Monday Bantering: Vlad, Varsho

Happy Monday. Any Monday where the Jays are 5 games up on the second place team is a happy Monday.

I keep reading that ‘if Vlad could pinch hit, he could have DHed’. Which we know isn’t true. Vlad wasn’t going to run the bases. If he reached first, there would have been a pinch runner. He was just there to pinch hit, hopefully hit something hard and come out of the game. The team is closer to him than we are, they know what they can getaway with and what they can’t. They aren’t going to do something that risks the rest of his season.

My biggest concern about him pinch hitting was that if it turns out Vlad needs IL time, it can’t be back dated. I’m interested to see if he can play today. I’m sure there is no chance he will play first. And I’d expect that, if he does play, he’d be pinch run for if they in a spot where he would have to go hard to the next base.

Daulton Varsho has been amazing. A home run every third game, every ten at bats. I’ve kind of figured that his value to the team was always going to be the glove and that if he chipped in with a hit or a homer, here and there, I’d live with it.

Last year he was (almost) league average, 97 OPS+ and he had a 5.0 bWAR. I would take that anytime.

It’s too bad he’s only going to get us 60 games, at best. But is is likely he’s going have the best 60 game season we’ve seen in a while (looking, Brett Lawrie had a 3.3 bWAR in 2011, his rookie year). He’s already at a 2.2 bWAR, he could end up over 3.0.

The idea that you can have a blown save as a reliever, in extra, when the run that causes the blown save starts on second base is dumb. If the Manfred Man scores it isn’t an earned run, which makes sense, but I don’t see why the same isn’t true about blown saves.

Yesterdays’ plate umpire did a terrific job. If they were all like this we wouldn’t be wanting robo umps. Only one really bad call. The other three were at the bottom outside of the zone.

The Jays made the MLB ‘Team Power Ranking”. Course that means little.