Replacing Reyes Item #151 on Today's Glitch List: JP3D inspired view of the problems of the Blue Jays.

Jurassic Park 3D was released in theatres last week, and as I watched John Hammond's dreams crumble I can't help but draw comparisons between the start of the 2013 Jays season and the ill fated Jurassic Park.

In honour of the re-release this blog entry will be the top 4 items on today's glitch list.  On the bright side, the Jays do not have all the problems of major theme park and a major zoo.   And although the Reyes injury seems gloomy, you will see we have other issues and if we fix these we can over come the Reyes injury, Anthopolous has engineered the team that way. 

So grab your melting ice cream and some cool, expensive night vision goggles and enjoy this entry.

Item #4: Defense

Jays have the 4th worst fielding percentage in the AL and the worst in the AL east.  Now sometimes percentages early in the season are misleading since we are looking at a small sample space, but the Jays also lead AL East in total chances, so we have the worst percentage and the largest sample space.  To make matters worst Tampa, Boston and the Yankees rank 2nd, 3rd and 5th respectively in best fielding percentage in the AL.  The Jays also rank last in the AL with a -1.9 ErrR (pronounced ErrR).  Simply put the Jays give up 1.9 more runs on errors than the league average and overall they are giving up 2.3 more runs than the league average (also worst in the AL). 

As Hammond learned the hard way he relied too heavily on bad personnel like Denis Nedry, next time things will be more automated. The Jays don't have this luxury you have nothing else to rely on to make plays and save runs then your players.  So who are our Denis Nedrys?

Lind, DeRosa, Izturis, Bonifacio, Cabrera all are playing below the league average on defense.  The table below shows DRS* (Defensive Runs Saved), # of plays, ErrR (error runs above average), UZR (defensive rating against the league average), and UZR/150 (UZR projected over 150 games). Stats pulled from www.fangraphs.com

Player	Pos	DRS*	Plays	ErrR	UZR	UZR/150
Adam Lind	1B	-1	2	0.1	-0.3	-19.4
Maicer Izturis	3B	-1	5	-0.2	-0.3	-37.6
Mark DeRosa	3B	-2	6	-0.6	-0.5	-26.7
Mark DeRosa	1B	-1	1	0	-0.8	-124.3
Emilio Bonifacio	2B	-2	16	-2	-1.1	-29.1
Melky Cabrera	LF	-1	13	0.1	-2.1	-53.9

 *DRS - how many more or fewer successful plays a defensive player will make than league average. For instance, if a shortstop makes a play that only 24% of shortstops make, he will get .76 of a point (1 full point minus .24). If a shortstop BLOWS a play that 82% of shortstops make, then you subtract .82 of a point. And at the end, you add it all up and get a plus/minus.” (Joe Posnanski, Sports Illustrated)

Some relief was expected with Lawrie getting closer to a return, meaning Izturis or Bonifacio would no longer be a starting infielder.  Now with the Reyes injury, looks like Izturis will take over at shortstop so will be dealing with a questionable middle infield until maybe the All Star break (worst case scenario).  Let’s hope it’s not a worse case scenario since Reyes was our best defensive player.

Which brings us to

Item #3 Injuries/depth:

Jays fans know all too well the negative impact injuries can take on a ball club.  2012 they ranked 6^th in most days lost to the DL.  Injuries are going to happen, they happen every year to every team.  Hoping it doesn’t happen to your team is well, a waste of time like Hammond thinking he had control over the power, it’s all an illusion. The best thing you can do is plan for it by building depth in your organization.  Jays have not done this.  Trading away most of our major league ready prospects for our current roster took us from being one of the best teams in terms of depth to what seems like one of the worst (for the record I do not regret any of the off season trades).  Where we do excel is current starters that can play multiple positions.  Bautista and Encarnacion have both spent time at 3B, Bonifacio can play almost every position (although my above argument shows not well), and Izturis and DeRosa are both flexible in the field.

Good article on teams that have planned for injuries http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/mlb/news/20130410/oakland-athletics-depth/index.html

What hurts the most is losing a guy like Reyes.  He was a spark plug for the team, bringing great on field energy and it was obvious to anyone watching the games his energy and attitude are appreciated by his teammates.  Last night was the first time this season we’ve seen him on the field and not smiling.  Now it’s impossible to replace his league leading 5 SB, .395 average, .465 OBP with one player.  There are only a handful of Reyes type players in the league and as we saw they come at a high price to obtain.  As much as I’m disappointed by his loss, it’s up to the Jays to find their Lex and Mr. Arnold.  They don’t have the skill of a Nedry, but in a pinch they can get that system back online. 

Why I’m not worried the Jays will see too much drop off in offense is despite Reyes high OBP he’s nowhere near the league lead in runs.  In fact for the 20 times he’s been on base, he’s only scored 5 times.  We just aren’t getting the hits behind him.  Once we get the heart of the line up hitting, then Reyes can be replaced by finding a player that has a high OBP and a bit of speed and we should be able to replace his offensive production in terms of runs.  

At least we have yet to lose a person to a Raptor attack.  In fact, that injury is what lead to the serious investigation of the stability of the island.  

What would happen if you went to use the oddly placed toilet outside the T-Rex paddock and the computer car left without you?  Add that to the list of problems, somewhere between the headlights and the fact that you can just get out of a car and walk up to a Triceratops. 

Item #2: Offensive Production

As shown in item 3 whoever is the new leadoff hitter (probably Bonifacio or Cabrera) you need to start getting hits from the 3, 4, 5 spots.  Cabrera has really improved to get his average up to .300 after a rough start, but Bautista and Encarnacion are struggling.  They along with Lind have the worst averages on the team, they lead the team in hitting into double plays, and Bautista has a ratio of 1.25:1 ground outs to fly outs.   Generally you would like your best home run hitter to hit more balls in the air than on ground. 

I’m not going to get into the data of Bautista getting bad calls on strikes because umpires hate him or so the rumour goes, but he does have to learn to adjust and make something happen at the plate.  And frankly Gibbons could help him out by adjusting the order, sliding Arrencibia in between the two or even Cabrera.  That way pitchers will be forced to throw more strikes and not risk putting Bautista on base with our HR leader and a .300 hitter coming up behind.  Not even the best raptors can hunt successfully without the other two raptors ambushing.  Right now the Jays look more like 6 foot turkeys.

If we can get more production from these hitters and some more early runs, maybe this will relax our pitchers giving them a bit of cushion to work with.  It’s not a secret the best pitchers in the league tend to have the most run support.

Item 1: Pitching

Quite simply put, Jays starting pitching has been ineffective.  It’s pretty clear that Jays are among the worst in ERA and WHIP, but there are some more telling stats as to why we are seeing proven pitchers in this league struggle so much.  Here are a few.

The most effective way to pitch in baseball is by being aggressive and getting ahead in counts.  When you control the count, it makes it much harder for a hitter to sit on a pitch.  Any hitter in the majors can hit a fastball if they know a fastball is coming.  Jays’ pitchers are 2^nd last in the AL in first pitch strike percentage, i.e. they are immediately falling behind in counts.  They are also 10^th out of 15 teams in total strikes thrown.  The more you get ahead in counts, the more batters have to become defensive and can’t afford to take borderline pitches.  A pitch on the corner which you can risk taking as a strike in a 2-1, 3-1 count has be to swung on in a 1-2, 2-2 count.  So it’s not surprising that the Jays are also 2^nd last in percentage of pitches a batter swings at outside the strike zone. 

Grant, Sadler and Malcolm aka Buehrle, Dickey and Johnson were brought in because they are experts and so far the only one on our side is the blood sucking lawyer aka Happ.  Let’s hope Johnson and Happ’s health fair better than Malcolm and especially the Lawyer.  

Now, as much as the pitchers need to help themselves out by throwing more strikes and more strikes early, baseball is a team game similar to how other players in the lineup can help our struggling batters, other players in the field can help our pitchers.  The Jays may be last in the AL in ERA but they don’t have to be.  If the Jays improved their defense this would dramatically help the pitchers.  If their defense was at the league average the Jays projected ERA is 5.24 (This is called FIP - measures what a player’s ERA should have looked like assuming that performance on balls in play and timing were league average).  Only the Minnesota Twins have a larger difference between their FIP and ERA. This may seem like Pitching should fall lower on the list, probably after defense but the fact is the FIP is till 5.24 which still puts them 3^rd worst in the AL.  

The pitchers are obviously struggling with execution, but this happens with all pitchers.  Not every game your a curve ball going to be working for strikes.  Your go to pitch isn’t always your go to.  In games when it’s not working, you have to grind it out and change the times at which you use it.  This is called pitch selection and setup pitches.  How a great change-up can setup a fastball by messing up a batters timing and perception, pitch selection is what usually turns off days to wins.  This responsibility falls on the catcher and the pitching coach.  It would certainly appear that Arencibia and Pete Walker have not been managing the game well.  Hitters seem to know what pitches are coming and then putting them in play.  This also might explain why all our pitchers are struggling.  In their defense, this is Pete Walker’s first stint as a pitching coach in the Majors and well Arencibia was never in the line up for his defensive abilities as much as his bat.  But these guys better learn quick.  Thole’s been tearing up AAA with his bat and is much better at catching.  

So maybe the best way to describe the Jays 2013 season so far is two no shows and one sick Triceratops.  Again the Chaos Theory proves true, Malcolm is really getting tired of being right all the time.  But let’s hope life finds a way and the Jays talent will not be contained. 

Spared no expense!