Monday bantering

I was pretty pleased with the performances of the weekend. I saw some hard graft, great teamwork and better than expected results; but enough about my home renovations...

...the baseball sucked.

Stats show our suckiness

The season stats back it up: (CAUTION: VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED)

• Every Jay in the starting lineup struck out at least once on Sunday, 16 times in all; the series total was 57, four short of the franchise worst for a four-game series. They struck out at least 13 times in four straight games, something that’s only been done four times in MLB history.
• Toronto has 119 strikeouts through the first 11 games trailing only last year’s Yankees who had 129.
• Coming into Sunday’s game the Jays managed 61 hits - the fewest over the first 10 games of a season in franchise history.
• Our .191 batting average is also a new low.
• Coming into Sunday, 32.1% of the pitches Jays hitters had seen were breaking balls, the fifth-highest rate in the league. Meanwhile, Toronto’s .211 wOBA against those breaking balls was MLB’s fifth-lowest.
• Our .240 batting average on balls in play sat third-last in the league coming into Sunday’s game. The Jays had MLB’s sixth-highest negative differential between their wOBA (.265) and xwOBA (.290), suggesting they’ve made much better contact than their results indicate. This is a cause for future optimism.

But what can we take away from our series against Cleveland? Something good, something bad and something ugly.

And as we rebuild, fans are looking for new players to love.

Its clear the Jays need a shot of energy- something to get them motivated. Maybe something like the bench clearing brawl between the Pirates and Reds? (although with our luck right now it would be a lot of swings and misses)

First Derek Dietrich of the Red took a loooooong look as his homer sailed into the river:

(Mumble, ‘unwritten rules’ mumble)

Then Jaden Smith Chris Archer threw behind him and we had a good old fashioned brouhaha!

I especially love the fact that a still from the video showing Tucker Barnheart desperately clinging onto Puig’s ankle has already been made into Renaisance art:

And here is a 5 point analysis of the brawl!

Deplete, Punish, Destroy

In case you hadn’t noticed, the Dodgers have scored 84 runs in their first 10 games, 3rd-most by any team in the past 100 years.

The only two teams with more (1932 Yankees, 1999 Indians) went on to score 1,000 runs.

At the rate they are going, the Dodgers will on about 5,000 runs by season end.

Max Power!

This is somehow not surprising as it should be.

Play of the Day

Comes from the Minor League and Peter Mooney of the Albuquerque Isotopes. Lovely!