Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
It is Blair and Barker on Sportsnet 590. Fans of Sportsnet, welcome to Blair and Barker. Brought to you by Capital One. Giving credit to over 4 million Canadians and counting, it is a pregame edition of Blair and Barker in about an hour and seven minutes or so, depending on how long the anthem goes. The Jays will finish their series against the Boston Red Sox.
Looking for the series win, Brian Baio is on the mound for the Red Sox. Eric Lauer getting the start. For the Blue Jays after Trey Savage's performance last night. And we'll have a lot of time to talk about that. Chris LaRue will join us. Ben Shulman as well. We'll have a little round table from the ballpark.
Although it's hard to have a round table because the table is actually technically square. And they're sitting at a desk. But it's called a round table. There is a considerable amount of... What are you laughing at? You. What's... Considerable amount of news on the Blue Jays front today. George Springer has been reinstated from the 10-day IL. Why is he not playing? That I don't know.
He's been reinstated from the 10-day IL. He will be active for today's game. Eloy Jimenez has been designated for assignment. Probably no great surprise there, I know. People will look at Jimenez's numbers. I think the Jays think Lenin Sosa gives him a little more power than he does. And frankly, Lenin Sosa can also play the infield. Eloy Jimenez, God bless him, is basically a designated hitter.
That's going to be George. So Eloy Jimenez has been designated for assignment. The Jays lineup, do we have the Jays lineup ready? Because it's been out. I don't know. Let me read the Jays lineup anyhow. That's all right. I'll read the Jays lineup anyhow. Give the folks a little bit of a taste of what the Jays are going to run out there. Ernie Clements leading off. Jesus Sanchez. Vlad Guerrero.
Okamoto Varsho. Penango. Straw. Jimenez. Valenzuela. Maybe a little surprise at Penango is... is still here. He does have options left. Eloy Jimenez doesn't have any options. But again, he can play in the outfield. And I think that's the biggest thing for Eloy Jimenez. The Jays don't have any room at the end for a dude who can DH. Oh, what else?
Yes, the Jays, and I don't know if we'll hear anything more about this today. The Jays are going to have a sit-down with Jose Barrios. They may have already had it. I don't know. And they're going to try to decide whether his next start will be against, would it be against the Twins or would it be in Tampa Bay?
Twins, I think.
They've got three against the Twins coming up. Maybe Sunday. Four against the Twins, right. So there will be a discussion with Jose Brios about that. If he isn't called up, if he stays down in AAA for another start, according to John Schneider, anyhow, the plan right now would be that Eric, pardon me, Eric Lauer would get that start. And I think that kind of covers all the news.
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Chapter 2: What updates are there on George Springer and Eloy Jiménez?
How are you doing today? Everything's good? You feeling different today about the Blue Jays than you did yesterday? Yeah.
You know what's funny? After ripping pass and for wearing his credential during his interview with Dave Roberts and Schneider, I go on air wearing my past.
If that's the worst thing you do, I think you're okay.
It won't be. It's not. Believe me, it's not the worst thing I've done. It's not the worst thing I've done in the last two hours, trust me. Nor will it more than likely. We have Blue Jays talk coming up, so who the hell knows where the day's going to go.
Chapter 3: What are the implications of Eloy Jiménez's DFA for the Blue Jays?
That's fair. It could go anywhere. It sure could. Yeah, it could go anywhere. Yeah, I didn't do the post-game show with you last night. What did you think of Trey?
Um... Well, I mean, first of all, and the pitching aside, there was a noticeable jolt of energy in the ballpark, whatever that means. Fans, it was a louder crowd than in a while at the Rogers Center. It was a big crowd. It was a louder crowd. There was a real, like I said, a real jolt of energy to the place.
I think, you know, ultimately, if you're the Blue Jays, I think John Schneider said that 80 pitches was roughly the target for him. You know, at some point, you'll probably want him to go beyond that, but what I saw last night, and Caleb Joseph pointed this out, you know, the splitter was kind of inconsistent at times, and Tyler Heinemann really, really, really, really, you know, forced...
And I trust Caleb in this because he really forced the fastball out of Trey Savage. And listen, I just thought it was really, I thought it looked good. He had a couple of quick innings. He had really, I took down, I wrote down, I'll tell you how much work I did. I even took down his contact numbers. He had like three hard hit plays and 17 in play. Got a lot of kind of iffy soft velocity.
But now, as you would point out, we're not talking about the greatest lineup in baseball. But yeah, I thought it was exactly what the doctor ordered. Especially, you know, you kind of... It's good to start... It just looks good. Optically, it looks good to start getting your guys back. It looks good to start getting the guys that you thought were going to be with you in spring training back.
And now you've got George Springer coming back and Jimmy Garcia maybe not that far away. And Jose Barrios, I mean, at this point, Jose Barrios, let's face it, is probably your... Fourth starter, fifth starter maybe even. So you ask yourself, is he capable of giving you more than Max Scherzer has? I think he is, absolutely. So you feel good about that.
Yeah. You feel good about that. Yeah. Well, we talked about this yesterday before Trey started or had his start. And, you know, you kind of – thought about just sort of what he would be going through of, you know, how long it's been since he's made a start, what he's been through to get back, you know, how late in the season his first start was.
Just the totality of his start, I think, yesterday was really good, right? You know, he sort of worked through the first inning. You know, he controlled the second inning with the leadoff single. You know, he had two on with two outs. Like, you could just tell.
I thought, too, and... I mean, my last memory of him, because I didn't see him in spring training, my last memory of him was in the World Series. I also thought his pace was really good yesterday for a guy making his first big league start of the year. There wasn't a lot of fidgeting or futzing around on the mound or anything like that.
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Chapter 4: How is the Blue Jays rotation shaping up with Eric Lauer's start?
At least the camera shots I saw, he was just kind of standing and kind of stretching and all, which I don't know. Maybe he did that last year as well. Yeah, I was really impressed by everything. It was a real jolt in the arm. It was just a real... a really feel-good thing, I think, for this team, and by extension for the fan base.
Yeah, I think there might be a little bit more predictability in the rotation now, right? You get him back, you have Gosman, you know, you're figuring out what you're trying to do with Dylan Cease. You know, whatever it is, trying to get him a little deeper. You know, Eric Lauer, what's he going to give you? The six full days of rest today.
You know, I think there's some, you know, maybe some a little bit more predictability. Some guys are starting to turn the corner offensively. Okamoto, Vladdy. You know, there's some things that are happening.
Okamoto's numbers against four-seam. He has a four-seam fastball. His numbers against four-seam fastballs are ridiculous. really good.
Yeah. The Latin. Well, to your point, right? The last 10 games, he's slugging five 88 with nine RBIs. That's a 61% hard, hard hit rate. Like, you know, again, the adjustments add up to what he's doing on the field, right? Moving back a little bit further in the box, Latin, the velocity, not look as hard as it actually is that the, the ball he hit yesterday was 96 miles an hour. Right.
Also the, And the guys on both telecasts pointed this out, and I kind of liked it as well. Now, he got thrown out at second base, but you know what? I liked the gamble. There was... You almost get the sense that he's finding his sea legs a bit with a major league game now in terms of the timing. Even in the field, to me, he looks different in the field.
But I like that, the fact that it was a legitimate shot. It went to replay, and it turned out the call was right. But I like that. I didn't have a problem with that. To me, that's kind of a guy feeling like he's – I use the phrase found a ceiling.
Well, a little bit of that, too, is you're trying to have that second run score. That's that kind of thing, too, where, you know, you'd rather have them throw it to second than throw it to home.
Vladdy had to pick it up a little bit to get across home plate.
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Chapter 5: How did Trey Yesavage perform in his return to the mound?
The guy's not a waste of space. The guy is going to get a lot of use. He's probably going to end up getting some save opportunities as well as this thing goes on. And there will be other guys who will get save opportunities as well. There's nothing wrong with having a dude, with having that bridge to your ninth inning be really, really solid.
And last night, I mean, last night it was, watching that game, I had no doubt that they were going to get to Louie in the ninth with the lead. And I haven't felt that way.
An awful lot this year. Okay, well, you can expand on that a little. It will be intriguing to see when the lineup sort of is meat of the order when they use Louie. It's just so happened it's worked out the last couple of outings for Louie that the meat of the order is in the ninth inning, not the eighth inning.
You know, you're getting Jeff or whoever, Tyler Rogers, where, you know, you can kind of throw him when you want to throw him. Tyler Rogers, you know.
That could still be a safe situation, though. Absolutely. I mean, if you're going – if you're facing, I don't know, 8-9-1 at some point and you give the ball to – it's still going to be a safe situation.
Well, it's like last night, the Louis Varlin thing, right? The three Ks, the .56 ERA in his 15 appearances. Do you want to sort of marry him to the ninth inning or do you want to use him whenever you want to use him? I want to use him when I can. I'm not sure. Again, it gets back to that.
If you can get a guy hot like Jeff doing things and kind of help you be a Swiss Army knife to where you can use Louie when you want to use Louie, right? One, nothing, ninth inning, two, one in the ninth inning, no matter who you're up in the lineup because you got Jeff. Now, all of a sudden,
I don't know if looking the part is a thing for a guy, but maybe he's turned the corner when it comes to that because it does look to me like whenever he does throw a bad pitch the last couple of outings, he can get it back on the tracks a little quicker. Does that have anything to do with he's not pitching in the ninth inning or not? I don't know.
The other thing that this does is if Jeff is really comfortable in that role, maybe you're going to see fewer 20, 25 pitch innings, which means you can use them more. You know, you're not going to have those 32-pitch save opportunities where, okay, now you – because one of the things the Jays – wherever Jeff Hoffman is, you know that the Jays realize he needs to be worked.
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Chapter 6: How has Kazuma Okamoto been contributing to the team's success?
You could have brought Dalton Varshow further up in the lineup as I just peek over at the lineup to my left, but I almost feel like maybe he's in the... Thank you. Maybe he's in the best... Best situation if he's more middle of the order. I think that's where he's probably succeeded the most. So I don't know about you, Chris, but I wasn't totally shocked.
No, I'm not shocked by anything really. The thing that I love is Okamoto starting to find his footing a little bit here in the big leagues. And I know that you guys see that. You guys are watching the same game as me, starting to play a little bit better defensively. Potentially he's hitting in the cleanup spot today and can potentially add some –
Chapter 7: What are the standout stats for Vladimir Guerrero Jr. this season?
some, um, some juice, some pop, some protection. That's the way they're finishing each other. Well, this is our third year. So it's almost like a married couple, each other's sentences. You could potentially add some protection with, uh, with Vlad. And I think that's really important. And I know that he's, he's swinging the bat really well right now.
Vlad is swinging the bat really well right now. So it's almost like he doesn't need protection. He's taking his walks. He's, he's, he's, uh, swinging at mistakes and, and, and barreling up mistakes, but With Okamoto hitting as well as he has, I think that's potentially going to make Vlad better.
And if you're thinking about Vlad potentially hitting more homers, more slug, all those things, I mean, that's pretty scary. And that's going to help this team a lot.
Okay, you just brought up exactly what I was going to ask you. And I read these stats to Jeff. The last 18 games, Vladdy's hitting .397 with one homer. You think he cares about the one homer thing?
Thanks. I think he would probably like to have more than one homer in that time if you injected him with some truth serum. But at the same time, I don't think he's worried about how he's hitting right now. You just said he's hitting 400 in that span. And for me personally...
it's hard for me to nitpick someone who's hitting 340 and and who's getting on base almost half the time you know especially it's magnified i think the slug right now because addison barger is not there right now george springer returning today but has not been in the lineup for a little bit and those two guys are providing a lot of the slug that you would have in your lineup so when they're out sometimes i and i get it from people you want more slug from vlad and
And the expectation for him is to hit more home runs than he's hit so far this year. But it's not like in some previous years where he started out of the gate slow. I don't think he started slow. He's just doing it a different way right now. It's still a way that helps you score a lot of runs.
Have you guys got any idea how the Jays are planning to move forward with Jose Barrios? I know John mentioned something about wanting to have a chat with him after his outing at AAA. You know, from a distance, then... The results didn't look great, but, I mean, you know, it's AAA. You're more interested.
John said weather had something to do with it. Well, yeah, it could have because it was. Had a whole season of weather in AAA.
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Chapter 8: What role does Jeff Hoffman play in the bullpen?
Well, I mean, interestingly enough, Tyler Rogers doesn't look the part, right? And he pitches in about as high leverage as you can get. Majority of the time now, it's been the eighth inning. And with that being said, my answer would probably be yes, because Tyler Rogers is an outlier with that. He comes in and he's...
you know throwing 81 82 83 miles an hour doesn't really have any above average pitches but he's just so deceptive I think I think my answer is yes I love when I see Louis Varlin come out there and he just he's just oozing confidence he makes everyone believe and I mean he's won over this crowd I don't know if you guys have really heard the crowd when he comes into the ball game now but
It's like someone just hit a grand slam when he comes out of the gates out there in left field. And he's been really good, had a little bit of a blip in, I think, his second save. Yeah, the second save. But other than that, I mean, last night with the changeup, and that was my favorite pitch from last night's performance, the changeup.
changes everything for him and you can't just sit glove side everything he had before was was moving either went straight as an arrow or glove side and now he's got that little wrinkle almost that split change that has that really violent downward action a little bit of run arm side i mean he could turn into one of the best closures in baseball with that change up but i truly believe that there it is boys we're gonna let you run really appreciate your time so that wasn't so bad time
Yeah, for you. It wasn't bad for you. He's sitting in my seat. This has been terrible for me. Guys, thanks for this, man.
Have fun. Thank you, guys.
A lot of fun. Take care. Ben Shulman and Chris LaRue, our Blue Jays radio crew, they'll have a call of the game tonight from the Rogers Center. Work from dome this afternoon. Again, day baseball. I'm not going to say it. Jeez. I'm not going to say it because I know everybody loves day baseball. Well, not everybody. Most people do. And I just, I like to think I do my best work.
At least I used to do my best work at night. That's not always about you, Jeff. That didn't sound right. It really didn't sound right.
Those were good answers. Very good answers. You know, I was always under the impression when dudes are running out that in those big moments, you know, you can get through it even if you don't have your best stuff if you're looking the part, if you're acting the part. There is something to that. That's why I'm kind of correlating that with the way Jeff has looked.
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