| 4/20 Adam Lind | (Tor- LF)  | Add | Free Agents | Blue Jays |  JP | ||
| 4/20 Frank Thomas | (Tor- DH)  | Drop | Waivers | Blue Jays | JP |
Ok it took me way too long to set that one up...but after that a week's worth of bad head to head performances Lind was down. And after a bad week from Stew, Wilkerson & Mench were brought up.
Now, I'm a huge fan of making tons of moves...but in fantasy baseball. You're not going to win games by doing this in real life. At least not with these players
The saddest thing over the past couple of days has been Joe Inglett starting in LF. Let me say that again - Joe Inglett is apparently higher on the Blue Jays depth chart than Shannon Stewart, and Adam Lind. Really? Inglett? Yeah, Inglett has a 718 OPS, but I mean, you have nothing to gain by using Inglett in LF. You don't win in this division by playing it safe. You win by taking risks that have huge rewards, such as playing Adam Lind.
While I'm on the topic of bitching at stupid moves - why the fuck was Scutaro DHing in the doubleheader last night? Why not put him at 2B and give Aaron Hill the game off or something? I realize Hill's the better defender, but you don't DH your bench players while playing your starters in a double header. If both of these guys are going to play anyways, you might as well DH Hill so that he gets his rest. I know Hill got the game off the other day, but give Hill or Rolen the DH spot in the doubleheader if you're going to use Scutaro.
Johnny mentioned an article about Lind being a 780 OPS LF yesterday, but I gotta say I don't agree with that. He's capable of a 280/340/460 line, and to me that's his floor. I don't think I'm being totally unreasonable here, as his minor league line is 318/380/509. That's nearly a 900 OPS (it's 889), so why would that person even suggest that Lind is pretty much a 780 OPS player? To me, that's bullshit.
I do agree that by showing no faith in him he has no trade value whatsoever. Considering some people think the season is over, or almost over, there's nothing to lose by giving Lind a shot in LF. The upside is that he could develop into an 800 OPS LF, who we'd pay about 390,000$ or whatever the fuck the minimum is. That's a hell of a lot better than paying Reed Johnson whatever the fuck he got, on top of too much money to Stewart, and the minimum to Butter Fingers Wilkerson. On top of that, we wouldn't need to spend shitloads of $$ or prospects acquiring a LF when we already have one for the next year or so. He'll move over to 1B or something when Snider comes...
Since I'm just ranting at this point, heres's another thing - this offense is just so one-dimensional. Right now, we're just a singles or walks club. There is 0 power, be it from doubles, and more importantly for HR's. I don't care about the BA with RISP - I mean, that wouldn't be a huge problem if say we were hitting 200 but at least we were hitting HR with guys on. Ok, it would be a problem, but you get what I'm saying. Can anybody remember the last time anybody hit a HR when we needed one? We had one the other day by Rolen, and beyond that I think the Stairs HR to win the game 1-0. But outside of that, we've had no HR. And that's what's killing this team. Back in 06/07 I remember Sportsnet showing some stat that 50% of the Jays runs came from HR. I know the team has changed a bit since then, but I'm sure that it's the same basic idea with the Jays.
More than anything, that's the reason they won't score. There isn't any pure speed - be it on the bases, or stealing speed. Rios steals the occasional base, sure, but not enough to be considered a base stealing threat. When he's on, you don't get worried like you would an Ichiro or a Crawford. The Jays are a station to station club. But if they're not showing power...well...this is what ends up happening. They get a couple singles, a couple walks, but never enough to really do any damage.
I know what I'm saying is pretty obvious, but if the Jays don't hit HR's, they're not going to win games. They got the OBP, they have a decent BA most of the time, but the Jays need the HR to score.
It's one thing for me to say it's the problem, but I'm not quite sure how to fix it. Giving Lind his reps in LF should give us better production, but Lind isn't really a HR guy. He's more like Overbay. Rolen is a guy who has a high slugging potential, but he's not a true HR guy either. Things' will get better when Overbay. Hill & Rios get out of their slumps, but even then none of them are really HR guys. It's like this team was built for the 3 run HR, except there aren't any true HR hitters.
Twitchy.
4 comments:
what's the defintion of a "HR guy"?
25-plus home runs? 30-plus?
what's your standard here?
I'm gonna fix what I said above...
30+ would probably be a safe bet.
Rolen's done it 3 times in his career, and beyond that there isn't a single player who's capable of doing that.
My point was more of a power outage thing, and that's why the Jays are struggling to score runs. I was just frustrated that nobody's driving the ball. Rios's GB% has jumped 10%, and the other players are all suffering pretty big drops in LD%. It's just frustrating to watch them hit weak little shots when they're capable of driving the ball for extra bases.
This team doesn't steal - not that there's anything wrong with that. They don't have pure speed, again nothing wrong with that. But because they lack speed, the only other significant way to drive guys in is via power. But they don't have much power in the lineup. Realistically, here's what we could expect for HR:
C - 8-12, 1B - 15-20, 2B - 8-18, SS - 3, 3B - 25, LF - 10-15 (depends who's playing), CF - 22 (Rios isn't a big HR guy), RF - 10-15 (don't know who's playing here long term since Rios ain't here), DH - 20
Now, if Wells is here you figure 20-28. The #'s above are messed up because of platoons, injuries, etc. But I mean you look at that and what jumps out at you is 1B, LF, RF, SS you're pretty below average.
This wouldn't be a huge issue on a team that had speed. But as I said, since the Jays don't have speed, they need to have power. They have OBP, which is terrific. But getting singles and doubles for this team isn't good enough.
You can see my point through the amount of DP's they've hit into. They get on base a lot, but they don't drive the ball for power. If they did, the ball wouldn't be on the ground, or it'd find the holes because it'd get past the fielders more often. But since they're not driving the ball into the OF, you get a bunch of slow runners grounding into a ton of DP.
Obviously they're not this bad. But until they hit for more power, it's not going to get any better.
Twitch.
The Jays have one multi-HR game since April 8th. That was the two-HR from Stairs against Tampa on April 23rd.
I just posted this same thing on Wilner's blog...
The AL team avg is 33 HRs, the Jays have 24. The AL SLG% is .395, the Jays’ is .364. The AL GIDP avg is 33, the Jays have 51!! The Jays are actually above average in SB by 3 (27). The OBP is coming back down to earth; the Jays are at .331 compared to the .330 average. The line drive BA is .684 compared to the .730 AL average even though the Jays have 145 LD hits, which is the exact AL avg for LD hits. The Jays bat .186 and have a .556 OPS with 2 out and RISP compared to .242 and .706 for the AL.
And those AL averages INCLUDE the Jays numbers. I was too lazy subtract the Jays numbers and redo the calcs for the 13 other teams. So the numbers are even worse than above.
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