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

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).

They're now 6-2 over the last three series against the worst teams in baseball, with one more game vs KC (8-3 including the Nationals series that preceded). Texas is collapsing, Seattle has a brutal schedule down the stretch, I'm optimistic again.

Dead heat with the Mariners now, two up on Texas.

No doubt my forever-complaining-fan mindset, but that feels like the first time in ages where the Jays were supposed to sweep a series and they actually did.

I was listening to yesterday's game from an adjacent room (it's just maddening to watch the Jays these days...my problem, not theirs), so I didn't actually see this till highlights later on. You'll never see anything like it.

my goodness three consecutive pitches 😮 pic.twitter.com/8qosgINimm

— Codify (@CodifyBaseball) September 10, 2023

even crazier, Ragans was absolutely dominatinant to that point (one hit), gives up 2 straight walks, both scoring on those wild pitches to tie it up, ending a 26-inning scoreless streak! what a way to do it.

dominatinant means *extra* dominant :P

Alek Manoah never reported to Triple-A when he was optioned on August 11th because he was upset about the decision, per @SNJeffBlair

Manoah reportedly has not even been throwing bullpens or side sessions. It’s unlikely that he’ll pitch in a game again this year pic.twitter.com/P6y3Bw5xwD

— Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) September 12, 2023

Something's going on that no one's talking about.

Terrible start to this big series last night. Bassitt has been an enigma the whole year.

Yeah you will know the answer to this, but that info has got to be leaked, right? I don’t think anyone was really clamouring for it? And if it was leaked it’s presumably reflecting the official view of the player’s behaviour?

Some explanation, maybe--not good.

Alek Manoah never reported to Triple-A when he was optioned on August 11th because he was upset about the decision, per @SNJeffBlair

Manoah reportedly has not even been throwing bullpens or side sessions. It’s unlikely that he’ll pitch in a game again this year pic.twitter.com/P6y3Bw5xwD

— Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) September 12, 2023

Weirdly enough, ties in with a David Wells rant making news.

https://nypost.com/2023/09/10/david-wells-on-how-to-fix-yankees-send-players-to-minors/

The team on the field...I'm back in whining, petulant mode. I'd down Friday for the Red Sox, and again on the 30th for Tampa. If they don't win these next two, that will very much dim some of the excitement for Friday, and the 30th will feel like a complete waste if the game's meaningless.

Sox are really bad atm so Blue Jays will probably win…You might see Brayan Bello pitching though & I’ll be really jealous if you do. (There is no starter currently named for Friday, think they are waiting to see if Sale will go Saturday.)

I'd like to see him, so hopefully the schedule will fall that way. I definitely don't want to see Chris Bassitt for the fourth time this year.

It's just the way he looks that makes this funny:

https://www.mlb.com/news/davis-scheider-hot-start-blue-jays-2023

Yeah that stache is hilarious for a 24 year old. He’s had some start.

I don’t get to watch the Jays often atm but what are your thoughts on Vladdy’s performance? Also, sorry to hear Belt is out again.

Disappointment--extreme. Yes, he's still young by normal standards (e.g., younger than all these guys who were just brought up from Syracuse), but to become what he was advertised as--a generational hitter--that's a different timetable; that window is fast closing. The thing that Steve Shasta posted about a month or two ago, how much his COVID time in the two minor-league parks skewed his numbers--something so obvious that I'd never clued into for some reason--has really made me rethink Vlad. I'm sure he'll still put together a pretty good career, but generational, I don't think so.

That piece on Schneider breaks down his success in really interesting ways. And no, I don't think he's generational either--maybe for another couple of weeks. (His mustache is, though.)Nobody that looks like that will continue to hit like Stan Musial; it defies the laws of baseball.

Am I more optimistic on him? I mean his dad played well into his thirties. The thing that seemed slightly concerning to me (limited sample size) is that he seems to be striking out a bit more and previously that was something he wouldn’t usually do, like he’d make some contact. He’s still extremely good and I’d expect him to get a big contract. But from watching Jays games this year Bo has been the team’s standout hitter for me.

xp yeah he might have had an explosive EDLC-like start and then either cools off or the league adjusts back to him. I read that the manager hasn’t been playing him every day (!) so that limited exposure might have been in his favour.

I finally figured out who he looks like: G. Gordon Liddy (possibly doing some illegal covert stuff for the CIA, hence the glasses).