Sad Sac Series

0:00It's at the letters for Wednesdays of September 9th, 2026. Arton's Welling here, a producer is Christian Ryan. Thanks so much for listening. Ben is not here. Him and I are in very different places and very different time zones and have very different schedules right now. So we honestly just have not been able to link up and then when we do link up, we end up spend our wheels for like two hours trying to get hotel Wi-Fi to cooperate and restarting and restarting recordings and putting Christian through hell. So we're not going to do that right now. It occurs to me that you're probably not listening to this on Wednesdays of September 9th, wherever you are. It's actually probably well into the evening right now. It's 414 right now, Pacific time and I am at the Sacramento International Airport. The honestly pretty lovely little well renovated, well lit, lots of room and comfortable seating and outlets, Sacramento International Airport.

1:09I'm waiting the flight to Vancouver where I will then catch another flight to Toronto ahead of this weekend's series against the Orioles, which I will be covering for SportsNet. So I figured I would just sit down here and get some thoughts about the Blue Jays and give you a podcast and try to relate a little bit of what I saw this week in Sacramento at Sutter Health Field, the Minor League Ballpark, where the poor athletics have to play their home games all year. So if you hear anything in the background, that is because I'm literally in the corner of an airport. It was not that busy looking around. It's quite nice. It's Starbucks. It's taking every fiber of my being not to have a coffee right now. My body clock is already messed up enough. The last thing I need is to guzzle a whole bunch of caffeine, but just know I desperately desperately want to. Let's talk about the game that I just witnessed here on Wednesday, 12 o'clock PM first pitch at a 38 degrees Sutter Health Park in the Blue Jays Lose to nothing.

2:24It's bad. It's not good. It is a very difficult loss to have right now at this point of the season. No good trouble on ideal poor you name it. Lujays have so few games left and they are all so important and you have an opportunity to win a series against the worst pitching staff in baseball, which is throwing a bullpen day with a bunch of guys you've never heard of. An athletics team that went 13 and 39 in July and August 13 and 39, a team with 12 players on the IL, including six that took the field for them on opening day. Like if somebody said test time name a bunch of athletics, you would probably name like Shay Langleyers and Nick Hertz and Jacob Wilson and Brent Rucker and Tyler Sodistrom and Luis Severino. Yeah, all those guys, they're all out there. None of them available for this series.

3:26You would probably have a hard time naming the guys who are on the athletics right now. Brian's servant started behind the plate for the athletics on Wednesday. So not great, not what you want if you're a Blue Jays fan. But that's the way it went and like the athletics, they quote unquote opened with Brady Brasso. And I say quote unquote opened because Brasso ends up actually going four innings here because he's doing so well. And because the Blue Jays playing to type had trouble with a with a left handed pitcher. The Blue Jays this year have a 658 OPS against left handed pitching. That was entering this game. So that's that's worse now, but that 658 OPS entering Wednesday was the second worst in MLB this year to Seattle Mariners. So Brasso, Paven success carving just set down the Blue Jays with very quick play appearances. And Mark Cotsay says, yeah, I'm going to push him as far as you can go.

4:27I'm running a bullpen day, but I would love it if I don't have to throw a bunch of dudes. I don't necessarily trust in middle innings or in like the third and fourth inning with Brasso only going to. So yeah, it ends up getting four out of Brasso and 68 pitches. I mean, I don't know. That's just like basically a start and not really an open or anymore. I think you've crossed the threshold at that point. And Brasso ends up allowing just three hits two walks striking out four. Blue Jays don't score run. And the biggest issue for the Blue Jays in this game was they were just sped up at the plate. Like they were just jumpy. They were too trigger happy. They were chasing Brasso around the zone. John Schneider mentioned after the game, like too many quick play appearances. And I would agree with them. I think the quality of play appearance just was not there for the Blue Jays on Wednesday. They make nine outs in play appearances that lasted only two pitches or fewer. That's a third of your outs in the game. So that's not what you want.

5:27It must be said. The Blue Jays did hit some balls hard in this game. Brett Bateman hit a ball probably about as hard as he could hit a ball. I just hit it right at short. 800 expected batting average out. All around the Kirk lined one. God on the screws hit it hard right at second. 640 expected batting average out. George Springer pinch hits. It's a ball of 396 feet that doesn't leave the yard. 730 expected batting average. A home or in three of 30 ball parks out. That kind of day for the Blue Jays. Even when they did make good contact, just things were not going their way. But that hard contact was just too little and too far between. There was just too much to a ball that were either they got under or they just got off the ends of their bats, too many ground balls. And really just a very forgettable performance from Vladimir Grouchy near. And that's why and stop me if I've said that before this season.

6:27But I mean, he had some opportunities here. He worked a walk in his first played appearance and it's always good when Vlad takes a walk early because I think it just sort of sets the tone for his day. It means he's making good swing decisions. It means he's seen pitches well. It means he's being patient and selective and doing the things they need to do to get to the pitches that he can drive. And I mean, his next time up to, I mean, he takes a tough pitch outside, doesn't lunge at it, doesn't chase it, takes it for a ball. And then what happens is he's 1-0 and grounds out to second base with the runner on first 2-0. And then, maybe after that, this is the one that you probably remember. It's the fifth inning. And I believe it was Bateman and Lucas who both reached a Bateman double and Lucas single. Maybe if I'm remembering correctly, anyways, runners on the corners. One out, fifth inning, Vlad's now facing Scott Bluitt, first pitch of a play appearance.

7:28I mean, the first pitch, Vlad sees. It's a cutter away. And it's something that, like in that situation, look, Vlad's a really good hitter. He could stay with that pitch and drive it the other way. He's got power to all fields. He could do things like that. But in that situation, you want him just dialed in on something middle in that he can pull. Like you want him thinking left center, left field over the wall. You want him to force Bluitt to throw that pitch. And I mean, this is the pitch. I'm looking at it right now. It's borderline. It's a way. It's on the back probably a strike, but just a strike like some of the ball is outside the zone and some of it is inside the zone. Oh, no, not a good swing decision. You got to take that pitch. You got to let that go. You'd rather be o and one rather than o four one, as they say. And that actually made him o for two because of when the A B took place. But anyway, Vlad swings at it, tops it off the end of the bat, ends up hitting the ground

8:29ball right back to Bluitt, who goes one, four, three, double play. And that was really just the Blue J's best opportunity all afternoon. Vlad came back up in the eighth, got to a two two count against Hogan Harris, who then hangs him a nice, nice curveball like the kind of pitch that Vlad actually should be swinging at curveball elevated pretty much almost middle middle, just a really good spot for Vlad to turn on it and pull it and hit it really hard. And he ends up with a pretty routine fly ball to left field that comes off his bat at only 96 miles per hour. And that's your Blue J's right there is just flat, a Mirager, a junior, not being flat, a Mirager, a junior. It's the biggest driver of the results that the Blue J's have had. We can pick at the corners of this thing and trust me, we will. We can talk about bolt end deployments and we can talk about batting orders. And is Ernie playing too much?

9:31Is Josh Smith not playing enough like are the Blue J's asking too much of Mason Fluardia that using Spencer Miles optimally, who's going to be the four and five starter for this team? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we can major in those minors, but the biggest reason why this Blue J season has gone the way that it's gone is Vlad Mirager, a junior, not being flat Mirager, a junior. If he was something even approaching, like just an average season, like if you take the average flat season over the beginning of his career entering this year, if you even just get that, you're in a flat position without a doubt. And you probably won this game because I think that even just the average Vladimir, Grego junior does better with the opportunities that he had in this game. And particularly against Hogan Harris there with the pitch that he had to really do damage against. So so much more to say about it. And that I mean, we've been watching it all year. There was a point in time not that long ago where I was like, ooh, the swing decisions

10:32are nice. He's not chasing. He's making that really hard contact in the air. He's making it to all fields. He looks coughed in the box and I thought, okay, here it comes. Like this is it. This is the breakouts cup. And like I'm seeing all the indicators that I look for, all that stuff under the hood that tells me that results are about to follow. Like look at the X-Wobas is up. Everything's trending in the right direction up arrow. I'm like, yep, here he goes, shoot my shot. He's going to come out of it right here. This is what's going to happen. And Lucy with football just pulled it right out. And here we are. So that's not great. But all that said, I do think you have to consider the circumstances of this game. And I know what you're going to say are near making excuses for the Blue Jays. One of this is an excuse. I just like crushed their performance for the first however many minutes of this that I've been going for. So just I don't know, listen to that again if you just want to be depressed.

11:34But I do think that it's important to consider the circumstances here of this particular game on Wednesday in Sacramento. It's the Blue Jays 9th game in 9 days. It's the end of a three city three time zone road trip. And that is exhausting travel. Every game on this trip started at a different time. So your body clock is completely thrown off. Like trust me, I'm on this road trip. I'm living it too. Like I'm exhausted. I don't know where I am or who I am or what day it is or what time it is. Like my sleep's all messed up. I can only imagine what's like for the players. It's like the hottest road trip of all time. I don't know what made it into the last episode with just like the ridiculousness we went through with recording. But like Kansas City was literally a historically hot series. And then here on Wednesday, it was like I didn't actually look at what it ended up getting to, but it was forecast to be 38 degrees Celsius. And just subjectively being out there, it was freaking hot.

12:37I was sweating a lot. It was absolutely gross out there. So it's just not an optimal circumstance to be competing athletically. And never mind the fact is day game after night game, the 12 o'clock PM start, the atmosphere at Sartre Health Ballpark, I mean extreme spring training vibes. Probably more staff in there than spectators. Just absolutely no energy in the building. You're hearing people's conversations just all around the ballpark. So if there's one heckler, if there's one guy who's like I'm going to be the most annoying person here today, they can be the most annoying person you've ever experienced. Because you're going to hear every single terrible heckle that they are going to bring. And the more Modellos that they drive into their gut, the worse and worse those trips are going to get. And it's not just like the atmosphere and the environment during the games, but it's also like your preparation as a professional athlete.

13:37It's the Myelig Ballpark. And these are pro athletes at the height of their sport. And they're dealing with pretty piss poor facilities there to be honest with you in terms of batting cages and recovery and preparation, the training room and the gym and everything even just the clubhouse is super cramped and tiny. And it's in the outfield. You've got to walk across the entire time to get to it. And then you get into a dugout with just some mistors and a hard bench and not a lot else in there. These are facilities that are below that of any respectable college program and probably a bunch of high schools in Texas and Florida as well. So think about Wednesday's game. Blue Jays are facing a bullpen day and they're facing a lefty to start. So all the lefties are on the bench. But who are the Blue Jays left to do? They love to pinch hit and try to seek matchups late in the game once the lefty is out.

14:37And that was the plan. So before the game, like Josh Knighter and David Popkins, they talked to the lefties who were going to be on the bench and they were like, look, you got two options. You can be in the dugout for the beginning of the game and then have to cross the entire field to go warm up in the batting cages out in center field and then come back like an inning later or you can like watch the game from the batting cages and just be out there and just avoid that. And like players literally had that option because it's so inconvenient. It's so ridiculous at home for the Blue Jays. Like they go down a flight of stairs at the back of the dugout and they're staring at a trajectory machine. Like it's right there. And as a hitter, you don't want to go into a game cold without having taken any swings without having seen velocity and without having seen spin. So all those things are kind of conspiring against you and working against you. And I think all those things are why the energy level for the Blue Jays on Wednesday wasn't

15:38great. Why it was probably a tough watch at home. Why it just seemed like they had a really hard time generating anything. And again, these are not excuses. These are just circumstances. Like I know people like to hand wave the stuff away and be like, oh, sucking up. But the stuff matters. Like this stuff contributes. No one on the Blue Jays pointed to it as the reason that they lost. But I think that we can all be adults about this and recognize that the circumstances were pretty crap. And so it's not shocking that the Blue Jays had the performance that they did. Obviously, they paid a lot of money. Obviously it's their job to perform at their best regardless of the circumstances. Obviously, you wish that they had done better in this game. I think anybody who's familiar with the grind of a major league baseball season just kind of knows how difficult it would have been for the Blue Jays just to be at their best and to summon the energy on a day like that.

16:39This is a tangent. Don't make excuses is like it's like such a tired old sports writer trope. You know, like it's just that just like needs to die. You know, when Spencer Eragedi is talking about Kansas City being the hottest environment he's ever played in. That's not an excuse. That's just interesting. Like that's just that's just a circumstance. Like that's just him sharing something that went into his outing like sharing something he was dealing with. He never said I would have thrown a perfect game if it wasn't that hot. Like, oh my God, I would have been brilliant today. You wouldn't have believed the pitch and clinic and the masterpiece that it would have painted today. If only it wasn't so hot. Like he didn't like assemble the media to make a statement about the heat. We asked him directly about the heat. He said, hey man, what were those circumstances like because we were all in those circumstances too and we were all like, geez, it's hot. It's hard to do our jobs right now and our jobs aren't that physical. So look, like hearing what's going on behind the scenes and like what players are going

17:39through, that's the whole point of this. That's why sports media exists. But we can have a little area of sports media as well where we just sort of talk about what goes on in the game and what happens behind the scenes. And what players deal with on a day-to-day basis. That's what I'm interested in. That's really my job is to go learn that information and provide it to you. And either you want players to be forthright and honest and to like share their experiences or you want robotic cliches or you want guys to be like, that we lost today. We'll try to win tomorrow. Yeah, you know, we got to take it one day at a time. We'll get him next time. You can't have a boat race. You just can't. Either you want to hear what's going on behind the scenes or you don't or you want robots. It's time for a little consistency when it comes to that, I'd say. Anyway, George Springer, second consecutive day off, not great.

18:40He's banged up for Blue Jays manager John Schneider per Springer himself. I asked him if he could share what he's going through physically and his answer was one word no. And I knew that would be his answer, but I asked anyway because I'm open minded to being surprised maybe here at the end of 60 years covering George Springer. He's going to shock me and share some details of the various physical maladies they's dealing with. I think it's safe to assume that the shoulder is involved here. Like that's what he was battling. And I guess it was the second half of July 1st, half of August. Like that never went away. It just kind of got more tolerable, but he still got that. You hear about some lower half stuff with him that's this bothering him. So the Blue Jays really just tried to leverage Thursday's off day to get him like a three day break to recover Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday ahead of Friday's opener against the Orioles. Obviously pinch hit on Wednesday, but he looked pretty good doing it.

19:42Like I said, hit a ball, think of it 400 feet and had a good A B. So, and after the game, you know, was answering questions and was positive and was very George Springer-ish. He said, you know, I'm doing everything I can to be available. It's September. It's been a long year for everybody. So it's one of those things where I'm doing everything I can to be available and we'll see what happens. That's a quote. I'm just looking at the transcript right now. I thought we hit some balls hard. I thought all their pitches did a really good job of being in out, up, down. They made some good pitches when they had to. And yeah, they saw it's like very George Springer stuff. So we'll see if it's in the lineup on Friday. The Blue Jays could use them. The Blue Jays need any offense that they can get right now. I know like, Jesus Sanchez is a touchy subject. The guy hits the ball really, really hard.

20:45It was a Tuesday that he was in the lineup and he just hit a ball back up the middle of like 112 or something, like just hit an absolute screamer. He's going to 105 way he runs, create plus on the season, which on the Blue Jays is pretty good. Because the Blue Jays have not had a very good offense this season. So anything, anyone who can provide some offense right now, the Blue Jays are looking to get into the lineup. Ideally, George Springer will be feeling better for Baltimore on the weekend. Because suddenly only five series remain for the Blue Jays. If you can believe it, begin in this weekend with the Baltimore Orioles, a team that has its like backs right up against the wall. And as I sit here in the airport at 4.36 pm local, I don't even know what time it is wherever they're playing right now. They're up seven to two on the Guardians in the bottom of the third inning. So say the Orioles win that game. That's good for the Blue Jays because then the Guardians don't gain a game on them on

21:46a day that the Blue Jays lost a game that they probably should have won. That's good. It's bad in the sense that like it helps the Orioles who are right in the thick of this thing as well. But there are six games below 500 right now. So if they move, if they win this game and they move to five games below 500, like they're still very much playing for their season. Then they come to Roger Center on the weekend. The Blue Jays can, by winning a series two to one over the Orioles on the weekend, they can basically push them to the very, very, very, very brink and remove all margin for error from them. And certainly if they sweep the Orioles, then their season's just over. And then that's that. So the Blue Jays, like 15 games left, five series, three against the Orioles this weekend. They can just bury them and not have to worry about them anymore. The Orioles are projected to throw Bassett, Bradish and Rogers. So they're throwing three good pitchers. But Bassett, you would think, would be gettable for Blue Jays lineup.

22:47They're going to have a bunch of lefties in there. I wonder if the Orioles actually open with somebody. House it insures on Friday. Did you know those guys are friends? Did you hear that they have relationship? Because I think you're probably going to hear a lot about it in the lead up to that game. That's going to be cool to watch. Blue Jays kind of debating whether they're going to have cease and Soriano and normal rest on Saturday and Sunday, or whether they're going to give them the extra day. I think you definitely feel fine with bringing Soriano back on regular rest. The question is just still in cease because when he was pitching against the athletics, the Velo was down. Stuff wasn't quite as crisp. He talked about not feeling great on the mound. He talked about needing to find a way to just maximize what he has right now. Everybody is feeling the length of this season and the toll of this season. But it sounds like Dylan Cease is in a big way as well. And look, when you push a guy to 105, 110, 118 pitches time after time through the summer,

23:52I mean, there's a toll that collects there. There's a tax. You have to pay for that. Sounds like Cease is probably paying that tax right now. So, I think the Blue Jays will make a decision on Thursday with regards to whether cease makes that start regular rest or whether he's bumped back. The awkward thing about it is that if you bump Cease back to Sunday, then you're bumping Soriano back to Monday because Soriano can't go on Saturday. Saturday would have to be like opener plus Eric Eddy plus the rest of your bullpen. So I think Cease probably starts Saturday, honestly. I think that's likely what's going to happen here. Nothing confirmed yet. We'll find out on Friday. But I think because it would be kind of the double hit of pushing off Soriano who you don't really want to push off right now and Cease. I think they'll just throw Cease on the mound and get what they can get from him and maybe have a bit of a tighter leash on him. Right? Like maybe it's another one of those 90 pitch outings, 85 pitch outings.

24:56If you're following the Velo, you're seeing how he's responding between innings. And ideally you have a well-rested bullpen after Friday because macchars are shoved over seven innings or something like that. Yeah, I think that's probably what's going to happen. But we'll see how it plays out. Anyway, the Blue Jays can really do themselves a favor by winning serious concurials this weekend or even sweeping them and just making the Orioles completely irrelevant. Blue Jays currently 73 and 74. So there's 15 remaining and I've kind of looked at 84 wins as like the place where you feel really comfortable about securing that third wildcard spot. So that means going 11 and 4 the rest of the way. So that means that like with five series left, if you just win all five series, two to one, that is not good enough. That'll be 10 and five if you win all five of your remaining series. And I'll get you to 83 wins. And I think you feel okay at a three. A three is probably just the precipice. It's like I could see the Guardians get 83.

25:58Of course, Blue Jays have the tiebreaker. So they would win in that scenario. But then if the Guardians get to 84, then you're not going to the postseason. So that's why you want to get to 84 if you can. If Blue Jays go 96, the rest of the way and get to 82, that's going to be tough. So really, there's just not much margin for error here. You know, I think that anyway, it's like the Blue Jays have absolutely no more than six losses maximum to play with. And that would be you would need some help as well. You would need Cleveland to play poorly as well if you're going to lose six times. I think more realistically, you got five losses to play with to give yourself a decent chance of getting in there. And then if you only lose four more times, I think you're probably going to the postseason. So it's win time. Blue Jays got to win. Not a win there. Remaining series can have any more hiccups like that against the A's here on Wednesday. It would have been huge to come away from from that game with a win that would have meant three winning series on the road trip on a really difficult road trip.

27:02Arduous, long, hot and one where a lot of guys are battling with physical stuff. And I think you can see it in some of the played appearances. You can see it in the velocities as we just said. Everybody around the league is dealing with that right now. It's game number one, 46, 147, 148 for everybody. So everyone's hanging. And yeah, we'll see how this thing plays out probably going down to the final weekend. I would expect just because that's how these things tend to go. But ever know, maybe the Blue Jays go on a crazy run. Maybe they lose a bunch of games in the row. It would take one of those things to have some sort of like certainty ahead of that final series against the Reds. I reckon we're probably going into that final weekends and, you know, there's a game or two between Team X, Team Y and Team Z. And these are the outcomes that can happen this weekend, depending on the results. And we're doing a lot of scoreboard watching. I'm going to step away. And then I'm going to come back and I'm going to talk some more about some things that I haven't

28:05decided what I'm going to talk about yet because I am just the crazy person in the corner of the airport talking to himself. You're going to hear from me again when we continue on at the letters. It continues on at the letters Arden's dwelling with our producer Christian Ryan. Thanks so much to him for his work. So thanks so much to you for listening and joining me here at the airport. You just missed the like classic like dripping with contempt announcement over the loud speaker of looking for Dave Smith, your flight leaves in five minutes and you're holding up the friggin' plane. Good times here. Sit in the terminal. I'm going to touch on some just quick hitters here and try to be a little bit less rambly and stream of consciousness than I was in the first half. Can you imagine how like just all over the place this would have been if I tried to do it after?

29:06The all the traveled like sleep I'm about to withstand. A good idea to do it now while these things are fresh in my mind. The one thing that's fresh that I will forget if I don't do it now. It's from the first game of this series and that's the athletics just exploiting how slow Dylan C's is to the plate. And Dylan C's in his delivery like you can see really leans back to generate a lot of velocity has this like weird look to third base that he does in his delivery and he's just very deliberate. That's how he generates his Velo and his stuff like you stand next to Dylan C's and he's not like an absolute tank. You know he's a professional athlete like he's large of course they're all very large human beings but he's not like the biggest strongest most you know cut up guy you've ever seen like he has to move in a certain way on the mound in order to be as nasty as he is and that causes him to be kind of slow to the plate.

30:09He's always been slow to the plate and he generally doesn't grade out well as picture for holding base runners but we just have never seen a team exploit him quite like the A's did they stole five bases with him on the mound. That's a career high. He'd never before allowed board of three. It makes sense like Dylan C's strikes a lot of dudes out he doesn't allow a lot of base runners so I understand why he had never allowed five before but on a night one the A's clearly were convicted to exploit that weakness I mean they really did and it's been a weakness for the Blue Jays like as a whole as a team. Stackass has a metric called net bases prevented which basically just tries to capture the ability of pitchers to control the running game and give the catchers a chance to throw guys out and the Blue Jays are dead last in baseball with almost like twice the negative net bases prevented total of the second last team.

31:10And a lot of that is just personnel you know Kevin Osman slow to the plate right think about that the bounce and the big leg kick and everything patch of Corbin very slow to the plate. Jordan model wasn't here this year but another guy who was very slow to the plate Spencer Ergeti actually quite slow to the plate as well so something about I think it's probably just coincidence but could be something about what the Blue Jays value in pitchers are the way that they move or generate velocity that is leading to this I don't know I have really poked around on that but something blue Jays have to be aware of particularly like we'll see if they make it in the post season but if they do like you know that whoever they're playing in the post season is going to try to exploit this like you know every advanced scout report has this near the top when the Seas on the hill hey we can run on the sky we can take extra bases and Seas is aware of it and he said after the outing that he quote just kind of let it happen. So now you want to hear you you want to hear that he's just more locked in and more focused

32:11on controlling the running game and really just being mindful about his times to the plate and about throwing over and using something the pitch clock to his advantage and not being as predictable so that's something he's really going to have to focus on. Going forward thing number two they'll forget if I don't mention it Josh Smith hit another Homer here in Sacramento so that was his fifth as a Blue Jays he now has a 1025 OPS as a Blue J in the obviously a certainly small sample of 50 played appearances but like he's having some success and he knows Cody Ackinson one of the Blue Jays heading coaches like from Texas Ackinson was in Texas organization and worked with Smith back in the day and taught him a lot about hitting and when the Blue Jays acquired Smith they had identified that he was doing something different in his swing mechanically that they felt they could help him fix and turns out they've helped him fix it.

33:14It has to do with with his feet and has to do with just moving correctly in the box like freeing them up to be a bit more athletic and just putting himself like in position to swing a bit more efficiently and it's gotten his bat speed way up from where it was earlier this year it's helped him make better contact on a variety of pitches you're obviously seeing the power five homers and 50 played appearances since he came over pretty good rate for Smith who isn't like exactly a massive power guy and he's really thriving I think part of it as well must be said is just like the health thing like he dealt with some pretty serious injuries when he was in Texas this year like not only like your more traditional sports injuries like he was a glute or hamstring or something like that but like he also had viral meningitis for which literally had him in a hospital bed for a week I mean he like he this guy was like hooked up to an IV and hospitalized bed ridden for six days

34:17he was telling me like at one point he like strained his tricep trying to get out of the bed because he just hadn't moved his arm in so long it's a fresh athlete we're talking about here like that's gonna take some time to to get over it's a pretty pretty crazy injury to have to deal with so I think the further he gets from that the more he's gonna be feeling like himself so nice little pickup for the blue jays how about the blue jays deadline you know you think about Josh Smith Brett Bateman who speaks for itself how much he's impacted the club Jose Soriano just his best outing as a blue jays so far I guess the athletic box on Tuesday was it used as like sinkers so so so effectively finally putting away that forseemary that you know he's gonna use he has to use it like yet it but should not be using it as much as he was earlier this year and just like had his ground ball game going like the outfielder's that day were just picking grass out there kick at our ox because there's just there was nothing for them to do like everything was a ground ball like everything

35:20was on the ground and when you've got on just some men as an Ernie Clement playing behind you Vladimir Grosjunior who's having like a legit like goal glove season at first base I think he should get goal glove consideration honestly his first baseman because he's been defensively so sound you're gonna go a lot of a lot of I would see even Katzmokamoto who yes had a blender in a rundown in this series but I would say more often than not is pretty defensively sound certainly better than he was sold when he came over from Japan kind of the belief was like yeah he's a good third first baseman and he can kind of stand there at third probably not a great defender and I think that he is like surpassed those admittedly quite low expectations defensively at third base so that's good and yeah just to cap the point on Smith I think like you could stand to give him some more playing time down the stretch and if that means that Ernie Clement doesn't start against Rides as much I know you want Ernie in there and he's very much like kind of the heart and soul of the team but

36:24like you just look at the results over the last couple of months and it looks like fatigue is really catching up to him honestly 488 OPS in August he hit 208 had three extra base sets in the month and that was like 101 play-dependencies 27 games played 24 started so so far in September things not going so well he had a 500 OPS coming into the game here on Wednesday and I do not believe I had one hit but yeah he went one for three of the walks so decent day but still like you if you're watching Ernie the comments play appearances right now like he's clearly not feeling his best he's clearly not operating like peak Clement capacities so if you trust Josh Smith defensively as a second baseman I think it could make some sense to get him in there against Rides a bit more often and maybe I've come out of his feet and he could still come in late in games and maybe just managing the workload there would help get like the best out of them going forward but also like you're still you're just dealing with 15 more games and it kind of is what it is at this point like workload

37:27management is somewhat out the window right now because like what what are you really managing for you have at most two more months of games the players have a bunch of off days here in September and then if you get into the postseason there's a bunch of off days built in there as well so I think the lugees will be fine to push guys a bit more right now than they typically do and obviously every win so important right now so you just really want your best lineup out there but there's probably certain pictures certain constructions in which Josh Smith is a better choice right now than Ernie Clement and that is like with acknowledging how important Ernie Clement has been for the blue jays like look at the postseason last year and he hits record like he was absolutely raking and he is liable at any point by the way to just do that again like there was a point last week was it where he just like stole breath abins bat and just it was like hit hit hit hit you know like that's just that's just Ernie like he's that kind of player he he can't explain it no one can explain it but he's liable to have a week where he's got like 10 hits you know he's just

38:31you get hot at a at a moment's notice so I'm sure the blue jays are looking for that from him but and maybe Josh Smith is being as productive as he is because the blue jays are being as selective as they are with his matchups but we'll see how that plays out go forward I mentioned on just some men as earlier he's got the he has the clutch ninth inning home run and again the blue jays lost the opener of the of the athletic series here oh my goodness that they're out he's on the mound and they hit three home runs and out hit and out walked the haze and threw all their leverage relievers somehow still lost that game um be out the clutch him and his homer in the ninth something that like we all know he's made a habit of if he just comes through in big spots actually um if you go to fan graphs they have a metric called clutch which basically uses wind probability added uh and leverage index to um just measure how much of bet how much better or worse a player is performed in high-leveraged situations then they do in like context neutral once so basically they just like

39:36you know they just look at the the discrepancy between how you are when it's high-leveled and how you are when it's not um you know though what your wpa is how you impacted the the winds and losses of your team and since 2020 Andre Semen has leased the league in the clutch metric the fan graphs by a substantial margin over jock Peterson and Bryson's dot who like just subjectively i-test it does feel like jock and Bryson are actually kind of clutch players as well if you're kind of familiar with their games um and Andre Semen is obviously who's been watching the clutch for a while here uh it sort of suggests that the metrics are a pretty good one and that it's working um i think part of it is that Hemenas is relatively pedestrian overall as a as a hitter so that sort of creates the opportunity for him to have a vast discrepancy between his like context neutral stats and his high-leveraged stats um and like clutches this is very this is

40:39descriptive this is not predictive um so it doesn't suggest that he's gonna be clutch going forward but i think it does confirm what we've seen and what we've felt uh this guy comes through in big moments another thing i was looking at uh a little bit poke around on in the series uh that was just completed was uh the blue jay's record when scoring first and this was entering Wednesday's game since july 29th so we're talking six plus weeks uh and over the last six plus weeks the blue jays are first in baseball with the best record when scoring first they've 15 and two scoring first and EE2 winning percentage like no team has done that well when scoring first and i think that it's a massive credit to the club's pitching staff which is done just such a strong job protecting those early leads like even just shout out to the pitching staff here on Wednesday which like bullpen day and they allow two runs on four hits and flock only two with one two three four five six pitchers all combining for that fishers the wrens and seawalled man to ply roger's violent

41:43just a great well managed and well executed bullpen day and we've seen that timing again this year blue jays offense just couldn't get anything going but i think that the the bullpen and the pitching staff is really why the blue jays have that like 15 to record when scoring first it's clearly not the offense uh that you know it's not a lot of things you can point to uh with the blue jays this year is successful and say yes because of what their offense has done uh unfortunately it's really been the problem for them this year there's also like an intangible element to this and like an energy element to this and like an aggressiveness element to this like the blue jays just tend to play better when they get out on the front foot and when they're being aggressive in the first inning and they're working tough played appearances and they're seeing pitches and they're fouling them off and they're leaning on a starter and they're like building that momentum and like i've talked to guys who have said like yeah we feel that you know like we that carries through the game like that sets the tone like all this stuff is so annoyingly cliche but i think it actually is sort of a big factor for the team um and just talking to various guys around it they when the blue

42:47jays score first they tend to they feel like that that gives them energy and that sort of they can sustain that through the game um kind of explains why you know on a day like one day when the blue jays don't score first and when they don't have success in early eightings tends to look somewhat different so i don't really have a great way to like quantify that or to utilize that i just think it's sort of an interesting thing um and it's a bit of a topic with the club right now is that hey we got to we got to bring it early in games we got to get on guys early and we got to we got to really set the pace for this thing uh because when we fall behind things don't tend to go well finally kazmo kimono got to mention him um hits his 30th film run in uh in sacramento pretty huge that's more than double what any other blue jays said this year uh just a great pickup for the blue jays really um he's got the season cool season home run record by blue jays rookie by a lot uh he's got a three rbis which are the second most by blue jays rookie behind arab kinski

43:50who had eighty four in two thousand and two and it's only a matter of time before that record falls as well i've talked to kaz about this and i've been like a man do you like do you feel like a rookie and he's like uh i'm 30 so it's a little weird but he's uh he's not somebody who really likes to talk about these like accolades or like really make it about himself you know he deflects all that stuff and he inevitably just sort of pivots to talking about trying to do the best for the team and trying to you know string together good games and good play appearances and uh you know get to a point where he's on one of his heaters um because he does go on his heaters like this one thing we've learned about kaz moe kimono this year there's something about like that three true outcomes approach and something about the way that he's kind of been in this cat and mouse game with with pitching throughout the season that's led to like some pretty extreme streakingness he's been very susceptible to peaks and valleys of performance if you take a just a rolling graph of his weighted

44:53on base average so weight on base average is basically it's like a catch all offensive statistic looks at your overall offensive profile and it's it's better than you know batting average or selling percentage or op s or anything like that because it just it weights the importance of your hits because like a home run of two runners on is obviously like far more valuable than a single with two outs in a little leverage spot so it weights things appropriately and it really gives you just a good look at how you're performing offensively it's scaled to like obp so you can read it like you would obp and if you just look at the rolling graph of ochomoto's woeba it's just like it starts down and then it goes right up and it goes down and then it goes right up it goes down it goes right up and it's like the electric cardiogram like it's the it's just the pulse that you would see there um and i i don't know if that's something that's going to continue beyond this year i don't know if part of that's just like the league figuring them out then him figure out the league

45:54league figuring them out again and him figuring out the league i don't know so that's just like the all-enathic swings like he does have a ton of bat speed and he does try to tend to like really put a lot into his swings so maybe he's just going to be like a three-true outcomes guy you know he's got i think around 45% of his play appearances this year if ended and strike out walker home run which is top 10 in MLB your top 15 i haven't looked at it a minute but it's definitely up there um for a while there he was like gonna set the franchise record for three true outcomes percentage i don't know if he's still tracking for that uh but maybe that's just what he's gonna be um but i think that when he's on his he's on a hot streak like he is now he's really looking for stuff like middle in he's really trying to pull the ball because he's a pull hit or at heart he's not really in all fields hit or although we've seen him go the opposite way for homers at times like he does have that juice um he is best success it's gonna be when he's lifting and pulling and that's what he's doing right now you know um and the blue jays will take it the first tomer in Sacramento that was one of

46:58his longest hardest homers he's hit all year and the second one uh the bat speed was up over 80 miles an hour and that was his highest bat speed on a ball and play since July so those are pretty good signs like if the blue jays are running into a casual commoto hot streak right now man they will take that because they need to find a way to generate offense any way they can and to score some more runs than they are uh ideally more than the zero that they scored on Wednesday it's gonna be hard to win many games down the stretch if you scored zero run so you're definitely gonna want to score more than zero would be uh my personal recommendation that's gonna be it uh for this episode of At the Letters you're probably gonna be listening to it on September 10th I would imagine because I'm literally just recording this and sending it off to Christian so by now you know what happened between uh the Guardians and Orioles of the Orioles were up pretty big so um I'm assuming the Orioles will finish that off but actually with the Guardians you never know they they like to come back

47:58in some of these games so uh you'll know like whether the blue jays are one game out whether they're two games out just where they stand going into the off day and then the Baltimore series on the weekend uh it's not over they've got 15 to play and they're at worst two games back so this can change dramatically and then change dramatically again and then we'll go into that final weekend those final three games against Cincinnati and I believe Cleveland is either in Kansas City or at home to Kansas City uh and it's likely gonna come down to that able with two teams tied or one game of difference and uh some very tense high leverage stressful every pitch matters baseball which is hella fun to watch uh and is why we grind through an entire season why we go through all that is for this time of the calendar like this time of the year where the intensity of the baseball and the quality of the baseball really amps up like this is when baseball's at its best is down the

49:03stretch in September and then obviously into October so I love this time of year I hope you all enjoy it uh we want to say thank you to Christian Ryan for doing the omens work with us this week is I've been all over the place on the road in different time zones and schedules and uh recording malfunctions and everything like that I want to thank everybody here at the Sacramento International Airport for putting up with me just talking in a corner like a crazy person very much appreciate that I'm gonna go get on the flight but thank you for listening to actually next time on at the limits so