The Scold II: The Reckoning - Early March News Dump
While I’m sure that everyone’s been wrapped up in the drama of watching the Blue Jays’ spring training games (*COUGH*) there have been some bits of news worth talking about over the last week or so.
We’ll start it off by talking about Jake Odorizzi and touching on the Jays’ precarious starting pitching situation. But first!
In case you missed it
I continued my spring training breakdown, talking about infielders and catchers. This leaves only the starting pitcher entry, which should be out later this week.
More like Jake NOdorizzi, am I right?
Starting pitching is yesterday’s game. The new market inefficiency is dingers, baby. We’re all in on 15-10 bloodbaths.
On Saturday morning, Jeff Passan reported that Jake Odorizzi had agreed to a two-year deal (plus a player option for 2023) with the Houston Astros. This would appear to finally close the door on any substantial upgrades to the Jays’ starting rotation. Unless you count signing Rick Porcello or Cole Hamels as substantial upgrades, which, uh, I probably wouldn’t.
This also comes after the Jays have missed out on Kevin Gausman, Yu Darvish, Tomoyuki Sugano, James Paxton, Masahiro Tanaka, James Paxton, Trevor Bauer, and Taijuan Walker, while instead re-signing and trading for reclamation projects Robbie Ray and Steven Matz, respectively. While it’s debatable to what extent some of those candidates were realistic or beyond their control, Toronto not substantially addressing their greatest area of need is no doubt frustrating for a lot of Jays fans, even with how much of an unequivocal success the offseason has been.
Odorizzi by no means would have been free of question marks. Even if you write off his injury-riddled 2020 season, he walks a fair bit of hitters (which has already been an issue for the Jays) and his high flyball rate (45.4% for his career) would have been a little worrisome considering the Jays’ home ballparks are likely to be absolute bandboxes. With that said though, he’s limited contact and struck out enough batters to make him a solid middle-of-the-rotation guy who has consistently outperformed his peripherals (4.05 ERA compared to a 4.76 xFIP and 4.50 SIERA in 2017-19).
I think it’s fair to say he could’ve helped the team, but it looks like the Blue Jays are content (or at least resigned) to lean on a hopefully injury-free Hyun-Jin Ryu, hope that Nate Pearson can stay healthy and become the pitcher he’s got the potential to be, and have Pete Walker work his magic on Ray and Matz, with an eye on acquiring pitching at the trade deadline. If everything breaks the right way and everybody plays up to their potential? We’re looking at a pretty solid rotation. How likely is that to happen?
Hurt, by Johnny Cash, by Nine Inch Nails, by JAYSLAM
Lol god damn it.
As of right now, we don’t have an exact timeline as to when we might expect Pearson back. My (extremely non-informed) understanding is that it’s possible to play through a Grade 1 groin strain, but probably not worth risking further injury. So all signs would seem to point to Pearson coming back relatively soon.
However, seeing that Pearson still has to ramp up from spring training, any interruption to his schedule would likely put him behind schedule for Opening Day on April 1st. The Jays especially want to play it safe with Pearson, who has pitched a grand total of 112⅓ innings throughout the last three seasons in the majors and minors. There was likely to be some sort of limitarion placed on Pearson due to his injury history anyways, so this may be more so a matter of that playing time being limited earlier in the season rather than later. I’m inclined to believe that the later in the season Pearson can stay in the rotation the better, so let‘s just fixate on the silver lining for now.
It’s much less easy to see the bright side for Patrick Murphy, who was placed on the 60-day Injured List with a sprained AC joint in his shoulder. I had originally listed Murphy as someone in contention for a bullpen spot, not knowing that apparently Charlie Montoyo and Ross Atkins had commented on his injury before camp opened.
If my math is right, Murphy will have to wait until May 29 until he can be activated. Not a death blow by any means, but nonetheless frustrating for a guy who’s been relegated to a full-time reliever role by injuries already at this point in his career. Hopefully, he can come back strong. Even in just a six-inning sample size in 2020, his sinker/curve combination was dynamite coming out of the bullpen.
Death, Taxes, & Travis Bergen
Since the last heart-racing edition of The Scold, the Jays have completed a few peripheral 40-man moves, both involving some familiar faces. First, on February 28, Toronto acquired lefty reliever Travis Bergen from the Arizona Diamondbacks, who had previously designated him for assignment on February 26. Bergen replaces Patrick Murphy on the 40-man roster.
The Blue Jays had, of course, drafted Bergen in the seventh round of the 2015 draft. In December 2018, he was selected by the San Francisco Giants in the Rule 5 draft, making his big league debut in April 2019. The Giants returned him to Toronto in August, and he made a grand total of one appearance with the Jays in 2020 before promptly being shipped to the D-Backs for Robbie Ray and cash considerations. With Bergen coming back to the Jays organization, it’s safe to say that the Jays have come on top in that trade.
In 28 big league innings, Bergen has gotten absolutely crushed to the tune of a 46.6% hard hit rate leading to some ugly peripherals (5.22 xFIP, 4.97 SIERA) and he walks a fair bit of hitters, though he balances it out somewhat with a high strikeout rate. He will join the competition for a bullpen spot, though he does have options, and given how often he’s been passed around, he seems more so like a guy that the Jays like as a fringe, emergency option.
Speaking of passed around, Joel Payamps is back!
I can’t say I envy Payamps. He was DFA’d by the Diamondbacks in November, getting picked up by the Red Sox, who DFA’d him in February, getting picked up by the Blue Jays, who failed to pass him through waivers, getting him claimed once again by the Red Sox, who lost him off waivers to the Blue Jays AGAIN on March 6.
He’ll also find himself back in the competition for a bullpen spot, though given the fact that he has an option, he’s more likely to either hang around in Buffalo or, uh, get DFA’d again. Let the poor guy unpack his bags, man!
On his way off the 40-man to make room for Payamps is Jacob Waguespack, who was designated for assignment. Waguespack, acquired from the Phillies in exchange for Aaron Loup, was generally not much more than an inning-eating swingman who could get you through some low-leverage innings, but he had his moments for the Jays. His oeuvre includes an absolute beauty of a seven-inning shutout against the Dodgers on August 22, 2019, during which he somehow worked a four-pitch walk against Kenta Maeda.
Lastly, Breyvic Valera was reinstated from the Restricted List as expected on February 28. Shi Davidi has an article explaining why he wasn’t able to report to summer camp last year, essentially boiling down to COVID restrictions leaving him unable to leave Venezuela. Hopefully, he can make the most of his shot at making the Jays as a backup infielder this season. He’ll have a tough time beating out Joe Panik and Santiago Espinal, but it’s great to see that he’s competing after a lost 2020.
Rhéal Cormier
In sadder news, Canadian Baseball Hall of Famer Rhéal Cormier passed away from cancer on March 8. The Moncton-born lefty spent 16 seasons in MLB with the Cardinals, Red Sox, Expos, Phillies, and Reds from 1991 to 2007. He also played for Team Canada at the inaugural World Baseball Classic in 2006, as well as a couple of Olympic Games twenty years apart: Seoul in 1988 and Beijing in 2008.
Rowdy’s World + Dunking on J.P. Arencibia
Rowdy Tellez has been crushing it at spring training for whatever that’s worth, but I include him here because he was on Sportsnet Today talking about his struggles with anxiety and depression. As someone pulling hard for Rowdy to crush it this year, it’s a great listen!
And on a pettier note, the positive message on mental health sure feels more authentic than the one with the terrible former Jays catcher turned anti-masker eye candy for his far-right grifter girlfriend!
Buffalo Bound?
Jays president and CEO Mark Shapiro appeared on an episode this week of The Bob McCown Podcast. In it, he was pretty forthright about the long-term plans for the Jays’ home ballpark in 2021.
“We’re going to sell tickets in Buffalo.”
…
“What I've been pretty candid about is that at some point Dunedin becomes too hot and too rainy to stay here. We don't have a domed stadium, and frankly we have a minor league stadium. So, we're going to have to move from Dunedin.”
We talked about this a bit in the last edition of The Scold where I speculated that a move to Buffalo at some point may have been in the cards since the Triple-A Buffalo Bisons and Rochester Red Wings are never scheduled playing home games at the same time. This would seem to suggest that the Bisons would move to Rochester at some point, sharing Frontier Field with the Red Wings.
Of course, none of this is confirmed yet, and the Jays will play at least the first two home series of the season in Dunedin. But it would make sense, given how stormy the weather in Florida gets in the summer. If I was a betting man, I would bet that the Buffalo Blue Jays will make their triumphant return at some point in the early summer.
Now whether the Jays return to Toronto as they hope… I’m a whole lot less optimistic about that.
Fuck Mickey Callaway
On March 2, Brittany Ghiroli and Katie Strang of The Athletic published a follow-up piece to a story in which they reported on Angels’ pitching coach Mickey Callaway’s history of sexual harassment.
I highly recommend checking out the whole article. It’s an absolutely terrible look for basically any team that’s employed Callaway as a coach or as a manager.
Here’s one particularly damning section.
“Over the past month, The Athletic has interviewed 22 people who interacted with Callaway during his years in the Indians organization, including 12 current and former employees. They say that Callaway’s sexual indiscretions permeated the workplace to such an extent that it would have been difficult for top officials to not be aware of his behavior, and they push back against any assertion that Callaway’s actions, when made public by The Athletic last month, caught team executives or MLB by surprise.”
“I laughed out loud when I saw the quote (in The Athletic’s original report) that said it was the worst-kept secret in baseball, because it was,” said one Indians employee. “It was the worst-kept secret in the organization.”
In the story, the conduct of the Cleveland front office is especially egregious. Cleveland president Chris Antonetti, manager Terry Francona, and president Mike Chernoff apparently knew about some of the allegations and played a part in making them go away.
However, lest we forget that both Blue Jays president Mark Shapiro and general manager Ross Atkins were both big players in that Cleveland organization. Atkins, who served as both Cleveland’s director of player development and assistant general manager at various points, features in a few paragraphs.
“When Ross Atkins, now the general manager of the Toronto Blue Jays, interviewed Callaway in 2010, he said he originally thought of it as merely a favor to Callaway’s agent (a friend of Atkins’), according to a 2017 New York Post article. But Atkins was struck by Callaway’s “intellect and authenticity.”
“I’m not going to compete for him. I’m going to hire him,” Atkins said of hiring Callaway, then 33, for the Indians’ Low-A pitching coach job in Lake County.
…
“When Francona was hired as Indians manager in 2012, Atkins said he was one of multiple Indians executives who vouched for Callaway and urged Francona to meet with him.
“Sometimes when a guy walks in the room it just becomes crystal clear,” Atkins said in the Post article. “With Mickey, it is crystal clear. Some guys interview well, but his body of work also is now exceptional.””
I’m getting good mileage out of this Simpsons clip today.
Atkins addressed the situation on March 4th.
On McCown’s show, Shapiro, Cleveland’s president during Callaway’s tenure, said the following about the situation.
I guess (I’ll say I’m) bitterly disappointed to be any part of an organization that, especially leading one, that people were subjected to that type of behavior and that they didn't feel comfortable coming forward at that time. But recommitted to building an organization here that fosters equality and empowerment and diversity and open-mindedness. So, I guess, all I can do is continue to commit to — and know that I didn't know those things, John, I was completely unaware and unsure of that — so, I'm disappointed in myself, but I think, if anything, as a generation of people in the last year we have all been challenged to think differently about race, about equality, about inequity, and it's a reminder that we may think we're open minded, we may think we're progressive, we may think that we're liberal in our belief system, but we can never do enough to continue to strive to be better. This is just a reminder to me like, hey, I've got to be better. And we have to be better as an organization.
They’re certainly saying the right things now, at least. Overall though, I mostly wonder why they didn’t display this level of thoughtfulness with regards to Callaway all those years ago.
I’ll also include Baseball America writer Alexis Brudnicki’s Twitter thread, which exposes how this shitty culture perpetuates itself in baseball front offices.
Anthony Alford Is Good
On March 1, former Blue Jays prospect and current Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder hit a home run off Robbie Ray. Alford feels like someone who never got a break with the Jays, always getting hurt and underperforming in both Triple-A and MLB when healthy despite his amazing tools. He’s extremely easy to root for, and I hope he can become a star in Pittsburgh, where he should amass a ton of playing time, if healthy.
Jamie Campbell revealed this amazing tidbit about Alford after that game.
I hope he hits 500 home runs in 2021.