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What you missed in Blue Jays land: Stroman back on target
All in all, it’s pretty hard to complain about what the Toronto Blue Jays accomplished this week. There’s no shame in taking one of three from the Houston Astros on the road, and the club got off to a fine start to its Canada Day weekend series with the Detroit Tigers.
Marcus Stroman, Ryan Borucki and Sam Gaviglio posted encouraging outings, the bullpen was able to get some needed rest and Justin Smoak provided some walk-off excitement. A 3-2 stretch is never a bad thing.
Here’s a few things you may have missed amidst the action:
Stroman finds the zone
When the right-hander was struggling this season, putting men on base was a huge problem. Stroman has never been known to cough up more than his share of walks, but in April he had an ugly 5.33 BB/9 his name. With that in mind, it’s encouraging for the Blue Jays to seem him control the zone as well as he did on Friday.
In his second start back from the disabled list, Stroman didn’t allow a single walk — the first time he’s done that in a start since September 2 of last season. Control was a huge factor in the impressive efficiency that allowed him to go seven scoreless on just 90 pitches. For example take a look at the location on his signature two-seam fastball:
That’s a classic example of pounding the zone, and it’s absolutely vintage Stroman.
Appreciating Randal Grichuk’s big fly
When you make an unbelievable ninth-inning, game-saving catch, people tend to forget what you did earlier in a game. What shouldn’t be forgotten is that Grichuk did this to a baseball in the eighth:
You don’t need to know much about this home run to understand that it’s special, but here are a couple facts anyway.
The shot measured at 471 feet
It was Grichuk’s longest home run of the year by 53 feet
It was the eighth-longest round tripper all season in the majors – tied with Aaron Judge’s farthest blast
Will Harris, his opponent on the mound, has held right-handers to a .180/.196/.320 line this year.
There are home runs, and then their are home runs. Grichuk’s rocket in Houston qualifies as the latter. Anyone who doubts this guy’s raw power isn’t paying attention.
Borucki’s odd changeup location
Considering he had to do battle with the formidable Houston Astros in his big-league debut, Borucki accounted for himself rather well. The southpaw ended up with a quality start, and although he walked more hitters than he struck out, it was definitely an outing to build on.
One oddity of the start was how Borucki used his changeup — arguably his best pitch. He deployed it exclusively against right-handers, which isn’t particularly unusual for a southpaw, but it looked like this:
Borucki earns high marks for avoiding the fatal misses here. We don’t see any changeups left middle or middle-in that a right-hander could turn on with ease. There are no meatballs to be found here.
On the other hand, Borucki left an odd number of changes high and couldn’t seem to find the low-and-away corner where the pitch is most effective. The cluster of high-and-away changeups is just bizarre and perhaps speaks to some release-point issues.
Overall, this pitch chart shows almost what you want to see, but not quite. If Borucki is able to keep his changeup down more his next time out he’ll be even more effective.
World Cup fever
All over the city Torontonians are awakening their inner soccer fans and getting into the 2018 World Cup. The Blue Jays clubhouse is no exception.
The clubhouse itself sports approximately 10-12 televisions and on Saturday morning each and every one of them was trained to the first game of the knockout round featuring France and Argentina.
Russell Martin responsed with a resounding “Yesssssss!” when he sauntered in and saw that France was holding a 1-0 lead. Meanwhile shortstop Aledmys Diaz sat in the middle of the room with his eyes trained on the screen and an Argentina jersey on his back.
The clubhouse tends to be a little emptier than usual on Saturday morning, but everyone who was there from Martin and Diaz to the newest Blue Jays call-up Darnell Sweeney paid close attention to the action.
Meanwhile in John Gibbons’ office two televisions were on. Both were tuned to MLB Network.
Gibby’s wisdom
“That’s why they have first names” — After mispronouncing the last names of both Jake Petricka and Sam Gaviglio in a 10 second span.
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