Some Answers On Opening Day

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 Simon B

The 2021 Baseball season is finally underway! The Blue Jays were in action on Thursday and Saturday and are once again in action this afternoon against the Yankees for the first series of the campaign. I'll have a piece on the entire opening series up tomorrow but what I wanted to do today is see if I can find answers to some of the biggest unknowns this young ball club has coming into the season.

My prediction for this Jays' team (if everyone stays relatively healthy and based on last year's performance) is that they'll be in contention for a wild card spot come September and I can see them getting into the postseason. But for that to happen, a ton of things need to go right.  pitching needs to be solid, they're big offensive guns need to live up to the hype and come up with some big performances. We'll just have to wait and see how things go. 

No Closer, No Problem

About two weeks ago now, the Jays announced that off-season acquisition Kirby Yates was going to undergo Tommy John surgery and miss the entire 2021 season. Yates struggled in 2020 but his stats from 2019 are the reason the Jays signed him. That year he posted a 1.19 ERA (earned run average) and had a career-high 41 saves for the Padres. During spring training he looked like his old self again. Naturally, when it was announced that the Jays lost their closer for the year, the question of who would be the replacement came up.

The first name that came to most people's minds was probably Jordan Romano. The hard-throwing lefty has everything you need to close out games in the major leagues when it comes to his arsenal. He's got a fastball that averages around 96.5 mph that he threw about 40% of the time last year. He likes to use this pitch up in the zone and blow batters away with it once he's got hitters in a two-strike count. His other pitch is a slider. The slider has about a 90 mph average and he usually uses this pitch to get ahead in the count going in at the knees to righties and down and away to lefties.

I thought that the Jays would have him closing if they ever needed to. However, manager Charlie Montoyo used him in the ninth inning with the game tied at two. He got into a jam but he overpowered hitters with that high fastball to keep it tied going into extras.

Because Montoyo had used Romano in the ninth who would he rely on in the 10th with the Jays now up by one? The answer was Julian Merryweather. 

Merryweather is a really interesting player. Toronto got him in the deal that sent Josh Donaldson to Cleveland back in August of 2017. He was advertised to be a really talented pitcher who could start games or just as well be a three or four-inning reliever if needed. Merryweather got bit by the injury bug though and has struggled to get any big league experience.  He bounced around in the minors for a while and played some fall and winter ball in Arizona as well but he never got onto the major league roster. 

He looked great in spring and the Jays were looking at him as a late-inning option before Yates or Romano. Well, with Yates done for the year his role would probably be more prominent. And right out of the gate it was.

On Thursday he was put into his first MLB appearance and needed to get three of the best hitters in the Yankee lineup (Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, and Gleleyber Torres) out. He was able to get all three to strike out in 10 pitches. The most impressive thing about his big league debut was the way he mixed the velocity of his pitches. He would throw a slider at 79 mph and then follow that up with a 99 mph fastball up in the zone. As a batter, when you face a 79 mph pitch and the next one nears 100, it's almost impossible to adjust and make contact. 

With both Merryweather and Romano showing that they can compete with the best lineup in baseball, I think that Jay's fans can rest easy knowing they've got two healthy arms to close out games for them.

If you have any other sports topics you'd like to read about, let me know in the comments or send me a message in the "Contact me" section in the sidebar!

Thanks for reading! I'd love your comments and questions.  Please share with friends and take a moment to subscribe (head to the sidebar and sign up under the "subscribe" section) so you can read all my post-game pieces on the Leafs as well as my takes on the big news in Toronto sports and more. It would mean a lot.

#GoJaysGo #BlueJays #JaysYankees #OpeningWeekend #NYY #MLB #shootsleftandwrites #slaw

Images courtesy of TrueRGM on YouTube and the Sportsnet television network


Location: Toronto, ON, Canada

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