Josh Donaldson’s already figured out one thing about his new home compared to the Oakland Alameda County Coliseum: all he has to do is make contact.
Through 15 home games at the Rogers Centre, Donaldson has posted an OPS of 1.157 and has 45 total bases in 64 plate appearances. His batting average at the Rogers Centre is .403, and he has five home runs and five doubles. Included in that is a 469-foot shot that is the second-longest home run in the majors this season, behind the 477-foot moonshot that Alex Rodriguez hit at Tropicana Field.
For comparison’s sake, Donaldson’s best season at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum was 2013, when he hit .288 with an OPS of .888 with 13 HRs and 153 total bases. Last season in Oakland, he hit .233 with 20 HRs and 117 total bases with an OPS of .766.
The Coliseum is Death Valley for hitters. Plus, its ample foul territory allows for more pop ups — a double-edged sword for a slugging third baseman like Donaldson.
“Where I came from, park-wise, you had to hit the balls really hard and at the right trajectory for balls to leave the yard,” Donaldson said Sunday. “Here, I can really just focus on being a good hitter versus trying to create different angles to create power. I mean, I’ve been fooled a couple of times here trying to create those angles. Now, it’s just a matter of focusing on making good contact …
“Although,” he added with a grin, “I do pick my spots every now and then to try to make things happen.”
One added bonus has been the artificial turf. Donaldson likes the way it plays defensively, and even said his body has felt fine playing on it.
“It’s a lot more comfortable than the stuff they had here before,” he said.
My friend Dave Perkins, ex of the Star – who covered more baseball better than anybody I know – thinks Donaldson could be the best all-round Blue Jays player since Roberto Alomar. Perk isn’t given to hyperbole. In fact, I think he’s right. Donaldson’s presence gives the Blue Jays a middle of the order thumper that will make it a little easier to make decisions about the future of Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion.
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Jim McKean spent 28 years as a major-league umpire and two more as a supervisor, and if he feels free to read more into Brook Jacoby’s statement after Jacoby’s 14-game suspension was upheld, so should the rest of us.
“The biggest thing that concerns me is the 14 days, because I’ve never heard of that,” said McKean, discussing the fall-out of Jacoby’s suspension for allegedly pinning umpire Doug Eddings against the wall in a tunnel at Fenway Park following a game in April.
Jim McKean on Baseball Central
“There’s more to it then meets the eye; there must have been. There’s a lot in that statement if you take it apart, that says there’s a lot more that went on than what is believed.”
The statement to which McKean refers was a press release – issued Friday by the Blue Jays – in which Jacoby says that he was wrongly accused and that he is “in no way going to apologize for what happened and feel that the penalties were very biased, harsh and unfair.” Essentially, the Blue Jays are accusing crew chief Bill Miller or whoever prepared the report of lying. As you can imagine, that hasn’t won them any friends with umpires.
Truth is we will never know the true story about what transpired in that tunnel at Fenway Park. But McKean seems to have his doubts, saying that the close confines of the tunnel effectively put the onus on the umpires to manage their exit (baseball has since mandated that the visiting team must wait to head to their locker room until the umpires have exited) and suggesting that “Brook Jacoby always had a very mild demeanor about him when he was a third baseman for the Cleveland Indians and I was umpiring. He was a guy who hardly said anything.”
As for Eddings? McKean said that the umpire sometimes has a chip on his shoulder.
“He has been a lightning rod,” McKean said, candidly, noting that Eddings was held out of post-season assignments one year when McKean was a supervisor. Interesting.
QUIBBLES AND BITS
- Poor David Blatt. The Cleveland Cavaliers head coach has been trashed all day after LeBron James decided to override Blatt’s called play to hit a game-winning final shot in Sunday’s 86-84 win in Game 4 of the Cavs’ playoff series with the Chicago Bulls – hey, if it’s Tristan Thompson doing that, it’s one thing, LeBron it’s quite another, so just move on – and because he can be seen calling for a timeout even though he didn’t have one. Luckily, his players paid no attention. But here’s the thing: as Sportsnet’s Alvin Williams points out, it’s on Blatt’s assistants to remind him of the status of timeouts well before that point.
- If like me you were wondering how often goals are scored in the first minute of each period during a playoff game, the answer is not often. When Chris Kreider scored for the New York Rangers 40 seconds into the first period on Sunday, Jason Chimera of the Washington Capitals scored at 0:28 of the second and Rick Nash of the Rangers tallied at 0:54 of the third, it was the first time goals were scored in the opening minute of all three periods in the post-season since Game 5 of the Pittsburgh Penguins/Philadelphia Flyers series in 2000. The Flyers’ Daymond Langkow scored 23 seconds into the game, Dan McGillis scored 16 seconds into the second and the Penguins’ Darius Kasparaitis scored at 0:40 of the third.
- They’ve already beaten the Golden State Warriors three times this season – something no other team has managed. They’ve held them below 40 first-half points in back-to-back games, something that was done only once in the regular season. Monday night, the Memphis Grizzlies will attempt to take a 3-1 lead against the Western Conference’s No. 1 seed, and they’ve been here before: since 2005, they’ve faced the No. 1 seed on three previous occasions, eliminating the Oklahoma City Thunder 4-1 in 2013 and beating the San Antonio Spurs 4-2 in 2011 after being swept in four games by the 2005 Phoenix Suns.
THE END GAME
Ah, yes. I can already hear the whining now that Noah Syndergaard is scheduled to make his major-league debut for the New York Mets on Tuesday, while 40-year-old knuckleballer R.A. Dickey fights to find his swing and miss stuff.
This was bound to happen at some time, folks, when the Mets and Blue Jays made the deal before the 2013 season, so why the sudden revisionism, especially among those who originally saw the deal as a sacrifice of the future for the short-term?
Syndergaard’s name was seriously connected to only one other deal I’m aware of: a trade with the Oakland Athletics that would have sent Gio Gonzalez to the Blue Jays before the 2012 season. Truth is, I don’t think either the Blue Jays or Mets have had its playoff aspirations impacted one way or another by the trade so far – Dickey gave the Blue Jays back-to-back years of 200 innings, and suggesting that general manager Alex Anthopoulous should have traded Syndergaard and catcher Travis d’Arnaud for a more bona fide No. 1 is a non-starter, since that deal wasn’t available when Anthopoulos needed to make a trade to build on the multi-player Miami Marlins transaction.
If you want to never trade a prospect, then you’ll never be a serious playoff contender. And if you do? This is the risk you take.