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11:30 PM Eastern

There really wasn’t much to the game tonight, which happens on occasion, but rarely.  The Yankees had all the offense they would need before the Blue Jays even came up to bat.

It looked for a second as though David Purcey might actually get out of that first inning relatively scathe-free, despite the Yanks loading the bases with nobody out on three straight singles.  He popped up Alex Rodriguez to shallowish right, then got Jason Giambi on a deep fly ball to centre that scored a run.  If that had been it, it would have been a major victory for the rookie, but Xavier Nady followed with a hard line single to right to cash a second run.  Another big two-out hit for the visitors came in the 4th, on Derek Jeter’s two-run, opposite-field homer which, it turns out, they didn’t need.

For the second straight game, the Blue Jays managed just five hits.  This time, though, all five were singles, and that’s just not going to cut it when you give up five runs.

Brian Tallet looked very good in his first action since coming off the disabled list last week, allowing a looping single and a ground ball up the middle in two shutout innings of work but really, there wasn’t much else positive from a Blue Jays’ perspective.  At least they have Roy Halladay heading out there tomorrow night in the rubber game against Sir Sidney Ponson.

It was a fun Wednesdays with J.P., as always.  He mentioned that he doubts the Jays will be big players in the free agent market, and refused to even speak the name of Scott Boras.  One thing that struck me odd was his reaction to my asking about Tim Collins, the 5′7″, 155-pound lefty who is currently tearing it up in low-A Lansing.  Collins  has thrown 63 1/3 innings in relief, allowing just 31 hits while walking 30 and striking out 92.  The numbers are sort of ridiculous, but J.P.’s asking if someone put me up to asking him about Collins was weird.  I’m going to have to find out tomorrow what that was all about, since I couldn’t catch him before he left the booth tonight.

Here’s the entire session, for your listening pleasure:

The Jays are still 7 1/2 back of the wild card, with a chance to be 6 1/2 back when Boston comes to town.  If that happens and they sweep the Sox, whose number they’ve had all year, they’ll be just 3 1/2 back with five weeks to play.  It’ll still take a miracle, but by no means are the Jays out of it.  That, of course, could very definitely change by the end of the week.

Rational, reasonable comments are always welcome.  Others will mostly be ignored.

12:50 AM Eastern

In his storied major-league career, the great Johnny Damon has won games on numerous occasions for the Kansas City Royals, Oakland A’s, Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees. We can now add the Toronto Blue Jays to that list. OK, that’s kind of harsh. Damon dropping Marco Scutaro’s fly ball on the warning track in centre field with two out in the bottom of the 8th inning, allowing Joe Inglett to score what proved to be the winning run, was not what lost the game for the Yankees. The fact that it was his second dropped fly ball of the game made it stand out that much more, but Damon didn’t cost them the game. In fact, he scored the Yankees’ only run, so he kind of came out even.

What cost the Yankees the game was that they weren’t able to score enough runs to back a tremendous performance by a starting pitcher, and that’s a song we’ve heard many times before, just substitute the words “Blue Jays” for “Yankees”. One run on five hits in eight innings is weak for anyone, let alone the vaunted Yankee offense, and 13 strikeouts yet! The fact that they were facing A.J. Burnett makes that line more palatable - it’s not nearly as pathetic as being shut down on three hits over 6 2/3 innings by Darrell Rasner or something. I mean, come on.

Actually, the Jays were about to turn the same trick as the Yanks when Adam Lind and later Damon took them off the hook. For six innings, they made Rasner look like Cy Young Incarnate, as they’ve done with a boatload of mediocre pitchers this year, but Lind came to the rescue in the 7th, turning around a 3-2 pitch and landing it in the Yankee bullpen. Those home runs sure do help. Lind now has nine of them, two back of the team lead, after spending 2 1/2 months out of the picture.

It’s interesting that two teams that scored 15 runs each in their respective last games combined to score just three in this series opener, and I’m willing to give more credit to Burnett than Rasner for that. A.J. was dynamite. He seems to really have hit his stride these last couple of months, and it’s strange how the “.500 pitcher” talk has all dried up. Save for Bobby Abreu, Burnett had the Yankees eating out of his right hand all night. Alex Rodriguez and Jason Giambi struck out three times each, Damon and Derek Jeter twice each. In compiling his season-high 13 Ks, one off his career-best, Burnett got every Yankee but for Abreu and Robinson Cano. That great bastion of mediocrity has now won six starts in a row and 10 of his last 12. Not six decisions in a row, not 10 of his last 12 decisions, but starts. Just when everyone is finally coming around to see how good Burnett is, he’s about to walk.

And what an incredible play Lyle Overbay made in the 9th inning. Alex Rodriguez led off with a little looper over Overbay’s head, but instead of giving up after the ball got over him, Overbay chased it down in short right field, sliding to stop it. He then got up and fired a strike to second base to nail Rodriguez by a good five feet. John McDonald wisely secured his glove with his bare hand as A-Rod slid in just in case the Yankee got a little slaptastic - you never know with him. Overbay said after the game that he wasn’t sure he could get Rodriguez, but he was just being modest. I swear, when Overbay realized that Rodriguez was going to try for second and how far away he was when Lyle got to the ball, his eyes lit up. Overbay was a pitcher and right fielder in college, and threw in the mid-90s. We’ve only had a few chances to see him cut loose that unbelieveable left arm, but given the circumstances of tonight’s game, it’s safe to say that it will no longer be baseball’s best-kept secret.

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

Reasonable, rational comments are always welcome, and really, those are the only ones that are welcome.

12:30 AM Eastern

THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is how you sweep a series, rain-shortened or otherwise. You take a trip to visit the team with the best home record in all of major league baseball (yes, that was the Red Sox on Friday, even though the Cubs and Rays share that distinction now), and you thoroughly, utterly and completely dominate.

The Sox had just scored 37 runs in their three-game sweep of the Rangers, yet they managed just five against the Jays, while allowing 19. The Red Sox NEVER sent a batter to the plate in the series while ahead or even tied. They trailed from start to finish. Yesterday, it was Roy Halladay shoving it down their throats, today it was the offense.

Joe Inglett was already 0-for-3 in today’s game before Jason Varitek even came up to bat for the first time. The Jays simply crushed the pitcher who’s supposed to be the Sox’ ace, battering Josh Beckett for a six-run first and knocking him out in the 3rd with Beckett finishing up having allowed eight runs on eight hits - four of them for extra bases.

The Jays set a club record with 10 doubles in the game - four of them off the bat of Alex Rios - and tied a club record with 12 extra-base hits (add a Brad Wilkerson triple and an Adam Lind homer to the two-baggers). The 15 runs scored was a season-high and the 22 hits matched a season-high. Five different Blue Jays had at least three hits (Rios, Lind, Marco Scutaro, John McDonald and Lyle Overbay), five scored at least two runs and four drove in at least two. Every one had a hit but for Rod Barajas, who managed to score twice, and everybody scored but for Wilkerson, but he had an RBI triple.

I’m really enjoying this post-non-benching Alex Rios. Five hits today, including those club-record-tying four doubles (Damaso Garcia and Shannon Stewart), but that fifth hit should have been a double as well. Rios ripped it right down the third-base line, but there’s that little retaining wall that juts out about halfway between third base and the Monster, and it caromed off that wall into short left field. That carom prevented Scutaro, who had been on first, from daring to go to third, which is what made Rios stop at first. He was flying right out of the batter’s box, with every intention of getting two, which was great to see.

Since the non-benching, Rios is 7-for-10 with four doubles, a triple, a homer (1.600 SLG! 2.300 OPS!), four runs scored and four RBIs. At the very least, he seems to save his best for the Red Sox and Yankees, which is nice.

It was another great day for Lind, who missed the cycle by a triple and drove in four, and for McDonald, who contributed a pair of doubles to the record cause, including a backbreaking two-run job off Beckett with two out in the first. Johnny Mac also made another one of his patented phenomenal defensive plays in the 8th, starting a double play with a dive up the middle to snare a Jeff Bailey grounder. Assistant G.M. Alex Anthopoulos and I had a chat on The Blue Jays This Week tonight, which you can find on the front page of this very website, and Alex had some interesting things to say about both those guys. We discussed the timing of Lind’s latest call-up and the conventional wisdom that it was Cito Gaston’s decision, as well as the McDonald surge at the plate (hitting .360 over his last seven games). Anthopoulos, who helped put together the Greek Olympic team for Athens in 2004, also commented on the demotion of Scott Richmond.

Full marks to Shaun Marcum too. He must have looked at the scoreboard as he came out for the bottom of the first and wondered to what team he’d been traded. The guy who seemingly pitches into the 7th inning of more 0-0 games than anyone else had been given a six-spot before he even took the mound, and he did a fine job with it. Not his best work, but he got a couple of double-play grounders when he really needed them, and J.D. Drew helped him out with a brutal read of an Alex Cora liner to centre and was therefore meatcake at second on a nice throw by Vernon Wells. Marcum went five for his third straight win.

Next up, the Bronx Bombers, who scored 15 runs of their own today. A Jays’ sweep vaults them up and over the Yanks into third place.

Here’s today’s edition of The JaysTalk, for your listening pleasure:

Finally, a final softball update. Our season came to a close tonight with a 17-9 loss in a one-game elimination playoff. We were right in it until they scored seven in the 5th to get us down 15-4 and we couldn’t recover. We hit in a lot of bad luck, a lot of line drives right at people, but they made the plays they had to make. Personally, I was 3-for-5 with three singles and three RBIs. I played the outfield tonight, but didn’t have my best game defensively. No errors, but there was one sinking liner that I think I normally catch, I just couldn’t get to it tonight. It must have been big brother’s 40th birthday dinner. So now, no baseball for me until next May, which really sucks.

Enjoy the off-day. Reasonable, rational comments are always welcome!

12:20 AM Eastern

As far as the run of 15 (now 14, thanks to Mother Nature) games against only the Red Sox, Yankees and Rays go, that is.

The Jays made the first step a strong one, or you could say that Roy Halladay did.  Except that Halladay gave up as many earned runs, one, as he did in his last start, which was a loss.  This time, the bats showed up as well, specifically those of Alex Rios, who homered and tripled, and Adam Lind, who hit an opposite-field job into the monster seats that impressed the heck out of at least one listener to The JaysTalk.

Vernon Wells chipped in with an RBI single and a nice sliding catch of a J.D. Drew liner with two on to end the first inning.  Marco Scutaro and Brad Wilkerson also threw their hats in the defensive ring in support of the Jays’ ace, who pulled back to within one win of A.J. Burnett for the team lead.

The Blue Jays have now won 21 of their last 34, and if they can repeat that over the next 34 games, they’ll have 84 wins with five games to play, so they’re going to have to pick up the pace a bit if they want the miracle to happen.

First things first, though, and that’s a shot at a sweep with Shaun Marcum on the mound.  The Jays have been getting terrific work from their starters lately, with Dustin Pedroia’s ninth-inning solo shot off Halladay snapping a steak of 21 consecutive scoreless innings by Toronto starters over the last three games.

It was pretty impressive to watch Rios tonight - first with the first-inning two-run jack that should have put the Jays up 3-0 (Joe Inglett got caught leaning and Paul Byrd picked him off first ahead of a Marco Scutaro single pre-jack), then legging out the triple off the centre-field wall in the 8th.  I admit that when I saw the flight of that triple, I hoped that Rios wouldn’t have already broken into his home run trot and have had to stop at second, but he ran hard out of the box and really turned on the jets rounding second to make it into third pretty easily.

I can’t imagine that it could have, but maybe coming to the ballpark Friday night and not seeing his name in the line-up sent Rios a message.  Brad Wilkerson had been scheduled to start the eventual rain-out in right field, and Lind was going to hit third.  Instead, tonight Rios was back in his regular spot and Matt Stairs was the one who found himself on the bench for Wilkerson and his 0-for-4 (though Drew made a really nice running catch to take a double away from him in the 7th).  Is it possible that sending the message was enough?  That a player can be affected by being benched even though he never actually wound up getting benched?  Maybe, but I doubt it.  It’ll be interesting to keep tabs on Rios for the next little while, though, to see how long it takes for him to next lose his focus.

Before I go, one thing about the Scott Richmond situation, now that he’s been sent back down to AAA with Cito Gaston being evasive as to whether he’s a candidate for a September call-up.  This may bring up the whole Olympic kerfuffle once again, since he’s been farmed out while the games are still going on, but I firmly believe that this may have been Richmond’s only opportunity to be in the big leagues.  To say that the Jays could have waited and called him up after he got back from Beijing is assuming facts clearly not in evidence.  Who knows if they would even have thought of him at the end of August?  If he’d have continued to pitch well in Syracuse?  Often players only get one shot, and it’s up to them to do what they can with it, and Richmond showed the Jays that he can pitch in the bigs.  I’m not sure Richmond would ever have gotten his one shot outside of being called up when he was. Every baseball player grows up wanting to play in the major leagues.  Every swimmer, gymnast and track athlete grows up wanting to go to the Olympics.

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

And as an extra added bonus, here’s Friday night’s Rain Delay Programme:

Make sure you tune into The Blue Jays This Week Sunday at 7:05 PM Eastern on the FAN590 and this very website - I doubt I’ll be posting a blog between now and then because after tomorrow’s game (and the subsequent putting together of TBJTW) I’m heading out for my brother Norman’s 40th birthday dinner, and then a softball playoff elimination game.  I don’t know what’s going to lead off the show quite yet, but you’ll hear Shaun Marcum being interviewed by the A’s Brad Ziegler, and Nick Leyva will answer 10 questions.

I’ll get to the comments during the Jay game, though, rational and reasonable ones of which are always welcome.

1:57 AM Eastern

Sorry for the late post - day game followed by softball followed by the obligatory icing of the back, you know how it goes.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure I saw 94 come up on that radar gun a couple of times from Jesse Litsch, and at the very least a whole bunch of 93s, which is something we didn’t see in the first or second comings of that newly-hard-throwing son of a Litsch.

Just like the Jays asked, Litsch went to Syracuse and worked on the four-seamer, keeping it down in the strike zone and throwing it really hard.  It worked, and he was fantastic this afternoon, simply mowing down the Tigers through seven shutout innings.  He looked nothing like the guy who was getting pounded all over the yard for most of June and July, which was fantastic to see.

What wasn’t fantastic to see was Jason Frasor’s eighth-inning meltdown, taking a runner on first, two-out situation with a 1-0 lead and failing to retire any of four hitters in a row (though one was an intentional walk) before leaving down 3-1.  Gregg  Zaun’s failure to stay down on a pitch in the dirt to Miguel Cabrera was big, because had the wild pitch been prevented, Cabrera’s game-tying RBI single would only have been a single that put runners at first and second with two out.  Instead, the single scored Placido Polanco, and Cabrera got to second on Adam Lind’s airmailed throw to the plate, which necessitated the intentional walk to Gary Sheffield, after which Frasor unintentionally walked Matt Joyce to load the bases.

That was the point at which, by the way, I would have gone out and yanked Frasor.

Truth be told, I wouldn’t have had him in in the first place, given his two innings of work the night before (even though he only threw 25 pitches).  I thought the situation was perfect for Shawn Camp.  After Jesse Carlson retired the lefty Curtis Granderson leading off the 8th, the Tigers had four righties in a row, for none of whom would Jim Leyland have pinch-hit.  Camp has been masterful against right-handed hitters this season, holding them to .169/.242/.205, almost 100 points of OPS better than Frasor.

Cito, too, may not have been familiar with the fact that while Frasor rarely blows up, when he does, he does it really well.  Another reason the unintentional walk, to me, was the massive red flag.

Instead, Frasor stayed in and gave up a two-run double to Edgar Renteria, then handing the ball to Camp, who gave up a two-run single to Brandon Inge before getting Dane Sardinha to end the inning.

All of this could have been avoided in one of two ways:  1 - Scott Downs, Brandon League and B.J. Ryan could have been held out of Monday’s 7-2 laugher, a game in which all three worked an inning with a five-run lead, or B - Downs could have stayed in the bullpen in the 9th inning last night, when the Jays had a 4-0 lead.  Under either one of those scenarios, League would have been available today, and under the second scenario, it’s likely all three of League, Downs and Ryan would have been available today.

Still, it’s tough to win a ballgame when you need to shut out the opposition - all the offense the Jays managed was Lyle Overbay’s solo bomb in the 5th.

The Jays now enter a five-week run of playing nothing but teams ahead of them in the standings, which means that if they can stay hot (they have won seven of 11 and 20 of 33), they can get themselves right back in the playoff race.  They’re in Fenway for the weekend with Halladay, Burnett and Marcum, so it’s not as though they could be better-armed, starting-wise.

Here’s today’s The JaysTalk, for your listening pleasure:

Before I go, a softball update.  We played our final game of the regular season tonight, somehow the rain held back through our buck-45 on the field, and though we led 5-3 after five innings, the seven-inning final had us on the wrong side of a 16-10 score.  I played centrefield, and had one fly ball hit to me all night.  Yes, I caught it.  At the plate, I was 1-for-2 with a two-run single, two walks and a sac fly.  If someone wants to total up my regular-season stats, be my guest.  You can go back through the Thursday posts starting in the middle of May or so to see how I’ve done every game, as well as Sunday July 6th.  I can’t imagine anyone would want to do that, but if you do, please share the info with the rest of the class.

The playoffs begin on Sunday!

Reasonable, rational comments are always welcome.  Unreasonable, irrational and insulting comments will be tolerated far less often than they have been.

1:05 AM Eastern

See what I did there?  The centrefielder hits a Grand Slam to provide all the offense in the Jays’ third straight win (and 7th in 10), but he was DHing.  The guy who was playing centrefield deserves a good slamming for dropping a very catchable fly ball with one out in the 9th, making the game far more of a nailbiter than it should have been.

First, the good.  Vernon Wells, in his 4th game back, becomes just the third Blue Jay in double digits in homers by hitting that none-out, first-pitch Slam off Kenny Rogers in the 3rd inning.  This comes after back-to-back two-hit games and a return game in which he went 0-for-4 but hit two absolute ropes.  He’s now within one RBI of the team lead, despite missing two months.  By the way, the last time the Jays lost a game in which Wells got a hit was July 6th!

More good - David Purcey.  For the first time, he looked comfortable and confident and  he had a terrific offensive team tied up in knots in his rain-shortened six innings of two-hitter.  Talk about a team that shakes its collective head when it gets spanked by a lefty, Purcey held noted lefty-crushers Magglio Ordonez, Miguel Cabrera and Gary Sheffield to just one soft line single between them.  He’ll get about another eight starts this season, and if continues to show well, could be the answer in the 4th spot next season.

As for the bad?  Well, the REALLY bad was Scott Downs spraining his right ankle on the wet grass while running to cover home plate on an Ordonez single in the bottom of the 9th.  J.P. Ricciardi actually read the text message about Downs’ status aloud on the air as he himself was seeing it for the first time, which was a pretty cool radio moment.  You can hear it below, but the gist is that the x-rays were negative and they’ll rest him for two or three days then re-evaluate.  It didn’t look like a huge sprain, but a leg injury to a pitcher is certainly not something with which one would want to mess.  It wouldn’t surprise me if we didn’t see him again until the middle of September.  Then again, he had the gout last year (I think, might have been the year before) and it only knocked him out for one day, so you never know.  Never mind the fact that it was surprising to see Downs out there in the first place.  With a four-run lead, and Downs having thrown two days in a row, where was Shawn Camp to face three straight righties, with Downs and League ready in case of trouble?
Downs has been the shining star of baseball’s best bullpen, with his 1.25 ERA and 1.06 WHIP, .199 opponents’ batting average and .543 opponents’ OPS heading into tonight’s game.  He’s been durable and dependable, with 54 appearances in 121 games, and the Jays will miss him dearly.  They’re going to need Brandon League to continue to pitch the way he has lately (last 12 appearances - 0.69 ERA, 0.92 WHIP, .174 opp BA, .261 opp SLG) and Jesse Carlson to keep up the resurgence he’s had in the last month (1.84 ERA, 1.23 WHIP, .220 opp BA, .260 opp SLG) - at least for starters.  Downs has developed into one of the best short relievers in the game, but of course, he was drafted by Gord Ash.  No, wait - he was claimed on waivers by J.P. Ricciardi, who needs to be fired.

The not-as-bad-as-maybe-losing-Downs-for-a-while-but-still-pretty-horrendous was, of course, the Matt Joyce deep fly that Rios dropped on the track in the bottom of the 9th.  There was one on, one out, a run already in and the Jays had a three-run lead.  Alan Ashby said it best on the broadcast - when Joyce hit it, Rios thought it was gone, so he kind of turned and jogged towards it as kind of that courtesy “I’m not going to just watch, but I’m not going to do much”.  When Rios saw that it wasn’t going to get out since, stunningly, it’s 420 feet to centre in Detroit, he turned on the jets and actually made it there, but had to try to make a basket catch and just plain dropped it.  Physical errors happen, they’re excusable, but physical errors that come as a result of mental errors are a whole ‘nother story altogether.

I have to admit, I was floored when no one broached the subject with J.P. until the last or next-to-last caller, and Ricciardi basically did the over-the-phone equivalent of throwing his hands up in the air in exasperation.  You can hear it right here:

Jesse Litsch will make his return to the rotation for the day-game finale of the series, with the Jays looking for their fourth four-game sweep of the season!  And don’t look now, but they’re only two games behind the Yankees.  But the Yankees have been decimated by injury, of course - though I thought injuries didn’t matter.

Rational, reasonable comments are always welcome!

2:25 AM Eastern

This was something new from the Blue Jays - immediately after having the opposition put up a crooked number to take the lead, they stormed back to retake it right away!

The Tigers broke open a 1-1 game in the bottom of the 6th by taking A.J. Burnett to the woodshed.  A disputed home run by Magglio Ordonez (which was indeed gone - the umps eventually made the right call) led off the inning, then two outs later Gary Sheffield blasted his second of the game, and there was no dispute about it.  Edgar Renteria and Brandon Inge followed with back-to-back hard line doubles, and Burnett was most assuredly on the ropes.  Then Inge let him off of them by getting thrown out trying to steal third.  Incredibly ill-thought-out.

Down 4-1 the Jays didn’t even give their most pessimistic fans that much time to write them off.  They put two on with one out, then scored a runner from third with less than two out on a groundout before Joel Zumaya came in and poured the contents of his guitar-shaped gas can all over Comerica Park.  The 100+ mile-an-hour man faced five Jays, and didn’t get any of them out.  The big blow was Vernon Wells’ go-ahead two-run double, his second hit of the game.  With the double, he moved back within five RBIs of the team lead, despite having missed two months.  Again, that’s an indictment of his teammates, not so much a compliment to Vernon.

John McDonald walked and doubled, and had another potential double taken away from him by Carlos Guillen, who made a nice play to snare a line drive that was headed down the left-field line.  Johnny Mac has four hits in his last 10 at-bats , and credited Cito Gaston and Gene Tenace for his mini-surge (that batting average is all the way up to .212).  He says they’re encouraging him to get the bat-head out, to pull the ball, instead of  just trying to “blade” base hits the other way (to quote the great Ken Huckaby).  McDonald is also heeding Gary Denbo’s advice to be more patient at the plate, and he’s become much more comfortable hitting behind in the count.  It’s all-but-impossible to imagine Johnny Mac finally becoming a hitter on the eve of his 34th birthday, but just imagine how much of an asset he’d be if he could only get on base even 32% of the time.

Brandon League continues to impress.  He gave up a hit and threw a wild pitch in his one shutout inning, but the hit was a little opposite-field looper by Placido Polanco.  League has now gone 8 outings without being scored upon, and over that span has pitched 10 2/3 innings while allowing just five hits and walking four, with five strikeouts.  It appears as though League has become Cito’s man in the 7th inning, helping to build the bridge to Scott Downs, then B.J. Ryan, each of whom threw a perfect inning to help nail down the victory.

Since the blown save that had many calling for Ryan’s trade, release or retirement, he’s thrown five shutout innings, having allowed three hits and two walks, while striking out four.

The pitching staff will have its work cut out for it the rest of this series, though.  League, Downs and Ryan have all pitched two days in a row, and David Purcey is starting tomorrow, followed by the return of Jesse Litsch.  They’re going to need baseball’s best bullpen for help, unless the bats give them a huge cushion - but that couldn’t happen, could it?

Finally, before everyone goes nuts about Alex Rios’ failure to slide at the plate in the 9th on the pitch that got away from Brandon Inge, it should be said that Rios was, indeed, safe.  He kind of half-tiptoed, half-dipsy-doodled into the plate (tipdoodled?  dipsytoed?), despite the fact that Rod Barajas was screaming and waving at him to slide.  He beat the tag, but had he slid, he would have been clearly safe (since he wouldn’t have slowed down as much as he did with the dipsytipping) and probably would have been called safe.  If you look at the replay, you’ll notice Barajas throwing his hands up in the air in seeming disbelief at the way Rios came into the plate.  I feel his pain.

Here’s tonight’s The JaysTalk for your listening pleasure:

Rational, reasonable comments are welcome.

11:25 PM Eastern

Oh, the vagaries of this great game!

Take the four-game sweep of the A’s and combine it with tonight’s easy win in Detroit, and it appears as though here plays a team that has everything working for it - great pitching, all kinds of scoring, opportunistic offense (.333 with RISP, 8/10 runners scored from third with less than two out), terrific defense.  A team poised for a run at the post-season.

Problem is, you can’t do that.  You have to toss in those three home games against Cleveland in which they could barely do anything right - certainly not the offense (.188 with RISP, only TWO runners reaching third with less than two out).

And that’s the story of the Toronto Blue Jays this season - mind-numbingly consistent in their inconsistency.

There are a couple of lights at the end of the tunnel, though.  First off, they’re now 60-59, which is the same record that they had in 1989.  Thing is, that’s where they left .500 behind for good that year.  Game 118 was the take-off point.  Mauro Gozzo beat Mike Boddicker and the Red Sox 4-2 to get the Jays back to .500, and the next day Dave Stieb got the win (7-2 over Boston) to get the Jays over.  The Jays then ripped off a 14-3 that set them on their way to an eventual 29-14 finish and a division title.

Can this team do that?  Maybe.  Having Vernon Wells back certainly helps.  If they do go on that kind of a run now, they’re right back in it, because that run will come against the Red Sox, Yankees and Rays.  They just have to do it, is all, which is a hell of a lot easier written than done.

Shannon Stewart was released today, and much to my surprise, there were hardly any calls on The JaysTalk referring to the release and to how big a mistake the Jays made in cutting Reed Johnson at the end of March and all of that.   I was more than surprised, actually.  I was stunned.  I figured The JaysTalk would be nothing but callers wanting to talk about Reed and how much of an idiot J.P. is for letting him go and how he should be fired.

In response to those non-callers, I’ll say this, as I’ve said all season long:  Given the information that was available at the time, keeping Stewart was the right choice.  Shannon had the track record of being able to hit both lefties and righties, which Reed didn’t have.  And still doesn’t, by the way - he’s hitting .269/.313/.393 against righties this year.  With the Jays knowing that Frank Thomas would be on a short leash and that Matt Stairs would likely take a step back, they wanted someone with whom they could be confident  as an everyday player when the need arose.  That wasn’t the case with Johnson.  It didn’t work out - at all - but nobody had a crystal ball in Dunedin.

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

As I mentioned on The Extendo, the Hall of Fame has moved up the fan balloting for the Ford C. Frick Award for the broadcasters’ wing in Cooperstown to September.  Every day next month, you’ll be able to cast your vote for the Frick.  I know a lot of people read this blog on a regular basis, and I appreciate that a lot.  During the month of September, I’ll be asking that each and every one of you cast a vote for Tom Cheek every day.  If we all do it, once a day, every day (heck, you’re on the internet anyway, right?), we can win the fan balloting for Tom, and that’ll go a long way to getting him right where he belongs.  I’ll have more on this as we get closer to September, of course.

Reasonable, rational comments are always welcome!

9:25 PM Eastern

I’m just assuming.

I can’t think of any other reason that the Blue Jays would put on such a pitiful display both with Halladay on the mound on Saturday and with his main competitor for the Cy Young Award on the mound today.

Yesterday’s travails are well-documented in the previous post.  One would think that, given the events of yesterday, the Blue Jays would want even more to stick it to Cliff Lee both to show the world (or at least those portions of the QEW and I-90 between here and Cleveland - no one else is really paying attention) who really ought to have started the All-Star game and whose claim to being the best starting pitcher in the A.L. is more legit.

Instead, it was an entire afternoon of “thank you, Cliff, may I have another?” (Of course, it might have something to do with the fact that baseball isn’t a game that can be won by motivation, intimidation or “wanting it more”.)

The bats weren’t as awful as they were in rolling over for Paul Byrd yesterday.  The Jays had at least a man on in each of the first five innings against Lee, and they hit some balls awfully hard.  They just didn’t score. Grady Sizemore made a couple of nice catches on the warning track to take extra-base hits away from Vernon Wells and Marco Scutaro, Adam Lind flied out to the base of the wall in left and Alex Rios did the same in centre, and Shin-Soo Choo made a really nice play to run down a David Eckstein gapper at the track in left-centre.

Of course, his next time up, Eckstein was asked to bunt with runners at first and second and nobody out in a game his team trailed 3-0 IN THE FIFTH INNING!  I’m not going to go on my usual diatribe here about that decision, but I will say that if your confidence in a hitter is so shaky that you’d want him to give himself up in that situation, you shouldn’t be hitting him at the top of the line-up.  Personally, I’d have put the hit-and-run on, which is something I’m not sure I’ve seen Cito Gaston do at all since he took over.

I saw Scott Rolen in the clubhouse before the game, walking towards Cito’s office with trainer George Poulis, so I figured something was up, though I wasn’t sure he’d land on the DL.  It’s probably the best thing.  I’m no doctor, nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but I couldn’t quite figure out how intensive therapy plus a day off or so a week was going to get Rolen’s shoulder right.  Maybe two weeks of nothing but intensive therapy will help, or maybe he’ll need another surgery, though it’s tough to imagine Rolen wanting to put himself through that a fourth time.  They’ll miss his glove badly, but they certainly won’t miss his post-June bat.  He’s hit .172/.291/.242 since the calendar flipped to July.

Rolen’s injury means that Marco Scutaro will be the everyday third baseman, with Eckstein and Joe Inglett likely platooning at second and John McDonald standing firm at shortstop.  Mac has started seven games in a row, and it appears now that Cito couldn’t take him out of the line-up even if he wanted to.  But why would he want to?  Two more hits for Johnny Mac this afternoon though, like the other six Jays hits, they didn’t amount to anything scoreboardically.

Vernon Wells is back, after a two-day rehab.  He went 0-for-4, although he did bust it down the line on his grounder to second in the 3rd - a good test for the hamstring.  Wells crushed the ball to centre in his first at-bat, on a line, but right at Sizemore.  It’s a huge indictment of the Blue Jays’ hitters as a group that Vernon, despite having missed nearly NINE weeks of the season, stands second on the club in home runs and third in RBIs.  Lyle Overbay, a favourite whipping boy by you comment-type-folk out there, has played 50 more games than Wells, and yet has one fewer homer and only four more runs batted in.  He’s scored 19 more runs, so that’s at least something.

On The JaysTalk, you may have heard me mention that A.J. Burnett isn’t talking to me.  When I asked him for a few minutes this morning for The Blue Jays This Week (you know, since he’s leading the team in wins with a career-high number and all), he declined.  When I asked why, he informed me that he didn’t like what was being said about him on the radio station.  He didn’t seem to understand that the fact that it wasn’t me saying those things made a difference - but I’d be almost as disappointed if he was complaining about me, given the fact that the things I say about him and his teammates are fair.  I mean, if you can’t handle the truth, get out of the kitchen.  Or something.

Regardless, you, the fans, will not be hearing from Allan James Burnett on the radio anymore.  Sorry to have to pass along the bad news.  A.J. has been a different sort of guy from his first day with the Jays.  I wouldn’t say alternating  hot and cold, but you definitely don’t always know who you’re going to get.  In his first meeting with the media he was cordial, gracious, friendly and seemed pretty terrific.  Then, in his first Spring Training, I want to say that it was after his third start (he hadn’t yet gotten hurt) that he tore a strip off a group of us reporter-types for “crowding his locker” - despite the fact that we were about five feet away waiting for him to grace us with his presence.  The ups and downs have continued from there - he was great to me this spring, for example - so I don’t know if this is just another “down” or if this is for good.  If he never talks to me again, it’d be a shame, because you, the listeners, want to hear from the players, I think.  That’s why I’ll keep trying, anyway, if only for another seven weeks or so.  Then I won’t have to deal with him anymore.

Here’s today’s The JaysTalk for your listening pleasure:

Reasonable, rational comments are always welcome.

5:25 PM Eastern

For one of a very rare occasions, I envied those of you who were watching this game on television or listening on the radio. I envied you because you could turn it off.

After the ugly offensive display of last night, there was every reason to expect that Roy Halladay’s mere presence would be enough to lift the Jays back into their winning ways and give them their 5th victory in six games. Unfortunately for the Jays, it’s wasn’t just Halladay’s mere presence, because he brought his fielders with him, and errors by Alex Rios and John McDonald (!) led to three unearned runs in a game the Jays lost by two.

Rios dropped a Shin-Soo Choo fly ball on the warning track in left-centre leading off the 4th. He had to go a long way to get to the ball, but he got to it and it was in his glove - until it popped out.

McDonald got a little too ambitious on a Choo grounder with a runner on first in the 6th. It was a slow chopper that had to be charged, and with Choo being played to pull, Joe Inglett couldn’t get to second that quickly. McDonald should have thrown to first to get one sure out, but thought he could make the play at second and his throw was too high for Inglett to snare while also keeping his foot on the bag.

The defense let Halladay down quite a bit, but the offense let him down even more. The Jays fell back into their old pattern of making mediocre pitchers look like world-beaters. Paul Byrd carried his .288 opponents’ batting average and 4.72 ERA into the game and retired 20 of 21 hitters at one point, sucking all the life out of the building.

Joe Inglett was the only Jays’ hitter worth mentioning from a positive standpoint, with a single, double and triple for half of his team’s hits. Needing a home run for the cycle, he grounded out to second in the 8th inning.

Lyle Overbay would have been worth mentioning in a positive light, since he picked up two hits, but he made a massive error in judgement on his drive off the left-field wall with two out and nobody on in the bottom of the 9th. As soon as the ball left his bat, you had to be thinking double, because that’s what a hitter normally gets on a ball off the wall. But Overbay hit the ball really hard, and Ben Francisco has a good throwing arm. Francisco played it perfectly and Overbay was sheer, unadulterated meatcake at second base. As soon as he rounded first, with the play right in front of him, the only thing that went through my head was “oh, crap.”

In that situation, down by two with nobody on, it doesn’t matter whether Overbay is at first or second, and chances are they let him take second later on on indifference anyway. There was nothing to be gained by trying to get to second there, and what was lost was the opportunity for Matt Stairs to come to the plate as the tying run.

I can’t go without a quick comment about Alex Rios. He is now 0-for-his-last-10 and 1-for-15 after taking the collar again this afternoon. What really bothered me, though, was the fact that he barely got out of the batters’ box on his pop-up in the 3rd inning. It was a fair ball, though an easy pop-up, but it could have been dropped. I’m not saying he should sprint around the bases or anything, but if Ryan Garko had dropped that pop, he still would have been able to get Rios at first, because Rios didn’t even get a third of the way down the line. This isn’t the first time, and one hopes that with the new regime in place, they’ll be able to get a stern message across to Rios about his at-the-very-least occasional lack of effort, but for now their hands are tied. It’s not like they could put Joe Inglett or Brad Wilkerson out in centrefield tomorrow with Cliff Lee on the mound, nor should they. They have their best chance to win with Rios in there. Still, I wouldn’t mind seeing him hitting 7th. There’s a fine line between sending a message and embarrassing a player, and you certainly don’t want to embarrass Rios to the point that you lose him forever, but it’s clear that any messages that have been sent so far haven’t yet sunk in.

Here’s today’s edition of The JaysTalk for your listening pleasure:

Rational, reasonable comments are always welcome.