Blair & Barker
Information Overload with Dan O'Dowd + Road Trip Reflections with Caleb Joseph
21 May 2026
Chapter 1: What insights does Dan O'Dowd share about Trey Yesavage's performance?
All right, welcome back to Blair and Barker, brought to you by Capital One. Capital One giving credit to over 4 million Canadians and counting. You okay over there?
Yeah, I'm good. Thanks for asking. I'm just wondering. Appreciate your kindness. Well, you're just doing something. Well, he told me hold my ear, and I held, and then you made fun of me and rolled your eyes. Just do what I'm told, Jet.
Okay.
That's tough.
7.05 will be the first pitch tonight from Yankee Stadium as the Jays and Yankees wrap up their four-game series. Braden Fisher opening for the Blue Jays. Expect to see a fair amount of Spencer Miles in the game.
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Chapter 2: What challenges do teams face when making trades early in the season?
Carlos Rodon on the mound for the Yankees. The Jays losing the first two games by a run, winning last night 2-1. And... As we've talked about, sort of looking very much like the Blue Jays, having men on base, not coming through with the extra base hit, getting decent bullpen pitching. See what happens tonight against Carlos Rodon. I'm picking Vladdy to go off tonight, by the way.
Dan O'Dowd, and I have no idea why, Dan O'Dowd is MLB network analyst, and he's a former MLB general manager. Even Dan laughed about that. He's joining us on Blair. I mean, I would say, you know, it's one of those things, Dan, you keep talking about it, and eventually it happens, and you can go, see, I've been telling you this for the last month.
It's just a matter of time is the way I look at it. Hey, thank you for joining us as always.
Sure. Thanks for having me, guys.
I wanted to ask you about Trey Yusavage.
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Chapter 3: How are the Blue Jays addressing their offensive struggles?
Now, he's made, I guess, sorry, Kevin, four starts this year, three starts, whatever. He's now in his sort of a regular routine. I mean, this is a guy, Dan, who came up really quickly through the minor league system, got a little taste of the regular season, really was a star of the postseason. Then this year, he's kind of held back a little bit.
And I'm just wondering, do we, or would you as a general manager, do you still judge him the way you would judge any other, you know, rookie pitcher when it comes to checking boxes?
I think he has a chance to be a number one and a two in a rotation. I think he's showing that. I think it's a lot of different things. One, he's a strike thrower. Two, he's got probably one of the more unique arm angles from the right side in the game. Number three, he's got incredible out pitch. He's got great vertical run, and he's got a splitter that is just like, forget about it. He's poised.
He's competitive. He's athletic on the mound.
Chapter 4: What adjustments has Vladimir Guerrero Jr. made recently?
I mean, just hope a kid like that can stay healthy over the long term because that was a great draft, and it was really a really good job of development on the Blue Jays' part.
Dan, you know, you just mentioned what Trey throws. We've seen the last couple days facing the Yankees that, you know, just trying to hit against that stuff is ridiculous. It's almost impossible to have a good approach. But that's the question I want to ask you. As a former GM, information-wise, just how do you kind of slow it down and give a hitter a chance nowadays?
They've got so many different pitches. They throw so hard. You know, it's just not as easy anymore as saying see ball, hit ball, or look fastball all the time. Sooner or later, you're going to have to hit something with spin. How nowadays do you think, if you were still the GM of a team, what would just sort of the information throughout the organization be when it comes to the hitting part?
You know, I don't like this. I'm like old school here, so bear with me. But if you look at the group, you know, I'm kind of a hitting nerd. And if you look at the greatest hitters in the game, when you look at the greatest hitters that have come through Toronto, their movement patterns were all the same before they actually released the bat.
Chapter 5: How do rain delays affect a player's routine?
And so I think if you move properly, no matter what generation you play in, I think you would hit. I just think that not many hitters in today's game are being taught correctly at a young level. And it's carried through, you know, this game has got connectivity now because how many kids are moving so quickly through development systems into the big leagues.
And, you know, if you don't, if there's not a disconnect between your upper and lower half, if you don't get in a good position to lag, if you don't get on plane, you know, early, if your front foot's not down on time, you're not going to hit. But that's the same thing that would not allow you to hit if you played in the 80s or 90s. Or 2000. So, I mean, there is a ton of velocity.
I just think there's a ton of one-piece swings in the game. And you're not going to hit velocity with a one-piece swing. I know that's like a highly technical answer. I'm just not buying that, you know, I think better hitters of other era would hit the velocity in the game. Now, you know, these players, the more you see velocity, the more it becomes like it's not abnormal.
It's late movement patterns. it's the lateness on the break of these hard sliders are thrown. But again, guys in the past years were nasty too.
Chapter 6: What makes Louis Varlin's fastball effective this season?
So I'm not buying that. It's anything more than, you know, I just don't think hitters are being taught the right way to hit.
So be ready to hit the heater, adjust everything else. I mean, it's, that sounds simple.
Absolutely. And you got to look up. I mean, you can't, you got to look for the ball up and then you got to adjust to the ball down. And I think at times we overload today's hitters with too much information, like this guy's going to attack you and this squadron. You've got to make great swing decisions, and you have to know where your nitro zones are.
If you do that, I think you're going to hit now. Listen, I don't think the average is going to be 260, 270 ever again. But we don't even look at average anymore in our game. All we look at is on base and slug. And, you know, I do think that you can do damage in today's game if you are putting yourself in the best possible position to hit.
Chapter 7: Why have some star players started slowly in the 2026 season?
Yeah, don't give the pitcher so much credit. I think that's the point, too. Marquise Grissom used to tell me that all the time. I stand on the on-deck circle. Don't give this dude any credit. Go out there and get it ready to hit. I mean, it's great advice. It's easier said than done.
Yeah, I think you could hit in today's generation. I mean, you were a good hitter, man.
I was ā I was a little out and around, Dan. A little out and around. Screams, throw him hard up.
Didn't Marquise also tell you don't foul a pitch off Kevin Brown because don't dig in after you do it because you're going to throw it.
Chapter 8: What is Caleb Joseph's perspective on the Blue Jays' defensive mistakes?
Yeah, it's that kind of thing. Dan, I do want to ask you about making trades this early in the season. Have you ever made a big ā I'm not talking about like trading for Kevin Barker. I'm talking about making a big trade, something that can influence your team early in the season. Have you ever done that? And if you haven't done that, can you do it this early in the season? Yeah.
I think the only way you can do that is you're taking on somebody who's contractually making a lot of money that in the past has really performed and You know, they just aren't, and somebody's just looking to get out of the contract, and a change of scenery completely unlocks the guy. But if you're trying to trade for somebody performing now, club's just bad.
This industry doesn't seem to react until there's a trading deadline. But, you know, I do think as you get into more, you know, beyond Memorial Day, into mid-June, the problem in the American League is that as bad as these teams, I mean, the Angels, who I think are, you know, one of the worst teams in the game, heck, I think they're only, like, Seven games out of the wild card is nice enough.
And so the American League this year is really upside down in that anybody that can put together a great 10-day stretch where they go 8-2 can realistically put themselves back into those second wild card hunts. So it'll be really fascinating. I don't think that's the Blue Jays' issue, quite honestly. One, I think it's ridiculous their amount of injuries that they have.
I mean, there's only so many injuries any club has. can exploit, but I mean, offensively just hasn't been a good team. I mean, they don't hit, they don't hit a home runs through they're the bottom of the league and walk. So you're not going to walk a lot. You got to hit the ball, the ballpark ballpark, and they're not doing either.
Yeah.
Yeah. There's no contact rates, which was so great a year ago or not the same contact rates around this year. And so I don't think any trade's going to help them offensively and pitching-wise. They've got to figure out how to get some of these guys back healthy.
That's fair. That's a great point. I mean, there isn't a lot of slug on the Blue Jays. And, Dan, I kind of wonder if you, you know, when you're evaluating a team at this stage in the year and you haven't had, you know, a 30-year lineup, more or less, healthy all year. You know, I haven't had Barger for a long period of time. I haven't had Kirky. You know, Lucas is part of the lineup.
He's been in and out. It's awfully hard to judge your lineup, isn't it? When basically you've got a bunch of guys playing probably two or three times a week more than you'd want them to play.
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