Friday, September 18, 2009

Dreaming impossible dreams of third place

Who says the Jays aren't playing meaningful games in September?

Trailing the third place Tampa by a mere 7.5 games, the Jays have the opportunity this weekend to make up more than half of that margin with a sweep of their four game series against the once-mighty Rays. And we're only being about 86% facetious when we say that.

Sure, this season has descended from tragedy into farce in recent weeks, with Cito Gaston's stubborn and steadfast refusal to either field the best team he can or play the prospects (aging or not) who could make the roster next year. But can't a man relish the notion that we could crap all over the Tampanians and make a mockery of the notion that the Rays were competing in the AL East?

Seriously, if the Jays were able to leave Tampa with the Rays sitting below .500, the schadenfreude would be so delightful. How sweet would it be to shove it in the face of all the jackanapes like Roger Lajoie, who trotted out the Rays as proof positive that it was possible to hang with the Yanks and Sox on a shoestring with a bit of ingenuity?

Third place: It never sounded so sweet. Let's go Blue Jays, chasing another ghost of a chance.

Prime Linkage
Speaking of Ghosts, Drew/LtB from that fine blog has a good piece on the folly of signing Jason Bay or Chone Figgins next year, while pimping Adrian Beltre and J.J. Hardy as possible solutions. We're not sure that we necessarily agree, but it's a compelling argument nonetheless.

Meanwhile, Big League Stew looks back at the year that wasn't for the Jays as part of their Walk Towards the Light feature on all the also-rans this season. Have a read and relive your pain!

7 comments:

The Ack said...

wait, so dying your hair jet black and matching haircuts don't work? what about team t-shirts with creative motivational slogans for all? no? shocked.

(as an aside, recall when the Clemens-led Jays all did that shitty looking bleached blonde thing?)

Navin Vaswani (@eyebleaf) said...

Seriously, if the Jays were able to leave Tampa with the Rays sitting below .500, the schadenfreude would be so delightful. How sweet would it be to shove it in the face of all the jackanapes like Roger Lajoie, who trotted out the Rays as proof positive that it was possible to hang with the Yanks and Sox on a shoestring with a bit of ingenuity?

Third place: It never sounded so sweet. Let's go Blue Jays, chasing another ghost of a chance.


This. Go Jays.

Adam Wray said...

I like the idea of inking Beltre. Not having to watch Encarnacion play third is value enough. How about making a run at Vladdy or Matsui to DH?

Tao of Stieb said...

You know, Encarnacion hasn't played all that poorly in the field. I've seen him make a couple of great plays, and I can't recall too many awful ones.

Give Eddie E a chance. He could be a 30 homer guy.

Torgen said...

His UZR/150 has been better since he got here, but it's still not positive, and it's an awfully SSS. We can't really afford two maybes on the same guy when either one not panning out means he sucks.

plain_g said...

i love the idea of beltre and matsui.

Anonymous said...

This would be great if it weren't for the fact that the Rays, y'know, won the pennant last year. Say what you will about it being a fluke or lucky or whatever, but the bottom line is that Tampa actually got it done once in the last 15 years, which is more than the Jays can say. Plus, given the amount of minor league talent in the Rays system, anyone would take Tampa's organization over Toronto's in a heartbeat.