To What Extent Does Your Life Revolve Around Alejandro Kirk? (The 2023 Blue Jays Thread)

Gibbons is not getting put up on the Level of Excellence.

Watching the ceremony yesterday, I realized that there aren't any Cal Ripken Jr. types in the LOE, that is, HOF (or Hall of Very Good) talents who spent 10-15 or more years with the team as a franchise player. Even the 80's and 90's guys had 6-7 year runs at most and tended to move on, not unlike Bautista. Is it because the Jays have been stingy on the free agent market? I can't think of a single superstar Jays player who was signed to a significant extension in their prime. Perhaps Stieb is the only exception?

Delgado? Because of the immense goodwill to anybody connected to 2015, I could easily see Gibbons going up there; he's second to Gaston in games and wins. Would you put Henke up?

Martinez obviously, probably Howarth too.

Delgado was a regular for nine years, about the same as Bautista. Vernon Wells got the mega-extension in his prime, and we know how that turned out.

My Keltner-list type criteria for the LOE would include: can you write a concise team history without mentioning him? If so, then he's not on the LOE. Was he ever the best player on the team? Did he factor (positively) into a number of pennant races and playoff runs? And so on. I don't think Henke or Gibbons make the cut.

At some point today, I will marshal some numbers and make my case for Henke.

The best relievers in the game during Henke's '85-92 Jays window:

Pitcher       ERA       FIP       WHIP       K/BB       Saves       WAR
Henke         2.48      2.53      1.025      3.88        217        16.8
Reardon       3.51      3.65      1.169      2.88        271         9.4
Smith         2.89      2.65      1.236      2.90        275        15.9
Franco        2.47      3.15      1.259      1.93        222        14.2
Thigpen       3.09      3.99      1.308      1.62        200         8.7

(Thigpen's rookie year is '86.) To me, unless you're fixated on saves, Henke is the best in that group, a little ahead of both Franco and Smith. The complicating factor is that Eckersley isn't converted to a closer until 1987, and then from '88 to '92 he redefines the job. Eckersley for '87-92:

Eckersley     2.18      2.21      0.844      8.93        236        15.5

So: Henke is either the best reliever in the game if you require the full eight-year stretch, or the second-best if you loosen that. He was, I'd say, absolutely the final piece of the puzzle in getting the Jays to the finish line in '85; finding a closer was an ongoing nightmare in '83 and '84. He was still the closer in '92, when they won their first WS (even though he couldn't close out G6, he had a decent WS). He had a rough ALCS in '85, was dominant in his other three ALCS's (didn't give up a run in 10 IP).

Was he ever the best player on the team? Probably not, but he's boxed in a bit by his position there--he was pretty great in '89-90. Did he factor (positively) into a number of pennant races and playoff runs? Definitely--in seven of his eight years in Toronto, the Jays either won the division (four times) or finished 2.0 games out (three times) in all but one season.

To this day, he's still the best closer they ever had.

You make some good arguments, so I'll respond with the full Keltner List, adapted for Henke/LOE. This isn't a putdown of Henke, I remember his arrival in '85 and the way he was celebrated as a folk hero by becoming the shutdown closer the team never had. OTOH, he never shows up in video clips of all-time great Jays moments. You don't see clips of him shutting down the Braves to win the 1992 WS because he blew the save in G6 to send the game to extras. I'm not saying he wasn't very good at what he did, but let's hold him up to the standard:

Was he ever regarded as the best player in baseball?

No. He picked up some downballot MVP votes, but never a CY vote.

Was he the best player on his team?

No, and in many of his years with the Jays, he wasn't even the best relief pitcher on his team, mostly because he didn't pitch many innings. Mark Eichhorn had an all-time great relief season in 1986, and Duane Ward had some outstanding seasons as Henke's setup man, throwing 100+ IP each year with K totals that would be elite even today. Ward also took over the closer's job in 1993 and arguably had a better season than Henke ever did.

Was he the best player in baseball (or in the league) at his position?

No, and once again, his prime overlapped with the peak of overrated closer mania, when CY awards and votes were being handed out like candy every year. And he never earned a single CY vote.

Did he have an impact on a number of pennant races?

Yes, he was a consistently good to great closer during the best sustained run of success the Jays ever had.

Was he a good enough player that he could continue to play regularly after passing his prime?

Yes, and he retired having hardly lost a step. Consistency is a big plus in his favour.

Is he the very best player in Jays history who is not in the LOE?

There's Encarnacion, possibly Donaldson (nearly as many WAR in four years as Henke, plus an MVP), and perhaps 2-3 of the guys currently on the team when all is said and done.

Are most players who have comparable career statistics in the LOE?

The only pitchers in the LOE are Halladay and Stieb, who are obviously on another level.

Do the players numbers meet LOE standards?

Tough to say because it's not a big sample of players, but everybody in the LOE either a) won a major award with the team, or b) won multiple divisions/pennants with the team, or c) featured in all-time great moments. Henke was a key player on a lot of winning teams, but would they have won without him? Again, they had many great relievers over the years who could have done the job. And I still maintain that you can tell the history of the franchise without mentioning his name. It's impossible to talk about the Jays without mentioning Delgado, Bautista, Halladay, etc.

Is there evidence to suggest that the player was significantly better or worse than is suggested by his statistics?

I think the statistics tell a fair story. Clem's comparison to other closers is revealing but by picking arbitrary start and end points, it leaves out Eck and other closers who did more to define the role.

Is he the best player at his position who is eligible for the LOE but not in?

By these criteria, yes.

How many MVP-type seasons did he have? Did he ever win an MVP award? If not, how many times was he close?

The likes of Steve Bedrosian won the CY because he racked up 40 saves, which was a hallowed number in those days. If that's the CY/MVP standard, then Henke was there, but I think these days we tend to laugh at those awards.

How many All-Star-type seasons did he have? How many All-Star games did he play in? Did most of the other players who played in this many go into the LOE?

Henke was selected to one All-Star Team while with the Jays. Yes, in those days they didn't stack the ASG rosters with middle relievers like they do today. But the superstar relievers did make the teams, Quisenberry was chosen in three straight years, Eck in five straight years, etc.

If this man were the best player on his team, would it be likely that the team could win the pennant?

No. Closers play a limited role, but that's kind of the point, isn't it?

What impact did the player have on baseball history? Was he responsible for any rule changes? Did he introduce any new equipment? Did he change the game in any way?

He was very good for over a decade (eight years with the Jays) but didn't redefine the position or anything.

Did the player uphold the standards of sportsmanship and character that the LOE, in its written guidelines, instructs us to consider?

He was a class act and a solid hand, no doubt.

To clarify on the 40 saves deal: Henke never saved 40 with the Jays. But obviously in terms of value (WAR, every day dominance), at his best he was as good as the guys winning the CY's. But because he never hit that magic number, he didn't get CY support, which is of course stupid. So if the question is, was he good enough to win major awards, compared with the performances of other contemporary closers, then yes, he had some CY-type seasons.

But the voters were dumber back then.

Fair points, and as the Jays post-game show guys said yesterday, the team has never gone back into the past to reevaluate someone--you either go up when your time comes or you don't. Just a couple of quibbles though. The end-points I picked weren't really arbitrary; that's when Henke was a Jay. Just about any comparison you do is going to be arbitrary in that sense--calendars rarely line up. And I tried to be up-front about Eckersley, rather than sneakily omitting him. (As far as the stats I chose, those six seem pretty basic to a closer--would you have gone with something different?) I'd also say--and you kind of acknowledge this--that two questions on the Keltner Test, the two that are connected to the idea of being the best player on your team, are hard to apply to closers. I'm not even sure Mariano was ever the best player on the Yankees--how could he be?

I think Henke never getting a Cy Young vote (something I pointed out in a "Hey Bill" once, I think about the greatest retirement-seasons ever; Henke's is among them) is so silly when guys like Bedrosian and Mark Davis were actually winning.

Yes, those are the years he was a Jay, so it's a fair comparison, but comparing Henke's best five consecutive seasons with Eckersley's or Lee Smith's would be equally fair. They're contemporaries even if the years don't exactly line up.

Agreed about the best player on your team aspect, although voters at time clearly thought differently considering the MVP and CY votes given to closers. For Rivera, one could ask whether he was ever the best player in a postseason for the Yankees, and the answer is likely yes considering his workload and the extra rounds of playoffs. Even during the regular season, he had a lot of 3-4 WAR seasons which probably meant he was more valuable than all but a few position players or pitchers. But that's why he's the GOAT of course.

Here's the "Hey Bill," from 2013:

Bill: Leaving aside the question of whether or not closers *should* get Cy Young votes, the fact is that they do, and they even used to win them semi-regularly during Tom Henke's peak years. So I'd like to put forth his name as another pitcher who was drastically shortchanged by Cy Young voters. Total votes: zero, even though he was arguably the second-best closer in the game after Eckersley from '85-95. He did draw MVP and ROY votes during three of those seasons.
Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 5/26/2013
Left the game when he could still pitch. He was a dominant closer, for sure...built like Papelbon.

And another:

Bill -- I'm sure you'll be deluged with suggestions for your "Going Out on Top" piece, so let me be the first: Tom Henke, one of my favourite players ever. He had 36 saves, a 1.82 ERA, and the usual array of excellence across his peripheral stats. I'm guessing it's easier for a stopper to go out on top than a starter or position player.
Asked by: Phil Dellio

Answered: 12/17/2011
Thanks.

I might be a little biased here.

Thermo and Francis: would either of you put Henke up there?

One more thing I noticed, and this is worth something, I think: Jaffe has Henke as the 17th greatest relief pitcher ever, putting him ahead of both Fingers (19th) and Sutter (25th). Among the direct contemporaries discussed, he's behind only Eckersley (2nd) and Smith (15th); Gossage (4th) is a little earlier and Tom Gordon (9th) a little later. (Gordon is the rare guy on there who's primarily a middle reliever.)

Crickets ... but it's also kind of expected that only clem and I would get worked up about Henke.

I'll be down there for the Phillies today. I don't think I've seen this many games (six for sure, possibly a seventh or eighth) since 2017--I recall going down a lot in a year where they were expected to win and didn't. So I need them to stay in this thing: the two September games I'll be at, including the 30th against the Rays, will be quite anti-climactic if they drop out.

And let me vent here a bit about their new virtual-tickets-only policy. I don't (and never will) have a cell phone. I'm trying to arrange for a game with a friend of my dad's who's in his 80s. All the other games I've seen and will be seeing this year, I simply purchase the tickets and transfer them over to whoever I'm going with--we then use their cell phone to get in. With my dad's friend, I'll have to first try to set up a Ticketmaster account for him, which will involve getting him on the phone while they send him a verification code that he can relay to me. 80-somethings aren't too big on these kinds of scenarios, and neither am I.

This actually turned up on my FB wall today in connection with Henke's retirement:

In 1995, Tom Henke finished the season with 36 saves and a 1.82 ERA. Instead of cashing in or hanging around for a few more years, he retired and went back home to his farm in Missouri. "My kids were starting high school. I wanted to be around. I wanted to see those basketball games. I wanted to see those baseball games. I wanted to see all that."

Its gotta be that tiny park in Buffalo they played at "home" during COVID.
― citation needed (Steve Shasta), Tuesday, August 8, 2023

Been meaning to look at this more closely; it stayed in my mind, and they were talking about the same thing on the radio the other day. (I don't get the call-in shows since moving four years ago, but I listen on the way in and back when going to a game. Lots and lots of Vlad talk, and the radio guys aren't particularly charitable anymore.)

When you look at Vlad's career box, 2021, his near-MVP season, really jumps out--it's the one season everyone continues to hang their hopes on.

But if you eliminate all those games played at Sahlen Field in Buffalo (2020 and 2021) and TD Ballpark in Dunedin (2021), there really is much more uniformity. His adjusted year-by-year:

Year        BA        OBP        SLG        OPS+
2019       .272      .339       .433        106
2020       .213      .288       .377         97
2021       .292      .375       .518        106
2022       .274      .339       .480        149
2023       .265      .342       .436        116

That looks like a very red flag to me. He still has a good season in 2021, but in no way MVP-caliber; his 2020 (small sample size, to be fair, once you eliminate home games) is terrible. He doesn't turn 25 until March, so I realize it's still early. But it's a lot less early than when he was heralded as the second coming.

I messed up the OPS+...Should be 149 in 2021, 133 in 2022. (I calculated his OPS+ for 2020 and 2021 by using the same ratio of Vlad's actual OPS to his OPS+ for all games, and recalculating that according to his adjusted OPS, if that makes sense. I'm sure it's not exact but should be close.)

Sorry to keep harping on this (though it is more interesting than posting about the whys and wherefores of a truly anemic offense):

https://bluejaysnation.com/news/three-blue-jays-who-could-be-next-in-line-for-the-level-of-excellence

Overall, Henke is one key figure missing from the Level of Excellence and should be next in line given what he accomplished for the organization during his eight years with the team. If elected, he would be the first reliever to receive the prestigious honour.

Bichette has been reactivated, DeJong released. 44 AB, 3 hits, O XBH, 0 BB, 1 RBI, 1 run, .068/.068/.068. He won't be forgotten.

Haven't read this yet--Jeff Blair is one of the two main hosts on the Jays call-in show (the one I can stand).

https://www.sportsnet.ca/mlb/article/time-running-out-for-blue-jays-guerrero-jr-to-re-write-his-seasons-narrative/

Pathetic display in the bottom of the ninth last night...I've always assumed this team would back into a WC, but the reality that they won't even manage that is slowly sinking in. There are dozens of reasons, of course, but in the end, it will come down to Manoan and Vlad. I'm down for today's game with zero enthusiasm after yesterday.

Manoah...

Listening to the radio on the way in, they were rattling off some stats pertaining to late-inning, high-leverage situations. Sobering. One of them was under .200 for the bases loaded for some window of time, another was 4-35 with...I forget: the go-ahead run in scoring position in the late innings, something like that. They're probably all relatively small samples, but they're consistent across the board. That's been the big story with this team for most of the year, how anemic their offense is with runners on base.

They won today (think I'm 4-0 this year), and that was good, but I really think they're out of time, even with their light schedule for the remaining 28 games. Bassitt and Kirk were great, Vlad was again ordinary.

I found it grimly funny listening to Blair and Barker talk about what the Blue Jays had to do during this upcoming nine-game stretch vs. Colorado/K.C./Oakland. 9-0? 7-2? Neither of them said it, but they both knew--and anybody who's followed the Jays this year knows it--they could very easily go 4-5.

So of course they're already down 2-0 against the Rockies.

Follow-up to Sid Bream...I was thinking that one day I'd use Ed Armbrister, famous for this play in the '75 Series. If there was ever a sure-fire 0.00001% rarity guy, it'd be Armbrister.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRw2_KvHcPk

Turns out I can't--five seasons, all with the Reds.

Oops--meant for the Immaculate Grid thread.

Only saw the very end, but:

- blew a 5-0 lead
- ninth-inning comeback ends with the bases loaded, two out, down a run
- Vlad: walk, 0-4, two GIDPs, a strikeout, and a non-run-scoring fly ball in the middle of the near-comeback

Basically why I went to a movie tonight. Watching this team is just no fun.

Saw highlights and caught the end and this loss was definitely tough.

It was a brutal spot for Horwitz with the game on the line, he was totally overmatched in that AB.

1-1 thus far on the tour of the worst teams in MLB. There's still plenty of time to salvage this, but I'm losing faith.

Even more maddening is that they're getting outside help: Houston's lost two in a row, Texas three.

It figures, the next day, Vlad and Horwitz are a combined 5-6, each with a HR.

God, I shouldn't say this, three outs still to go, but looks like they might limp out of town with two wins.

https://bluejaysnation.com/news/triple-a-buffalo-bisons-place-alek-manoah-on-temporarily-inactive-list

No idea what that means. Earlier today I was in the library and saw this, dating back to April:

https://i.postimg.cc/1tXw132M/alek.jpg

Going by that, I'm going to guess there are at least parts of the accompanying article that don't date particularly well:

https://torontolife.com/city/the-electrifying-life-of-blue-jays-ace-alek-manoah/

Remember when he was optioned to Buffalo? About a week or so ago it emerged that he was still in Toronto. Reading between the lines a bit, I think he’s struggling with his mental health.

I hadn't considered that...sincerely hope not. If true, I'm sure Taylor Ward is weighing heavily on him. For the many jokes I've made about him the past couple of months, and my tendency to pin this season's frustrations on him and Vlad, I really do hope he emerges from this humbled and a better pitcher. I forget how young these guys are.

I really think they made a mistake rushing him back. I said it either itt or the regular season thread, but he is very young. Honestly think they mishandled him.

I didn’t post about it on here, but there was a story last season & also this season with Jarren Duran:

https://www.masslive.com/redsox/2023/08/alex-cora-red-sox-talked-with-jarren-duran-about-posts-on-mental-struggles.html

Everyone knows it’s a game of failure but how players deal with it especially in this day and age when anyone can contact them directly to tell them exactly what they think is another question.

I remember reading in Joan Ryan’s team chemistry book about Lincecum’s slump in August 2010, and it was clear that the guy who’d won the Golden Spikes, was called up less than a year after being drafted and won two Cys back to back in his first full seasons had never experienced this kind of failure before.

With Duran, he made some high profile errors (in a horrific game against the Blue Jays), got sent down last year, talked about being suicidal. This season he started off strong, slumped a bit, came back strong, slumped a bit, but talked about how helpful he found Justin Turner to be in dealing with failure. He said Turner’s approach was the classic “turn the page” approach where you have to come to each day anew, because it’s a long season and you can’t pull yourself down.

And yet this happened during another slump.

I think it must be hard for players to deal with their bodies not responding as they have done all their lives. You suddenly can’t get guys out or reliably hit, and there’s nowhere to hide. But I think for Manoah and Duran both, to have dealt with such high profile failure, seeming to come back and succeed again (this is success in a more limited sense for Manoah because he didn’t come back to what he had been before) only to get pulled down again? Must have been hard.

I don’t really know very much about how clubs handle their young players like this, but we can only hope that they treat them as the people they are and not assets to be stripped and dumped when they don’t perform anymore. Wow I wrote a lot, sorry!

Everyone knows it’s a game of failure but how players deal with it especially in this day and age when anyone can contact them directly to tell them exactly what they think is another question.

Which is undoubtedly the biggest difference between today and a couple of famous and long-gone poor starts: Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle. Mays had Durocher (helping him), Mantle had his father (making it worse), but neither had to deal with social media.

(Of course Manoah--and I'm trying to stay consistent here--compounds the problem by mucking around on Twitter.)

Yeah. I actually learned the story about Willie Mays crying in front of his locker as a rookie after going 0-23 while reading a piece about 2023 rookies and their struggles adjusting to the big leagues. Can’t imagine how it might have gone if he’d been asked, constantly, why aren’t you hitting? Why aren’t you getting the job done? Why? Why? Why?

I think I linked this piece before as a favourite tribute to a favourite player but this Lowell Cohn piece about, yes, Lincecum and the end of his Giants career stuck with me for many reasons, but mainly just this:

But after he pitched, he talked. Was required to talk. Then everything was different. He stood at his locker as long as reporters wanted — a painfully long time after the decline started. The questions, asked so many different ways, amounted to one thing: “What’s wrong with you?”

Imagine people asking you, day after day, what’s wrong with you. You might pop your cork. Or run out of the room. Not Lincecum. He stood there. Took it. Said he was sorry for letting down the team. Said he wasn’t throwing like he wanted.

And all the time he looked so sad. Or was it guilty? This torture with the writers was his penance. Maybe it was a form of psychotherapy. And all the writers were kind to him, polite. How could it be otherwise? He gave the best of himself and he deserved the best of us.

Manoah was brought up so quickly, just 3 games in AAA and was dropped right in the Bronx. He performed so well, it almost didn't make sense to me. I was waiting for the pendulum to swing the other way, and it never did all through last season. He almost certainly was rushed too quickly back up this year. Jays had very few SP options. Now they don't appear to have such a need in that department for a playoff run, but they may have set Alek back unnecessarily by not taking the long view of the season. It's tricky, he's paid to help the team, but he might also be going through something really heavy, so it ends up feeling potentially callous but also counterproductive anyway. Even just for baseball reasons, gotta give him time. Make sure there's actual starting depth next season and go way slower.

Locked in a life-and-death struggle with the A's. Reggie, Catfish, Vida, Bando, Campy--great, great team.

I hate my previous post--so petulant. They're a hard team to love, but I should just be happy they're in it.

They're overtaken the Rangers for the final WC spot.

They've

Notice that the four teams fighting for three spots--Jays, Mariners, Astros, and Rangers (I won't count Tampa Bay)--have one thing in common: they're all under .500 against winning teams (ditto the Twins).