Opening Series Hype-Posting
Texas Rangers vs. Toronto Blue Jays, Opening Day Roster Finalized, Blue Jays Trade Anthony Castro to the Cleveland Guardians in Exchange for Bradley Zimmer
It’s been too long since we did a series preview. 187 days, in fact. A 187 day span that included one flurry of moves, a three-month lockout, a two-week drip feed of transactions, and a spring training that I lost interest in watching four innings into the first game. Now, finally, it is April 8, obviously the traditional, non-work stoppage affected date for Opening Day going back to the humble days when future Hall of Famers would be given a nickname based on either a learning disability or horrifying racial epithet.
The Toronto Blue Jays have evolved into a hell of a baseball team. On paper, they’ve evolved into the best Jays team since the 2015 team that should have won a World Series. I don’t recall ever going into a regular season with this much hype surrounding one Jays team. Even the lead-up 2015 didn’t attain the heights of intense excitement we’ve already reached. Mainstream pundits are seriously considering the Blue Jays as a major World Series contender. Insanity. Sixteen-year old me wouldn’t have believed this. He would be busy trying way too hard to talk himself into Josh Johnson for 2013 right about now. The poor, stupid fuck.
Personally, I’m in a state where I’m vacillating hard between being extremely nervous and anxious about the massive expectation on this team, only to be pumped up beyond belief by the slightest bit of, well, propaganda.
Like, look at this.
I’ve been watching this for the last three hours while trying to get this post done. If neither this hype video brought to you by Toronto-Dominion Bank nor George Springers’ article for the Players’ Tribune don’t make you emotional or doesn’t make you want more than anything for these boys to win a World Series, then fuck you, I hate you, I’m not joking.
Jayslam will, of course, be following the season, and with a whole year under my belt, I’m dedicated to trying to find ways to maintain a steady stream of content that isn’t just some variety of “Vladimir Guerrero Jr. had a good series”, “look at how much I like screen-capping Baseball Savant”, or “no, I will not explain what xFIP is”. Before we get this season underway, if you like what Jayslam is doing, please consider sharing this post with a pal who may be interested! Or an enemy! I’m happy with either.
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Opening Day Roster Finalized… OR IS IT????
In our last roster prognosis, I theorized that Zack Collins, even after being optioned to Triple-A Buffalo, would be called up to serve as a third catcher and lefty bench bat. Sure enough, Collins was recalled yesterday. With Ryan Borucki and Nate Pearson starting the season on the IL (the latter being dealt a rough, rough hand by being diagnosed with mononucleosis), Julian Merryweather, Tayler Saucedo, and Trent Thornton were all called up. And as was reported, utilityman Gosuke Katoh had his contact purchased.
With José Ramírez being locked up by the Cleveland Guardians, it’s just about time for the Jays to park the bus and roll with what they’ve got. Probably no trades to be made. Especially not with the Guardians.
Or they could trade with the Guardians for fuckin’ Waluigi.
On Thursday evening, the Jays announced that they had traded relief pitcher Anthony Castro to the Guardians in exchange for outfielder Bradley Zimmer. Those of us who watched Castro last year know what Cleveland’s pitching factory likely see in him, being some nasty stuff undone by command problems and a tendency to give up home runs. He’ll be a candidate to establish himself in the Guardians’ bullpen. More importantly, what is Bradley Zimmer’s utility to the Jays?
Zimmer was Cleveland’s first round pick in the 2014 draft, notably selected during Mark Shapiro’s tenure with the team. Earning praise for his raw power potential, speed, and defence, Zimmer was called up in 2017, spending parts of each season with the Guardians since. He’s a fine defensive outfielder and is one of the speedier players in MLB (he posted a faster sprint speed than any current member of the Blue Jays in 2021) with solid power metrics to boot, posting good hard hit and barrel rates, as well as above average average exit velocity, while generally not chasing pitches out of the zone and taking walks. So aside from a tendency to hit the ball on the ground more often than in the air, what then is the problem?
Well you see, the ability to hit the ball hard only helps when the hitter can actually put said bat on the ball, something Zimmer has repeatedly struggled to do. In his big league career thus far, he’s slashed .225/.310/.347 with 79 wRC+, the lowest career wRC+ of any player on the Jays’ active roster save for Raimel Tapia (78 wRC+). Zimmer posted some of the worst strikeout (29.9%) and whiff (36.2%) rates in baseball in 2021, and has slowly found himself pushed off the Guardians’ roster, with the emergence of Steven Kwan perhaps being the final coffin.
The disrespect of being traded in favour of Oscar Mercado aside, Zimmer does provide some utility for the Jays. That’s mostly if they can unlock a latent ability to do the hardest thing in sports to do, but even just his defence and baserunning constitute a useful tool for the Jays off the bench, and he figures to become the team’s main backup in centre field, as he’s played there better and more frequently than Raimel Tapia. The question is: What role exactly does he play on this team? And the annoying thing is that, at the time of writing, we do not actually know, since no corresponding move has been made to make room on the 28-man roster for Zimmer, who is out of options.
If there was an injury, that would free up a spot (and also be a nightmare), but as far as we know, there hasn’t been any rumbling of an injury to any position player, and all three starting outfielders can be seen training in the Rogers Centre.
That doesn’t necessarily preclude an injury to them or Tapia, but there just isn’t much public evidence of an injury as of yet. So if no one’s going to the IL, that means someone’s getting sent down. A relief pitcher seems unlikely, as the whole point of the expanded rosters is to shore up pitching depth. So we’re likely looking at one of the position players getting optioned down.
Santiago Espinal is a fixture on the team as part of an assumed platoon with Cavan Biggio. Tapia is out of options. Alejandro Kirk is the primary backup catcher and figures to see a lot of time at DH. So that leaves Zack Collins and Gosuke Katoh. While neither would necessarily be the wrong decision (other than being a bit of a gut punch for both players, especially Katoh, who has come so close to his big league debut), Collins has been about as good as Zimmer offensively (with less power and strikeout extremes in either direction) and provides little defensive value in terms of either run prevention or flexibility, being either an extremely poor fielding catcher or a backup first baseman. Meanwhile, Katoh’s main selling point is his versatility while his bat is more of an unknown quantity. It all depends on what the front office values more, though if I had to guess, I would say Collins goes down. Somewhat awkward timing, given the great Arden Zwelling piece that just came out on him.
Schedule/Probable Pitchers
(Stats are from 2021)
Friday, April 8 (7 p.m. EST/5 p.m. MST): Jon Gray (4.59 ERA, 4.22 FIP, 24.4 K%, 9.0 BB%) vs. José Berríos (3.52 ERA, 3.47 FIP, 26.1 K%, 5.8 BB%)
Saturday, April 9 (3 p.m. EST/1 p.m. MST): Martín Pérez (presumptive, 4.74 ERA, 4.82 FIP, 19.1 K%, 7.1 BB%) vs. Kevin Gausman (2.81 ERA, 3.00 FIP, 29.3 K%, 6.5 BB%)
Saturday, April 10 (1:30 p.m. EST/11:30 a.m. MST): Dane Dunning (presumptive, 4.51 ERA, 3.94 FIP, 22.3 K%, 8.4 BB%) vs. Hyun-Jin Ryu (4.37 ERA, 4.02 FIP, 20.4 K%, 5.3 BB%)
The Opposition
After years of embarrassment and general irrelevance, the Texas Rangers are finally in the process of carving out a future for themselves. The monster signings of middle infielders Corey Seager and Old Friend Marcus Semien constitutes a major boost to their offence, though the pitching additions ended up lacking. Jon Gray is a solid addition, but the starting rotation is thin after himself and Dane Dunning, as Martín Pérez was bumped out of the Red Sox rotation last season, and both Taylor Hearn and Spencer Howard are extremely unproven. There also isn’t really much depth to the lineup either beyond Semien, Seager, new catcher Mitch Garver, and Nathaniel Lowe, bottoming out pretty quickly to the likes of Andy Ibáñez, Kole Calhoun, and Willie Calhoun.
Make no mistake, this is looking to be the most expensive 75-win team in the history of the sport, but honestly, that’s not a bad thing, either for the sport or the Rangers. It’s a good thing that teams feel compelled to spend money on salary even before their window is technically open, whatever exactly that constitutes. And with regards to the Rangers, they know they have solid pieces in Seager and Semien to shore up the team once highly-regarded prospects like Josh Jung, Ezequiel Durán, Justin Foscue, and especially pitchers Jack Leiter and Cole Winn do find their way to the Majors.
For now though, give Semien his awards and put the Rangers in the ground, please and thank you :)
Best Players (2021 stats):
Marcus Semien (Shortstop/Second Base), .265/.334/.538, 131 wRC+
Corey Seager (Shortstop), .306/.394/.521, 147 wRC+
Mitch Garver (Catcher), .256/.358/.517, 137 wRC+
Jon Gray (Starting Pitcher), 4.59 ERA, 4.40 FIP, 24.4 K%, 9.0 BB%
Adolis García (Outfield), .243/.284/.454, 100 wRC+