Monday Bantering: Jays Bits

Happy Monday. There is a ‘super blue moon’ tonight. Hopefully it will be clear and we’ll be able to see it.

The Jays made a move today:

• They claimed Easton Lucas, a left-handed pitcher off waivers from the Tigers. Lucas has pitched for the A’s and Tigers this season, but it hasn’t been good. But he was doing a great job in the minors, putting up a 3.31 ERA in 29 innings. He’s allowed 41 hits, 4 homers, 23 walks and 52 strikeouts, split between the A’s and Tigers’ Triple-A teams. He throws a mid-90s fastball, a slider, curve and change.
• Alek Manoah has been moved to the 60-day DL to make room.

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Bowden Francis was named AL player of the week for his 2-0 record, 0.64 ERA, 4 hits, no walks,0 and 15 strikeouts in 14 innings.

Well deserved, Bowden.

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Chris Bassitt made headlines saying that the Jays:

The one thing I will say about the Blue Jays for this year…we put, I think, $700 million into Shohei Ohtani’s basket and didn’t get him. We really didn’t have a pivot.

I think they didn’t have a pivot because they were only interested in signing him, and if not, they wouldn’t blow past the Competitive Balance Tax threshold for anyone else. I don’t think Ohtani, by himself, wouldn’t have saved the season. Baseball Reference has him at a 6.1 WAR. So he likely could have got them above .500, but I don’t know that he could have made them a playoff team unless he could have magically made Bo and Springer hit decently by his presence.

He also said:

Bassitt said in order to compete for a World Series title, a team has to have three or four superstars.

“This is just the reality of the landscape, is that you need three or four superstars. We have to get more hitting to protect Vladdy [Guerrero] and then the pitching has to be a lot better. There’s so many things you could talk about…but again, I just don’t think saying those things publicly is what is best for this organization.”

He also thinks Vlad should play third:

The craziest part to me is that if I was Vladdy and I was going to a free-agency year, I’d be, like, ‘Listen, you’re moving me to third base because I’m going to make a lot more money at third base than at first base,’ and the reality is that he is pretty damn good at third base. I thought moving Vladdy from first to third was going to be an absolute crap show. There’s no way Vladdy can play third then we moved him over to third and I’m like, ‘Damn, you actually can play third. Like you played third, obviously, in the past but like I thought that was a long time ago,’ he’s pretty damn good at third.

I’m afraid I have to disagree with that.

He also thinks Vlad wants to be a Jay for life:

I don’t know this, I don’t want to speak for him on this, I think Vladdy wants to be a Blue Jay for the rest of his career,” Bassitt said. “I don’t think he wants to leave, so I don’t think it’s like a super rush to get an extension done. They, obviously, didn’t trade him because they don’t ever see him or want him to be in another uniform. They’re OK to go to arbitration to know how much he’s going to make next year but I think both sides want to be together.

Arden Zwelling and Shi Davidi asked about the interview, and Bassitt cleared up some of the stuff he said:

I agree with that.

And about the unfixable problems, Chris says what he meant was he and Gausman and Berrios are getting older and well you can’t fix that. The odds of them continuing to be great in their later 30s aren’t good:

I don’t know; I think what he said yesterday was blown out of proportion. But then that’s what we do. I agree they didn’t have a backup plan for if they didn’t get Ohtani, but then I don’t think they felt that there was anyone else out there worth spending that much money on.

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Tonight’s lineup. Jimenez is still out, Barger gets to play (and hit ninth for some reason).