specific feature? They could eliminate the mound but let the pitcher run up to the rubber. Do you think that would be inherently more fair?

As with most everything in baseball, the mound is part of the balance.
uglyone - Wednesday, July 14 2021 @ 11:06 PM EDT (#402524) #
Is there any rule which stops a batsman from taking a running start at the bowl?
uglyone - Wednesday, July 14 2021 @ 11:12 PM EDT (#402528) #
Isn't the point that the balance is off?

And is that why they actually out the mound in? For balance?
Hodgie - Wednesday, July 14 2021 @ 11:37 PM EDT (#402530) #
Partly it was bullpen ofc, but a lot was just Jays hitters having awful approach in late inning scoring situations.

Since you are obviously committed to high leverage performance, I assume you would be outraged to learn that Jays pitching has the 4th worst ERA and the worst FIP (5.81!) in those same situations? Or is that just the middle of the road, high leverage offence that has that cross to bear?

uglyone - Wednesday, July 14 2021 @ 11:55 PM EDT (#402531) #
I've refrained from looking closely at it so far but why not:


High Leverage

Bat: 275pa, .317 woba (#15)
Pitch: 60.0ip, .339 opp woba (#24)

Medium Leverage

Bat: 1309pa, .322 woba (#12)
Pitch: 312.0ip, .308 opp woba (#12)

Low Leverage

Bat: 1695pa, .348woba (#1)
Pitch: 386.2ip, 3.14 opp woba (#15)

Bats: Low = Elite, Medium = average, High = Average
Arms: Low = Average, Medium = Average, high = awful


So both the bats and the arms have been unclutch....but that doesn't change the fact that the hitting is good and the pitching is not.

ramone - Thursday, July 15 2021 @ 12:05 AM EDT (#402532) #
For Groshans Gerry, I was watching the game, fouled a ball off his foot, was clearly in pain. He grounded out to short and noticeably was limping as he ran towards first. He was removed from the game right after that.
hypobole - Thursday, July 15 2021 @ 12:35 AM EDT (#402533) #
Red Sox High Leverage FIP 3.20 Rank #1
TB Rays High Leverage FIP 3.70 Rank #8
Orioles High Leverage FIP 4.16 Rank #14
Yankees High Leverage FIP 4.19 Rank #15
Blue Jays High Leverage FIP 5.81 Rank #30
John Northey - Thursday, July 15 2021 @ 01:13 AM EDT (#402535) #
Given every study I'm seen says that clutch is not a skill - that players who show it one year don't show it the next - tells me this is a low worry and more random bad luck than anything else.  I'd still be chasing an elite closer just to push everyone else in the pen down a slot thus making the whole pen better. 

Richard Rodriguez - Pittsburgh's closer and a very good one not a free agent until after 2023.
For:
Miguel Hiraldo a 3B low minors (top 10 in most Jay listings)
Rikelin De Castro, a SS in the low minors. ranked from 11th to 21st depending on who was ranking.

That trade could make sense - two low minors prospects, early in development for a guy who helps today.  The Trade Simulator is a good tool for this stuff - helps keep you for going nuts either way on a potential deal.
scottt - Thursday, July 15 2021 @ 01:41 AM EDT (#402536) #
The bullpen issues was mostly young pitchers scared of long balls in right fields.
Is it fair to blame the hitters for doing poorly in specific at-bats against elite pitching when the best hitters fail 70% against average pitching? I'd agree about failure to bunt, which is an easy play, but swinging and coming out empty is the most expected result.

The Jays had a lot of hits to right field in Dunedin and after watching one game, both Boston and Tampa did the same.

Kasi - Thursday, July 15 2021 @ 12:28 PM EDT (#402550) #
I think uglyone's stats have it pretty well. Writers on the Jays have posted it too. But all parts of the team have underperformed in high leverage. Pitchers go from average to bad, hitters from good to average (or in late and clutch just bad since in those situations only Detroit and Pittsburgh are worse)

And the Jays players themselves are aware of the hitting issues too.

https://www.sportsnet.ca/mlb/article/blue-jays-focused-tightening-play-close-games-star-break/

“A lot of our wins have been big blowouts and you get to the close games and we're not doing as well in them,” he continued. “That takes better pitching, better defence and timely hitting. That's what it always comes down to in the close games. We know that we can blow a team out some nights because we have the bats to do it with, it's those other games that we've got to tighten up.”

The reason the Jays have such a minimal chance to win the division at this point lies mostly with the Jays failure so far in situational stats. Now who knows how that holds going forward, those stats generally are predictive but they do do a good job of showing what the team has done and well what they've done is underperformed in nearly every way. Which is why I'm more open to replacing Montoyo than I used to be.
Kasi - Thursday, July 15 2021 @ 12:32 PM EDT (#402551) #
Oops typo from above. Those stats are not predictive. I agree with John that in general those skills aren't repeatable so just because the Jays have sucked to this point doesn't mean they'll suck in the second half. A lot of it is probably bad luck, but as Nigel has posted things like managing, lineup construction, roster choices, etc probably factor in.
scottt - Thursday, July 15 2021 @ 02:22 PM EDT (#402558) #
FIP often obscures things rather than bring illumination.

I'm guessing it's mostly walks.

Mike Green - Thursday, July 15 2021 @ 02:50 PM EDT (#402565) #
UO, once you adjust for park context (and perhaps the Jay defence which might be below average modestly), the pitching and offence are not very far apart at all.  The xwOBAs tell the story cleanly. 
Kasi - Thursday, July 15 2021 @ 04:02 PM EDT (#402573) #
That is true. Both Buffalo and Dunedin are very good offensive environments, among the best in all of baseball. Which obviously hurts pitching and helps batting.
Nigel - Thursday, July 15 2021 @ 04:27 PM EDT (#402575) #
Agreed. The home ballparks are making an above average offensive team look elite.
Kasi - Thursday, July 15 2021 @ 04:31 PM EDT (#402576) #
Yeah its kinda funny. Dunedin is number 1 by a mile and Buffalo is number 2 just slightly ahead of Colorado and Milwaukee.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/stats/parkfactor
Hodgie - Thursday, July 15 2021 @ 04:48 PM EDT (#402577) #
Not sure I follow, I thought metrics like wRC+ take into account park factors?
Mike Green - Thursday, July 15 2021 @ 05:17 PM EDT (#402578) #
Hodgie, UO did not cite wRC+.  The Blue Jay offence iwRC+ is 110- third in the league.  The Blue Jay ERA- is 90 (lower is better in ERA-), actually pretty comparable to the 110 wRC+ for the offence. 
Hodgie - Thursday, July 15 2021 @ 05:41 PM EDT (#402579) #
Mike, I was replying to the notion that the Jays offence isn't elite because of Dunedin/Buffalo. wRC+, which is park-adjusted disagrees strongly with that notion. Also not sure how you deem 3rd in the league (wRC+) versus 20th (ERA-) comparable. What am I missing?
Hodgie - Thursday, July 15 2021 @ 05:54 PM EDT (#402580) #
I guess what I was missing was reading comprehension and sorting skills, the Jays 90 ERA- is of course 9th (tie), not 20th.
Kasi - Thursday, July 15 2021 @ 08:33 PM EDT (#402590) #
I did some reverse engineering here of Vlad's WRC+ trying to figure out just what they were using for park factors. When I reverse engineered it the number came to 1.029, likely a rounding error due to going off of 189 not the decimals that were likely after that.

Going off Fangraphs site here on how it is calculated with the tables they use we have this: https://library.fangraphs.com/offense/wrc/

This takes us to here which is what they're using for their ballpark factors: https://www.fangraphs.com/guts.aspx?type=pf&teamid=0&season=2020

It seems they are just using a 5 year average. Perfectly reasonable in situations where you have a decent sample size on one stadium. Except this is completely useless for the Jays since last year they played all in Buffalo (with a very small sample size) and this year split between Dunedin and Buffalo. If we look at Mike's posts and the links to actual ball factors for this year the ballpark factor for Blue Jays should be more like 1.14 (colorado's factor) if not higher.

For simplicity sake I recalculated Vlad's WRC+ given that new factor and I get a WRC+ of 178, not 189. If you do this across the board it would give you a more realistic number for the Jays offense and no it would no longer be number 4 in WRC+. They would likely drop to around where Boston is about number 8 or so. Support's Nigels point about this being a good offense, but not elite.
Kasi - Thursday, July 15 2021 @ 08:38 PM EDT (#402591) #
To clarify I just used Colorado's park factor to recalculate Vlad's WRC+, I didn't go higher even though there is arguments that it should be higher considering how ridiculous Dunedin inflated runs. Anyway its rather clear that fangraphs is mostly using stats from Toronto to calculate WRC+ this year for players not playing in Toronto. WRC+ should just not be used to describe any Jays players stats for this year since its fundamentally flawed in how it is used.
Nigel - Thursday, July 15 2021 @ 09:39 PM EDT (#402592) #
I appreciate that posters to this sight (thank goodness) generally only think along objective, statistical lines - but, doesn’t that “feel” right based upon a subjective view of the lineup on most days? The lineup has one guy having a season for the ages, three having good years (particularly position adjusted), and then …. Springer’s return will likely add a 4th name to the good tier, but there really haven’t been a lot of stretches this year of successful long sequence offence. It’s why, outside of the obvious bullpen help, I’d be pushing resources into improving the offence as a first priority. A LHH OF whose offence tilted a little to OBP being the obvious upgrade.
scottt - Thursday, July 15 2021 @ 10:01 PM EDT (#402594) #
They've played more games on the road than at home and they only played 2 months in Dunedin.
From what I remember, Buffalo was tilting towards pitcher's park in the International League.
Toronto is a usually a hitter's park, so the difference with Buffalo might not be that big.
There is not enough data to actually compute anything statistically meaningful.

One issue with Dunedin was the sun during evening games.
That was always working against the Jays as by the time they came to bat, the fielding conditions improved.

Another issue was the wind. On some occasions it blew strongly out of right field.
Not always though. Gurriel and Hernandez are not the best guys to chase balls in the wind.

Overall, Dunedin worked against the Jays. I don't think you can actually put numbers on how it  impacted offense or defense. Vladdy hit a lot of no doubters. Tellez, Biggio, Gurriel, Jansen, Semien were all slumping badly in April.
Semien turned it around in May. Others took much longer.

Typically, hitting catches up to pitching after a month or two.
April numbers are always fluky. May numbers correct themselves.
I expect the offense to be solid for the rest of the year.

On the pitching side, there has been too many walks.
Relievers walking the lead off batters. Relievers walking runs in.
That is not really a function of the ballpark, but pitchers will walk more batters if they think a ball over the middle will leave the park.
Kasi - Thursday, July 15 2021 @ 10:09 PM EDT (#402595) #
Sure it is not a big sample size but it is better than using irrelevant data to show the Jays are a top offense. WRC+ is meaningless because it just uses Rogers Center data. How much it is off from this year is unknown sure, but its definitely off by something.
scottt - Friday, July 16 2021 @ 08:18 AM EDT (#402602) #
You're still comparing two sets of meaningless numbers.
It's either a WRC+ of 189 give or take 10 or 178 give or take 20.

Semien is better on the road.
Hernandez has hit fewer home runs than last year but has more hits.
Springer had hit well in a handful of Dunedin games, but has been slowed by his long time off.

If you have time on your hands, you could rank all teams based on their away numbers only *and* remove all the numbers for games played against the Jays.
uglyone - Friday, July 16 2021 @ 12:18 PM EDT (#402616) #
This debate is weird.

Offense:

#5 Runs/gm
#2 Avg
#6 Obp
#4 Iso
#2 Ops
#2 wOba
#4 wRC+
#4 oWar
#1 EV
#3 Barrel%
#3 Hard-hit%

Clearly at minimum a top-5 offense in baseball, even with their 2nd best hitter missing most of the year so far.


Pitching

#12 runs/gm
#12 earned runs/gm
#27 RS/9
#14 Avg
#12 Era
#10 Era-
#16 Fip
#21 Fip-
#12 xFip
#11 xFip-
#22 Siera
#20 EV
#23 Barrell%
#21 Hard-hit%
#13 ra9/war
#24 fWar


Some results in the "slightly above average" category but most underlying numbers say that's probably not sustainable.


I don't know what we're arguing about - especially since this exactly what we should have expected looking at the roster coming into the year.
Spifficus - Friday, July 16 2021 @ 12:54 PM EDT (#402620) #
Yeah, I'm a bit confused, too.

Considering lots of places use multi-year sample sizes for park effect calculations because of all the noise, I'm going to throw some side-eye at half-of-a-half-season sample sizes to say anything with any confidence. I'm certainly not going with any SSSS-driven conclusions that say Dunedin is Denveresque.

I mean, at these XXS sample sizes, quality of competition is a real noise threat. Angels, Yankees, Nationals, Rays, Sox (red), Phillies, Braves - those were the visiting teams in Dunedin. All of these were to varying degrees contenders coming into the year. Only the Angels have a below avg FIP (19th). Only the Phillies were below ML average, and at 16th, that's pretty good without a DH.

Wish I had time to actually do a deep dive on this to see what shakes out, but I suspect I'd just be falling for a different small sample size. So, for time, I'll go with face value and gastro-intestinal wisdom and say they're a top 5 offense.

Of course, All that said, if there's an offensive improvement that makes sense, go for it. OF reduction (probably Gurriel given his inability to play CF) in favor of a 3B (I've heard good things about this Ramirez fellow in Cleveland) would be something to consider, with Biggio going into the DH In Name Only role. Yes, that seems to be my Tandem Starters. Though, obviously, I'd also keep a look-out for a multi-year solution for the rotation. And I'd shake the Reliever Tree to see what falls out. Basically, just about anything's on the table.
Mike Green - Friday, July 16 2021 @ 02:13 PM EDT (#402623) #
Don't agree at all, UO.  You're cherrypicking the batted ball stats.  xwOBA covers all of them, and it shows all the pitchers currently on the club as essentially average or better, with Romano, Borucki, Mayza, and Manoah significantly better than average.  On the batting side, you've got a bunch of players who are noticeably poorer than average. 

It's easier and cheaper to upgrade from Grichuk/Gurriel than Matz.  And likely more beneficial. 
Kasi - Friday, July 16 2021 @ 02:58 PM EDT (#402625) #
Yeah fully agree with Mike and Nigel here. This offense is not as elite as we think it is or pitching as bad as some think it is.

As for ballpark factors the numbers in Dunedin were pretty conclusive about how strong a ballpark it is for offence. How strong sure we won't know because we do lack sample sizes, but I think anyone should agree its a far stronger offensive park than Rogers and evaluation that use Rogers numbers for current season numbers should be tossed out.
scottt - Friday, July 16 2021 @ 03:30 PM EDT (#402629) #
Which team has guys hitting 7th and 8th that are better than Grichuk and Gurriel?
Not the Rays. Not the Yankees. The Red Sox have been using guys like Dalbec, Arroyo, Kike Hernandez,  Marwin Gonzalez, Franchy Cordero, Kevin Plawecki and Michael Chavis, all worse.

Jansen has produced less with the bat than all the other catchers in the division, including some backups.

Borucki is a question mark for me. Peripherals have looked ok, but the results have not been there.
Is that the guy I want to protect a one run lead against the top of the lineup? Maybe not.
Romano doesn't look like he can go back to back reliably.
They need to decide with Mayza if they need him for 4 outs or back to back days.
I don't think he can do both.
Another closer or setup guys seems like a must.

Matz should be given every chance to get back into it and they got Hatch if necessary.


Spifficus - Friday, July 16 2021 @ 04:10 PM EDT (#402634) #
They have the 6th best road wRC+. It's only 101, but teams don't usually do well on the road, which is why it's 6th (side note - the Astros are freaks!). That's more meaningful than trying to over-parse half of their home games for half of the season against strong competition.
Spifficus - Friday, July 16 2021 @ 04:26 PM EDT (#402635) #
Forgot to check the road ERA and FIP, and I will say that I'm quite surprised there. They rank 6th and 12th best respectively, so I'll definitely say there's something in the pitching being better than we probably think. I do think the rotation has come a long way, and the bullpen has been more heartbreakingly up-and-down than catastrophic failure.
Capra Puts A Cap On Hartford | 53 comments | Create New Account
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