Blue Jays 4, White Sox 0: Brandon Morrow Throws a Two-Hitter for his League-Leading Third Complete-Game Shutout of The Year, No Big Deal

seriously, seriously: no big deal

And maybe he only walked a pair, and maybe Bautista and Rajai hit home runs, too, I don't know.


KS

Blue Jays 2, Mets 0: Brandon Morrow, Metsecutioner

lol so not a tag man so not a tag

So it turns out the Rays officially appealed a recent official scoring decision of official scorer Dave Perkins, an officially middling Toronto Star sportswriter who took a package a couple of years back, the one that called the ball ripped off a diving Adam Lind (before his demotion made him . . . Sadam Lind) an error and so made like five runs unearned. The Rays won their appeal, and the play was ultimately ruled a hit, which is fine, but it totally inflated Brandon Morrow's earned run average heading into today's game. And so, in response, Morrow threw a complete game, three-hit shutout. No big deal. The Blue Jays got a big assist from a totally blown call in the ninth: the Mets by all rights should have had runners on second and third, one out, in a two run game, but because the umpire was in no position to see the play at second as Mike Baxter slid in under Yunel Escobar's tag on a throw from Jose Bautista that beat him by a mile, but again, no tag, they totally did not. 

Also of note today: at one point Alan Ashby spilled a cup of water all over his scorecard and Jerry Howarth good naturedly rode him about it way longer than you would think and it was charming. 


KS 

Blue Jays 5, Athletics 2: Now That Wasn't That Hard, Was it

lovin' that stride

All it took was an overdue demotion of the basically reprehensible (baseballically, I mean) Adam Lind -- a man who is a career 2.4 WAR player, guys/ladies -- to the eighth spot in the lineup and a promotion of my main man Casey Janssen to the closer spot (a made-up spot that should be abolished in my view because I am enlightened in that regard) and there you have it, a nice and easy 5-2 win in which Brandon Morrow was cool and Lind (and Arencibia and E5) homered and Janssen pitched a still-as-deepest-sleep ninth and we are golden. That's the way, fellows!


Did you know that the Blue Jays are actually second in the AL in run differential this year, behind only the mighty Texas Rangers? Isn't that awesome? No doubt, there have been areas of concern: too many blown saves (a stat that I of course despise; see earlier parenthetical remark re: my enlightenment), some troubling outings from Kyle Drabek, from whom we had smokey expectations (indeed, the smokiest), and Jose Bautista not at all doing what we have come to expect him to do. Also have I mentioned that Adam Lind is wretched? But E5 has been a beast, Kelly Johnson has been really good, and the starting pitching has been, on the whole, as good as you could have hoped, really. With four games against the pitiably lowly Minnesota Twins and so a chance to really put some wins together here before some big games with Tampa and New York, I remain wildly optimistic about what this season could bring! Seriously I do! Also my wife got me a new fitted hat for my birthday! How is that for excitement?  Tonight my friend was like, "Hey did you get that for your birthday?" and I was like "Yeah!" 


AND TODAY THE BLUE JAYS SIGNED VLADIMIR GUERRERO! On my birthday! Were you aware that every time I play Baseball Mogul, like every time, I move heaven and earth to get Vladimir Guerrero on my team? Of course you were not aware of that, but that doesn't make it any less true. Like, if I were running the IRL Toronto Blue Jays right now, this is absolutely something I would have done. Immediately. Actually maybe instead of feeling amazingly about Alex Anthopolous for making this happen, maybe I should be furious he didn't do it sooner? Anyway: come to me Vladi. Come to me.


KS  

Blue Jays 7, Mariners 0: E5 BABY YEEEEAH

mostly they are happy they look so fresh in those new uniforms

A very good way to break an especially depressing four-game losing streak is for Brandon Morrow to pitch six innings, striking out nine and walking nary a dude, and for E5 to hit an opposite-field grand slam, complete with cocky bat flip, to cap off a 7-0 drubbing on a Saturday afternoon. This is so much more like it, you have no idea. 


DO IT EDWIN DO IT.

Edwin, doing it

KS

Blue Jays 5, Rays 1: Not At All What I Expected

Early jitters, settling in, etc.

Generally speaking, when David Price takes the mound for the Tampa Bay Rays, he cuts a swath through Blue Jays hitters, and I am left shaking my head. Before last night's game, he was 9-1 against Toronto, and not many of those nine, if memory serves, were squeakers. So when Price opened the game with two strikeouts on six pitches, I had concerns. These concerns grew deeper and more troubling when Brandon Morrow threw twenty-nine pitches in the bottom of the first. The second wasn't awesome, either: forty-eight pitches through two does not auger well, right? But the Blue Jays were the beneficiaries of two costly throwing errors by Price in the third, and the three runs they put up that inning were more than enough for Morrow, who pretty much cruised the rest of the way: seven scoreless innings of two-hit, four-walk, nine-strikeout baseball. This Jekyll and Hyde thing that Brandon Morrow has going this season is killing me, a little, to be perfectly honest with you, but last night he totally settled in after some early jitters, so good for him. 


Finally, here is a picture of an intentional walk, which is not something you see photographed all that often.

They shook.

KS

Yankees 3, Blue Jays 2: Shucks.

Everybody loves Jeter!

In the bottom of the third, Derek Jeter grounded to short. Yunel Escobar's throw pulled Adam Lind off the bag at first, and Lind attempted a particularly sweepy sweep tag as Jeter sped by. Jeter was called out on what was totally a phantom tag, but rather than throw a fit about it, Jeter put on a kind of pained, ironic smile and started pleading his case. The umpires got together, reversed the call. Yunel Escobar, charged with an error, literally had to be restrained. All the while, Jeter was perfectly chill about everything. Beloved Toronto play-by-play guy Jerry Howarth said something to the effect that Jeter did the right thing by not going ballistic and embarrassing the umpire. "Do you know who else he didn't embarrass, Jerry?" Alan Ashby asked, before answering his own question: "He didn't embarrass himself." And it was like, damn it, he's right. I wanted to hate that he said that, but I couldn't. Jeter, man: everybody loves him, and they're not exactly wrong. One wonders how the captain is dealing with life without Minka? They seemed so happy . . . 


Also, quite a game last night! The Blue Jays went up by two early, and it probably should have been more: Jose Bautista singled in an Escobar walk in the first, and Adam Lind drove in an Eric Thames single before Brett Gardner made a redonkulous grab in left and doubled Bautista off of first (Jose, at the time, was closer to third) to end the inning. At the time it was easy to say, well, Bautista made a mistake being aggressive, and that's cool, it's early. But that's all the Jays would get all night, thanks in large part to Andruw Jones remembering how awesome it can be to be awesome, and stealing a home run from Bautista in the fourth. Brandon Morrow had a decent outing, a textbook quality start (three runs in six innings, which is kind of why the textbook is kind of dumb re: the quality start stat), but alas. 


Back to Jose Bautista for a minute, though, he made a nice catch on a long foul ball by Curtis Granderson!

Also he fouled one off his foot and the crowd was like "lol" which I found to be unsporting!

Jose will strike back against the haters today, though, whilst Ricky Romero will strike out everybody. It is going to be great.


KS

Blue Jays 7, Rays 3: This Is So Much More Like It, You Have No Idea

You got stuck in a rundown, and you can't get out of it.

Nobody knows exactly what hitting coach Dwayne Murphy said in the team meeting yesterday in which he is thought to have implored everyone to stop yapping at the umpires, except of course for me, with a big assist from both Imagination and the viewless wings of Poesy: "OK then (Jose Bautista), so everybody (Jose Bautista), I am going to keep this short (Jose Bautista), but (Jose Bautista) let's all just agree to lay off the umps (Jose Bautista), because it's getting out of hand (Jose Bautista), and we're getting the kind of reputation that's hard to shake (Jose Bautista), and the bottom line (Jose Bautista) is that it's not doing us any favours (Jose Bautista), so let's just cut it out. Jose Bautista." This issue had been troubling me, and so I am very glad that this has been dealt with.

I am equally glad that the Blue Jays avoided the four-game sweep last night by hitting everything. Ricky Romero once again looked slightly below his usual top-notch self: three runs over six is far from poor, but four walks to go along with six hits (including two Johnny Damon dingers, no less) and only two strikeouts is subprime Romering. But who cares? Every Blue Jay in the lineup last night had a hit, except for Dewayne Wise (did I mention Colby Rasmus is on the DL, and that that sucks?), but let's be reasonable in our expectations re: Dewayne Wise. It was just straight-up mashing of the best kind: Jose Bautista's thirty-eighth home run; Adam Lind's twenty-third; Kelly Johnson's three hits, including a triple; J. P. Arencibia's three hits, including a double, a triple, and a stolen base. All these things occurred, and owned. 


And the bullpen! Nobody would tell you the Blue Jays bullpen is anything but a butt, and so we should really show warmth and appreciation in the direction of Litsch, Janssen, and Francisco for allowing but one hit in three innings of relief last night, because it would have been depressing as hell to have blown that one, and don't act like it couldn't happen, because that sort of thing is happening on the reg/is killing me. Ricky Ro' is now a pretty choice 13-9 with a 2.84 ERA and four complete games (two shutouts). I know the advanced stats prefer Brandon "I'd rather look at the nerd stats" Morrow this year, bless his heart, and I am not a PITCHER WINZ guy by any stretch, but I just feel a whole lot better with Romero on the hill, friends, what can I tell you. The man is a bulldog out there, A Bulldog.   


In short, bring on the O's.


Hey also: I am not here to tell anybody how they would best enjoy the game of baseball, but let me say, you can do a whole lot worse than getting rid of all of your cable, giving our evil overlords at MLB twenty dollars to get access to every game on the radio (blackout free!), spending twenty minutes a day watching the luxurious and non-YankeeSox-centric game recaps at MLB.com (blackout free!), and checking in on whatever the MLB.TV free game of the day is (pending blackouts). It is seriously incredible how much baseball there is out there, and the kind of access we have to it. Being a baseball fan in 2011 is roughly a zillion times better than it was to be a baseball fan, say, twenty-five years ago. Let us not loose site of this (unless you really liked the Expos, I guess, in which case I would forgive you for loosing sight of this). Sometimes I think that the only thing about baseball that might not be as awesome as it was when I was a kid is baseball cards, but then you see something like the 2011 Topps Prince Fielder, and wonder if any baseball card has ever captured l'essence of its subject better:

Fattest vegan alive, friends; act surprised.

But then you remember, oh yeah right, his 2010 Topps:

Really, this got him beaned? Really? 

Anyway. Baseball. Let's hear it for it. 


KS

Blue Jays 5, Mariners 1: Sorry Brandon Morrow hit you in the face, Caspar Wells.

His face. 

Brandon Morrow almost certainly didn't mean to do it. He was just busy allowing only three hits while striking out twelve in six innings, and one kind of got away from him. At 97 MPH. Entirely his fault. Entirely. 

What more is there to say, aside from how it is awesome that E5 continues to tear it up, that Colby Rasmus hit one out, and that maybe Adam Lind is back to being a guy who can make teams pay for shamefully pitching around Jose Bautista? Well, there is this, too: over at Notgraphs, Navin Vaswani gets all worked up about the Blue Jays, and about Canadian fans traveling to Seattle, and how everything is either awesome or could someday be awesome. I like the spirit in which that piece is written. I also like that it includes the following .gif of Brett Lawrie and Jose Bautista:

There is a very real chance that what we are seeing there is the least cool thing, and yet who can resist it? 


KS

Angels 5, Blue Jays 1: Bless you, Vernon Wells.

I've got to think this went even better than he'd hoped.

This is definitely worth watching, if you haven't seen it yet: the Toronto crowd gives Vernon Wells a warm welcome (home, sort of); Vernon steps out of the box and acknowledges the crowd, and proceeds to rip a first pitch slider over the centre field wall that Vernon used to, you, fly into awesomely. I was genuinely pleased to see that the kind of ridiculousness that dogged Vernon during too much of his time in Toronto -- yeah he's a stand-up guy who plays through injuries and puts up big numbers when he's not hurt and is awesome in the community and is the team's union rep and actually nobody has a bad word to say about him in the least but he had the audacity to sign a contract J. P. Ricciardi was fool enough to offer and he himself was not fool enough to decline and so we shall boo this man -- was nowhere to be seen here, and everybody was just like, "Hey, it's Vernon! Boy, he sure played here long time, and is second in pretty much everything in Blue Jays history to Carlos Delgado! Let's all clap a minute!" Because that is the right thing to do.


Vernon did a fun little interview with Aaron Hill that the Fan 590 played before today's game, and in addition to talking about how nice the reception was and how awesome it was to hit that home run, he also mentioned something I was not aware of at all: according to Josh Hamilton (whose memory might be hazy, actually, so take this for what it's worth), Toronto is the roughest left field to play in in the AL; the fans just wear you out. Now, this to me seems absurd. Worse than Boston? Or Chicago? Or New York? Anyway, this is what Josh Hamilton says, Vernon reports, and Vernon also said that he gets it now. He said he heard it pretty good for all innings last night. He also noted that it was "awesome," unsurprising from a guy who, as you no doubt recall, knows from heckling.

"Dear Mr. Dork, Here is your ball! Can you please tell me what gas station you work at, so when you are pumping my gas I can yell at you!!! Now sit down, shut-up and enjoy the game. Your favorite centre fielder, Vernon Wells"

Anyway, good for Vernon, who will be lucky to get another hit all weekend given how terribly his season is going, and good for everybody, really. Except the Blue Jays, I guess, because Brandon Morrow got touched up early and the bats never really got going. 


But Vernon!

KS

Orioles 6, Blue Jays 2 and Blue Jays 7, Orioles 2: Not Quite What I Had In Mind But Fine

:

Camden Yards: still somewhat OK

I have no problem with Yunel Escobar -- shortstops with .820 OPS are fine by me -- but he managed to pretty much single-handedly undue an excellent start by Brandon Morrow when he booted a potential double-play ball in the sixth inning Saturday night. But that's baseball. And yesterday was also baseball, you will be pleased to know! Ricky Romero allowed only two runs in his eight efficient innings of work, picking up his tenth win and lowering his ERA to 2.94, if I may cite two stats we don't pay nearly as much attention to as we used to but to which we still cling when they make dudes we like sound awesome. The Blue Jays hit a whack of doubles, E5 is streaking, and Brett Lawrie hit the first home run of his major league career. That is all really agreeable stuff to me. After an off day Monday, Oakland comes to town for three, and then it's the Angels, which, with the Blue Jays only 4.5 games behind Los Angeles for the playoff spot that will probably exist next year but which totally doesn't this year, doesn't actually matter more or less anything else. Except that I will enjoy those games extra because it is the Angels and Vernon will be back! Kind of a rough year for him, what with the .629 OPS and the negative WAR. Did you know he is owed $86 million over the next four years, and the Blue Jays are only on the hook for $5 million? Is that something you have heard about previously? Good for Vernon; good for the Blue Jays; Angels you guys are crazy man I love it.


KS

Blue Jays 7, Rangers 3: Blue Jays Spit In the Faces of All Who Would Oppose Them on Roberto Alomar Hall of Fame Day

A Good Day

Say what you will about the historically low esteem in which the public holds the once venerated Royal Canadian Mounted Police after recent years of scandal ranging from the petty to the rather severe, but being led through the crowd by a couple of Mounties is an absolute motherfucker of a way to make your way onto the field to have your number retired in front of 45,629 people packed into the building I can only call the SkyDome. I mean:

That just straight up works, you know? I have already more than said my piece on Roberto Alomar in recent days, so that is not ground that I will revisit with you here today. Instead, let it be said that Brandon Morrow pitched a heck of a game, striking out eleven over seven innings of two-run, six-hit ball. Early on, Alan Ashby noticed that Morrow had "the good slider" going, and predicted a long day for Texas bats, and he was totally right. There was no shortage of offense on the Toronto side, the highlight coming early, as the streaky E5 -- notably the last player to wear Alomar's number twelve, now the first number retired in Toronto Blue Jays history -- launched a shot into the second deck with Bautista aboard (on a walk, naturally). 


A really, really nice day of Blue Jays baseball, is all I really have to say about this one. It gave me a real good feeling, the kind of feeling you get when you look at a picture of Otto Velez talking to Roberto Alomar and Sandy Alomar Jr. in Anaheim in 1977, you know?

KS

Blue Jays 11, Mariners 6: Kind of feeling bad for the Mariners, actually.

Such mustache.

I am pretty jazzed yeah that's right jazzed that Brandon Morrow turned in a solid start at home, where he has struggled this year, and I am equally jazzed that Travis Snider (2-4, HR, 5 RBI) is hitting .357 since being recalled from Las Vegas, that Jose Bautista looks fine (1-3, 2B, 2 BB) coming back from his ankle sprain, and that the streaky E5 is raking right now and stole second and third in the fourth inning. But I am also kind of sad about the Mariners, our 1977 expansion cousins. Eleven losses in a row, that's rough, especially when the team you were only a couple of games behind in your (joke of a) division rattled off a dozen straight wins. 


And it is painful to watch Ichiro struggle through his first truly bad season. It's not just that he isn't going to end up with his customary 200 hits; it's that he has been legitimately bad: he's hitting .260 with a .306 OBP. It's brutal. He still steals bases with an amazing rate of success (he's 23 for 27 this season, and an unreal 406 for 498 in his career), but he's not getting on enough to be a respectable lead-off hitter. Hopefully he gets crazy hot in the second half, but at 37 he might just be done. 


This would sadden me greatly, because that guy was awesome.


KS

Blue Jays 7, Yankees 1: Maybe Start Freaking Out?

That is some look right there.

I said I wouldn't do this, but OK, with these back-to-back drubbings of the Yankees -- twenty-three runs in two games with no home runs? that's wild -- the Blue Jays are eight back of the wild card. That's still totally out of it. But what if Romero beats Sabathia today? That's not impossible, right? And Villanueva over Hughes on Sunday, why not? That would put us six back. Six. That wouldn't be that bad! I said these things to my wife last night and she quite rightly just shook her head. 


Brandon Morrow was fly last night, bordering on supa dupa fly: one run on four hits and a couple of walks through six and a third. I will take that literally every time. "Don't Ask" Dotel, Rzepcynski, and Frasor took it the rest of the way, and the bats just kept putting numbers up. Like, there was no single inning where the Blue Jays brought a million dudes to the plate; it was more the case of here's a run, now another, hey there's three this inning, and so on, and before you know it, it's 7-1 and you are having a really, really great time. Snider is hitting, Thames is hitting, Escobar is hitting . . . and E5 looked OK at third base! Go figure, man, go figure.


A few odds and ends: 


(i) "Feeling much better today! Getting treatment as I tweet!" Those are the words of Joeybats19, and I am not going to argue with them. Bautista will be fine. He'll probably be back Tuesday, they're now saying. 


(ii) Do you know who threw out the first pitch last night? Lil' Jose Bautista! Seriously! If you do not know who I mean, it is this guy:

(iii) Russell Martin is accusing the Blue Jays of stealing signs. Boo hoo, is my considered response to this whining. Mix them up, or start throwing at guys. That is how these things are settled, Russell Martin, come on. As Jeff Blair noted on the radio last night, the Blue Jays have long had a reputation in this regard: Cito was great at it; as was Alomar; as was Delgado. This is a legacy issue, basically, and Russell Martin should respect that.


KS

Blue Jays 7, Phillies 4 and Blue Jays 9, Red Sox 7: Jays Break Out the Bats on Mr. Sub Sports Bag Day, Keep Them Out For Lesser Holiday A Day Later

Have never liked the black uniforms; have always liked dingers. You can see the bind I'm in.

Cliff Lee's utterly ridiculous streak of thirty-four consecutive innings without allowing a run -- the man allowed a grand total of one run in June, by the way -- came to an end in pretty dramatic fashion yesterday, as the Blue Jays thundered to a 7-4 win powered by three home runs in the eighth, from Eric Thames, who fills me with hope, Jose Bautista, who fills me with pride, and Edwin Encarnacion, who fills me with stomach cramps but it's not his fault. Had Jo-Jo been able to keep it together for like a second longer, he totally would have picked up a win over Cliff Lee, which would probably have been the coolest thing ever, but nevertheless, a big day! And even bigger because it all came on Mr. Sub Sports Bag Day. 


Mr. Sub Sports Bag Day has been an annual occurrence for pretty much as long as anums have occurred. For those of you not familiar with this whole situation, Mr. Sub are the purveyors of seriously the worst possible sandwiches, and I am not being stuck up about that. I enjoy Subway. Quizno's can be good. But Mr. Sub can never, ever be good. In my experience, Mr. Sub is a dank pit of strangely wet meat, genuinely questionable vegetables, and injudiciously applied condiments. I hate it and it is awful. But their sports bags, given away at Blue Jays games annually, serve a pretty interesting social function in the city: if you see someone on the streetcar or wherever, and they're rocking a Mr. Sub Sports Bag of any vintage at all, it is like "woah ok we've got a 500 here," which is to say, a citizen of the 500-level upper deck seats. I'm not hating, because that's where I usually sat, too; but generally speaking the 500s are a place for oddballs, drifters, and broke fanatics. The term "500s" applied to people outside the context of the stadium itself is a useful classification for, say, the kind of not-entirely-together but certainly not-entirely-untogether kind of slightly odd person you not uncommonly encounter at the public library, say. You know what I mean? Anyway, these people, this broader meaning of "500s," very, very often are in possession of Mr. Sub Sports Bags when you see them doing their thing, and yesterday is the day all those people got new ones. Somewhere, I have like five.  


Then today things got pretty rad in Boston, too! Brandon Morrow was pretty OK for a bit; Jason Frasor wasn't, really; and "The Closer" Frank Francisco had me uttering foul oaths but ultimately struck out three in the ninth after allowing a leadoff single and a stolen base. Aaron Hill went three-for-five with a home run, and please please please let this be the start of a torrid second-half pace for Aaron Hill, because this has been brutal. Also, Travis Snider is back up, and he too went three-for-five with two doubles. Let this be real. OK?


KS

Blue Jays 2, Pirates 1: Squeak.

10 K is a pretty good amount of K

Brandon Morrow's ratio of Having Awesome Stuff : Being Good has been frustratingly, horrifyingly off so far this season, so it was just really great to see him fan ten and allow but a lone run in seven innings of four-hit (and three-walk, let us not hide from the truth) baseball. Eric Thames, who could totally be a player, hit his first career home run in the seventh, and Rajai who has been awful and Escobar hit back-to-back doubles and inning later, and we're good!  


Looking ahead, but only, like, six hours ahead, Brett Cecil makes his first start since being recalled from Triple A Las Vegas. You will recall that the reason for his demotion was that he was pitching badly. Perhaps he will be better now? 


KS

Red Sox 16, Blue Jays 4: Yikes.

I would spell it "Veritech" if I were him.

A career-worst start from Brandon Morrow, which is to say nine runs on ten hits and three walks in less than five innings. The best work on the hill for the Blue Jays yesterday came from utility guy Mike McCoy, who became the first Toronto position player to pitch since Frank Menechino (remember him?). A disaster, is what I am saying to you.


Let us reflect, though, on the extent to which Adam Lind continues to tear it up: .331/.368/.580/.947 with 10 HR. Good for him!


KS

Royals 3, Blue Jays 2 (F/11): Et tu, Mark Rzepcynski?

Juan Rivera, feeling about this game like I feel about Juan Rivera

Before I get into minding last night's extra-innings loss to the Royals, there are a couple of other things I would also like to mind. First off, I know Alan Ashby is covering for Buck Martinez on the TV side of the broadcast right now, but do they have to replace the absolutely first-rate Ashby with Gregg Zaun as Jerry Howarth's number two in the radio booth? The drop off from Ashby to Zaun is the difference between listening to an insightful adult or a smug bro. I enjoy insightful adults. I do not enjoy smug bros at all. Also, I think part of why I fail to care at all about the plight of the Royals -- in addition to lingering bitterness over the 1985 ALCS, plus the obvious fact that the reason the Royals have been almost entirely bad since then isn't about economic problems plaguing the game so much as utterly inept management that can't seem to develop enough talent to be competitive in the straight-up embarrassing AL Central while Tampa managed to surpass four teams with vastly larger payrolls in the AL East -- is that the games start an hour later when the Blue Jays are in Kansas City and I always forget, so when I turn on the radio at the appointed hour I get nothing. All of these things need to stop but I worry that they won't.

To last night's game, then: a really crisp affair in the early going, with both Morrow and Paulino throwing very well. When the Blue Jays scratched out a lone run in the fourth on an error, wild pitch, and two ground outs, it looked to me like that might be the difference. Not so, of course, as  Eric Hosmer reached on an error in the bottom of the inning, and came in on a Mike Aviles triple (oh man triples!). Another Blue Jays run on a groundout in the seventh should have meant nothing but good times, but my man Mark Rzepcynski kind of didn't get anybody out and walked three dudes in relief, including walking in the tying run. This is a shame, in that it is on its own awful, but also in that Scrabble has been terrific out of the bullpen this year. Alas, and also alack. 


Why even mention that it was The Closer Frank Francisco who gave up the walkoff hit to Eric Hosmer in the eleventh? Everybody knows. Francisco is awful, legitimately awful. You don't even need to get fancy about it: 6.06 ERA, 1.78 WHIP. That's brutal, and brutal in a way that is easy to understand. End this. Someone. Please.


Finally, I couldn't help but notice that Fangraphs ran a neat thing on the worst players in baseball by WAR yesterday. I recently did the same, but I'm going to take this as a loving tribute rather than anything untoward. Here's what Seidman wrote about our dude E5:


Edwin Encarnacion (-0.9 WAR): Some players are on here as a direct result of their suckitude with the bat. Encarnacion, aptly nicknamed E5, makes this list primarily on the lack of merit of his glovework. In just 43 games his UZR is a spectacularly bad -9.1. If you’re more into the fielding percentage metric, consider this factoid Dave Cameron discussed recently. As of May 27th, Encarnacion had a .784 fielding percentage. The next worst was Andy LaRoche at .892, a gap of 108 points. Encarnacion is one of the worst fielders in baseball history, and if he can’t even match the lower league average with the bat, what actual purpose does he serve?


Aside from using "factoid" in the debased and subliterate sense that indicates no understanding of the meaning of the "-oid" suffix, the man has some valid points. Also, I am a dick.


KS

Cleveland 6, Toronto 3: This Changes Nothing

I don't even know, man.

The Indians are still bogus and the Blue Jays are still pretty good. I am convinced of these two facts -- yes, facts -- even after last night's 6-3 loss. Brandon Morrow continues to do that thing he does whereby he can strike all kinds of dudes out (like nine, even) but still have a bad start (six runs in six innings, say). It was almost not that bad though: with two out in the fifth, Carlos Santana, who is awesome, doubled to right. The throw from Jose Bautista to Aaron Hill to J. P. Arencibia beat Travis Buck to the plate, but Arencibia couldn't hold on. I do not blame him for that, necessarily, as catchers mitts are nuts. But instead of the inning ending there, that run and then two more came in, and a fairly undaunting 3-0 deficit is all of a sudden 6-0, and you just go ahead and do something else with the remainder of your evening. 

In Jose Bautista news: his 3-5 with a run scored puts him at 4.9 WAR through May, which means he could realistically surpass the value of his entire 54 home run season in about another month. Also, you love him. 

KS

Blue Jays 7, Astros 5: Our Long National 0-8 Nightmare is Over

Breaking ball imo.

Imagine, if you will, that you are Houston Astros' right-hander Brett Myers. You are a major league baseball player, so your life should be a good one, but you pitch for the Astros, so instead it is misery. But not today: today, the offense has staked you to a 4-0 lead, and you have held the hometown Blue Jays off the board into the sixth inning. Sure, Jose Molina has just led off with a solid single up the middle, but you've got just the thing for that: you will compel Yunel Escobar to ground crisply to short, a perfect double play ball! And you actually manage to do it! But on this day, the usually sure-handed Clint Barmes forgets to shut the barm door, and it goes right through the wickets (this is not a mixed metaphor it is all literally true), and now you've got two on and oh shit that's Jose Bautista isn't it? 


Now open your eyes (I asked you to close them, right?). You are not Houston Astros' right-hander Brett Myers. Brett Myers is Houston Astros right-hander Brett Myers. But aside from that single detail, everything else that has just been imagined is all too real.


Bautista hit a three-run home run in the sixth and added a solo shot in the eighth -- and let us not overlook Escobar's blast in the seventh -- as the Blue Jays overcame some fair-to-moderate shakiness from Brendan Morrow and pulled this one out late. It was awesome. Jon Rauch did his best to blow it again but Ocatavio "Don't Ask" Dotel closed it out and I thank him for that; that's real to me. Coming into the game, Bautista was mired in his worst slump of the season, I think, 0-8 with a walk in there somewhere. But yesterday he came out clean shaven, perhaps in the interest of slump busting, and he went 3-4 with a single, those two home runs, 4 RBI, a stolen base, and he threw a dude out at third. Was the dude fat? Sure: it was Carlos Lee, who is listed at 6'2", 265 lbs. Was he probably actually safe? Absolutely. But whatever, Jose Bautista owns. That's 4.3 WAR on the season now, for those of you who are (sabermetrically) scoring at home. Also his beard was mostly back by the third.  


This is in all likelihood the only time I will be able to say this all season, so I'm just going to go ahead and say it: the Blue Jays are actually the hottest team in baseball right now, with eight wins in their last ten. They're only a-game-and-a-half back in both the division and the wild card. Playoffs? Almost a certainty. Almost.


KS 

Blue Jays 11, Twins 3: First things first, Jose Bautista will eat your brains.

Gossip, gossip, haters just stop it.

It has been clear for some time now that were one to describe Jose Bautista's season through analogy to a single selection from the Kanye West oeuvre, it would be "Monster," in that everyone knows that he is one. However, this five home run weekend against the Twins -- three of them coming in yesterday's blowout -- specifically situates Bautista in the Nicki Minaj verse, because it, like Jose Bautista right now, is totally the most monstrous. Pink wig; thick ass; give 'em whiplash. This is what is happening. This is what is going on. I cannot believe it.


Bautista's first home run of the day was a legitimately towering blast off Brian Duensing in the third that landed just shy of the upper deck. His liner to the corner off Slowey in the next inning was comparatively modest, but the ridiculous opposite-field shot that came when Slowey pretty sensibly tried to go down and away in the sixth made up for that. The whole thing was beyond bananas. It was . . . one time I was in the sometimes alarmingly awesome Suspect Video on Markham St. and I asked the fairly icy girl behind the counter which particular noise rock band we were all listening to at an uncomfortable volume that day and she said all quietly "unsane" and I was like "sorry what was that?" because the music was way to loud and so to be properly heard above the din she leans forward a little bit and goes "UNSANE." Jose Bautista right now is UNSANE.


Other, less amazing things happened yesterday, too: Brandon Morrow struck out five his first time through the order, but then fizzled a little and ended the day allowing three runs, all of them earned, in five innings of work. The guy throws a ton of pitches, and he just doesn't go that deep into games. Such stuff, though; such stuff. Also, and this is not important and maybe not even interesting, but I could not help but notice that every Blue Jay in the starting lineup got a hit yesterday except for Rivera and E5, who combined to go 0-10. One of those players I continue to hate; the other I blame for nothing. 


Anyway, the Twins are surprisingly awful, and unlike the last time the Blue Jays played a truly awful team (what's up, Seattle?), they actually managed to, you know, win some of the games, which was totally a plus from this fan's perspective. With this five-game winning streak, the Blue Jays are now back to .500 at 20W-20L, three games back of the AL East-leading Rays (boy that just kind of happened, didn't it?). The three games back part of things, that doesn't matter so much; that cannot and will not hold. But I'm really hoping the .500 part of it sticks around. It's really all I ask in this, another non-contending year: just be around .500, preferably a couple of games to the good, and everything is lovely. Because while I know it's all about the future, all about 2012 and 2013, I've still got to watch the games, and there is only so much I can take. Just be .500, with Jose Bautista running away with the AL MVP. Surely that is not too much to ask?  


A couple more things. First, longtime Blue Jays radio man Jerry Howarth gave a great interview on CBC Radio 1's Sunday Edition with Michael Enright yesterday, and you can listen to that here if you are so inclined. Note that Michael Enright looks like this. Secondly, and almost finally, whenever a three home run game happens, I can't help but think about how Carlos Delgado totally hit four, and that I was there when he did. That and related Carlos feelings are, of course, compiled here. He is my favourite player and he had just retired so things get pretty badly out of hand there.


In closing I would ask Neil to ready himself for the smoke that is about to be thrown upon him as the Blue Jays open up in Detroit tonight and Kyle Drabek takes the hill. You should steel yourself, probably.


KS