I am trying to get back into writing a little bit about baseball. With these shorter pieces, I will focus on tidbits from box scores and highlights for one team in one specific game. Hopefully I'll be able to do some larger pieces later in the season once the semester is over.
On Opening Day, the Blue Jays eeked out a one run win over the Yankees in ten innings. They had a few close calls before pulling it out. The ace of the staff last year, Hyun-Jin Ryu was tapped for the first start, and Ryu struggled with first pitches, only getting ahead of 7 of the 21 batters he faced. Twelve swinging strikes is nice (13%), but he’ll need better control in order to maintain his success from the last couple of years. In 2020, his walk rate ticked up to 6.2%, which is about the same as his career numbers (5.5%), but well above the very successful years he had with the Dodgers (4.6% in 2018, 3.3% in 2019). While he only walked one batter this start, the
Dolis pitched the 8th inning, showing no issues stemming from the back spasms that caused him to miss a bit of time towards the end of spring training. Dolis assumed the traditional setup man role for this game, pitching the 8th with the score tied at 2. He was slated to face the 3-4-5 hitters (Hicks, Stanton, Torres) so the Blue Jays may be focusing on having him face the top hitters. Unsurprisingly, this closer situation will need monitoring, as Dolis could very well have pitched the 9th if the batting order in the late innings was just a bit different.
Jordan Romero was nearly unhittable, both because he was not throwing strikes (10/22 pitches), but also because of filthy stuff (8 swinging strikes, 36%). Last year Romero had an elite combination of high swinging strike rates (19.4%) and getting ahead of hitters (66.7% first pitch strike rate), which led him to be the top AL reliever per my modeled, based on xK and xBB rates. Only LeMahieu managed to make contact against him, with a weak groundball to third base. Granted, because of two earlier walks and a stolen base, Biggio had to make a nice throw to the plate to get the second out of the inning and prevent Tauchman’s potentially winning run from scoring, but some flashes of dominance from Romero. To end the 9th, Judge struck out on a fastball which seemed to catch him off guard, leaving the winning run at second base. Judge swung late and underneath the ball, perhaps sitting on Romano’s slider, which was his best pitch in 2020.
Merryweather was even more impressive, looking absolutely dominant to close the game out in the 10th. It only took him 11 pitches to strike out the side, and he only threw one single ball. Merryweather is an older (29) starting pitching prospect who is penciled in for the swingman role in the Blue Jays bullpen. He could emerge as an old school, multi-inning fireman. His fastball was already impressive in 2020, averaging 96.7 MPH, but in this outing it was nearly two MPH faster (98.4). Obviously a tiny sample size, but the velocity on his fastball and slider are both up about 2 MPH, while also dropping his changeup velocity. If you are in a league where middle relievers have value, he could be an excellent pickup.
Since writing an initial draft of this post, Merryweather picked up another save on Sunday. He was similarly dominant, striking out 2 Yankees in a perfect inning to close out a 3-1 win. Merryweather has been nearly unhittable thus far, and could be stealing the closer job from Dolis or Romano (who pitched in the 8th on Sunday).
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