Scott Rolen will make you choke on your cheesesteak

Is there anything that Scott Rolen can't do?

Last night, the Greatest Blue Jay of All Time drove in the winning run (in the first inning), hit a laserbeam out to right and rounded the bases before it knocked a whole clear through the sternum of some Philly douche, and helped turn the first 1-5-4 inning-ending double play we've ever seen.

After the game, he fed the poor, healed the sick, and removed several ill-advised lower back tattoos from several young ladies before sending them home to South Jersey to reconnect with their estranged fathers.

Nice work for an evening, Hoss.

Repeating our Tweets here, for those not Twitter-inclined
So outstanding was Rolen's game last evening that it led us to make the following exclamatory tweet over on our Twitter thingy. (And if you're not following us, then...well, whatever. That's cool...your prerogative.)

"Scott Rolen es muy macho. He could BBQ and eat Troy Glaus' wife's showjumping horse, and still have room for bourbon."

(Mmmm. Tasty looking animal. Do you suppose that Rolen would go with a sweet barbecue sauce, or maybe something a little more smokey? A dry rub perhaps?)

Alex Rios is owning his moniker
We will make excuses for the Blissfully Oblivious Gazelle until we are powder blue in the face, and forgive him each and every one of his trespasses on the basepaths. But seriously: Two baserunning gaffes in as many days? It's almost as if he doesn't give a fuck.

Maybe Alex could use a day on the bench to ponder his baserunning choices, and reflect on why it is that he is prone to such mental midgetry.

Scott Richmond - The Strikeout King of Canada
Here's something fun: Take a look at ESPN's list of the top strikeout performances for this season so far, and savour the sight of Scott Richmond's name in the list alongside Roy Halladay, Justin Verlander, Jon Lester and David Price. Wicked.

Facing the Phillies lineup is a pretty scary proposition, and we worried about Richmond getting thrown to the wolves last night. But to his credit, he tossed a monster game game in the place of Halladay last night.

We're told that last night's game was on ESPN, but since Richmond is a good Canadian boy, he wouldn't be phased by such things, because we don't even know what ESPN is. But you know that Scotty gets the cold sweats every time he meets Rod Black.

Aggregating data is what we do
Almost forgot: We're going to be doing the Inside the Blue Jays posts over at Bart Given's Inside the Majors blog, and the first of them was posted yesterday.

In future posts, we'll supplement some of the data points with our trademark wit an whimsy to contextualize them. And if there's anything of obvious relevance that we're overlooking like the Gazelle running the bases, let us know.

Thanks to Bart for the opportunity to contribute. All it is going to cost him is a nice dinner at Lift with Jody. (You can tag along if you want, Bart...if you don't mind sitting at the bar. Sorry...were we not clear about that?)

Not every win is going to be pretty

Seriously, what is the point of bitching and moaning about the number of players left on base when you come from behind in the ninth and pull out an extra inning 8-3 win over the defending World Series champs and their ace pitcher?

Win pretty or win ugly...it's all pretty much the same in the end. Sure, the Jays loaded the bases a few times, only to have RR Cool Jay hacking like your drunken uncle at a family barbecue softball game. But we'll give Romero a pass given the stellar performance he put in on the mound (6 hits, 3 earned, 9 Ks and 2 walks over seven innings.)

Two hits, and now it's all sunshine and lollipops for Vernon
Okay, so Vernon Wells is still twitching in the batters box like he's auditioning for Breakin' 3: Digital Boogalee. But let's give credit where it is due: Vernon's infield hit in the ninth and some smartly aggressive baserunning were key to the Jays' comeback rally in the ninth and their go-ahead rally in the tenth.

One more thing on Wells. We were at the game in 2003 when Wells broke the Jays' single season record for hits, and it was on a swing very much like the one he took in the tenth last night: a line drive back up the middle. If Vernon is willing to back off on swinging for the fences and just look to make solid line-drive contact, we believe that he could regain some of the form that allowed him to hit more than 40 doubles and be the centerpiece of the offense again.

Accentuating the positive with Alex Rios
Before you all get your Agent Provocateurs in a twist over the Blissfully Oblivious Gazelle's baseruning gaffe by not tagging up last night on a fly ball in the eighth, can we all remember that he reached base four times last night, scored twice, drove in a run and made a nice sliding catch.

We know that people like to pile on the Gazelle because they think he's stupid or that he doesn't give a fuck, but he had a pretty great game overall last night. The Jays would not have won without his contributions, so don't piss and moan about the alternate universe where they lost last night because of him.

Scott Rolen - Still the Greatest Blue Jay of All Time
You know, whenever we watch Scott Rolen do anything, we just wanna call him "Hoss". Like, "Nice hittin' there last night, Hoss", or "Way to stick it to the douchebags with the seven-year grudge, Hoss".

A note to Scott Downs
Leave the bat on your shoulder. Thanks.

You know what rule we hate? Defensive indifference
We have no stake whatsoever in Chase Utley's numbers, but his moving to second on "defensive indifference" in the tenth last night reminded us of how much we hate that scoring quirk. Whether if he gets to second because the Jays let him or if he gets it because he beats a throw, shouldn't that still get scored a stolen base?

Intentional walks, unless we are mistaken, are still credited the same as unintentional walks, even if the other team is deliberately giving you the base and giving you everything short of an escort to the bag. If Utley took the initiative to take second because they were giving that shit away, so why shouldn't he get credited for swiping the extra bag?

Viva Las Vegas for the Pasty White Hope

We pretty much saw this coming a few weeks ago, but yesterday the Jays confirmed that they were sending Travis Snider to Triple-A Las Vegas to get his shit together.

This is likely for the best, given the fact that playing time had become increasingly sporadic for the phenom over the past few weeks. Getting three starts per week and hiding him away from lefthanders isn't any way to help Snider straighten himself out. Since his breakout series in Minnesota more than a month ago, Snider has posted a Johnny Mac-like .480 OPS, with two doubles and five RsBI. Here's hoping that with some regular plate appearances, he'll be back and better than ever.

(Side note: While no one wants to question the infinite wisdom of Cito Gaston, are we the only ones having flashbacks to the way that the skipper handled Carlos Delgado and Shawn Green in their early years?)

A final thought on the Boston series
Let's move on, shall we?

But before we move on, we'll take a moment to recall the fly ball that eluded the Blissfully Oblivious Gazelle in right field last night and bounced off the top of the towering four foot fence for a homer. And now we'll take a moment to smash our head against the corner of our desk.

There. All better. Moving on...

Tomahawk this
It's the Jays and the Braves this weekend, so dig out your 1992 upside-down Canada flag t-shirts and your Kelly Gruber Mullet Fluff Hair Spray and get ready to watch an old rivalry(?) rekindled. Roy Halladay starts tonight (not a moment too soon) versus the Braves' vaguely touted Japanese import Kenshin Kawakami.

We note that there's no local coverage (Hooray for junior hockey! Woooooo!). We will get to watch Turner's Peachtree TV broadcast tonight, which will hopefully scrub away the memory of three nights worth of Dennis Eckersley's brain farts being expelled over the air on the NESN feed.

Knuckling under in Boston

God, we hate when we get all punny with our blog post titles. We would like to think that sort of lowbrow humour is beneath us, but it's just not. We are that lame.

So what did we learn in last night's 2-1 loss to the Boston Chowderheads? We learned that when a shitty shitballing shitbird throws shitty shitballs all night long, the Jays may be in for a shitty night of shitty pop ups to the infield. By the end of the game last night, we felt like it was 1987 and we were watching Frank Tanana toss junk around, frustrating us to a point that leaves emotional scars for decades afterwards.

Although to be perfectly reasonable about this, it is still May, and there's still three-quarters of the season to go.

Breakin' it down: The Dopeness
After a shakey first two frames, Brian Tallet was nails for the next four innings, locking it down and giving the Jays the chance to work their way back into the game. Tallet went six, struck out 5 and walked two, likely keeping himself in the rotation for another two starts at the very least. Welcome back to the Summer of Tallet...

We're not sure of Cito is a genius for playing Kevin Millar last night, or if Millar is a savant for putting pretty much the only good swing on a Wakefield pitch. Let's just call them both awesome and move on...

The Beej looked alright, even with seemingly diminished velocity last night. We never saw him throw anything over 88 MPH, but his location was mostly spot on, and he worked at bats well. He looks a lot more composed on the mound, and doesn't seem to be rushing his delivery, which likely makes all the difference...

Breakin' it down: The Wackness
We're not entirely sure how Alex Rios got thrown out trying to steal on a floating knuckleball that the catcher double-clutched on, but it happened. Perhaps the Blissfully Oblivious Gazelle forgot halfway between bases that there was some urgency involved with making his way to second...

We hate to dump on Adam Lind's defense, because we can see the guy is really trying to improve, but his throw way up the line to no one in particular in the second inning was quite the brain cramp. Let's hope that Cito or Brian Butterfield can work they mystical magic on him before we get to Atlanta...

It's easy to pick on Vernon Wells' and his propensity for popping out (twice last night, along with a lazy fly and reaching on an error), but the whole team seemed to want to get under Wakefield's floaters last night. Six pop ups and seven mostly lazy flyballs later, the Jays did their bit to keep the basepaths neatly manicured and the bases pristinely white.

Breakin' it down: The Media Section
Ok, first off: What the fuck was up with TSN2 using the NESN feed? All of this scrapping over carriage on the Rogers cable system, and the CTVgm folks can't even see to it that a Canadian crew is employed to broadcast the game? How was this different than Rogers just giving the free MLB Extra Innings Preview? (Our guess is that TSN2 didn't have an HD production truck at its disposal, given TSN's hockey duties, so they decided to take the easier simulcasting route. Actually, we're pretty sure that "Take the Easier Simulcasting Route" will be the title of Ivan Fecan's forthcoming autobiography...

We were actually happy to watch the NESN broadcast, which probably has the best production quality of any local MLB broadcast. However, spending close to three hours listening to Dennis Eckersley's ridiculous meanderings just about drove us batty. Really, can we have another five minute discussion of "sneaky cheese"? It made us appreciate how good Pat Tabler has become over the past decade in the Jays' booth. Too bad we can't pair Tabby with NESN's excellent playcaller Don Orsillo...

Next Up
The lanky southpaw rookie versus the tubby washed up righty: Brett Cecil (2-0, 1.80 ERA, 1.05 WHIP, 15 Ks / 4 BBs) versus Brad Penny (3-1, 6.69 ERA, 1.68 WHIP, 20 Ks, 16 BBs).

A mother of a day for young Brett

It might be a touch presumptuous after just two starts, but we think that Brett Cecil is making a good case for the fact that we can't read too much into the pitching stats for Jays prospects in Las Vegas. After getting shelled in the high elevations and dry air of the Pacific Coast League (to the tune of a 8.31 ERA), Cecil has looked stellar in his first two starts with the Jays.

Yesterday's eight innings of five hit shut out ball (with six strikeouts versus two walks) in a 5-0 win over the A's likely complicated the Jays' decision-making process for what to do in the next week or two with the surprising surplus of arms in the rotation.

The conventional wisdom seemed to be that Robert Ray and Cecil would make their way back to Vegas to make room for Casey Janssen and Ricky Romero next week. But until Cecil demonstrates that he's not ready to pitch in the Big Leagues, we don't know how you can drop him from the roster.

Required Reading: Jon Hale's graphtacular breakdown of Cecil's first start over on the Mockingbird.

Alex Rios is a productive mess
So Cito comes out this weekend and tells the media that Alex Rios' swing is a mess. Well duuhh.

While Rios has been a bit more productive of late (including a homer and three RsBI yesterday), his swing is still all over the place, and he seems as though he's trying to pull everything. Elsewhere in the blogoweb, we've seen people suggest that the Rios doubters just STFU already about his performance. But in spite of some desirable returns from the Blissfully Oblivious Gazelle, we would make an argument along the same lines as Ghostrunner LtB's about Cito's decision making: Don't confuse the outcome with the process.

Sure, Rios is going to have good days at the plate, but if he doesn't address the problems with his swing, they will be few and far between in the long term.

Oh, yeah, about Tuesday's probable starters
Halladay versus A.J.. Are you freaking kidding me? We're going to spend the next two days in a girlish tizzy of anticipation.