Hacks and gasbags hack away at Jays

Now that the Jays' ever so slim playoff aspirations have gone up in a poof of green and gold smoke, thanks to Esteban Loaiza and his merry band of brigands, we fully expect the gang of hacks and gasbags in the Toronto/National media (is there a distinction?) to gleeful indulge in "I told you so" wankery for much of the next few weeks.

What fun.

We wouldn't mind, so much, if they were vaguely enlightening about the plight of the Jays season. For instance, Jeff Blair, in his triumphant return from the Barry Bonds beat, lays it out pretty effectively in today's column.

You're misguided if you think the Blue Jays postseason hopes are fading fast. They were extinguished long ago, when the club went 3-5 from July 12 to 19 in an eight-game road trip against the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees.

You see, that's harsh, but it is true.

But what kills us are the goofballs like Sun Media columnist and TSN sabbath gasbag Steve Simmons, who dropped this erroneous knowledge in his Sunday column: "Not hard to figure why the Blue Jays are so middle-of-the- road. The club is 14th in batting, 17th in runs scored, 22nd in earned run average".

We checked those numbers, especially since the ERA number seemed so completely out of whack. The Jays sit fourth in ERA (4.01 going into yesterday, and 3.99 coming out). In 22nd in ERA are the Marlins with a 4.69, so it's doubtful that the Jays managed in the space of about four days to shave almost three-quarters of a run off their mark.

Neither of the other numbers made much sense when we checked them either, so Simmons basically made this shit up.

Sycophancy Update - Back to the mailbag
We were slow off the mark in our analysis of yesterday's Dick Griffin Mailbag Madness yesterday, but the Drunk Jays Fans pretty much said what we thinking.

We'll just point out that yet again, the mailbag was full of unnecessarily laudatory greetings for a writer who is already way too full of himself.

Yesterday's mailbag featured such exquisite brown-nosery as "I love your column and candor during the season" from some limey, "I look forward to every Wednesday just to read your column" from someone in Oshawa, and "Hi Richard, Love your column" from some misguided American Jays fan.

We get it, Dick. People love you. Then again, people love a lot of ridiculous shit, like The King of Queens and head cheese.