Blue Jays 13, Orioles 0: Thoughts for Jo-Jo, But No Prayers This Time

Dinger aftermath.

With Brian Tallet safely DFA'd, the Blue Jays took the field with a spring in their step last night and absolutely punished poor, sweet Jo-Jo Reyes, who didn't make it out of the third. Blue Jays bats were relentless, except I guess for the bat of Mike McCoy, which relented quite a lot, actually. But everybody else pounded the ball. Escobar? 4-6. Thames? 4-5 with a double. Bautista? A three-run home run, his league-leading thirty-ninth. E5 went 4-5, Kelly Johnson homered, as did big fat Jose Molina. It was awesome.


All the while, Henderson Alvarez kept right on throwing strikes, and forcing ground outs with a great sinker. Three hits, no walks, and five strikeouts over eight innings of work earned him the first win of his career, and maybe this is a dude who should be in the back end of the rotation next year, right? I know it was just the O's, but still. I know that all experts agree that the Blue Jays have a ton of pitching coming, and so I should be patient, but pretty much everybody but Ricky Romero and Casey Janssen has me down these days so I am flailing a little. I can't shake the Drabek thing, basically, and I really wanted Brett Cecil to prove craftier. Oh hey that totally reminds me: over at Frangraphs, Jesse Wolfersberger (possibly a real name) dares to ask the question, "Why Are Lefties Crafty?" in an article that is completely worth your while. "It turns out, this is one historical saying that holds up under statistical analysis," he contends, and then shows you math in a persuasive way.  



Unrelatedly, I would also like to draw your attention to how Milwaukee Brewers' slugger Ryan Braun was totally on his way to an inside-the-park home run last night before he stumbled between third and home and got caught in a rundown to the delight and straight-up merriment of all. A photo essay on this subject follows.

KS

Blue Jays 3, Rangers 2 and Rangers 3, Blue Jays 0: I Hope You Enjoy Crispness

Crafty lefties are maybe the best kind.

Neither the Blue Jays nor the Rangers are messing around this weekend, and that is what I like to see (something I also like to see: when everybody just messes around, so either way I'm good, really). Friday night, Brett Cecil got the best of the totally solid Alexi Ogando for the second time in less than a week, getting all the run support he needed from a J. P. Arencibia three-run home run in the bottom of the fifth. I'm not here to tell you that J. P. Arencibia is some kind of unstoppable juggernaut of a dude -- there is, after all, the .284 OBP to consider -- but he has been hot lately, and it is just straight-up factual that here we have a rookie who is leading all AL catchers in home runs with 17, and who trails only Carlos Santana (who is awesome) in extra-base hits. He's second only to the Angels' Mark Trumbo in rookie home runs, I hasten to add. I know the thinking is that Travis D'Arnaud is actually the top catching prospect in the system and probably has the higher ceiling; all I am saying here is that I am enjoying J. P. Arencibia as a rookie catcher with some power despite his .220 batting average. The only other thing I want to mention about Friday night, really is that Jon Rauch worked for the third straight night (to which: cheers!) and gave up a home run for the second straight night (to which: jeers, sadly). Oh yeah finally: both Bautista and Lind are turning in nifty plays at the corners of late, and that is rad!


The story of today's game was starting pitching. Brad Mills came up for the Blue Jays, and pitched admirably despite having what scouts like to call "fringey stuff," by which I think they mean that everything he throws has little shit fringes around it. This is a guy who puts pretty much nothing behind the ball, and to make matters better, he leaves it up in the zone like all the time. But hey: two runs on six hits over seven innings, that's awesome. Unfortunately for him, Derek Holland only needed 95 pitches to shut the Blue Jays out, the Rangers fourteenth of the season. These guys can pitch, and it would be neither surprising nor in any way awful to see them back in the World Series this year. I had a friend from Houston visiting all week, and when the subject of the Rangers came up, he just looked disgusted and scoffed, like "pppppppffffffffffffffff the Rangers" and I get where he is coming from on that, I really do, but I'm not there with him. 


Another feature of this weekend's series I am enjoying so far is that Michael Young has brought his "IRL Roger Dorn Fielding Shitshow" with him to Toronto, and it is an absolute joy to behold. The best is listening to the commentators try to make sense of it. "Uh, I guess he was battling the sun a little on that one? Uh, that was maybe a bit of a tricky hop? Uh, Young is really battling out there today." It's pretty much the best. Also I'm totally going to pretend this isn't just sour grapes over how the Blue Jays traded Young and his eventual 2000 hits away as part of the Esteban Loaiza deal a million years. 


KS