On today’s episode of “Small Sample Size Theater”:
After one full day of baseball, the Major League leader in
[ul]
[li]Batting Average[/li][li]On Base Percentage[/li][li]Slugging Percentage, and [/li][li]Home Runs[/li][/ul]
is a pitcher.
It won’t last, but it’s fun to look at for a day or two.
Well, that was a heartbreaking Opening Day loss, but whaddya gonna do. Toronto should have scored six runs off Gausman, who did not have command of his pitches, but they didn’t have good at bats. 161 games to go, so there’s some hope.
The release of B.J. “Melvin” Upton is fascinating in that he was basically free, since San Diego was paying him, and they don’t have any other outfielders right now. Steve Pearce is sort of an outfielder, I guess, but has a wonky arm. The Jays have two first basemen and a DH, but only three true outfielders. They’re also carrying twelve pitchers despite having two off days in the first eight days of the season. It was very odd timing. Why was Upton carried on the roster until the day before the season started?
Like, I’m not a huge fan, but Upton was a useful player to platoon with Carrera or use as a defensive replacement. Upton crushed lefthanders last year, and he is a good defensive outfielder on a team with two bad outfielders. (I will grant you Bautista had a hell of a day yesterday in the field, but trust me, he usually stinks.) He also runs well. In other words, Upton is a legitimately useful bench player, in that while you may not want him out there every day. there are several specific roles he does very, very well.
And Bronson Arroyo is the 5th starter? Heard he was consistently around 83-84mph in spring.
He’s definitely a good defensive player. I wonder about that form against lefties, though. His platoon splits were certainly remarkable last year, but it’s the first year in his career that Upton had such a strong performance against left-handed pitching. He’s had some other years where his numbers against lefties were a bit better, but never the sort of massive improvement that he showed against them in 2016.
Given that the Padres are paying so much of his salary, though, you’d think it would be worth it for Toronto to give him a bit of time, to see if he could carry that form against lefties through to this year.
I’ve seen speculation that Upton may have been unhappy at the prospect of playing in a platoon. There’s no facts supporting that, just speculation based on the fact that releasing him when he goes for so cheap and seems to fill a need doesn’t make a lot of sense.
The other possibility is that he just hit so badly for the Jays that Gibbons is sick of the guy.
And Uncle Vin was celebrating Opening Day by getting the car washed before going for mothballs..
…that would be in the running to only finish 20 games under .500.
MLB schedules most teams an off day after opening day in case opening day is rained out. The White Sox were rained out last night, so they got open today in a make up game in the afternoon. Attendance is pathetic.
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Well, he doesn’t have to hit THAT well to be useful. An OPS 150 points lower than what he did would be fine for a guy you can also use to spell Bautista in right late in close games, pinch run with, and just have handy if someone gets hurt since otherwise you’ve got to have an infielder play the outfield.
The theory that he simply did not want to be a part time player is a logical one, but if Upton thinks a lot of teams are lining up for his services he’s in for a rude surprise. I just am always leery of what seem to be ill-planned decisions; if Upton was good enough to be on the team on March 31, why wasn’t he good enough on April 2? What changed? During the exhibition game in Montreal he hit a home run; is that supposed to make you like him LESS?
The other factor here is that Ryan Goins was out of options, so they didn’t want to lose him. I like Ryan, but objectively he has very little role on this team unless someone is injured (Granted, Devon Travis is usually injured.) Goins is a second baseman and a light hitting one. He can’t hit well enough to be used as a pinch hitter or to platoon for anyone. He’s a good defensive player, but so is Darwin Barney, and you don’t need two guys to be glove men at the same position.
In other words, the roster just doesn’t look well planned.
I agree that if the decision came down to Goins or Upton, keeping Goins doesn’t make a lot of sense. Heck, it’s not like all-glove, no-bat middle infielders are really all that hard to find. Even if he did get claimed and Travis or Tulo got injured, would it really be that expensive to acquire another Barney/Pennington/Goins-type player to fill in via trade?
Stephen Piscotty gets hit three times in one inning.
They say for good players, the ball finds you.
By that measure, Piscotty is headed for the HoF. 
I mean, at some point you start to take it personal.
Chris Sale makes his debut for Boston in just over 7 hours. Really looking forward to that.
What do you all think of the new rule eliminating the four pitch intentional walk?
It is stupid. However:
The idea behind the rule is to save time and speed up the game. But as has been pointed out, in MLB there’s less than one intentional walk every two games. The difference between a four-pitch IBB and an automatic one will be, what? Twenty seconds, maybe less? So it really doesn’t solve a problem, but then it also won’t be in your face very often by virtue of the same fact that means it won’t solve the problem.
Rob Manfred was at the Cubs/Cardinals game where the first ever no-pitch IBB was issued. He said to the broadcast crew what I feared was true. The new IBB rule is not designed to save time. Of course it won’t, as **RickJay **points out. It’s designed to let the players and fans know that this is The Direction we’re going. Get used to these types of things because there is more to come.
Stupid beyond measure. Problem: Games are getting too long. Cause: Too many commercials between innings. Solution: Shorten every other game by about 10-20 seconds by eliminating intentional walks. Result: More commercials to make up for the time “saved” by eliminating the intentional walks.
Two games in, and my Mets’ curious policy of keeping the guy who might be the second-best hitter in the franchise stapled to the bench makes no more sense than it did two games ago. Given the level of the pitching on this team, giving up free offense like this is infuriating.
Indians are 3-0 (Texas 0-3) after three late-inning comebacks. I don’t know if i can handle 159 more of these white-knucklers. We need a blowout.
And the Mariners are 0-3. Sigh. Between, this, and the news that the Seahawks are shopping Sherman around the league, and Lynch is returning to football as a Raider, it’s been a disappointing week for Seattle fans.
Any thoughts on Fox’s analyst, A. J. Pierzynski?
He seems to know, remember a great deal, and not concerned about talking too much.
Some of his observations are rather profound. At least for me.