Weekend Wrap: The Feelin’ Like 2015 Edition

7 years ago

Sunday’s loss in extra innings, which allowed the dumb Red Sox to avoid being swept, was certainly disappointing, but it couldn’t take away from what was a wholly terrific weekend of baseball at the Rogers Centre. It could have very easily gone the other way, of course. The Jays needed a clutch home run from Josh Donaldson off of Koji Uehara on Friday night, and a wild, incredible end to Saturday’s wild and incredible affair to best Craig Kimbrel on Saturday. But all that counts is what ends up in the Win-Loss column — which is an easy thing to say, I suppose, when you’re on the right end of a series like that.

The Red Sox have a terrific bullpen — must be nice! — at least at the very back end, and it felt huge that the Jays were able to get to them. Even if they only hung two losses on them over the course of the weekend, instead of the three they might have if they’d just been able to push across a late run across against scumbags like Heath Hembree, Robbie Ross, and Clay Buchholz, and so gained only a game in the standings, it felt like a statement of a series.

It also felt a whole lot like 2015 down at the Rogers Centre, with the roof open, the crowd buzzing, and the Jays finally starting to shake off the uncharacteristic home woes that have plagued them so far this season. Friday’s game was just the second Jays victory I’ve seen in person this season, after eight or nine trips to the Rogers Centre, and with the two wins they’ve moved to 11-14 at home overall — compared to 15-12 on the road.

Hopefully now that the dreary days of the closed dome are mostly behind us, that’s all going to change. That might sound crazy two weeks from now, if the club goes back to the losing ways that have characterized the season so far — and Sunday’s was certainly a perfect example of the poor RISP luck and eventual bullpen meltdowns that have featured prominently in so many of them — but from this vantage, everything is truly looking up.

Well… most things anyway.

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Performance Notes

This… uh… this can’t be good…

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Gavin Floyd’s numbers have crept up into not-so-hot territory after a run of outings somewhere on the scale between bad and disastrous. John Gibbons told reporters on Sunday that he thinks his (former?) defacto setup man has hit a bit of a wall, which is putting it mighty kindly. Over his last six outings, which span 6.2 innings, Floyd has given up seven hits, two walks, three homers, and seven runs. The underlying numbers still look OK, I guess, with only an outsized HR/FB% looking especially wonky. But a 9.45 ERA and 8.51 FIP? Woof.

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Drew Storen is bad. (I’m sorry, were you expecting analysis?)

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Since the start of the Twins series, Russell Martin has slashed .257/.316/.543 — good for a 132 wRC+. I’ll take that.

Breaking News!

The Jays’ beleaguered (read: not-very-fucking-good) bullpen has been burnished (hopefully) here on Monday by the addition of Ryan Tepera from Buffalo. In a somewhat surprising move, Jimmy Parades has been designated for assignment in order to clear room on the active roster for him. Parades just isn’t a good enough infield defender to have kept in the mix there, apparently, and the club seems to have felt like ditching him instead of optioning down the struggling Ryan Goins was the better move. Not sure I agree, though I understand their fears of having to spend a few innings with Parades or Devon Travis at shortstop, in the event that Darwin Barney were to go down with some kind of a mid-game injury. It’s just, while Parades certainly isn’t any kind of spectacular bat, he at least offers something off the bench, in terms of offence. And that’s the sort of thing this team needs, and Goins can’t provide. Splitting hairs, though, really.

Worth A Read…

John Lott is excellent, as usual, in his latest for Vice Sports, in which he talks about the Jays offence, its lack of luck, and what players — such as Josh Donaldson, who somewhat awesomely quotes Lee Trevino — are trying to do about it. The answer: not a whole lot, really. “On balls leaving the bat at 105 mph, Donaldson is 11-for 24 (.458) and Bautista 9-for-24 (.375). That’s bad luck,” he explains. “Meanwhile, Houston’s George Springer is 14-for-19 (.737) and Baltimore’s Mark Trumbo is 19-for-26 (.731) when they hit balls that hard.”

Over at Hum and Chuck, Joanna heads to Red Sox Nation’s Sons Of Sam Horn messageboard and delights in them having a sad after the Jays dramatically came back to win Saturday’s game.