Blue Jays At The Break: Not Exactly Awful, But Still Somewhat Hurtful

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When the season began, our proprietary Baseball Objectively Nonsensical Emotional Rating System predicted 84 wins for the 2011 Toronto Blue Jays, and thus far the Blue Jays are not far off that pace. Were we to take the .489 winning percentage the Blue Jays posted through their first 92 games and extrapolate from that in an actually pretty dazzling feat of mathematical wizardry, we would find a total of 79 wins: still well above the low-70s lines set by the bookmakers before the season began, and yet still not any good, really. Which is OK I guess. Heading into the year, it looked like this would be one of those sort-of-on-either-side-of-.500 seasons that the Blue Jays have specialized in over the now seventeen years since the lost age of awesomeness -- only twice since 1993 have the Blue Jays been truly horrible (1995, 2004), and only once have they finished less than ten games out of the A.L. East lead (2000) -- and that's what we're going to get, alright. Now eleven games behind Boston and ten behind the Yankees, there's no pretending the Blue Jays have a chance to make it interesting this year or anything like that, so it's really just about keeping their heads above water and hopefully finishing the year on the right side of .500, which, I grant you, is irrelevant in the sense of the long-term development of talent and overall betterment of the team, but extremely relevant in that I watch these games, man, I watch them.  You can be forgiven for not knowing offhand that the Jays have actually been a winning team in four of the last five seasons, but now that you do know that, you can not be forgiven for not knowing I would very much like for them to make it five out of six. 


What are their chances? Let's break things down in the analytic mode we all so enjoy. 


The Outfield: Has Been Garbage + Jose Bautista


Now that Jose Bautista is semi-firmly re-entrenched at third, we can say without reservation that the outfield has been an utter disaster. Defensively, it has been atrocious, and the bats, my god, the bats. Travis Snider was unexpectedly but totally deservedly demoted; Rajai Davis has rocked a legitimately shocking .264 OBP, dwarfed by the comparatively towering achievement of Corey Patterson's also awful .294; and Juan Rivera never failed to fill me with anger and shame. It is miraculous that he is now a Dodger (for a player to be named later, which is totally cool with me so long as they do not later name Juan Rivera). Now that Snider is back and getting better results -- although the jury is still out on aspects of his swing, particularly that one-handed nonsense that keeps happening on breaking balls -- and Eric Thames is up and hitting, you've got to think things are doing to be at least somewhat cooler going forward, right?


The Infield: On the Whole, Borderline Rad


So, Jose Bautista has a very real chance at turning in a better season (by WAR) than either Henry Aaron or Albert Pujols ever managed throughout their all-time great careers. This is to say that we are pretty much set at third now. Had E5 been able to be anything other than seriously one of the worst fielders in the history of Major League Baseball, Bautista could have stayed in right, but it was not to be. (Again, Edwin Encarnacion is, in my view, blameless; love the sinner, hate the sin. Let him be.) Third base was such a massive sinkhole for the Blue Jays for most of the first half, just such a sinkhole, but hey, if Bautista can handle it, at least until Brett Lawrie gets a look, then awesome. Yunel Escobar is turning in a fine, fine season at short, and has been duly rewarded with a contract extension. Adam Lind has rebounded as well as anyone could have hoped, and is on his way to the best season of his career. The only real problem on the infield, now that third base is being handled by a dude having an historically great season, is that Aaron Hill looks lost not only at the plate but, increasingly, in the field as well, and it's a real shame. He's probably on his way out, as there's just no way the team can pick up those extensions, right? I mean, I hope they don't. Everyone likes to rush in to say that Hill is really starting to square-up pitches and make good contact and hit the ball hard, but he's basically a replacement level player right now. It's brutal to watch. I don't think anyone saw this coming. Finally, J. P. Arencibia plays a competent catcher while hitting for no average and maybe twenty homers. I can live with that.


DH/The Bench: Let's Not Pretend Edwin Encarnacion is Even A League-Average Hitter (This is Getting Absurd); Everybody Still Likes John McDonald I Guess


It's the AL, who cares about the bench. And it has been a while since we have had a designated hitter who is someone you really would take a good hard look at and then designate to hit.


The Rotation: Did Not See This Coming


Rickey Romero is pretty awesome, and with even a little run support, everybody would know that, instead of just people who are clever knowing it. And thank goodness for that pretty awesomeness, because what the H happened to the rest of the rotation? Brett Cecil lost velocity and got sent down; Kyle Drabek led the league in walks and got sent down; Brendan Morrow as usual has such stuff but is not exactly translating that to such outings; Jesse Litsch got hurt; and Jo-Jo Reyes is, bless him, Jo-Jo Reyes. But Carlos Villanueva has come out of the pen and given us way more than we could have anticipated; Cecil is back and OK; Morrow might never really put it all together but sometimes he strikes out a tonne of guys; and Jo-Jo Reyes is, bless him, Jo-Jo Reyes. 


The Bullpen: Is Killing Me


I don't know, man, I just don't know. The bullpen's combined fifteen blown saves yeah fifteen blown saves trails on the Angels in the American League. I'm not even doing a thing where I am like, we could be fifteen games better! No, of course not. But I'm not asking for that; I'm not even asking to match Detroit's league-best five blown saves. What if the Blue Jays were just league-average? How much better would that be? Like, if they'd only blown ten, not only would the team be kind of a little bit back in the mix, but I would only have gone to bed angry 66% as often as I did. It's something worth considering. 


The Manager: Am Not A Fan of This Guy


Stop running all the time. Just stop it. Don't. Please. I hate it. It sounds like it's going to be fun, and then it isn't at all. No more safety squeezes. And I'm not even saying you told him to do this, but do not create a culture and a climate in which Rajai Davis twice tries to drop down a bunt with two out and a runner on second in a close game. I do however credit you for your attempt to restrain a rampaging Jon Rauch in what is, thus far, the finest ejection of the season.


In Summation: We Are Largely Junk


Hey. I know what this is. This is not the year. Nobody ever said it would be. I haven't been lied to or misled. I'm OK with how things are going. I'm loving baseball on a day-to-day basis. Nobody's scoring this season, but the Blue Jays are fourth-best in the league in runs. Sure, they're third worst in runs allowed, and a lot of that isn't just the iffy pitching, but incomparably shoddy defense, but what can you do? I heard the other day that the Blue Jays have, unsurprisingly, played the toughest schedule in baseball to this point, but that's the deal. They still have every chance to finish right around .500, which would be fine. On the Baseball Today podcast earlier this week, Keith Law was saying that it's kind of the worst possible position to be in, right around .500, because you can convince yourself that you're a piece or two away from ninety wins and a real contender, when that is often very far from the truth. It can be difficult to see through that, Law said, but on the same show he also pointed out that Alex Anthopolous is doing, on balance, as good a job as any GM in either league, so we can probably trust him to get this right. Or mostly right, right enough that I will not despair.


KS