Vladdy has been raking all year and has driven the offence of the Blue Jays, but what I have been more impressed with is how happy and how infectious this happiness has been to the rest of the team. He always has a smile on his face and what surprised me was that while I was watching a game over the weekend I heard that he has a separate hand shake for each team mate after they hit a home run. This is who he is. Fun Vladdy and the more he contributes to the team winning, the more fun he has.
His offensive numbers speak for themselves and he has done everything any fan could have asked for. The key to his success for me is how patient he has become at the plate. Coming into this year there were numerous occasions when Vladdy was swinging at balls way off the plate and seem like he did not have a specific approach to what he was doing during an at bat. All that has changed this year. He already has 30 walks which I believe translates into a 100 walk season which would have been uncalled for going into this season. His 13 home runs, 36 runs batted in and .331 batting average are all among the tops in the majors and I have been salivating to how good Vlad Jr. can be. I have had the utmost faith in his abilities since he laced up for the Blue Jays two years ago, so let's hope that he can keep it up. So far so good! The rest of the offence even without Springer and Teo for large chunks of the season has been very good as well. Semien has restored his near MVP form of 2019 and is actually on pace to have a better year than he did when he placed third in the voting for A.L MVP. He has been the perfect lead off hitter in the absence of Springer and Charlie has a difficult decision whenever he is healthy. Semien has also been a huge contributor to Bo being the best version of himself that he can be, especially in the field and that has shown up over the past month or so when Bo has been very solid and remedied his early problems fielding the ball during the first month of the season.
Teo and Grichuk have also come up big for the team's offence. Grichuk has cooled off since his hot start, but he is tied with Vladdy for the team lead in runs batted in which no one saw coming from him before the season. A lot of experts and fans actually saw the Jays trading Grichuk or him being the odd man out which made no sense to me since despite his inconsistencies, Grichuk is a solid major league ball player and can get hot with the best of them. Teo, when healthy this year has proven that he is an all star player and he has progressed leaps and bounds from the player he was when he started his Blue Jay career and that is awesome to see considering we traded a washed up Francisco Liriano to obtain him from the Astros.
As good as the offence has been, the pitching has been terrible. The team continues to have three major league pitchers in the starting rotation and even though the bullpen was a strong point during the first part of the season it has struggled over the past couple of weeks and something major has to be done if this team is to make the playoffs.
Ryu and Ray have been all stars, but the the case of characters that have toed the bump to start for the team this season has ranged from mediocre to unacceptable for a team that is supposed to be a playoff contender. Matz started off great, but he slacked off considerably since his 5-0 start and is lucky to last 6 innings in any given start. Stripling lacks the stuff and endurance to be a starting option and would be ideal in a long bullpen role. Kay and Pearson are not ready to start for a major league team and the the other options are nothing to sneeze at either. I am totally fine with having one starting rotation slot given to the opener role, but right now there is legitimately two with how bad Stripling has been. So what to do?
Apparently Berrios is out there and available and if that is the case management needs to do what it can to acquire his services or someone similar. Gurriel Jr. has started to heat up, so his name should start to show up in trade talks . I do not believe that anyone in the minors is a viable option to serve as a long term solution to the starting pitching woes either. Manoah has been amazing in Triple A, but to showcase him in the big leagues for a couple of starts is not the way to go unless there is an emergency type of situation and that is the last resort. That or Manoah throws 3 no hitters in a row and with baseball being nutty like that right now, who knows?
Overall, after two months of the season I am happy with how the team is performing, but the big boys in the A.L East are all hot right now and on winning streaks and with the Jays on a 5 game losing streak, something needs to be done and soon to change the momentum to how the team is playing. Nothing drastic, but something to show that management wants to get better. Hatch should be ready to join the team soon and that would be a nice addition to the starting pitching depth and Springer hopefully will be back soon and that would make an already potent offence that much better. GO JAYS GO!
Commentaires