J.P. Arencibia: Remembered

Strangely, I remember June 7^th, 2007 pretty vividly. At the age of 15, I was truly hitting the sweet spot of being a baseball fan: Old enough to head down to the Rogers Centre sans parent, still young enough to pity some cup of coffee reliever into signing an autograph pre-game. At the time, unlike the other three major North American sport leagues, the MLB didn’t televise their draft. Due mostly to the non-descript nature of NCAA Baseball. No average fan knew who these guys were. Hell, some would toil in this anonymity for the rest of their careers. But that was the day I decided I wasn’t an average fan. I was going to take a vested interest in the MLB Draft.

The Jays had two picks in the first round of 2007. The 16^th selection garnered from the Rangers’ signing of free agent outfielder Frank Catalanotto. This pick would be used on Kevin Ahrens, a SS from a high school in Texas. To this day I routinely check-in on Ahrens minor league stats. They’re ugly. In 2013 Ahrens would play with the AA New Hampshire Fisher Cats, posting a .626 OPS. Somehow, that’s only the 3^rd lowest mark of his career. With the 21^st spot, Toronto decided to go in a different direction: A college catcher. Unlike Ahrens, still just an 18-year old, this product of the University of Tennessee was more polished, filled-out, and had played against a consistently higher level of competition while in school (generally college players take a quicker path to the majors because of this). And so, as I sat periodically refreshing a computer screen in my father’s apartment, this was the moment J.P. Arencibia became a Toronto Blue Jay.

As with anything in life, you only get one first prospect, and Arencibia was my guy, for better, or, as usually was the case, for worse. The Jays signing of Dioner Navarro this morning essentially means the end of J.P. in Toronto. This, for all intents and purposes, is a good thing. To say Arencibia was a liability behind the plate would be a vast understatement. With his seemingly allergic relationship with walks ruining any chance he had of falling into a classic three-outcome player mold, an Arencibia at bat usually had two endings: A home run or a strikeout. And dingers can only get you so far. However I’ll be choosing to remember the good when it comes time to gaze upon the Florida native’s stint with Toronto. If you’d like to join me, here are some great starting points…

Game One (August 7^th, 2010)

In 2010 Arencibia would win the Pacific Coast League MVP. In 2010 I was unaware that high altitude effected the distance a ball would travel. These two facts played a very large role in my excitement as I headed down to the Dome with my friend Mark.

Downtown Toronto, as it still does, sat roughly 250 feet above sea level that night. This did not stop me from predicting to Mark that, while making his MLB debut, J.P. Arencibia would hit a home run on his first pitch. Now, I’d made this claim before. I’d make it again. In fact, I’m not batting much better than Arencibia himself in the realm of predictions, but that one hit. The rookie became just the 28^th player in MLB history to deposit the first pitch he saw into the seats. He would include a double, a single, and another home run that night. After a curtain call, a standing ovation, and one of the shortest feeling TTC rides home in my young memory, Mark and I were drunk with Arencibia infatuation. And much like most drunk decisions, we’d make one we’d soon regret. To the best of my knowledge, that was the night Facebook’s first J.P. Arencibia Fan Club was created.

“Drafted by the Blue Jays in 2007, 21st overall. In 4 years in the Jays minor league system batted .275 with 82 HRs, including 31 this year at AAA Las Vegas, which lead the Pacific Coast League. 

Was 4/5 with 2 HRs and a double in his major league debut. Making him the most amazing human being on the planet!”

I’m not sure who technically wrote it. But Mark and I share the blame. I’ll have “Arencibia Fan Club co-creator” put on my tombstone. I must live with it. It’s my scarlet letter.

Hold Me Back (July 2^nd, 2011)

As an avid sports fan born in Toronto in 1992, you’re sort of forced to get creative with what’s considered a great sports moment. I’ve found it easier to just replace “great” with “memorable” and continue to bask in the mundane. That said I have had the pleasure of being present for some of Toronto’s best blow-ups. Matt Bonner fighting with All-NBA and future Hall of Famer Kevin Garnett. Brett Lawrie’s now infamous helmet toss (with personalized Twitter account: https://twitter.com/HelmetTosser13). But neither holds a candle to 6’9 Jon Rauch’s freak-out on home plate umpire Alfonso Marquez.

I’ve had a lot of time to examine the events of that afternoon. It wasn’t supposed to be the hulking Rauch we all remembered. July 2^nd, 2011 was also the day Harry Leroy Halladay made his return to Toronto. However the soft-spoken Halladay just couldn’t compete with Rauch’s Magic Mike impression. Though, also lost in the moment, were the actions of Arencibia. It might have been the power numbers he produced in the minors, but I had always believed J.P. to be a big man. This was not the case. He stands 6 feet tall. He weighs in around 200 pounds. No match for Rauch.

There’s a lot of ways to view that picture. Whether it’s a meta-commentary about Arencibia being unable to physically handle a pitching staff, a metaphor for his career with Rauch representing the overwhelming strength of opponents that J.P. couldn’t handle, or just a microcosm of a disappointing 2011 campaign. I just think it’s hilarious.

Opening Day (April 5^th, 2012)

The 2012 season, to a somewhat lesser extent than the 2013 season, was supposed to be special for the Blue Jays. Like most years on Opening Day, Toronto had a 1 o’clock start time and, like most years, I had skipped class to watch it.

Not much went right for the Jays. Ricky Romero, coming off an All-Star season, struggled with his command all afternoon, the beginning of what some view the end of another former 1^st round pick’s career. Toronto trailed 4-1 heading to the 9^th when miraculously they staged a comeback and tied the game at 4’s. Unlike school, I had decided on actually going to my job as a cashier at a grocery store that night, extra innings just weren’t going to work for me. But that’s the beauty of 162 games. You can’t watch every inning. Sometimes you just have to hope you don’t miss something great. Apparently I didn’t hope hard enough.

Arencibia stepped to the plate in the top of the 16^th 0 for 6 with three strikeouts. Much like Romero, it would really be all downhill from this game on in Toronto, but he’d always have this at bat. J.P. mashed a three-run home run off Indians pitcher Jairo Asencio giving the Jays a 7-4 lead they wouldn’t relinquish and a win in what became the longest Opening Day game in MLB history. It also made me change my profile picture to this for three days:

It remains on Facebook, much like a photo-shopped Peyton Manning in Dolphins gear, both reminders of the unpredictability and rapid-changing mentality of sports. Plus, let’s be honest, he’s an upgrade over my face. Which leads me to my next point…

The Female Persuasion (April 9^th, 2012)

This picture pretty much speaks for itself.

Just know this was a live-shot during the Jays’ 2012 Home Opening broadcast. This was on Canadian National TV for like five seconds. Buck Martinez said nothing. I’d like to think Pat Tabler got it, but knew better. Either way this is a good time to point out you can buy “I heart BJ’s” t-shirts for $20 on Front Street after Jays games. Use that information as you may.

Coming into the 2014 season there was really no way around it. J.P. Arencibia was not, and will not be the starting catcher for a World Series team. The team needed a change. Frankly, Arencibia did too as his relationship with the Toronto media grew toxic long ago. In fact, J.P. in so many ways reminds me of long-time Raptor Andrea Bargnani. Skilled, but never skilled enough and never in the right ways. Bargnani, like Arencibia, is an acquired taste in a flavour that has long gone sour in Toronto. But an amazing thing happened when the Italian center was traded to the New York Knicks: People noticed.

netw3rk ‏@netw3rk

13 Nov

Bargs might be the most GIF-able/Vine-able player in the league. He does several hilarious things a game.

So go J.P. Arencibia. Go off into MLB free agency. Take with you your 25 home runs, 200 strikeouts, and rugged good looks. You belong to the world now.

Brett Lawrie, You've Been Sabermetric'd

Aaron Levenstein, a former business professor at Baruch College, once said “Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.” This has long been the understanding of stats; they can pretty much prove whatever you’d like them to prove, and because of this they are the lifeblood of debate and discussion. In no sport is that more evident than baseball. Glorified recently by the movie Moneyball, baseball is numbers. Percentages, tendencies, averages; these aren’t just used by bar patrons to argue the value of their favourite player or fantasy gurus giving insight to their eager disciples, but by managers to set infield alignments and even by players to turn their careers around.

There’s an old notion in baseball that everything evens out after 162 games. This is mostly true, the rare Brady Anderson-like anomaly notwithstanding. Essentially what this means is that early season stats should be taken with a grain of salt, because, whether good or bad, the inverse will happen by season’s end. The problem is fans are impatient, especially when it comes to players as anticipated as Brett Lawrie.

 Looking at Lawrie’s current .286/.321/.408 line; everything actually appears to be in order. He has two home runs, a team leading nine RBI. It all seems to add up to a good or, at the very least, above average start, but this is anything but the case. Sometimes stats lie. Sometimes were just looking at the wrong stats. Last season the young Canadian’s splits were .293/.373/.580. Vastly better than this season, yet the batting average remains nearly unchanged. In just 224 career at bats Lawrie has proven that whether with speed of bat or foot, he’ll get his hits. The difference between this year and last is what those hits are producing. In 2011 Toronto’s third baseman had an ungodly isolated power, a measure of a hitter’s raw power and extra base pop, of .287. To put that in context, a league average ISO is roughly .145. This year Lawrie’s ISO sits at .122, due mainly to 12 of Lawrie’s 14 hits being singles. One factor contributing to this is Brett’s ground ball to fly ball ratio which currently sits at 3 to 1. He’s just not squaring up pitches so far in 2012.

The RBI are also misleading. In fact RBI are the hitter’s equivalent of a pitcher’s win total. They’re flashy stats. They’re well-known stats. But in the context of player value, they mean nothing. RBI are nothing more than a representation of two factors: a player’s position in the line-up and the strength of that line-up. Discounting home runs, in which a player drives himself in, RBI are a product of situation. Now, Brett is hitting .375 this season with runners in scoring position, however his OPS in those 16 at bats is just .796.  Compare that to 2011, where he batted .289 RISP, but with a .966 OPS, due to the fact that 45% of his hits in these situations were of the extra base variety. Essentially, Lawrie isn’t hitting badly in these opportunities his team is creating for him; he’s just not taking the same advantage of them.

            Again, this is 12 games into the season with a man who’s played just 55 in his career. Comparing 2011 to 2012 is literally like comparing apples to slightly smaller apples. However this trend is concerning, not just because it’s happening, but because people are unaware. Sometimes stats hide the truth and the truth is: Brett Lawrie is struggling this season.