ARLINGTON, Texas — Marcus Semien still keeps tabs on his former teammates with the Toronto Blue Jays, both the ones he played alongside during his all-star campaign in 2021 and the ones from his days with the Oakland Athletics who have since found their way north. He met up with many of them during early work Friday, hanging by the cage with Bo Bichette, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Matt Chapman, chatting with Cavan Biggio by the dugout a little later.
“It’s good to catch up with those guys,” he said.
Much has changed for all of them since the one-game short heartbreak in that bizarre three-home-city season. Semien, of course, parlayed his 45-homer, third-in-American-League-MVP-voting breakout into a $175-million, seven-year deal with the Texas Rangers and after a down 2022, is back to form as a driving force for the surprise AL West leaders. The Blue Jays, similar yet different, are trying to regain the offensive prowess that carried them through that unique 2021, with Guerrero, the MVP runner-up that year, front-and-centre in that regard.
The wait for a breakout continued Friday as the Blue Jays eked out just enough offence for a 2-1 win at Globe Life Field while the slumping all-star first baseman went 0-for-4, Semien stealing an RBI single from him in the sixth with a sliding stop on a 111.2 m.p.h smash up the middle.
“He set the standard high,” Semien said of what he remembers of Guerrero in 2021. “I think about our offence here in Texas, we’ve set the standard high, you go through a little slump or whatever it is, and everybody’s saying what’s going on? His standard is so high that an OPS in the eights is not good enough and that’s crazy to me. I laugh at that.”
“He knows he’s a superstar and he’s got the ability,” Semien continued, “and it just takes a little bit of adjusting and recalibrating because the league knows he’s the best, the league knows don’t give him anything to hit. So if you’re chasing, you’re trying to get hits on pitches you don’t usually do damage on because that’s all you get now, you’re going to hit little slumps. So it’s just a tough spot for him right now. But ultimately he’s one of the best first basemen in the league.”
Worth noting is that Guerrero’s underlying numbers all support an eventual breakout. He’s in the 98th percentile in average exit velocity, max exit velocity and hard-hit percentage, 96th percentile in expected batting average, 95th in expected slug and 87th in barrel percentage — truly elite stuff.
Yet the production hasn’t consistently been there for him, or the Blue Jays, who got a two-run homer in the fifth from the suddenly scorching Danny Jansen and little else. Oftentimes of late they build innings but don’t fulfil them, but Friday they had only two at-bats with a runner in scoring position, with Semien robbing Guerrero of a hit in one of them and Alejandro Kirk grounding out softly in the other.
A desire to find some runs prompted the Blue Jays to recall Spencer Horwitz, a left-handed hitting first baseman/DH who’s impressed at triple-A Buffalo, in favour of outfielder Nathan Lukes while manager John Schneider moved Whit Merrifield up into the two-spot ahead of Bichette and Guerrero in “a little shakeup.”
That’s significant as Schneider generally values stability and likes to keep his lineups fairly consistent. Why change things now?
“Seventy games into a season,” he replied. “We’ve been pretty consistent with the lineup. In spurts it’s been really good and in spurts it’s been good and just hasn’t been getting the big hit. You always want to be consistent within a couple spots with guys. Match-ups go into it and the course of the season goes into it. If this was May 1, maybe a little bit different. Here we are June 16. So here we go.”
The dividends came in the end result, if not in the process to get there, as Kevin Gausman once again did the heavy lifting, limiting the hard-hitting Rangers to a Leody Taveras leadoff homer in the third. He stranded Semien at second later in that inning and then escaped a two-on, none-out jam in the sixth unscathed in his latest stabilizing start.
