Kuzul

We all know the names of guys like Pujols, Fielder, Howard, Teixeira, and Rodriguez. They’ve been the league leaders in power numbers for most of this past decade.

But now that 2010 is here and a new decade has dawned, who is poised to step into the limelight? Who among the nameless, faceless masses is ready to become the next HR king?

My criteria is as follows:

Player must be no more than 23 years old.
Player must have no more than 500 MLB at bats.
Player must not be a Buffalo Bills fan. I won’t put up with that crap.

So without further ado, here’s your Top 5 Power Hitters under 23:

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Back in March this year, the feeling around Spring Training was one of cautious optimism. 

After coming off a humbling 75-87 season, the firing of J.P. Ricciardi and the trade of team icon Roy Halladay, the Blue Jays were clearly embarking to rebuild.

Fast forward to May 9, with a record of 19-14, the water cooler talk was all about our “great young arms”, our “potent offense” and dare I say it—Wild Card! 

And why not? We had just taken 3 of 4 against Chicago and previous to that we swept the Indians.

The Jays are the top power hitting team in baseball with 51 Home Runs and lead the AL in Total Bases with 535

John Buck, with a .237 career batting average, is all of a sudden a .270 hitting juggernaut who’s on pace to obliterate his career highs in every major statistical category. This includes almost tripling his previous bests in HR’s and RBI’s.

How about Alex Gonzalez? The light hitting baseball nomad has either been eating out of Victor Conte’s garbage or is on the hot streak to end all hot streaks. The most glaring stat? His SLG% (Slugging Percentage) is a ridiculous 185 points higher than his career number.

As for those “Great Young Arms”, Ricky Romero and Shawn Marcum are indeed pitching well. However, Romero has been the recipient of great defense and quite a bit of luck as his unusually low .288 BABIP (batting average for balls in play) would suggest. 

Once that number climbs to around .300, Romero’s stats should even themselves out.

Even still, 19-14 is nothing to scoff at. Until we went on the road to face the Red Sox.

After allowing seven walks last night (six in 1.2 innings from starter Brendon Morrow, one of our “great young arms”) we narrowly lost a sloppy game to Boston. However, that was just one game and there’s no way we walk seven again tonight.

Well we didn’t walk seven, we walked eight. Red Sox 6 – Blue Jays 1.

That loud THUD you just heard was the other shoe dropping.

This is to be expected from an elite hitting team like the Red Sox. They are third in the AL with a .353 team OBP and 4th in fewest strikeouts (from their hitters). 

On the other hand, the Jays are in the bottom three in the AL for OBP and have struck out at the plate more times then any other team in baseball.

Home runs are great but nothing kills a rally more than a strikeout or hitting into a double play. There’s a reason why Adam Dunn is playing in Washington and guys like Russell Branyon and Jack Cust can’t keep a job even though they are legit power hitters.

Apologies to my fellow Jay fans out there as I know I can come across as a bit a buzz kill . However, this is still a rebuilding season and when we beat up on some the leagues lesser lights we all need to take it with a grain of salt.

Having said that, there are still lots to be excited about! Lyle Overbay is making Mendoza look like Tony Gwynn so we can expect to see Brett Wallace manning First Base hopefully by July when we make our west coast road trip.

It’s all about perspective.

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This is my first official article as the new Toronto Blue Jays Feature Columnist here on B/R. Quick thanks to the editorial staff for their assistance and to the men behind the curtain who saw fit to give me this opportunity. And a big thanks to my readers who never cease to keep me honest. I expect nothing less.

Cheers!

Jeff

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As I write this, my beloved Toronto Blue Jays are sitting third in the AL East (fourth overall in the AL) with an impressive early record of 16-13. This places us a mere four games behind the Yankees, for the Wild Card spot.

It’s also May 6.

Have a cup of coffee, rummy.

First allow me to preface the remaining article with the following: You will be hard pressed to find a more devoted Blue Jay fan than I. However, I’m also a strict realist who deals in honest, factual reasoning and absolutely does not suffer fools. I’m a shotgun diplomat who leaves the platitudes for the horde of Pavlov’s Dogs that seem to inhabit the sporting news blogosphere.

As for the Jays, sometimes you just need to tell your girlfriend “yes honey, you do look fat in that dress.”

At first glance a 16-13 record looks fairly impressive for a team that was supposed to be a bottom feeder this year. However, when you dig a little deeper you’ll notice that it just isn’t the case.

We’ve played four of nine series’ against teams with winning records last year, Boston, Los Angeles, Tampa, and Texas.  Our record stands at 3-9 in those games, including 1-6 against AL East teams

We have yet to play New York, Detroit, Minnesota, or Seattle and we still have 16 games left to play against Tampa and Boston.  That leaves 99 games left against winning teams from ’09—not including 12 games against the Rockies, Giants, Cards and Phillies, all winning teams from the NL. 

At our current pace we are looking at a record of 33-66 against the winning teams in the AL.  Lets say we run just over .500 during Inter-league games at 8-7, that leaves us at 41-73. 

48 games left to play against the worst of the AL.

Lets be optimistic here and say we have a .700 record against these teams and end up 34-14.  That gives us a record of 75-87.

Coincidentally, that was our record last year. Good enough for 4th in the AL East, a full 28 games back of New York.

Now for some sobering reality about our roster:

Alex Gonzales’ best year offensively was in 2004 with the Marlins when he hit .232/23/79.

To illustrate how much of an anomaly that is, his career per season numbers are .248/10/45.  Of his eleven other seasons, only in three of them did he eclipse 10 home runs and 55 RBI. His pace so far projects to .278/45/123. Needless to say you can cut those power numbers in half and knock off 30 average points. More than expected yes, but Alex Rodriguez, he is not.

John Buck is hitting very well of late (though his avg/OBP are putrid as expected). 

However, in four of his six years in Kansas City, when he was the clear starter, Buck had never hit more than 18 HR or 50 RBI.  His current pace of 27/76 (based on 135 games) simply cannot be sustained.

As advertised, Brandon Morrow has been a strikeout machine. 

But with a K:BB ratio of 10:5, we can expect his ERA to stay at around 5.00. Control is a skill that is slow to develop and expecting Morrow to “figure it out” and start shutting teams down in the next couple of weeks, or even months, just isn’t reasonable. Also, as long as he’s averaging five innings per start, he’s going to decimate the arms in our bullpen.

Now lets quickly discuss Vernon Wells. 

He’s also on pace for a 45/120 season although at a significantly higher average than Alex Gonzalez. Also just like A-Gon, he will not maintain that pace.

That’s not a bad thing either.

His bloated contract puts him squarely in the cross hairs of both media and fans alike. 

However, over the course of his career Vernon has proven to be a very respectable .280/25/90 hitter to go along with great defense in center field. I think we need to stop blaming him for the contract J.P. Ricciardi signed him to and realize that he just isn’t the .310/35/115 guy we all want him to be. 

Jays fans need get off the road to Jonestown this season. 

We are not winning any divisions or wild cards. We are, as expected, a middling team just trying to stay relevant in the cutthroat A.L. East.

Lets just sit back and enjoy the emergence of some great young talent like Brett Cecil, Ricky Romero, and Travis Snider. I suspect that fairly soon Brett Wallace will be here and we should catch a glimpse of J.P. Arencibia and Kyle Drabek come September.

Now take a cold shower and get ready for more kool-aid. 

NHL offseason starts in July!

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Bottom of the ninth and two outs. There was a runner on first and a ghost runner on third, and Moose, the neighborhood meathead and opposing team’s best hitter, was at the plate.

Filthy, drenched in sweat, and a tightly wound bundle of nerves, I stood on the mound (which was actually just a chalk line drawn on the ground)—the loneliest kid on earth.

All the catcalls of “Heeyyyy batta batta batta” or “pitcher’s got a rubber arm!” had coalesced into a deafening cacophony of white noise, yet I could distinctly hear the rhythmic “thump, thump, thump” of my heart as I stalled the inevitable, wiping my clammy hands on the front of my shorts.

Moose (real name escapes me) was the biggest kid in the neighborhood. No one believed he was only 10 years old, and my friends and I often joked that his dad must have been a Sasquatch. He clearly had the small brain and massive fists to make this theory plausible. However, if there was anything he could do well, aside from hand out random beatings, it was hit a fastball.

I thought long and hard about this very fact as Moose sneered at me from the plate. Maybe if I just tossed him a grapefruit and let him annihilate it I could avoid his ire for a few extra days.

But then again, how sweet would it be to strike this behemoth out? I’d be a king, the local David slaying the big dumb Goliath. However, I had barely escaped goat horns as Moose had hit my two previous pitches a mile, though just foul. So what now, tempt fate again? The decision was clear.

The knuckleball.

I’d been working on this pitch ever since I watched Tom “Candy Man” Candiotti completely baffle my beloved Blue Jays when the Indians came to Exhibition Stadium a few months previous. Since I spent so much time at the school library hiding from Moose and his goon squad (they NEVER went in there; books were like kryptonite for those idiots), I read up on the knuckleball and about guys like Phil Niekro and Eddie Cicotte.

David had his slingshot; I had my knuckler.

Now, with my foot set on the mound, I gave the obligatory look off to the runner on first. Fingers firmly sunk into the ball, I then lifted my lead foot, swung my arms behind my head, and, in an exaggerated arching motion, threw my wrist forward, releasing the ball.

Time slowed to a crawl as I watched my pitch dance and jig its way home like some kind of drunk butterfly. Moose’s eyes went wide with glory lust as he tightened the grip on his bat and lifted his elbows.

No longer able to watch, I closed my eyes tight and waited for the inevitable crack as the ball was hurtled into the cosmos to join its brothers. If God created Heaven and Earth, then Moose created the stars with poorly located fastballs.

Then, nothing. No cheers, no jeers, not even a distant car horn. Just silence. Was I dead? Did Moose hit my pitch so hard that it came back and slammed into my skull? I dared to open one eye, just one, and take a peek.

What I saw was perhaps the most beautiful thing I could possibly imagine. The ball was sitting on home plate, and Moose was crumpled on the ground with his legs twisted like a corkscrew and a look of profound astonishment on his big dumb face. I did it—I struck him out!

Screeching with the kind of joy only a child could muster, my friends and I danced and jumped and yelled like fools for what seemed like hours. I knew I’d most likely take a beating from Moose for this, but I didn’t care. I’d take a thousand beatings if that was the cost of feeling what I felt then. It would be worth it.

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In my neighborhood we called it Birby, although you may recognize it as Stickball or Wallball. Wherever you grew up and whatever you called it, this game was a rite of passage for thousands of kids when I was growing up in urban Toronto.

As an adult, it’s easy to become jaded with professional sports. Million-dollar athletes who refuse to sign a child’s ball, small-market teams relegated to mediocrity, greedy owners holding cities and fans hostage for stadium deals, etc.

However, remember that around the corner from your house there’s a group of kids playing Stickball for nothing other than the sheer joy it brings. No salaries, no agendas—just innocent childish fun.

Once upon a time that used to be you. It may be time for some perspective, a cleansing. Call some buddies and dust off that old Darryl Strawberry Rawlings glove you have in the basement. Now all you need is some road chalk, imagination, and a lack of ego.

Go break a sweat, and remember: Above all else, baseball is still just a kid’s game.

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