11:50 PM Eastern

The amazing series in Texas continued – the Jays are playing with house money after skunking the Rangers by the same 9-0 score that’s recorded when a team forfeits.

Brian Tallet was fantastic – getting through his first-inning jitters by retiring the side in order, and winding up throwing seven innings of two-hitter.  Perhaps more importantly, Tallet only walked two.  The tall lefty has been nothing short of a revelation since being forced into the rotation by injuries to, well, everybody.  Jesse Litsch joined that crew today – he’s going to have Tommy John surgery on Friday and may not be back until the 2011 season.

But back to tonight.  Vernon Wells kick-started the offense with a lead-off triple in the second.  Adam Lind scored him with a grounder to short and the Jays went on to score four in the inning, thanks in large part to Elvis Andrus booting what would have been a very easy inning-ending double play ball.  Lind later homered (he’s 20 for his last 50!), as did Aaron Hill, and Scott Rolen had his second straight three-hit night.

It’s as though the switch has turned back on for the offense, which I guess is to be expected when you go to Texas, but you wouldn’t expect that the switch would be turned off for the Rangers, who came into this series tied with the Yankees for the best record in the American League, but have been outscored 15-3 over the two games.

Their ace, Kevin Millwood, takes the mound tomorrow against Ricky Romero as they try to turn things around.  If the Jays can win that game, they’ll move to within half a game of second in the divison, behind either Boston or the Yankees, unless it rains in New York (in which case they’ll move to within a game of both of them).

The Jays could get an offensive boost in the near future – they’re in talks to bring in David Dellucci, recently released by the Indians, to replace Millingltista as either the left fielder or DH against righties.  Dellucci brings a nice three-true-outcome bat, and while he would certainly be no saviour, and there will be better options available at the trade deadline, he would definitely be an improvement over what the Jays are running out there right now.  We should know in the next couple of days where Looch will wind up – he’ll get a pro-rated portion of the major-league minimum wherever he signs, with the Indians on the hook for the rest of his salary.

I understand that Looch will draw comparisons to Brad Wilkerson – and he is as far removed from his best years as Wilkerson was.  One simply hopes that if he comes here and doesn’t work out, the Jays will be quicker to pull the plug on the experiment than they were last year.

It was draft day today – at least the first three rounds worth, anyway, and the Blue Jays did pretty much exactly what they wanted to do.  They got Kennesaw State (GA) University righty Chad Jenkins, with whose agent they’d been in conversation all day, then grabbed Canadians with their next two picks – B.C. lefty James Paxton with the compensation pick for losing A.J. Burnett, and Newmarket high school lefty Jake Eliopoulos with their second-rounder.

They love Jenkins – a big guy at 6’4″, 225 who the scouts say throws a heavy fastball with late sink that touches 95.  He has a good slider and a better change-up, and he throws strikes.

Paxton is a power lefty who may be headed for the bullpen because he doesn’t have a great third pitch.  His fastball sits comfortably in the mid-90s and he’s hit 98 on the gun, and he also has a terrific slider.  He has some issues with his command, but he’s Canadian!  He’s a Scott Boras client, but the Jays have said they’ll go over slot – and he’s Canadian!

So is Eliopoulos, who plays for the Brantford Red Sox and the Canadian National Junior Team.   His fastball is in the high 80s, he’s got a promising curveball and a feel for the change-up.  He just turned 18 last month, though, so he’s a long way away, as is the Jays’ first third-rounder, Jake Barrett.

Barrett is a big kid out of  Desert Ridge High School in Arizona, and doesn’t turn 18 until next month.  Scouts rave about the 6’4″, 230-pound righty, who lights up the gun at 94 miles an hour and also throws a power curve and a big splitter.

The Jays stayed in high school for their final pick of Day 1, grabbing outfielder Jacob Marisnick of Riverside Poly High School in California five picks after Barrett, with the other compensation pick for A.J.  Apparently a fantastic defensive centrefielder, he hit .495 last year (high school alert!) with power and speed, and was ranked 11th among high schoolers on the MaxPreps Baseball Top 100 list – some even projected him as a first-rounder.

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

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Join us tomorrow night, we’re on at 7:00 PM Eastern here on the website and on The Fan590 for a pre-pre-game show, hooking up with the rest of the country at 7:30 for an 8:05 first pitch.  Make sure you tune us in!

Rational, reasonable comments are always welcome!

12:40 AM Eastern

The Jays had been waiting for a strong start from Casey Janssen this season, and I’m not sure they expected it would come in that hitters’ haven in Texas, but Janssen got the job done with five shutout innings before getting the old “death by a thousand paper cuts” and hitting the showers in the 6th.

It was a weird outing for Casey, who didn’t dominate at all over the course of those first five.  Two of the four hits he gave up were booming doubles, he gave up a couple of really deep fly balls that were caught and Nelson Cruz hit an absolute rocket in the 4th that Scott Rolen somehow came up with and turned into a double play – making the throw to second off his back foot.

One would expected that when (if?) the roof fell in on Janssen tonight, it would have been because some more of those hard-hit balls would have been hit, and found holes, and the Rangers would have started beating him up.

Didn’t happen.  Instead, Janssen didn’t give up a single fly ball in the 5th or 6th, but in that 6th inning he issued the dreaded lead-off walk, then gave up a solid single to Cruz.  David Murphy – the man who had hit those two ringing doubles – hit a grounder to second that Aaron Hill left on the grass to load the bases, then Marlon Byrd hit a grounder into the 5-6 hole that Marco Scutaro couldn’t come up with, scoring a run.  Janssen then struck out Chris Davis, but Rod Barajas couldn’t corral strike three, another run scored, and Casey was done.

It’s weird, it’s almost as though he found his stride those last two innings (well, 1 1/3), but the sixth was when he got knocked around.

Jason Frasor closed out the 6th and pitched a 1-2-3 7th – I guess putting his picture on the milk carton helped – and Brandon League and Scott Downs, with a four-out save, finished up.

Frasor caught a big break when Elvis Andrus bunted through what was supposed to be a suicide squeeze with runners on the corners and one out in the 6th.  The potential tying run was erased as Barajas chased Byrd back to third and dove at his feet as Byrd dove for the bag.  The Jays got the call, but it was impossible to see on replay whether Barajas actually tagged him.

Adam Lind provided the pop – all the offense the Jays would need, in fact – with a pair of two-run homers.  It was the first time in his career he’d homered twice in a game.  One of them was hit to right-centre, one to left-centre, and both cashiered Vernon Wells ahead of Lind, Wells having drawn a lead-off walk in each of the 2nd and 4th.

Lind was in left field tonight – so much for the theory espoused by a caller a couple of days ago that playing the field messed Lind up at the plate.

Aaron Hill had a hit for the second straight game as he continues to come out of that slump, Rolen returned to the line-up after two days off with a bad back and had three hits, and A.L. Player of the Week Lyle Overbay singled and walked, extending his hitting streak to 14 games.

A couple of people on The JaysTalk wanted to talk about the fact that Downs was brought in for the four-out save.  I’m a big fan of this when the need arises, and it certainly wasn’t the wrong call by Cito tonight.  Brandon League definitely did his job – he got a strikeout and two ground balls, but the second grounder went into right field for a hit, bringing up the all-or-nothing lefty Chris Davis.  It had been all nothing for Davis to that point in the game, striking out three times against Janssen, but Cito didn’t want Davis to catch up with one and give the Rangers the lead, so he went to his closer.  Ron Washington went to the bench, and Downs got Andruw Jones on a grounder to third.

In the bottom of the 9th, Downs was shaky to start, walking Jarrod Saltalamacchia and giving up a hard line single to Andrus, but he settled down and with help from a great catch by Wells in the left-centre gap on Hank Blalock, nailed down his eighth save.  I think the long wait between the 8th and 9th had a lot to do with Downs’ hard time.  That’s something through which he’s definitely not used to sitting.  And asking him to get four outs after he hadn’t pitched since Friday night isn’t a big deal at all, I don’t think.

One more thing – one of the last JaysTalk callers, one in a long line of those who say Rios and Wells should be moved down in the line-up (yes, I know they should be, I agree, but they don’t suck), suggested that either Kevin Millar or Rod Barajas should be moved up into the 5th spot, with Adam Lind moving to clean-up.

I have no issue at all with Lind hitting fourth, I think it’s a great idea to move him up, but give me a break with Barajas and Millar.  Here are some numbers for you over the last month, from May 8th to June 8th, including tonight’s game for Barajas, Millar, Rios and Wells.  Try to figure out who is who:

.279/.347/.505 (.852 OPS)

.226/.247/.333 (.580 OPS)

.220/.279/.266 (.545 OPS)

.194/.270/.299 (.469 OPS)

Think about it, then check the answer below.

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

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Tomorrow, we’re on the air with a pre-pre-game show at 7:00 PM Eastern on The Fan590 and here on this very website, then we hook up with the rest of the country at 7:30 for an 8:05 first pitch.  Brian Tallet is going to try to get out of the first inning unscathed – the Jays will face Doug Mathis, who comes out of the ‘pen to make the start because scheduled starter Brandon McCarthy has a stress fracture in his shoulder.  Make sure to tune in!

I keep forgetting to give softball updates – my old man league started up in May, but I didn’t get to play my first game until last week.  We lost 15-10, and I went a disappointing 1-for-3 with a single.  Turned a nice double play at short, though – thanks to a fair bit of generosity from the umpire at first.

Here are your answers, by the way – in order, those month-long numbers belong to Rios, Barajas, Wells and Millar.

Rational, reasonable comments are always welcome!

5:40 PM Eastern

And directly in your face, too.  Greinke sat there and watched the man he may well beat out for both an all-star game start and the 2009 Cy Young award simply toy with his Royals teammates in becoming baseball’s first 10-game winner this season.

Halladay went the route on a seven-hitter – all singles, only two hit even reasonably hard – didn’t walk anyone and struck out a hungry-fan-disappointing six (someone actually had the audacity to call The JaysTalk and complain that with a big lead, Halladay should have been trying for the seventh strikeout!).  He needed only 97 pitches to complete the game, which means his 133-pitch outing on Tuesday can be added to this one and will average out to 115 pitches per start.

Halladay did find himself in a bit of trouble on a couple of occasions – first and second, nobody out in the 4th and bases loaded, one out in the 7th, but he got out of the first jam by getting a double-play ball off the bat of Jose Guillen.  He extricated himself from the second jam by striking out Miguel Olivo and getting ninth-hitter Mitch Maier on a grounder to first.

By then, he had all the offense he’d need.  In fact, he got that in the first inning when Aaron Hill walked, went to third on a hit-and-run single by Alex Rios, and scored on a sac fly by Vernon Wells.  Imagine that, Rios and Wells contributing to the winning run.

In his next at-bat, Hill took Kyle Davies over the left-field wall, at least halfway up the 100-level, for his team-leading 13th homer of the season.  The shot snapped an 0-for-25 slump for Hill, giving him his first hit since a first-inning single against the Red Sox last Saturday.

In between the two Hill trips today, Lyle Overbay absolutely tattooed his seventh homer of the season – he smacked it off the top of the vertical panes of glass on Windows restaurant, just missing the slanted panes above that would have gotten a bounce into Sightlines.

The offense dried up after the Hill homer, but with Halladay dealing the way he was, no more runs were needed.

A 5-4 homestand isn’t what many hoped for, but it’s better than what a lot of people expected after the 0-9 road trip, and the Jays find themselves just 2 1/2 games out of first place heading into Texas, despite having lost 13 of their last 18.

As promised yesterday, we had a super-extendo edition of The JaysTalk today, and it was pretty good one.  Here it is, for your listening pleasure:

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The Blue Jays are now off to Texas, where they haven’t played well through the years, having gone 11-26 so far in the 21st Century.  Casey Janssen will try to bounce back from a rough outing against the Angels tomorrow against righty Scott Feldman.  We will have a pre-pre-game show on the Fan590 and here on this very website starting at 7:00 PM Eastern, during which we’ll have either some pre-game JaysTalkage or perhaps an interview with Mark Teahen, the Royals’ infielder who played third for Team Canada at the World Baseball Classic this year.

Speaking of 7:00 PM Eastern, make sure you tune in to The Blue Jays This Week tonight, all along the network as well as here on the website, as well.  The show features Tony Fernandez and John Gibbons, both of whom were outstanding.

Rational, reasonable comments are always welcome!

 4:05 PM Eastern

So much for momentum.

After laying a pounding on Zack Greinke in the series opener (before 15,000-plus!), the Jays came out and got just about exactly nothing done against Luke Hochevar, who has been thoroughly unthreatening as far as major-league hitters are concerned (before 16,000-plus!).

Hochevar came into the game with an ERA of 10.80 and a WHIP of 2.06 in his three big-league starts this season, and despite the pedigree of twice being selected in the top five of the draft seemed ripe for the picking, but he gave up naught but a two-run homer to Raul Chavez while Scott Richmond blew up real good in the 5th after thoroughly dominating for the first four innings.

The Jays were back to their old tricks, managing just one hit after the third inning in allowing the Royals to snap their  eight-game losing streak.

Richmond stymied the Royals over the first four innings, facing the minimum 12 hitters having allowed just a little looping single to centre to Brayan Pena in the 3rd – he was erased on a double play ball.  The big, tall righty got hit hard in the first, with Willie Bloomquist and Billy Butler absolutely scalding balls into the gloves of Vernon Wells and Marco Scutaro, respectively, and Adam Lind had to make a nice catch on an Alberto Callaspo liner in the 3rd.  Richmond didn’t look like a guy who was about to implode, but he did.  The Royals hit for the cycle in the top of the 5th, and with a pair of walks in there, scored five runs.  Bloomquist’s two-out, three-run triple capped the rally and sent Richmond to the showers.

It was the third time in less than a month that Richmond has given up five runs in an inning.  That, as much as anything else, is why he’s the fifth starter and may well be on shaky ground to stay in the rotation much longer.

I’m a big fan of Richmond’s, don’t get me wrong, and I believe he’s got a big-league future.  I don’t think he’s a write-off as a starter by any means, but I think he’s the clear number five right now, and when Brett Cecil, Jesse Litsch et al are ready, he’s likely off to the bullpen.

With Toronto FC staring us in the face, it was only a two-call edition of The JaysTalk today – here it is for your listening pleasure:

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Tomorrow, we’re likely to have a super-extended Extendo JaysTalk, what with Roy Halladay pitching, so we’ll have plenty of time to talk Blue Jays then, and it’ll more than likely be coming after a win.  Of course, the bats have to show up for that to happen, and they didn’t today.  Make sure you tune us in, we’re on the air at 12:30 PM Eastern for a 1:07 first pitch.  I’m going to try to put together a 1989 alumni roundtable for the pre-game show, which could be a lot of fun.

Aaron Hill got his first day off of the season today, he’ll be back in tomorrow against Kyle Davies with Marco Scutaro likely to get his first day off.  Hopefully 35,000 fans don’t take the day off again tomorrow.  Who would have thought that the Jays would be touch-and-go to draw 50,000 for the ENTIRE WEEKEND when SkyDome/Rogers Centre celebrates its 20th anniversary?  It’s pathetic, is what it is.

Rational, reasonable comments are always welcome!

11:35 PM Eastern

……that the Blue Jays and Brewers played the first-ever game here at SkyDome, and there were over three times as many people here to see that 5-3 loss for the home side than came out here tonight to see the current edition smack Zack Greinke all over the yard and salute 11 members of that 1989 A.L. East division championship team.

On The JaysTalk tonight, I said that the Blue Jays marketing department really dropped the ball on this one, because I think that’s true.  I didn’t see one ad in print or on TV or hear anything on the radio (other than the stuff I was saying) about the ’89 team coming back or about the Jays doing anything special to celebrate the Dome-i-versary.  15,435 in attendance on a Friday night with this in the backdrop is, plain and simple, pathetic, and the Jays should be embarrassed.

Those who did show up got to see the Jays let the shaft out against Greinke, who allowed seven runs before hitting the showers after five – he’d only allowed 12 runs all season coming into this game.  Greinke hadn’t given up a home run since last September 2nd, a streak of 111 innings, before Lyle Overbay took him deep in the second.  Adam Lind turned the trick in the 5th, his 10th hit in 11 at-bats.

Lind had that club-record-tying 8-for-8 streak coming in to the game, and in his first at-bat, he hit a rocket to straightaway centre, but right at Covelli Crisp, who hauled it in knee-high for the out.  It may have been the hardest he’d hit a ball through the entire streak, and it wound up his only out in 11 trips.

Ricky Romero looked pretty terrific tonight, taking a two-hit shutout into the 7th before giving up back-to-back homers to Jose Guillen and Mike Jacobs.  He left a few balls up over the first couple of innings, but got away with it, and picked up his first win since going on the DL with his April sneeze.

Aaron Hill’s struggles continued, going 0-for-5 – he hasn’t had a hit in his last 25 at-bats, and tomorrow may be his first day off of the season.  Cito Gaston said that he wanted to give each of Hill and Marco Scutaro (who had three doubles tonight) a day off this weekend.

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

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I’m surprised that only one or two people wanted to talk about the Alex Rios incident outside the ROM last night, when he got into it with a few fans who had the audacity to heckle him as he was coming out of a charity event with his girlfriend/date.  Rios overreacted, without question, and what he did was incredibly stupid.  When you’re in the public eye, you have to make sure you don’t blow up like that in public.  First because it’s an asinine thing to do, second because you know someone is going to get it up online within minutes.

To his credit, Rios came out onto the field before batting practice today and apologized.  He refused to make the excuse that some piece of Samsonite who has nothing better to do was provoking him.  He said that he can’t “lose it” like that, and he’s right.  Thankfully, he didn’t issue a written statement or read from a prepared statement or anything like that – his words were his own, which is always nice to see.

There’s no excuse for what Rios did, the way he blew up, the language he used in front of kids, but there’s nothing he can do about it now but apologize, and he has.

It is a little crazy, though, that some people think it’s OK to heckle a guy as he’s leaving a charity event.   Such fine, upstanding citizens really need to find something productive to do with their time.  And no, Rios isn’t a bum.  He’s certainly not producing at the level that any of us (including him) expect, but he doesn’t suck.

Rational, reasonable comments are always welcome!

5:00 PM Eastern

For only the second time this season, the Blue Jays have lost a series at home, and they probably shouldn’t have.  I say probably because they were trailing 5-1 going into the bottom of the 7th and 5-2 into the bottom of 8th and you’re really not supposed to be able to win games like that too often.  Thing is, they put themselves in a great position to get the comeback win,  but couldn’t close the deal.

With that 5-2 lead and super-set-up man Scot Shields on the DL, the Angels went to lefty Darren Oliver to face the two lefties in the middle of the order (around Kevin Millar), and it didn’t work.  Adam Lind, who had a five-hit day with three doubles – but didn’t drive in a run, he’s awful – led off the inning with a single, Millar singled him to second and a wild pitch moved them both up before Lyle Overbay doubled past a diving Gary Matthews, Jr. to score them both.  A faster runner gets to third after the ball gets by Matthews out there, and Overbay could have tried, but with nobody out and him being the tying run there was really no value in taking the chance.

After a walk to Jose Bautista, Rod Barajas completed a great at-bat by flaring a little single into centre field with the infield in, loading the bases.  Overbay didn’t seem to read the ball well and didn’t get a great jump, so he had to stop at third.  He might otherwise have been able to score, but with nobody out, the chances that he’d have been sent on a close play were pretty low.  Had Overbay scored, Bautista may have been able to go to third, and would have scored the go-ahead run on the sac fly that instead scored Overbay to tie it (given the same space-time continuum following, which is a huge leap of logic).

Before the sac fly, Joe Inglett lined out hard to second – just bad luck.  After the sac fly, Aaron Hill struck out to extend his hitless streak to 0-for-20.

By the way, I haven’t heard one word of complaint about Hill through his slump.  Is it because of his contract?  Because he appears to be playing hard all the time? Or might it be because he got off to such a fantastic start that his numbers still look very good even through the slump?  Imagine the bile if Vernon Wells or Alex Rios were in an 0-for-20.

The Angels scored the winning run in the top of the 9th on a very strange play.  Howie Kendrick bunted his way on, and went to third on a hit-and-run single by Chone Figgins.  With runners on the corners and nobody out,  Erick Aybar hit a ground ball hard to the right of Hill at second.  Hill moved over to make a nice backhand play and flipped to second to start a double play.

Why did he flip to second?  Because he knew that given where the ball was hit and how he had to make the play, he didn’t have a chance to throw Kendrick out at the plate, so he might as well get two outs out of it.  What he didn’t know was that Kendrick hadn’t broken for the plate. For some weird reason, he was still busy sizing up the play and trying to figure out whether or not to take off.  He didn’t go until Hill flipped the ball to Scutaro.  Scutaro then threw to first to complete the double play, though someone should have been screaming at him to throw the ball home.  By the time the ball got to Overbay, it was too late to throw Kendrick out at the plate.  Overbay didn’t realize that he still might have had a play on him, and hesitated before he threw home, but even if he hadn’t, Kendrick would have scored.

It should have been automatic for Kendrick to take off, but given that he didn’t, someone has to let Scutaro know that the play is at the plate.  Kendrick may even had time and room to turn back and go to third had Scoot thrown home, but that would have been runners on the corners with one out and the game tied, which is better than nobody on, two out and down a run in the ninth.

In the bottom of the ninth, the Jays got the winning run on base against Angels’ closer Brian Fuentes, with another one of those non-RBI doubles by Lind followed by a Millar walk.  But Fuentes struck Overbay out on a high 3-2 fastball, then got Bautista on a check swing to end it.  With Scott Rolen on the bench.  That would be the same Scott Rolen who is hitting .400/.508/.620 against lefties this season and .348/.446/.413 with runners in scoring position.

For Cito Gaston, this is one of the battles you lose to win the war.  He kept Rolen on the bench because, for the most part, he believes a day off should be a real day off, on which a player should have his mind clear of all things baseballic.  Just take the day off.  Asking Wells to pinch-run or Rolen to play an inning of defense on a day that was supposed to be a complete day off isn’t the same thing as asking a guy to go up and get a hit in a big situation.  Again, if you believe that Cito is behind how well the Jays have played this season, then you must accept things like this.  This is all part of the Grand Cito Plan, which has worked four times (as far as making the playoffs goes).  Also, Overbay had just hit a two-run double against a lefty and Bautista is no slouch.

What it comes back to, though, is the fact that the Jays loaded the bases with nobody out in the 7th and only scored once, then loaded the bases with nobody out in the 8th (after Overbay’s double) and only scored once.

Brian Tallet wasn’t terrific, with a shaky first inning for the second straight game – though this time he allowed three runs, not one.  Raul Chavez didn’t help him out, either, bouncing a throw to second that should have had Vladimir Guerrero dead to rights and failing to get Torii Hunter at second a batter later.  This time, Tallet couldn’t keep it clean after the first, allowing a two-out RBI single to Chone Figgins in the 4th and a solo jack to Mike Napoli in the 6th.

Vernon Wells had the day off, so he can’t be blamed for this one, but Alex Rios went 5-for-5 in the strikeout department.  Just an awful day for Rios, who only left two runners on base, but his ugliness (along with Aaron Hill’s 0-for-5 and Marco Scutaro’s o-for-3 with a walk and a sac fly) made sure that Adam Lind never came to bat with a runner on base on a day on which he went 5-for-5.  It was a career day for Lind, who has a hit in eight straight at-bats, which ties a club record.  He’ll have the chance to break the record tomorrow night against Zack Greinke.

Despite the 0-for-5 from Rios today, he has still hit .295/.357/.557 since May 10th, a span of 22 games.  So don’t everybody pile on all that quickly.

It was a short edition of The JaysTalk today, but a good one (aren’t they all?).  Here it is, for your listening pleasure:

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Tomorrow, John Gibbons and the Kansas City Royals come in – and they may be coming in on a seven-game losing streak.  Ricky Romero will try to shake off back-to-back rough outings against Zack Greinke, who actually looked human in his last start, which was against the White Sox.  The dream of the 7-2 homestand is dead – the Jays have now lost 12 of their last 15, but they’re still only three games out.  We’re on at 7:00 PM Eastern tomorrow, with the 1989 team reunion weekend getting started.  Duane Ward and Tom Henke were on the broadcast today, and look for more ’89 luminaries to show up in the 5th and 6th innings of every game this weekend.  I’m also going to try to get one or two of them to come on and take your phone calls after the games.

Rational, reasonable comments are always welcome!

11:45 PM Eastern

Back when SkyDome opened to the public 20 years ago today (not coincidentally, the same day some military dude taught Billy Shears and the boys a thing or two about music), the Blue Jays weren’t around.  The same could kind of be said about today.

Of course, back in 1989 the Jays were in Boston, laying a 10-2 pasting on the Red Sox in advance of their ‘Dome debut two days later.  Tonight, the Jays were in attendance at their home yard, laying a huge egg, getting smoked by the Los Angeles of Anaheims.

Jered Weaver dominated, just as he did out west last month when he threw a complete-game three-hitter at the Jays.  This time, he only lasted seven innings, but again the Jays only got to him for three hits, and he struck out a career-high 10 – including Marco Scutaro, Aaron Hill and Vernon Wells twice each.

Last night, the Jays were able to win despite only getting one hit from their first through fourth hitters.  Tonight, they again got only one hit out of the one through four, but the bottom of the line-up couldn’t pick up the slack – not that it should be expected to be able to do so on a regular basis.

Weaver is on fire.  Including tonight, he’s given up just one run in five of his last six starts.  The Jays ran into a buzzsaw, but that’s two buzzsaws in their last three games.  Three if you count Halladay last night.  In fact, a starting pitcher has recorded a career high in strikeouts three Jays games in a row now.  Brian Tallet needs eight tomorrow to make it four in a row.

There was some good to point out -  Adam Lind, who was nearly scratched before the game with a sore right wrist, wound up going 3-for-4 with a couple of doubles.  Wells flexed his defensive muscles, making an outstanding running grab in deep right-centre on a Kendry Morales belt to start the 9th inning.  He also made a great catch on Juan Rivera at the wall in the 3rd.  Vernon used to be able to do that a lot more often, but it was awfully nice to see.   Shawn Camp came in to pick up the pieces in the 5th inning and threw three innings of two-hit shutout, striking out four.

Far more bad than good, though, including B.J. Ryan’s shutout 9th inning.  He may not have allowed a run, but that was more thanks to Wells’ great catch than anything else.   Ryan struck out Kendry Morales on an 84 mile an hour cutter, and his slider, which had been low to mid 80s earlier in the season, hit just 78 on the gun.

Also filed under “not so much”, Casey Janssen.  The drop-and-drive specialist had a lot of trouble keeping the ball down, and when that happens, he’s going to get hit.  Tonight, Janssen gave up a two-run homer to Bobby Abreu and a double to Vladimir Guerrero before he even recorded an out.  He only managed to record 12 outs before retiring for the evening having allowed five runs on seven hits, including a total of four doubles to go with that homer.  It was easily the worst of his three starts so far this season, but I’m still a big fan.

Also bad, the fan who picked up Abreu’s two-out double in the 8th.  The spectator interference allowed Erick Aybar to score all the way from first.  Granted, it was the 8-1 run and didn’t mean a thing in the grand scheme, but the first rule of fandom is NEVER interfere with a ball in play unless it will help your team.  The second rule, or perhaps 1A, is ALWAYS interfere with a ball in play if it will help your team.

Here’s tonight’s edition of The JaysTalk (tonight’s “Target Of Your Wrath”, Vernon Wells) for your listening pleasure:

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The series ends tomorrow with an afternoon affair pitting Brian Tallet against John Lackey.  The Jays now need to win, and to sweep the Royals, to make good on my pre-homestand prediction of 7-2.

Before I go, I learned something about the bureaucracy of baseball today, a little-known rule about which I wasn’t aware  was applied in the case of Dirk Hayhurst, who was called up last night.  It turns out that the Jays weren’t allowed to call him up from the minors until May 15th, so he couldn’t have made the team out of Spring Training regardless.   Cito Gaston said before the game that he had actually wanted to take Hayhurst north because of his fantastic spring (8 IP, 7 hits, 1 run, 0 BB, 13K).

The reason he couldn’t was that Hayhurst was a “draft-excluded” player who had been released after the Rule 5 draft.  That is, a player who was added to the 40-man roster after X date (sometime in August, I think).  Such players aren’t allowed to be placed on the major-league roster until May 15th if they re-sign with the team that released them.  We got all the info in a nice, little Baseball 101 session – though given the intricacy and obscurity of the rule, maybe Baseball 401 – with Alex Anthopoulos before the game.  Basically, the rule is in place to prevent teams from hiding players from the Rule 5 draft, so it bites teams that kind of try to make their way around said draft.   That’s not what the Jays were trying to do here, Hayhurst was released and quickly re-signed in February after the Jays had a chance to grab Matt Bush on waivers.

It doesn’t happen often, that a team has a player on its 40-man roster through the Rule 5 draft, then releases him and re-signs him prior to the start of the regular season (such players can’t be outrighted off the 40-man, the only way to get them off the roster is to release them), but when it does happen, we now know that those players can’t play in the big leagues until after May 15th of that season.  You learn something new every day!

Rational, reasonable comments are always welcome!

11:15 PM Eastern

Roy Halladay was not coming out of this game.  Plain and simple.

After being yanked having thrown seven shutout innings in Atlanta and having to witness the debacle in Baltimore as the bullpen blew his 8-3 lead in the eighth inning, Halladay wasn’t going to leave this “W” to anybody else.

Chances are it was more Cito Gaston’s decision to send his ace back out for the ninth having already thrown 116 pitches, but I’m betting Halladay was all for it.  He had an extra day’s rest, after all, and justified his skipper’s faith by striking out the side around a little looping two-out single by Kendry Morales.

Halladay struck out a whole bunch of people tonight – a career-high 14, in fact, including six of the last eight hitters he faced.  He was a whole different type of dominating, with NINE of the strikeouts coming with an Angel standing, bat on shoulder, like the proverbial house by the side of the road.

But for that four-batter blip in the 7th inning, it was watching the master at work.

That blip, by the way, consisted of a line single by Bobby Abreu just over the leap of Marco Scutaro, a ground single to Vladimir Guerrero that would have been a double-play ball had Aaron Hill not been shifted towards the middle of the diamond, an extraordinarily rare four-pitch walk (to Torii Hunter) and a solid line single to right by Kendry Morales.  In a serious departure from form for Halladay, both Guerrero’s and Morales’ hits came on 0-2 counts.  Two long fly balls later and it was 6-4.  Then six of the next eight hitters struck out.

Halladay was determined to win this game, and Cito wasn’t going to trust it to anyone else.  He didn’t even get Scott Downs up in the bullpen until after Morales’ two-out looper in the 9th.  And as you may have heard on The JaysTalk (if not, click below and listen), Halladay was out in the left-field corner playing with his kids about half an hour after it was over.

Offensively, the Jays really exposed Bobby Abreu as one of the worst defensive outfielders in the bigs.  The Jays took advantage of him in right field on Jose Bautista’s triple – Rod Barajas scored all the way from first – standing! – because Abreu couldn’t chase it down quickly enough.  Ditto on Scott Rolen’s double in the 4th.  If there hadn’t been two out, he could have had a triple, too.

Alex Rios went deep for the second straight game – that’s seven homers through one-third of the season – and the Jays won a  game in which their top four hitters (in the line-up) combined to go 1-for-16.

Defensively, I was very pleasantly surprised to see Lyle Overbay go out and play first base in the bottom of the ninth.  This was a game that Cito Gaston did NOT want to let slip away, even in the slightest, and he went with his best.  Let’s hope to see some repeat performances of that act.

After the game, Brian Wolfe was sent down, much to the delight of many of you commenters, I’m sure (not so much me, Wolfe seems to be the guy who always gets picked on, always has the shortest leash), and the engaging Dirk Hayhurst has been called up to take his place as the long man/mop-up guy in the bullpen.  Hayhurst hasn’t exactly been lighting it up in Sin City, posting a 5.11 ERA in 37 innings overall, allowing 51 hits and walking 10 while striking out 29.  He’s given up five home runs in those 37 innings.

However, and this is likely why he’s here, he seems to be a different animal out of the bullpen.  A garfoose, perhaps.  As a reliever, Hayhurst (to whom I may at any time begin referring as Hey Dirkhurst, just letting you know) allowed just 21 baserunners in 18 1/3 innings, striking out 16 with an opponents’ batting average of .239. Offensive numbers are inflated in the PCL, so that’s some serious stuff.

I’m a big fan of his, he seems like a genuinely nice guy, very chatty with us reporters down at Spring Training.  And if you’ve read his blog, you know he can be hilarious.

A Jesse Litsch update!  Litsch saw Dr. James Andrews last week in his Pensacola office, and the good doctor reported that there was no structural damage in Litsch’s sore right elbow.  The Jays are now going to let him loose in extended spring training – it sounded as though they’re going to work him until his elbow either feels better or pops.  One or the other.  They’d prefer the former.  He won’t be back in the majors until July, at the earliest.

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

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We have hit the one-third point of the season, so for those of you interested in “pace” and the like, here are some counting stats on which you can chew:

Roy Halladay: 27-3, 273 IP, 246 K

Aaron Hill:  36 HR, 111 RBI

Adam Lind:  24 HR, 114 RBI

Marco Scutaro:  129 runs scored

Vernon Wells:  15 HR, 75 RBI, 99 runs, 27-0 SB-CS

Alex Rios:  21 HR, 78 RBI

Rational, reasonable comments are always welcome!