Three Key Things: Houston, Toronto had some problems this week

Who had been outscored 19-2 in Houston this week on their Bingo card? How about being no-hit? What about being one-hit also? Yep, all three of these things happened in H-town this week, and hilariously enough, the Jays didn’t get swept.

We’re only seven games into the season and the discourse about the Blue Jays’ offence is already heating up, and it is a part of this edition of “Three Key Things.” 

I’m an optimistic Blue Jays fan, but there were several instances in this series where the offence proved to be frustrating. And yes, while it may be seven games in, I don’t think this is an overreaction given how many similarities can be drawn to last year’s team.

I won’t totally disregard the talent of Houston’s pitching; Framber Valdez and Cristian Javier are very well-equipped starters who have already established themselves as All-Star-calibre arms, and Ronel Blanco has clearly earned a spot in a big-league rotation. However, in the cases of Blanco and Valdez, the Blue Jays rarely made them sweat. Blanco averaged only 11.6 pitches per inning and Valdez averaged 11.8 pitches per inning, with both pitchers combined to have 8 innings throwing 10 pitches or less.

In the end, the second game of the series really encompassed a lot of what we saw in last year’s team. Stop me when this sounds familiar. A starting pitcher tosses a quality start (or better) for the Blue Jays, and Toronto was able to win the game only with a couple of timely hits from the offence. It was 8.0 innings of playoff-level pitching, and Davis Schneider gave the Jays a late 2-1 lead with a clutch two-run home run.

I’m not trying to take away from the pitching staff (I’ll get to them in my next point), but the problems on the offensive side of the ball still remain. Schneider’s home run and Justin Turner’s 3-for-3 night on Tuesday were the only bright spots on the offensive side of the ball in this series, as Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (1-for-11, BB), Daulton Varsho (1-for-7), Alejandro Kirk (0-for-10), and Kevin Kiermaier (0-for-9, BB) were among several hitters to post lacklustre stats for the week. Again, I’m an optimistic fan, but a no-hitter, a one-hitter, and four double-plays don’t live up to this team’s potential.

Bowden Francis was roughed up in his first career start and Chris Bassitt continued to live on the wrong end of the Yordan Alvarez experience, but Jose Berrios made the most out of his second start of the season. Berrios tossed six innings, allowing six hits, one run, three walks, and two strikeouts, which by no means served as his best start ever. Only three of his 27 slurves garnered a swing, something very abnormal for his best chase pitch, and his sinker velocity was down a couple of ticks.

Despite this, Berrios made his adjustments, manufactured outs in different ways, and still kept Toronto in the game. He left a little bit of a mess in the seventh inning, though, as Yimi Garcia was summoned into a first-and-third-with-no-outs scenario.  Garcia induced a shallow fly ball out as well as an infield pop out, and he struck out Victor Caratini to end the threat.

Tim Mayza and Chad Green threw up zeros in their high-leverage 8th and 9th innings, although they had some help from Houston’s atrocious base running. Clutch bullpen outings, comically, still fall in line with Toronto’s 2023 narrative, but these guys legitimately deserve a ton of credit for playing this kind of role in the win.

This has been a hot topic throughout the last 24 hours or so, and some, if not all, Blue Jays fans have given their take on this, so here goes mine.

This isn’t the first time that Schneider has been oddly left out of Toronto’s lineup. In 2023, he slashed .400/.516/.680 between August 4th (his debut) and August 12th, only to play in two games between then and August 26th. A couple of weeks later, John Schneider kept Davis out of the lineup against the Oakland A’s because of  “matchups and analytics”, despite the young slugger still possessing a .397/.514/.845 slash line entering that game.

I understand that this staff is process-driven and isn’t afraid to make the tough call, but beyond keeping one of the team’s best power hitters out of the lineup, it’s just a bad look for the team. Mere hours after hitting the game-winning home run off of *checks notes* Josh Hader, Schneider was rewarded with a night off rather than continuing to build confidence and consistency. J. Schneider told reporters that he spoke with Davis beforehand and I’m sure Davis handled this with class, but what else does this guy have to do to earn playing time?

It’s easy for me to say after the fact that the team being one-hit makes John Schneider’s decision-making look even worse, and Davis Schneider being in Wednesday’s game clearly wouldn’t have been the difference maker in an 8-0 rout. But there’s a principal that the Blue Jays are clearly missing; Gausman being pulled early in 2022’s Wild Card series, Schneider being left out of the lineup multiple times last year, and Berrios being pulled early in last year’s Wild Card series. While the numbers are important, riding the highs and lows and going with what you see should be up there as well.