Monday Bantering: Jays Stuff

Happy Monday.

Mondays are always better after the Jays sweep a team. Beyond the wins, it was the most interesting baseball we’ve seen this season. Lots of big moments, interesting decisions, defensive lapses, good and bad pitching.

After being last in the league in hitting with RISP, we’ve moved up to second last, ahead of the Orioles, hitting .245 with RISP. Actually tied with the Yankees for 13th in the AL. Baby steps.

After the game we found out that Danny Jansen and Teoscar Hernandez were dealing with minor ouches, explaining why Tapia was DHing. I know we always want to jump to Charlie’s an idiot, but generally, there is an answer for why things are done. In my little experience, once you’ve had an oblique problem, you have to kind of manage it for a while.

Santiago Espinal doesn’t look like the answer in the 2-spot in the lineup. He’s hitting .115/.200/.115. It is a small sample size and all, but perhaps he’s putting too much pressure on himself, or perhaps he was hitting over his head for the start of the season and this is a correction. He’s dropped from number 1 to number 2 on the team in fWAR (behind Springer) and to number 3 in bWAR (behind Springer and Kirk).

Trying him there was fine since no one was hitting, but maybe it is time to give it up.

The second spot has been a black hole all season. Our guys hitting second have a .240/.282/.378 line. But Bo is hitting better now. Vlad seems to be coming out of his little slump.

The back end of the pen hasn’t been great. I guess that’s not unusual for the back end of the pen and its small sample size but the trouble is that sometimes guys in the back end up pitching in spots you wouldn’t like.

And it isn’t like Borucki and Merryweather don’t have potential but they aren’t showing why. Merryweather could be sent down, but Borucki would have to clear waivers. But then I don’t know if anyone would pick him up at the moment.

I do think that 6 innings isn’t a big enough sample to know what’s going on and Borucki’s does throw hard. I guess I’d take to Pete Walker and ask if he sees a possibility of a fairly quick fix.

Nate Pearson has had one appearance in Buffalo. I’d imagine they would want him to pitch a couple of weeks down there before they make any plans.

They won’t be making any major trades for a reliever for a bit. Maybe the end of June.

I was curious about the umpiring yesterday....Not great:

But it can always be worse: