Arden Zwelling

guessed that if I said how many defensive runs saved did he have last year.

That's a really solid number for a guy who's playing a lot of corner outfields.

So he's already got three this year in a fraction of the playing time.

He's somebody who you just really trust.

in either corner, and we've even seen the Blue Jays use him in center field at times, and he's no peak Varshow out there, but I think he's basically a league average center fielder, which is not the easiest thing to do.

You have to be quite an athlete, make really good reads, have really good instincts, and just really understand pre-pitch setups and how to get good jumps and first steps and things like that.

You just have to have a lot of ability to do that, and Nathan Lucas has it.

Yeah, if you'd asked people in recent years after the Blue Jays acquired Pignongo what his future defensive home is, they would have told you DH.

Now he's at least playable in a corner, but you're going to have games like those when you see just some of the indecisiveness and perhaps timidity

at times um you would much more prefer that he's aggressive and assertive and if uh a mistake gets made okay but at least you went for it like at least you you know if you if it's a lack of athleticism or a lack of hand eye or whatever it is like okay but you don't want to be a lack of like certainty in what you should be doing on a given ball and play so

uh yeah that's going to be a work in progress I don't think he's ever going to be a plus defender um you know Charles McAdoo as well like we're going to get a look at him um this week and going forward uh not somebody who's described as a great defender either um and he's gone better with with the Blue Jays as well because that's been a big focus of his development but I mean they've had him at second base a couple of times recently just not a position he's played regularly he's

in years um i know the pirates had some questions about whether he was going to stick at third base the blue jays thought that he could stick at third base but um if you want to talk about like what's his best defensive position it's probably first base uh but the blue jays have a pretty good one of those so um i think we're just gonna continue to see some like

imperfect defensive deployment for this team as they continue to just try to push as much thump as possible into this batting order and to try to score more runs because ultimately like if the Blue Jays fielded their best possible defensive lineup all the time right now I mean they probably score even fewer runs than they are to this point like that's why guys like Jesus Sanchez is playing right field every day and that's why Pinyongo is in there

every day, and that's why McAdoo is up.

He didn't earn this call-up because he was making highlight reel plays around the infield.

He earned it because he's hitting the ball really hard with authority, and the Blues have a serious lack of that in the big leagues right now.

Yeah, he had an active series against the Marlins.

There was a lot going on at the plate and in the field and looked like a lot of banter going on between him and his former teammates.

I think the biggest difference that I've seen with Sanchez over, say, the last three weeks versus like his first six has just been the bat speed.

And it's up two miles per hour.