MLB’s worst clutch hitters give thanks for the rotation
As dog days of summer baseball go, this one could not be described as a (b)arf.
But neither did it get up on its hind legs and perform tricks.
And the Blue Jays need to unleash their inner alpha dogs — the hitting prowess with which this lineup is blessed — if they are to make any kind of a standings push and keep their wild-card hopes alive.
Because there really aren’t any dog days for this club. Their lacklustre play since last they passed through the Rogers Centre, failing to feast off lowly opponents across a 3-6 road trip, then gagging on low-hanging fruit against the Tigers on Friday — only Robbie Ray can be excluded from that botchery — has left precious little room for lapses.
So no, there was not much sic in Toronto’s 3-0 win over Detroit on a hot and humid Saturday afternoon. A brace of jacks provided all the offence for the Jays, adding to the team’s league-leading home run tally. Yet they
went five innings between Randal Grichuk’s two-run blast into the Toronto bullpen in the second frame and Marcus Semien’s 399-foot solo shot in the eighth. In between, just a pair of homely singles and nobody got beyond first base.
To look at the glass half-full, Toronto did ride a seven-inning gallop of shutout ball from starter Hyun-Jin Ryu, who tied a season-high scoreless effort for his 12th win, the lefty drawing even with Gerrit Cole and Chris Bassitt for most in the American League. That was also the 12th shutout of the season and seventh since the all-star break for the Jays, most in the majors.
The Jays can boast two starter studs now in Ryu and Ray, making his own bid to be part of the Cy Young conversation. The entire starting rotation depth has turned into something to write home about, and the team will need more of where that’s coming from to put some lead in their postseason ambitions pencil, particularly with such a shaky bullpen.
“Of course Ryu was our ace today,” said manager Charlie Montoyo. “Another great job.” As his previous start had not been, nor the one before that. “Gave us a chance.”
The skipper added: “He was huge, not only because of the circumstances of the game. We were on a semi-losing streak. We need to win a close game. The offence is not swinging the bats very good right now, so there’s no room for error. We needed a game like that and he gave it to us. He was outstanding.”
Surrendered a mere five hits and was never in any trouble as the Jays snapped their threegame losing skid. Dropping seven of their previous eight, however, is hardly a “semilosing” streak. It’s a convulsion, undoing all the positives that had accrued from their 9-2 return-to-Toronto homestand earlier in the month.
Ryu certainly looked like he’s restored to dominating form, keeping hitters off balance, wielding a nasty changeup. “All of my pitches felt like they had pretty good life, and my command was pretty good resulting in a lot of outs and strikes as well today.”
Certainly Ryu benefited from some sterling defence behind him, with Toronto turning three double-plays. “Looking back at the first double-play and even the last double-play, having guys like that … helps the starting pitcher really well,’’ Ryu said through his interpreter. “It just gives you more energy as a pitcher to go throw and to trust them.”
Montoyo gave prime chops to Bo Bichette, who flashed dandy leather in tandem with Semien and Vladimir Guerrero Jr., solid at the other end of those plays. But Bichette, slotted into leadoff, was 0-for-3 at the plate with a walk, striking out twice, while Guerrero had one single and hit into a double-play to end the third inning. Only Semien — two singles and his 30th home run — could be said to have uncorked a muscular performance. His eighthinning missile into the 200 level exploded off the bat and erased any thought the Tigers might have had about repeating their late scoring surge from the night before.
Semien was clutch, as he has so often been. And that — clutch — is not a word that can be used to describe most of the Jays’ batters through this August slump.
In fact, as per FanGraphs’ clutch metric — which measures how much better or worse a player performs in high-leverage situations compared
to context-neutral ones — the Jays are the worst clutch team in baseball. They simply aren’t delivering in situations that matter the most, despite the loads of talent throughout their lineup. And that accounts considerably for some worrisome statistics: five losses when leading after seven innings, 2-for-8 in extra-inning games, nine of 18 games decided in the final at-bat, 0-for-12 with runners in scoring position on Friday, a futility mark not reached since September 2007, and 5-for-49 over six games before Saturday.
As of Saturday morning, FanGraphs pegged the Jays with a 10.5 per cent chance of grabbing a wild card.
These are distressing low expectations for a team that has talent coming out the ying-yang, even with George Springer on the injury sidelines again. The clutch — or kill — factor is mealy at best. Racking up home runs in blowouts is great for the personal stats, certainly boost self-confidence, but still amount to just a single tick in the win column. That missing ingredient had been quite evident over the past fortnight.
“We’re kind of pressing a little bit,” Montoyo had observed pre-game, using his scrum to again justify the loopy decision to bunt in the bottom of the ninth in Friday’s loss, after Tigers closer Gregory Soto served up back-to-back walks and couldn’t throw strikes. “That’s one of the reasons we’re trying to bunt, trying to get our guy to third base. So we can get a sac fly or something because obviously we’re not getting the hits. Of course the play didn’t work …
“That’s been the key of the last six games. And that’s going to happen through a year. Even a team with a good offence is going to go through that. But that’s where we are right now. Which means we’ve got to do the little things to win games until we get hot again.”
Maybe this is the start of hotness redux. But the 3-0 win — churlish as this may sound — wasn’t send-a-message impressive.
The Jays did gain some ground trying to scale the rock face of the wild-card cluster, but still sat 4 ⁄ games behind with four teams ahead of them in that pursuit. ’Scuze-me if that whole home run jacket thing looks more silly than signalling. (“I’m back,” Grichuk proclaimed in the dugout as he donned the garment. One can only hope, for a guy who so splendidly picked up the Springer-slack early in the season but is hitting .188 in August.)
At least the Jays have not — yet — been on the record book end of career home run No. 500 for Miguel Cabrera.
It might be historic. It would not be an honour.