Archive for Blue Jays

When a pitcher strikes out a lot of batters while keeping his home runs and walks allowed to a minimum, good things generally happen. Prior to this season, there were 31 occurrences of a season in which a starting pitcher threw at least 140 innings with a K/9 greater than 10.0 with a BB/9 less than 3.5 and a HR/9 below 1.0. The list includes some of the game’s greatest pitchers: Roger Clemens, Curt Schilling (3x), Sandy Koufax (2x), Nolan Ryan (4x), Pedro Martinez (4x), and Randy Johnson, who had nine (9!) such seasons. The list also includes some surprises like Jason Schmidt, Mike Scott, and Erik Bedard. Recently, we’ve seen Scott Kazmir, Justin Verlander, and Tim Lincecum (2x) put up these kind of seasons.

Zack Grienke (10.67 K/9, 2.16 BB/9, 1.02 HR/9) is close to joining the list; however, as of right now Brandon Morrow is the only pitcher in baseball on pace for membership to my arbitrary statistical club. After his start this weekend, Morrow has a K/9 of 10.41, a BB/9 of 3.45, and a HR/9 of 0.97.

There is one huge difference between the Toronto righty and the rest of the list.

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A fair amount of Most Valuable Player and Cy Young discussion has been going around lately, and while it seems a bit early with a month left in the season, I suppose it is understandable. There has been less discussion of Rookie of the Year. I don’t blame anyone for that. I really don’t get that worked up about the individual year-end awards. (I’m not quite brave enough to say that I don’t care, maybe if Greinke hadn’t won in 2009 the story would have been different.) And if I’m not that pumped about the MVP or Cy Young races, why should I be excited about Rookie of the Year?

Still, a number of rookies have been impressive this season, so it is worth discussing. Brett Lawrie, for example, has hit so well in only 26 major league games that he’s already at two WAR for the season, right of there with the best of the American League rookie hitters. What if he (or Desmond Jennings, or whatever player you want to pick) keeps this up? What if they put up more value than any other rookie in less than half of a season? Would you vote for them for Rookie of the Year?

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The Diamondbacks traded Kelly Johnson to the Blue Jays on Tuesday, getting Aaron Hill and John McDonald in return. Arizona’s motives for the trade are questionable, as the deal could actually hurt their playoff odds.

Eno Sarris covered the deal from the Jays point of view, noting that free-agent-to-be Johnson will likely be used to extract compensatory draft picks this offseason. Johnson is mere percentage points from attaining Type A status — and prior to the trade, he was the highest-ranked non-Type A middle infielder. The Jays employed this tactic last season when it traded for Miguel Olivo on the day before free agency started and allowed him to walk. The Jays again are shrewdly exploiting the compensation system.

Add to that the idea that Johnson is a better player than Hill and the deal makes plenty of sense for Toronto. But does it make any sense for the Diamondbacks, who are in the thick of a divisional race?

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The Blue Jays shipped fan-favorite John McDonald and fan-hated Aaron Hill to the Arizona Diamondbacks for Kelly Johnson. Strangely, even though Hill is the only player with a possible contract currently in place for 2012, this deal opens up many possibilities for the Blue Jays and increases their flexibility.

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Ed. Note: Four people were injured in the copyediting of this article.

One word. Change one word of the trade description, and you might see a world in which the Cardinals got fair value for Colby Rasmus in their trade Wednesday night.

The consensus for the most part is that Alex Anthopoulos pulled a coup when he acquired a young left-handed center fielder with power and speed and a decent glove for his collection of spare parts. A rental starter, a rental backup center fielder, a rental righty reliever, and a young lefty reliever is all that it took to get Rasmus. But then there’s that one word — reliever.

Call Marc Rzepczynski a young lefty starter, and suddenly things might seem a little more even.

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If there was ever a precursor to a trade, this was it, via Matthew Leach and Austin Laymance:

Speaking to KSDK TV-5 in St. Louis, La Russa was largely complimentary of Rasmus until the end of the interview. He spoke of Rasmus’ bright future and said that the club is not shopping Rasmus.

At the end, however, La Russa was asked whether Rasmus is listening and responded tartly.

“Well, he’s listening to somebody,” the manager said.

Asked whether Rasmus is listening to the Cardinals’ coaches, he was more direct.

“No, he doesn’t listen to the Cardinal coaches much now, and that’s why he gets in these funks, in my opinion,” La Russa said. “If he would just stay with [basically] what they teach, he would have … but I actually feel concern for him, because he hears it from so many places, he’s got to be confused.”

Approximately 12 hours after that piece hit MLB.com, the Cardinals sent Colby Rasmus packing to Toronto along with relievers Brian Tallet and Trever Miller and minor league stalwart P.J. Walters for a package centered around Edwin Jackson. The Blue Jays also sent relievers Octavio Dotel and Marc Rzepczynski and center fielder Corey Patterson to St. Louis to complete the deal.

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The talks started last winter, but they didn’t seem serious. Why would the Cardinals consider trading Colby Rasmus? He’s young, he’s cost-controlled, and he’s a center fielder who has some pop. But he clashed with manager Tony LaRussa, and we’ve seen other players depart St. Louis after such spats. Those talks have heated up again in the past month, gaining momentum as the trade deadline approaches. Today it all came to a head. Early this morning word broke that the Blue Jays were set to acquire Edwin Jackson, whom they’d then flip to the Cardinals in a Rasmus deal. A few hours, everything came together as planned.

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Whence we last examined yonder batting orders, we came away with several expected observations (Jose Bautista plays baseball like a video game, the Oakland Athletics do not care much for scoring runs, Rick Ankiel and Ian Desmond are not feared hitters, and so forth) as well as a number of curious findings (the Cubs lead-off combo was tops in the majors, the 7th hitters on AL teams were worse than the 9th hitters, NL managers effectively managed the bottoms of their lineups, and such).

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The Toronto Blue Jays signed shortstop Yunel Escobar (28) to an extension over the weekend. The contract reportedly includes two guaranteed years at $5 million each buying out his last two years of arbitration (2012 and 2013) as well as club options for 2014 and 2015, also at $5 million each. After impressing both at the plate and in the field with the Atlanta Braves during his first three seasons, Escobar had a rough 2010 and was traded to the Blue Jays. He’s recovered quite nicely this season, and it is hard to see how the Blue Jays could lose out in this deal. The only question is why Escobar agreed to it.

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We all know that Jose Bautista is destroying worlds this season: the Bautista (hat tip: Bradley Woodrum) has mashed 20 homeruns and posted a .513 wOBA, accumulated 5 WAR in only 61 games. To put that in some perspective, his .513 wOBA would rank 22nd all-time if the season ended today, and when you adjust for the scoring environment, it’d rank as the fourth best offensive season in major league history (trailing only Babe Ruth and Barry Bonds). He’s having a season for the record books.

In thinking about this recently, I started pondering: how does Bautista’s homerun pace compare with other all-time great seasons? We’re all captivated by a homerun race, and while Bautista isn’t going to break any single-season homerun records, has his homerun pace been as impressive as the rest of his season? And so, I decided to compare his 2011 season against batters that hit 70+ homeruns (Bonds, 2001), 65 homeruns (McGwire, 1999), 60 homeruns (Ruth, 1927), and 54 homeruns (Bautista, 2010). Take a peek:

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