Talk to pitchers on the record, and the links they’re willing to draw between an increase in blisters and what looks like a tighter baseball are minimal. That makes sense — and it’s doesn’t seem to be concern for politics or press relations that’s holding them back. There are so many confounding factors that it’s the probably the right way to approach the situation.

Talk to a few pitchers off the record, though, and another link emerges, one that might provide some insight into the relationship between seams and blisters.

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The Blue Jays are not where they want to be in the standings. That much has to be acknowledged. While it’s long been understood that the American League East was again going to be a challenging division, the Jays have still been a disappointment, and it’s an open question whether the front office might elect to start selling in advance of this month’s trade deadline. The train has gone off the rails, and while the rails are just right there, within reach, it’s no simple matter for any train to reattach. You know how trains are.

And as long as we’re saying things up front, this is an article about Jays closer Roberto Osuna, and not even very long ago Osuna was in the news because he had to miss a few games, owing to rather severe anxiety. Anxiety is a sinister thing, and a personal thing, and it’s not a villain you conquer with a good night’s sleep. Possibly, it will march alongside Osuna for the rest of his life. Probably, it will linger for at least another few years. It’s just one of the things he’ll have to deal with, like someone else might deal with a wonky knee.

So it hasn’t been all rainbows for Osuna, nor has it been puppy dogs for the baseball team around him. But this much can be said: When Osuna has taken the mound in 2017, he’s been absolutely sensational. Osuna was already a perfectly fine closer. What he is now is something else, something very nearly perfect, at least by human standards. Osuna’s only 22, and he’s pitching at the top of his magnificent game.

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Daily notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Wes Rogers, OF, Colorado (Profile)
Level: Hi-A   Age: 23   Org Rank: HM   Top 100: NR
Line: 2-for-4, HR, BB

Notes
Rogers’ draft stock spiked during the 2014 JUCO World Series, during which he hit .538. He went straight from Grand Junction — where the JUCO World Series is held and where the Rockies’ Pioneer League affiliate plays their home games — to Scottsdale to workout with Colorado. He ran a plus-plus 60-yard dash there and the Rockies drafted him in the fourth round. He’s having a bit of a breakout year, albeit as an old-for-level prospect repeating the Cal League. But Rogers runs very well, has above-average bat speed, and exhibits terrific command of the strike zone. He’s also been an efficient and prolific base-stealer, lifting 159 career bases in 324 games at an 88% success rate. He’s also a long-limbed, small-school prospect, both late-blooming traits. Some of his power is probably fueled by Lancaster’s hitting environment, but there are big-leagues tools here, too.

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A couple of years ago, Jose Bautista had some advice for Marcus Stroman. “He said I should screw with my timing more,” the Jays’ right-handed pitcher told me a couple weeks back. Maybe you’ve seen him employ the strategy this year. It’s a fun and makes watching him more interesting. The effect it has on his ability to prevent runs is less obvious, though.

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We’re still 100 games away from the end of the season, but we’re getting closer to that time when teams have to decide whether they’re in or out of contention for the playoffs. Some clubs might have to make the tough choice of moving themselves out of contention despite having a reasonable playoff shot. In the American League, nearly every team is still in the race. That might change over the course of the next month, of course, but the field certainly looks like it will still be crowded come July.

There are five playoff spots up for grabs in the AL, and while a lot can and will happen the rest of the way, there are four teams to which our playoff odds give roughly an 80% or better chance of making the playoffs: the Houston Astros, Cleveland Indians, Boston Red Sox, and New York Yankees. The Astros look well on their way to potentially 100 wins, while the Indians, Red Sox and Yankees appear to be moving toward close to 90 wins, a figure that generally amounts to a spot in the postseason. Those four teams total 359% of the 500% total odds available. After that, seven teams have something close to a 10%.

After the first four teams, no club has a better than a 50% chance at the playoffs. The team at the top, Toronto, is currently in last place in its division. Here are the playoff odds since the beginning of the season for the rest of the teams in the American League — with the exception, that is, of the rebuilding Chicago White Sox, who have been near zero all season long.

Does that look like an incomprehensible mess? Well, welcome to the AL Wild Card race. If it helps at all, the list of teams at the bottom of the chart is in order in terms of their current playoff odds. There are seven teams with close to a 1-in-10 shot of making the playoffs, with a couple more in Kansas City and Oakland that possess an outside chance of getting back into the mix. If you picked the top team currently by the odds, Toronto, taking the field is probably a better bet.

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There are a couple good stories beginning to emerge in the American League. Just last night, the Mariners crawled their way all the way back to .500, despite suffering through a rash of significant early-season injuries. And, similarly, although the Blue Jays aren’t quite also at .500, they’re close, despite encountering a similar problem. There’s been talk of whether the Mariners and Blue Jays ought to sell. With their play much improved, each team is firmly back in the race, vying to contend for the wild card.

With any team in such a position, success is dependent upon there being some surprises. And when you look at the Jays, there may be no bigger surprise than the offensive performance of Justin Smoak. Before the year, there were 14 Jays projected to play at least semi-regularly, and Smoak stood as the eighth-best hitter. At this writing, there have been 14 Jays who have played at least semi-regularly, and Smoak has been the second-best hitter. By wRC+, he’s above Jose Altuve, Carlos Correa, Daniel Murphy, and Kris Bryant. Smoak has a career WAR of 1.8. This season alone, he’s been worth 1.5.

As you know, Smoak is a former top prospect. Plenty of hype, for plenty of years. He’s also 30 years old, and until now, he looked like a replacement-level hitter. When the Jays signed him to a modest extension a year ago, it was met with mockery and disappointment. Welp. There was no putting off this post any longer.

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We’ve talked (a lot, maybe) about lifting the ball more here, and so far the discussion has revolved around hands, legs, and intent — the mechanics of the swing, more or less. There’s another way to lift the ball better, though, one that hasn’t been addressed here: swinging at better pitches. That’s what Kevin Pillar has focused on, and his story offers another look into the effort to hit the ball over the shift.

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Bo Bichette is making mincemeat out of lower-level pitching, and not in subtle fashion. The 19-year-old shortstop has a swing designed to smash baseballs into smithereens, and that’s pretty much what he’s done since the Toronto Blue Jays selected him in the second round of last year’s draft. In 283 professional plate appearances, former big-league slugger Dante Bichette’s rapidly rising son is slashing .396/.456/.656.

The damage he did in Rookie ball last year — which led to an 1.182 OPS over 22 games — is largely being replicated in Low-A Lansing. Slotted near the top of a loaded Lugnuts lineup, Bichette is hitting an electric .381/.458/.619, with 18 doubles and six home runs. He leads the Midwest League in all three slash-line categories, as well as in total bases.

Anecdotally speaking, he also tops the circuit in aggressive hacks. When Eric Longenhagen wrote up Bichette in his Blue Jays Top Prospect rankings, he cited “exceptional bat speed and above-average raw power,” but also an “exaggerated leg kick” and hands “noisier than a Dinosaur Jr. concert.” He added that “Toronto may actively be working to quiet things down.”

Somewhat surprisingly, that isn’t the case. With a presumed organizational mindset of “If ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” the precocious youngster is being allowed to continue to do his own thing. I learned as much when I spoke to Bichette, and to Blue Jays farm director Gil Kim, in mid-May.

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On His Aggressive Swing

Bichette: “I’m a really aggressive hitter. I take a big leg kick, and I use everything I have. I’m not the biggest guy out there — I’m 5-11, 190 — so I need all the power I can get. I use my upper body and my lower body. I have a little bit of an inward turn with my upper body, which I think people may see as weird, but everything I do is to generate as much power as I can.”

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Over the winter, Jose Bautista was forced to settle on a one-year contract of about $18 million, or roughly the price of a qualifying offer. Given Bautista’s performance over the previous half-dozen years — during which he’d been one of the game’s best hitters — that deal came as a surprise. Most thought he would get three or four years guaranteed at that rate.

When a player receives so little compared to the general consensus, there’s an inclination to believe that maybe the teams know something we don’t. Bautista had just recorded one of his worst seasons, putting up a 122 wRC+, a 20-point drop from his previous three campaigns. Perhaps there was reason to believe that his poor 2016 season was going to carry over into this year. That certainly looked to be the case just a few weeks into the current season. Not so much anymore.

On April 25, Jose Bautista had played in 19 games, recorded 85 plate appearances, and produced just three extra-base hits, only one of those a homer. His walk rate was a solid 15%, but his strikeout rate was 31%. A lot of strikeouts and no power caused an early-season hitting line of .129/.271/.200 and just a 33 wRC+. As for the cause of Bautista’s poor play, age-related decline was certainly a possibility. Curious himself, Jeff Sullivan requested reader assistance, on April 25, to help better understand the underlying causes for some hitters’ struggles. Jose Bautista was one of those struggling hitters. Since that time, however, he hasn’t struggled at all. In fact, he’s been one of the game’s best, recording a 177 wRC+ in the meantime.

Regarding Bautista, the first issue raised by Sullivan raised was contact. The Jays’ right fielder had historically made contact on 81% of pitches, but he was down to 71% this season. His whiffs both in and out of the zone were up. To help gain some context, let’s separate Bautista’s last few years into a few different segments: 2013-2015, 2016, the 2017 season through April 24, and the 2017 season since April 24. Let’s start by looking at contact rate.

The good news is that Bautista has brought his contact rate back up to near-vintage Bautista levels. When the ball is pitched in the zone and Bautista swings, he’s making good contact. Before we get to the damage done on contact, that dropping O-Contact% is worth a look. From 2013 to -15, Bautista was above the league average of 63% on swings on balls outside the zone. Last season, Bautista tumbled below the 62% league average. This season, whether looking at the early or latter part of this year, Bautista is well below league average. While that is likely an indication of his declining skills, given Bautista’s batting eye, it might not hurt him as much as others. Bautista’s 21% swing rate on pitches outside the zone is among the top-10 rates in baseball.

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When you look up and see that the Athletics are in the midst of a two-game mid-week series against the Marlins in late May, you might suspect that the major-league baseball schedule is simply an exercise in randomness. At this point in the campaign, that’s actually sort of the case. The combination of interleague play and the random vagaries of an early-season schedule conspire to mean that your favorite team hasn’t had the same schedule as your least favorite team. Let’s try to put a number on that disparity.

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