37 Jays - Recasting Brett Cecil

Who: Brett Aarion Cecil. Sport goggle aficionado. Left-handed pitcher, most recently in a relief role. Six-foot-one, with a weight listed at 215 pounds, though that is a moving target. Jersey number 27, age 26.

Provenance: Dunkirk, Maryland. Selected with the 38th pick overall of the 2007 amateur draft by the Blue Jays out of the University of Maryland. Made his major league debut less than two years later, on May 5, 2009.

Contract Status: No contract signed for 2013 as of yet. Is out of minor league options. First year of arbitration eligibility is next season.

Back of the Baseball Card: 4.79 ERA in 451.0 innings pitched over four seasons and 87 games, including 74 starts.  Struck out 16.6 % of batters (6.47 per nine)  and walked 8.1 % (3.13).

2012 Stats: Pitched 21 games for the Blue Jays, including nine starts. Posted a 5.71 ERA, striking out 18.9 % of batters (7.48 per nine) and walked 8.5 % (3.38). In 15 starts between Double-A New Hampshire and Triple-A Las Vegas, posted a 2.95 ERA in 82.1 innings with 67 strikeouts and 21 walks.  

2012 Repertoire, as per Brooks Baseball: Four seam fastball (33%, 89.8 MPH average); Curve (22%, 79.3 MPH). Cutter (14%, 85.7 MPH); Changeup (14%, 82.5 MPH); Sinker (11%, 88.5 MPH); Slider (5%, 82.2 MPH).

Recent Injury History: Nursed a groin injury for two months of 2012 in the minors. Injured pitching hand cleaning a blender in 2011. Had a case of the dead arm in late 2010.

Looking Back: There are few players who are more confusing to evaluate than Cecil. For a few moments, Cecil was the Jays' best pitching prospect, and seemed to solidify a role in the rotation after a solid 2010 season: 4.22 ERA, 117 Ks and 54 BBs in 172.2 innings...and a 15-7, if that's your style.

If you were paying attention closely in the final months of the 2010 season, though, there were signs of the struggles that were to come. Cecil was shelved for a week with arm fatigue, and saw his fastball velocity drop off by a couple of miles per hour. In the moment, you could have written it off as a typical late season lag, but in the ensuing two years, that velocity never really returned.

With less heat behind his pitches, Cecil's homer-to-flyball ratio exploded from a very respectable 8.7% to 13.3% in 2011 and 14.5% in 2012. Couple this with a simultaneous rise in his fly ball rate - perhaps as a result of a less effective sinker? - and you see a rapid decline from a pitcher with peripherals that were tenuously those of a major league starter.

Towards the end of 2012, Cecil re-emerged in a return to the bullpen. With less of a workload per outing, Cecil seemingly felt free to let fly in his short stints, and his fastball velocity in September popped back up above 92 MPH.   

One other odd note about Cecil in 2012: He has seemingly abandoned his slider, choosing to go with a curveball as his breaking pitch of choice. Throughout his emergence through the Jays' system, Cecil's slider was always the breaking pitch that was mentioned in the shorthand analyses of his arsenal, but by September of last season, he had seemingly stripped it out of his game, tossing the pitch just three times in 12 appearances at the end of last year.

Looking Ahead: A closer in college, the Jays spent much of the past five years stretching him out to make use of his expansive repertoire. Now, his best hopes to stick on the big league roster - and indeed, with the organization - come as he shifts back to the bullpen.

The Jays find themselves in a position where they have a fair bit of left-handed pitching that can step into the big league club's bullpen. In the pecking order of bullpen southpaws, Cecil will enter the season behind Darren Oliver and slightly ahead of Aaron Loup based on the latter having options remaining. Later in the season, Luis Perez will re-enter this crowded situation if his recovery from a July 2012 Tommy John procedure is successful.

Given that competition, Cecil will need to be something more than a middling middle-reliever to retain his spot on the roster.

Pessimistically: Cecil's homer rates continue to rise, and he shifts to the back of a smaller bullpen. And when you start to back yourself out on a plank like that, it isn't long before you realize suddenly how short it really is.

Optimistically: A more focused approach and the return of some velocity makes Cecil a reliable option to quell mid-game rallies. Pitches well enough to get a nice deal to buy out a few arbitration years.

Brett Cecil and Other Season's Eve Busy Business

A few quick thoughts and whims on what has been a busy final day of the rehearsal schedule.

As recently this morning, we settled on the notion that we'd blown up yesterday's bad start by Brett Cecil into something way larger than it actually was. Shows what we know.

Though we spouted off yesterday on Twitter about his impending demotion, a more moderate and rational quadrant of our brain assured us he would start the year in the rotation with the Jays. Those nefarious, prevaricating synapses told us: "Sure, he's messed up and throwing slop, but the Jays' brass will do their best with him in the early weeks, and be quick to pull him if necessary, but he'll stick." Stupid brain.

Cecil's demotion speaks to the importance of a deep pitching staff. Through the winter, he was pegged to settle in as the number three pitcher behind Ricky Romero and Brandon Morrow, but it doesn't take a huge drop off for a mid-rotation starter to turn into a below-replacement arm. Thankfully, the Jays have a system full of emergency options that they'll be able to untilize should the need arise.

A question that popped up on Twitter in the midst of this news -- and much credit is due to John Lott of the National Post and Shi Davidi of Sportsnet for getting the news out quickly -- is whether the Jays should have looked at an "innings-eater" like Gavin Floyd or Joe Blanton to pick up the slack. It wouldn't surprise us if Jays GM Alex Anthopoulos has something brewing in the background, in case something else falls off. But given their limited need for a fifth starter to begin the season, plugging the hole with Joel Carreno and giving a big league roster spot to Kyle Drabek seems like the smartest solution.

And in passing: How many of us would have picked Drabek and Carreno over Cecil and McGowan just two weeks ago?

A larger question going forward will be: What does this mean for Cecil down the line? Given that this is the third season in a row in which he's needed to reset himself and find confidence by pitching in the minors, the dreams of him being a front end start are probably beginning to fade. The argument for keeping him out of the bullpen -- anyone remember the "Cecil for closer" movement from three years ago? -- was that he had too many pitches and too much value as a starter. But with the number of starters who will push their way into the picture this year and next, it wouldn't hurt the Jays to consider limiting Cecil's repertoire and reworking his role into a bullpen lefty. Because Darren Oliver can't pitch forever.

Welcome Back Joel: As for Carreno, we couldn't be happier with the Jays' decision to make him the early season starter. His minor league strikeout and walk rates (9.7 and 2.9 respectively) have intrigued us for a couple of years, and his 15 inning audition last season (14 Ks, four BBs, two earned runs in 15.1 innings) only further whetted our appetite. His fastball (90-92 MPH) has nice life to it, and he keeps the ball down in the zone, just where we like it. We were hopeful that he could make his way back to the Majors sooner rather than later, so his re-promotion was in some ways the bigger story for us.

One Last Piece: It seems that the Jays will have to find something to do with Luis Valbuena by tonight, as he is out of options, but not likely to make the team barring an injury today. Valbuena didn't manage any better than a .544 OPS in the spring, and wouldn't seem to be enough of an asset to garner anything in return.

Our best guess is that he either slips through waivers, or gets picked up by someone needing a biped with a pulse, and we never think of him again.

One Last Promo: It's almost time for it to disappear from the shelves, so if you haven't read our piece on Kyle Drabek in the Sportsnet Magazine season preview, do us a solid and go pick yourself up a copy. There's 15 pages of Blue Jays preview mumbo-jumbo, including stories from Arden Zwelling, Shi Davidi, Mike Wilner, and some up-and-comer named Brunt. It's worthy of your perusal.

A Better Back End

We’re greeted this April Fool’s Day by the entirely unsurprising news that Dustin McGowan, sidelined with plantar fasciitis, isn’t expected to be back in action until late April at the earliest, and that his recovery might stretch into May. Everyone put down those ballots for Comeback Player of the Year, and put the caps back on your Sharpie markers, please. This race is still wide open.

I feel awful for Dustin McGowan. The good news, of course, is that this isn’t an arm, shoulder or knee problem, but any setback at this point for the oft-injured pitcher inevitably raises questions about his ability to ever stay healthy for an extended period, and about the contract extension the team agreed to give him during the latter part of Spring Training.

There are still 29 players on the 25-man roster at the time of writing, including McGowan and Jesse Litsch, both of whom will be starting the season on the Disabled List. This is where things get interesting on the back end of the rotation. Kyle Drabek and Aaron Laffey have been, we’re told, in a battle for the final spot that would have been McGowan’s. Drabek would be my pick simply based on upside – an upside that, if even close to realized in the early part of the season, would make for some tough roster decisions when a healthy McGowan is available.

Imagine for a moment a world in which Kyle Drabek, even in limited action in April (since the need for a fifth starter appears scarce), pitches excellent big-league innings. Maybe seven strikeouts per nine, some semblance of control, some knee-buckling curveballs – the sort of performance that makes you want to see more. Can you give him more, if you’re John Farrell and Alex Anthopoulos? Can you, with a newly-extended, now-healthy McGowan coming back on the roster, let Drabek stay with the big club? And if the answer is yes, how do you go about it?

This gets even more complicated if Drabek were to out-pitch Brett Cecil, currently penciled into the rotation alongside Ricky Romero, Brandon Morrow, and Henderson Alvarez. In that scenario, the options issue enters the equation: both Cecil and Drabek have options remaining, McGowan does not.

Gaming this hypothetical scenario out even further, a resurgent Drabek would force a decision on either a healthy McGowan or a less effective Cecil. This, given the ability to burn an option on Cecil and an already crowded bullpen, becomes not a terribly difficult decision at all. It would surprise me very little to see Brett Cecil in a Las Vegas 51s uniform before the end of May. (Well, I wouldn’t see it for myself, unless someone wants to take me a sweet road trip and pay for it.)

Even highly hypothetical scenarios like this turn Cecil into Exhibit A of the wisdom of accumulating high-ceiling young arms in a team’s system. Cecil was formerly ranked among the top prospects for the organization, back at a time when the organization as a whole was not thought to be all that strong. The Brett Cecil of three years ago probably doesn’t crack the top five pitching prospects at various levels of the Blue Jays’ minor league system that exist today. Sure, Cecil has put in reasonably effective big-league time, which you can’t say about Noah Syndergaard, Justin Nicolino, Daniel Norris or Drew Hutchison. But he’d be behind those guys now.

Now, it probably sounds to you like I’m terribly down on Cecil, but I’m not. I also don’t think Brett Cecil is by any means on the outs with the Blue Jays. He’s just become a different kind of asset for the club than he was when he was first coming up, because the other assets now in place are so much better. In a nutshell, this is exactly what I think Alex Anthopoulos set out to achieve when he took over the organization and set to re-stock it: healthy competition from high-ceiling athletes at all positions, pushing hard against a much stronger core at the major league level for playing time.

If Brett Cecil makes 30 starts for the Jays this year, it will likely either be because of trades and/or health issues with other pitchers, or because the arms pushing against him for a spot didn’t quite reach that ceiling the organization expects – yet. But they’ll still be there, creating tougher, more intense competition, next spring and the ones after that.

30 Jays in 30 Days - On the Velocity and Mass of Brett Cecil

Who: Brett Cecil, No. 27. Left-handed starting pitcher. 6’1”, 215 LBS, down from 250 last season. 25 years old.

Provenance: Dunkirk, Maryland. Drafted by the Blue Jays in the first round (supplemental) of the 2007 draft out of the University of Maryland. Go Terps.

Contract Status: Resigned for one year by the Jays in the offseason. Arbitration eligible after this season.

2011 Stats: 4.73 ERA, 1.326 WHIP, 87 strikeouts and 42 walks in 123.2 innings over 20 starts with the Blue Jays.

Career Stats: 4.64 ERA in 66 games (65 starts) over three seasons with the Jays. 6.3 K/9, 3.1 BB/9, 1.40 WHIP in 389.2 innings.

Looking Back: It feels as though we’ve spent much of the past 18 months treating Brett Cecil as some sort of riddle, wrapped in an enigma and smothered in secret sauce. How could the 15-game winner (most on the Jays!) in 2010 devolve into a 4-11 pitcher in the space of one year?

And yet, if you cast your eyes down his stat line a bit, you start to see that Brett Cecil’s last two seasons have more in common than the win-loss record would lead you to believe. (Which is why we never talk about pitcher win-loss records, and why you should pay them little mind. But we digress.)

Cecil’s WHIP in 2010 and 2011 was the exact same at 1.326. His K/9 rate was 6.1 in 2010 and 6.3 in 2011. His BB/9 was 2.8 in 2010 and 3.1 in 2011. The differences are hardly earth-shattering. The numbers that stand out when comparing the two seasons are those that show hitters getting balls in the air off the Jays’ lefty. His flyball rate bumped up from 38.2% to 43.5%, and his HR/9 rate spiked from 0.9 to 1.6.

Plucking from our memory we’d explain the added loft by noting the trouble Cecil had keeping the ball down in the zone last year. His delivery seemed to be a constant work in progress, especially after he showed up to spring training with a couple of miles per hour missing from all of his pitches. He’s gone from a pitcher who touches the low 90’s and averaged 90.7 M.P.H. in his 2009 debut to averaging 88.5 M.P.H. last season.

Looking Forward: Funny how one year later, we’re all still waiting for Cecil’s velocity to return.

Anyone who is live-tweeting the games from Florida is questioned almost immediately from Jays fans as to the speed that Cecil is showing in any given game. There ought to be a hashtag for that: #CecilRadarGunWatch? #WhatsTheVelocityCecil?

Through his ascent through the system, there was talk of Cecil being a power lefty, and even the odd musing about his ability to close games. But the reports back so far would seem to indicate that Cecil has become a pitcher for whom the 90’s will be just out of reach for his fastball. If Cecil is going to succeed, he’ll have to do it with guile and control, and better location on his pitches.

Cecil’s off-season weight-loss is supposed to help him finish through his delivery, and keep the ball down in the zone. Apparently, love handles and puffy midsections impede your ability to keep a downward angle on your pitches, which means that we’d probably be launching everything over the backstop at this point. Again, apologies for the further digression.

2012 Expectations: It’s not inconceivable that Cecil could find a way to take his arsenal of pitches and carve out a decent season for himself, though the Jays will likely look to him to eat innings and carry his starts through and beyond the sixth inning this season. If his newly svelte figure truly helps him keep the ball down in the zone, we could see a season closer to his 2010 performance. Not exactly the stuff that puts you over the top in the AL East, but a very useful arm at the back of the rotation.

Instant Upgrades

There’s a very specific feeling I get whenever the Red Sox or the Yankees make major player acquisitions to improve their respective teams. It’s something close to pure viciousness in its ugliest form. I have friends who are Red Sox and/or Yankee fans, and in these instances my feelings toward them move beyond mere annoyance, into the realm of wanting to swing heavy blunt objects into the hoods of their cars.

Eventually I calm down, of course. Even though I’ve learned that life is one crushing defeat after another until you just wish Flanders was dead, it’s hardly worth losing sleep over something as inconsequential as baseball.

I was at a function on Friday night (ed: Oh, la-dee-da, a “function”? Hope you didn’t spill any wine spritzer on your good Metallica t-shirt), so my Twitter obsession had to take a back seat to making small talk and eating while standing for a couple hours. When I got a chance to catch up, that old familiar feeling was there waiting for me. The New York Yankees had acquired potential perennial star pitcher Michael Pineda from the Seattle Mariners, and then they went out and signed another more than serviceable arm in free agent starter Hiroki Kuroda.

Instantly, the already-toughest team in the AL East got even tougher, going from a rotation that was going to consist of CC Sabathia and no small amount of hope to one that is likely to make life pretty difficult for opponents at least 80% of the time.

Once I worked through my usual stages of rage, frustration, and resignation, I got to thinking less about how brutal it might be in 2012 for the Blue Jays to face the Yankees, and more about how the Blue Jays themselves could make a similar instant upgrade to the rotation.

If we’re to believe the scuttlebutt, Alex Anthopoulos has been burning up the phone lines in search of another reliable starting pitcher to slot in among Ricky Romero and Brandon Morrow for 2012, and perhaps beyond. And we all know what 2011’s rotation looked like apart from those two. Yes, we saw the emergence of a potential contributor in Henderson Alvarez and the feel-good story of Dustin McGowan’s return near the end of the year, but we also saw backward steps from Brett Cecil and Kyle Drabek; 110 forgettable, negative WAR innings from Jo Jo Reyes; and a selection of bullpen fill-ins and minor league call-ups rounding things out.

One can easily understand AA’s apparent eagerness to acquire an arm with more staying power, like a Mat Latos or Matt Garza. I have a certain amount of support for the idea myself, but I don’t think it will be catastrophic if it doesn’t happen before the start of the season – precisely because those remaining in-house options represent a certain amount of opportunity.

I’m not betting on all of Brett Cecil, Kyle Drabek and Dustin McGowan to step into 2012 and make big impacts. But a really oversimplified (and probably incorrect) way of looking at it is that there’s a 33.3333% chance that one of them will. A resurgent McGowan/Drabek/Cecil would mean a great deal to this team. If one out of the three were to somehow become a consistent, 2-3 WAR pitcher in 2012 (coupled with a decent full season from Alvarez and no unpleasant surprises from Romero and Morrow), the team would suddenly have four pretty nice options out of five in the rotation.

It might sound like a stretch, but Cecil put up 2.6 fWAR in 172.2 innings in 2010 before last year’s regression. McGowan, in his last mostly-healthy season in 2007, put up 3.9 fWAR in 169.2 innings, which was right there with Felix Hernandez (4.1 fWAR in 2007), Justin Verlander (also 4.1), and Cole Hamels (3.8) – all of whom pitched more innings than him. Even in 2008, he put up 2.3 fWAR in 111.1 innings. And that’s not to discount Drabek, who was one of baseball’s most highly regarded prospects for a very good reason.

If two of them were to ascend (or re-ascend) to such levels, well, in the words of the immortal Carl Weathers, baby, you got a stew goin’.
It would create the type of major-league rotation depth that most teams simply don’t have, and if they do, it’s not matched by the kind of pitching prospect depth that the Jays have also built – the kind that AA has been hesitant to part with in rumoured trades this offseason.

With this in mind, missing out on the acquisition of a starter in the off-season begins to concern me less, because it’s become apparent that AA sees mid-season and specifically the trade deadline as the time when the true impact deals can be made in his situation. He’s consistently thrown aside the notion that only “contenders” can improve when the market heats up mid-summer.

With hoarded pitching depth from which to deal at the deadline, AA’s hand would be even stronger, his flexibility and leverage greater, and the available arms to acquire possibly even more plentiful.

Brett Cecil's New Normal

For some reason, I’ve been thinking about Brett Cecil lately (though perhaps not as much as some have in the past). More specifically, I’ve been thinking about what exactly could have happened to him through Spring Training and most of the early part of the season last year.

In March of last year, he told the National Post’s John Lott that his fastball was averaging about 87 miles per hour, although, according to him, “Everybody knows (he) can throw in the low 90s.”

The diminished velocity, and all-around lack of effectiveness, was well-documented. It got him sent to Vegas, and led to him putting up numbers that were a clear step backward from his previous season. There was a time when smarter people than me would have taken Cecil over Ricky Romero (Keith Law says as much in this chat from only two years ago) . The whole episode makes me wonder how many would do it today.

Lots of theories have been put forward about Cecil’s 2010 issues, from a possible undiagnosed injury, to a mysterious dead-arm problem, to a mechanical issue in his delivery that needed to be fixed.

But one other theory has stuck with me. I don’t even remember where I saw or read it, and it might have only been just one time in a comment section somewhere, but I found myself nodding along with the idea – having been through it myself and seeing the effects in had on my own day-to-day activities.

The theory: Brett Cecil had lost either his conditioning, or his focus, or both, as a result of spending more time last off-season occupied with his new baby.

Absurd, right? I mean, it’s not like Cecil was the first player in history to be a parent. Plenty of ballplayers have plenty of kids (some of them will even admit to being their fathers… hey-o!). I don’t know if any of them ever saw an impact, positive or negative, on their baseball performance.

But anyone that has ever gone through the experience of having a baby in their life for the first time knows that it has an effect. If you’re one of those parents who claims that it never fazed them in the least and your work output never once changed except for the better, then I’m prepared to call you a big fat liar.

When the Org Kids came along, I was pretty much a disaster for a good nine or ten months after each of their births. When you’re a new parent, you don’t sleep at night. You don’t eat properly. You don’t have time to work out.

And you can’t wait to get back home from whatever’s taken you away from those kids to go through more of it.

Cecil at one time had a Twitter account, and his followers got to see just how excited he was to be a new father. There is little doubt that the guy is a committed, doting dad and husband. I followed him, and even though he’s younger than me, I could seriously relate to things he was expressing about his life and growing family.

But even the most enthusiastic and energetic new parents need to re-invent their entire routines around the kids, and inevitably, things get dropped out of the old routines. I don’t know everything there is to know about a left-handed pitcher’s offseason training regimen, but I could certainly envision myself eliminating the 6AM run from the daily calendar if I’d been up four times during the night to calm a crying baby. But eventually, you figure it out. Your life never gets back to the way it was, but a “new normal” sets in and the upheaval subsides – mostly.

I don’t know; maybe it’s a bullshit theory and Cecil never missed a beat in terms of conditioning or focus. Maybe the things that more-or-less suddenly troubled him last spring were as mysterious as they seemed. Baseball is a weird game that way.

Besides, it’s not like there’s any way to find out if the new-parent theory is true. I certainly would never expect a major league baseball player to tell a beat reporter that the reason he couldn’t pick up the spin on a breaking ball out of the pitcher’s hand that day was because he was awake all night washing puke out of his baby’s crib blankets.

All I’m saying is I’m prepared to cut Cecil a break if being a new dad took a toll on him that he wasn’t quite ready to deal with or admit. If he’s like the rest of us, once his new normal is established, chances are he’ll be better than ever.

An Ode to Brett Cecil's Thighs

O! Thighs of Brett Cecil! Mighty stanchions of our hero!
Thou art both rigid and pliable,
Providing both a sound, supportive base,
And dynamic energy for the day's errand.

Pat Tabler might be tempted to say
That thou art "So strong".
(Though such a thing is so often offered forth by the Blonde Banterer
As to be utterly inconsequential.)

Rather, perhaps, thoust are unwavering,
Or unyielding, (though perhaps only somewhat yielding,
What with that one night in Fresno, in which so much was yielded.)

No matter! Thou art true and constant,
Serving as the very base of the man,
Who is occasionally derelict
In his use of your generous capacity for virtuous brawn.

(Because he, who tends to you with squats and lifts -
And all manner of calisthenic -
Will often neglect you, and show undue favour towards
Dubious shoulder, or enigmatic arm.)

Dost he not recognize the folly of merely standing on magnificent pillars,
Using them primarily as a pivot,
When the authoritative brawn within those bedrock limbs
Is the very footing of his future prosperity?

Thighs of Brett Cecil: We implore you
To remain stalwart, staunch and stout.
Hoist the full heft of the man with resolute conviction,
And provide him with the robust mechanism
To once again gleam like a gem
On this, the preeminent pitching plane.

High Five! Tiny Morsels for Your Friday

If brevity be the soul of wit, then blog on, bloggerman!

1) Jo-Jo Reyes is your number two starter: Okay, that's a stretch, but amongst the regular starters, his ERA+ ranks only behind Ricky Romero. (And Carlos Villaneuva, whose awesomeness probably deserves its own bullet point.) Our point here is not to hype Jo-Jo into something that he's not (which was our pre-season mistake), but merely to underscore that a guy who was about to be run out of town two weeks ago ("useless", "waste of a roster spot") is now a guy who the team will depend upon to give them quality innings for the next few months. Beacuse...

2) Kyle Drabek is wild man! WILD!: Drabek has walked more batters than he's struck out (45 to 43). Yikes. And if you want to double down on your worries, listen to Keith Law on the June 2nd edition of the Baseball Today podcast, wherein he wonders if this sort of lack of command indicates some form of injury. (Our two cents is that we think Drabek might have been able to get Double-A hitters to swing at hard stuff out of the zone more so than big leaguers. That's what passes for positivism around here.) Also, KLaw quite rightly questions John Farrell's handling of Drabek in that inning by not letting him extricate himself from the mess he'd made, given that it's part of the learning process.

Does Drabek's recent struggles mean he should go back to the minors and put in some time against Triple-A pitchers? It might work out well, considering...

3) Brett Cecil's wife thinks Brett Cecil is ready for promotion: We tend not to monitor the Twitter accounts of Jays' wives and girly-girls, because we're already creepy enough. But we couldn't help but notice the retweets of Jennifer Cecil's timeline from last night, as her fella tossed a complete game, six-hitter as the Las Vegas 51's won 4-1. The one run was on a homer which Mrs. Cecil assures us would have been a double in Toronto, and she noted that he was touching 94 MPH and regularly hitting 91. Take that as you will. Perhaps if Cecil were to be recalled, he could share a cab with...

4) Gordie Dougie!: For all of the pissing and moaning we've done in pushing back on the many fans who were calling for his immediate integration into the MLB roster, we'll confess to being as excited as any of you now that the recall is imminent. The power-speed-contact-discipline numbers that we've seen from Lawrie in the past month are enough to make even us, Your Scolding Auntie, trip over our knickers in anticipation. And won't he look splendid lining up next to...

5) AL All-Star Shortstop Yunel Escobar!: Actually, June-Yell is going to be in tough when it comes to making an appearance in this year's game, given the extraordinary seasons of other AL shortstops. Even with the pretty nice start that Escobar has put up, he's still in a three-way tie for fourth amongst AL SS's in fWAR. (Though Erick Aybar's and Elvis Andrus' 1.7 fWARs are fuelled mostly by stolen bases, and we suppose that you could start to pick apart what value should be placed on SBs if you were so inclined. We'll say that we LIKE the fact that Yunel has only one stolen base this year. So there. SMALL BALL SUCKS!)

All this to say (wtf happened to all the brevity we promised), if you want Yunel to make the All-Star roster ahead of The Shell of Derek Jeter, Alexei Ramirez or Asdrubal Cabrerra, you might have to buckle down and find the time to get your 25 votes in for our boy in the middle infield.

And don't go to sleep on José Bautista either! You remember how that hot girl on American Idol got voted off because no one thought she needed their votes, and then the creepy country kid with the head tilting won? Don't let that happen to the One Man Gang!

Have a great weekend!

Take Away Thoughts from the First Weekend

Before we start picking through the minutiae, indulge for this moment: Good gravy it was lovely to see baseball this weekend. Sure, we can spend six months musing on hypotheticals and theory, but there's nothing quite like real games that matter.

(And make no mistake: There are 159 games left, but the margin for error for an American League East team is so small that the "meaningful" games start early on in the season.)

With that said, here are a few thoughts on the weekend.

The Crowds, For Better, For Worse: Mostly, we should be saluting the strong crowds throughout the weekend. Bringing in more than 110,000 spectators for the first three games shows that there is a renewed interest in the team amongst some of the more casual fans. So bully for us.

Now, about the bad shit: When you pack the house on a Friday-Night-Opening-Night, you're certain to attract a some number of hooligans and ne'er-do-wells, as has happened before. Friday night's game was not nearly the complete shit show that the 2008 opener devolved into, with just one (apparently highly-entertaining) girl fight breaking out. Still, the Jays' in-game promotion department should probably settle on the fact that they can't just hand potential projectiles to the Opening Day crowd.

No one was in any particular danger - which only facilitates the thought process for the idiot goons who get their kicks out of throwing shit on the field - but the delays are a pain in the ass, and senseless.

Final thought on the crowds: Blue Jays crowds tend not to be terribly raucous, and that's okay, frankly. Yes, the echoes of silence in the closed Dome can create some uneasiness. But that's just who we are. And if it bothers you enough, then let yourself become the SuperFan that you wish for. (But try to be more interesting than the guys who scream: "You suck!" all game long.)

It's really just a shame that with the extraordinary upside that this team has, the crowds have chosen to reserve their most vocal moments for booing one of their own players. Which brings us to...

Good Edwin, Bad Edwin: Make three errors in two games, and suddenly every thinks you're a terrible player.

(Okay, maybe not so suddenly.)

Yes, we're a bit of an apologist for Edwin Encarnacion, so take this for what you will: We actually liked his game this weekend, especially his newfound speed out of the box. EE twice reached on errors this weekend, but they were errors that he helped to create by getting out of the box and down the line quickly.

As for the errors: The short hop on Friday was a tough play with which he tried to do too much, while the liner on Sunday was another difficult (though makeable) play. But let's not run him out of town like Larry Murphy based on three bad moments. (And by the way: Booing him out of town isn't going to speed the process of getting Brett Lawrie to Toronto. So shut that shit down right here and now.)

Pitching Dopeness, Pitching Wackness: Friday's start by Ricky Romero and Staurday's outing from Kyle Drabek were remarkably fine-tuned performances for the beginning of the season. Both changed speeds and locations well, and kept the Stars-and-Scrubs lineup of the Twins in check for the first two days.

And if it were still the fourth inning on Sunday, we could have roped Bret Cecil into that same group. Except that Cecil began letting the ball sail up in the zone, his tragic flaw.

It seems to us as though there's something askew with Cecil's foot plant, or it could be that when he gets into this trouble, he is too upright and never quite gets his body driving on a downward plane towards home. (Pappy Walton and Pat Hentgen would probably punch us in the face for talking about stuff that we don't really know. But we'll stand by this.)

(And by the way: More interesting, graphically astute analysis of the weekend starts by Drabek and Cecil can be found over at Ghostrunner on First.)

Surprising Mancrushes: Watching two games of Mike McCoy in centre for an ailing Rajai Davis, we were actually pretty impressed with his ability to field the position. (We sat in the centrefield seats on Saturday, and spent a lot of time observing the outfielders' positioning. And while Kyle Drabek's mastery meant that it wasn't a busy day, we appreciated some of the heads up play that we saw.) McCoy may not get more than 100 ABs this year, but as a guy who can cover off the middle of the diamond defensively, there's some value to him as organizational depth.

The Leader Leads through Leading Leadership: It's hard to criticize José Bautista, especially given the quick start to his season. Still, we watched him this weekend, and he seems to have taken his role as a leader on the team very, very seriously. It seemed as though he never stopped talking to teammates (this chatterbox nature might be why Alex Anthopoulos has bonded with him).

Given that there was plenty of complaining about the lack of active leadership in the clubhouse over the past decade, we're willing to go along with JoBau's chatty routine. As long as everyone is happy to listen, then this is great, we suppose. But it is a fine line between talking TO your teammates and talking AT your teammates.

(Why am I complaining about this?)

Other Stuff, Quickly, with Ellipses: The Saturday and Sunday lineups were not necessarily what we'd have used, but at least Farrell is willing to mix it up a bit...Not that we expected much from Juan Rivera, but even at that, he has been pretty lifeless so far...Loved the path to the ground balls that Snider took on Sunday to throw out one runner and hold the other. Saved two runs, and he looks swift tracking down balls as well...We can make the argument as to why Lind was right to jump on the first pitch (presumed to be a fastball strike, except that it was a breaking ball low) from Joe Nathan with the bases painstakingly loaded in the ninth, but it would probably sound like contrariness for sport.

Up Next: The Athletics. And The Summer of Jo-Jo begins in earnest.

Brett Cecil won't be ignored

So we're gallivanting around Niagara-on-the-Lake this weekend, hitting various and sundry wineries along the way, when one of our companions points out to us that "Brett Cecil had to be the quietest 15-game winner" he'd ever come across.

Being the cordial type that we are, we went along with the line of discussion. Actually, we didn't. We got all snooty and all "pfftt, wins are a stupid stat" and then tried to demonstrate our baseball acumen to a minivan full of mostly indifferent (though vaguely tolerant) wine drinkers.

But when the vino cloud pushed on and we had some time to think about it, there was something to what he was saying. If you'd asked us on the spot that day what Brett Cecil's record was last year, we would have figured 11-9, or 12-10, rather than the 15-7 that he actually posted. And while his won-loss is likely a bad way of gauging his worth, our teachable moment here was that we'd almost completely neglected our bespectacled hero when we considered the 2011 campaign.

Mostly, we've been focused on seeing Brandon Morrow emerge into something of otherworldly splendor, or seeing Ricky Romero become a wiser and wicked dealer at the top of the rotation. We also pictured Kyle Drabek's emergence, and the battle for the fifth spot in the rotation, which would be won by someone so deserving (Zach Stewart) that they'd dazzle and amaze.

But Cecil? The dude who had us writing love poems to his thighs and they power they generated in his delivery? The dude who dazzled us with his ability to pitch blind (or at least without his glasses)? We'd pretty much put him in the corner. (And pause for you all to shout out the obvious Dirty Dancing punchline here.)

Looking at the more interesting numbers from last year, it stands to reason that Cecil would come into the year as the number three starter. His FIP of 4.03 ranked him behind Morrow (3.16) and RickRo (3.64), and puts him in a neighbourhood of pitchers such as Jonathan Sanchez, Tim Hudson and Carl Pavano. Which isn't bad, but wouldn't be your ace-type pitcher if you played in a real man's division of professional baseball.

Meanwhile, Cecil's K/9 of 6.10 was too low for us to start thinking about his impending world domination, though his low walk rate (2.81 per nine) outshone Romero's (3.51) and Morrow's (4.06), and keeping free runners of the basepaths is no small measure of future success. Cecil also did a decent job last year of keeping the ball on the ground (44.2% groundballs) while having the lowest percentage of line drives hit off him of those three returning starters (17.6%).

We're droning on here, and we can sense your eyes glazing over like Ban roll-on dispensers. But to sum up quickly, our point is that Brett Cecil will probably end up as the third-best pitcher in the rotation after all is said and done this year, but that's not a bad spot to end up. Cecil is still just 24 years old, and the youngest amongst the top three returning starters. He's also younger, than Rzep, Jesse Litsch, Brad Mills, Bobby Ray and Jo-Jo Reyes for that matter, and just a year and five months older than Drabek. So there's still plenty of upside to anticipate from him, and every possibility that he emerges into a top of the rotation arm within the next two seasons.

A storybook weekend

We'll confess to be a little overly obsessed with "the narrative": The ongoing story of the Blue Jays, which is written page by chapter by volume as every game, series, and season goes by.

The narrative, of course, is really only clear in retrospect, and a large part of what we spend our days doing around this blog is an attempt to anticipate or divine what the moment we're immersed in presently is going to mean for us a week or a month or a year onwards. Is this a turning point? Is this the moment we recall where the team's fortunes changed? Is it merely a spectacular moment, or is it something more?

We're not so bold as to assume that we know what this past weekend - and indeed, the entire week of series wins against the Yankees and Rays - really will mean in the grander context, years down the road. Maybe it doesn't need to mean anything at all, and we should all just savour the moment.

But how can you try to be measured and rational after performances like those? We can't remember the last time that we were so giddy from watching our team. From the brilliant Friday start from Brett Cecil, Saturday's otherworldly debut from J.P. Arencibia and Brandon Morrow's nearly perfect Sunday, it felt really great to be a Blue Jays fan this weekend.

You should celebrate the other J.P., too
In the midst of Arencibia's brilliant Saturday, a number of hacks felt the need to make an obvious joke at the expense of the former general manager: "You love this J.P.! You hate that J.P.! Ho ho!"

And yet, as we looked around this weekend, we saw a team whose foundations were laid by J.P. Ricciardi: Arencibia, Snider, Hill, Lind, Cecil, Romero, and Marcum were all drafted by the former GM, while Bautista, Overbay, Downs and Frasor were all acquired by him along the way.

We don't doubt that it was time to move on, and we think that Alex Anthopoulos has done some very smart things which would not have been undertaken by Ricciardi. But as this team starts to turn itself around much more quickly than many imagined, keep in mind that the team and its farm system were left in fairly good stead by the former GM.

Cleveland? What? Were we in Cleveland?

We choose to ignore anything else that happened in the past week that might have led to us losing faith and our team ending up at .500. That didn't happen. It was all a bad dream, filled with crappy fielding and no hitting.

Instead, we'll rejoice at the fact that the Jays could pull off a win against the once-again mighty Yankees, and that Brett Cecil dominated by throwing the ball where no one could hit it. (To the tune of five walks, and six strikeouts.) And what could possibly be concerning about that?

Weekends!!!1 Playoffs!!!1 Above .500!!!1

Happy Canada weekend kids.

Aww, crap. Update that we don't want to give right now...
Shaun Marcum is headed to the 15-day DL with elbow shittiness. We're going back to drinking, and forgetting that this might be a bad thing. We'll let the Ack clean this up, if he's so inclined.

Clip and save: A reusable post on the bullpen

We probably don't need to say this game in and game out, and since we'd like to preserve precious resources (of time, energy, and psychological fortitude), we're offering you a reusable blog item that you can refer to after most games. Feel free to clip the following out and put it in your wallet for future reference:

(Clip along the dotted line)
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"The Jays' bullpen really looked bad out there last night."

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(Clip along the dotted line)

Excuses, apologia, and the GoBau! movement
Because our mancrush on Brett Cecil and his Thrilling Thunderous Thighs remains strong, and because we fear that we may have jinxed him with our ruminations on his ace-dom, we won't discuss the six runs that he gave up, nor will we give much of an airing to the fact that this was his second cruddy start in a row and his ERA has just popped up over 4.00.

Instead, we'll focus on José Bautista and his two mammoth home runs. GoBau! Ballots for Bautista, yo! Get your vote in now!

Note to self: Don't get ahead of yourself

So there we were, yesterday, piecing together our argument about how Brett Cecil is the new ace of the staff, and how we should all bow to his thunderously thrillingly massive thighs and the way that they propel him in a consistent manner towards the plate as he attacks hitters with an impressively diverse arsenal of pitches, speeds, and locations. What a dreamboat.

Really, the whole piece was working its way towards being one of our better posts in recent memory, certain to generate comments (comment whore!) and controversy (Team RickRo was going to be incensed.) We'll probably even come back to it, and tart it all up and include FIP and xFIP comparisons and all that jazz.

But next time, we'll probably wait until a night when someone other than RickRo, Cecil or Marcum toe the rubber. Because it makes us feel like we're wasting our time when we make the case for our guy, only to see him get rocked that night in his start.

We probably don't believe in jinxes, but we're pretty sure that we toyed with the baseball gods when we went on a campaign of unparalleled gushing over him on the night of his start. Sorry about that.

Now, we presume that we have to make an offering to those same baseball gods, so this afternoon, we'll be torching our Donruss Roy Halladay card from 2003 (Cy Young year!) with the T-Bird logo (Power of the T-Bird!). We hope this sacrifice pleases them.

The Sad Ballad of Dusty Lambchops
It's another sad story told in minor chords for Dustin McGowan, who had yet another setback in his recovery from labrum surgery. We probably haven't even considered him as part of the club's future for some time now, but we still feel bad for a kid who seemed to be on his way towards the top of the Jays' rotation.

We'd love to see those sideburns on the mound in game action once again, but McGowan's story reminds us that an upward trajectory isn't guaranteed for any young or emerging prospect, and that the vagaries of time and the wear and tear caused by the unnatural and violent action to which pitchers subject their extremities can derail the most promising careers.

Try not to look so sad, chums

It's been quite a ride so far, hasn't it? The hot start through the nine weeks of the season helped to separate the true believers from the doubters, and the hopeless romantics from the incorrigible cynics.

Ah, the salad days: Homers were bountiful, and pitching performances were surprisingly satisfying. Brett Cecil got the call, and quickly emerged as the future (if not present) ace of the staff. Travis Snider was out of the lineup, but we hardly seemed to notice, given the performances of Fred Lewis and José Bautista. We'd even managed to relax about the whole thing with The Manager, even stepping in occasionally to (quietly) defend one of his moves. We looked at the standings daily, and saw the Jays sitting above the Red Sox, and mere percentage points behind the Yankees.

These were good days, and times to savour. We could hardly have been happier. We relaxed, smiled, and put on five more pounds.

But on the tenth week, it suddenly went ugly. There were shit-kickings, painfully close games that got away or never seemed far from our grasp. But all of it added up to a week with only a single narrow escape of a win. (And that win only added to our general anxiety about Kevin Gregg as our closer, leading people to start talking wistfully about the days of the Beej and Billy Koch. Or maybe that was just us...)

We've all been conditioned at this point to keep our eyes open and to anticipate the moment in the season where it all goes wrong for the Jays, and where they slip off the pace and back into the mid-pack (or lower) of the American League for good, so a week like this is certainly going to resonate. And while we're generally committed to be the last dude handcuffed to the ship's rail when it hits the ocean floor, we'll confess that there was much about this past week that causes us concern.

(Like JoBau's inability to hit inside pitches. Or the Jays' inability to get guys on and move them along. Or the spectacular ratfuck that is the fifth spot in the rotation. Or the prospect of meeting up with the Padres and the Cardinals.)

But if we can offer any solace in this, we'd tell it you like Ray Charles' momma told him: There's gonna be hard times. This past week sucked, but you've got to just pick up your replica retro Jays cap, dust it off, slap it back on your mellon and hope for a better week ahead.

This team has surprised us already, so let's try to hang onto those happy thoughts, even as they drift into memory. Because the alternative is a long miserable summer.

This rotation is doing just fine without what's-his-name

It's probably easy to forget this after the shit kicking that the Jays took in the first two games of the Rays series, but their rotation - or, at least 60% of it - has been something to behold thus far into the season. Take a gander through the league leaders, and you'll find three Jays starters in the top 20 of the ERA, WHIP and Ks.

Ricky Romero is currently sitting in third in strikeouts (86), ninth in ERA (3.06) and 17th in WHIP (1.20), while Shaun Marcum is 15th (65), 16th (3.38) and 7th (1.13) respectively. Brett Cecil doesn't have the innings to rack up the counting stats, so he's sitting back in 39th overall in strikeouts, but his 3.22 ERA is good for 13th while his 0.99 WHIP places him third. (And if you need him, Brandon Morrow's 74 Ks are good enough for 7th. So there.)

Maybe this has crept up on some of you who were inclined to follow along with the notion that the absence of Roy Halladay was going to create a giant sucking vacuum in the rotation, and that the 100-loss season would certainly ensue because one-fifth of the starting corps was gone. "A bunch of guys named 'Who?'" is the laugh line that we seem to recall.

But last night's awesomely manly performance by Cecil brought us back to remembering how much we've enjoyed the pitching performances from the top three so far this year, with the occasional quality start from Morrow tossed in for good measure. The Jays numbers as a starting rotation sit in the middle in both the AL (6th of 14) and MLB (16th of 30) in terms of ERA, although with the improvement seen in Morrow, the expulsion of some of the lesser lights and reinforcements on the way (Litchtits!!!1), we're cautiously optimistic that the starting pitching can actually improve.

With a team that is sitting three and a half games back in the Wild Card chase in a season that was supposed to be lost before it got underway, we really hope people start to recognize how much great baseball our guys are playing, and how close this team is to making the next step.

(And yeah, we're a hopeless booster for this team. We wouldn't have poured all of these hours and all of the effort into this little ratfuck of a blog if we weren't hopelessly devoted to this team. If you want someone to be cynically aloof about the Jays in 2010 and in the future, there are an infinite number of options out there for you.)

Speaking of next steps...
It's the National League for the next two weeks, and we have a whole lot of stuff to say about the Rockies, Padres, Cards and whoever. But we'd rather leave The Ack something to talk about this weekend.

A quick and quiet five game losing streak

It's not as though we weren't somewhat present and watching and/or listening to the games over the past week.

But somehow, it barely even registered with us until this morning that the Jays are currently plunged in a five game slide, having dropped five of six games to the big kids in the AL East. It could be that we trying so hard to identify the encouraging parts of these games and the signs of good times ahead that we've glossed over the fact that the team is just not putting enough together to win games, especially against their tough divisional rivals.

We're probably too busy consoling ourselves by looking at the strong starts from Brett Cecil and Shaun Marcum, and the strongish start from Brandon Morrow, and saying "If only they had some offense tonight." And when the Jays relentlessly beat Josh Beckett around the park, we start having happy thoughts of "What if they actually got some good pitching tonight?"

And the next thing you know, you're sliding backwards to the wrong side of .500, and finding yourself cautiously grateful for an appearance by the Oakland A's. (Who actually look kinda good this year, in the way that mid-pack AL West teams can start to look like contenders to win 86 games and the division title after one good week.)

Fear of a left-handed planet
Not that we're wishing ill health upon young pitchers, but we breathed a sigh of relief when we saw that A's lefty Brett Anderson wouldn't be available for the forthcoming series. The Jays are 1-4 thus far against lefties, posting a godawful .468 OPS in games started by LHPs.

It looks as though the Jays might get Gio Gonzalez in one of the four games this series, but the other three pitchers should be right-handers. (Justin Duchscherer tonight, possibly Trevor Cahill or Vin Mazzaro tomorrow, and Ben Sheets tossed into the mix at some point.) None of which guarantees victories, mind you. It just makes the overriding feeling of dread subside by a few percentage points.

And speaking of "few percentage points", that whole "play Lyle Overbay against lefties because he wants to play against them" plan? Not working so well so far: Lylo is rocking a .333 OPS, including a .095 OBP and a .238 SLG. (And those numbers include a homer against a lefty, so imagine how miniscule they'd be otherwise.)

Brett Cecil came and made everything better

(whaddya think about that?)

So, I've been away from things for a while. And by "away from things", I mean merely scanning boxscores and grabbing the headlines for the past week as opposed to dryhumping every last minutiae of information I can find surrounding the Blue Jays (awwwkward).

You know how it is - work stuff, family stuff, maybe some more work stuff. Unbelievable that goddamned life dares get in the way of baseball, right? I was this close to dialing into JaysTalk with Wilner and bitching about Lyle Overpaid and that goon JP Ricciardi and his 5 year plan.

But I'm back and plugged in (as much as I ever was, I guess), and I'm here to talk about that magnificent bastard Brett Cecil. The final line might not immediately blow you way (4 ER in 6.2 IP), but like everything else this season, I choose to conveniently blame the manager for not yanking the kid after 6 strong innings. Seriously though, Cecil was everything the Jays hope he will be - a strong mid-rotation presence with power stuff, able to compete against AL East rivals. I'd say his 2010 debut fit the bill.

Oh, and you look good up top, Freddy Lewis.

Oh, and welcome back, Aaron Hill. And make sure you give that sore arm plenty of rest, Edwin.

One more thing - where would the Jays be without Kevin Gregg right now? I know - who woulda thunk it, right?

Quickly....
AJ Burnett's tattooed arm - what the fuck?

Speaking of douchebags, nice to see ARod get called out by Oakland's Dallas Braden for breaking code. Truthfully, I don't even much care who's right in this one. Douchey is as douchey does, Alex.

Brett Wallace is up to 7 HR and a 1.036 OPS. JP Arencibia is starting to come around, too.

Fire up the Adeiny Hechavarria hype machine. Let's go!

It's the AL East, son

And now, this season gets serious. Over the next six days, the Jays get their first real taste of the AL East (because we're already saying that Baltimore doesn't count.)

If you want games that "matter", then take heed: These are the games that matter.

Last year, the Jays' schedule against the Only Division That Matters was almost entirely backloaded, with their first meeting against the Unholy Trinity coming on May 19 in Boston. And it was pretty much on that evening in Boston that the then unstoppable Blue Jay machine was pretty much stopped in their tracks.

(And to be honest with you, we're not sure that we've recovered yet from that Tim Wakefield junk-ball-palooza, after which the Jays hitters went into such a prolonged slumber that some of them may have had their organs harvested without waking up. Which would go a long way towards explaining Lyle Overbay.)

Make no mistake: These are the games that matter, and this is where the fortunes of this team are determined. The Jays were 20 games under .500 against those three teams (and an even .500 with the Orioles, if that matters), so effectively it was that significant chunk of the schedule that sunk any hopes of respectability. Conversely, the Jays were 49-41 outside of their division. Which is kinda respectable, even for a team that people wrote off as a disaster.

(Go ahead. Sing it with us, because you know the words: "My Kingdom for a Balanced Schedule!")

Let's get this party started right
So if this wholly inequitable portion of the schedule has to get started somehow, we can't think of a much better pitching matchup than tonight's. The Dreamboat himself, Brett Cecil, will take the mound in the air-conditioned tomb of Tampa versus the dastardly Matt Garza, who owns the Jays (6-3, 1.70 ERA and 1.12 WHIP in 10 career starts against the Jays.) And still, we'd rather face him than Wakefield.

(If only we weren't going to be blind drunk by the time the first pitch is tossed.)

Brett Cecil is coming to make everything better

So that guy (what's-his-name, the number two starter, hipster oaf-looking fella) is off to the DL with a case of the Too-Many-Cutters. So for those of you who were waiting patiently throughout both weeks of the season for Brett Cecil to return, now is your moment.

We're so excited to have Cecil back with the big club that we have to admit to losing our composure upon hearing the news. It was almost as though we heard that David Cone, Jimmy Key and Mark Eichhorn jumped into a hot tub time machine, dialed it back to 1992 and were on their way to Toronto to reclaim glory.

(And, if you'll permit a bit of a meander here: Would '92 vintage Cone/Key/Eichhorn put the Jays back into contention? Would they have to Roberto Alomar along for the hot tubbing? And would they want to? Sorry...I got lost there for a moment.)

Why do we love Cecil so much? How is it that this young lefty with an ERA on the wrong side of 5.00 and a WHIP of 1.65 has captured our imagination? The best explanation that we have is that Cecil is the Bizarro World Shawn Camp for us. It doesn't matter how bad the result is, we can't help coming away from every outing feeling that much better about him.

We don't even mind that he gave up 13 hits in 11 innings at Las Vegas so far, or that his Triple-A WHIP is 1.36. We figure that has to be the fault of bad fielding. Or poor field conditions. Or official scorers with a vendetta.

When it comes right down to it, we're probably a bit fixated on Cecil's legs. They are as thick and strong as sequoias, and when he's on a roll, he uses them effectively to drop and drive towards the plate. The strength in his legs help him maintain a powerful and consistent delivery, and he never looks like he's overtaxing his arm, which makes us think that the chances of a DL stint based on throwing too many of a certain pitch is unlikely.

We realize that reading along as a grown man swoons for reasons that are wholly irrational might make some of you uncomfortable. Sorry about that. As a make good to all the fellas who might have found this a bit disconcerting. So as a make good, we offer the Christina Hendricks Esquire cover. Which you've already seen, we're sure...but too much of Christina Hendricks is never enough.
Mrroawr.