Shots Fired! J.P. Arencibia Goes After Gregg Zaun & Dirk Hayhurst

May 2, 2013; Toronto, ON, Canada; Toronto Blue Jays catcher

(9) throws out the baserunner in the eighth inning against the Boston Red Sox at Rogers Centre. The Red Sox beat the Blue Jays 3-1. Mandatory Credit: Tom Szczerbowski-USA TODAY Sports

The starting catcher for your Toronto Blue Jays does not appreciate the message that fellow Rogers employees Gregg Zaun & Dirk Hayhurst have been spreading about his play.

J.P.  went off of Blue Jays on the two former players turned analysts on the Brady & Lang show on the Fan590. If you haven’t already had a listen you can check it out here.

Arencibia clearly agitated with the negative light that his play has been cast under went on the defensive. After some small talk about a charity event he was attending today Arencibia went at Zaun and Hayhurst, quite bluntly stating that it is unfortunate that fans have to listen to the duo who are “informing fans the wrong way” and claiming that “there’s not one person in our clubhouse that respect those guys.”

Arencibia didn’t stop there, despite the fact that Zaun had a quite successful Major League Career (5 seasons above 1.2 fWAR which is J.P.’s career high), J.P  doesn’t respect him due to his career as a “below average player who used PED’s to stay in game”  (a reference to Zaun’s name being brought up in the infamour Mitchell Report).

J.P. then went on to take credit for Hayhurst making it up to the Blue Jays Major League roster when he was catching in Triple-A due to his encouraging Hayhurst to throw his change-up on the inside (Side note: haha).

It’s clear the Arencibia is frustrated with the negativity that has been associated with his season, taking to the radio to rip on analysts is probably not the best way to handle it. It may temporarily deflect attention from his atrocious season, but come next week, he’s still going to be gettin on base around 24% of the time, he’s still going to be a very below average catcher, and there will still be analysts who don’t feel the need to turn a blind eye to his subpar play due to his affable personality.

While I don’t agree with everything Hayhurst or Zaun says, they are in the right on this issue. J.P. has been bad this season, they’ve done their job as analysts in pointing this out. He needs to suck it up, and play a little better, if not? Well he can go and join a TV studio himself and he’ll be that below average player criticizing those actually playing the game.

If nothing else, this should make for an interesting pre-game show, knowing what Zaun is like, his response to J.P. should be entertaining to say the least.