Blue Jays Discussion: Manoah gets the Halladay treatment (optioned to rookie-ball to try and fix him)

[Stephen]

I like the symbolism of a Toronto team snapping a Tampa streak last night.

 

[Seath The Scaleless]

Was looking at some stuff on Fangraphs. The Jays plate discipline numbers have been crazy, especially for Bo, Vlad, and Chapman. Contact percentages way up than last year, Swinging Strike% way down, K% way down.... and of course, they're crushing the ball.

And although he isn't crushing the ball like those three guys, Springer's contact and SwStr rates have seen similar gains.

They haven't faced great pitching so far, sure, but still pretty cool to see

 

[Seath The Scaleless]

Zach Neto (13th overall, 2022) called up by the Angels. On one hand, I'm shocked that he's up already after only 44 games in the minors. On the other hand, Fletcher has been borderline useless since 2020 and they did nothing to address that position in the winter.

Neto's bat seems advanced already at least

 

[BertCorbeau]

Was looking at some stuff on Fangraphs. The Jays plate discipline numbers have been crazy, especially for Bo, Vlad, and Chapman. Contact percentages way up than last year, Swinging Strike% way down, K% way down.... and of course, they're crushing the ball.

And although he isn't crushing the ball like those three guys, Springer's contact and SwStr rates have seen similar gains.

They haven't faced great pitching so far, sure, but still pretty cool to see

It's nice to see the patience this early in the season .. shows focus. They're not going out there too eager to try and do too much, and it's showing in the results

Will be a tough W today... I expect Tampa to sharpen up

 

[MS]

Random fun fact

Berrios’ 17 quality starts last season was better then both Carlos Rodon (16) and Ohtani (16) and was top 30 overall. He can oddly go from getting roughed up badly one night to coming back and giving you a nice quality start in the next start, even though he didn’t get one last night.

Yeah, I keep mentioning this as well.

Berrios' bad year last year was very strange. Normally when a pitcher has horrible numbers they're just getting pounded almost every start because they have zero control (Kikuchi last year) or because their arm is dead and they're throwing 90 MPH meatballs (Roark a couple years ago).

Neither of these were the case with Berrios. His control was as good as ever, and his velocity was fine. And in, like, 23 of his 33 starts last year he was effective and looked just like the effective pitcher of prior years. He just had 10 starts where he was absolutely clown pounded.

I've never seen anything quite like it and the results were totally night/day between the 23 good starts and the 10 terrible starts without any obvious difference in stuff and it's why I really wonder if some teams were picking up that he was tipping pitches and some teams weren't. The team also obviously had similar concerns because that was the reasoning given for him chewing on a mouthguard at one point.

This video about Michael Kopech's last start (which looks a lot like a lot of Berrios starts last year) is really interesting.

 

[The Nemesis]

In honor of Jackie Robinson Day if anyone needs something else to occupy their evening, the complete 1949 World Series' radio coverage is available to listen to on Youtube. The 5 game tilt pitted the then-Brooklyn Dodgers against their cross-town rival Yankees and featured 10 hall of famers (manager Casey Stengel, C Yogi Berra, CF Joe DiMaggio, 1B Johnny Mize, and SS Phil Rizutto on the Yankees. C Roy Campanella, 1B Gil Hodges, CF Duke Snider, SS Pee Wee Reese, and 2B Jackie Robinson on the Dogers)

Game 1


Game 2


Game 3


Game 4


Game 5


It's Robinson's second World Series appearance, but the first I could find radio archives for (his first WS was 1947, but there aren't any surviving recordings of entire games) and the only one that I found that was complete (For instance I also have the 1955 World Series but it's missing games 1 and 4. Plus Robinson didn't play in the climactic game 7, which is somewhat baffling although he did hit poorly in the first 6 games.)

 

[phillipmike]

 

[Dr.Funk]

 

[canucksfan]

 

[phillipmike]

Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week, April 14

A non-exhaustive list of the fun and maddening things that happened in baseball this week.

blogs.fangraphs.com

3. Alek Manoah’s Non-Competitive Pitch Problem

If more pitchers were like Alek Manoah, baseball would be a lot more fun to watch. He works deep into starts, wears his emotions on his sleeve, and challenges hitters rather than nibbling. He went at least six innings in 25 of his 31 starts last year, a welcome throwback in a world increasingly populated by five-and-dive starters and one-inning reliever parades.

This year, Manoah hasn’t found his form. His strikeout and walk rates are both 15.9% — that’s far too many walks against not nearly enough strikeouts. He’s already had starts of 3.1 and 4.1 innings, each shorter than any start he made last year. He’s lost a little velocity, but that’s not the biggest problem here. No, the thing that’s most vexing Manoah is a troubling increase in non-competitive pitches.

Manoah’s game is built on efficiency, and part of that is not wasting pitches. Baseball Savant has a handy “waste” zone – it refers to pitches thrown so far away from the strike zone that they hardly ever draw swings (roughly 6% in each of the past five years). Every year, only about 9% of pitches fall into that non-competitive bucket. Last year, only 8.3% of Manoah’s pitches ended up in the “waste” zone. Pitchers almost never intend to throw it there; those are just the pitches where their mechanics betray them, and they either yank the ball or have it fall off their hands weirdly.


This year, Manoah’s mechanics have been betraying him a lot. In his second start of the season, he threw 16 waste pitches out of 98 total, a 16.3% mark. On Tuesday, he threw another 15 (16% of his 94 pitches). His fastball velocity was down in both starts, too: he bottomed out below 88 mph, and he’s averaging roughly 1 mph less this year than last.

In graphical form, it’s just as ugly. Here’s a good Manoah start from last year:

Here’s this Tuesday’s start:

It doesn’t take a data scientist to spot the problem. Manoah couldn’t land his slider, and he left a bundle of sinkers above the zone too. The AL East is going to be a grindhouse this year. The Rays have already pulled out to a sizable lead. If Toronto is going to chase them down, their ace needs to start repeating his delivery and stop giving batters free pitches

 

[Bjindaho]

It's early, but here are a few fielding observations:

Chapman is the worst defensive 3B in baseball by Fangraph's DEF as a result of a league worst OAA. While his range and arm still are doing well, there have been plays that he hasn't made this year that he made in the past (largely DP-related).

Behind the plate, only Wong and Haase are doing significantly better than Jansen.

At 1B, Vlad is tied for the lead in DRS, but OAA loves Lowe in Texas.

At 2B, Schoop will lead everyone if he gets the playing time (which he hasn't so far). Espinal has been the second best 2B followed by Semien.

At SS, Bo is in the bottom few, but he has been slowly moving up in the last week or so with better decisions.

In LF, Varsho is a mixed bag. He leads everyone in DRS, but he's below average in OAA (but he's improved in the last couple of games).

In CF, KK leads everybody in OAA but Isbel leads DRS.

In RF, Springer is tied for second worst in DRS due to range issues (and possibly batted ball noise in his numbers).

 

[hockeywiz542]

 

[phillipmike]

 

[CatchyTune]

Anyone see Bass make himself out to be a total asshole on twitter yesterday/today? kinda disappointing

 

[Blitzkrug]

Anyone see Bass make himself out to be a total asshole on twitter yesterday/today? kinda disappointing

On the plus side, some of the replies/clapbacks were absolute gold.

But yeah he looks like an absolute clown. You're responsible for your own kids bucko.

 

[MS]

Anyone see Bass make himself out to be a total asshole on twitter yesterday/today? kinda disappointing

On the plus side, some of the replies/clapbacks were absolute gold.

But yeah he looks like an absolute clown. You're responsible for your own kids bucko.

I ... don't disagree with him?

With certain services, when you pay for them part of that is the expectation that they will clean up your mess (within reason).

If I go to a nice restaurant, I'm not expecting them to ask me to hop in the kitchen and scrub my dishes. I'm not washing the sheets at a hotel. And I'd fully expect that any small food mess left by my kids would be cleaned up by the airline after paying $thousands for flights.

 

[Jozay]

Idk how you could sit there watching your kid make that mess and not do anything.

 

[CatchyTune]

I ... don't disagree with him?

With certain services, when you pay for them part of that is the expectation that they will clean up your mess (within reason).

If I go to a nice restaurant, I'm not expecting them to ask me to hop in the kitchen and scrub my dishes. I'm not washing the sheets at a hotel. And I'd fully expect that any small food mess left by my kids would be cleaned up by the airline after paying $thousands for flights.

It also looks like he went out of his way to have the attendant fired. almost nobody is taking his side

 

[red devil]

 

[MS]

It also looks like he went out of his way to have the attendant fired. almost nobody is taking his side

I mean, he's a rich white dude complaining about something in the toxic cesspool that is social media. It doesn't matter whether he's right or wrong, he's going to get absolutely piled on just because of who he is.

(not that most rich white guys complaining about stuff on social media aren't absolute twits)

Again, to me this is a restaurant/hotel situation. Part of paying the company big bucks is that they clean up after you, within reason. If you pull a big bag of potato chips out of your carry-on and dump the whole thing on the floor, obviously you try to clean most of it up as best possible. But if your kids crumble a bit of the in-flight snack on the floor, that's on them to clean up.

And as far as I know, airplanes usually have a cleaning crew take a vacuum through them and tidy up garbage between flights for things exactly like this. Any airplane that doesn't do this I'd consider a very crap budget carrier. And forcing a pregnant woman with two small children to clean up a few popcorn pieces seems totally ridiculous.

 

[thehockeysong]

I mean, he's a rich white dude complaining about something in the toxic cesspool that is social media. It doesn't matter whether he's right or wrong, he's going to get absolutely piled on just because of who he is.

(not that most rich white guys complaining about stuff on social media aren't absolute twits)

Again, to me this is a restaurant/hotel situation. Part of paying the company big bucks is that they clean up after you, within reason. If you pull a big bag of potato chips out of your carry-on and dump the whole thing on the floor, obviously you try to clean most of it up as best possible. But if your kids crumble a bit of the in-flight snack on the floor, that's on them to clean up.

And as far as I know, airplanes usually have a cleaning crew take a vacuum through them and tidy up garbage between flights for things exactly like this. Any airplane that doesn't do this I'd consider a very crap budget carrier. And forcing a pregnant woman with two small children to clean up a few popcorn pieces seems totally ridiculous.

Difference between hotel/restaurant example is pretty big imo. If someone stood up and walked into the back of a kitchen and washed their own dish, that'd be bizarre. Same with taking your sheets and finding a housekeeper and insisting that you'll drive them to the cleaning facility. If I drop some popcorn on the ground and scoop it up with my hand.... That's not nearly as bizarre. It's just expected.

Don't think they expect someone to scrub the floors to a shine, but picking up some popcorn if you let your kid spill everywhere is pretty parenting 101 stuff - shouldn't need someone asking.

 

[Seath The Scaleless]

Bryant hit his first HR in 33 games at Coors since joining the team. Too bad his team is losing 13-1

What a tire fire (again) in Colorado.

 

[Blitzkrug]

Bryant hit his first HR in 33 games at Coors since joining the team. Too bad his team is losing 13-1

What a tire fire (again) in Colorado.

Bryant is still a halfway decent hitter. He put up solid numbers in the small amount he played last season.

However, whatever semblance of power he had is long, long gone. When you can't hit dingers at Coors consistently as a supposed power hitter...you got issues/

 

[Canada4Gold]

It's not a flight attendant's job to clean up your mess. As long as your mess is contained to your seat nobody will care and the groomers should clean it up inbetween flights. The way I understood it the kids made a mess that spread to seats around them and someone else complained. It's not the flight attendant's responsibility to clean that mess up. So their options are either do something outside their scope of responsibility, tell the person who complained to deal with it, or ask the person who made the mess(or their parents when it's kids) to clean it up. The middle option isn't something that will happen much at all unless that person is blowing something extremely minor way out of proportion. So you either get a flight attendant who's willing to clean it up to make everyone happy or they tell you to clean it up as it's your responsibility. If his wife was obviously pregnant you might be more likely to get the former but a lot of days at work people are already annoyed at the shit they have to deal with so I would expect the latter a lot. And I don't really have an issue with it. As much as I can feel for a pregnant lady travelling alone with 2 kids who are making a huge mess, it was a situation she chose to put herself into. If it's just a little bit of popcorn I'm probably more annoyed at whoever complained. While you didn't pay to have a seat with popcorn on the floor, it's not gross or liquid or anything. Bringing it up is just going to create an uncomfortable situation for everyone involved when the person making the mess is 2 kids of a pregnant lady travelling alone.

 

[Puckstuff]

Yeah, Bass had a blind spot on this one. It sounds like his wife was traveling alone with the kids and Bass had an expectation that others should take responsibility in his absence to clean up their mess. If Bass was present that’s even more strange but it sounds like he wasn’t. The wife shouldn’t be putting her self in that situation, just not smart really. It also looks like an economy class ticket. I’m not sure why he would expect a $20/hour airline attendant to clean up after their mess. This is just entitlement. Your paying for an economy class ticket. They are your flight attendant not your maid. Get business class if your expectations are that high. Just observe the situation and don’t have your kids make a mess in the first place. This is situational awareness which it sounds like they both lack.