It Was a Big, Long Game for J.P.

For a guy who was that close to posting an 0-for-7 last night, it sure ended up being a heck of a game for J.P. Arencibia. Crushing a game-winning homer over the tall wall at Progressive Field was unquestionably the highlight, but even if JPA hadn't done so, you'd still have to tip your cap to him on an impressive game. Aside from the big fly, we give Arencibia a lot of credit for his work behind the plate last night.

You could ask Shin Soo Choo about it, given the diving tag that J.P. made on his spikes to end the third, followed by the low throw on the first base side of second that caught Choo stealing to end the sixth.

And when a Luis Perez pitch buzzed Choo in the 15th, Arencibia got between the disgruntled hitter and the pitcher quickly enough to help defuse the situation. It looked to us as though Perez was ready to throw down, too. But the Jays needed his arm on the mound, because who the heck knows how long that game was going to go.

Finally, it bears noting that after a four-run outburst in the second, Arencibia spent a lot of time talking Ricky Romero through his last three innings of work, and helped guide him and seven more pitchers -- yes, the entirety of the Blue Jays bullpen -- through a total of 14 straight scoreless innings. All in a long day's work.

A few other impressions: It was a long day at the plate for Colby Rasmus, though he did hit the ball hard a few times for outs. Hopefully, that diving catch (which might have been a game changer in retrospect) is what sticks in the minds of most fans...Edwin Encarnacion crushed that ball in what turned out to be a game-tying double. We can't really hate on him for admiring his shot and his bat flip, nor getting caught off base on a sharp grounder in that same inning...Speaking of admiration of one's work, what was Rajai Davis doing watching that ugly bunt? We shouldn't need to reiterate our feelings on small ball to you all, but suffice to say, it sucks...It also looks like it might be a long few months in the field for Eric Thames. For all of the talk about his improvement in the field, he did not look sharp at all yesterday...José Bautista at first base? The late inning shift foreshadows a move that we suspect he'll make in the next few years.

How About Another Year?

It really is a pretty amazing time of year for a baseball fan. For those of us who live and breathe the game, what sits before us is six densely-packed months. And then some.

For the other major North American professional sports, so much of the story is woven off the field of play, where the subtext is simultaneously created and dissected through any number of media scrums at practices and ex-jock analyst roundtables. But with baseball, there's so much that happens every day that it provides an almost constant flow of, well, the text.

This is what makes baseball such a fun game to follow. There's hardly the time to fixate over a bad at bat or a pitch that got away, because there's another game tomorrow, and the day after that, and after that.

Which has us thinking: In Toronto (and across Canada), there's been a persistent refrain about the lack of "meaningful games" in recent years for the Blue Jays. But for those of us who love the game, and absorb as many chapters and verses as time and good sense will permit, it feels as though there's too much meaning to take in over the run of a season.

Which isn't to say that a game or a play or a pitch means everything over the course of a season. But they all mean something, and over the long term, they all add up. Or where, ultimately, this collection of players is heading. It takes patience not to skip ahead in your mind to attempt to foretell how the season will end up, and where it fits into the bigger, broader context. But if you can catch your breath and appreciate the moment you're in, it can be incredibly rewarding to be a baseball fan.

That's why this moment, with past as prologue and a full season yet to be played, provides such an incomparable feeling. We know that we'll forget this feeling as the season wears on. There will be hard times, and there will be high times, and trying to keep them in perspective is always tough when you're in the moment.

There's 162 games ahead, and they'll be filled with walkoffs and blown saves, unexpected performances and unfortunate injuries. There will be games that should have been won, and games that the team manages to pull out. There will be winning streaks and losing streaks. Balls will get popped up on the infield, and balls will be sent sailing beyond the outfield wall. Runners will be stranded, and runners will be cashed in, eliciting a comforting "the Blue Jays are in flight!" from Jerry Howarth.

There's so much to take in, it's almost overwhelming. But we couldn't be happier. Let's play ball.

This Could Be the Start of Something Big

It's Opening Day, which means that we must be talking about new beginnings. And that might seem pat, because there are 29 other cities in which writers and bloggers guys at the end of the bar are currently waxing poetic about the new possibilities that lie before their ball team.

But with the number of new faces in new places that will be around the diamond and in the dugout tonight, this year's edition of the Toronto Blue Jays feels to the long-suffering fan like something more than a new iteration. It isn't merely a page turned, or a new chapter that has begun. It's a whole new volume whose spine is about to be cracked.

Not that we're completely done with the past: The new face of the franchise was brought to the team by the much-maligned former GM (in a move that elicited little more than shrugs at the time). So too were the much-praised fielding guru and hitting coach, the Opening Day starter, the Slugging Phenom, the Catcher of the Future, the Enigmatic Third Baseman, and the Accidental First Baseman.

There are many pieces around the club to remind us of the past. But a tweak here and a reinforcement there, and somehow, it all looks brand new.

When we look down towards the field of play tonight, we'll see the largest piece of real estate patrolled for the first time in a decade by someone who isn't Vernon Wells. And truly, few will benefit from the revitalized and renewed feelings of warmth towards the franchise than Rajai Davis. We've spent a few days working on paens in his honour, somewhat willingly oblivious to the two-plus wins that the Jays lose in this swap, and to the fact that Wells' value in one of his "down years" (3.2 WAR in 2005) was roughly the same as what Davis produced in his most prolific season (3.3 in 2009).

(Nor did we pay much mind to the fact that Rajai is less that two years Wells' junior, so this wasn't exactly a Rod Stewart-level trade-in of the old model - literally! - for the much younger version.)

But the move to Davis feels like something more than the swapping of numbers, no matter how articulate the metric might be. There's a weight that has been removed, allowing the team the flexibility in their payroll, in the lineup and in the field that feeds into a new energy, and a whole host of possibilities for clever management.

Which raises the other most significant change, new bench boss John Farrell. For a team that needs to be that much more clever than every other team in professional sports - no hyperbole intended - the Blue Jays have brought in a new manager who is something more than the retread with a reputation or the "good guy" baseball lifer getting a break. Farrell seems to truly approach the game with a vibrant intelligence that isn't weighed down by any overbearing ego.

The Jays entered their search for a new manager last year, and through the legendarily exhaustive process, they came away no only with the best man for the job in the top role, but several of his fellow candidates filling out the coaching roles around him. In bringing in Don Wakamatsu to focus on the catching mentorship and game-planning, and Luis Rivera in a truly unique "eye in the sky", non-uniformed coaching role, not to mention the retention of Brian Butterfield and Dwayne Murphy through the transitional phase, the Jays have added heft to throughout their instructional staff.

(There's a part of us that thinks that sometime soon, the granularity of roles and the player-to-coach ratio that the Jays have instituted this year will be the model to follow.)

We'll take in tonight's game sporting the now-shelved for good powder blue colours sported by the 1985 team. But as much as we think kindly on the past, we've shelved that volume of the team's history. We're ready to look forward, and to follow along with these new Jays as a new legacy is forged. Because as we open the new book, the possibilities are truly inspiring.

Play ball.

The Time for Prognostication is Over. Thank the Stars.

We're not sure how it happened, but the blog over the past few months has regressed into a stream of plucked-straight-from-our-butthole predictions on everything from win totals to call-up time frames to contract values to individual performances for the coming year, the near future and the distant future.

(Have we told you about how we think Canada's superior knowledge of robot arms will help us in the 2053 season?)

Generally, we like to have fun and jibber jabber with all of you throughout the offseason, but we have to say that we're utterly relieved to be done with that part of the calendar. It's easy to get caught up in looking ahead at the coming season, and trying to figure out how it's all going to play out.

But we'll confess to feeling like a bit of a fraud, because the answers we've been giving hither and yon about what may happen are just uneducated guesses, based mostly on hope, partially on dread, and generally in ignorance of any supporting data.

As we look around at the sports pages and throughout many of our regular web haunts, pre-season predictions seem to dominate the coverage at this point, and that is understandable.
But we'd prefer not to play the part of the Oracle from here on out.

The fun part of baseball is not where you have all of your expectations proven out, thus establishing yourself as some sort of sage. The fun part is where you're surprised every day by the unpredictability of the outcomes, and the constant development of the narrative of the team, its players, and the game itself.

When Ricky Romero delivers the first pitch of the season tomorrow night, we're sure to feel a palpable sense of relief that the season is finally underway. There's plenty of interesting matter to discuss about the game that takes place outside the lines, especially given the management team that the Jays currently have in place.

But for us, the game is the thing. And we can't wait to begin the next chapter.

(Photo swiped from The Hilarious House of Frightenstein Tribute Site. If you only knew how much we love that show.)

Opening Day Dopeness and Wackness: It could be one of those years

We'll be straight with you: We were so excited to watch baseball and so geeked by the first eight-and-a-half innings yesterday that it took awhile for the fact of yesterday's loss to actually sink in.

And as we got to thinking about it, it struck us that this what this whole season could end up being for us Blue Jays fans: An exercise in finding the positives wherever they might be hiding.

Opening Day Dopeness
When it comes to the good, Shaun Marcum and (gasp!) Vernon Wells obviously stand out. Marcum looked great through six innings and lost the handle a bit in the seventh. It's pretty hard to fault him on that pitch that Nelson Cruz swatted out for a three-run equalizing shot, because that was a pretty great location, and we're still dumbfounded as to how Cruz half-swung and drove that ball 400 feet.

As for Vernon, we've been really impressed with the fluidity of his swing so far this season. He's not dropping his hands and he's coming through the hitting zone quickly and on a nice level plane. And if he keeps doing that, there may be room for in our cold cold hearts to welcome him back.

Adam Lind's swing is worth every penny he's got coming to him. And Aaron Hill continues to be awesome.

Opening Day Wackness
So, uh, Jason Frasor...How's that closer role feel? Not to get all irrational over one game, but we actually started to wonder yesterday what Kevin Gregg might have done in that situation.

(And yeah, we know that's the stupidest thing ever. We're just sharing our stupidity with you so that you know that fending off our inner Jays Talk caller is a constant struggle.)

Also: Lyle Overbay left five guys on base.

Opening Day Dopeness, Disguised as Wackness
Sure, Travis Snider struck out three times yesterday. But he also worked his way into deep counts, and worked his way back to full counts in two of those at bats, and a lot of his strikes yesterday were on foul balls that he got to quickly and fought off. With that patient approach, Snider's going to get pitches to hit eventually.

Don't Call It a Comeback - Your opening day starter

There are lots of ways that we could slice the discussion over the Jays' Opening Day starter in order to make it seem like bad news.

Whoever it was who was going to get named to that still-somewhat-anachronistically-prestigious role, he wasn't going to be Doc. And as it turns out, it's a player who has no major league track record from 2009 to parse through for argument's sake.

But we'll say this about Shaun Marcum: So long as he continues to stand his ground like a manly-man against wearing those insipid BP caps with the NASCAR pit crew piping on, he's all right by us.

(And the fact that he's still got a spotless ERA in five Fake Game innings makes this all the more easy to swallow.)

What about RR Cool Jay?
We like that there is actually a bit of room to argue about who deserves the role this year, if one were given to taking Ricky Romero's side of the argument. Romero had some brilliant stretches last year before he tired and started throwing everything that was supposed to be down in the zone into the dirt. His 1.93 ERA through four Fake starts seemingly augurs well for the forthcoming season, though the six walks in 14 innings (versus nine Ks) is still a bit worrisome.

(And as for the rest of the rotation? It kinda scares the shit out of us.)

Links!
It's a bit of a banner day out there for reading material about the Jays:

Firstly: Jeff Blair leaves his boyish crush on Melissa Hollingsworth aside and shows up for duty in Dunedin, leading off with a smart and fresh take on Vernon Wells. God bless Blair...With his Angry Man Tweeting routine and his long absences from the beat, we sometimes forget what a truly excellent baseball writer he is.

Next! Will Leitch, the man who somehow got us hooked on this whole "we/us" blogging voice, talks about The Manager on his blogma matter. (And gets stuff wrong, but who are we to quibble? We didn't even merit a link in his story! Screw him. We're gonna go comb back our emo bangs and start slagging him at every possible turn. Kill your idols!)

And then! Mop Up Duty has a roundtable of Blue Jays bloggers, which does not include us. (Which is mostly because we couldn't be arsed to answer an email in a timely fashion. But still.)

Opening Day, Snow Day

Even the cold, damp temperatures and snowflakes the size of big fluffy white kitties won't dampen our enthusiasm for Opening Day in the 2009 Blue Jays season.

Nor will the inundation of naysayers who are lining up to talk in funereal tones about the state of baseball in Toronto now that the team seems - to them, at least - somehow down and out before the opening bell has rung. While some writers, like the Globe's Stephen Brunt, wonder what Jays fans have to root for this year given the strength of the Red Sox, Yankees and Rays in the powerful AL East, we think this is one of the most exciting years in recent memory.

This is a transformative year for the franchise, where many of the faces that will make up the next wave of the team's successes will begin to appear on the scene. This is the year where some of drafting decisions of J.P. Ricciardi and his staff will begin to bear fruit. At the outset, we will see Travis Snider and Adam Lind installed as regulars in the lineup and Ricky Romero in the rotation. By year's end, we will see Brad Mills and Brett Cecil take their turns in the rotation, and J.P. Arencibia should get at bats in the late summer. We may also see Robert Ray, who we still have pegged as the surprise arm who will emerge this year.

Catcher Brian Jeroloman and pitcher Zach Dials will also be worth tracking throughout this season, as will be first baseman David Cooper, making the quick jump to Double-A after being drafted last year. Brad Emaus - who was essentially an anonymous low-level prospect a year ago - is a year or two away, but offers extraordinary promise for the future.

In a way, this year's team reminds us of the 1984 team, where a group of players under the age of 25 began to emerge as the team's core for the better part of the next decade: Barfield, Bell, Moseby, Fernandez, Key, Gruber. The Jays were still Canada's second best team at that point, but the blueprint for the teams that would win pennants and compete every year for the next decade was set that year.

Certainly, if you are focussed on the the short term, and the wins and losses in the next six weeks or six months, you may be disappointed by the latest incarnation of the Blue Jays. But for those of us who have been following this narrative word for word, line by line and chapter after chapter, this is an incredibly exciting time.

Now, we watch the next heroes step out of the shadows and into the limelight. And if that is not the fodder for the fondest of dreams, than what is?

Enough with the monkeyshines! Let's play some frickin' baseball!

How many Opening Days can we handle before we lose our goddamned mind?

Globe Junior MacLeod says that the weather is promising, but he didn't really say what it was promising. The Weather Channel (not to be mistaken for our own Weather Network, the former home of the Sportsnet anchorthingy Martine Gaillard) is calling for wicked gusts of wind and a chance of lightning.

Given the Blue Jays' luck over the past year, we're not sure that we want to see Alex Rios patrolling the outfield in a lightning storm, lest he end up like this guy.


Drunken Sloppy Livebloggage
The Drunk Jays Fans have reassembled to give the liveblogging another try tonight. God help them if tonight's game gets washed out, because even their herculean livers are going to start breaking down if they do three consecutive nights of considerable imbibing and considered blogging.

Let the real games begin!

So what is this...the nineteenth Opening Day of the 2008 season? Hey, we're not complaining. We're just glad that after six months of pulling stuff out of our ass, we're finally going to see some real action that really counts and that really means something.

No more "it's just Spring Training" excuses. No more speculating about who plays where and hits in what spots and who has what role in the pitching staff.

Real baseball. And six months of it to follow. Life is good.

Roy Halladay is the Quote Machine
For the first decade of his career, Doc Halladay spoke in the sort of bland platitudes that we've come to expect from athletes. But this spring, he's been outspoken about his expectations for the team's performance in 2008, and the failings of the past. Speaking on the Jays' propensity to give up wins to lesser teams, Halladay told reporters (including the G&M's Robert McLeod) "For me, that's got to change. I think any time we get a chance to win a game or beat a team, we have to take every opportunity we can to do that." Without blathering on about intensity or grit or blah-blah-blah, we're still happy to see Halladay set this sort of tone. We've felt for years that they just didn't have it in them to step on the other team's neck and boot them in the teeth when they had them down, but maybe with Doc setting this sort of tone, that will change this year.

Setting up the season with Blair
Full marks to the Globe's Jeff Blair, and his outstanding article from this weekend's edition of the paper setting up the season. Blair sets up in the article how this season will be crucial not only for the club's future, but for GM J.P. Ricciardi's future with the team, and manages to do so without the cavalcade of cheap shots and second guessing the litters the Toronto baseball media landscape.

Sign on the dotted line?
The Jays had set today as the deadline to sign Alex Rios to a long-term contract, and McLeod reports that the sides are closing to nailing down an agreement. We don't know if the contract negotiations were a distraction in the pre-season - which, remember, means nothing - but Rios' hit below the Mendoza line in the fake games, and was fortunate to have the stench of Frank Thomas' wretched spring distracting from his own subpar performance.

Meanwhile, MLBastian reports that the Jays have delayed any further negotiations on Aaron Hill's rumoured extension until the off-season. If Hill continues at the same pace he set in Spring Training (which, remember, is completely fake and means nothing), he could be in for a big payday before the 2009 season.