Blue Jays 3, Angels 2 (F/10): YEEEEEAAAAAAHHHHHHH

EXUBERANCE 

Ricky Romero, who continues to own, went nine strong innings last night, with the only real damage coming on solo shots from Mark Trumbo and Torii Hunter. Two runs over nine was not quite enough to earn Romero his sixteenth win, though, because aside from J. P. Arencibia's two-run single in the fourth, the Blue Jays were kind of junk with runners on the rest of those nine. Particularly poor: the bottom of the very ninth, in which E5 singled and Johnson reached on sacrifice attempt that turned into a bunt single before Lawrie sac'd, Molina K'd, and Arencibia lined out to Hunter. However! In the bottom of the tenth, Adam Lind grounded to Hunter -- who, because Mike Scosia is awesome, was playing as an extra infielder for the second straight inning -- whose throw to the plate came too late to beat the sliding Mike McCoy. I am loving these walk-off wins, let me tell you. 


Also, with the Angels in town again, my thoughts cannot help but turn to the plight of poor Vernon Wells, who is playing miserably, of course, and who has recently become the subject of internet fun owing to an interview in which he went on the record thus: "Maybe it’s just society, but people put too much on struggling." Oh, Vernon . . . 


Finally, here is an awesome picture of Torii Hunter hitting a home run. 

KS

Angels 5, Blue Jays 1: Bless you, Vernon Wells.

I've got to think this went even better than he'd hoped.

This is definitely worth watching, if you haven't seen it yet: the Toronto crowd gives Vernon Wells a warm welcome (home, sort of); Vernon steps out of the box and acknowledges the crowd, and proceeds to rip a first pitch slider over the centre field wall that Vernon used to, you, fly into awesomely. I was genuinely pleased to see that the kind of ridiculousness that dogged Vernon during too much of his time in Toronto -- yeah he's a stand-up guy who plays through injuries and puts up big numbers when he's not hurt and is awesome in the community and is the team's union rep and actually nobody has a bad word to say about him in the least but he had the audacity to sign a contract J. P. Ricciardi was fool enough to offer and he himself was not fool enough to decline and so we shall boo this man -- was nowhere to be seen here, and everybody was just like, "Hey, it's Vernon! Boy, he sure played here long time, and is second in pretty much everything in Blue Jays history to Carlos Delgado! Let's all clap a minute!" Because that is the right thing to do.


Vernon did a fun little interview with Aaron Hill that the Fan 590 played before today's game, and in addition to talking about how nice the reception was and how awesome it was to hit that home run, he also mentioned something I was not aware of at all: according to Josh Hamilton (whose memory might be hazy, actually, so take this for what it's worth), Toronto is the roughest left field to play in in the AL; the fans just wear you out. Now, this to me seems absurd. Worse than Boston? Or Chicago? Or New York? Anyway, this is what Josh Hamilton says, Vernon reports, and Vernon also said that he gets it now. He said he heard it pretty good for all innings last night. He also noted that it was "awesome," unsurprising from a guy who, as you no doubt recall, knows from heckling.

"Dear Mr. Dork, Here is your ball! Can you please tell me what gas station you work at, so when you are pumping my gas I can yell at you!!! Now sit down, shut-up and enjoy the game. Your favorite centre fielder, Vernon Wells"

Anyway, good for Vernon, who will be lucky to get another hit all weekend given how terribly his season is going, and good for everybody, really. Except the Blue Jays, I guess, because Brandon Morrow got touched up early and the bats never really got going. 


But Vernon!

KS

Orioles 6, Blue Jays 2 and Blue Jays 7, Orioles 2: Not Quite What I Had In Mind But Fine

:

Camden Yards: still somewhat OK

I have no problem with Yunel Escobar -- shortstops with .820 OPS are fine by me -- but he managed to pretty much single-handedly undue an excellent start by Brandon Morrow when he booted a potential double-play ball in the sixth inning Saturday night. But that's baseball. And yesterday was also baseball, you will be pleased to know! Ricky Romero allowed only two runs in his eight efficient innings of work, picking up his tenth win and lowering his ERA to 2.94, if I may cite two stats we don't pay nearly as much attention to as we used to but to which we still cling when they make dudes we like sound awesome. The Blue Jays hit a whack of doubles, E5 is streaking, and Brett Lawrie hit the first home run of his major league career. That is all really agreeable stuff to me. After an off day Monday, Oakland comes to town for three, and then it's the Angels, which, with the Blue Jays only 4.5 games behind Los Angeles for the playoff spot that will probably exist next year but which totally doesn't this year, doesn't actually matter more or less anything else. Except that I will enjoy those games extra because it is the Angels and Vernon will be back! Kind of a rough year for him, what with the .629 OPS and the negative WAR. Did you know he is owed $86 million over the next four years, and the Blue Jays are only on the hook for $5 million? Is that something you have heard about previously? Good for Vernon; good for the Blue Jays; Angels you guys are crazy man I love it.


KS

Blue Jays 7, Yankees 3: Everybody Loves Intentional Walks

Bartolo Colon: way too fat for this nonsense.

Through five innings, the only runs on the board in this well-pitched affair came off a Robinson Cano sac fly that plated Granderson in the fourth and a pretty spectacular Jose Bautista lined shot to left centre in the first, the nineteenth home run of his hater-confounding 2011 campaign. That Bartolo Colon was getting it done was not shocking; that the spot-starting Carlos Villanueva was doing likewise caught me a little off-guard, which is really a shame-on-me scenario because he's been awesome so far out of the pen (1.48 ERA), and it's not like he's never started before, so who am I to doubt Carlos Villanueva?  


Then, in the sixth, things got pretty wacky: Corey Patterson -- who doubles often, bless him -- doubled. In a tie game, with nobody out and a runner on second in the sixth, they walked Bautista, which is what is going to happen now, I guess, and so be it.  Adam Lind is still rehabbing his bad back, meaning we are utterly and completely without a cleanup hitter, and so it fell to Yunel Escobar to drop the sacrifice bunt, the first time a Blue Jay batting fourth has dropped a sac bunt since . . . Dave Winfield in 1992! Why would anyone have ever asked him to do that? Cito, man. A character. Anyway, that puts runners on second and third with one away, so Girardi decided to walk Juan Rivera to set up a potential inning-ending double play, and I get that, but man he must have been kicking himself when Aaron Hill singled in a run, Eric Thames worked a bases-loaded walk, and J. P. Arencibia ripped a three-run double. Kicking himself.


The home half of the sixth was starting to look pretty nutty too when Escobar botched a double play ball, allowing a run to score and making things at least a little ticklish for a minute there, but as bad as things might be going for you as a pitcher facing the Yankees, you know that sooner or later Jorge Posada is coming up so everything is going to be cool. Twice last night, Posada grounded out to end innings with two runners on. As an aficionado of this great sport, you have probably already heard about how Posada got all mad about batting ninth the other day, and then asked to be taken out of the lineup completely for a game, and then felt kind of silly about the whole thing and apologized? If not, that totally happened, and if you were wondering just how bad he's been, last night Jerry Howard said that Posada was 0-26 on the season batting from the right side. I'm not going to look that up, but if that is what passes for switch hitting these days then shit I'm a switch hitter, too.


Just how bad has Posada been? And please note that I have no problem with Jorge Posada, who has had a totally admirable career: totally passable defensive switch-hitting catchers with power from both sides of the plate are basically the bee's knees. But this season, he is the 25th worst player in the American League by WAR at -0.4 (he's 253rd if you are counting in the other direction), and I really like WAR as a stat for measuring awfulness because of its cumulative nature. It gives you a better picture of awfulness than rate stats: to put together a seriously negative WAR you've got to be out there actively sucking, not just be theoretically bad and sitting on the bench, you know? 


Also while plumbing the stygian depths of the Baseball Reference WAR leader board, I can't but notice that Travis Snider -- who hasn't even been in the league for a pretty good little stretch now -- was every bit as bad as it seemed: he's rocking a 6th-worst/272nd-best -0.8, and E5, who I had recently speculated might be the worst major league player getting regular playing time right now, is in fact only the 4th worst! Carl Crawford is still somehow faring even more poorly, and I had no idea Joe DiMagglio was having the kind of year he's having. Vernon, we knew he was this bad. And there's your top four. Bottom four. You know what I'm saying here. 


Finally, if you still totally hate J. P. Ricciardi (and who doesn't?), it's perhaps worth noting  that two of the worst nine players in the American League right now are being paid a combined $35 million this season on deals originally signed by the Blue Jays but mercifully foisted onto others since. When J. P. Ricciardi was all you think you know baseball in this city but you don't, we were wrong to doubt him.


I don't want to end on so sour a note, so in closing I offer this image of Jose Bautista's swing, which at this point should really be filling all of us with joy, regardless of rooting interest, because it is so awesome. And he is so awesome. And baseball? Unfailingly awesome, even at its ruinous worst.

Yep.

KS

Catching up with Vernon Wells

Vernon Wells, forlorn. 

Just wondering how the old soldier is making out, you know? Let's have have a look together!


Through 32 games and 142 plate appearances, here's what we've got: .180/.225/.286 for an OPS of .511. But rate stats have never really been Vernon's forté, so let's be sure to take a close look at his counting numbers, too: 24 H, 3 2B, 1 3B, 3 HR, 10 RBI, 7 BB, 29 K, 1 SB, 1 CS, and somewhat miraculously only 1 GIDP. 


That's an OPS+ of 46, and Baseball Reference has Vernon as a -1.1 WAR player through only a fifth of the season. If this trend continues . . . 


Last year, the Blue Jays paid about $15 million for the 4.0 WAR version of Vernon, which is not that bad given the going rate for marginal wins these days (the rising costs of marginal wins, amirite?) This year, the Angels are on the hook for $18 million of Vernon's $23 million (it was ultimately established that the Blue Jays are picking up $5 million, which Anthopolous did his best to keep quiet so as to make it seem more like a baseball trade than a contract-related pillaging, and so as not to hurt Vernon's [baseball] feelings). 


In short, friends, I am here to tell you that the Angels may have made a mistake on this one, if you can believe it. God bless Vernon Wells, and long may he run, but he has been incredibly bad so far, bad beyond even the worst forecasts. Like, you might have gone into this season thinking, "Gee, I bet Vernon Wells is done, what a crazy trade," but would you have believed he would be this bad? I wouldn't have, and I have seen Vernon play some pretty shitty baseball from time to time.


You might well say, but the Angels are in first place, so what do they care? Probably a lot, one would think, because they owe this man $63 million dollars after this season, and he's killing them out there. Mostly I feel bad for Vernon, though, which makes little sense, but such are the ways of the heart I guess.


KS

Meet Mike Napoli . . . or should I say Mike NIPPLE!!!!!!(i)

 On the right, in the grey dress, Mike Napoli's mom. On the right, out of the grey dress, Mike Napoli's mom's nipple.

The estimable folks over at Drunk Jays Fans have quite sensibly assembled a collection of Mike Napoli party shots.  And they're all pretty awesome, and you should totally go see them, but what I've included for you here is really the money shot, so to speak.  In it, we see Mike Napoli, looking pretty hammy, next to two unidentified young ladies, a guy with a stripey shirt, and then Mike Napoli's mom with her boob out.

Make no mistake, I am totally ready for Mike Napoli: slugging, indifferently-fielding catchers are cool by me.  And I have nothing against people's moms having boobs out (breast is best, as they rightly say).  But I will say this: you'd never see Vernon Wells' mom with her boobs out.  You'd never see Vernon's stepmom with her boobs out, and she's like twenty.  That's because Vernon Wells is classy.  His whole operation is classy.  When Paul DePodesta or whoever figures out that there's a staggering market inefficiency for classy, the Vernon Wells trade is going to have to be revisited, reassessed, and rued.

KS

Vernon Wells and George Bell: undeniably exactly the same except George Bell was a jerk

The green line is Bell.  The orange is Wells.  Each graph represents how good they are at baseball. I'd go into more detail but I'm sorry, it's way too complicated. You probably wouldn't understand. I own a book by Bill James and Moneyball and last year's Baseball Prospectus though so I totally get it. You can look at bigger ones here if you think it might help but it probably won't. In the third graph, the sudden drop-off on George Bell's line indicates when God caused his dick to fall off.


KS

Also in case you were wondering, everything else aside, whether or not Vernon Wells owns . . .

"Vernon Wells Reaches Out to Mr. Dork"

KS

An Improtu FanGraphs Chat, Edited and Abridged for Your Edification and Delight

Dave Cameron over at FanGraphs doesn't think the Vernon trade is a particularly good deal from the Angels' perspective. Read the whole thing here, or keep on reading after the jump for much, much more of this.  I've edited this so that what you get here is all Vernon stuff unmix'd with baser matter.  Enjoy!


                                                                                     KS

Friday January 21, 2011

8:20	Dave Cameron:  I've got a bit of free time, so let's talk about this craziness.

8:20	[Comment From Mike]  As a Jays fan, all I can say is, are you serious?

8:20	Dave Cameron:  Canadians already have their own Thanksgiving celebration, now they get Christmas in January too.

8:21	[Comment From Ethan]  Original opinion on Wells deal?

8:21	Dave Cameron:  What the bleep are the Angels doing?

8:21	Dave Cameron:  For those who haven't seen Shi Davidi's tweet, he's hearing that the Jays may not be covering any of the $84 million that Wells is still owed, by the way. $84 million for 4 years of Vernon Wells.

8:21	[Comment From Pickle]  How can the Angels justify this trade if the rumors are true and the Jaus are sending no money along?

8:22	Dave Cameron:  It's crazy. If that is true, this will go down as one of the worst trades ever. This can't be true.

In the next three years, the Angels will pay Vernon Wells more than the Blue Jays paid him for the previous thirteen.

Memories from a simpler time.

Not going to pretend that I'm not still reeling from all of this, but I managed to pull myself together enough to have some lunch.  And whilst enjoying that lunch, it occurred to me that the whole narrative on Vernon's time in Toronto has to change.  It was never really true that Vernon was horrendously overpaid.  It was certainly true that he was going to be super seriously overpaid once his contract really kicked in unless he all of a sudden became his 2003 self, only better every year, plus became a doctor and a lawyer and a really good kisser.  Then you could look at twenty-odd million a year and think, well, we're really getting a lot for that.  

But we never got there.  If you actually look at what the Blue Jays spent, and what they got in return, you would really have to be an asshole to say that Vernon was badly overpaid.  I took a quick look at his contract information at Baseball Reference, and was all set to just go with that, but somebody in the comments section over at Drunk Jays Fans broke it down even better, so you can read all the particulars with all the bonuses and everything over there if you want.  The long and the short of it is that the Blue Jays payed out something like $60 million for thirteen years of Vernon Wells, with 2010 his first year of really making well over $10 million, and some real steals in there early on like 2003-2006 (Fangraphs WAR: 3.8, 3.7, 3.2, 5.7) for basically no money.  

And unless Vernon opts out of his contract, which he's entitled to do pretty much any time now but which would be one of the worst financial decisions anyone had ever made ever, the Angels are going to pay him more than that total in the next three seasons. Both GMs have confirmed that there isn't any money changing hands in this deal at all, not the rumoured $5 million, not anything.  It's just straight up dudes for dudes. Clearly the Angels are banking on him being the 4.0 WAR guy he was in 2010 and not the 0.0 WAR guy he was in 2009, but maaaaaaaaaaan they are rolling the dice on this one.    

Anyway, everybody agrees that Vernon Wells is a totally solid dude, and, when he wasn't playing through all kinds of injuries, a totally solid player, and at his best a really good player.  That's pretty much consensus stuff.  Hopefully the other part of the Vernon Wells consensus, that he was ridiculously overpaid, Blue Jays fans will actually kind of shut up about because it didn't ever actually come to pass.  Not because J.P. didn't try: he seemed determined from the outset to write a ludicrous contract.  But that's not the Blue Jays' problem at all.  Because Alex Anthopolous is amazing.  


KS

Alex Anthopolous is a fucking ninja, but honest to god, I will sincerely miss Vernon Wells

2003 Toronto Blue Jays forever man

First off, how the hell did this happen?  You would have laughed at anyone who suggested to you even earlier today that there was any chance the Blue Jays could ever hope to trade Vernon Wells and his famously awful contract (on that contract, quickly: yeah it's obviously really, really bad, but let's not get all worst contract ever over it.  Hampton.  Zito.  Come on now.).  Pretty much everything Alex Anthopolous has done since taking over for the rightly reviled J. P. Ricciardi (it wasn't the results, it was the smugness that would really grind you down) has been both pretty solid and completely under the radar.  I kind of don't know what the Angels are thinking, except that I kind of do: they need to score more runs, and see Vernon helping them do that.  But man, at what cost?  If, as the Canadian Press' Shi Davidi is saying on his twitter is true -- "Just heard Angels may not be getting any money from Jays in Wells deal. Not cast in stone, but pointing that way" -- then this gets upgraded from lol omg to lololololol zomg wtf in an instant.  Mike Napoli, cool, absolutely. J. P. Arencibia isn't going to play everyday, so yeah.  A catcher with some power.  Alright, good.  And I'm sure we can find something for Juan Rivera to do, at least sometimes.  


I'm not a person who cares a whole hell of a lot about how Rogers spends their money, and I actually believe Anthopolous and Paul Beeston that there's no actual firm payroll budget, that the money is there and will be spent when it's appropriate, and that Vernon's contract has not (I guess we can say "did not" now, holy cow) kept them from doing anything they've wanted to do.   I actually believe all that, which may totally be an outcome of my naive and childlike faith in The Beest.  But I have never been one to bemoan the Vernon contract even though it was something that pretty much united the Blue Jays fan base because fundamentally, what do I care?  AA and Beeston never said anything bad about the contract even though it was a product of the awful JP and Paul Godfrey (that guy was the worst) era and they could have easily not-in-so-many-words bemoaned it in the papers or on the radio but they never did.  And Vernon was obviously cashing fat cheques and I like Vernon (more on that in a minute), so good for him.  But what I am getting to here is that although I never complained about it, I totally acknowledge the awfulness of the deal, and so I am seriously astounded that Anthoplous was able to pull this off.  For it is some astounding shit.   


All of that said, I am 100% certain that I will enjoy the 2011 baseball season less because Vernon Wells will not be playing centre field for the Toronto Blue Jays.  This is very possibly dumb but it is nonetheless true.  Vernon Wells was my favourite guy on my favourite team and you can go to hell, basically.  It's not just that he had such a solid 2010 after a truly, epically miserable 2009, even though that was pretty cool.  I got pretty into his hot start, as you can tell by this image saved on my computer as VWTRIPLECROWN2010: 



Vernon Wells has fully and completely been my guy.  We both really arrived in Toronto in 2001 (unlike me Vernon had a couple of PAs in 99 and 00), but became fixtures during the fairly poor 2002 season.   Eric Hinske (oh man that guy) may have won the AL ROY that season, but there was no question it was Vernon was the young player who, alongside Doc, had you most excited about the future.  It was like, man, Carlos is still a monster and Doc and Vernon look like the real deal so with little luck we are pretty much in business here.  Except as it turned out we totally were not in business here.  But that wasn't at all apparent until after the 2003 season, actually my favourite non-92/93 season in Blue Jays history, with Doc's Cy Young, Delgado's MVP-calibre year (eat shit, A-Rod), and Vernon Wells' absolutely raking.


2006 and 2010 were both totally solid years, really very good seasons for Vernon (in the intervening years, we, like Ron Washington in his days as the A's infield instructor, "seen some shit") but man, 2003 was the bee's knees.  Thirty-three home runs.  Scored 118 runs and knocked in 117 (yeah yeah we don't care about RBI as predictive of anything and rightly so but they measure what happened which is all I'm talking about).  And not only were his 214 hits that year more than Ichiro's, they also broke Tony Fernandez's club record.  This seemed like a really, really big deal at the time if you were a Blue Jays guy.
  
It's strange to have gotten this far without talking about his defense, which is now sub-par if you measure it either by the modern metrics or by the eye.  He's always been heavy for a CF, and now he looks like he's running in mud.  At his best, though, he was right there with Mike Cameron and Torii Hunter (are the Angels really going to keep Vernon in centre and Torii in right?  has Hunter fallen off that badly?  I should probably know but don't).  I clearly remember the game in September 2003 (here's the boxscore) when Halladay took a no-hitter into the eighth against the Tigers, and Kevin Witt, of all people, came in as a pinch hitter and doubled deep to left-centre to break it up.  Halladay, being Halladay, went ten innings and got the 1-0 win like it was no big deal, but I mention it because when the ball dropped, I remember that in my section in the right field bleachers it was like UGGGGHHHHH, of course, but also like, well, if Vernon couldn't get to it, it couldn't be gotten to, so it goes.  


I saw that game in 2003 because I saw every Blue Jays home game in 2003 in what was both an impressive streak and also kind of the product of mental illness, but whatever.  I was in on a pretty amazing Season Pass deal where for $81, you could present this pass at the box office on game day and get an upper deck seat.  A good deal for anybody, a great deal if you were willing to amortize it to the extreeeeeeme.  They also had a rewards program for frequent attendance where you'd swipe this card at a kiosk and if you went to five games you'd get a key chain, twenty games and you get a hat or something, I don't remember.  But if you went to all eighty-one games, you were awarded a Vernon Wells autographed baseball, presented to you in an on-field ceremony, which are magical words.  I still have that ball, obviously, along with the vivid memory of just how huge Carlos Delgado is when you're standing about ten feet away from him while he's warming up, and just how shiny his head is, like, way shinier than most batting helmets, even before the current trend of wearing batting helmets that are really, really dirty (note: this is actually a pretty cool trend). 


Anyway. The 2003 Blue Jays.  Vernon Wells.  So many feelings.  This is going to take a while.  


KS