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| Gausman's casual flip from the glove to the hand before every pitch remains, five years into this whole thing, a little bit charming every time |
It is a shame that a lightly hard-luck Jeff Hoffman eighth inning (the first of these in weeks and weeks?) got the best of the Blue Jays in their final game before the All-Star break, overshadowing, as it did a little, the quality start from Kevin Gausman (weird though it was that he balked in a run!), and homers from both Nathan Lukes and Ernie Clement. Glory to our old friend Ty France, though—remember him? came over from the Twins with Louis Varland before moving on?—who had a couple of nice games for these fairly likeable Padres (I have no quarrel with any iteration of the San Diego Padres, come to think of it). It is no fun to have lost a pair of games headed into the break, especially as several of our AL East fellows finished their respective first halves on winning streaks of between four and nine (nine!) games. It is an uncomfortable truth that, as of yesterday afternoon, and seemingly continuing into today, we are in last place in the division (I will be sure to check tomorrow). Not great! And yet the minor miracle of our Wild Card position endures: just two-and-a-half games out, despite our being significantly closer to the bottom of the AL than to its top. It would be wrong to say that I am concerned, exactly. If it becomes clear that this is a season that will contain no "post-"— which, though uncertain, grows ever-more-likely with each passing game (just mathematically, but of course also spiritually [these do intersect])—there aren't even that many pieces to move, really: the only notable-and-fully-healthy players whose contracts expire at the end of this season are Daulton Varsho, for whom there could be takers; George Springer, for whom there most likely would not (he is having a tough year after a wondrously age-defying one last season); and our aforementioned pal Kevin Gausman, whom most contenders would be eager to pick up headed into October, you'd think? It would be tough to see Gausman go, but, as is inevitably the case with thirty-five-year-old pitchers entering the final months of a long-term deal, we're probably on the home stretch with him one way or the other. Whenever that time comes, I will definitely miss him. He has been a great Blue Jay.
Ah, but why suffer twice! Instead, let's have a little All-Star break fun by sorting the FanGraphs fWAR leaderboard and have a look at how everybody did in this Blue Jays first half that, regardless of our own particular dispositions and inclinations (whether towards hope or despair, say), I think we would all agree to have been "somewhat surprising." We will address, however briefly and inadequately, every player to have appeared for the Blue Jays so far this year in one gigantic, unworkable paragraph rendered slightly less unworkable (though by no means workable) by putting each player's name in a bold font so that the reader may orient themselves slightly better than the otherwise might (it will still be pretty bad, though). A reminder that, over the course of a full season, eight-or-so wins above replacement is like a legitimate MVP-level season; five is like a strong All-Star, and two or so is a good everyday major leaguer. Because wins above replacement, in whatever formulation, is designed to be a context-neutral measure, nobody really seems to think it does a particularly good job of evaluating relief pitchers, who in a sense barely pitch at all, but whose impacts on win probability can be, as well you know, ginormous. After everyone's fWAR, I'll also note their bWAR, just for yucks (it will probably vary most for catchers [FanGraphs accounts for pitch framing, whereas Baseball Reference does not] and for pitchers who have wild BABIPS one way or the other), but fundamentally I would like to remind the group, as one wag noted on a message board some time ago, that this fWAR/bWAR business is all well and good, but it's awfully hard on the geese. Here we go!
At the head of the pack, perhaps unsurprisingly, we have Dylan Cease (3.7 fWAR/3.6 bWAR), who is about to become the first Blue Jays pitcher to start an All-Star Game since Roy Halladay, squaring off against Christopher Sanchez, the first Philadelphia Phillies pitcher to start an All-Star Game since, well, since also Roy Halladay, actually (pretty neat!). Cease, you will recall, was the first big free-agent signing of the previous offseason (not just for the Blue Jays, but for all of baseball), the idea being in part to have an ace at the head of the rotation as Kevin Gausman's time in Toronto winds down (we may have addressed this previously). So far he has overdelivered, and been super fun to watch! The Blue Jays' other big free-agent signing, Kazuma Okamoto (2.3 fWAR/2.3 bWAR) is next, and what a delight his team-leading twenty-two home runs have been, because we have not had a whole lot of those otherwise, have we! Fewer than we might have thought! Haha! When the Blue Jays signed Okamoto early in the offseason in another move that, like the Cease deal but even more so, nobody really seemed to have speculated about even a little, the infield started to look pretty crowded, didn't it, if there was any real thought of bringing Bo Bichette back. But as much as we all love Bo, this can only be seen a super canny move, as Bo has struggled pretty hard at the plate this year, though FanGraphs likes his defense at third base just fine (0.9 fWAR/0.2 bWAR). Okamoto's has been fine, too (his defense I mean), which makes sense when you remember it was deemed good enough for him to start at the position for the Japanese national team, but you did hear things ahead of the season; dudes did talk (as they so often will). Next we've got Kevin Gausman (2.2 fWAR/1.4 bWAR) just humming along in the fashion to which we have become accustomed, and young All-Star Louis Varland (2.2 fWAR/2.8 bWAR) right there with him in overall value despite, as a reliever, having pitched fewer than half the innings a starter might have; that is how ridiculous Varland's first half has been (six earned runs in forty-nine innings in forty-four games, and literally just one home run). The first real surprise for me here—and this is why you do it; this is why you sort—is rookie catcher Brandon Valanzuela (1.6 fWAR/1.0 bWAR), who saw a tonne of playing time when Kirk was off with that broken thumb; we are all set at catcher for years, it would seem. Andrés Giménez (1.4 fWAR/0.5 bWAR) has had his struggles at the plate but plays a smooth shortstop so we are not upset about it. The beloved Ernie Clement (1.2 fWAR/1.1 bWAR) will be the American League's All-Star starter at second base despite weirdly struggling at the position defensively at times so far this year; his two previous seasons were considerably more nifty (objectively more nifty) than this present one, but Ernie is awesome, so good for him. Trey Yesavage (1.1 fWAR/ 1.8 bWAR) has been a little bit under-the-radar so far this year, which I suppose is inevitable compared to coming out of nowhere to strike out literally thousands of Yankees and no-hit them through five-plus innings in the playoffs as a twenty-two year old, but aside from his start this weekend, he's been quite good—as have fine-fielding left-handed-batting outfielders Daulton Varsho (1.1. fWAR/0.9 bWAR) and Nathan Lukes (1.1 fWAR/0.8 bWAR) in somewhat (though not terribly) limited appearances. Vladdy (1.0 fWAR/0.8 bWAR) and his troubles are well documented, of course, here and elsewhere, but I think it is worth noting that his improved baserunning and defense make it entirely possible that he'll end up producing more value overall than he did in 2023 even if his recent dingers do not full-on auger an immediate return to form in that regard (the regard of dingers). Next we have three members of our fairly laudable bullpen, Rule-Five-draft-legend Spencer Miles (0.9 fWAR/1.6bWAR), BABIP-nightmare Jeff Hoffman (0.9 fWAR/-0.1 bWAR), and the ever ever-estimable Tyler Rogers (0.9 fWAR/1.1 bWAR), and man, you can really see the divide between the fWAR and bWAR approach to measuring pitching performance creep in there, can't you, not that we'll digress about any of it more than maybe one parenthetical sentence following this present one. (To be brief, yet reasonably accurate, fWAR tries to assess what should have happened; bWAR tries to account for what has happened [and the former turns out to generally have better predictive value, for what that may be worth].) Say what you will about Patrick Corbin (0.5 fWAR/0.6 bWAR), but he really will throw any number of innings for you, and some of them you'll enjoy well enough (others less so, I suppose). I would have told you Mason Fluharty (0.5 fWAR/0.3 bWAR) was struggling at least a little, but he's actually been totally fine, and has somehow pitched fifty times already (that's a lot of times! [I have just now checked and it is the most in baseball by three]). Young Jonatan Clase (0.4 fWAR/0.5 bWAR), a smooth-fielding switch-hitter, has been just tremendous in the six games he's been up for recently, and I sincerely hope he sticks as a corner outfielder going forward (my feeling arises from what the literary [rather than cinématique] Ron Washington might describe as "the shit we've seen" [fabricated quotation on my part] from other corner outfielders at times). Alejandro Kirk (0.3 fWAR/-0.1 bWAR), among our raddest guys, has barely played, and has struggled at the plate, but it is no surprise that fWAR has liked what little it has seen of him this year, underpinned, as it is for catchers, by pitch-framing (perhaps unsurprisingly, he has been pretty good at ABS challenges, too). Luis Urías (0.3 fWAR/0.3 bWAR) was acquired for mere cash considerations, as I recall, and has played like a suped-up version of the roster spot that had belonged to Lenyn Sosa (-0.5 fWAR/-0.9 bWAR), whose struggles we will note a little out of order but, more importantly, with sympathy and fellow-feeling rather than with anything harsher (do you think that's how he wanted to hit? because that is not what I think). Myles Straw (0.2 fWAR/0.0 bWAR), whose nickname is actually listed as "Kilometres Straw" on Baseball Reference, far exceeds his metrics (well I guess not the excellent fielding ones) in pure vibes, though nobody would mind if he could bring that OPB back north of .300 (I'm sure he'd be into it to!). Joe Mantiply (0.2 fWAR/0.5 bWAR), an emerging bullpen piece, we might say, regrettably needed knee surgery in May. We have a host of 0.1 fWAR guys, some of them bullpen arms called up and sent down and back again (Chad Dallas [0.1 fWAR/0.2 bWAR], Adam Macko [0.1 fWAR/0.2 bWAR]), some of them steady hands about whom the numbers are mixed (Braydon Fisher [0.1 fWAR/0.8 bWAR]), at least one interesting guy whose knee exploded immediately (Cody Ponce [0.1 fWAR/0.0 bWAR]), and among the most baffling defensive outfielders of our generation who nevertheless seems nice (who but Jésus Sánchez [0.1 fWAR/-0.4 bWAR]. Our zéro-fWARistes represent a range of types, but chiefly fall into the guys who have barely played (Simeon Woods-Richardson [0.2 bWAR], Tanner Andrews [0.1 bWAR], Connor Seabold [-0.2 bWAR], Hayden Jeunger [-0.1 bWAR], and regrettably Addison Barger [-0.2 bWAR]) and those who have played a lot, but who have fallen (or continue to fall, like in a perpetual tumble I guess) on tough times, like Tommy Nance [0.3 bWAR] or, worst of all, George Springer [-0.2 bWAR]). There is also the case of young Yohendrick Piñango (bWAR -0.5), whose early promise with the bat was overshadowed pretty quickly by some true adventures in left field. As we dip into negative fWAR territory, it is as good a time as any to remind ourselves of the accepted imprecision of Wins Above Replacements: Sean Forman, whose Baseball Reference makes use of the Sean Smith (remember when he was "Rally Monkey"? on the boards, I mean?) formulation, has mused publicly (and privately, who knows?) that it may have been a mistake not to include error bars all along; and how often did Dave Cameron, formerly of FanGraphs, then of the Padres, and subsequently of the Mariners, suggest we approach Wins Above Replacement as a fairly reliable measure to within about 1.0 WAR over a full season? I couldn't even tell you! I myself lost count! This is all to say that, as bad as it looks when presented starkly on the screen (or also I suppose "on paper," though one rarely encounters WAR unmediated by the screen [except for on the backs of fairly recent baseball cards]), a negative value for any of these measures should not be read as immediate proof that anyone is, like, lousy (in the non-infested, baseball sense); even the sometimes appreciable spread between fWAR and bWAR as seen above (in the cases of several guys) should remind us that these are useful generalities and approximations that are best used to begin conversations rather than end them. Some of these players that now follow in our overview may not be lousy players, but instead be players experiencing lousiness. And so as we dip into the negatives, we have a mix of players mostly grinding it out in the high minors, and others who have moved onto other organizations: Tyler Heineman (-0.1 fWAR/-0.2 bWAR), Eloy Jiménez (-0.1 fWAR/-0.1 bWAR), Lazaro Estrada (-0.1 fWAR/0.2 bWAR), and Josh Fleming (-0.1 fWAR/-0.2 bWAR). Go another tick lower, and we're into Yariel Rodriguez (-0.2 fWAR/-0.4 bWAR) territory, where he is joined by youngsters Sean Keys (-0.2 fWAR/-0.2 bWAR), Charles McAdoo (-0.2 fWAR/-0.1 bWAR), and slightly-less-young youngster Chase Lee (-0.2 fWAR/-0.1 bWAR). From there, things start to get poignant, I'm afraid, as we find fan-favourite Davis Schneider (-0.4 fWAR/-0.3 bWAR), formerly of the 2025 American League Champion Toronto Blue Jays (call to mind, if you are able, the leadoff home run he struck off of Blake Snell in Game Five the World Series) but currently of the Buffalo Bisons, who probably has no better than even odds of getting called back up this season. Lenyn Sosa (-0.5 fWAR/-0.9 bWAR) is currently on a rehab assignment in the low minors, if I am remembering correctly, but may well be finished as a major leaguer. Brendon Little (-0.5 fWAR/-1.4 bWAR) had a strong first half last year, struggled later in the season, gave up the Eugenio Suarez grand slam in the ALCS, and then allowed fifteen runs (fourteen earned) in just four-and-a-third innings this year, all while having kind of a naturally wounded look about him, which made it all the more troubling to behold (Austin Voth [-0.5 fWAR/-0.5 bWAR] pitched quite similarly, yet it was somehow easier to bear?). Only three players remain of the forty-nine to have appeared for the Blue Jays this season, but let us pause briefly to note: forty-nine! On a twenty-six-man roster! You can see why the MLPBA wants to change the rules to limit this kind of roster churn, where players are optioned repeatedly in a single season (marginal relievers have it especially rough in this regard). But as we were saying, three remain, all of them pitchers: we have Eric Lauer (-0.6 fWAR/-0.5 bWAR), who totally found his old form once he was waived and picked up by (you guessed it!) the Dodgers; Shane Bieber (-0.5 fWAR/-0.4 bWAR), whom all expect to figure it out at least a little as he works his way back from arm issues; and finally Max Scherzer (-0.7 fWAR/-1.0 bWAR), whose first-ballot, absolutely-for-sure Hall-of-Fame career looks to be at its end, or so near its end that it makes little difference (except to him, I'm sure, as he really does seem to relish hanging out on the top step of the dugout, leaning over the rail, and chopping it up with seemingly anyone and everyone [I bet he's fun at dinners]).
Can you believe it was that many guys? From just the first half? Wild, right? I have either watched or listened to all ninety-six Blue Jays games so far this season, and then at least lightly considered each game anew for the purposes of [gestures broadly] this, our ongoing silly project, and there are definitely six players whose names I would not have been able to summon had I been asked to list all of our guys so far this year, and that number could pretty easily have risen all the way to ten had I been asked when, say, a little sleepy. That's between twelve and twenty percent of the guys! Indeed, faced with this reality, one cannot help but reflect upon the fleeting nature of all guys. And therefore never send to know, as John Donne nearly wrote in "Meditation XVII" of Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, for whom the guys fleet; the guys fleet for thee ("no man is an island" is from the same one, if you can believe it; what a banger of a meditation).
Anyway, enjoy the break! And the All-Star Game tonight, should you be so inclined (I am! it's always fun to me). I will admit that I tapped out on the Netflix presentation of the Home Run Derby after literally just four minutes last night. I found it aggressively unwatchable! Congratulations to young Jordan Walker of the Cardinals all the same, though. He seems to have hit really quite a number of dingers.
KS
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