With a day game after a night game coming up, I’ll touch quickly on a couple of the major talking points that came out of the loss to the Rays:

-Going to Evan Crawford in the 5th inning was a fine move by John Farrell.  It may have been the by-the-book move or the safe move, but that’s what your bottom-of-the-bullpen guys are there for, to be used early on when you’re losing.  You hope they keep the game where it is so that you can have a chance to come back, but sometimes they give up runs.  With the Rays loaded with left-handed hitters and switch-hitters who are better from the left side, the likeliest call was Crawford with the Blue Jays down 6-4 in the fifth, then Luis Perez later on.

-Brett Lawrie calming himself down before attacking second base umpire Rob Drake was a very good thing indeed.  Drake called Lawrie out on appeal for not retouching second base on his way back to first after Lawrie took off on a pitch that wound up being hit into right field and caught.  Lawrie slid into second, got up, and to my eyes appeared to at the very least stunt towards third before running back to first base, but he didn’t touch second on the way back.  It amazed me how many people who watched replay after replay are firmly convinced they saw completely different things.  As I said, I think Lawrie was on the third-base side of the bag, but even if he wasn’t, he should have known that it was close enough to have stepped on second on the way back.  It’s not as important that you know you didn’t need to touch it as it is that the umpires know.

Anyway, when Drake went up with his fist, Lawrie came sprinting towards him off first base, causing Drake to shake in his boots and put his hand up to stop Lawrie, as though that would have helped.  But the light went on in Lawrie’s head – you could almost see it as it was happening  - and he slowed down before he got too close and put his arms out to the sides as if to say “It’s OK, I only want to talk”, and that was all he did.  It was good to see, but it didn’t help his cause any, because he was out.  That wasn’t the umpires picking on Brett Lawrie, that was Lawrie being rightfully called out.

-Drew Hutchison gave up a five-spot in the fourth inning, a Rays rally that was capped by a three-run Carlos Pena homer.  It’s the third big inning Hutchison has allowed in his young career, and 14 of the 23 earned runs he’s given up in have come in three of the 37 2/3 innings he’s pitched.  Take away the three big innings and the 21 year-old has an ERA of 2.93.  Obviously you can’t do that, but it does sort of illustrate that he’ll be just fine if he can stay away from the big inning.

Here’s tonight’s edition of The BlueJaysTalk, for your listening pleasure – I apologize for not being able to contain my incredulity at the suggestion that Ryota Igarashi should be called up from Las Vegas to replace Casey Janssen as the closer:

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The series wraps up with Ricky Romero taking on righty James Shields.  Romero has struggled with his control lately, walking 14 over his last three starts.  Hopefully it’s a bump in the road that he’s gotten over and he’ll return to his now less-recent dominant self.  A Blue Jays win gets them back to within a game of the Rays for second in the A.L. East and would give them their first series win at the Rays in 15 tries.  It’s a matinee, so please join us along the Blue Jays Radio Network at 1:00PM Eastern!

Please give me a follow on the Twitter, you can find me @wilnerness590.

Comments are welcome, I read them all and respond to most!

What started out looking like a little-league affair wound up with only one team looking as though it didn’t belong, and for one of a very few times when these clubs meet up, it was the Tampa Bay Rays.

The Blue Jays have lost each of the past 14 series that they’ve played in Central Florida, and it seems as though many of those losses have either been of the “anything that can go wrong will go wrong” variety, or have involved the Blue Jays’ allowing the Rays a tiny opening with an error, misplay, ill-timed walk or some such and having the Tampas just blast through that hole for a big rally.

In the opener of this series in St. Pete, the Rays got a huge break early thanks to a ridiculous ground rule at Tropicana Field, and were basically handed another run later on by an extremely shaky Kyle Drabek, but they couldn’t put Drabek away and wound up blowing up real good in the 8th inning, allowing the Blue Jays to salt away a win.

The insanity began early, with B.J. Upton coming to the plate with one out in the bottom of the first.  He hit a lazy fly ball to centre, and Colby Rasmus camped under it in front of the warning track, ready to make a play, but the ball hit something and fell in front of him.

The umpires went back to look at the replay and must have seen one that we didn’t, because they determined that the ball hit an object that was suspended from the “B” ring – the second most inside of the four rings that hold up the roof at the Trop.

It’s a categorically insane ground rule – there is no chance the ball would have gone out if it hadn’t hit the catwalk – but as of right now there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

But the Blue Jays didn’t let that get to them, nor did they let six Drabek walks get to them, or three wild pitches by the young righty – all of which came in the third inning.

In fact, despite his wildness, Drabek only gave up one run over six innings other than the extremely tainted 300-foot “home run” to dead centre, as the Rays went 1-for-5 against him with runners in scoring position.  In three of his six innings, a lone walk was the only baserunner the Rays would get.

In the top of the 2nd, the Blue Jays tied it up by taking advantage of a Rays miscue.  Edwin Encarnacion led off with a single and A.L. Player of the Week J.P. Arencibia hit a routine double play ball to third, but T-Bay second baseman Will Rhymes threw wildly to first, allowing Arencibia to go to second, from whence he scored as Eric Thames followed with an RBI single (and was picked off rounding first too far by Jose Molina).

The Blue Jays took the lead for good when Yunel Escobar went deep with one out in the 6th – no catwalks, no guywires, no nothing – and pounced on more Rays’ mistakes in the 8th to score three unearned insurance runs.

Colby Rasmus led off that inning with  his second of two doubles on the night. After Jeff Mathis failed to bunt him over, Kelly Johnson was intentionally walked and Rays’ manager Joe Maddon went to his bullpen for Burke Badenhop.  Escobar hit a comebacker to the mound that got under Badenhop’s glove for an error, loading the bases with one out, but then Badenhop got Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion each to hit inning-ending double-play balls to third – neither of which were turned.

Sean Rodriguez hauled in Bautista’s grounder and threw it into right field, allowing two Jays’ runs to score, and Bautista blew up Rhymes at second on Encarnacion’s grounder, forcing a wild throw and cashing another Jays’ run.

Francisco Cordero came on to work a 1-2-3 bottom of the 8th – he’s retired 12 of the last 13 hitters he’s faced and hasn’t given up a run since being removed from the closer’s job.

The Blue Jays beat the Rays at their own game, and maybe – just maybe – this might mean that the dark cloud that has seemed to follow them every time they head down to the lovely St. Pete-Tampa Bay area is lifting.

Here’s tonight’s edition of The BlueJaysTalk, for your listening pleasure:

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Big news from the minor leagues, as well, with Brett Cecil (5.2ip), Danny Farquhar (2.1) and Ronald Uviedo (1.0) combining to throw a no-hitter for the AA New Hampshire Fisher Cats in a 6-0 win over the Portland Sea Dogs.  It’s the 3rd no-no in Fisher Cats’ history – the last guy to throw one?  Kyle Drabek.

The Blue Jays and Rays continue their series in St. Pete with a battle of rookies.  21 year-old Drew Hutchison takes the ball against 22 year-old Matt Moore, who was the most talked-about rookie of the spring.  He was the consensus pre-season pick for 2012 rookie of the year, and most seemed to think he’d contend for the Cy Young, too.  Eight starts in, he’s 1-4, 5.20 with a WHIP of 1.578 and opponents’ OPS of .828.  Hutchison has started six times and is 3-1, 4.81 with a WHIP of 1.515 and opponents’ OPS of .780.  We’ll be on the air at 7:00PM Eastern – join us, won’t you?

Please give me a follow on The Twitter – you can find me @wilnerness590.

Comments are welcome – I read them all and respond to most!

The Blue Jays brought their brooms with them to Rogers Centre in an attempt to sweep away the New York Metropolitans, but fell just short despite having a seemingly golden opportunity to at least tie it up in the bottom of the ninth.

The Jays had climbed back from a 6-2 hole to close to within a run with some big hits late – a two-out RBI single by Jose Bautista in the 7th, back-to-back doubles by J.P. Arencibia and Eric Thames to open the 8th and an RBI single by Colby Rasmus later in that frame, which snapped his personal 0-for-20.

The Mets looked for some insurance in the top of the 9th but couldn’t get it, as Francisco Cordero came on for Darren Oliver with two on and two out and struck out Ronny Cedeno on three pitches, driving the crowd of 41,867 nuts.  It was an incredible atmosphere at the old Concrete Convertible, with the huge crowd – driven by a Brandon Morrow bobblehead giveaway and the gorgeous long-weekend weather – making its presence felt throughout the game, it’s just too bad the Blue Jays couldn’t emerge victorious.

As I said, the chance was there.  Frank Francisco, the Mets’ closer who had the same job with the Blue Jays for a lot of last season, came on  to work the bottom of the 9th to great celebration among the fans, and they were even happier when he walked Yunel Escobar on a 3-2 pitch to open the inning.  Jose Bautista followed, and with the Mets playing a major right-handed pull shift, Bautista bounced a two-strike offering through the wide-open right side for a single.  Escobar had to hold up at second because the ball almost hit him on its way to right field, so he had to stop to let it go through.

That put the tying run on second and the winning run on first with the Blue Jays’ 4-5-6 hitters coming up.

Edwin Encarnacion was first, and in no way should he have been asked to bunt.  Encarnacion has been having a rough time lately, just 5-for-25 on the homestand and hitting only .188 in May going into that at-bat (though with 5 homers in 18 games), but he has still been the Blue Jays’ best overall hitter this season.  More importantly, Encarnacion has NEVER laid down a successful sacrifice bunt in his career.  When some hitters come to the plate in that situation, it’s just screaming out for a bunt to be dropped down.  Not your clean-up hitter, though.

Edwin struck out, and J.P. Arencibia was next.  Unlike Encarnacion, Arencibia has been hot as a pistol in the month of May, hitting .339/.362/.732 going into that at-bat, and already with two hits in the game.  Arencibia got ahead of Francisco 2-0, fouled off a couple of pitches, then struck out too, leaving things up to Eric Thames.

The options on the bench were Jeff Mathis and Omar Vizquel, neither of whom is nearly the hitter Thames is, even Eric struggles through a tough May of his own, with an OPS under .600.  Thames fouled off a couple of pitches around a couple of balls, then, just like the two teammates before him, he struck out swinging. That ended the game and got Francisco his 10th save of the season in 12 tries, actually lowering his WHIP to a still-unsightly 2.040.

It’s too bad that the Blue Jays couldn’t take advantage of the opportunity Francisco afforded them with the two baserunners, but it’s not as though it should have been managed differently.  You don’t bunt with Encarnacion – nor do you pinch-hit one of your two worst hitters for one of your best in order to ask one of them to lay down a bunt that has no guarantee at all of working (remember Omar Vizquel in Oakland last week), nor do you bunt with (or pinch-hit for) your hottest hitter.

The only thing that perhaps should have been done differently was maybe having Yunel Escobar try to steal second with Bautista up.  Francisco has always been absolutely terrible at holding baserunners – over the last five years, 40 runners have tried to steal off him and 37 have been successful, including four out of four this year.  The thing is, Escobar is probably the second-worst basestealer on the team.  I don’t know why, he’s not slow, but he’s not a good basestealer.  He’s only tried once this season, and been caught, and for his career he’s stolen successfully on only 21 of 39 attempts.  That’s an awful conversion rate, and even with someone as bad at holding runners as Frankie on the mound, I don’t know if it’s worth taking a chance with the tying run.

It was an unfortunate finish, but an electric afternoon at the ballpark, and while I’m sure the crowd left frustrated and unhappy at the loss, I hope most people will think back to what a great time it was overall, and remember how great a place Rogers Centre can be when the atmosphere is like that.

Here’s this afternoon’s edition of The BlueJaysTalk, for your listening pleasure:

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I also have to comment on a controversialish play in the top of the first inning.  With two out, Kirk Nieuwenhuis hit a blooper to shallow centre on which Colby Rasmus made an incredible headfirst, sprawling, diving catch.  He sno-coned the ball, though, and once he slid to a stop, opened up his glove to allow the ball to drop down into the pocket, as we see outfielders do all the time.  The ball fell out, and instead of a catch, it was ruled that Rasmus dropped the ball.  Everyone disagrees with me on this – which, while you wouldn’t think so, is pretty unusual – but I don’t see any difference between that play and an infielder dropping the ball on a transfer while trying to turn a double play.  Hopefully, the lesson Rasmus learns from this is that if he ever finds himself in that situation again, to either just stand up and start jogging to the dugout, or to take the ball out of his glove with his bare hand and not try to drop it into the pocket.  If that had been called an out, the inning would have been over, the Mets’ third run wouldn’t have scored and the game might still be going on.

It’s not, and the Blue Jays are off on a weeklong road trip that begins with a three-game set against the Tampa Bay Rays, who swept a two-gamer here at Rogers Centre earlier this week.  The series opens with Kyle Drabek taking on last season’s A.L. Rookie of the Year, Jeremy Hellickson.  We’ll be on the air at 7:00PM Eastern – join us, won’t you?

Please give me a follow on The Twitter, you can find me @wilnerness590.  If you do, you can have good times like Saturday night when I was on for an hour discussing Adam Lind being placed on outright waivers.  If you don’t, you miss fun stuff like that!

Comments are welcome – I read them all and respond to most.

You can pretty much take the blog post I wrote two and a half weeks ago and re-read it.  Brandon Morrow was great back on May 3rd in Anaheim, throwing a three-hit shutout and striking out eight, and he was great Saturday afternoon against the Mets, throwing a three-hit shutout and striking out eight.

The difference between the two games?  Morrow issued one more walk this time than he did that time – for a grand total of one – and he threw five more pitches.

The righty was dominant from start to finish, retiring 20 of the first 21 batters he faced and facing just three batters over the minimum.

In five of his last six starts (not counting the last one against the Rays in which he hit a wall in the fifth inning and got lit up), Morrow has allowed a grand total of two earned runs on 25 hits, walking six and striking out 38 over 36 2/3 innings.  That would be an ERA of 0.49, a WHIP of 0.845 and a K/9 rate of 9.33  Those numbers are phenomenal, and hopefully show that Morrow has taken a huge stride towards becoming the legitimate ace so many expected him to become – he was taken 5th overall in 2006, after all.

Morrow did catch a rather huge break in the top of the 9th, though.  With one out and a runner on first, Mets’ DH Mike Baxter ripped a line drive down the right-field line.  Jose Bautista played it off the low retaining wall, spun and fired a blind strike to Yunel Escobar, who swiped at thin air as Baxter slid past him into second base……and was called out.  Escobar completely missed Baxter, but second-base umpire Brian Knight was in no position to see that, and so he went up with his fist since the ball beat the runner.  It was a terrible call, and just enhances the reasons to have robot umpires – or instant replay at the very least.  Instead of the Mets having runners at second and third and one out – the tying run in scoring position – and their third and fourth hitters coming up, they had a man on third and two out.

Just an awful call, though it has been a while since one that bad favoured the Blue Jays.  Still, these guys work awfully hard out there and with the technology available since, you know, the 1980s or so, there’s no need to subject them to the vagaries of human judgement.

The Blue Jays’ only scoring came in the bottom of the fifth inning and Jeff Mathis started the rally by stroking a single to left with two out and nobody on.  Kelly Johnson followed by ripping an RBI double into the gap in right-centre, moving to third when the ball scooted under the glove of Mets’ centrefielder Andres Torres.  Johnson scored as Yunel Escobar smacked the next pitch into right field for a single.

That was it – those were half the hits the Blue Jays managed for the afternoon – but it was one more run than Morrow would need in his dominant performance.

Here’s this afternoon’s super-extendo version of The BlueJaysTalk, for your listening pleasure – thanks to all the long weekend cottagers for calling up:

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The series and the homestand wrap up Sunday afternoon, and it’s Henderson Alvarez tasked with securing the sweep and the Blue Jays’ fifth straight win, which would be a season high.  His mound opponent will be righty Dillon Gee, who has been kind of unlucky to post a 5.65 ERA so far this season.  His opponents’ batting average on balls in play is an unusually high .351, and he’s walked only nine in 43 innings of work.  Gee has had a little trouble keeping the ball in the park, though, allowing six home runs, and the Blue Jays have hit 11 homers in their last four games including this last one, in which they didn’t hit any.  We’ll be on the air at 12:30PM Eastern with the pre-game show for a 1:07 first pitch – join us, won’t you?

Please give me a follow on The Twitter, you can find me @wilnerness590. Brandon Morrow can be found @2Morrow23.

Comments are welcome – I read them all and respond to most!

Blue Jays fans have long dreaded the beginning of interleague play because it’s a place where the Jays’ playoff hopes, faint though they may have been, have gone to die in recent seasons.

For some strange,unknowable reason, the Blue Jays have rarely fared well against NL teams during the regular season, posting a winning record in interleague play only three times since its inception in 1997.  In fact, over the past eight seasons, the Blue Jays have lost an average of three games a year in the standings to the Red Sox and Yankees through the 18 interleague games.

This year, though, started with a bang.  Five bangs, actually.  A pair of homers each for J.P. Arencibia (who has four big flies in his last three games) and Rajai Davis (his first-ever multi-homer game) were lovely bookends for Yan Gomes’ first big-league homer – a laserbeam to left field that took about a second and a half to get out of the park.

Gomes has made quite an impression in his first two games, he’s 3-for-5 with a walk and a sacrifice fly to go with the homer, two runs scored and two RBIs.  If the plan was to ship him back down to Las Vegas after the weekend, once Brett Lawrie comes back, he seems determined to make it very difficult for the Blue Jays to follow through with that.

In all, every Blue Jays starter reached base at least once and they all came around to score at least once, save for Ben Francisco.

The Mets only managed one 1-2-3 inning on the mound, the 8th, and the pitcher was Rob Johnson, who happened to spend the first seven innings behind the plate.

Ricky Romero wasn’t exactly back to his old self – he walked four in his six innings of work but only allowed a run on three hits and left after having thrown 99 pitches since the Blue Jays had a 14-1 lead.  Carlos Villanueva picked him up with a shutout 7th, Evan Crawford and Luis Perez combined to give up four in the 8th and Francisco Cordero threw a hitless 9th, issuing a walk.

Crawford had to come out of the game (kicking and screaming,  mind you) because of a low back spasm, but the Blue Jays don’t think he’ll have to go to the disabled list.

Here’s tonight’s edition of The BlueJaysTalk, for your listening pleasure:

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The series continues with the return of Miguel Batista.  The 41 year-old, who was the Blue Jays’ number two starter in 2004 and their closer in 2005, resurrected his career last season after spending some time with the Mets’ AAA Buffalo Bisons team.  His year so far has been kind of rough, posting a 1.737 WHIP in 12 appearances, three of which have been starts, despite a 4.26 ERA.  Brandon Morrow will oppose and we’ll have it for you along the Blue Jays Radio Network starting with the pre-game show at 12:30PM Eastern for a 1:07 first pitch.  We are expecting to have Alan Ashby back in the booth with us, it’s been an incredible honour (and a lot of fun) to fill in for him these last two games.  Join us, won’t you?

Please give me a follow on The Twitter, you can find me @wilnerness590.

Comments are welcome – I read them all and respond to most!

Coming into their series with the New York Yankees, the Blue Jays were looking pretty rough.  They’d just been swept by the Rays and had lost four out of five overall to drop to within a game of the .500 mark and they had their fourth and fifth starters going against a powerful offensive club.

So, of course, the Blue Jays nailed down a sweep.

Drew Hutchison looked terrific in picking up his second straight win, allowing just a run on five hits over six strong innings.  He did walk four, but two of them came back-to-back to lead off the fourth, after which the 21 year-old got a ground ball double play then struck out Andruw Jones to escape unscathed.  In the bottom of the third, Jose Bautista had blasted his 10th home run of the season – a two-run shot – to give the Jays the lead for what turned out to be the duration.  J.P. Arencibia, batting 5th in the rejigged line-up, added his second homer in as many games – also a two-run job – for some 7th inning insurance.

Jason Frasor, Darren Oliver and Casey Janssen worked a perfect inning of relief each.  Janssen is  3-for-3 in save situations, and more perfectly, he has yet to even allow a runner to reach base when he’s locking down a save.

Bautista’s bat seems really to be coming around over the last week, the trip to Minnesota appears to have done him some good.  He’s got the batting average back over .200 for the first time in three weeks, and since last Friday night he’s hitting .333/.379/.889 with five home runs in seven games.

The Blue Jays made plenty of news before the game, shipping Adam Lind down to AAA Las Vegas and recalling Yan Gomes as Brett Lawrie dropped the appeal of his four-game suspension.  Lawrie, Alex Anthopoulos and John Farrell all said that Brett didn’t need an appeal hearing hanging over his head, he’d made his peace with umpire Bill Miller and they didn’t really anticipate the suspension being reduced on appeal, so the decision was made to drop it.  I’m thinking as well that they’d rather have had Lawrie miss three games against the Mets than two each against the Rays and Rangers.

The bigger news, though, was the Lind demotion.  He’d been a full-time big leaguer since June of 2008, when Cito Gaston was brought back to begin his second tour of duty with the team, and in 2009 he won the American League’s Silver Slugger Award as a DH.  But Lind had fallen on awfully hard times since his 2011 OPS peaked at 1.019 on June 17th of last season.  At that time, he was hitting .339/.381/.638, but from that point until the end of the season (80 games thanks to a DL stint, 348 plate appearances) he hit just .203/.247/.332 with 11 of his 26 home runs while dealing with a bad back and a wrist injury.

Lind never hit his stride this year, and takes a big-league line of .186/.273/.314 with him down to Las Vegas, with just three home runs.  That’s 14 homers over the course of the last 114 games for someone who is supposed to provide power in the heart of the order.  I’m not adding his slash line numbers together because it would be too depressing.

Lind is in a massive funk right now, and he has been for the better part of a full calendar year.  The Blue Jays have taken the drastic measure of farming him out because they still hope he gets turned around, and that he can be a big part of their future.  Comparisons were made to Edwin Encarnacion, who was hitting .200/.298/.467 when he was sent down in late June of 2010.  He spent only a week and a half in AAA, tearing up Las Vegas and environs to the tune of a .438/.486/.731 mark, with two doubles and three home runs in just seven games.  He returned and hit .269/.310/.491 the rest of the way – more of a jump in batting average than anything else, but look at him now.

I don’t think Lind is done as a very good big-league hitter, and I don’t think the Blue Jays are done with Lind.  It’ll likely take him more than ten days to come back, but I think he’ll be back and be productive again.  He’s only 28 years old, after all.

Gomes was Lind’s replacement on the roster – though he’s really up to replace Lawrie at third for four games – and he had a terrific major-league debut, going 2-for-3 with a pair of line-drive singles, one to centre and one to right.  He wasn’t really tested at third base, only having to make one play, on a pop fly, but he’ll take it.  Gomes is the first major-leaguer to have been born in Brazil, so one hopes this was a pretty big day for the soccer-mad South American nation.  He’s a versatile guy with a decent bat; a catcher, he can also play first and third, and the hope is that he’ll be in the bigs for a while but the Blue Jays were pretty cryptic about that, saying that more moves could very well be coming on Monday when Lawrie returns from his suspension.

Those moves won’t include a promotion of Vladimir Guerrero, though.  Even though his timetable has been accelerated to the point where he’ll begin playing in extended spring training games on Friday instead of early next week, Farrell still doesn’t expect Guerrero to be major-league ready until early June.

Here’s tonight’s edition of The BlueJaysTalk, for your listening pleasure:

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Interleague play is now upon us, as New York moves out so that New York can move in.  The Blue Jays open up a three-game set with the Metropolitans on Friday night with a battle of lefties – Ricky Romero takes on Jonathan Niese.  Romero has issued five walks in each of his last two starts, and he’s coming off his first loss of the season, so here’s hoping he turns things around against the blue-and-orange.  Here’s also hoping that Alan Ashby is back with us – he was out sick tonight, batting a bad cold that’s ripped up his throat over the past few days.  We’ll be on the air at 7:00PM Eastern.  Join us, won’t you?

Please give me a follow on The Twitter, you can find me @wilnerness590.  Yan Gomes can be found @Yan_AGomes.

Comments are welcome – I read them all and reply to most!

If the first meeting of 2012 between the Blue Jays and Yankees was any indication, then it’s going to be one fun year for the boys in blue.

The Yankees were simply no match for the home side, it wasn’t even close, as the Jays jumped out to a 5-0 lead through three innings in support of a very strong Kyle Drabek on the way to a rout.

Each of the Blue Jays’ first seven runs scored as a result of a two-out hit on a night when every facet of the game – pitching, hitting and defense – showed up for the Jays at the same time.  Heck, even Francisco Cordero pitched a perfect inning!

There were four home runs, one each for Edwin Encarnacion and J.P. Arencibia on their way to three-hit nights (Arencibia missed the cycle by a triple).  Jose Bautista hit a laser beam that took about a second and a half to make it to its final resting place in the 200 level, his fourth home run in six games, and Kelly Johnson blasted the 100th round-tripper of his career.

As  for Drabek, after struggling through 4 1/3 innings in Minnesota last time out, throwing 84 pitches over the first three frames, the 24 year-old shoved it right up the Yankees’ big bats, holding them to just a run on three hits over seven innings.  All three hits were ground balls and the run scored on a two-out  bad-hop single by Mark Teixeira.

It was an overwhelming victory – certainly one that doesn’t prove that the Yankees aren’t capable of competing with the Blue Jays this season, but a dominant win nonetheless.

Here’s tonight’s edition of The BlueJaysTalk, for your listening pleasure:

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Before the game, the Commissioner’s Office handed down a four-game suspension to Brett Lawrie for his “aggressive actions” against home plate umpire Bill Miller on Tuesday night.  Lawrie appealed the suspension and should have a hearing sometime next week in which he can tell his side of the story.  It’s quite possible that the mitigating circumstances, Lawrie being a first-time offender and his genuine contrition over having hit Miller with his batting helmet as it bounced off the ground might get the suspension reduced by a game.  Lawrie will continue to play until the appeal is heard and a ruling is made.

The two-game mini-series wraps up Thursday night with 21 year-old Drew Hutchison taking on the Yankees for the first time in his career.  He’s coming off his best start yet – six innings of three-hitter in Minnesota – and will face the consistently inconsistent Phil Hughes.  We’re on the air at 7:00PM Eastern – join us, won’t you?

Please follow me on The Twitter, you can find me @wilnerness590.  Kyle Drabek is @kyledrabek4.

Comments are welcome – I read them all and respond to most!

This was going to be a post about how the Blue Jays kicked away a tremendous start by Henderson Alvarez with shoddy defense in the top of the 7th inning, but home plate umpire Bill Miller rewrote the script with his complete and utter disregard for the game he was working in the bottom of the ninth.

It’s an umpire’s job to call balls and strikes, safe and out and to maintain control of the game.  It’s not an umpire’s job to insinuate himself into said game by enacting personal vendettas when he feels slighted, and that’s what Miller did.

With one out in the bottom of the ninth, Brett Lawrie took a 3-1 pitch that was, conservatively, six inches outside.  The overhead camera angle showed that the pitch actually got a piece of the left-handed batters’ box.  Lawrie started to trot down to first base, thinking that he’d walked, but Miller called the pitch a strike, causing Lawrie to freeze about 20 feet up the line or so and come back to the plate.  Lawrie didn’t say anything, he just dug back into the box, and Miller didn’t say anything to him, either.  The next pitch was clearly high, and Miller called it strike three.

One mistake is acceptable from an umpire – they’re human beings, after all (though I still believe they should all be replaced by robots) – but to compound that mistake with another intentional mistake because your feelings were hurt is thoroughly unprofessional and should be completely unacceptable.

We can’t know what Bill Miller was thinking, mostly because he refused to answer questions from a pool reporter after the game, but it seemed abundantly clear that he wasn’t going to let this punk kid “show him up” on the field.  Whether or not Miller had his mind made up that the next pitch was going to be strike three no matter where it was, we can’t know (and of course he never would have said that anyway), but it certainly looked as though Miller was more than ready to ring Lawrie up – he called strike three with tremendous enthusiasm – and knew that he would eject him from the game shortly thereafter.

It was a disgusting display, and one that happens all too often on the playing fields (and courts and rinks, etc.) of professional sports.  Officials get a burr in their saddles and decide “I’ll show them, they can’t treat me like that” and they get away with it all the time.  It’s an affront to the games over which they purport to watch, it’s completely unprofessional and it should be subject to severe consequences – but it’s not, and so it continues.

A ball is a ball and a strike is a strike.  That doesn’t change based on whether your feelings are hurt.

Lawrie will face supplementary discipline from the Commissioner’s Office because he threw his helmet into the ground and it bounced up and hit Miller in the hip – Lawrie wasn’t trying to hit the umpire, he didn’t throw the helmet AT him, but he should have known better than to throw it anywhere near him.  Miller will face no discipline for possibly altering the outcome of a major league game in order to follow through on a personal vendetta.  Heck, he didn’t even have to answer questions from reporters.  It’s shameful.

Here’s tonight’s edition of The BlueJaysTalk, for your listening pleasure:

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With the Blue Jays appearing to be in free fall, having lost four of five and seven of ten, the Rays hustle on out of town and the New York Yankees come in for a two-game series starting Wednesday night.  It will be a huge test for the Jays’ fourth and fifth starters, Kyle Drabek gets the nod in the opener against Hiroki Kuroda.  Note that even with all the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments among Blue Jays fans over the recent stretch, the team has never been under .500 at any point this season, and even with so many things going so badly right now, they remain just a game and a half out of a playoff spot. We’ll be on the air at 7:00PM Eastern – join us, won’t you?

Please give me a follow on The Twitter, you can find me @wilnerness500.  Brett Lawrie can be found @blawrie13, Bill Miller @notsomuch.

Comments are welcome – I read them all and respond to most!

A team generally loses its first game after returning from a long road trip, and I’ll wager the likelihood goes up if there’s no off-day after the travel.  That doesn’t make the series-opening loss to the Rays any easier to swallow, though.

Brandon Morrow didn’t seem himself through the first four innings, but he hadn’t allowed a hit, had struck out seven, and had retired 12 of 13 after starting off the game with back-to-back walks.  Something wasn’t right, though, as his fastball was hanging out around 88-90, only occasionally hitting 93 and 94.  Still, he was certainly getting the job done before Will Rhymes led off the 5th with a double into the left-field corner.  An out later, Elliot Johnson scored Rhymes with a single, but he was eliminated on a Ben Zobrist grounder.  Morrow followed that with a four-pitch walk to B.J. Upton, then got Matt Joyce to hit a hard ground ball to first.  Adam Lind couldn’t corral it, and the ball deflected off his glove to Kelly Johnson, who threw to first – Morrow covered as Joyce dove headfirst for the bag.

Joyce was called safe, and as Morrow stood and argued with first base umpire Bill Miller, Zobrist scored all the way from second.  Now, had Morrow come up throwing to the plate as soon as he caught Johnson’s throw, Zobrist might still have been safe anyway, but it sure would have been nice to have seen it.

The floodgates were open, but it’s tough to say that either the error or the disputed call at first rattled Morrow, because he got back on the mound and struck out the next hitter, Carlos Pena.  Problem was, strike three bounced up to the plate, and despite good blocking form from the catcher, the ball squirted through J.P. Arencibia towards the Blue Jays’ dugout, allowing Pena to reach to load the bases and continue the inning for Luke Scott, who singled hard to left to score a pair, and Sean Rodriguez, who doubled to right-centre to cash another two.

That was more than enough for the Rays, as the Blue Jays went hitless between Eric Thames’ infield single with two out in the 3rd and Brett Lawrie’s line single to right with none out in the bottom of the 9th.  The Blue Jays’ suddenly punchless offense, which has scored in only two of the last 21 innings, and has plated only five runs in the past three games, managed all of four singles on a night in which the starting pitcher was knocked out in the first inning.

Lind, who was back in the clean-up spot partly because of his 13-for-28 career mark against Rays’ starter Jeff Niemann and partly because of Niemann’s splits that had lefties hitting almost 300 points of OPS higher than righties, knocked Niemann out of the game by breaking his leg with a line drive in the first inning.  It wasn’t grisly or anything – Niemann picked up the ball, threw Lind out at first and was able to pitch to and retire Edwin Encarnacion to end the inning – but he couldn’t answer the bell for the second and x-rays later revealed the break.  He’ll miss most of the rest of the season.  Five Rays relievers combined to shut the Blue Jays down on three hits the rest of the way.

At least the Blue Jays’ bullpen pitched well, right?  Morrow left after that six-run fifth (though only one run was earned), and Luis Perez, Evan Crawford (called up in the afternoon as Joel Carreno was sent down to AA to get back to starting), Francisco Cordero and Carlos Villanueva combined to throw four innings of three-hitter, striking out seven while only allowing one run – a Zobrist homer off Los Del V leading off the ninth.

Here’s tonight’s edition of The BlueJaysTalk, for your listening pleasure:

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The series wraps up Tuesday night with Henderson Alvarez getting the call against Blue Jays-killer David Price.  The Rays’ lefty is 10-2 lifetime against the Jays, with a 2.13 ERA and 1.049 WHIP.  Earlier this season he struggled against them, but allowed just two runs despite giving up eight hits and walking two in 5 2/3 innings.  Jeff Mathis took him deep in a 12-2 Rays win.  We’ll be on the air at 7:00PM Eastern as the Blue Jays try to shake themselves out of the doldrums that have seen them lose six of their last nine games – join us, won’t you?

Please give me a follow on The Twitter, you can find me @wilnerness590.

Comments are welcome – I read them all and respond to most!