Phewwwwwww.....wait....darn!

Well first the Good news...

• stud closer B.J. Ryan will only miss 4-6 weeks with an elbow strain, much better than the worse case scenario.
  
• Then the bad news...Troy Glaus is going on the D.L. Tuesday with his heel problem. This puts a severe hole in the Jays lineup and will mean Lind/Hill batting second a lot and Overbay staying at the fifth spot.
• Ryan Roberts gets the call up from Syracuse and will be the backup infielder. Roberts has been playing some 3B down there and has some good versatility.

It will be a tough few weeks for the Jays and they don't get to take a breath as they host the Red Sox and Dice-K tomorrow night at the Rogers Centre.

Injuries, Injuries, Injuries

So I didn't want to post when I hadn't had a chance to watch a full game except Friday night...things are a little crazy as the Senators make their way through the playoffs. But what a horrible week it was for the Jays aside from the standings where they are currently tied for first...

• Closer B.J. Ryan is gone...and we should find out today for how long. The bullpen had been great early on this year but now everyone has to take a step forward on the bullpen chart. It does not look great for Ryan either, when the name Tommy John is being tossed around...Jamie Vermilyea is up in his place and Davis Romero's season is done. Jason Frasor is the new closer.
• Outfielder and spark plug Reed Johnson is "deciding whether to have surgery that could sideline him for two months". Good news is we get to look at Adam Lind a bit earlier than scheduled, and Aaron Hill gets to bat in the number two hole once in a while. Bad news is we might see a lot of Stairs in LF.
• Who knows about Glaus? They need him in the lineup to re-align things but they don't want to risk a longer injury to him too...
• Was that Josh Towers edition 2007 on the mound yesterday? Can we hope? With A.J. and Ohka struggling...this could be great. He has a better ERA than Doc this morning and a better K/BB ratio

So...still excited for this season, this team is too good to be held down even with injuries, but there's going to have be some depth additions if those three injuries are in any way serious...What does everyone think?

McGowan Watch '07

Dusty had his second start of the season with Syracuse and impressed again last night. He allowed his first ER of the season with a home run by Ryan Sweeney (2 spots behind Travis Snyder on the Baseball America Top Prospects list at 55). In ten innings this year, McGowan has struck out 17 batters and walked only 3. With Towers so-so performance, as previously discussed with no help from the defense, last night is McGowan far away from the MLB rotation. Will they need to keep stretching his arm out? Or is one of their current bullpen men looking at a rotation spot? It looks like McGowan may finally be comfortable in a set position, this time as a starter...

April 10th, 2007...questioning the manager

Sometimes you don’t even have to look deeper into the boxscore. You just look at who is listed in the boxscore and it makes you realize all you need to know about the game. Matt Stairs in left field is something meant to make you cringe, certainly with the knowledge that the starting pitcher needs all the confidence he can get after a horrible season last year. Having Jason Smith at SS and Jason Phillips at C on the same night also raises the eyebrow, why bench three starters when the man on the mound could benefit from all the help he can get? This was a badly played game by the team on the field, led by two miscues by Matt Stairs and 4 errors by the defense including Gold Glover Vernon Wells. Did Towers deserve better? Probably…but it was a decent outing for a man who greatly struggled last season, allowing 10 hits, but no walks and striking out six. Two of those hits could be erased by Stairs miscues…Downs’ arm was finally stretched to more than one batter and he mowed through his 1.1 innings, only allowing one hit and striking out two. Marcum outdid him, throwing 2 innings with 1 hit and the two strike outs.

Offensively, the star was the pinch hitter Gregg Zaun who came on in the 7^th inning and hit a 2 run shot to bring the Jays closer. But there were no bright lights on this night, only head shakes and raised eyebrows…

Inside the Box Score - April 9th 2007

What a long...long game it was tonight. First thing to look at on that boxscore is the time of play: 3 hours and 8 minutes, although it seemed much longer at times.
As I write this, Orlando Hudson just caused his team a run with his 'great defense' as we sometimes saw with the Blue Jays, check the box score for a sacrifice fly to the hitter by Cody Ross. Hudson backed up to right field to make a routine right fielder's catch, Griffey was on third and saw that Hudson could not cock a throw to home plate in time to get him tagging up.

Back to the Jays game:

• Troy Glaus made his comeback and was fantastic: 2 for 3, with one run and walk.
• Royce Clayton finds ways to impress every game. His second inning walk was a great at-bat totalling 9 pitches including 5 foul balls, he never let a strike go by him, nor did he swing through one. The pitch tracker also shows that all 5 pitches fouled off were in the strike zone. Oh yeh, he also had a basehit and a run.
• Aaron Hill is finding his stroke much faster than last year, his 3 for 3 night gives him a .348 AVG and he also walked. At this time last year he had a .273 AVG but he quickly plumetted and would stay under .200 from April 26th to May 18th. He already has a home run, soemthing he didn't do until May 24 last year. Let's hope for him that he keeps it up
• A. J. Burnett threw 102 pitches, 60 for strikes and found his stride after the first few innings where he could not find the plate. Doing so lowered his ERA under 8 and gave him a 100 pitch game 3 months quicker than last season, although that only covers 3 less starts. He wasn't dominating (5 strikeouts), he wasn't always accurate (40% balls, 3 walks) but he found a way to get things done, somehow it really seems like he allowed more than 3 walks and 3 hits.
• There are still four Blue Jays reliever who have yet to allow a run with Casey Janssen leading the way, not having done so during 5.2 innings. Jeremy Accardo and Scott Downs have 3 innings and 2 thirds of an inning respectively after appearing in this game.

So today's Top Performer Award goes to Aaron Hill for his great performance with the bat and no errors today. The team is a game ahead of the Red Sox for first place in the division. More to come...any thoughts on tonight's game? How different were the anthems? How nice is A.J.'s hair?

Inside the Boxscore 04/02

This is a new thing that I've always wanted to do because sometimes, a boxscore can tell a great story...hopefully this will become a recurring thing. But first of all, check out the official boxscore on MLB.COM.

-Reed Johnson had an 0 for 4 day at the plate but he did draw 20 pitches and walked once. He stole second after this walk and scored. Even with his speed, last season he only had 8 stolen bases
-Vernon Wells had a great at bat in the tenth, wearing down Rodney with a nine pitch sequence including 5 foul balls until Rodney relented and walked him. The reliever had to throw 31 pitches during that inning and Wells at-bat was a big part of that.
-He also stole a base, of which he only had 17 last year...The Jays as a team only had 65, not sure if this a new aggressive approach or just being able to read the pitcher/catcher combo. But Pudge is not an easy catcher to steal from, last season, he had an 0.21 Stolen Bases Allowed per 9 innings and caught 51% of all would-be base stealers.
-Gibbons showed that he would utilize his bench this season, using a pinch runner and pinch hitter and then making 2 defensive changes to make up for this and in effect used every player.
-As well as Doc pitched, the bullpen was fantastic, throwing 4 shut out innings including a great performance by Casey Janssen. The youngster did not allow a hit or walk in his 2.1 innings and threw 18 of 25 pitches for strikes. Ryan made the fans nervous in the ninth but two strikeouts helped him get the save.

What did you think, what were the stories that needed to be told? 1:05 start today, A.J. takes the mound.

Still kicking...

Well I'm back...not better than ever, actually much different than I was. I want to apologize to all the readers for being gone, I was literally spending almost every waking minute working and then when I got some time off, I had some big family issues that are still on-going. But I want to keep this site going, I will figure out how, but first I'll need some help. So if there's anyone out there that wants to help out, e-mail me, let me know. I'm happy about Opening Day, it's a great distraction and I missed the sport. Huge win by the team...alright so there you have it, this site will make a slow comeback...