Considering the majority of the expert prognosticators have our beloved Blue Jays comfortably entrenched in the basement of the AL East this season (fucking bullshit!), Spring Training has gone about as well as any of us could have expected.Until today, maybe. There's nothing like a pair of shoulder injuries to stop the warm & fuzzies.....on the surface, anyway. Since pissing and moaning will do nothing but quicken the onset of Jays-related depression (I'm giving myself until mid-June), let's look at this optimistically - or perhaps, realistically.
None of us should have expected Dustin McGowan to return to his first game action throwing 95 and wiping out hitters with sick breaking stuff. The drop in velo to 88 is potentially concerning, but the Internet tells me that a dead-arm period coming out of rehab after such a long time away from the mound is quite normal. And the Internet never, ever lies. All this does is guarantee that McG opens the season on the DL - where he should be. No point in rushing him back when he clearly isn't ready.
Brandon Morrow's shoulder soreness also seems to be "just one of those things" the young righty goes through every spring. By his account, a few days off to ease the barking has been a past cure-all for his arm, and he expects this minor setback to be no different. Let's just go with the notion that he's still set to be our next AJ Burnett (minus the bullshit).
Or he could be on the verge of going under the knife and becoming the next, er, Dustin McGowan.
(Let's pretend that I didn't just say that, OK? OK.)
Whatever happened to....
..Lyle Overbay? Seriously, anyone heard from Lyle? I'm not even kidding. I'd like to think that I follow the spring coverage fairly closely, and the only time I hear his name mentioned is when Brett Wallace is talking about picking his brain for 1B defensive tips. I mean, he is still going to stand in there against RHP, yes?
Or has Clarence identified him as the lone remaining malcontent responsible for last season's locker room revolt, completely thrown him under the bus, backed the fucker up, and rolled over again for good measure?
(Get it? "Bumps in the road"? Ah, nevermind.)
15 comments:
As to Lyle...
IF you believe in the Ruiz Renaissance then there are only two ways it happens... either Encarnacion stays hurt, Bautista plays 3rd, Lind and Snider play LF & RF, Ruiz is the full time DH - OR - Ruiz at least platoons with Overbay, preferably Ruiz REPLACES Overbay.
For Ruiz the BEST option is that Encarnacion stays hurt and he becomes the full time DH as Wallace would soon knock him out of 1st base.
No matter how you look at it - Overbay's goose is cooked - or should be.
I agree MyLegacy, but the thing is, the Jays are still paying 7 million dollars this year to keep that goose alive, and in all fairness, that goose is still pretty darn good at hitting right-handed pitching. With Ruiz on the team there's really no reason Overbay should ever play against lefties, but they're not going to just dump him for nothing either.
I agree that the internet never lies, but not with anything else you've said. Or is it the opposite.
No matter. I wonder if this was just a bad day for Dustin or if this is as hard as he's thrown. It's hard to imagine everybody would have been raving so much about his previous sessions if he was maxing out at 88. Surely catchers and professional talent evaluators can tell the difference between 88 and 98 without a gun?
Lyle is hitting .429/.619/.643 in 21 ST plate appearances. Though his 7:2 BB:K ration pales in comparison to Aaron's 9:0 ratio.
Are you guys nuts?
Overbay is one of the best hitters on the team and I expect him to have a great year. Why wouldn't the Jays be playing him everyday to trade him late in the season or let him walk with draft picks?
In case you guys forgot, Overbay had an .838 OPS last year. That was considered an off year, but it was 10 points higher than Aaron Hill. This on top of his defense preventing errors from EE. Talk about being under-rated!
JB, he also had a .534 OPS vs lefties last season. I don't see how you can justify playing that when Ruiz is sitting on the bench. That's lower that Johnny Mac's career OPS and over 100 points lower than McDonald OPS'd in 2009, by the way.
Overbay should be leading off against RHP and sitting against LHP. Why can't someone in the front office just point this out to the Dorito?
vs rhp
overbay
hill
lind
wells
encarnacion
snider
ruiz
buck
gonzalez
vs lhp
bautista
hill
lind
wells
encarnacion
ruiz
snider
buck
gonzalez
gogogogog
I only heard of people raving about McGowan's breaking stuff. Wonder if he can get into the low 90's again?
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Most comments seemed generally positive. You'd think they would have been a little more reserved if he was missing 10mph.
But Dustin's comments made it seem like he was particularly off on Friday.
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Best spam comment of all time? Best spam comment of all time.
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Did you miss yesterday's spam?
Is that you Cito?
You guys got it all wrong. Overbay goes in breadboxes.
That spam comment was boss. It needs to be framed ASAP!
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