Saturday Bantering: Mayza down, House up

The Jays have called up T.J. House. Tim Mayza gets send down. Sure announce that after I’ve centered half this post on Mayza. But, we knew it was coming. House was scratched from his start in Buffalo last night. And Mayza threw 38 pitches over the past two days. We’ll see him again soon.

House could give us a few innings, if Nick Tepesch can’t go deep in today’s game. I haven’t heard if Roberto Osuna is ready to play today. Ryan Tepera has pitched in 3 of our last 4 games, I’m wondering if he will need a day off.

The team re-signed pitcher Taylor Cole, he was released last week.

Tim Mayza is getting a fair bit of virtual ink.

Sportsnet tells us that Pat Hentgen gave him an important piece of advise:

“Pat always told me: ‘Get ahead, get out of the middle,’” Mayza said. “That’s something that I take personally.”

Pat says he’s sure he’s not the only one to give that advise, but, I’d imagine, for Tim, a former Cy Young winner telling you something is a whole different thing than a pitching coach telling you.

Steve Buffery, in the National Post, talked to Mayza’s Millersville University coach, Jon Shehan, who was in the park to see him make his first appearance Tuesday.

Mayza, talking about Shehan said:

“He meant a lot to me and had such an impact on my development, really helped me in a lot of ways, not just in baseball,” said the soft-spoken Mayza. “He’s always been big proponent of the mental game, being able to handle certain situations and stuff like that. He’s one of the guys who I credit for developing my mental training prior to this year. He made me believe in what my stuff was and what my capabilities were. He pushed me to believe in myself.”

I’m enjoying watching Mayza. getting to see young players grow into major leaguers is the best part of being a baseball fan. Hard throwing lefties are few and far between.

The Ryan Goins hitting with RISP thing has gotten to the ‘this is truly weird’ point. I still don’t believe it is a separate skill, but I’m getting to where I think that he’s been told he’s good with RISP enough that he’s believing it. I do think a person can talk themselves into things. So no one tell him it isn’t a separate skill set.

He’s hitting .342/.378/.589 with RISP.

He’s hitting .163/.225/.206 with bases empty.

The trouble is....he has more than twice as many at bats with the bases empty. And, of course, getting on base is a valuable thing too.

There is a certain segment of the twitter world that thinks RBIs are all that matter. I have a hard time balancing the ‘he’s good with RISP’ and ‘he’s awful all the rest of the time’. I’m not sure how much extra credit to give him.

He isn’t hitting in the ‘late and close’ category. Just .196/.255/.217 (just 52 PA).

Fangraphs has him at a -1.0 WAR and they really don’t like his defense, -9.5 UZR/150 at short and -1.7 UZR/150 at second. I do think that he does some things well, on defense, that doesn’t show up on UZR. He’s great on tag plays. He seems to be able to catch a throw, from the catcher, and slap down a tag all in one motion.

Yesterday Zaun said that the Jays should move him into the 3 spot in the order. No no no.

Our old friend, Nick Ashbourne, has a post for Yahoo, talking about “The tragic flaw that holds Kevin Pillar back as a hitter”. Nick says popping up on pitches on the outside half of the plate. I would have said ‘swinging at everything no matter where it is’ but potato, potato (which doesn’t really work in the written form).

Here is an example from Nick:

This is just too much fun, from a tweet by @BarNasty85: