Game Chat: 4/16 Rays (13-2) @ Blue Jays (10-5) 1:37 PM

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1. Game notes for today/what I’m watching for:

   – I will start by saying the Rays didn’t drop two straight games because of the umpires; they lost because they’re a team built on run prevention, and they failed to prevent runs. Poor defense and lots of free passes from the pitchers has led to extra outs and extra base runners for Toronto. The bad news is that it’s frustrating because it’s all self-inflicted and the Jays haven’t really shown anything offensively other than being able to capitalize on poor play. The good news is that this is super uncharacteristic of the Rays so it’s just part of the ebbs and flows of a 162 game season, and that the Rays are only losing because they’re beating themselves. The offense hasn’t been great either, putting up just 5 runs in 2 games started by arguably the two worst SP in the AL (not including whatever that team in Oakland is trying to do). How does this Rays team, with an above average 27.8 chase% and 3rd best 19.0 K% heading into the series, put up a 34.6 chase% (worst in MLB) and 29.7 K% (3rd worst in MLB) against two pretty bad SP?
   – So far during their series in Toronto, the Rays have seen 13.2% of pitches taken out of the zone called for strikes. This may not seem like a lot, but it’s actually the most in baseball in the current slate of matchups across the league right now. Rays batters have had to expand their strike zones a lot because there’s a 13% chance that a pitch outside of the zone is going to be called a strike. Normally this isn’t a big deal because Rays pitchers would take advantage of a larger zone – and we actually saw them try to do that (part of the reason there have been so many walks, especially from Ras early on). However, there seems to be a different strike zone for the Jays batters; just 6.1% of pitches outside of the zone have been called strikes for them. The Rays are getting bad calls at almost twice the rate, and it seems to happen a lot in pivotal moments. None of the catchers on this series are super good or bad at framing, so that’s not really a factor here.
   – Again, the Rays aren’t losing because of the umps, but it’s certainly not helping the offense. Bad officiating is part of the ebbs and flows of a 162 game season and they will eventually see these things even out, but it’s still frustrating and I can’t wait for robo umps. The games aren’t rigged and both Berrios + Kikuchi were relatively sharp with their secondary pitches – but not nearly as sharp as the box score suggests. Don’t worry about the run prevention side of things; this has been a fluke for them as they’ve been a top 5 defense this year with arguably the best pitching staff in the game. The offense will be fine too; they’ve just had to expand a chase a lot because of the umpires, but as soon as they get a competent one, I expect the offense to come back to life. They won’t be scoring 7-8 runs a game like they were before because that’s not sustainable, but they should be above average the rest of the season