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Chapter 1: What are the Blue Jays' recent performance trends?
Shut it down. They did it. Mission accomplished. Banner behind George W. Bush. All that stuff. Look at Banner, Michael. The Blue Jays are back to 500. No, good game yesterday. They win 4-2 to start this 10-game homestand. They beat the Astros. They get Hunter Brown out of the game early. The bullpen does its job.
There's not much to do at this point other than keep stacking wins and stacking series. And the Blue Jays have done enough of that to get back to 500. They hadn't been 500 in about a month. They haven't been over 500 in even longer than that. They'll try to do that this afternoon. As a reminder, it's a 407 game tonight today because of the World Cup game downtown a little later.
It'll be Shane Bieber's 2026 debut taken on Peter Lambert. He back from Japan and looking much better than he was as a Colorado Rocky. But who wouldn't? look better than they did as a Colorado Rocky. Later in the show, we will talk to Ryan Dempster. We will talk to David Adler. But for the first hour, joining me in studio is John Axford. John, how we doing, buddy?
Blake, good to be here. A little different on a Tuesday, but probably better than Monday since that game on Sunday was rained out.
Yes, we would have had, I guess we still would have had Friday and Saturday's games to talk about.
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Chapter 2: How does Shane Bieber's return impact the team?
But rain outs, what is a rain out like? I was going to ask Dempster this later too, because the Cubs got double rained out. They got rained out again yesterday. So Shota Imanaga has had his start bumped twice now. But yeah, what is a rain out day like from the player perspective?
When it happens early enough, that's good. I like, you always love that. You like showing up, getting your work done. It's already called. Okay. Your day's done. Away you go. You get the rest. So I always like that.
If you're in the pen, and especially if the bullpen's been utilized like the Jays' pen has been, it's nice to get that day as well, even though they're probably still going to be utilized a lot as the upcoming games come. But when you have to sit around and wait and wait and wait, and it's hours and hours and hours, and then they call it, that's never a fun time.
But you're just playing video games, playing cards, trying not to eat as much of the spread as possible. But when they call it early, I never minded that.
Even the delay like that where they're not calling it, as a reliever, do you have a bit more of an advantage than the other guys? Because at some point the game will start and then you have an hour and a half or two hours before you're going to get called on. You can manage your snacking a little better than the starting pitcher or the two-hitter could?
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Chapter 3: What insights does Ryan Dempster provide about the Jays?
Yeah, I think mentally you're never really preparing, or at least I wasn't and most guys in the pen, until the game is moving on anyways and you're seeing how it's unfolding. So, you know, you can kind of just joke around and goof around and make sure that you're in a good spot physically and then mentally you can just prepare later.
But as long as it's not going until 1 a.m., I think there's been times where I've closed the game and it's past midnight and that's not so fun. But the earlier is always better.
Yeah, that's what the Jays got Sunday. It was an early start for getaway day, and because the Cubs primarily play early starts anyway, it got canned, so they got back to Toronto early and won yesterday 4-2.
John, the fact that they are back to .500, while it is satisfying to look in the win-loss column and see them back to even, and it's better that they're in a playoff spot than not, given where the goals were for this season, this is just kind of a minor... a minor thing to you rather than some sort of accomplishment at this point?
I mean, the way the AL is currently going, they are in a wild card spot. That's where they want to be. They want to be in the playoffs.
This dominant 500 team with a minus 23 run differential.
If 83 games is going to get you in the playoffs this year, 83 wins, I should say, Good. That's helpful for them. I know they were in a better spot last year. They battled for a little bit in the beginning part of the year. Everyone's going to keep looking back to last year and how that was. They weren't at .500. What were they?
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Chapter 4: How do the Blue Jays' offensive struggles affect their season?
They were probably about eight games or so above, I think, at this point.
Their turnaround started mid-to-late May last year.
Yeah, so hopefully if this turnaround is similar, I mean, last year's turnaround, I think they took over first in July, like very early July. So if this is a little bit later of a turnaround, you know, who knows? Maybe it's August this time where certain things like that happen, and especially the way the AL East and just the AL in general is kind of rolling.
I guess the only good teams are kind of in the AL East right now, though, too. So they have a little bit of an upward battle there. But, I mean... you're a 500 and you're in a wild card spot. I, I feel pretty good. If I'm a blue Jay right now, the way everything has moved for that team.
Yeah. There is a lot that's gone wrong that you could be under 500. You have not had much injury luck on the pitching side. You have not had any individual player have what you'd call like a great season. Everyone's kind of just been okay, which is good. You have a high floor. This is how you end up being a 500 team.
You don't have a lot of terrible spots, but you don't have a lot of great spots either. It's, We're kind of describing a 500 team even in the American League this year. We're describing a 90-win team in the American League Central, but we're describing a 500 team in the American League East.
Yeah, it's always... This AL East is always going to be a battle no matter what. Obviously, there's... I think the Rays are always going to be the race, it seems like. They're always put down here, but they're always up there. Yankees are always going to be good. I think the Jays have got to stick with it, do as much as they can right now. 500 works.
So the last time you were on, we talked a little bit about –
you know, offensive identity and this year's team is going to be different from last year's team. And it hasn't really changed that much since two weeks ago when we talked about it. But yesterday they did something and they've done a little bit more of this lately that at least they can work with. And look, they didn't execute particularly well when they got guys on base yesterday.
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Chapter 5: How do the new Statcast metrics influence player evaluation?
that you can get the pitch count up, and even if you're not going to put a big number up, better a small number over five than a small number over seven.
Yeah, that's something they did last year as well, getting into those bullpens early, running pitch counts up on starters as – An opposing player, if you're in the bullpen, you're seeing that happen with your starting pitcher. It gives you a little bit of a panic down there.
So knowing that the offense is fighting and they're battling, they're doing things like that, I think it kind of puts the opposing team on their toes a little bit more. Anybody that's coming out of the pen, I know for me personally, if I'm coming out, I'm now anticipating guys swinging, guys putting things in play. Just really... problematic at bats, and that's what the Jays were doing yesterday.
So as a pitcher, that becomes really frustrating. It becomes really tough.
Chapter 6: What is the significance of Dylan Cease's pitching performance?
You're trying to now nibble the edges a little bit more. You're getting off the zone a little bit more, get away from the bats so they're not. you know, not fouling things off, but also you have to put things in the zone so they can just put it in play. There are certain times where you're so frustrated with it that you're like, all right, just hit a ground ball. Just like, here you go, hit it.
And then it ends up being a double. So good for the Jays. I mean, that's something that they need to kind of keep doing. I think that's going to help the offense at some point kind of explode the way they need to instead of leaving these guys on base and running the pitch counts up, and then maybe scoring one or two here and there, you're going to get that bases clearing double.
You're going to get that big home run. Those things just haven't quite found themselves yet. I think these are the moments that the offense can do that.
There is also, in a series, a cascading effect where the Astros come into this series, and they're running one man short in the bullpen because they're running a six-man rotation right now. Brian Abreu is on the restricted list due to a personal issue, and now you got to the bullpen early. A.J. Bluebaugh is almost certainly down today after throwing 40 pitches yesterday.
Brian King's now pitched in back-to-back days. So while Josh Hader still looms back there, you now get into game two of the series where their bullpen is, you know, a little thinner than they came in and a chance to kind of...
roll that one game into the next um what is the like i talk about a bunch on this show because like we can see it and you can see who's red and yellow and try to play through what the game's going to look like um how much on the team side is that uh something that gets talked about or something that's emphasized particularly early in a series like getaway day whatever it's still better to pitch to hit against a middle reliever than a start a starting ace right but you're not going to get the carryover effect the way you are that if you do that in game one of a series
Yeah, I think when you see... red lights showing up on bullpen lists pretty early after game one, when you're in that pen, it's a problem. It becomes a problem. You're trying to lean on each other as much as you can to get as much out of your pen as you can.
But I think this also becomes a little bit of an issue as we've maybe seen the Blue Jays kind of move guys around up and down as well when it's happened with them, is these borderline and bubble guys are just, they're now, you're there to fill a spot and you got to throw some pitches and now you're risking getting sent down. emotions, moving guys around in that pen.
But I know when you have a solid pen, there was always that time, second, third inning, you're seeing that pitch count climb up. You feel, I think, as I mentioned earlier, a little bit of that panic, a little bit of that anxiety, like, oh, my God, this is game one of the series. What are we going to do? You have to take it one game at a time, as cliche as that is, but the panic already sets in.
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Chapter 7: What are the implications of the Blue Jays' bullpen situation?
You know that you're in for it. You know that you're going to have to run some pitches. You might have to turn a red light into a yellow, potentially, for some guys to see if they can do it.
But, yeah, I mean, I know for me whenever you would see a pitcher kind of get run pretty early like that, especially in the first game of the series, you just had to lean on each other in the pen as much as possible. You had to be open and trustful with your coaches as well. What do you feel like? What are you able to get? Some days you'd come back after throwing.
First two games and say, hey, I can get you 15 pitches today. That's maybe it.
Chapter 8: How do injuries affect team dynamics and performance?
That's all I have. Offensively for the Jays, that's great. You want to run through these guys as much as possible. You want to get to that pen early.
And then you're definitely red Wednesday if you do a third game in a row.
If Brian King goes out there for three straight. Especially now. I don't know. When's the last time someone went four in a row? Does that happen very often? I don't think so.
I mean, playoffs, but there's off days in there.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm sure Louis Varlin would like to, but even they're not going to ask Louis Varlin.
He'll go six outs and then get four the next day and then still say that he's okay to go. So, yeah, I mean, it's good for the offense for the Jays. They need to get in there, especially on a shortened bullpen like that, see as many arms as they can, wear them down.
So, naturally, Peter Lambert will shove today. We'll talk Peter Lambert a little later in the show. So, look, I don't want it to sound like we're doing backflips about the Blue Jays' offense in that game. They only put up a four spot. And, yeah, that's against Hunter Brown, but they chased Hunter Brown early and then didn't put up big numbers against the bullpen.
They just kind of chipped away at it. So... Again, there was a lot of positive in running the pitch count up, getting the starter out, the carryover effect. They did also go one for nine with runners in scoring position and left 13 guys on base. Left, I think, six of those or seven of those guys on base in runners, in scoring position, rather, left them on base.
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