12:15AM Eastern

Going into this series, it was the hope of most Blue Jays fans that Target Field would be the cure for what had ailed Jose Bautista in the early part of this season.

Bautista had a terrible April, and when the Jays left Oakland Wednesday evening he was hitting .182/.316/.345, showing only the occasional glimpse of coming out of it.

Target Field, though, Bautista loves hitting at Target Field.  He went 0-for-3 in the Blue Jays’ series-opening win in Minny, though he did walk and get hit by a pitch, but he turned it on Friday night with a pair of home runs, and added to the total with another big fly – breaking a 1-1 tie in the 6th inning – in the Jays’ win Saturday night.  He later hit a laser-beam single to right field in the 9th.

Maybe the cool Minnesota air was the cure, though obviously we’ll have to see if he sustains this bounce-back, but the man who has been the best hitter in baseball each of the last two years is hitting .364/.462/1.182 over the (incredibly tiny sample size) first three games of this four-game set against the Twins.

Bautista’s homer was the winner, but the Blue Jays tied the game an inning earlier on back-to-back two-out hits by a couple of struggling batsmen – Colby Rasmus, hitting .207 on the road trip to that point, started it with a double, and Adam Lind singled him in with a two-strike line drive to centre.

Drew Hutchison had his best outing in the big leagues – although it was just the Twins – throwing six innings of three-hitter.  He did walk four, including Trevor Plouffe with the bases loaded in the 4th to allow Minny’s only run to score, but he struck out four as well and receipts for his second win.

The play of the game came in the 7th inning, when Francisco Cordero came on and got a first-pitch pop foul from Chris Parmelee.  Brett Lawrie tracked it into shallow left (still foul), but the ball kept pushing him deeper and deeper to the point that he was in a straight backpedal when he reached out for it.  The ball went in and out of his glove, but there was Eric Thames waiting to pluck it out of the air before it hit the ground.  Teamwork at its absolute finest, and something I haven’t seen since Pete Rose helped out Bob Boone in the same sort of scenario for the Phillies in the 1980 World Series.  Amazing.

It was interesting to see Cordero in the game in that situation, since John Farrell had said he wanted to back his ex-closer off and put him in lower-leverage spots.  A one-run game in the 7th inning isn’t so low-leverage, but it was the bottom third of the Twins’ order.  Cordero struck out Darin Mastroianni after the Lawrie-Thames circus act, but then gave up a single to Jamey Carroll and walked Denard Span to put the tying run into scoring position.  He then let Brian Dozier take him to a full count before getting the rookie to ground to short.  It wasn’t pretty, and it didn’t lack any drama, but at least it was the first time in five outings that Cordero hadn’t given up a run, so there’s that.

In the 8th inning, with the Twins’ best hitters coming up, Farrell went to Jason Frasor because that’s the way baseball works.  It was about as clear an illustration as there can be of the problems with the “closer” role.  Joe Mauer, Josh Willingham and Ryan Doumit are really the only remotely threatening hitters in the Minnesota line-up right now, but because they were due up to start the 8th inning, and not the 9th, they didn’t have to face the pitcher deemed to be the Blue Jays’ best reliever.  If ever there was a situation crying out for your number one guy, that was it, but because “closer” has come to mean 9th inning only, Casey Janssen watched Frasor give up a double and a walk around a couple of outs, and then Luis Perez came on to strike out pinch-hitter Alexi Casilla to preserve the lead for Janssen, who threw a perfect 9th against the Twins’ 8, 9 and leadoff hitters.

This isn’t a criticism of Farrell, he’s doing things the way things are done.  But hopefully the time is coming soon when things will be able to be done differently.

Here’s tonight’s edition of The BlueJaysTalk, for your listening pleasure.  It includes an interview I did with Alex Anthopoulos before the game about the Cole Hamels/Shane Victorino trade rumours of a couple of days ago:

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The series wraps up, along with the 10-day road trip, with a Mothers’ Day finale featuring a battle of lefties.  Ricky Romero has never lost to the Twins – he’s posted an ERA of 1.91 and a WHIP of 1.009 against them in five career starts – and he’ll square off with Guelph, Ontario’s own Scott Diamond, who has had one big-league start this year.  Diamond threw seven shutout innings against the Angels.  We’ll be on at 1:30PM Eastern for a 2:10 first pitch.  It’ll be my last game getting to do play-by-play for a few weeks – Alan Ashby will be back with us when the Blue Jays open up a weeklong homestand against the Rays and the two New York teams.  The Blue Jays prepared for my return to my normal role by getting outscored (1-0) in my innings for the first time this season.

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

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

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2:54AM Eastern

The Blue Jays and Twins waited out a one hour and 51-minute rain delay before getting things started, which made for an awfully long  night.  Then Kyle Drabek and Carlos Villanueva combined to walk seven batters over the course of the first four innings, which made the odds of losing pretty much impossible to overcome.

Still, the Blue Jays did manage to rally to get back within a run, but their four-homer barrage (two for Jose Bautista, one each for Edwin Encarnacion and Eric Thames) ultimately fell short.

There was plenty of opportunity to interact with yours truly on the phones tonight – here’s the Rain Delay Programme, for your listening pleasure:

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And here’s the post-game BlueJaysTalk, also for your listening pleasure, of course:

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It’s no fun losing to the Minnesota Twins, and the Blue Jays are going to try to make sure it doesn’t happen again.  To that end, they’ll send rookie Drew Hutchison to the mound for his fifth big-league start on Saturday night.  He’ll face P.J. Walters, who was a Blue Jay briefly last season – he pitched a hitless inning of relief against the Orioles on July 28th after coming over in the Colby Rasmus trade.  We’ll be on the air at 6:30PM Eastern for a scheduled 7:10 first pitch, and the weather is supposed to be lovely.  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!

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12:33AM Eastern

If you’re a Blue Jays fan, you’ll like see the series-opening win in Minnesota as a triumph of great starting pitching, timely hitting and a ton of hustle, with a bit of a hand from a shaky Twins team.  If you’re a Twins fan, chances are you saw this game as one your team completely handed to the opposition, and you might even see it as rock bottom for your ballclub.

The truth, of course, lies somewhere in the middle.

The Blue Jays got another great start out of Henderson Alvarez, and got some big two-out RBI hits from Brett Lawrie and Colby Rasmus, but they also took advantage of some huge defensive letdowns by the Twins.

There were at least three massive misplays on which the Twins showed exactly why they’re mired in last place,with the worst record in the major leagues, the only team that’s still in single digits in the win column for the season.

Two of the three plays – or lack of plays – came with Edwin Encarnacion at the plate.  The Blue Jays’ leading offensive performer came into the game with just one hit over the first six games of this road trip, and drew a one-out walk in the first inning.  In the third, he came to the plate with runners at first and second and nobody out, and hit a hard ground ball to third.  Twins’ third baseman Trevor Plouffe had to make a diving stab to his left, so it wasn’t exactly what you’d expect would wind up a double play ball, but you figure he gets the out at second and you have runners on the corners with one out.  Except that Yunel Escobar, who had been at second, hit third, rounded it, and didn’t stop running after Plouffe fired a little high to second base to force Jose Bautista. Alexi Casilla stretched to catch the throw, and couldn’t nail Escobar at the plate as he just kept on trucking, scoring from second base on a ground out to third.  That’s not supposed to happen.

What’s also not supposed to happen is that a pop fly about seven feet up the third base line from home plate scores a runner from second base, but that’s exactly what transpired the next time Edwin came to the plate.  He lifted the sky-high pop-up, and was furious about it as he trudged to first base, but Twins’ catcher Ryan Doumit had no idea where it was.  Plouffe had been backed up at third, but still had plenty of time to get there, but pitcher Jason Marquis came running in and called for the ball. Marquis overran it, though, and as the ball spun back towards the mound, Marquis backed up and had it fall right behind his head as, once again, Escobar scored from second.

The other misplay didn’t really factor into the scoring, but it was pretty cool to watch Lawrie go first to third on a passed ball that barely went 20 feet away from Doumit.  Again, he had no idea where the ball was, and turned the wrong way first before finally choosing to check with his teammates to see where they were frantically pointing.

Among some of the other craziness:

- Jose Bautista getting hit by two consecutive pitches in the same plate appearance.  Home plate ump Bill Welke didn’t think the first one hit Bautista, and if it did, it barely grazed his jersey (though that’s enough for a base), and it seemed as though Welke thought Bautista might have swung at the second one, which drilled him square in the ribcage.  At least Welke agreed to consult with his fellow umpires, who I imagine told Welke he was nuts and let Bautista go to first.

- Rule Five outfielder Erik Komatsu deciding to test Bautista’s arm in the second inning, and losing that gamble.  Komatsu tried to bunt his way on with two down and the bases empty, and though Alvarez pounced on the ball as it rolled up the third base line, Henderson threw it away.  Komatsu took off for second and stopped there, but when he saw the ball get under Kelly Johnson’s glove down the right-field line, he re-accelerated for third, seemingly unaware that Bautista was only a couple of feet away from KJ.  The kid was meatcake at third base, a place you really never want to make the last out of an inning.

And it wasn’t so much craziness, but an unusual sight around these parts lately – the Blue Jays’ bullpen was perfect.  A three-up, three-down inning each from Luis Perez – who was ordered back to the clubhouse to change his undershirt, the sleeves of which were two tones of blue, before he could pitch – and Jason Frasor.

Here’s tonight’s edition of The BlueJaysTalk – including a caller from Iceland! – for your listening pleasure:

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Before the game, the Blue Jays made some news by signing Vladimir Guerrero to a minor-league contract.  He’ll go down to extended spring training in Dunedin to try to work himself back into game shape.  The one-time Expos great, and potential Hall of Famer, was a shadow of his former self last year in Baltimore, hitting .290/.317/.416 to establish career lows in all three of the slash categories.  His 13 home runs, in 590 plate appearances, was also a career-low.  Guerrero had failed to hit at least 20 homers only once before in his career, and that was in 2009 with the Angels.  I understand a lot of Blue Jays fans are very excited about the prospect of having Guerrero here and helping out the Blue Jays as a middle of the order scary bat, but you’re thinking of the Vladdy of four or five years ago and before that.  He’s not the same guy now, and it really almost hurt to watch him limp around the outfield the last time he got to play it, which was in the 2010 World Series with the Rangers.

Hopefully he still has something left, and will be able to contribute off the bench and as an occasional starter, but Guerrero can’t run anymore, he can’t play any position but DH, and his power seems to be fading fast.  It would be awesome, though, to have him finish his career in the same country in which he started it, and you could certainly do worse for a bat off the bench in a playoff race, should the Blue Jays find themselves in one.

As a basis for comparison, though, Guerrero’s OPS of .733 last season was lower than Adam Lind’s .734.

The series continues Friday night, weather permitting, with the Blue Jays looking for their third straight win.  Kyle Drabek will face the 0-4 Nick Blackburn, who has an ERA of 6.84 and a WHIP of 1.595 so far this season.  We’ll be on the air across the Blue Jays Radio Network at 7:30PM Eastern for an 8:10 first pitch.  Those of you listening on Sportsnet590 The Fan or here on this very website get an extra half-hour of pre-gameness beginning at 7:00, so tune us in!

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

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

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12:54AM Eastern

In the wake of Tuesday night’s ugly loss to Oakland, John Farrell make a whole whack of changes to the way his team does business, and Wednesday afternoon, they all worked out rather beautifully.

The biggest decision, of course, was to take Francisco Cordero out of the closer’s role, in which he’d performed pretty abysmally lately.  Cordero’s blow-up Tuesday night was his third straight blown save and he’d thrown only one clean inning all year.  After Farrell sat him down to explain the decision, Cordero met the media and told us that Farrell was right, that Cordero would have made a change too.  That he can’t keep going out there and blowing game after game for them.  But he’s confident that he’ll bounce back, he has before.

Cordero out meant Casey Janssen in, and lo and behold Janssen got a save opportunity Wednesday and did something that no Blue Jays closer had done to this point this season.  He pitched a perfect ninth inning.  Quiet, efficient and thoroughly drama-free, Janssen was outstanding in picking up the 10th save of his career – his first since last August, which also happened to be here in Oakland.

Carlos Villanueva did a terrific job to get the ball to Casey, working his way out of a Luis Perez jam in the 7th, then pitching a spotless 8th to get the ball to the new stopper.

There was a major change to the batting order, too, with clean-up hitter Adam Lind being busted all the way down to the 8th spot in the wake of his poor start to the season.  Edwin Encarnacion, who carried the offense in April but who was hitless in 18 trips so far in this road trip, moves into the fourth spot in the line-up.

Lind responded to his demotion with a two-run homer in the fourth that opened the scoring, and Encarnacion responded to his promotion by snapping out of his slump with an eighth-inning solo shot.

The other controversy that came out of Tuesday night’s loss was the decision to pinch-hit for J.P. Arencibia with Omar Vizquel in the 9th inning.  Arencibia was no longer seething about it by the time he arrived at the ballpark Wednesday morning, but he was still visibly upset.  He said that he supports his manager but didn’t agree with the decision, and wants to be looked at as someone who should be up at the plate with the game on the line and the chance to drive in a big run.  Was there ever any doubt that J.P. would go deep at least once in this game?  Of course there wasn’t, and of course he did.

There was no BlueJaysTalk, what with it being a weekday day game as well as a getaway day for us on the road – which explains the lateness of this post.  I had hoped to have it up before we left for Minnesota, but circumstances didn’t allow it.  First time traveling with the team, so I’m still learning the drill.

For your listening pleasure, though, we have coverage of all the big news stories of the day.

Here’s Francisco Cordero being as stand-up as a stand-up guy can be:

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And his replacement, Casey Janssen:

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And lastly, Arencibia – you can still hear that he’s upset, but he certainly channeled that upsetedness in the right direction on the field:

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Having left the west coast 3-3, which isn’t so bad, the Blue Jays are now in Minnesota getting set for a four-game series against the league-worst Twins.  Henderson Alvarez will pitch the opener against righty Jason Marquis on Thursday night.  We’ll be on the air across the Blue Jays Radio Network at 7:30PM Eastern for an 8:10 first pitch, but those of you tuned in to our flagship station Sportsnet590 The Fan, or listening here on the website, get an extra-special treat – an extra half-hour pre-game with yours truly, live from Target Field.  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 will be catching up on the responding very soon!

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3:25AM Eastern

Not the way I wanted to begin my road career as a Blue Jays play-by-play broadcaster, that’s for sure, and not just because the game was played in a stadium as craptacular as this one here in Oakland.

The Blue Jays carried a one-run lead into the bottom of the 9^th inning thanks to a huge two-out RBI single by Kelly Johnson in the top of the frame, only to see the save opportunity be blown rather spectacularly by Francisco Cordero.

It’s the third straight save chance that Cordero has blown after converting his first two in the wake of Sergio Santos having been shut down with a sore shoulder.

Cordero started by getting two strikes on former Blue Jay (for 10 minutes) Michael Taylor, who then threw his bat at a pitch off the plate in desperation and poked it just inside the right-field line for a leadoff double.  He was bunted to third and Cliff Pennington followed with a single through the Blue Jays’ drawn-in infield to tie the game at three.  If you’re counting, that’s the seventh blown save for the Jays this season, in just 30 games.  It got worse.

Pennington stole second on Cordero’s 2-0 pitch to Josh Reddick, which led the Jays to then intentionally walk Reddick, since his run didn’t matter anyway and a double play chance would ensue.  Then Jeff Mathis boxed the 2-0 pitch to Jonny Gomes, allowing both runners to move up and leading to another intentional walk, this time to load the bases for Brandon Inge.

At that point, John Farrell decided to go to the five-man infield that worked so well for him in Cleveland on Opening Day, but with Omar Vizquel already having been used (more on that below), it was Jose Bautista who got the call to serve as the fifth infielder.  He was positioned at second base, with Johnson moving to the shortstop side of the bag.  It turned out, though, that the best position for him would have been to be standing on top of the left field wall, since Inge took Cordero’s next pitch out into the stands in left for a walk-off Grand Slam.

Nice way for Inge to make his home debut as an Athletic.

There’s no way to dance around it, Cordero has had a terrible start to the season.  In 12 appearances he’s thrown exactly one clean inning, and has allowed 12 earned runs on 20 hits – four of which have been home runs – with 6 walks (3 intentional) against only 8 strikeouts.  That’s an ERA of 9.53 and a WHIP of 2.294, if you’re counting.

It would appear as though the time has come that the Blue Jays can no longer afford to continue to send him out to try to save games.  Especially with options such as Casey Janssen, Jason Frasor, Darren Oliver, Luis Perez and even Joel Carreno behind him.

On this morning’s late-night edition of The BlueJaysTalk, I asked callers who they would like to see the next time a save opportunity presents itself for the Blue Jays, and no one answered Cordero.  Here is The BlueJaysTalk, for your listening pleasure:

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Had Cordero not blown up real good, most of the post-game talk would probably have been about John Farrell’s decision to pinch-hit for J.P. Arencibia with Omar Vizquel in the top of the 9th.  Eric Thames had led the inning off with a triple and Brett Lawrie followed with a grounder to a drawn-in Jemile Weeks.  Colby Rasmus was then intentionally walked after Grant Balfour fell behind 3-0 to put runners on the corners with one out.

It was then that Arencibia was called back for Vizquel, a curious choice to be sure.

I have a feeling the decision was made because Farrell has such complete faith in Vizquel’s ability as a bat-handler, that he could drop down a squeeze bunt or sneak the ball over the drawn-in infield, and was worried that Arencibia was either a candidate to strike out or hit into a double play.  In my mind, anyway, the decision would have been unnecessary had Rasmus simply stolen second base.  I know it’s not that simple, but with the infield drawn in, if they weren’t actually handing Rasmus second, the A’s were pretty close to doing so.  There probably wouldn’t even have been a throw, with Oakland reluctant to put an infielder on the move in such a situation.  A stolen base there takes away the double play worry, though not the strikeout issue – Arencibia has struck out 19  times in 87 plate appearances this season.  He had no history with Balfour, never having faced him before.

But the call was made to go to Vizquel, and there was no hint at a hit-and-run or a squeeze early in the count.  Nothing until Vizquel was ahead 3-1, and he tried to drop down a bunt.  It was a safety squeeze – pinch-runner Rajai Davis didn’t break until Vizquel made contact, and then he slammed on the brakes as Omar popped the bunt up to third.

That left Johnson to try to be the hero, and he was – albeit temporarily.

Hey, at least the Blue Jays won 2-0 in the innings I called!

The series concludes on Wednesday afternoon, with Brandon Morrow against Tyson Ross in a battle of righties-who-went-to-UC Berkeley, which is basically right around the corner from here.  Ross is starting in place of Brandon McCarthy, who was scratched with a sore shoulder.  Morrow has been spectacular in his last two outings and is on a stretch of 19 2/3 consecutive shutout innings.  Over his last three starts, he’s allowed a grand total of one run and one walk, and the Blue Jays are asking him to stop their current three-game losing streak.  We’ll be on the air at 3:30PM 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!

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10:42PM Eastern

The Blue Jays almost dug themselves out of a three-run hole in Anaheim Sunday, but just couldn’t push that final run across, falling to the Angels but winding up with a split of a four-game series on the road against what will wind up being one of the better teams in baseball.

As I said on The Twitter right after the game (you can follow me @wilnerness590, by the way), you can’t be upset with splitting a four-game series on the road, but you also can’t be happy about it after winning the first two games of the series.

Drew Hutchison put together a lovely fifth starter’s start, but he goes into the record books as the first pitcher ever to cough up a home run to the Angels incarnation of Albert Pujols.  Albert ended his longest career homer drought – and the longest EVER to start a season by a player with at least 400 career big flies – by taking Hutchison deep to left in the fifth inning, a two-run shot that put the Halos up 4-1 at the time.  It was his 111th at-bat of the season.  Fans who had been booing him all weekend suddenly wanted a curtain call, but they didn’t get one.

The Blue Jays scratched their way back with a run each in the 6th (Jose Bautista leadoff double, Edwin Encarnacion sac fly) and the 7th (J.P. Arencibia single, Pujols throwing error, Kelly Johnson RBI single), and had the tying run on base in each of the 7th, 8th and 9th innings, but couldn’t cash.

In both the 8th and 9th, the tying run was erased on the bases, with the 8th inning incident standing out the most.

Adam Lind walked to lead off that frame, and Rajai Davis came out to pinch-run.  Davis took off for second, but Edwin Encarnacion couldn’t stop his half-swing and fouled the pitch off, then fouled off another before the Angels pitched out with Davis staying put.  Davis then took off again, but Edwin popped the ball up to the pitchers’ mound.  Davis never could figure out where the ball was, and slid into second thinking that either there had been a throw or a ground ball somewhere.  The rule is, of course, that if you can’t pick up the ball, you pick up your coaches, and Davis did neither one of those things.

There were shenanginans, to be sure, as Angels’ shortstop Erick Aybar did his best Sean Avery impression – dancing around in front of Davis, standing between him and first base, but Davis never made a single move to go back to first anyway.

The runner eliminated in the 9th was much more normal.  Arencibia smacked a one-out single up the middle that was hit so hard that it broke Scott Downs.  The former Blue Jay, and now Angels’ closer, strained something in his leg ducking out of the way of the Arencibia missile and had to leave the game.  Jeff Mathis came in to run for Arencibia, who wound up 3-for-4 on the day with a duck snort, a pop-up lost in the sun and that rocket, as LaTroy Hawkins came in to finish it off for L.A. of A.

Omar Vizquel, making his first start at shortstop this season (and in so doing  becoming the oldest person ever in the history of anything to play shortstop in a big-league game), lined a shot back up the middle with Mathis running, but it was a little lower than Arencibia’s, so instead of nearly taking Hawkins’ head off, Hawkins was able to stick his glove out and snare it.  At that point, Mathis was meatcake and the game was over.

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

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It was a valiant effort, as has the entire season been to this point, but the falling shortness means that the Blue Jays fall to 16-13 on the season, and continue their road trip in Oakland with a quick little two-game series against an A’s team coming home off a 5-4 road trip they finished with series wins in Boston and Tampa Bay.  I’m thrilled to report that I’ll be joining the Blue Jays for the remainder of this trip (two in Oakland, four in Minnesota) to do the radio broadcast with Jerry Howarth as Alan Ashby moves over to the bright lights of the television (Pat Tabler has the week off).  Tuesday night’s game will be the first of 27 games (not in a row) I’ll be filling in for Alan on the broadcast, so please make sure to tune in –  I want your feedback!

The series in Oakland opens with Ricky Romero taking on hotshot Oakland rookie Jarrod Parker, a former Arizona first-rounder who went to the A’s in the Trevor Cahill deal this past winter.  We’ll have the full pre-game show for you beginning at 9:30PM Eastern Tuesday  night – join us, won’t you?

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

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1:30AM Eastern

The Blue Jays’ four-game win streak came to an end with a sloppy all-around effort that featured poor defense and a starting pitcher who emerged with an ugly line for the game – two very unusual things for the Blue Jays one-sixth of the way through their season.

They didn’t get a third straight shutout, which would have matched the team record set in 1983 by Dave Stieb, Jim Clancy and Luis Leal (with an inning of relief work from Randy Moffitt), but they pretty much would have needed it to win, given that they only managed two runs off Angels’ starter C.J. Wilson.

Kyle Drabek winds up looking at five innings of five-run, eight-hit ball, with five walks, but he wasn’t quite that bad.  Drabek struggled with his control all night – he walked Vernon Wells twice! – but came off the mound at the end of the 5th inning trailing only 2-1.

His night probably should have been done there, given how he’d been coming out of his mechanics and pitching in trouble almost the whole game and that the Blue Jays’ bullpen had thrown all of one inning over the course of the last three games, but John Farrell sent him back out for the 6th and he gave up a leadoff home run to Mark Trumbo.  Then there was a walk, an infield single and a bunt single and all of a sudden the bases were loaded with nobody out and Drabek’s day was done.  Jason Frasor came in and all three runners wound up scoring.

Some fans will (and did) blame Farrell for the loss, but it’s not on him.  Sure you could make the argument that Drabek shouldn’t have come back out for the 6th, but I’m thinking Farrell did it both because Drabek was only down a run and in order to help the 24 year-old’s development along.  If one is to be a key cog in a starting rotation in the bigs, which is what the Blue Jays hope Drabek will eventually be, one is going to have to go out and suck up some innings without having your best stuff every once in a while.  This wasn’t one of those nights, but it was a reasonable opportunity to see if Drabek could do it – and he’d only thrown 87 pitches over the first five innings, so he shouldn’t have been overtaxed.

Don’t get me started on the defense – whether it was overcommitting or undercommitting on bunts, both Frasor and Luis Perez being unable to make an accurate throw to second base to start double plays, or a routine bouncing ball going right through Adam Lind’s legs, this was an ugly one – all the way down to Jose Bautista striking out on a pitch that hit him in the foot.

They’re not all going to be Picassos, and this game should just be tossed out in the dustbin as soon as possible.

The good news?  The Blue Jays’ runs were driven in by Bautista (RBI single) and Lind (solo shot off the lefty).

Here’s this morning’s edition of The Late Night BlueJaysTalk, for your listening pleasure:

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The series in Disneyland ends on Sunday afternoon with 21 year-old Drew Hutchison on the mound facing an Angels line-up that will likely feature a resurgent Albert Pujols.  The slugger had his first game off Saturday night and watched his new teammates score six runs and win after not having scored any with him in the line-ups the two nights previous.  Righty Jerome Williams gets the start for the Halos.  We’ll rev up the engine at 3:00PM Eastern with the pre-game show for a 3:30 first pitch – join us, won’t you?

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Comments are welcome – I read them all and respond to most, but please don’t e-mail any comments to baseballtoday@fan590.com.  That e-mail address is hardly ever looked at, so an e-mail sent there could go months without being seen.

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2:15AM Eastern

How do you follow up the Brandon Morrow brilliance in the opener in Anaheim?  By turning the trick yourself, if you’re Henderson Alvarez.

The man I’m trying to nickname The Hendersonian Institution (not sure why, just like the sound of it, though he is going to be around for a while) wasn’t quite as dominating as Morrow – he did allow three whole runners to get past first base, and one got all the way to third – but he was equally devastating, stretching the Blue Jays’ shutout streak to 22 innings.

Alvarez was baseballic butter in Disneyland:  Smooth, smooth, smooth, needing only 97 pitches to nail down his first career complete game.  He only struck out three as he plowed through the Halos – the game was even faster than Morrow’s Thursday night special, lasting just two hours and ten minutes.

Having just turned 22 last month, featuring a big-time power sinker and filthy slider, you have to imagine the strikeouts will come, but until they do Alvarez has been an extraordinary treat to watch nonetheless.

He got all the offense he would need in the third inning when Yunel Escobar’s two-out single to centre scored Jeff Mathis, who had walked and moved up on Kelly Johnson’s hit-and-run grounder.  The Blue Jays gave him a little more anyway, as Jose Bautista followed with a rocket to left for his fifth home run of the season.

Bautista, by the way, has more home runs so far this season than Prince Fielder and Albert Pujols combined.

Alvarez isn’t the youngest Blue Jay to pitch a shutout – Phil Huffman has him beat by about nine months.  The righty, later traded to KC for Rance Mulliniks, blanked the Oakland A’s on one hit back on August 27, 1979 as a 21 year-old.   Roy Howell hit a Grand Slam in that game and was 4-for-4, missing the cycle by a triple.  Tony Solaita was the Jays’ DH and clean-up man that day.  That’s not a typo, I’m not sure I’ve heard of him, either.

The Blue Jays have matched their longest winning streak of the season at four games and have taken six of seven, and they’re off to a phenomenal start on this 10-game trip through Anaheim, Oakland and Minnesota.  Only three teams in the American League have won more games than your Toronto Blue Jays, though two of them are in the A.L. East.  But one of them is Baltimore.  They’ve also gotten consecutive complete game shutouts for the first time since June of 1993, when Jack Morris and Al Leiter turned the trick.  Good things wound up happening later that year.

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

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The series continues Saturday night as Kyle Drabek, who pitched so well in a losing effort against Yu Darvish and the Rangers last time out, tries to continue the shutout streak.  He’ll face the Angels’ second-biggest free agent acquisition of the off-season, lefty C.J. Wilson.  The game gets going an hour earlier than the previous two, so we’ll be on the air with the pre-game show at 8:30PM Eastern for a 9:05 first pitch – join us, won’t you?

Please give me a follow on The Twitter, you can find me @wilnerness590.  Henderson Alvarez can be found @h_alvarez_37, though he doesn’t tweet much and when he does, it’s in Spanish.

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

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1:33AM Eastern

I mean, really, what more is there to say.

We may be witnessing the emergence of one of the best pitchers in the entire game, right before our eyes.

Brandon Morrow had ACE written all over him even before the Blue Jays traded Brandon League (and Johermyn Chavez) to Seattle for him two and a half years ago, but Seattle let him go because they were frustrated with his control problems and his inconsistency, even though they contributed to that greatly by rushing him to the big leagues and jerking him back and forth from the rotation to the bullpen, the majors to the minors for the first few years of his career.

Once he became a Blue Jay, the jerking around ceased but the inconsistency remained.  We saw just how good he could be in August of 2010 when he threw one of the greatest games ever pitched, coming within one out of a no-hitter, allowing only an infield single in a complete game shutout of the Rays in which he struck out 17 and walked only one.  He led the major leagues in strikeouts per nine innings the last two years but averaged fewer than six innings pitched per start.  He had great peripheral “nerd stats” but an ERA of 4.62 and a WHIP of 1.33.

Morrow teased us with stuff that talent evaluators across baseball said was right up there with the best in the game, and now it appears as though he may have finally put it all together.

What did it take?  A little self-actualization.  Morrow had been hearing for years that he’d be well-served to try to get at-bats resolved a little more quickly, to get a few more ground balls so he could get deeper into games and keep a few runs off the board, but it wasn’t until this winter that it finally sunk in.  He said that he looked at all the same things everyone else did – the stuff, the low innings pitched per start, the fact that his strong nerd stats didn’t translate to strong real numbers, and decided he had to make a change.  He seemed especially embarrassed that he’d only managed to get one double play turned behind him all last year.

Morrow spent the whole spring developing his curveball and change-up in an attempt to make himself a more complete pitcher, and it’s worked brilliantly, even though he’s barely thrown anything but fastballs and sliders over his last two starts, which have been his two best outside the near no-no.  Hey, at least hitters know he has them in his back pocket, right?

Thursday night in Anaheim, Morrow was spectacular.  He threw a complete-game three-hit shutout, facing only one batter over the minimum, striking out eight against no walks, allowing only one Angel to get past first base and throwing just 102 pitches – a total he’s reached in four innings in previous starts.

It was the second straight start in which Morrow hasn’t walked a batter – and the second start in his entire career in which that’s happened.  He even induced two ground ball double plays.

Morrow got all he would need off the bat of J.P. Arencibia, who drilled a three-run homer in the third inning after Brett Lawrie led off with a line single to centre – the first hit an Angels pitcher had allowed in 17 innings – and Colby Rasmus followed with a beautiful drag bunt up the third base line.  The Blue Jays only managed four more hits – a pair of singles each from Kelly Johnson and Yunel Escobar, who are a combined 8-for-16 with two walks since being flipped in the batting order, and another infield single from Lawrie.

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

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The series continues Friday night with Henderson Alvarez on the mound coming off his first win of the season. He’ll face Ervin Santana, who is off to an 0-5 start and has allowed a major league-leading 10 home runs so far this season.  We’re on with a full pre-game show starting at 9:30PM Eastern for a 10:05 first pitch – join us, won’t you?

Before I go, a quick word about Mariano Rivera, the great Yankee closer whose career may have come to an end when he tore the ACL in his right knee shagging fly balls in batting practice prior to the Yankees’ loss in Kansas City Thursday night.  I’m as much of a Yankee-hater as anyone, but the one guy you could always look at in those pinstripes who simply exuded class and dignity is Rivera.  He really has been everything a professional athlete should aspire to be, brilliant on the field and known for nothing but his charitable work off of it.  He is SECOND on the all-time WHIP list, behind only turn-of-the-century Indian Addie Joss, who is in the Hall of Fame, which is where Rivera will wind up in five years should his career actually be over, maybe with the highest percentage of ballots cast in history.

It’s a sad loss for the game, you always want to see the greats go out on their own terms, and hopefully Rivera will make his way back onto the field next year so that he can end his career the way he was supposed to – by blowing the save in Game 7 of the A.L.C.S. against the Blue Jays.  If he is done, there’s no question that he went out on top, still at the height of his greatness, which is almost otherworldly given the fact that he’s in his early 40s and still only throws one damn pitch.

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

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

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4:02PM Eastern

The Blue Jays wrapped up their homestand by letting the proverbial big dog eat, exploding for a season-high 11 runs in pounding the Texas Rangers, who came to town with the best record in baseball (tied with the Dodgers) and left having dropped two of three to the Jays, who moved over .500 for the season at Rogers Centre with a 4-2 homestand.

As has been the case far more often than not this season, the Blue Jays fell behind early – this time it was Brandon Snyder’s first major-league home run, a one-out solo shot to dead centre in the second inning.  In their 25 games so far this season, the Blue Jays have surrendered the first run 18 times but, amazingly, they’ve won half of those.

This time, Kelly Johnson got them back in front with his second homer in as many games – a two-run shot off Matt Harrison in the bottom of the third.  Johnson found himself in the leadoff spot for the first time this season, as manager John Farrell flipped him with Yunel Escobar, who was dropped to second.  It was a set-up Farrell had used a few times late in Spring Training, but he’d abandoned it before the season started.  To make the switch for Wednesday’s game was curious, since Rangers starter Matt Harrison came into the game allowing  lefties to hit just .094/.094/.125 off him this season, but that didn’t deter Johnson, or Eric Thames for that matter, who was 1-for-2 with a double off the southpaw.

Yunel Escobar seemed awfully comfortable in the second spot in the order – he had a three-hit day, missing the cycle by a home run.  His biggest blow was the one that ended Harrison’s day, a three-run triple to right-centre as part of the Blue Jays’ six-run fourth.  Escobar came up in the 8th against Koji Uehara with a chance to join Kelly Gruber and Jeff Frye as Blue Jays cyclists, and the chance to have the first legitimate cycle in Jays’ history, but he grounded out to shortstop.

Ricky Romero got the win to improve to 4-0 on the young season with seven dazzling innings of four-hitter.  There was one decidedly non-dazzling inning, as well – a four-run fifth for the Rangers that saw Romero open up by walking the first three hitters he faced, which happened to be the only free passes he’d issue all afternoon.  Elvis Andrus followed with a rocket to dead centre on which Colby Rasmus took a step towards the infield, then chased all the way to the wall. That two-run double was followed by a broken-bat RBI single by Michael Young and then, finally, a Mike Napoli sacrifice fly for the first out of the inning.  Romero settled down beautifully from there, getting eleven more outs without giving up a hit before handing it over to Joel Carreno for the ninth.

Romero’s blow-up came right after the Blue Jays’ big fourth inning, and there’s a chance that sitting and watching his mates score a bunch of runs in a chilly open-roofed Rogers Centre might have had a detrimental effect on Romero – cold hands leading to a lack of feel for the baseball and that sort of thing.  Regardless, he was pretty impressive once he got that hiccup out of the way.

Two roster notes – Rajai Davis came out of the game after getting an infield single and then scoring on Escobar’s triple.  He has a mild strain of his left hip flexor and is day-to-day.  And Romero handed it over to Carreno for the ninth because the Blue Jays optioned Evan Crawford down to Las Vegas before the game, calling up the righty who had started the season’s third game but will work out of the bullpen now.

The Blue Jays are the first team to hand the Rangers two straight losses in the regular season since the Red Sox did it on August 24th and 25th of last season; this was also the first time in seven tries that Texas has lost a day game, whatever that means.

It was a weekday day game, so there was no opportunity for The BlueJaysTalk,  but we’ll make up for that with a late-night edition on Thursday night/Friday morning as the Blue Jays open up a 10-game, 11-day road trip with the first of four in Anaheim against the Angels.  The series begins with Brandon Morrow taking the mound coming off his best start of the season – six innings of five-hit shutout with no walks and nine strikeouts against the Mariners – facing Angels’ ace Dan Haren.  The Halos are struggling, with just nine wins in their first 24 games, so the Jays might want to sneak in, win a few games, and sneak out all quiet-like.  We’ll be on the air with the pre-game show at 9:30PM Eastern for a 10:05 first pitch – 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!