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Chapter 1: What do the Blue Jays need to improve after a tough series?
First off day after 17 in a row, I'm sure the Blue Jays feel much better today than they did at the end of Sunday's game. They will look for better results starting tonight as they take on the league-leading Atlanta Braves for a three set in Atlanta. Begins tonight at 7.15. Kevin Gosman against Bryce Elder. Patrick Corbin against Grant Holmes tomorrow.
And Chris Sale against an old TBD on Thursday. All of those are 7.15 starts. So Blue Jays Central at 6.30. It's going to be a big series. The Blue Jays obviously survived that 17-game stretch. It didn't end the way anyone wanted. And there was a lot of angst coming out of Saturday and Sunday's game. But yesterday, as a reset...
I haven't started a show coming off a non-game day in a long time, and I kind of forget how to do it, how to get into it here. I went to the Marlies game last night, which was a lot of fun. They lost, but they're still up 2-1 in the Eastern Conference Finals, and there was a lot of chippiness, a couple hits from behind. So I would imagine game four on Wednesday is pretty physical.
Tonight's game between the Blue Jays and the Braves will not be. It'll be the normal level of physicality for a baseball game,
Thank you.
Let's just get into it. We've got a fun show today. We will get you more set for that series later on. Jesus Cano of The Athletic will join us to talk about the brave side of things. John Marossi of MLB Network is going to join us around 11 o'clock. We'll have Eric Smith, who's on the radio call on the Sportsnet Radio Network, on it a little bit.
But right now, for the first time this season, for the first time since he was activated off the paternity list, restricted list, we've got Davey Andrews of Fangraphs. Davey, what's up, buddy? How we doing? I'm good. How are you doing? Luckily, Fangraph's paternity leave is a lot more generous than the Major League Baseball three-day paternity list.
Yeah, I believe Aaron Nola has to start tonight, having just had a child in the last 48 hours. So, yeah, you are in a better spot. Now, you make less than Aaron Nola, presumably, but it's nice that you were able to take the time you did. How's it been? How are you doing? I'm not crisp, we'll say. Neither am I. Did you hear the start to this show? I'm a little rough over here too.
Look, you did a lot better than I would have done. But no, I'm doing really well. Everybody's healthy and the baby is great. And I couldn't ask for more. Well, congratulations. And it's nice to have you back. And you've come back with your regular stuff at Fangraphs, but also this kind of running journal from your time being...
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Chapter 2: How has Daulton Varsho changed his swing this season?
And once I started explicitly making these connections, how is this like raising my daughter, you know, it's, it kind of opened things up. The thing I, the entry that I wrote, I don't know, a couple days ago was similarities between a newborn baby and a Major League Baseball player, of which there are surprisingly a lot. That's great. They both get their uniforms dirty quite a bit.
Yes, there's a good kicker there. By the way, speaking of your music, I think we're on like a not great Edward Julian watch right now. The OPS has dipped below 600, even in Colorado. For quite a while, we've been on this watch. Yeah, and like really wanted to turn around the Canadian aspect.
your fun song aspect, but if you're sub 600 in Colorado where you are getting as many opportunities as you could possibly get, my confidence level has shrunk pretty significantly. Yeah, I mean, I was hoping that when he got there, they would kind of do a reset. You know, I think he's patient to a fault.
And so I was really hoping that with a new team, they might bring him in and say, hey, here's some things that we'd love you to work on that he didn't, for whatever reason, work on or change with the Twins. But it doesn't seem to be going that way. It is the one thing you could hold on to is like there's a actual results versus expected results gap with him like Woba versus ex Woba.
But that was the case last year, too. And like Colorado is supposed to fix that. That's supposed to be the cure all for for those kind of guys and nothing so far. Right. Well, yeah, part of that is that he tends to he doesn't pull the ball very much, which is where you get a lot of the the difference because Expo doesn't factor in the spray angle, which side of the field you're hitting it to.
And so when you hit the ball deep to center field, Expo thinks he did a great job. But, you know, the park is deep for there and he's just not. I don't know. I'm really holding out hope for him. I'm a fan. But, yeah, it's looking a little dark.
We've got to – I understand why XWOBA doesn't incorporate that because, you know, it gets a little too into, well, would you need a specific XWOBA for each – like, would each player need to have their own individualized XWOBA based on – because, like, if you're not a pull guy and you pull the ball –
that's going to be different than like an Isak Paredes who pulls the ball with that intention every single time. Like, I guess it would get too granular too quickly, but it does seem odd that we control for everything at this point, but not that. I mean, it would be very easy to make an X-Wobbit that did that.
The reason that StackS doesn't, and Tom Tango, who's the data architect over there, has talked about this a lot, is that once you're getting that granular, it loses its predictive power because basically it's just regular Wobbit once you factor in exactly where the person hit the ball. Yeah, I guess that makes a lot of sense.
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Chapter 3: What are the implications of using Jeff Hoffman in the ninth inning?
There you go, Devereux. If anyone is a Detroiters fan out there, it's taking everything I have not to sing the name Devereux right now. Okay. So let's zoom back out, Davey.
So you did this like joking first and 99th percentile, but the exercise of looking at the absolute best case and the absolute worst case for a team heading into a season is pretty helpful because baseball teams are not going to perform to their 50th percentile very often.
I would say the Jays right now with all the injury luck and some of their hitters not performing, nobody on the team has an 800 OPS. They're probably somewhere in the like 20th, the 30th percentile outcome range. And yet today they're tied for a wild card spot in two games back of 500. When you look at this team, what do you make of that where they are?
And there's an element of this where it's positive that they've been able to stay in the fight despite all of this. There's also an element of like, nobody other than Gosman, you Savage and Corbin and Louie Varlin has really like over delivered, especially on the position player side. Right. I mean,
You look at where they are, I think, Fangraphs, we have them at a 42% chance of making the playoffs right now. And when you consider all these injuries, you know, it's a situation where you'd say, I'll take that. You know, the position player side, like you're talking about, Andres Jimenez has been rough. Vladi is doing okay, but not up to his usual standard. Same with Dalton Varshow.
And so, yeah, so I think you're right. It's around the 30th. Obviously, when you go to the World Series and play like they did, we tend to overestimate them the next year. Teams that go to the World Series usually overperformed their skill level. So you're supposed to see a drop off. But I don't think we thought of them as a team that would be under 500. So I think you're right on the money.
It's... It's down, but it's not like the 10th percentile where everything has gone catastrophically wrong. And, you know, assuming that some people bounce back and some people come back from injuries, there's a lot to look forward to here. Yeah, and it's a long season. So even if there weren't, we would find some things to look forward to because, you know, you can't.
Even if it's been disappointing, you can't fold up shop on June 2nd when you're tied for a playoff spot. It's not how it works even if you're annoyed with the team or some of the injuries or whatever. So, Dave, you mentioned Dalton Varshow in there.
Not to spoil the piece entirely, but I know you have something coming on Dalton Varshow at Fangraphs that looks at both the offensive side and the defensive side. Let's start with the offensive side, some noticeable swing changes so far this season.
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Chapter 4: What is Jon Morosi's insight on Jacob deGrom’s legacy?
And obviously it didn't turn out that well. Didn't turn out that well. They blew the game. Jeff Hoffman and Connor Siebold lost it. But yeah, reflecting on it now, what did you make of that in the moment and after the fact?
Okay, let me give you at least one little preface here. I fully admit that I'm going to sit on the fence, but this is to me, if we're being truly honest about the situation, I feel like this is a fence-sitting worthy conversation. The reason I say that is, let's go back to the beginning of the game. Did anybody think that Trey Savage had his stuff that game?
I mean, if you make it out of five innings and you've got seven walks, he did not have anywhere close to his top stuff in that game. And in all likelihood, I actually tried to look up the number at the end of the game, Blake, and I couldn't find it. I asked Ben to do it as well, and I don't think he was able to find it. How many times, literally in history, let alone in recent history,
as a blue jay pitcher let alone any pitcher in baseball or pitching staff had double digit walks and won the game because the savage had seven and when the pen came and i believe the pen total had four more so i believe it was 11 walks might have been 12 in that game chances are if i were to tell you at the end of the game hey the blue jay pitching staff had 11 12 watts and trey savage had seven your first question to me would be how much did they lose by
So the fact that they were in a position to win that game 5-1 before it got away from them in the bottom of the ninth, I think was a minor miracle. So again, if we're being totally honest with ourselves, Toronto probably should not have won that game. But to get to your question specifically, this is why I kind of lean on both sides of the fence.
I joked with Chris LaRue about this off the air because he was wandering around the studios as well doing some TV work.
Even right now, and I say this with all due respect to Chris, maybe a little bit of a Jeff, but even at his age, his years removed from Major League Baseball, if he were to step into a game right now, I'm talking like tonight, I've got to think I would have the faith that he would be able to hold down a four-run lead.
He might give up two or three, but I've got to think that I'm feeling fairly confident if I'm handing the ball off to Jeff Hoffman with a four-run lead. So I don't totally...
criticize John Schneider for the thinking because if we go back to and I remember calling the series roughly about a month or so ago when the Blue Jays were playing the race and there was a situation I can't remember if it was game two or three of the series but it was a situation where it was the eighth inning
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Chapter 5: How does the Braves' pitching staff contribute to their success?
We'll be seeing you there. Yes, absolutely. Okay, let's talk some Major League Baseball. There's fun college baseball stuff to get to as well if we have time. Actually, let's just do that now. How cool was that? So for anyone who didn't see it, West Virginia, Comes up with the big win yesterday. And this is something that, as I understand it, they do regularly.
But given the weight of that win, every player is standing on the field. Every person in that stadium is singing in unison at the end of the game, Take Me Home Country Roads by John Denver. You ever seen anything like that, at least in North American sports? It's very unique, Blake, and I'm glad you asked about it.
First of all, the starting third baseman for West Virginia, Tyrus Hall, is Canadian, so you've got a Canadian connection to the Mountaineers. It's a special atmosphere, and I'll tell you, earlier this season, actually it was about a month ago, I was in Morgantown. I was part of two broadcasts on ESPN Plus of college baseball, of a series between West Virginia and Kansas State.
So I got a chance to experience exactly what you're describing, which is every home win, The Mountaineers stand on the first baseline, the home dugouts on the first base side, and they lock arms and they sing Take Me Home, Country Roads. And I got goosebumps watching it then, a month ago, when it was a Big 12 series, but Not at all what we saw in the last couple days, and that's unique.
So I was watching the game last night and watching it all unfold and reaching out to people that I knew who were part of West Virginia baseball and the coach, Steve Saban, I've known for a long time. Actually, to bring it totally full circle, part of the reason why I was at those games on the broadcast there for ESPN Plus a month ago was because I got to know the staff and
at West Virginia, then coach Randy Mazey, who's done a great job there for many, many years, and the now coach Steve Sabins, because I spoke with both of them when I was doing a story about Alec Manoa. And that was the whole reason why we kind of got connected. And they said, at some point in time, John, when you've got it in your schedule, come down for a weekend.
We'll have you work on the broadcast and get to know a little bit about what makes Mountaineer baseball so special. So it all honestly goes back to Alec Manoa. If it were not for Alec Manoa, I would not be able to tell you on this edition of Jay's Talk Plus what it's like to see a ball game in Morgantown because I saw it twice. Really, the fan support, and I think it's great this time of year.
I feel like every year around the NCAA tournament, Blake, sort of casual baseball fans or major league fans that all of a sudden are watching this unfold on ESPN or however you can watch it. You're like, whoa, what's this college baseball going on? And I feel like a greater and greater group of people every spring and every late May, early June get to experience why college baseball is so unique.
And I think West Virginia does a great job of illustrating this in that it is a The major league team of that state. There is no major league team in West Virginia. They're about an hour or so away from Pittsburgh, but that is the major league team.
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Chapter 6: What are the key strengths of the Braves offense this season?
It would make the argument a lot easier. I think, yeah, that's well laid out. And the number for me will probably be 396 more innings. Get over that 2,000 inning.
Total it's, I think it's still going to be hard for some voters to, even with a couple of Cy Young's and the record that, you know, best strike at the walk ratio ever, you know, a lot of league leader stuff over the years, but yeah, sub 2000 innings. It's I'd be very curious to see, but maybe he gets there. Maybe he gets there. Like you said. Okay.
We've got a Blue Jays Braves series that starts tonight, and we're going to talk to Jesus Cano of the Athletic in a little bit here about the Braves side of things. But they're sitting in first place, not just in the NL East, the entire league right now. They're 40 and 20, and they had a pretty disastrous 2025. They had made the playoffs seven times in a row, won a championship.
Expectations are always this high. And... They did change the manager, but they didn't change a ton else. What do you make of how they steered out of a bad 2025 and into a good 2026? Kind of similar to the Jays 2024 to 2025, but without the, you know, seven year playoff streak behind it. They have an excellent president of baseball operations, you know him well, Alex Anthopoulos.
And I wanna credit Alex for the way that he responded to last year, because sometimes there's the temptation when a year does not go well, that you change a ton of things. And he didn't. He recognized correctly that it was a matter of the pitching not being healthy at all. You look at Schwellenbach's injury, Smith-Schauber, others that happened last season. They had a lot of bad luck.
And then the bullpen was both injured and not terribly good. And so that was... I think as Alex looked at it, the main reason why they struggled Acuna obviously has had his share of injuries the last couple years. But I think a lot of the things that I listened carefully to your conversation yesterday with Jeff Francoeur that I think were very, very telling in why the team is having success.
I think Jeff's point about rotating the DH is a really important one. And again, that's something that Alex decided intentionally to leave that spot open to rotate players through. It's been overall a really successful innovation for the Braves. And I think also Alex knowing the type of managerial voice they needed.
The Braves have been a team, when you look at, again, going back to Bobby Cox, when Bobby retired, they brought in Freddy Gonzalez, then Freddy leads into Snitker. All of these people had pre-existing ties to the organization. This is...
This is the comparison, whichever program you want to allude it to in either hockey or college football that likes to stay within the family and has success doing it, that's the Braves. And there's been Braves DNA either as a... Previous coach or previous executive in almost all of their hirings over the last four decades, if you want to look at it that way. The consistency that they've had.
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Chapter 7: How are the Blue Jays preparing for the series against the Braves?
I mean, they're playing the best in baseball right now. And there really isn't any, you know, slumps or anything going on. So it's been a really good position to be here. So I'm excited to be here and talk about the Braves, man. Yeah, and it's been great to read your work. I've read some of your stuff at Baseball America. Unfortunately, you were stationed in Arizona for spring training.
So, you know, not as much Jay's stuff hitting there. Okay, so you mentioned it. The Braves are very, very good. They are the best record in baseball. They are top three on both sides of the ball. Let's start at a high level. What has clicked so well for this team, especially coming off such a down year in 2025?
I think it's the fact that when constructing this roster, you look at the lineup they have, and you can obviously point to superstars like Ronald Acuna, guys like Matt Olsen, Austin Riley, and then the emergence of Drake Baldwin after winning the Rookie of the Year, and those were sort of the core players heading into this year.
But it's been a lot of other guys that continue to step up routinely because the thing about the Braves, like while they're the best team in baseball, they also just happen to come in with a lot of injuries specifically to the pitching rotation. They were out without, you know, Hurston Waldron, Spencer Schwellenbach, and then Spencer Strider went on the injured list during spring training.
And then to go with that, I mean, the injury, they've been plagued with so many injuries to the lineup. You know, Sean Murphy was still recovering from an injury he suffered last year.
then Acuna went down then when Acuna comes back one day later Drake Baldwin goes on the injured list right so you have your top guys but you also have guys who continue to step up you know every single step of the way and specifically talking about guys like Mauricio Dubon this past month it's been Mike Yastrzemski and recently at shortstop in the absence of with Hassan Kim's injury and him not coming up to a hot start it's been Jorge Mateo you know and you look at the lineup Bryce Elder I mean the rotation Bryce Elder has you know finally come into shape and form from the prospect that they
one stop that could contribute to the team, and he's certainly doing now. It's plenty of different other guys that just seem to step up to the role, and I think that's the biggest thing for the Braves right now.
Yes, they have a good balance of really good players that are probably good all-stars, but they also have a balance of role players who have stepped up and have just done beyond expectations of what they were expected to do. So this Braves team, whether under Snicker previously or under Walt Weiss now, one of the things that you become accustomed to is they... their main guys post every day.
The lineup is fairly similar every day. You don't see with the exception, with the exception, exception, Mike Yastrzemski, you know, not a ton of platooning and things like that. So the Jorge Mateo Hassan Kim situation is very interesting to me.
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Chapter 8: What are the expectations for the Blue Jays in the AL East?
We will talk to you at 10 a.m. tomorrow. Have a great Tuesday.