Random Quik Hits

Still geeked: Off days are never fun, in part because they remind you of what life is like in the offseason. (We totally stole that sentiment from a tweet by someone yesterday.) But given all of the ridiculous fun that we all had over the weekend, maybe we needed an extra day to savour what we'd just seen and let all of the past week's happy thoughts stay with us one more day.

Bring on Boston: After pillaging their way through the top two teams in the American League, we can think of no better way for the Jays to keep the good times rolling than to have the Red Sox roll into town. With the rotation making its way back to the putative top, we're anxious to watch RickRo, Marcum and Cecil pitch like men against Boston.

The Chase for Fifth!!!1: In case you'd forgotten, we're all about the Jays catching Boston and ending the season as the AL team with the best record who didn't make the playoffs. Sure, you can scoff at this goal as underwhelming...but if the Jays sweep the Red Sox in this series, they'll sit a game back in the Chase for Fifth!!!1

J.P. Arencibia's Accent Portends Awesomeness: After hearing a few interviews with the Greatest Blue Jays Since Scott Rolen (GBSSR!!!1), most of us seemed puzzled by the odd lilt in his voice. Is he Dutch? Swedish? Some odd Cajun/Slovenian mix? As it turns out, Arencibia's folks are Cuban, and he has somewhat of a touch of Spanish to his English. But what is particularly awesome is that Arencibia is apparently fluently bilingual, and spent his first few days floating between the Anglos and Latinos in the Jays clubhouse.

We've been on this language hobby horse for a while now, and if it offends your Libertarian sensibilities to think that language skills have any importance in the workplace, then fine. Mange d'la marde, mon gros toxon. But if we're hearing that the franchise's soon-to-be primary catcher is conversant in both English and Spanish at precisely the moment where the team is looking towards international signings as their key to competing and building, then that would seem to us to be an awfully good thing. We know that grunts and hand gestures and clipped sentences whatnot might work for some, but we can't help but feel like this will be an asset to the team going forward.

Poor Fred Lew: We're not sure what's going to happen with Vernon Wells' toe (which is apparently not broken, just dislocated). But with Wells potentially out of the lineup, it seems to us that Fred Lewis might find himself parked on the bench for the next stretch. Lewis doesn't play the field well enough to sub in at centre, and we imagine that Wells' absence will mean more time for Dewayne Wise and Travis Snider in the short term.

Wait a second: As much as we've softened on him lately, why would we assume any rational action from The Manager?