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.)
Any chances we'd get to see your answers to the roundtable questions?
ReplyDeleteA reminder of why you love Blair was long overdue. He just seems like a crank now.
ReplyDeleteI dunno. It seems a bit uncouth to steal their questions.
ReplyDeletePlus, we don't like talking about The Manager. It gives us the gasses.
the VW piece did not contain any terribly interesting insights. there was no direct question about whether the Manager's nonsense about batting him in the heart of the order helped or hurt his confidence. it was the usual VW platitudes about injuries and attitude.
ReplyDeletedoes Blair even go to games anymore? since he switched to being a general columnist and started appearing on PTS i have lost a lot of respect for him as a sports commentator. his act involves a lot of whining, sentences which take forever to take shape, and stating opinion as fact.
He's a columnist. Stating opinions as fact are his stock in trade.
ReplyDeleteAnd I thought that Blair parsing through what Alex the Ant was saying was really insightful. Instead of just regurgitating it, as some of the beat writers do.
The way Marcum has cut his beard makes his neck look enormous. Beard fail.
ReplyDeleteAgreed, definite beard fail. I will ask that all further references use Shaun 'The Bullfrog' Marcum.
ReplyDeleteDid you just say augurs?
ReplyDeleteI hate spelling that word, because I always get the wrong spelling. Auto Correct has made me stupid.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I'm pretty sure that I got this one right.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/augur
Wells is so going to rake.
ReplyDelete