Jose Bautista: Bag Tagger

Take that, Henderson Alvarez's groin.


KS

Why would you do this to me, FanGraphs, the day before the Blue Jays open their season?

Why:


The Toronto Blue Jays organization has most of the pieces necessary to not only field a playoff-caliber team but to also build a dynasty if it plays its cards well. The minor league system is strong and should be able to sustain a steady stream of talent, although the new restraints on acquiring amateur talent will offer a challenge to the club. The organization also has stable ownership and, theoretically, the money necessary to acquire some star talent to supplement those currently on the 25-man roster.

Why.

KS

Perhaps the Finest Fangraphs Audio Ever

Carson Cistulli, baseball bloggeur nonpareil

Yeah I'm pretty sure this is the best one they've ever done, and you can listen to it here. Dayn Perry joins Carson Cistulli, the baseball internet's great hipster ironist, to offer a reading of Ryan Bruan's recent speech as text in the cultural studies sense. At one point Perry mockingly derides cultural studies Ph.D. programmes as "the blast furnace of American ingenuity," which is totally the best part and I have just ruined it for you. Also, I have looked up Carson Cistulli on ratemyprofessors.com, and while on the whole he fares well, one evaluation reads only, "unfit to teach," which is tremendous. Let me add here that in my experience, professors of longstanding sometimes state with pride how completely they ignore student evaluations, often to the point of not even opening up the envelope, but I have never heard anyone claim to be above typing in their own name at ratemyprofessors.com. If you ever want to really hurt someone (or be nice), that is the place to do it. 


KS

Blue Jays 4, Angels 3: Now That is How You Close The Season at Home

There she goes.

Trailing 3-1 in the seventh despite another solid start by young Henderson Alvarez, the Blue Jays at last got down to biznass: Eric Thames, who Alan Ashby could not possibly love more, led off the inning with his twelfth home run of the season, knocking Ervin Santana out of the game. Jose Bautista walked (3-4, 2 BB, 2 standing ovations complete with chants of "M-V-P"), and Adam Lind ripped one off of Mark Trumbo at first. What could have been a double play was instead a ball that skittered into centre field, which allowed Bautista to reach third, and Lind to totally evade the tag at second, not that umpire Brian Runge noticed. As you can see here --

-- Adam Lind was not nuts about this, nor should have been. In any event, Bautista came in to tie the game at three on a wild pitch, but the Jays left an E5 double out there to die to end the inning.


Let us reconvene in the bottom of the twelfth, long after the Blue Jays had strangely lost the DH through pinch hitting machinations in the bottom of the ninth and defensive reorderings in the top of the tenth. Leading off that home half of the final inning of baseball to be played in Toronto this year was that selfsame E5, who curled a 3-2 hanging breaking ball just inside the foul pole to give the Blue Jays their eleventh walk-off win of the season. And there was much rejoicing, because it owned. The Blue Jays were perfect in extra innings at home this year, which is a pretty awesome thing to be. Thanks, guys.


I was struck last night by the end-of-season baseball feelings displayed by young Navin Vaswani of NotGraphs, whose emoting I have linked to previously in these pages. The last home game of the year is invariably a melancholic affair, even, or perhaps especially, when it ends like this one did. In the tellingly sepia-tone-titled "One Last Night At The Ballpark," Navin had this to say:   

I’m at the Rogers Centre. Section 217, first base side. The lid’s open. There couldn’t be finer weather for the grand finale, the last baseball game in Toronto this year.

Vernon Wells is getting “the business” in left field. An elderly woman to my right booed him when he came to bat in the fifth. She’s merciless. A couple of enthusiastic Blue Jays fans, or, as I like to call them, “clowns,” just started the wave.

There’s an Englishman sitting behind me, at his second game this week. About baseball he said: “I just wish we had this in England.”

Baseball’s the best. It’s going to be a long winter.

 He did not stop there:

ADDENDUM: Edwin Encarnacion — “Double E,” not “E5″ — walked it off for Toronto. It was glorious. The Blue Jays made sure that since they weren’t going to the postseason, neither were the Los Angeles Angels. Here’s to playing spoiler.

In the 9th and 12th innings, when Jose Bautista stepped up to bat, most everyone in the building rose to their feet and showered the American League’s Most Valuable Player with applause, and chants of “MVP! MVP! MVP!” This warmed my baseball heart. We might not have given him the many curtain calls he probably deserved, but Bautista was appreciated. His has been another incredible season, one this city won’t soon forget.

I had it all Wednesday night: Great company; delicious sweet potato fries; a beautiful night; a couple of Bud Light Limes; and an extra innings, come-from-behind walk-off Blue Jays win. If that’s the last baseball game I ever have the privilege of watching in person, I’m good. No complaints.

It would be easy to make light of this as the kind of naked sentimentality best reserved for the ear of one's significant other, or perhaps best confined to the heavily annotated pages of one's scorekeeping book, even. But I salute Navin. These are baseball feelings of the highest order. Is there a more profound baseball feeling than the end-of-season baseball feeling? I submit that there is not. Bless you, Navin.


KS

On Ichiro, for just a second.

Did you have any idea Ichiro was this much smaller than Jeter?

Ichiro occupies kind of a strange place: so overrated that he's underrated or so underrated that he's overrated, or something. Non-nerd baseball fans are likely to think he is ridiculously awesome, whereas nerds are quick to point out that no, Ichiro does (or rather has done) a couple of things exceptionally well -- hit for average; steal bases at an historically high rate of success; field his position excellently -- but has been far less valuable over the course of his very fine career than many other players that you don't care about in the least. In fact, the nerds are correct, but with the caveat that also Ichiro is ridiculously awesome. 


Ichiro is unique and stylish and graceful and we love him, which is what makes this, his first truly bad season, such a drag. There's realistically nothing he can do in this final month of the season to salvage this utter butt of a year, if we are measuring his performance in the best ways we know how (he has barely been above replacement level as measured by whichever WAR you prefer), or even superficially (fifty points off his career average, and sixty below his career OBP). If, however, all we want is for Ichiro to have yet another 200-hit season, then maybe. 


Just a few days ago, Steve Rudman (whose work I did not know previously, but who has a kind look and so I am predisposed to like him) wrote a fine piece called "40 Hits to 200: Not Even Ichiro Can Do It," in which Rudman, pained, clearly and precisely details the muck and despair that has led us here and the daunting task that lies ahead. When I read it, I was completely convinced: Ichiro is old now, and this isn't going to happen. However! What if it did? Last night, Ichiro went 4-5, and hit a home run for the second straight day. With eighteen games to play, Ichiro now needs 33 hits, which is still nuts, but maybe? It wouldn't mean that Ichiro isn't in serious decline, or that he's not coming up fast on the end a Hall-of-Fame career, or anything like that, but it would a heck of a thing, wouldn't it? An eleventh-straight 200-hit season? Who wouldn't want to see that? And it looks like even the WARriest nerds are in on this one, too: as of this morning, Ichiro is the most popular player page right now at Fangraphs.


KS

Blue Jays 13, Orioles 0: Thoughts for Jo-Jo, But No Prayers This Time

Dinger aftermath.

With Brian Tallet safely DFA'd, the Blue Jays took the field with a spring in their step last night and absolutely punished poor, sweet Jo-Jo Reyes, who didn't make it out of the third. Blue Jays bats were relentless, except I guess for the bat of Mike McCoy, which relented quite a lot, actually. But everybody else pounded the ball. Escobar? 4-6. Thames? 4-5 with a double. Bautista? A three-run home run, his league-leading thirty-ninth. E5 went 4-5, Kelly Johnson homered, as did big fat Jose Molina. It was awesome.


All the while, Henderson Alvarez kept right on throwing strikes, and forcing ground outs with a great sinker. Three hits, no walks, and five strikeouts over eight innings of work earned him the first win of his career, and maybe this is a dude who should be in the back end of the rotation next year, right? I know it was just the O's, but still. I know that all experts agree that the Blue Jays have a ton of pitching coming, and so I should be patient, but pretty much everybody but Ricky Romero and Casey Janssen has me down these days so I am flailing a little. I can't shake the Drabek thing, basically, and I really wanted Brett Cecil to prove craftier. Oh hey that totally reminds me: over at Frangraphs, Jesse Wolfersberger (possibly a real name) dares to ask the question, "Why Are Lefties Crafty?" in an article that is completely worth your while. "It turns out, this is one historical saying that holds up under statistical analysis," he contends, and then shows you math in a persuasive way.  



Unrelatedly, I would also like to draw your attention to how Milwaukee Brewers' slugger Ryan Braun was totally on his way to an inside-the-park home run last night before he stumbled between third and home and got caught in a rundown to the delight and straight-up merriment of all. A photo essay on this subject follows.

KS

From Grant Brisbee to Carson Cistulli to Me to You, Dearest Baseball Feeler

Is that a bat in your stance or . . .

Over at NotGraphs, FanGraphs aesthete-in-chief Carson Cistulli links to a piece by Grant Brisbee in which many animated .gifs are used to demonstrate how baseball is awesome, and I urge you to go see. "Five Different Things Baseball Players Can Do With Their Bats" is the finest thing to emerge from the baseball internet in literally days. The above image is not from the piece itself, but is instead just Aaron Rowand doing that thing he does, which calls to (my) mind that thing that Reed Johnson does, where he steps out between pitches, sets the head of the bat in the ground, the knob resting atop his cup (you heard me), whilst he adjusts his batting gloves. I have always thought of this position as the tripod; only now does it occur to me that it could also be described as the reed johnson, if you follow me. That I can find no images demonstrating this position is even more disappointing to me than it is to you, so don't start.

KS

An Almost Impossibly Square Video Tribute to Roberto Alomar, Narrated by Stephen Brunt

I saw this at FanGraphs/NotGraphs. Pretty amazingly square, but tons of great clips here, some good writing, and here's how Brunt ends the piece:


It doesn’t happen often: A player for the ages turning up on your favorite team. In a perfect world, Roberto Alomar would have stayed a Blue Jay longer. In a perfect world, there would have been more championships to go with that magical pair. But what a great thing to have had him here, at his best. And now, to have him bring the Blue Jays to Cooperstown.


Pretty much, yeah.


If that's not enough Brunt on Alomar for you, there is also this.


KS

Royals 3, Blue Jays 2 (F/11): Et tu, Mark Rzepcynski?

Juan Rivera, feeling about this game like I feel about Juan Rivera

Before I get into minding last night's extra-innings loss to the Royals, there are a couple of other things I would also like to mind. First off, I know Alan Ashby is covering for Buck Martinez on the TV side of the broadcast right now, but do they have to replace the absolutely first-rate Ashby with Gregg Zaun as Jerry Howarth's number two in the radio booth? The drop off from Ashby to Zaun is the difference between listening to an insightful adult or a smug bro. I enjoy insightful adults. I do not enjoy smug bros at all. Also, I think part of why I fail to care at all about the plight of the Royals -- in addition to lingering bitterness over the 1985 ALCS, plus the obvious fact that the reason the Royals have been almost entirely bad since then isn't about economic problems plaguing the game so much as utterly inept management that can't seem to develop enough talent to be competitive in the straight-up embarrassing AL Central while Tampa managed to surpass four teams with vastly larger payrolls in the AL East -- is that the games start an hour later when the Blue Jays are in Kansas City and I always forget, so when I turn on the radio at the appointed hour I get nothing. All of these things need to stop but I worry that they won't.

To last night's game, then: a really crisp affair in the early going, with both Morrow and Paulino throwing very well. When the Blue Jays scratched out a lone run in the fourth on an error, wild pitch, and two ground outs, it looked to me like that might be the difference. Not so, of course, as  Eric Hosmer reached on an error in the bottom of the inning, and came in on a Mike Aviles triple (oh man triples!). Another Blue Jays run on a groundout in the seventh should have meant nothing but good times, but my man Mark Rzepcynski kind of didn't get anybody out and walked three dudes in relief, including walking in the tying run. This is a shame, in that it is on its own awful, but also in that Scrabble has been terrific out of the bullpen this year. Alas, and also alack. 


Why even mention that it was The Closer Frank Francisco who gave up the walkoff hit to Eric Hosmer in the eleventh? Everybody knows. Francisco is awful, legitimately awful. You don't even need to get fancy about it: 6.06 ERA, 1.78 WHIP. That's brutal, and brutal in a way that is easy to understand. End this. Someone. Please.


Finally, I couldn't help but notice that Fangraphs ran a neat thing on the worst players in baseball by WAR yesterday. I recently did the same, but I'm going to take this as a loving tribute rather than anything untoward. Here's what Seidman wrote about our dude E5:


Edwin Encarnacion (-0.9 WAR): Some players are on here as a direct result of their suckitude with the bat. Encarnacion, aptly nicknamed E5, makes this list primarily on the lack of merit of his glovework. In just 43 games his UZR is a spectacularly bad -9.1. If you’re more into the fielding percentage metric, consider this factoid Dave Cameron discussed recently. As of May 27th, Encarnacion had a .784 fielding percentage. The next worst was Andy LaRoche at .892, a gap of 108 points. Encarnacion is one of the worst fielders in baseball history, and if he can’t even match the lower league average with the bat, what actual purpose does he serve?


Aside from using "factoid" in the debased and subliterate sense that indicates no understanding of the meaning of the "-oid" suffix, the man has some valid points. Also, I am a dick.


KS

Earlier I Suggested That Baseball is The Worst, But Craig Robinson has Convinced Me Otherwise with A Post on His Tumblr

There can be no rebuttal. 


More of the great Craig Robinson at Flip Flop Fly Ball

KS

Two notable Joe West gifs, and oh yeah also a triple play if you are into those

First, Joe West ejects Barry Zito's mustache:

Next, we have Melky Cabrera high-fiving Joe West, who was really just signalling that time had been called, but Melky was like "even so, I can't leave him hanging":

Finally, I searched -- both high and low -- for an animated .gif of the Indians 3-4-6 triple play from Sunday's game, but, alas, all I have for you is video. Go here, click "video," and scroll down. If you are like, "fuck you, I know how to use the internet," then we have nothing more to say to each other.


Anyway, that must have been really nice for all eight Indians fans that have been showing up so far.


KS