Sunday, April 25, 2010

Sunday afternoon quick-hitters

....so quick that no pic is required. Thoughts kicking around my head after a lacklustre weekend of Blue Jays baseball....
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Maybe this should be filed under the "it's early!" tag....or maybe the "sample size!" tag....or maybe the "overreaction to one brutal outing" tag....but, yeah, Jason Frasor looks about done. We all noticed the decline in velocity early on, but I had hoped it was one of those "build up arm strength in the early going" deals. But that 90-92 mph fastball (last year's 93-94) isn't picking up any velocity, has no life, and can't find the strike zone (nearly one walk per inning). There has to be something wrong with the Sausage King's arm. Gotta be.
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Lest you think I'm picking on only Frasor, neither Scott Downs nor Jeremy Accardo are faring much better. Both are getting hit around and missing minimal bats. "Trade Value" for the loss. Meanwhile, Josh Roenicke has been nearly unhittable in the early going for Vegas. You'd suspect Downs is safe barring injury, but given his history, Accardo shouldn't get too comfortable in his Toronto digs.....you'd think. How long before Camp sees the 8th inning? (that retching sound you hear is the Tao as he reads this)
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Speaking of unhittable, Timmy Tim Collins' YTD line for AA New Hampshire: 16K's through 9 IP and nothing across. Wow. I think the kid has gone from feel-good curiosity to legitimate prospect to get moderately excited about at this point, no?
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Remember when we used to shit on Greggg Zaun for not throwing anyone out? Well, Jose Molina nailed four runners trying to steal this afternoon. And the Jays lost 6-0.
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Looks like maybe new whipping boy Lyle Overbay (formerly Vernon Wells) is coming on strong. Well, maybe "strong" isn't the word, but you get the point. Unfortunately, there's little he can do to slow the Brett Wallace train. Now if only the Snider train would start to roll.....

14 comments:

Leaker19 said...

The Rays were terrifying in their offensive persistence this weekend, especially after the sixth inning. Early on they look like the class of the A.L.

The Ack said...

ya know....the Rays are a good fucking team. Red Sox Nation oughtta be scared. Real scared.

Mattt said...

It's really weird that the bullpen is coughing games up and the starters have been really solid. Maybe JP has to be here for the bullpen to function...

SP said...

The FB velocity is a mild concern compared to the loss of his split/change pitch from last year. That's what made him dominant last year and elevated him from an average FB-slider reliever. It seems to be just gone completely. Maybe LtB can do some digging around on this.

brent said...

How about putting up game threads so there can be some discussion. DJF's threads are a desolate wasteland of suck. Where can everyone come together?

bakatron said...

you know what... our ricciardi era bullpen is just about done. downs, frasor and accardo seemed to have totally lost it. maybe its time to restart building the bullpen.

we have litsch and rzep coming back from injury as well as roenicke coming up. maybe its time we realized that morrow is a really great closer or setup guy... that we have other options and that we really don't need to find the next aj burnett.

2008 was our best team in a decade... if baseball wasnt colluding to keep bonds out we would have probably gotten him and into the playoffs.

Navin Vaswani (@eyebleaf) said...

So is 3rd place the goal, now? Because, well, the Orioles are TRULY a joke, and Boston ... well it would be nice to finish ahead of Boston.

Tampa's good. Very good.

And because I didn't see it, I still don't believe Molina pulled that off.

Unknown said...

"maybe its time we realized that morrow is a really great closer or setup guy..."

After 3 starts????

Really?

Isn't that exactly what happened to him in Seattle?

Sheesh.

Jaysfan26 said...

I'm with Tao on Camp - he's good but there's just something about him...

I'm with brent - the DJF threats start off well enough but then suddenly turn into a cesspool.

Jaysfan26 said...

Just realized I did the "I'm with..." twice. My bad.

JB said...

Bullpen?

I've got two words for you that could be completely baseless but it is fun anyway:

Brad Arnsberg.

Holden Ballfield said...

Tao colludes with DJF to keep game threads out of this blog. They get the page view revenues; he gets to keep his teeth. This Jays blogging thing is a tough racket.

The Ack said...

@ Holden Ballfield.....I really can't comment on that.

Darren Priest said...

I would like to comment on games as they unfold sometimes -- especially since I have no nearby friends who profess to being baseball fans. But I guess Twitter will do -- I am sure my 34 followers are hanging on my every word.