Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What are the implications of Shane Bieber's return for the Blue Jays?
Well, rain outs are a little disappointing. The Toronto Blue Jays bullpen is probably not arguing with the day off, but for the purposes of a Monday morning show, the purposes of wanting to spend my Sunday afternoon with the Blue Jays game. on the radio or something like that. A rain out's a bummer. The Jays were supposed to play 16 games in 16 days.
They got rained out against the Cubs yesterday. They'll make that one up in August. And the trade-off here is they'll now play from July 31st through August 16th, 17 consecutive days. They will play 29 times in 30 days coming out of the All-Star break. That is arduous. That sounds not great.
However, given the state of the bullpen right now, given that they are still in a position where they're trying to get enough guys back and healthy and the bullpen has been redlining. And when you look ahead, a chunk of those days that I just mentioned will come after the trade deadline where potentially you have reinforcements here. I think the Blue Jays will take this trade off for now.
As it stands, they split a series. They lost 16-2 on Friday. It was one of the worst games of the entire season. Kevin Gosman got hit pretty hard and walked a lot of guys early. Jesus Sanchez made a play in right field that maybe could have helped stem the tide there a little bit, even if he had. Gosman's control wasn't where it needed to be. Miles Straugh got the pitch in that game.
Brendan Little returned and then got sent right back to Buffalo. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. looked like maybe he had tweaked his back, but he was able to play Saturdays. If Saturday rolls around, they rally back from down five after Patrick Corbin is ineffective.
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Chapter 2: How are the Blue Jays managing the Alejandro Kirk and Brandon Valenzuela platoon?
Once again, Cosmo Okamoto has a big home run. They play the defense first outfield, and they come through Varsho Homers in his first game back, and Louis Varlin gets you a six-out save, which is, I don't know, I'm running out of superlatives for Louis Varlin. So the way things stand today after the rain out, Jays still one game below .500. They remain asymptotic to the .500 mark this season.
They are in the third wild-card spot right now, again, to the extent that you care about that, on June 22nd.
Chapter 3: What insights does Robert Ford provide about the Astros' upcoming series?
Tonight, they will start... a series against the Houston Astros. It is also the start of 10 consecutive games here at the Rogers Center. They'll play three against the Astros, four against the Rangers, three against the Mets, taking you in to Canada today. So it should be a lot of fun. From a starting pitching perspective, everyone just bumped the day. So Cease is going today.
Bieber will make his return tomorrow instead of today. Trey Savage will close out the series on Wednesday. A little later in the show, we'll have Robert Ford, who is a voice of the Astros on the radio, to set up that side of the series. We'll talk to our pal Paul Sporer of Fangraphs about some pitching stuff and a little bit of fantasy stuff. And we'll talk to J.J.
Cooper of Baseball America about MLB's proposed changes to the draft system and eligibility and the international draft and things like that. There was a lot of reaction to that late last week. Maybe he's had the weekend to let it settle. The College World Series is also in a final championship game three later today at 6 p.m.
So if you're looking for something to do before the Blue Jays game, you can check that out. Oklahoma and UNC tied 1-1 right now. So we'll talk with JJ about that right now, though. We're joined by Ben Eccleston-Smith of Sportsnet of At The Letters.
Chapter 4: How are the Astros' pitching and lineup shaping up this season?
He joins us now. Ben, how we doing, buddy?
Doing great. Yeah, like you, Blake, I was looking forward to a little Sunday baseball involving those Blue Jays, but it wasn't to be. What'd you do? What'd you get up to with your Sunday instead? I did a little reading, did a few, got a little run in, did a few errands. So, you know, somewhat productive, but yeah, it's always nice.
You basically count on baseball being on every single Sunday because it is. And yeah, a rare exception for the Blue Jays yesterday.
What is a little run to you? Like 20 kilometers with like four baseball podcasts at two times speed? Or what are we talking here?
Well, I actually, I never do two times speed anything. I don't know. I don't know why. Maybe I should give it a shot.
Two times, that was an exaggeration. I don't, I'm a one speed guy.
Yeah, same here. So, no, this was like actually a little run. It was like literally four kilometers.
Nice. That's a nice Sunday stroll.
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Chapter 5: What trends are emerging with Kyle Bradish and other inconsistent starters?
Exactly. Okay, so there is a trickle down of the rain out. I mentioned it on the way in that this sets up 17 and 17, July 31st through August 16th. It also means they'll play 29 games in 30 days out of the all-star break.
Given where they are right now with the state of the bullpen, you know, how much they've asked of the starters and stuff, Jays probably take that trade off and push that problem to August, no problem.
Yeah, I do think so, just given the way things were lining up. It's one of those things where there's never, like you're always just going through it as a baseball team, really with a few exceptions, like opening day, obviously coming out of the all-star break, you'll have the occasional stretches where you have two off days and a five or six day period.
And okay, after that, your bullpen is going to be rested. But for the most part, as you know, basically it's a grind every step of the way. So it's going to be a grind this week coming out of that off day. Certainly coming out of the All-Star break and going into that stretch of 29 and 30 will be a challenge. But you know what? That's Major League Baseball.
This is the schedule that everyone else has to play and all the other teams have similar periods of busyness in their schedules.
So what it does here is it pushes every starter back a day, and it gives us an unbelievable pitching matchup tonight with Dylan Cease against Hunter Brown. Ben, I know Hunter Brown is pretty well established, but he might have forgotten just how good he is because he missed most of the year so far. Pitched on March 31st was his last start before he returned last outing.
How much are you looking forward to just as a baseball fan, Cease versus Hunter Brown down at the park tonight?
Yeah, 100%. I mean, that's a great matchup. Cease and Monaco would have been really good, too. So, you know, anytime you have Dylan Cease on the mound, there's a reasonable chance you're going to have a pretty good pitching matchup, and that's definitely the case here. Hunter Brown, I feel like, is one of those players on Houston that... can push them back into this thing.
And it seems like they're gradually making those steps toward becoming a relevant team again, despite their really slow start. So with guys like Connor Brown, obviously Jordan doing his thing and just carrying the offense, then you can get that team back into the mix.
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Chapter 6: What are the proposed changes to the MLB Draft and their potential impact?
Well, I think part of it, and this applies to the Blue Jays as well, is just that the opportunity is still there in the standings. So that's a good thing for any of these underperforming teams. Even the Tigers, to a small extent, trying to get back in this. So that's step one. Jordan having an MVP season is step two. I think he probably is the MVP frontrunner at this point, along with...
You know, you have guys like Ben Rice obviously having good seasons, too. But I do think that Jordan Alvarez would be the MVP leader. So that goes a long way. And then with Brown back, that helps the starting pitching. So, yeah, I think that this is a good team. Whether they're a great team, whether they can be a playoff team remains to be seen.
But I think at the very least, this is a good Major League Baseball team that's in town for these next three.
As far as the matchups that the Jays will draw, Hunter Brown, obviously very difficult. But given that the Astros are running a six-man rotation, which means a shorter bullpen, and the Jays are drawing Lambert and Burroughs in spots two and three in this series, a little bit of a fortunate way this has worked out for them, do you think? I do think so, although Lambert's kind of good.
Yeah, I don't really, I'm going to talk to Robert Ford about it a little bit more. I got to dig in on him still, but yeah, it's a little surprising. First year back from the NPB.
Yeah, I'll have to listen to your conversation there and get the latest scouting report.
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Chapter 7: How does the international draft proposal affect player development?
But just following the numbers from afar, he's been pretty effective. So I do think that that's not a pitcher to overlook, especially given some of the challenges with this Blue Jays offense. Like, you know, it's not like you have to be facing Pete Jacob deGrom to see this Blue Jays team struggling at the plate with the exception of Saturday and a great comeback. So, you know, it's...
I don't think we're at a point in the season where we can look at Burroughs and Lambert and say, okay, Jays are good to go here. I'm inclined to give those starters a little bit of credit and see what comes of it this week.
So that five-run comeback, and funny enough, you and I were texting about Colin Ray because someone in the fantasy league we play in together streamed him against the Blue Jays, and I was like, Has the Blue Jays offense really fallen that far? Well, it turns out yes for Colin Ray. No overall because the Jays do make that comeback. How important do you think that was?
Like obviously this Jays offense has underperformed. There were some numbers floating around about just how infrequently over the last couple years the Jays have been able to come back from a deficit like that. To kind of affirm to that clubhouse, like, hey, that is a possibility. And to just see some proof of concept on the offense with some of the power hitting.
How important a win was that to come back from?
yeah i think massive and i think it just it's the most obvious thing in the world but hitting a few three-run homers i mean that's just such a such a game changer for any offense and it feels like the blue jays haven't had a lot of those this year we've talked a lot about runners in scoring position and how the blue jays have performed in those situations it hasn't been great and part of that is of course the singles that might drive in one or two but yeah it's also the homer
runs that can just change the complexion of a game as we saw so to have Vladi come up with the you know big big
okamoto do his thing okamoto really has been essential to this team just to stay in it just to be that one power bat the one guy who is hitting three run homers um so that's that's what they need they need more of that they need it's it's hard to it's easy to say and it's hard to do of course because every team's out there trying to hit three run homers but it's uh yeah that's a really encouraging development for the blue jays
And to paint a picture of how little power that they've had, I mean, obviously we've talked about Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
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Chapter 8: What are the latest developments in the College World Series?
a lot, and Kazuma Okamoto's power is probably the one, like, defining characteristic that anyone in the lineup has, even though his OPS overall is only 753. But Brandon Valenzuela hit cleanup. Yesterday, and look, he's been awesome.
If you look at those same leaderboards that have Jordan as maybe the MVP favorite, Brandon Valenzuela's been worth more wins above replacement than any other Blue Jay, but him in the cleanup spot is not what we would have expected a little earlier in the year. Batting order part of that aside... What have you made of how they've split Kirk and Valenzuela's time so far?
And we've got a week here with two afternoon games after a night game. Pretty straightforward to you how they might manage this from here?
Yeah, I would think that from here, Kirk's catching for the next six. Valenzuela's catching to the next six. And then you try to mix in maybe a little DH time for Valenzuela in there as well. Or perhaps Kirk is DH-ing one of those day games. You get Valenzuela catching. I think Kirk's going to be starting at least two of three. And that's...
I don't think very controversial to say that that's how it should be. He's one of their franchise players. He's been so good in the course of his career with the Blue Jays. We all know what's possible there. But at the same time, Valenzuela's got to be mixed in.
And it's, again, to go back to the point of the grind and where we're at in the season, last thing you want to do is wear Kirk out right away. So I think you get Valenzuela in there for one out of three at least. That allows him to stay somewhat fresh. And hopefully opportunities come up, too, for pinch hit, a DH here and there.
Not that you have to build your whole offense around that with Valenzuela, but keep him in mind as a possibility because he's earned those reps.
Yeah, definitely. And, you know, there's not a lot to nitpick there. I guess some of the challenge stuff maybe you could nitpick. But otherwise, you want to keep him in there pretty regularly. Another thing that we saw Saturday. On Friday, the outfield defense was not particularly strong. Chris Black had a good thread about this on Twitter.
They have not gotten a lot from their corner outfielders this year defensively, and that is in such stark contrast to what this team has been as far as outfield defense goes the last couple of years. A tiny bit of that is, you know, Dalton Varshow has not been quite himself defensively, but the corners, when you have Pignango and Sanchez in there, have been pretty notable.
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