Thursday Bantering: Bits of Jays Stuff

What I’d give for some Jays’ news.

Winter came this week to Calgary, we are buried under a ton of snow. But that didn’t stop us from having a night out at the bar to watch the game. It was a fun game. People keep talking about momentum in baseball. Yesterday I heard that the series wouldn’t come back to Houston. No way the Astros could win again after such a crushing defeat. But, in baseball, momentum is that day’s starting pitcher.

Dusty Baker is an interesting manager. Tuesday, he leaves his starting pitcher in the game to give up 5 home runs. Yesterday the starter got pulled with a no-hitter (though at 97 pitches, but if you are ever going to let a guy throw more than 100 pitches, isn’t that the time?). Bryan Abreu gets three strikeouts on 15 pitches but only gets one inning. I would have let him have another inning. Rafael Montero pitches a quick eighth, 10 pitches, and he’s out of the game. And then Ryan Pressly finishes off the no-hitter.

It worked yesterday, and Tuesday, his team didn’t score, so it didn’t matter how many home runs McCullers gave up. But then Dusty shouldn’t have taken it for granted that his team wouldn’t score.

And now they are down to a best-of-three series.

• Charlie Montoyo has been hired to be the bench coach for the White Sox. I’m glad for him.
• Ross Stripling thinks Matt Chapman should have won the Gold Glove.

Matt Chapman looked amazing at third, but then I didn’t get to see enough Ramón Urías to compare the two, and Ramón’s numbers were much better.

• MLB Trade Rumors has their Offseason Outlook up for the Blue Jays. Nothing there we didn’t know, but it is nice to have all the information in one spot.

It does talk about the Jays’ need to find a starting pitcher or two to fill out the rotation behind Manoah and Gausman. Berrios will have to have a bounce-back season, but, as we noted before, the Jays were 23-9 in his starts. So even with a better season, we can’t expect better results from his starts. I don’t think the team will average 5.7 runs a game for him again.

It mentions the possibility the Jays could go after Justin Verlander. I don’t think there is much of a chance of that. They also say Carlos Rodon is a possibility. I’d love to see that.

And it mentions that the team might try to sign one of the top shortstop free agents and move Bo to second. Doing that would free up the team to look to trade Santiago Espinal or Cavan Biggio. And then Whit Merrifield could move to center field, letting Springer move to a corner spot.

For a team with 92 wins, it promises to be an off-season with many moving parts. But, I’m looking forward to it.