Blue Jays 11, Indians 1: JO-JO WINS! JO-JO WINS! JO-JO WINS!

Special Memorial Day hats in a country without Memorial Day: MLB, ladies and gentlemen.

By the bristling beard of Odin, Jo-Jo did it! The twenty-eight game winless streak is over! And in not unfine style, too: Jo-Jo spread eight hits and four walks over his nine innings of some how-only-one-run ball. The only damage came on an upper-deck blast from Shelley "Is A Girl's Name, Bro, Be Serious" Duncan in the fifth, the fifteenth time someone has hit it into the 500s in the now sort of long history of the SkyDome/Rogers Centre. Now that the streak is over, we can look back and reflect on how there is no way he would have stayed in the majors this season if he hadn't been left handed. What a rare gift.


Fausto Carmona, who took his league-awesomest name with him to the mound for the Indians last night, had a much rougher outing, and looked a lot like the Jo-Jo Reyes of pretty much every start for the last three years than Jo-Jo 2.0 or Jo-Jo Reborn or whatever it is we decide (as a people) to call this magnificent new beast. Carmona got lit up early and often, and gave up seven (although a mere five earned) in a bat-around fourth. Corey Patterson's crazy little spell is over, as he was held hitless along with the still-cuttable Juan Rivera and the kind of terrible Aaron Hill, but everyone else in the lineup was good for at least a couple hits. Jose Bautista continued to pour sand in the bathing suit area of the haters, going 2-3 with a walk, a double, a run scored, and a pair batted in. He's at 4.8 WAR and I would remind you that it is still totally May.


Also I would like to mention that I am taking last night's result as conclusive evidence that I have been right all along to put no stock in the Indians' record. They have been playing reasonably well  I guess but have been padding their record against garbage teams and are nowhere near the best teams in baseball. No offense, Neil, but this is as bad as the AL Central has looked in a while. The Indians have finally had to play a stretch of games against AL East (i.e. real) teams, and they've been outscored 48-15 over their last seven. They're not good. And yet they are 31-20, and five games ahead of the Tigers. The Blue Jays, who in fact are good, with reasonable pitching and the third-best offense in the league, are 28-26, good for two games behind Boston and New York for both the division and the Wild Card. I am not doing a thing about how the playoff format is unfair or anything like that because that is loser talk of the highest order; I actually like that the Blue Jays compete (lol ok "play") in the toughest division in any league. But let's all just settle down about the Cleveland Indians, is what I'm saying here.  


KS