Check In: Week 7

4-1 (17-24, 5^th place)

Ortiz:  5.0 IP, 1 ER, 5BB, 1K

Buehrle: 7.0 IP, 1 ER, 2BB, 5K

Jenkins: 5.0 IP, 2 ER, 1BB, 2K

Dickey: 6.0 IP, 2 ER, 2BB, 10K

Ortiz:  7.0 IP, 1 ER, 1BB, 1K

That’s… wow.  5 starts in which no more than 2 ER were surrendered.  That’s impressive, particularly for Russ Ramon Ortiz.  It’s about time that someone came out of nowhere to exceed expectations… this season has, to date, had a lot more disappointments than happy surprises.

The bullpen, after being pretty good for the first 6 weeks, gave up 13 ER in 14 innings.  Fortunately, none of that really mattered, because the bats woke up, and several of those runs came while mopping up in blowouts (or while the Jays were being one-hit).

But more importantly, the bats finally woke up!  Yeah, things started looking up in Tampa last week, but following the 1-hitter by Lester, the Jays scored 36 runs over the next 4 games.  The team is (as of Thursday) up to 8^th in the AL in runs scored, 9^th in OPS (8^th in slugging, but just 13^th in OBP).  It was a great week for Bautista (1.379 OPS) and Lind (1.283 OPS).  Cabrera, Lawrie, Encarnacion and Bonifacio all had OPS scores in the .900-1.000 range, which is very good.  Rasmus and Izturis were so-so (OPSs in the .600s) and Arencibia and Kawasaki were bad (sub-.450).

Next:  3 in New York vs the Evils, 3 at home to the Devil Rays, and the first of 4 at home to Baltimore.  It’s still too early for these to be ‘crucial’ games, but a 4-3 or 5-2 record would keep the momentum going nicely.  Conversely, being swept by either New York or Tampa would put the Jays back to where they were a week ago.

Taking stock

Isn't that a nice, calming scene?  Sure it is.

It’s amazing what a series win in Boston does to my psyche.  Yup, it’s always fun to beat on the Red Sux and their fans.  A series win in Boston, and getting out of Tampa Bay without a series loss, can’t be anything but a good sign, right?

Anyway.  It’s May 13.  The Jays have played (approximately) ¼ of their schedule.  They’re 15-24, 9.5 games out of first, with a .385 winning percentage and a -47 run differential (even after yesterday’s 12-4 win).  The run differential is third worst in baseball, ahead of only Houston and Florida.  The winning percentage and number of games out of first is ahead of only those same 2 teams, plus the equally disappointing California Angels.  Angels shoulda kept Vernon Wells, I guess.

A few weeks ago, I said that this would be a good time to start panicking.  Am I panicking?  No… not really.

It’s not that things look good.  The Jays need to play .609 ball from this point, to get to 90 wins.  That wasn’t out of the question back in January, but it might be, now.  Every starting pitcher the Jays had on Opening Day has either “underperformed” or been hurt, or both.  I say “underperformed” in quotes because it’s starting to look like some of the pitchers in question (Dickey, Buehrle, Johnson) may not be underperforming so much as they may be establishing a new performance level.  The lost velocity on Dickey’s “hard” knuckler seems to be really hurting his performance.  Buehrle’s always given up a lot of hits, but this year, those hits have been flying out of the park at double his career rate.  And Johnson has reportedly been having velocity issues as well.  I’d like to believe that all 3 of them can recover their past form, but that may be a lot to hope for – it’s more reasonable to assume that one will get back to his career norms, one will continue to struggle, and the other will wind up somewhere in between. 

On top of that regression, comes another wave of pitcher injuries.  Yes, we haven’t (to this point) seen season-killing injuries like those to Santos, Drabek, Hutchison and Perez last year, but even if Morrow is ready to go on Wednesday as planned, the team still needs to fill 2 spots (Happ and Johnson) for a few more weeks.  Chad Jenkins pitched well yesterday, and Ramon Ortiz filled in nicely last Friday in a losing cause.  Good news on both counts, and maybe Jenkins is ready to be a big-league contributor… but it’s asking a lot to expect the team to climb back into contention with a AAA fill-in (Ortiz) and a guy with 2 career starts in the majors (Jenkins) making 40% of the starts for the next few weeks.

The offense, thankfully, seems to have gotten out of its doldrums.  Bautista is starting to hit; Encarnacion has been steady.  Arencibia and Rasmus have provided bursts of power despite all the strikeouts.  Adam Lind is actually contributing with the bat (.393 OBP!  .810 OPS!).  Kawasaki hasn’t been a dead loss at the plate, defying expectations.  Sure, Lawrie, Bonifacio, Izturis and Cabrera have been disappointing, but other than Lawrie, they’ve all looked better in May than they did in April.  The Jays are 10^th in runs and 10^th in OPS in the AL, but that’s up from where they were at the end of April.

Where do the Jays go from here?  Well, candidly, I have a hard time seeing them in the playoff picture on Labour Day.  The hole they’re in isn’t inescapably deep, but they need a lot of things to break right – better play from the underachievers, no additional significant injuries, no regression from the bullpen – to climb back into contention.  The Jays will play better; they’re not a sub-.400 team.  But assuming ‘normal’ luck (as opposed to a run of great luck, which the team is not ‘due’ because of the bad luck from 2012 to now; probabilities don’t work that way), they’re not a .600 team, either.

And while that's disappointing, it's no reason to give up on the season.  Lots of good stuff can still happen - with the understanding that a playoff berth can't be taken for granted.  As it never should have been, really.

Check in: Week 6

3-4 (13-23, 5^th place)

Starters:

Romero:  4 IP, 3 ER, 3BB, 4K

Dickey:  6 IP, 7 ER, 2BB, 5K

Morrow:  8 IP, 2 ER, 5BB, 8K

Buehrle:  6 IP, 7 ER, 2BB, 5K

Happ: 1.1 IP, 4 ER, 1BB, 0K

Romero: 0.1 IP, 3 ER, 2BB, 0K

Dickey: 6 IP, 2 ER, 5BB, 5K

With that kind of production from the rotation, it’s a little amazing that the Jays won 3 times this week.  Of course, some credit is due to the bullpen, which compiled 31 IP, 11 ER, and a 3.19 ERA this week. 

More credit goes to the offense, which came to life somewhat over the past 5 games, producing 32 runs over that span (although they scored just 2 in the first 2 Seattle games).  All of DeRosa, Lind, Cabrera, Kawasaki, Bautista, Davis and Rasmus had OPS scores over .800 for the week, although only Cabrera and Bautista were full-time players (more than 17 at-bats) for the week.  Izturis, Arencibia, and Encarnacion were so-so.  Brett Lawrie and Emilio Bonifacio (.259 and .222 OPS) didn’t hit at all.

Up next:  3 in Boston, an off day, 2 at home to San Francisco, and another off day.  With the rotation down to 3 pitchers, the off days couldn’t have come at a better time.

Um.

If it seems like I haven’t written much about the Jays lately, you’re right – I haven’t.  The obvious reason for this is that it’s not as much fun to write about a team that’s losing.  Expectations were high going into the season, and they’ve been unmet, to this point.  As mentioned before, the Jays are a frustrating team to watch, and I’ve been taking a little of my own advice and paying a bit less attention to the team, because they’ve been so aggravating to follow so far this year.  It’s one thing to lose to teams that are simply better, and another to lose games due to poor defense and un-clutch situational hitting.

The other reason I haven’t written is that, frankly, I don’t know what to say, beyond stuff that’s already been said.  It strains credulity to suggest that all of Bautista, Cabrera, Encarnacion, Lawrie, Bonifacio, and Izturis are going to underachieve, with only Arencibia mildly overachieving (along with DeRosa, in limited playing time).  And it similarly strains credulity to suggest that ALL of Dickey, Buehrle, Johnson and Morrow have forgotten how to pitch.  So, it makes sense that most of these guys are going to regress (or progress, which sounds better) towards their mean career performance levels.  Same goes for the currently-awful batting average (and OPS) with runners on base.  And that’s great, assuming the guys who are performing well (um… Arencibia, DeRosa, and the bullpen) don’t regress.  Logically, the team should get better… but what if they don’t?  What if this is one of those years where more than half of the team’s key players underachieve?  Because years like that do happen.

There’s no help to be had in the minors, as far as I can tell.  Drew Hutchison won’t be available until late in the year.  Jim Negrych’s pretty AAA stats are due in large part to a high BABIP and, well, to facing AAA pitching.  Still, if Bonifacio and Izturis continue to struggle, he might be worth a look over the short term (although Bonifacio is out of options and Izturis would have to consent to a demotion).  Anthony Gose has been playing well, but Colby Rasmus hasn’t been the Jays’ biggest problem (Yes, Rasmus has far too many strikeouts, but .248/.315/.446 is much more than I’d expect from Gose right now, and Rasmus’s defense has actually been pretty good – in particular, his range has improved).  The Jays will get a shot in the arm when Reyes returns, and perhaps a boost if Josh Johnson pitches better after his DL stint.  And that’s about it.

Are heads going to roll if the team doesn’t start playing better?  Probably.  I expect some of the on-field braintrust (Gibbons, Mottola, Walker) to be replaced if the Jays are still mired at the bottom of the AL East at the end of June.  Not that I’m implying that any of those guys are to blame for the way the Jays have played, but that’s how sports (and business, for that matter) works:  If the enterprise fails for whatever reason, the guy running the enterprise gets blamed.  Yes, they could be better under a new manager.  They could be worse, too.

For right now, it’s pointless to project how many wins the Jays will finish with based on what they’ve done already, or to start counting how many wins and losses they can sustain going forward and still get to 90 wins.  We won’t be at a point where that stuff matters, for a few more weeks.  The mathematics of making the playoffs isn’t troubling yet – what’s troubling is the possibility that the talent level isn’t what we thought it was, and that the 2013 Blue Jays were never going to get to 90 wins, slow start (and Reyes injury) or no.  So the "real" 2013 Blue Jays better stand up, and soon.

Check in: Week 5

1-5 (10-19, 5^th place)

Starters did this:

Laffey:  2.2 IP, 2 ER, 5BB, 0K

Happ:  6.0 IP, 3 ER, 2BB, 5K

Dickey:  7.0 IP, 3 ER, 1BB, 4K

Morrow:  5.0 IP, 3 ER, 3BB, 7K

Buehrle:  6.2 IP, 5 ER, 3BB, 1K

Happ:  3.2 IP, 2 ER, 7BB, 2K

Ugh.  Bye-bye, unlamented Aaron Laffey.  Dickey and Happ #1 were decent starts, anyway.

Bullpen: 20 innings, 14 ER.  6.30 ERA.

Offense:

Bautista, Encarnacion (4 HR!) and Lawrie had good weeks (OPS >1)

Davis, Rasmus, and Izturis were okay (OPS in the .700s)

The others (Kawasaki, .500 OPS, Lind, .496, Bonifacio, .455, Arencibia, .350, Cabrera, .333) were varying degrees of awful.

The Jays have lost big (10-1) and small (two 1-run losses and two 2-run losses).  They’ve lost by making errors.  They’ve lost by walking too many batters.  One thing the Jays haven’t done so far this year is blow late leads; they’re a perfect 9-0 when leading going into the 8^th.  That’s a little ironic, considering that the Jays lost more than a handful of games in the 9^th in last season’s April and May.

But more than anything else, the Jays have lost by not hitting, and not hitting with runners on base.  The Jays are 6-0 when they score 6 or more runs, 2-4 when they score 4 or 5 times, and 2-15 when they score 3, 2, 1 or (obviously), zero runs.  Conversely, their opponents are 5-4 when scoring 3 or fewer runs, and 6-3 when they score 4 or 5 runs.  So… yeah, hitting has been a problem.  So is the 1-5 record when tied after 8 innings.  The bullpen can hold a late lead, but the offense can’t go out and get a late lead.

Next:  3 at home to Seattle, 4 on the road versus the Devil Rays.

Silver Linings

I have no idea what the hell that means in this context.

Want to panic now?  For myself - I don’t think it’s fair to panic until May 12 or later – by May 12, the Jays will have played an additional 13 games against the AL East (plus 3 vs Seattle), and if they go, say, 6-10 in those games (matching their current winning percentage), they’ll be 10+ games out of first.  And more importantly, they’ll have played 39 games, or about ¼ of the season, and it will a lot harder to sound credible when saying things like “it’s early!” and “small sample size!” and “Colby Rasmus can’t possibly strike out 280 times this year!”

Anyway, I asked if you want to panic NOW, and if you are panicking, this post is for you.  Turn that frown upside down, and remember, always look on the bright side of life.  Here’s 10 “silver linings” within the 2013 Blue Jays season that, sadly, must be written off after 23 games.

1.  A bad finish in 2013 means better draft picks next year, for the purposes of restocking the farm system that was gutted in the past offseason.

2.  With the team playing badly, the drunken louts reported to be inhabiting the 500 level will return to their natural habitat – TFC games.

3.  Josh Johnson won’t cost $100MM to re-sign.  (On the downside, he won’t get the Jays a draft pick if he goes somewhere else, either.)

4.  Jack Morris will suddenly be an insightful analyst, becauseofcourse he’s right: None of the Jays starters are “pitching to the score”.  See you in the Hall of Fame, Jack.

5.  There’ll be no danger of a Jays’ playoff run distracting Torontonians from the first Leafs intra-squad scrimmage in September.

6.  Get pumped up for the start of the Anthony Gose/Jim Negrych era!

7.  We won’t have to worry about the Yankees buying every free agent next offseason, in order to match the Jays’ stacked 2014 roster.

8.  The return of Clarence (Be honest: if you’re ready to write the team off now, you’re probably also on board with Gaston, Part III.)

9.  Toronto can be forced to host another G20 meeting in late June, and nobody will care if Jays games are moved.

10.  At least we’re not Raptor fans. 

Check in: Week 4

2-5 (9-14, 5th place)

The starters did this:

Morrow:  5.1 IP, 5 ER, 1BB, 4K

Buehrle: 7 IP, 2 ER, 1BB, 7K

Johnson:  5.1 IP, 4 ER, 3BB, 4K

Happ:  6 IP, 0 ER, 2BB, 6K

Dickey:  6 IP, 4 ER, 5BB, 4K

Morrow:  6.1 IP, 3 ER, 3BB, 4K

Buehrle:  5.1 IP, 5 ER, 0BB, 3K

Not great, but no complete disasters, either.  Happ and Buehrle (well, his first start, anyway) were the bright spots.  Yes, folks, Jay Happ leads the Jays rotation in ERA.  Bringing Happ north, as opposed to letting Romero work out his pitching problems in the majors, is one of the few decisions that has turned out well so far this year.

The value in these check-ins – for me, at least – is that they provide an easy way to compare how various parts of the team were doing from week to week, and a means by which to test assertions made by others.  For example, the Post had an article Thursday about how overworked the bullpen has been.  Fair enough; they have been overworked to this point – they’ve thrown 81.2 innings in 23 games.  However, consider that in week 2, the ‘pen had to come into 4 games in a row in the 5^th inning or earlier.  That won’t happen a lot, and in that week alone, the bullpen threw 26.2 innings, or almost 4.5 innings per game.  The last 2 weeks, they’ve thrown just 20.2 innings (3 per game), and 23.1 innings (3 1/3 per game, but note that the Jays played 2 extra-inning games this week).  Point being, the league-average bullpen throws about 3 1/3 innings per game.  With the starters the Jays have, overuse of the bullpen shouldn’t be an issue.

And speaking of the bullpen, they contributed 23.1 innings and just 3 ER (1.157 ERA) this week.  And going into the season, the bullpen was supposed to be the team’s Achilles heel.  Goes to show how unfathomably weird this year has been so far for Toronto.

Top offensive performers:

Adam Lind, 1.150 OPS… thanks to 2 singles and SEVEN walks in 12 plate appearances.  Okay then.

Arencibia, 1.098 OPS.  3 more home runs for JP to go with 2 doubles, 4 singles and a walk.

Bonifacio, Kawasaki and Izturis all had OPS scores below .500, and Rasmus (.511) wasn’t much better.  Arencibia and Rasmus continue to duel for the team lead in strikeouts (JP currently leads 34-33; the two are second and third in the AL).  Lawrie, Davis, Cabrera, Bautista, and Encarnacion were all so-so.

Up next:  3 more at the Yankees, then 3 at home to Boston.  You can start playing well any time now, guys.

Just say no.

Right now, the Blue Jays are a frustrating team to watch.

They don’t hit (12^th in the AL in OPS).  They don’t hit with men on base (last in OPS).  They give up runs, and lose games outright, by making errors.   They’re 2-4 in 1-run games, 0-2 in extra innings.  Their run differential is -29, better than only the expansion Marlins and Astros.  For years, Blue Jay players have said how much more pumped up they are in front of a full house… and yet, in games where 40,000+ fans were in attendance this year, the Jays are 2-5.  Fans were craving the opportunity to celebrate a win on opening day, to stick it to John Farrell, to beat up on the Vernon Wells-led Yankees… and each time, they’ve been disappointed.

So, I get that you may be frustrated.  So am I.

But if you’re frustrated enough to start doing irrational things, don’t watch.

That’s right – don’t watch.  Getting into drunken fistfights in the 500 level won’t solve anything.  Neither will throwing peanuts at opposing relievers.  Irrational demands, like firing the coaches (who aren’t the ones hitting .186 with men on base) will accomplish nothing.  And don’t say the team lacks leadership, or “fire”, or that they “don’t want it enough”, because there’s no logical reason why the Jays would “want it” less than, say, the Colorado Rockies.   

Instead, just don’t watch.  Give yourself a break from baseball.  This is supposed to be fun, and if it’s not fun, why are you participating in it?  Come back when it's fun again for you.

Travis troll alert

I saw a tweet the other night to the effect that Travis Snider’s OBP would put him second in OBP, if he was on the Jays.  My interest was piqued, and sure enough, Snider has a .400 OBP as of last Friday.  That’s better than anyone on the Jays except Reyes (who is gone for a while).

I get the impression, sometimes, that tweets like the Snider tweet are just intended to troll Jays fans (particularly while the team is not hitting AT ALL).  OK, sure – Snider’s playing well.  His batting average is .314, his OBP the aforementioned .400, and his wOBA is an impressive .377.  But of course, it’s early.  Snider’s batting average is almost entirely due to his .440 BABIP, which is bound to drop into the .300-.330 range over the course of the season.

And I say “almost entirely” because Snider has zero hits on balls that were not in play.  That’s right.  Zero home runs.  Which would put him last on the Blue Jays, behind Mark DeRosa (1 HR) and Maicer Izturis (2).  Point being that Travis, despite the impressive OBP, still has some pretty significant holes in his game – for example, he still strikes out 25% of the time.

Yes, Snider is contributing to the Pirates; yes, the guy he was traded for, Brad Lincoln, is playing in AAA (the early returns aren’t good).  But at this point, trading Snider still seems like it was the right move.  After all, where would he play on the 2013 Jays?  He’s not going to play ahead of Cabrera or Bautista or Rasmus.  He can’t play CF, so he's not really capable of being a  4th outfielder.  Snider is a lefthanded bat, so he would have no value as a platoon mate for, say, Lind or Rasmus (in fact, the Pirates don’t let Travis bat against lefthanders at all), unlike Rajai Davis.  Yes, he may well be a better outfielder than Bonifacio, but he doesn’t do the other things (switch-hit, play the infield and steal bases) that Boni does, so he couldn’t take Bonifacio’s roster spot.  So, if Travis doesn’t get traded for something last year (or last offseason), he’d have been lost to the Jays when they tried to assign him to Buffalo this spring.  Lincoln is probably as good a return as any.

Check in, week 3

4-3 (7-9), 4th place

Overall, not a bad result - it felt a lot worse as it was happening.  But this team has gotta start hitting, and soon.

Over the last week, the starting rotation did this:

Happ: 5 IP, 4 ER, 3BB, 4K

Dickey: 6.1 IP, 1 ER, 2BB, 4K

Morrow: 6 IP, 2 ER, 1BB, 3K

Buehrle: 6.1 IP, 2 ER, 2BB, 3K

Johnson:  7 IP, 2 ER, 2BB, 8K

Happ:  5.2 IP, 5 ER, 1BB, 3K

Dickey: 6.0 IP, 0 ER, 1BB, 7K

Those are, obviously, much better performances than we saw in the first 2 weeks, notwithstanding Happ’s 2 so-so outings.  The bullpen went 20.2 innings and surrendered 8 earned runs (ERA of 3.48), but unfortunately, Darren Oliver and Steve Delabar gave up runs late in tie games that turned into losses.

Unfortunate, but as I said at the top of this post, you gotta hit.  The Jays scored 8 runs in the opener of the KC series, and then scored 15 over the next 6 games.  Their team OBP is a sickly .290 (12^th in the AL) and when they do get runners on base, they don’t drive them in.  The Jays are last in the AL in batting average (.186) and OPS (.602) with runners on.  With runners in scoring position, they’re 13^th in batting average (.182) and 11^th in OPS (.684).  Couple those percentages with the fact that the Jays are also second-last in the AL in generating RISP situations, and 12^th in the AL in generating runners-on situations.  In other words, the Jays are seldom are in a position to drive in runners, and when they are, they don’t execute.

Another troubling thing about the offense is that the top performers (excluding Reyes, who we won’t see for a while) are performing in unsustainable ways.  Colby Rasmus and J.P. Arencibia lead the team in OPS, home runs, and are 1st and 3rd in RBI.  That’s good, but Rasmus has struck out in 45% of his PAs and Arencibia, 37% (at least Rasmus walks with some frequency – 9.8% of PAs – but Arencibia has walked once all season).  Those strikeout rates are so high, that they’re bound to affect Colby and JP’s performance as their home run per flyball rates and BABIP regress.

It’s still early, of course, and some of the ugly numbers are bound to improve.  Sabermetrics has proven that ‘clutch’ hitting doesn’t really exist, so the Jays aren’t going to finish 2013 hitting .186 with runners in scoring position (they hit .260 with RISP last year).  Bautista will come back, Lawrie will work his way back into hitting form, and we’ll see Reyes again sometime this summer.  Rasmus won’t strike out 250 times, and JPA will finish the year with a walk total in the double digits.  But man, it’s ugly out there now.

Rasmus (.914 OPS), Encarnacion (.909), Kawasaki (.850!) and Lind (Lind?? Yes - .871 OPS) had good weeks.  Arencibia, Cabrera, Bonifacio and Izturis all had OPS averages below .600, although JPA and Bonifacio each had 3 RBI, best on the team for the week.

Up next:  3 with the Yankees in Toronto, then 3 at Baltimore and the first of 4 games at NYY.   And hopefully, some timely hitting.

Because, you gotta hit, man.

The neutering of Drunk Jays Fans OR, entirely understandable hypocrisy is still hypocrisy

Fortunately, DJF doesn't have a literal monkey army at its disposal.

(Caution:  Language in some of the links may N be SF your W.)

I’m what you could call a ‘long-time reader’ of Drunk Jays Fans, Tao of Stieb, Blue Jay Hunter, and other blogs like the now-defunct Ghostrunner on First and (funny coincidence!) the long-gone fire-gibbons blog.  Those blogs gave me Jays related reading material, made me a more knowledgeable baseball fan, entertained me, and to an extent, inspired me to start writing out my own Jays-related thoughts.  So, a portion of the credit (or blame) for the existence of Missing BJ should go to people like Drew Fairservice, Ian Hunter, the Tao of Stieb and his blogmates, and of course, Andrew Stoeten, Dustin Parkes, Bergkamp, and Chairman Mao, the original DJFers.

If you’re a baseball blogger who dreams big, DJF is the Cinderella story:  Some guys who spend a lot of time talking baseball start a baseball blog, develop a following, become a sought-after property, get hired by media conglomerate (The Score, whose internet presence including DJF was subsequently spun off as theScore Inc., distinct from Score Media, which is a division of Rogers.  Got all that?), and thereafter get paid to write and talk about baseball all the time.

DJF is a terrific success story, but ironically, today’s Drunk Jays Fans (and its near relation, Getting Blanked) is almost nothing like what it was back in 2007-8.  Sure, the old DJF is consistent with the current DJF in some ways (not blaming Wells for his contract, and not booing Blue Jay players, for example), but it was also chock full of sexist, racist, and homophobic humour.  It made light of rape and drunk driving.  It repeatedly mocked former (and current) Blue Jay-related entities like John Gibbons, Gregg Zaun, Brandon League, and Richard Griffin (and, Philadelphia!).  It scatologically savaged AJ Burnett and Alex Rios (see above) and may have accused Jesse Litsch of PED use.  And, even though some of the content went a little too far for my taste, I would often find myself literally laughing out loud as I read it.

DJF isn’t like that anymore, and that’s disappointing for me.  I don’t know Stoeten or Parkes, so I can’t say whether the two of them have quote-unquote “matured” since 2008, and don’t write and think that way any more.  Or perhaps they’ve been told not to write that way by their employer, which – ironically – presumably hired them for their notoriety, but can’t or won’t publish the things that made them notorious.  And, of course, it’s their blog (well, Stoeten's blog, now), and they may have made a conscious decision on their own to tone down some of the more outlandish rhetoric.  Regardless, it’s not the same experience it once was.   DJF has a lot more analysis than it used to, and a lot less hilarious ranting.  There’s lots of blogs that analyse baseball, but few that express the id of the frustrated, impatient and yes, drunk, baseball fan.  That niche is now (so far as I can tell) unfilled.

So, I’m a little sad about the changes at DJF over the years, but plus ca change, and all that.  People mature, or their interests change, or their employer tells them not to refer to home runs as “long hard ding-dongs”.  I get it.  What rankles me, though, is the hypocrisy – in this post and the comments to it, for example.  Yes, using the word ‘raped’ to describe a baseball trade is insensitive to rape survivors – with that, I totally agree.  But it’s the height of hypocrisy for Stoeten to wag his finger at those making rape jokes, when he and his fellow DJFers did the same thing, repeatedly, in 2007.  Censored comments, even censoring the usernames of commenters, is something I see more and more often at Drunk Jays Fans, and it’s weirdly ironic to see Stoeten shutting down commenters who are offensive in the same way that he himself once was.  No frustrated, drunken rants allowed here!

The archives of the old DJF aren’t easy to find.  There’s no link to the pre-Score DJF archives in the new Score-based DJF.  Links to individual posts that are embedded in the new DJF don’t work.  You can find your way into the old DJF in certain ways (including clicking on the Boggs head, and then clicking through to the ‘previous’ or ‘following’ post, or copying links like this one http://blogs.thescore.com/djf/page/531/ and changing the page number in the URL).  I’m guessing The Score isn’t thrilled to be hosting that kind of content, and consequently doesn’t make it easy to find.  So if you’re inclined to, enjoy those archives while you can.

As I was saying...

Torso twists are a great way to loosen up a stiff back.

OK, I'm not saying that Bautista's back turned wonky due to his playing 3B over the weekend... but, do the Jays really want to take chances with their best hitter?  Can we please put the "Bautista at 3B, Lawrie at 2B" notion to rest?

Let's see... on top of the Bautista injury risk playing 3B, there's:
- Lawrie injury risk playing 2B (turning the double play, throwing across his body with a history of oblique problems, collisions with runners, being spiked, etc)
- When he returns to the Jays, Lawrie will be trying to learn to hit in the majors and to not run the bases in an idiotic way.  Do we really want to make him think about re-learning to play second base, too?  Doesn't he have enough on his plate?
- worse defense at third base, questionable defense at second, with the net benefit being (?) keeping Bonifacio or Izturis on the bench, replacing one of them with... Rajai Davis??  Oh-kayyy.
- For those of you who are saying that "second base is Lawrie's natural position", well... shortstop is Sergio Santos's natural position, and nobody's suggested putting him at short until Reyes returns.  Playing a position years ago in the minors isn't the same as playing it in the majors.

Again... Just stop.


Oh, incidentally...
Darren Oliver, April 2012:  7.2 IP, 1 walk, 9 K, 2.35 ERA, 0.91 WHIP
Darren Oliver, April 2013:  4.1 IP, 2 walks, 1 K, 6.23 ERA, 2.54 WHIP
Remember when we were all worried about Oliver not coming back, and the bullpen having to rely on Brett Cecil and Aaron Loup from the left side?  Well, Cecil has been great, and Loup very good... and Oliver's been shaky at best.  Goes to show, once again, that it's almost impossible to predict how good relievers will be from year to year.

A good news, bad news weekend

The Jays return home after visiting the presumed AL Central champs, Detroit, and the less-credibly-presumed-to-be improved Royals with a 3-3 record.  Not awful, considering how this road trip started.

Kansas City got their first taste of Rah Dickey in 2013, and didn't like it much, scoring just 1 run over 6.1 innings.  Contrast that with Dickey's last start against Boston - the Red Sux feasted on Rah Dickey in Toronto, scoring 8 times (the Sux would presumably be very happy with a steady diet of Rah Dickey, based on last week's results).

No, you're a juvenile sense of humour.

Anyway, the bad news, you already know.  Jose Reyes is gone for 3 months, give or take.  That's disappointing, on several levels - Reyes is fun to watch, produces a lot of value at a premium position, and the Jays don't have any really good options for the leadoff spot, in his absence.  However, two things can be taken away from the Reyes injury, not "silver linings" per se, but perhaps bronze or electrum linings:

Despite what Buck and Pat were saying on yesterday's broadcast, Reyes is not the Jays' best defender at shortstop.  I've been over this already; Reyes is a great hitter, but not as good defensively as Yunel Escobar.   It's arguable (see Fangraphs, for example) that Maicer Izturis is as good as Reyes in the field, and the shortstop de jour, Munenori Kawasaki, is a 2-time Gold Glove winner in Japan and looked pretty solid in the field this weekend.  Sure, small sample size, but Reyes's injury is a disaster only in the sense that he can't be replaced offensively in general, and in the leadoff spot in particular.  The defense at shortstop will be fine.

Secondly... (I know, this is the sort of intangible-based argument that I normally sneer at) Reyes's injury may force other players to step up their game, and make the team better overall.  Remember, last year's Blue Jay team was at or near the top of the AL in runs scored, before the injuries hit.  That team had Yunel Escobar and Kelly Johnson, and they've been supplanted by Reyes, Cabrera, and Izturis/Bonifacio in 2013.  So, realistically, it's not as if this year's team is hurting for offensive potential, in Reyes's absence.  And if the Jays can hang in the playoff race (and I believe they will), they'll get a huge boost when Reyes comes back in July.

(Assuming he has no setbacks and returns as scheduled in July... but I don't want to think about the alternative.)

So moving on to the good news:  Dickey played well, Morrow played well, and Happ, while not as sharp as he was against Boston, was good enough to keep the Jays in Friday's game (that they eventually won).  Now if Buehrle and Johnson can right themselves, we'll be in business, even if Rajai Davis is the new leadoff hitter.



Jose Bautista has been receiving plaudits for his heroically volunteering to play 3B following the Reyes injury.  Huh, what??  I mean, good for him for putting his hand up, I guess, but that was really the only move the Jays could have made on Friday.  With Izturis and Reyes hurt, what was Jose going to say, "No, I won't play 3B.  Let Bonifacio play 3B and see if we can make a trade with the Pirates and fly Russell Martin in to play shortstop, during the injury delay"?   I would hope that a professional baseball player who has THREE THOUSAND innings of experience at a defensive position would be willing to play that position in an emergency.  Anyway... my thinking was that Jose would be at 3B until Brett Lawrie came off the DL.  That would be fine, considering Lawrie is expected back within days... but now, there's word that Lawrie played second base today in Dunedin...

...No, no, no.  Do we have to go over this again?  Brett Lawrie is a very good third baseman.  He hasn't played second base in over 2 years.  Putting Lawrie at 2B and Bautista at 3B does... what, exactly?  Free up Bonifacio for shortstop - no, Bonifacio isn't a good shortstop.  Keep both Lawrie and J-Bau in the lineup?  No, they would be in the lineup anyway.  The only thing an infield that includes both Lawrie and Bautista does is ensure that the Jays don't have to expose an outfielder (Casper Wells?) to waivers.  Well, that, and making the infield defense worse, of course.  When Lawrie comes back, he should be at 3B, Bautista in RF, Izturis (or Kawasaki or someone else) at short, and Bonifacio (or Izturis) at second.  Neither of the Jays' backup outfielders (Rajai Davis, Casper Wells) merits being played every day at the expense of the infield defense.  OK?  Thanks.


Finally, from the DJF comments section, one for the "I wish I had said that" archives:
Better to have Lo Viste’d and lost than to have never Lo Viste’d at all.

Get well soon, Jose.

Check in: Week 2

2-4 (3-6), 5^th place

Are you panicking?  Don’t panic.  Yeah, the Jays aren’t playing well, but all of Dickey, Buehrle, Johnson and Morrow didn’t suddenly forget how to pitch.  They’ll be ok.  Maybe not as good as we would like, but a lot better than they’ve been.  Similarly, the hitters will likely hit more or less the way their career numbers suggest they will.  If you want something to worry about, worry about the bullpen.  I’m not so sure that the bullpen can handle much more usage (38.1 innings already, 3.1 more than Seattle’s ‘pen, which has thrown the second-most innings… in 2 extra games) without risking burnout, injury, or having to shuttle guys back and forth between Toronto and Buffalo.

The rotation did this:

Johnson:  6 IP, 3 ER, 2BB, 6K

Happ:  5.1 IP, 0 ER, 3BB, 6K

Dickey: 4.2 IP, 7 ER, 2BB, 5K

Morrow: 3.2 IP, 5 ER, 2BB, 0K

Buehrle: 4.1 IP, 5 ER, 2BB, 2K

Johnson: 1.1 IP, 6 ER, 2BB, 1K

That’s 4 pretty horrible starts in a row.  Bad, nasty, horrible pitching.  Silver linings?  Well, there’s talk that Johnson’s velocity was down in Detroit, but that seems to have been exaggerated.  JJ’s velocity was fine in Toronto.   The weather was awful in Detroit, which can’t have helped the pitching.  And Detroit and Boston are two above-average-to-pretty-good teams.  3-3 would have been an acceptable record in this week’s games.

The bullpen has been pretty good so far this year – 3.76 ERA, 7^th in the AL.  Considering that the ‘pen was considered the team’s weak point going into the season, that’s great news, even better when you consider that three guys responsible 8 of the relief corps’ 16 earned runs (Bush, Jeffress, Gonzalez) aren’t even on the team anymore.  Anyway, this week, the bullpen had the following line:  26.2 IP, 13 ER, ERA 4.38.  I’ll take it, all things considered.

The offense ranks 13^th in the AL in runs scored and 10^th in OPS.  They’re obviously capable of better.  Reyes (.560 OBP, 1.299 OPS), Rasmus (.316 BA, 1.065 OPS), and Cabrera (.881 OPS) had good weeks, and DeRosa (1.011 OPS) played well in a part-time role.  Arencibia had a big hit but a so-so week overall (.720 OPS).  Everyone else struggled, with OPS scores in the low .600s (Blanco, Lind), low .500s (Davis, Bautista, Bonifacio) or worse (Izturis, Encarnacion).

Up next:  A full week of games; 3 at Kansas City, 4 at home with the White Sox.

Roster move a'comin', and coming catcher regression?

The Jays picked up outfielder Casper Wells this week, which is notable because unlike other waiver pickups, he’s not some scrub pitcher who will throw some long relief and then get DFA’d (see: Gonzalez, Edgar and Bush, Dave).  Wells is 28, a decent defender, and a righthanded hitter (career OPS of .838 against lefty pitching).  As such, Wells immediately becomes a candidate to platoon with Colby Rasmus in CF and/or Adam Lind at DH.  However, he does present a problem, as he becomes the Jays' 6th outfielder – to go with Bautista, Rasmus, Cabrera, Davis, and Bonifacio (who splits time between outfield and infield).  Even with a 7-man bullpen, there isn’t room for 6 outfielders, when one of the 4 bench spots is a catcher (a backup infielder is required, too)… so once Lawrie returns, someone will be on the move.  None of the 6 outfielders have options, so Bonifacio or Wells can’t easily be sent to AAA.  If you decide that Bonifacio is an infielder, someone else (out of DeRosa or Izturiz) has to go.  Izturiz is a better defender than Bonifacio, so he probably won’t be going (he has a 3-year deal) and DeRosa has actually been playing well of late, so he may stick around.  Consequently, it seems to me that a trade of some sort has to happen, or the Jays will likely lose a player, probably an outfielder, on waivers.

**********

Look who’s been carrying the Jays offensively for the first 2 weeks of the season:  Mister Jonathan Paul Arencibia.  JPA leads the Jays with 7 RBI as I type this, and has been pretty ‘clutch’ for the team, driving in 3 big runs against Detroit on Wednesday and hitting a tiebreaking homer (one of two) against the Cleveland Racists last week.  Can he keep it up?

There’s a perception in some parts that I’m excessively critical of JP Arencibia.  I’m of two minds as to whether I should try to dispel that perception – after all, a hatred of JPA (irrational or otherwise) could be a calling card, a trademark of Missing BJ the way the hobo Dick Griffin picture will forever be linked to Drunk Jays Fans.  Truth be told, I don’t hate Arencibia, and I want him to succeed – if he fails, there aren’t a whole lot of other options immediately available to replace him.  Unfortunately, I have a hard time finding evidence that JPA is good at baseball, relatively speaking.

But, I digress.  Can he keep it up? , I had asked.  Well… the signs aren’t promising.  JP has 37 plate appearances to this point in 2013.  Included in those 37 PAs are:

3 home runs

4 doubles

3 singles

1 walk

15 strikeouts

And 11 ‘other’ outs

A few things jump off the stats sheet.  The walk/strikeout ratio is uuuuugly.  So far this year, JP is walking less than 3% of the time and striking out about 40% of the time.  That’s an awful ratio, far worse than his career numbers of 6.1% walks and 28.6% strikeouts (and that’s not a good ratio, either).  Strikeouts normally hurt batting average, but JP is hitting .278.  How is he doing this, you ask?  Well, he has a .388 average on balls in play (BABIP), which is far above the league average (around .300 or so).  So it may be that JPA has been a little lucky with balls in play – 7 of his 18 balls in play have been hits, when 5 or 6 would be normally be expected to drop in.  Yeah, yeah, extremely small sample size and the BABIP is a matter of 1 extra hit at this point, but humour me a little longer, ok? 

I used the word “lucky” when I referenced BABIP, and for hitters, there is an element of luck to how well they do on balls they hit that aren’t home runs.  Sometimes you hit a ball hard right at a defender; other times, a weak grounder or soft line drive finds an empty space among the defense.  The exceptions are for extremely fast runners (who can leg out ground balls that would otherwise be outs) or for extremely talented hitters.  Tony Gwynn (Sr.) had a career BABIP of .341.  Do we say he was lucky – no, he wasn’t lucky, because nobody is consistently lucky over 9200 at-bats.  He was fast and talented.  Ted Williams had a career BABIP of .328, including BABIPs of .378 in 1941, .368 in 1948, and .367 in 1957.  Williams wasn’t especially fast, but he was very, very talented.  There might be some luck there, but luck wasn’t the whole story – again, it’s extremely improbable that anyone could be 10% luckier than average over the space of 8000+ at-bats.

Back to Arencibia, who isn’t extremely fast, and who has a career BABIP of .266 (albeit over just 857 career at-bats).  So, not only is his BABIP way above league average, and above what the greatest hitters of all time have managed, but it’s also way, way above his career norm.  Yes, hitters do improve, thereby boosting their career BABIP, and JP’s batted ball numbers do show improvement (for what 8 games of data is worth, anyway).  So far this year (stats as of Wednesday night), Arencibia’s line drive percentage is at 26.3%, up from his career number in the mid-teens.  His ground ball rate has dropped to 10.5%, and his fly ball rate is at 63.2%.  That’s a pretty ideal ratio for JP – ground balls are a bad thing for all but the fastest hitters, as they’re almost always outs.  Line drives tend to turn into hits, moreso than any other kind of batted ball, and fly balls usually turn into home runs about 8% of the time, or double that for power hitters like JP.   In other words, he’s hitting the ball well when he makes contact, and the outcomes have been favourable for the type of hitter Arencibia profiles as.  

Can JPA continue to hit like this?  Probably not – a BABIP over about .330 just isn’t sustainable, and when over a third of your at-bats are strikeouts, a league-average BABIP of .300 will translate to a batting average of .220 or so… which is pretty much JP’s career line.  That said, if Arencibia can continue to make good contact (lots of line drives and fly balls) and cut the strikeouts down a bit, I can see him hitting .250-.270 this season, which, when you throw in 20-30 home runs, is more than ok for a catcher.  More walks would be nice, but JP’s never walked more than 8.3% of the time at any level, and there’s no sign of that changing this season.   We’re going to have to accept JP for what he is, in terms of on-base percentage, and hope he keeps putting baseballs in the air.

Nice comeback this afternoon...

Zaun pandering to the crowd in... Atlanta?  (Note the flag)

...Y'know, if you like that kind of thing.  It's really, really unlikely that all of Buehrle/Morrow/Johnson/Dickey will make a habit of going 6 or fewer innings this year, and it's really likely that Encarnacion will hit better than ,129 for the year.  Still, despite there being no reason to start worrying about player performance in early April, it obviously feels great to win the way the Jays did today.  Good stuff.

And I'm not sure, but it might be a good sign that the Jays managed to put together some offense without the benefit of the long ball.  If nothing else, it refutes half the 'facts' Dick Griffin spouted over the weekend.  As it turns out, the Jays have hit 1 home run in their 2 games in Detroit, after clubbing 11 in the 6-game homestand.

Which brings me around, sort of, to what I was planning to write about tonight:  Announcers making stuff up.  Specifically, Gregg Zaun making up science.

Zaun feels that the absence of glass in centrefield at the Skydome is turning fly balls into home runs, and home runs into looooooooong home runs: "I really believe now that there’s nothing to stop the air going out to centrefield".  Zaun really believes this, but he hasn't presented any, y'know, evidence for this belief.  Yes, many home runs hit in the Skydome have gone a long way this year, and yes, the glass from Windows restaurant isn't there anymore.  But there is no causal relationship between these two things.  You could say, for example, that Gibby's down-home folkiness is making the players hit the ball harder, and it would be no less credible an assertion.

For what it's worth, I walked through the new windowless outfield viewing area area last week, and I didn't feel any baseball-sucking wind blowing past the crowd that lined the railings, on back towards the concourse.  There may not be much science behind that observation, but it's still more scientific than Zaun's fantasies are.

Still... if it turns out I am wrong and there is something to Zaun's ravings, I have a suggestion... put one of these babies in Alex Anthopoulos's box seats:

That's right, reinstall the glass windows, but make them motorized!  Roll 'em up when the opposition bats, and down when the Jays are batting.  61-20 home record, here we come!

The Jays are getting clobbered, so...

... I'll fill the time by mocking Richard Griffin, whose recap of yesterday's game started like this:

"It took just one trip through the Blue Jays’ five-man rotation for fans to learn some early facts about this team:

1. They’re frontrunners.

2. They don’t come from behind well.

3. Carrying eight relievers in the bullpen was not enough — just five days into the season.

4. Their clutch hitting needs some work.

5. The defence is remarkably inconsistent and, oh yeah, they need a road trip, sooner rather than later."

He could also have added,

6.  JP Arencibia is the best hitter in Jays history,

7.  Brett Cecil will win the ERA title, and, venturing on to the American League in general,

8.  Chris Davis is your American League MVP.

It's idiotic to call observations based on 5 games played "facts".  Frankly, they're barely observations.  Drawing conclusions about a baseball team 5 games into the season is like writing off the Argos in the second quarter of the season opener, or the Leafs after 2 games.

Then again, it's the Toronto sports media, so the two nonsensical examples I gave could absolutely happen.

Check In: Week 1

(I decided a few weeks ago that I’d do these weekly thingamajigs again this year.  Frankly, I don’t think that they have a lot of statistical or analytical value – the sample size is always tiny (6-7 games, usually), trends are difficult to spot, and one good game can skew things crazily.  Still, I occasionally noticed stuff in the course of looking at a week’s worth of stats (for example, some weeks, the bullpen was great despite the team going 2-4, and that greatness would otherwise have gone unnoticed).  And I like the idea of memorializing each week, because I won’t remember how I felt in April by the time June rolls around, let alone in September.  So, here we go again.)

1-2 (1-2, 3rd place)

(The other problem with these check-ins, which I had forgotten about until now, is the issue of when to write them.  Friday is a defensible choice, but what if a game is scheduled Friday?  Usually, these check-ins cover games from the previous Friday to Thursday.  I guess we don’t often see Friday afternoon games, so if I can remember to blog before 9:00 or so, I’ll avoid situations where a game result is in the books before I finish writing about the previous game(s).)

Opening week!  A 1-2 start against the Cleveland Indigenouses!  Does this mean that Cleveland is better than we thought, or that the Jays aren’t quite as good as we thought, or aren’t firing on all cylinders?  Given that Cleveland plays in the AL Central, I’m guessing it’s one of the latter two options.

The starters? They did this:

Dickey: 6 IP, 3 ER, 4 BB, 4 K
Morrow: 6.0 IP, 1 ER, 2 BB, 8 K
Buehrle: 5.1 IP, 6 ER, 1 BB, 4 K

And the bullpen did this:

11.2 IP, 3 ER.

Morrow was good, Dickey was okay, and Buehrle better not expect that kind of run support every time out.  The bullpen, all in all, was fine – there were no implosions of the Cordero, Rauch, or last year’s Santos-variety.  Darren Oliver was kind of shaky (3 hits, 2 walks, and 0 strikeouts in 2 innings) but the sample size is ultimately meaningless.

The offense was feast or famine.  After getting 10 9 hits over the first 2 games, and 2 solo HRs for the only RBIs, the Jays clubbed 5 homers as part of a 9-hit, 6-walk performance in the series finale.  It all added up to 13 runs over the 3 games, and the Jays are 7^th in OPS in the AL.  Individually, Bautista and Arencibia have 2 HR each and lead in OPS, despite some ugly moments in the first 2 games.  Surprise, surprise, EE has been walked 3 times, batting ahead of Lind.  Bonifacio has a pair of doubles, and… everyone else is scuffling.  It’s early, Adam (0-11, 1 BB, 1 K), Colby (1-11 (HR), 1 BB, 4 K), and Melky (2-12, 2 BB, 2 K)… but you can start hitting anytime now.

Attendance was the usual sellout for opening day, and then a couple of so-so crowds:  24,600 and 19,500.  I guess for midweek games against non-Sox, non-Yankee teams, that’s not awful.  The first midweek series last year against a non-evil team was 3 vs. Tampa Bay, and the Jays only drew 15,000-18,000 for those games.  The attendance story is still being written, I guess.

On a random albeit semi-related note, I am trying to decide whether to refer to Rasmus as “Colbylocks” or “Rasmunzel”.  Opinions?

Additionally, on the subject of nicknames, Mrs Roberto has been trying to get me to pronounce RA Dickey (normally “Arr Ehh Dickey”) as “Rah” Dickey.  Does that sound a little too much like a slang term for unprotected sex, or is it just me?

Up next:  3 games at home to the Red Sux (“BOOOOOOOO”), an off day, and then 3 at Detroit.

April 3, 2013: Impressions from the ballpark!

A shot of the latest Skydome “feature”, which has some novelty value...

I was at my first real game of 2013 last night, and as you already know, the Jays lost 3-2 to the Cleveland Indigenous Persons (CIPs).  Not a great way to start the year (last year, the Jays won 10 of the 11 games I attended), but… Baseball is back, people!

So… impressions.  The biggest takeaway I had from last year is that not much has really changed with the in-game experience.  My friend and I had tickets in the 500s, between home plate and first base.  Like always, I went in through Gate 2, walked up a couple of ramps, and circled the 500-level concourse to get to the seats.  Same as last year – although in the distant past, you had to go to the gate listed on your ticket.  Not having to enter through Gate 6 saves everyone a lot of walking down, and then up, stairs.

On the way in, I got grilled meat on a bun for $4 from one of the ubiquitous street vendors.  If anything, that was cheaper than last year.

Last night’s crowd with the CIPs in town was 24,000.  Crowd for last year’s Game 2, against the more popular Red Sux, was a little higher.  In any case, rumours of 35,000+ for the second-night game seem to have been incorrect.

I didn’t find the lineups for concessions to be too bad in the 500s, perhaps because they were over-staffed expecting bigger crowds.  In the last couple of years, I’ve started to see beer vendors in the upper-deck stands more often, and this year, they were actually selling real beer (as opposed to generic ‘lite’ beer brands).  Good stuff.  Not having to miss an inning and a half of play while lining up for beer is a definite improvement.

On the minus side, the food options don’t seem to be any better than they were last year.  Granted, I didn’t look very hard, but the choices in the 500s seem to be the usual generic stadium ones – hot dog, nachos, pizza.  I missed my Muddy York jerk chicken nachos.  Also, I have reports that there was no ice cream available in the 500s, and the popcorn was reportedly very salty.  Take from that what you will...

Around the 5^th inning or so, my buddy and I decided to check out the new centrefield viewing section, formerly Windows restaurant.  The section was nice enough, but probably a novelty only – you’re standing, leaning on a railing, watching the game… three things you can do from behind first base, too, where the view is better.  Perhaps more amenities will be added, but if not, I suspect that area will be less busy by midsummer when the novelty’s worn off.  What I do think the new section does is open up the 200 level.  We were asked to show our tickets when we came down the ramp to the 200s, but were waved through after saying “we’re here to check out the new outfield viewing area”.  That line now ranks up there with “I want to buy a kosher meal” and “I want to spend my gift card at the good Jays Shop” in the pantheon of Things You Say To Get Into Better Seats.  Come for the outfield viewing area, find a section with a distracted usher, and voila!  Instant seat upgrade.

From there, we made our way into the left-field corner, in time for the last couple of innings and an up-close look at J-Bau’s screaming line drive home run that tied the game in the 9^th.  And by the way (if you care), Campbell and Zaun now do their broadcasts from behind a thick, seamless curtain, with a much more obtrusive security presence.  I’m not sure whether some “incident” happened to merit the increased security, or if it’s just Rogers being cautious given the potential for opening-week rowdiness.  Or maybe they don’t want the fans to see how puffy Gregg Zaun is in person?

As for the game itself (and the opener before it)… well, there wasn’t a lot of really bad stuff, at least nothing that can’t be fixed.  Morrow pitched well, Dickey pitched fairly well (he had trouble with walks in last year’s opener, too), and the bullpen pitched well (even Cecil, who hit the 93mph mark in Game 1).  Arencibia struggled with the knuckleball, but that’s what Henry Blanco is here for.  Izturis hasn’t been great at 3B, but Lawrie will be back… uh, hopefully in a couple of weeks.  By and large, the pitching was as advertised, or better… and what problems there were would go unnoticed with better hitting in the two games played.  The Jays have 9 hits in 20 innings, 3 runs through 2 games, and a team OPS of .505.  Obviously, that will improve.  And for what it’s worth, last night’s HR by Bautista is further evidence that his wrist is fine.  Good news there, anyway.

And most importantly…. Baseball is still back.  

Finally a statistical/sabermetric note: this happened last week.  So if the WAR numbers you were checking 2 weeks ago look different now, that’s why.