Blue Jays: A win streak despite a lot of questionable decisions

The Blue Jays keep on winning, but despite the success I think it’s fair to question some of the decisions that Charlie Montoyo has been making lately.

Things have been going pretty well for the Toronto Blue Jays over the last week or so, as their recent six-game win streak has even pushed them into a playoff position if the season were to end today.

Despite the fact that there has been so much positive momentum, if you searched for manager Charlie Montoyo‘s name on social media, or even on Google, you’ll see a lot of people questioning some of the decisions he’s been making lately. It’s not at the point where the team is winning despite of him, but I think it’s fair to wonder about the rationale of a few things we’ve seen from the second-year skipper.

For example, last night Montoyo lined up Danny Jansen as the third hitter in the lineup, and dropped Cavan Biggio to eighth in the order, despite the latter being on a streak of reaching base in 13 consecutive games. At first it made some shred of sense considering the Blue Jays drew a southpaw in Ryan Yarborough on Friday, with Jansen hitting right-handed and Biggio from the left side. Except that Jansen entered the game having gone 0-6 against Yarborough during his young MLB career, and he’s been ice-cold lately, seeing his batting average drop to .151 after a fourth consecutive start without a hit. Meanwhile, Biggio has been hitting lefties better than righties so far this season, and fared just fine in the same situation last year. He’s also arguably their hottest hitter right now.

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Montoyo has already drawn a fair bit of criticism for his use of the bullpen this year as well, despite their surprisingly dominant performance as a group. One of the biggest issues is that they’ve been very overworked so far this season, and with a jam-packed schedule the workload is also going to be heavy going forward. And yet, despite all of that and the fact that Matt Shoemaker had retired seven straight batters to finish the fifth inning on Friday and had thrown just 74 pitches, Montoyo lifted his veteran starter and naturally things quickly went sideways.

It’s hard to argue the results of a 13-11 record for this club, and especially against the current six-game win streak. That said, fans that have been closely watching this team all year long are aware of how many winnable games that have been squandered as well. The blame can’t and doesn’t rest solely on Montoyo’s shoulders for those lost opportunities, but I think it’s fair to say there have been some tough lessons learned this year, and likely a few decisions that he’d like a mulligan on.

All things considered, I’m still a supporter of the Blue Jays bench boss, and it’s clear that he’s certainly doing a lot of things well. However, the questionable decisions we’ve seen from Montoyo over the first few weeks of the season, even over the course of this win streak, can and will eventually catch up to you, and can be the difference between making the playoffs and being just outside the circle.