Happy Sunday.
And Happy Birthday to Jordan Romano, who turns 31 today. Yesterday, he picked up his 99th save. His next save will tie him with Billy Koch for fourth on the Jays all-time list. Next up is Roberto Osuna at 104. He could pass Duane Ward (121) for second this season. Tom Henke is #1 at 217, so he’s safe for a couple of years.
Romano has an 89% save percentage, and Henke has an 85%. To be fair, Tom had more 2 and 2+ inning save opportunities.
José Berríos is having a terrific start to the season.
Dorktown shows us that he has the lowest ERA by any Jays pitcher through 5 starts. That tiny blue dot at the bottom right is Jose.
The race for early season MVP seems to consist of three names.
- Daulton Varsho had a slow start with the bat, but in the last eight games, he’s hit .360/.407/1.040 with 5 home runs. He leads all MLB outfielders in Outs Above Average at 6, 2 ahead of Julio Rodriguez. He also has 2 steals.
- Justin Turner has been consistently terrific at the plate. He’s hitting .323/.405/.532 with 2 home runs and tied with Varsho for the team lead in RBI at 11.
- José Berríos has an ERA of 0.85 in his first 5 games, with a league-leading 4 wins and a league-leading 31.2 innings. Batters are hitting .205/.276/.286 against him. And he’s been better against LHB (.265 OPS) than RHB (.717), now he won’t keep that large a reverse split. But it is a nice sign for a guy who has always had trouble with lefty batters.
Shi Davidi has a story on Varsho.
The difference this year is in “having a better understanding of where my swing’s at, not missing my pitch when it’s there, and having a better plan, I would say, overall of how to attack every starting pitcher that I’ve really faced. Obviously, you’re going to run into those days where you can’t see the ball very well and you make bad decisions, but it’s about being able to move on to the next one.”
I know it is a Padre and all, but I think an umpire should have a thicker skin (though it looks like a good call to me). That was pretty low on the ‘degrees of slamming down your equipment’ scale. Neither bounced that much. I’m a fan of letting players blow off a bit of steam (the game is personal to them). Umpires shouldn’t be blowing off steam. I don’t know, maybe Profar said something simultaneously, but fans come to see players.
If he was a Jay, we would have been upset at the quick hook.
But Ramon De Jesus was pretty ok last night:
This I don’t understand:
he’s just not that into it pic.twitter.com/0hrHm35Kit
— Codify (@CodifyBaseball) April 21, 2024