Blue Jays Player of the Week – Another New One

It won’t come as news to anyone here that it was a miserable time in Jay land. The Blue Jays went 1 for 6 from May 11-17. Choosing a PoW was both disheartening and difficult. No one player stood out. Most of the team had poor to average weeks. The starting pitching, that has been the primary problem all season, continued to struggle. Collectively, they posted a 5.53 ERA and 4.82 FIP. The next biggest area of weakness, the bullpen, fared even worse with a 6.06 ERA and a 6.58 FIP. In their defence, they’ve been having to throw far too much. The fact that doomed the Jays to 6 losses was the drop off of their extremely potent offence. They only managed to post an 86 wRC+ and a .677 OPS. Much blame cannot be laid with the offence though as they were bound to have a down week after carrying the club all year so far.

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The candidates for PoW are therefore rather uninspiring.

Ryan Tepera and Roberto Osuna were the bright spots of the bullpen. Tepera threw 3 innings allowing a single hit (unfortunately a home run). Roberto Osuna, unlike almost all of his team mates, had a great week throwing 3 shutout innings, allowing just a walk and struck out 4. He’s been a rock all season in the troubled ‘pen.

Buehrle was adequate in his 2 starts allowing 6 runs and 13 walks/hits in 14 innings. Drew Hutchison was a step better in his one start. He struck out 9, let up 6 walks/hits and allowed two earned in 6 innings.

Edwin Encarnacion contributed the most offensively this week. He did so in a strange way. He only had 4 hits in 22 ABs but all of them found the seats. He added 4 walks and had 6 RBI. Josh Donaldson had a solid week getting on base at a .379 clip. Not much else positive to report here.

So what do you do with candidates like that? Can nobody be the PoW this week? I don’t normally need to do this since it’s only 7 days of games but I turned to WAR for some guidance. Hutch’s outing was worth 0.3 WAR, Osuna’s relief 0.1, Encarnacion 0.3 and Donaldson’s week 0.2. Of course WAR left me with a tie.

Alright EE, you win the weakest PoW thus far (hopefully all season). This is the 3rd week in a row with a new PoW.

Razzie: so many worthy candidates this week. Jeff Francis, Aaron Loup, R.A Dickey, Aaron Sanchez, Devon Travis, Kevin Pillar, Liam Hendriks. Loup stands out among them all for single handedly blowing Hutch’s strong start. He pitched an inning, let up 4 (3 earned) and allowed 5 walks/hits—all at a crucial juncture in the game.

Here’s hoping for better times ahead.

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