Giving The Jays Front Office Their Flowers

 This is a quick post today, and it's not something that I haven't done before I just think it's timely given the game yesterday. All off season, fans and myself were hating on the Jays front office. We wanted Juan Soto or Roki Sasaki and got neither. This made the fanbase, and myself, overlook the moves the front office did make bringing in real contributors to winning. I'll save some of the other guys for another day, today the focus is on Myles Straw and Max Scherzer, two guys brought in this offseason without much noise and two guys who won the Jays a ballgame last night. 

Myles Straw

I'll be the first to admit that I hated this move when the Jays made it. To be fair to myself and the fans, the Jays were coming off a season where they had the best defense in baseball, only to have nobody hit anything making the defense useless. At this point of the offseason, the Jays already missed on Juan Soto which bummed the fan base out to a significant degree. It was ok though, they were making a hard pitch at Japanese pitcher Roki Sasaki. With the Dodgers and Jays as finalists, the Jays knew they had to do something to sweeten the deal given that every team is only allowed to spend so much on international players. To create room in their international player pool, the Jays traded for Myles Straw and the $14.1m remaining on his contract, freeing up an additional $500k or so to throw at Sasaki.  Despite this, Sasaki signed with the Dodgers leaving the Jays stuck with Straw's contract with no Sasaki. 

Mike Wilner, a long time Jays analyst, got on his podcast and claimed this was a fireable offense. Usually a guy who protects the front office at all costs was absolutely fed up. I too was upset, the Jays are now overpaying their 4th outfielder, who's also a guy that doesn't hit and has a great glove just like everyone else on the roster I thought. Turns out we are all idiots. Straw is having one of the best seasons of his career, and without researching it too much I'd wager a guess that he's the best 4th outfielder in all of baseball. If any Jays starting outfielder goes down with injury, as Daulton Varsho did for a big part of this season, you can feel more than comfortable throwing Straw in the lineup. He's got gold glove quality defense, is the fastest guy on the team and has shown this season he can come up with a big hit when the opportunity finds him. He's also not a guy with a big ego that you need to play every day. Often the Jays will use their versatility on the bench to bring in pinch hitters and runners, the latter being a perfect situation to use Myles Straw. Then there's games like last night. As Max Scherzer's start wore on, Myles Straw made a tremendous leaping catch at the wall in deep center field to rob extra bases in the 5th. An inning later he made a diving catch on a line drive in shallow center that saved a run or two with guys on base. The Jays won last night 7-3 and I would say Straw saved them 2-3 runs with his defense alone. Comparing pitchers to outfielders is stupid, but I'm going to do it anyway. This season Straw has a WAR of 2.0, Roki Sasaki carries a WAR of 0.3 after going down with a shoulder injury in May. Looks like the Jays got the better of that transaction after all. 

Mad Max Scherzer

This one will be shorter, but just as fun I promise. When the Jays signed Max Scherzer, it wasn't the same reaction as the Myles Straw trade. I'd actually say most Jays fans were pleasantly surprised by the signing. Scherzer is a first ballot hall of famer and one of the best pitchers of my lifetime, why wouldn't we want him on the Jays even if he is in his 40s. The season began and immediately Scherzer went down with a thumb injury. He was honest with the media saying he wasn't sure if his thumb would ever be healthy again and he'd just have to manage it. With that in mind, most Jays fans, again myself included, wrote him off for this season. Scherzer was reactivated on June 25, and you could argue since then he's been the Jays best pitcher. In 10 starts Scherzer has gone 57 innings with a 3.47 ERA, and has only gotten better as the season has gone on. In his last 5 starts he's pitched to a 2.25 ERA in 32 innings. 

It's not just his stats that are great, which they are, his demeanor is even better. I know it's been advertised many times that Max Scherzer is a bit of a maniac on the days that he's starting, but seeing it live on your team is something else. If he gets himself into a jam, he locks in and takes pride in getting himself out of it. If he gives up a run or two an inning before, he puts it behind him and does whatever he can to pitch a clean next inning. When he's on the bench, nobody is into the game or cheering harder than Max Scherzer. You can tell that all he wants to do is win, and he's helping the Jays do just that. Last night Scherzer pitched 6 innings of 1 run ball despite not having his best stuff leading the Jays to a much needed win that ties the series. If the playoffs started today, I'd genuinely want Max Scherzer starting game 1, which is something that sounded impossible when the season kicked off. 

That's that, just a little love for the moves the front office did make. I think that I was so caught up in how the Jays didn't catch any of the big fish that I missed the moves they did make. This is a deep team of interchangeable pieces surrounding stars in Vladdy and Bo. I guess that was always the vision, it's just now finally coming together and is beautiful to see.