Jose Bautista, Utility Player

Title says it all.

Actually, that's what it says on Wikipedia. Seriously. The MLB HR leader at the end of July, with 30. Hopefully, whoever wrote that meant "utility player" in the sense that he can play multiple positions, not in the sense that he was mostly a journeyman bench player for most of his career.

But who the heck is this guy? I don't think anyone knows for sure, probably not even Jose himself. This is a guy who I was somewhat upset to see traded for Robinzon Diaz, who I thought was a pretty good catching prospect. This is a guy who came over in August 2008 from Pittsburgh and immediately (and darkly humorously) became the Blue Jays' HR leader with 12. This is a guy whose best asset at the time was his ability to change facial hair four times a week.

Not anymore. I remember watching this guy and cringing when he first came over because he looked like he was wildly (and unsuccessfully) swinging for the fences EVERY SINGLE PITCH. 0-2 count when leading off the third inning? Swing wildly for the fences. Down by 3 runs with bases empty in 9th inning? Swing for the fences. Using a fungo to hit ground balls to infielders during practice? Swing for the fences.

In 2009, his stupid-looking swing continued, and although he hit well against lefties, he sucked against right-handers, posting OPS's of .919 and .664, respectively. And then he went off in the last month and crushed 10 home runs. That put a few thoughts in my head. First, I didn't mind the trade so much anymore because Robinzon Diaz hadn't become much of anything. Second, I thought his versatility could mean something to the team, and I thought the sudden showing of power might be useful off the bench in 2010. I really didn't want to see him non-tendered, as many people thought he might be.

When talk came out of him becoming a regular, I was dumfounded. Most pitchers are right-handed, and he's proven that he can't hit righties at all. Then talk that Cito wanted him in the leadoff role? Shit. As I let that idea sit, however, I started warming up to it. I was thinking that, maybe, in the leadoff role, he might learn to stop swinging for the fences on every single pitch and try to make solid contact more. And, just as they let Marco Scutaro hit in the leadoff spot for a year (which netted them two high draft picks), I thought maybe the same could be done with Bautista, or he could be traded for a nice prospect at the deadline.

I didn't see this coming, however. Apparently, what has happened to Bautista boils down to just two things, which he mentions every time he's interviewed.

1. Regular playing time. Makes sense; it worked for Marco Scutaro, utility player extraordinaire, didn't it?

2. "Getting started earlier". Bautista has said that getting ready to swing the bat ahead of time has helped him. And, what do you know, his stupid wild-looking swing is gone.

So, what does this mean? I, for one, was not at all convinced that he was for real when he started off strong this year. He was available for at least a month on the waiver wires in each of my four fantasy leagues and I passed every time. I knew that he had the potential to hit 15-20 HR with regular playing time, but not 45, which he's actually on pace to exceed. Ridiculous.

He's still under control for another year and I do believe that the Jays have a chance of competing next year, so I'm in no rush to trade him. I would be disappointed if he didn't post another OBP north of .350 next year with 25 bombs, and any team can use that from a guy who can play so many positions. But what if the best possible deal comes along now?

All I can say is that I've never felt so confident in the Blue Jays' GM that the right move will be made. If two top prospects can be had for Bautista, I wouldn't be against a deal. Anything less, and I don't see Anthopoulos giving up on the guy.

Whatever happens, Bautista has been one of many bright spots on this season. From his massive home runs to his laser beam shots that I hope no one tried to catch bare-handed, to his rocket for a right arm, he's living proof that a team can be fun and exciting to follow even when buried beneath the filthy excess of the American League East.

Lifting Tallet

Yeah, I can't say I didn't see that coming. When Cito leaves his starter in there until his pitch count runs dry or he gets really deep into trouble, I don't think that's a huge deal. There probably is something to be said for developing confidence and an ability to "battle". But in game 2 of the Detroit double-header, the starter, Jesse Litsch, had been pulled after 5.1 good innings and replaced with mop-up reliever BBrian Tallet. That move was perfectly fine, considering the fact that they only had Tallet, Frasor, Janssen and Purcey available that game.

Tallet did an OK job getting out of the inning, allowing one of the 2 runners he inherited to score and getting the last two outs of the inning. Miraculously, he also breezed through the 7th without giving up a baserunner. With a 4-2 lead going into the 8th and three relievers left in the pen, that would have been a great time to get the innings-eater out of there in favour of, um, a good pitcher. Sure, you don't want to have to use two pitchers in the 8th and 9th and go into extras with just one guy left who can go 2, maybe 3 innings at most. What's the probability of a 2-run game going into the 12th inning though? Besides, if that was your worry, then why not bring in Janssen or Purcey to finish the 6th and 7th, then have the other one do the 8th and 9th in combination with Frasor? That way you have Tallet if you think the game will go into the 14th inning.

Gaston clearly blew this one. BBrian Tallet's ERA now sits at 6.27 (a number lowered by his several starts this year). And Jason Frasor's inability to help Tallet out of his mini-jam couldn't have helped his trade value, but that's another story.

Uninspiring

When was the last time we had a closer this uninspiring? A huge, 6'6", 250+ lbs. guy with glasses staring down batters in the ninth inning who's able to intimidate the heck out of other grown men. For about 5 seconds, which is the amount of time before he throws his first warm-up pitch and they realize he throws like a girl.

Sorry, that was rude. No self-respecting girl playing professional baseball would go about their business walking more than a batter every two innings. No self-respecting baseball player, PERIOD, goes and shows up his manager on the mound after getting pulled for walking THREE BALTIMORE ORIOLES in less than an inning. Kevin Gregg. He of the triple-G, double-B, full-of-suck, needs-to-be-traded... thing. He does that. And that's only half of why he's the least inspiring closer I can remember.

Giving BJ Ryan $47MM was moronic. It was, by far, JP Ricciardi's stupidest move. Even if he had stayed healthy all five years, stayed as unsustainably dominant for all five years, he would have pitched 350 innings at most. And although we knew he'd never stay that good and would quickly turn into the waste of money that he was, he at least got people excited for a time, what with his stupid-looking delivery and sometimes-unhittable sliders. Downs after him was a trustable closer because of his groundball tendencies and good walk-rates. Heck, Frasor had that split-fingered changeup going for a while, and even Accardo and Miguel Batista had pretty dirty splitters that could be counted on once in a while.

Gregg? Well, pretty much the only thing you can say about him is he should have a decent chance of getting a double play every time he toes the rubber. Because he's always walking people or leaving hittable pitches up in the zone that even bad hitters will jump all over for singles. And what's his out pitch? It seems like he can't even decide how he wants to get guys out, let alone hit his spots once he's made his pitch selection. He throws (at least) a cutter, 4-seamer, 2-seamer, a curveball, a splitter, and a slider. I'm pretty sure I've never seen a ball with changeup velocity + movement, so I'm not sure if he's thrown that this year, but still: 6 different pitches, all of which he can't consistently throw for strikes or rely on to fool batters to strike them out.

At least he ended the game quickly enough tonight, even if it was by letting the lowly KC Royals whack him around for 3 hits and have a guy on first distract him into a 4-pitch walk.

He's Breaking Unwritten Rules!

If you had told me before the season that the Blue Jays would be leading the league in home runs for most of the year, I'd have said, "Sure, why not?". If you had told me at the same time that they'd also go without a grand slam for the first half and have their salami-less streak ended by Yunel Escobar, then -

Well, anyways, I'm glad we got this guy and all, even with the possible headcase baggage, but I'm really starting to get worried about him. He bunts the pitch he sees in a Jays uniform - a clear no-no under Cito - and then bunts again two days later?! And then decides to end his season-long homerless drought by depriving all of his longer-tenured teammates, including the MLB leader in home runs, of the opportunity to hit the team's first grand slam this year? Way out of line. Next thing you know, he'll be hitting for average and drawing walks, becoming a positive OBP force at the top of the lineup.

He was kicked off of the Braves for "not playing like a Brave", whatever the heck that means. Well, he's not playing like a Blue Jay right now. He's overstayed his welcome. Good thing there's still two weeks until the trade deadline.

Misdirected Anger

Kevin Gregg is becoming a tired act with Jays fans has been getting on our nerves for a while now sucks. I know, he's third in the AL in saves, or whatever, but clean innings aren't his thing, which always makes people nervous. He was (inexplicably) incredible in April, barely walking anybody, but BBecame a BBad pitcher not too long after that. That reached its climax in that disgusting game against the Rays, in which he nibbled and nibbled, walking five(!) guys and blowing the game in spectacular fashion. Then he blew up at the ump, even though he was clearly sucking all on his own.

Tonight? Almost the same. Three walks in the ninth before being pulled by Cito while the Jays were still up. This time, it looked to me that Gregg didn't have a remotely fair strikezone (Camp, who took over, got a strike call on a pitch much farther outside than pitches Gregg didn't get), but I guess he was afraid of getting ejected again. I'm glad he didn't yell at the umpire this time, as having a reputation for being a hothead can never help you in any way, but having words for your manager after being pulled for sucking? That's weak.

Good for Cito too. Or is that him? The Manager used three pitchers in the 8th and had Camp ready if Downs hadn't gotten a DP to end the inning. Matchups, eh? I thought keeping your players' confidence up was the key to success? In any case, you can't argue with pulling Gregg in that spot. He now has a very unprofessional-looking 21 walks in just 36 innings. That's mopup man stuff right there, not closer material by any means.

For those of us sick of Gregg, we won't have to wait long. The deadline is only 2 weeks away, and with Gregg slated to be a Type B free agent in the offseason (and a low-ish salary), there's got to be some desperate team willing to toss us a few prospects for him. He also has some wacky options tied onto that contract of him for 1 or 2 years at over $4MM a season. Maybe some special GM will see those as having some value. I'm quite excited to see what guys like Purcey and Roenicke can do in high-leverage situations with some of our expiring relievers heading out the door in the next two weeks. Hopefully Gregg is one of them, because that's one walk I don't mind seeing Gregg doing.

What the Hill?

Last year, Blue Jays fans were all wondering what the heck was up with Wells and Rios. They had come off of decent although unspectacular 2008 seasons with a fair recent history of being stars. For all of the first half, I was hoping that they'd snap out of it, that they would join guys like Hill and Lind (who were mashing opposing pitchers like boiled potatoes) and create a very deep, potent offence.

Never happened. Rios ended up being given away for free to the White Sox, unloading the remaining $60MM of his long contract from the Jays' books. He ended up sucking harder than ever in the Windy City, posting an OPS of .530 (you read that right). Although I was pissed as heck at Ricciardi for giving up so quickly on a young star, seeing Rios take his "I don't give a f&ck" act to Chicago and produce slightly less than a cornfield irrigated with seawater alleviated some of that annoyance.

Wells, meanwhile, continued to suck in Toronto. I remember going to a game in September and yelling at him to not suck next year (this year) and got a lot of confused looks from fans around me. I still stand by what I said (it's not like I was booing him pointlessly or insulting his family), and hey, maybe he listened. He hasn't sucked this year. Neither has Rios, for that matter. In fact, Rios has probably been one of 2010's most dangerous hitters. I'm not even going to bother checking on his stats because that will just confirm all of our suspicions that dumping him FOR NOTHING was an idiotic idea. Especially when they were offered prospects for Rios at the deadline. And now they've traded for another young player with similar mental issues as Rios. But I digress.

I was wondering when Rios and Wells were stinking it up last year if this kind of thing could ever happen to Hill and Lind. People around me were telling me that was impossible; their mental game is much stronger. But look at Wells - he's always managed to keep a straight head and play hard, even if it didn't look like he was doing it last year. The thing is, hitting a baseball is such a difficult task that if one little thing goes wrong, everything can go wrong. If your mechanics are off by an unnoticeable sliver of a toenail, a would-be line drive can turn into a harmless grounder. Even worse: an unlucky draft of wind that blows the ball down by 1 cm before it makes contact with the bat can do the same thing, and there's nothing you can do about that. All you can hope for is that, over time, it all evens out. You expect to get a stray draft to blow the ball just onto the barrel of the bat just as often as it will knock it off.

Sounds stupid, doesn't it? Well, maybe not. Think about it - his .180 BABIP is the lowest in the majors, driven largely by a 9.2% line-drive rate (less than half his career 19%). His struggles have admittedly made him more prone to chasing pitches, swinging at 32.4% of pitches out of the zone, compared to 22.9% in his career. But he's still made contact overall 84.4% of the time, which is exactly his career average. This has generated a 14.6% K rate, which is about the same as his 14.1% in his career. Moreover, he has walked at a career high 8.9%.

I'll argue also that he has been ridiculously unlucky on balls he has hit hard. If you've been watching, you'd have noticed a lot of hard-hit ground balls and liners of his have been turned into outs. The worst thing about this is a caught line drive is much more likely to be considered a flyball than one that drops in. I don't have the statistics to back it up, but I cannot believe for a moment that he's hitting line drives 9% of the time. A lot of balls that I am certain would have been scored line drives had they been in the gaps have been snared by outfielders, making them look like simple flyballs. Finally, it seems that he's hit a ton of balls just foul down the lines. With a little more luck, his line drives in play will fall in front of outfielders or between them, and his balls down the line will be just fair. Had he been a little luckier, his line drive rate this year could have easily been 15% or so. Logically, that would likely have made him press a little less and perhaps swing at fewer bad pitches.

Maybe I'm going down a slippery slope with this argument. Fact is, it seems to me that Hill has been just barely missing a lot of pitches or barely missing spots to drop his hits in. When his luck picks up a little, you can be sure he'll be back to his former self. Although their struggles were somewhat different, it happened to Rios and Wells after an atrocious 2009 for both of them.

I'm predicting that Hill will put up a .290/.350/.480 line in the second half. If his luck takes a HUGE correction, making up for his first half, that could go to .350/.420/.580 at best. But that's the gambler's fallacy, if I'm not mistaken, so I'll stick with the first line.

The Marco Scutaro Trade

On Novemeber 18, 2007, The Oakland A's sent Marco Scutaro to the Toronto Blue Jays in exchange for Minor League pitchers Graham Godfrey (34th rd, 2006) and Kristian Bell (11th rd, 2004). Scutaro was brought in to be a utility man, having proven that he can play 2nd base and 3rd base relatively well and provide adequate defence at shortstop and left field.

He had an OK 2008, filling in for various injuries at all infield positions and putting up a mediocre OPS+ of 88. Fine, I thought. This is a decent utility guy who can probably have a good career filling in every once in a while. You can imagine how confused I was, then, when he was announced to be the Jays' starting shortstop and leadoff hitter in 2009.

Boy, was I ever wrong. Not only had I failed to realize that he was well liked by fielding metrics, but he managed a 3.1 WAR on the strength of his good fielding. And then came his career year at the plate, in which he walked at a 13.2% clip and posted 111 OPS+, although his fielding metrics went down considerably. He was entertaining to watch (notably stealing second base on his own walk against Joe Blanton in Philadelphia) and quickly became a fan favourite, with good reason. Best of all, he attained type A free agent status.

...

When Alex Anthopoulos signed John McDonald for 2 years at $1.5MM each year, I thought for sure he'd become the Jays' primary shortstop in this "building" season. A few days later, as you may recall, he also inked Alex Gonzalez (who shares the same name as my all-time favourite Blue Jay) for a $2.75, 1-year deal with a team option for $2.5MM. I didn't really like it but didn't think much of it. Another all-glove, no-bat shortstop for a year, probably won't pick up the option. And it's not my $2MM+, so no big deal. Then I thought of the possibility that Anthopoulos pulled Gonzalez before the Red Sox could re-sign him, as they had thought quite highly of him as a player, having traded for him in 2009. Could it have forced the Red Sox to, in turn, sign Scutaro? Maybe. In any case, that gave the Jays the #34 (Aaron Sanchez) and #80 (Justin Nicolino) picks in the 2010 Amateur Draft. Young, high-upside pitchers.

And then Gonzalez started to hit lots of home runs. By the All-Star Break, he led all AL shortstops with a 112 OPS+, somehow failing to make the All-Star Game. It's too bad, because that would be the last chance Jays fans would have had to see him in a Jays uniform.

...

So now Toronto's left with Yunel Escobar, a cheap, talented 27-year-old shortstop under team control until 2013, and Jo-Jo Reyes, a once-highly-considered prospect who has simply stunk at the MLB level so far. A reclamation project of sorts.

But let's focus on Escobar. This is a guy who the Braves probably wouldn't have traded for Travis Snider three months ago. Young shortstops with career OBPs of .370 with speed, growing power and elite defence don't grow on trees, after all. The fact that he wasn't liked in Atlanta has been spun a number of different ways. Some insist that it is a lack of hustle and too much showboating that made him lose favour with management. Others insist that he just never felt comfortable in Atlanta, and maybe a change of scenery will do him good. The truth, as it almost always is, is most likely somewhere in the middle. Escobar didn't learn much English, which clearly distanced him from his teammates and the media, as well as American culture. But when several sources criticize someone's attitude, it's unlikely that it's being fabricated. This is reminiscent of the Rios scenario with the Jays last year, and the Jays are hopeful that a change will wake him up as well as let him settle down.

Oh yeah, the Jays traded 5'7" Tim Collins of the 15+K/9 ratio and SS Tyler Pastornicky to the Braves. Potentially good players, but you have to give talent to get it.

...

It's a bit of a stretch to say that Graham Godfrey and Kristian Bell, along with Collins and Pastornicky were traded for Yunel Escobar, Jo-Jo Reyes, Justin Nicolino and Aaron Sanchez. But the fact is, despite all that's been made of the Jays' shortstop conundrum of late, all that has turned around, starting with Marco Scutaro's great performance in 2009. After the Jays and Red Sox essentially traded shortstops in the offseason, the Jays won out, receiving a huge first half from Gonzalez (and 2 young drafted pitchers) and spinning that into potentially a great player for the longer term. And the salaries in all of that? Scutaro earned $2.65MM in his 2 years in Toronto, and Alex Gonzalez about $1.5MM in his half season. That adds up to about two fifths of what they're paying B.J. Ryan this year.