Now more than ever

So is this the kind of ballclub you can get behind or what?

Oh sure, there are still maddening stretches of inexplicably flat baseball these Blue Jays tend to fall into, but I'm willing to chalk that up to growing pains. For now. Because this is a talented roster that has nowhere to trend but up.

Right?

To these eyes, there is far more chance for even greater upside in this lineup than there is downside. And that's exciting. For the first time in a long time, these Jays have a roster stacked with talented youth who's best is yet to come (Lawrie, Arencibia, Rasmus, Thames? Sure, Thames), unquestioned superstars (Bautista, Escobar? Sure, Escobar)... and only a few question marks.

It's a roster perfectly built to growing together, and that is no coincidence. The goal of Alex Anthopoulos has always been to put together a team built for the long-term, with a stacked farm system ready to plug holes through promotion or for use in trades. That aspect is definitely in place.

So is the roster close? Now more than ever, I think that it is. Other than time and experience, perhaps the one thing the club really needed was a rallying cry......

Well then.

Look friends, it would be easy & convenient to rant on about the American media not wanting to attribute the successes of a player (Bautista) on the league's only Canadian-based team to hard work and talent. But this isn't about jingoistic baseball rhetoric. It's about the league and those covering it taking notice of an upstart team getting ready to challenge the big dogs of the AL East.

It sure seems, since the story "broke" concerning The Man in White (this whole thing is stupid!), that the Toronto line-up has, in response, got their collective backs up and are responding to the negative attention with a massive F-U.... and that's a good thing.

You think our best player is PED'd up? F-U. You think we're stealing signs? F-U. You think we celebrate inappropriately? F-U. Jerkball, baby. Jerkball.

Much like the Rays, the Jays are now on the scene. It's only a matter of time before the barking gets even louder, and once again.... that's a good thing.

Win streak!

Two wins in a row! All is well! Go ahead and shovel your antidepressants back into their industrial-sized tub!

Even with last night's 6-4 win over the Tigers, the Jays remain eight games back of the Red Sox for the Wild Card, although such considerations are probably way beyond moot at this point. Though they may be able to make up some ground on the BoSox, Yankees and Rays over the next two weeks of head-to-head matchups, the more likely scenario is that they split those series and end up pretty much where they are now.

And don't forget that with his acquisition by the Red Sox, the Jays will have to face the mighty Paul Byrd a few more times before the season is over. Given the fact that he easily disposed of the Jays with a 94-pitch complete game performance on Saturday, the Jays had better hope that they miss him in the rotation and draw punks like Dice-K and Josh Beckett instead.

Cito's lineup madness
It's probably best for everyone if we just forget Cito Gaston's bizarre insistence over the weekend on batting Brad Wilkerson in the second spot in the lineup. Maybe the dusty old book of baseball says that a left-handed hitter should hit second, but Wilkerson's big long wild stroke makes Adam Dunn look like Rod Carew.

Still, we're watching with interest how Cito utilizes Adam Lind. After a great game at the dish on Friday (2-4 with a couple of solid singles), Lind was bumped up to the cleanup spot on Saturday, where he promptly went 0-4. Lind was dropped to the five-hole on Sunday (0-4 again) and down to the seven-hole for the last two games, where he's gone 3-8 with a homer and three RsBI.

It's probably all a load of shite to speculate that any of this means anything, but we'd prefer to see Cito leave Lind lower in the lineup for the time being. We get that it must be tempting to move him up, especially since he is hitting better than anyone else on the roster at this point, but just let him settle in and hopefully see some fastballs with Rios, Wells or Overbay on base ahead of him.

Conspiracy theories? We got one.
A strange notion struck us over the weekend after we saw one too many hard-hit balls by Jays hitters die on the warning track: is there something funny going on with the baseballs in Toronto? We know that Colorado keeps theirs in a humidor or a deep chest freezer or something, but what about at Rogers Centre?

If the Jays pitching staff is mighty like few others (3.66 ERA ties them with the Dodgers for tops in the Majors), and their hitting is lowly like few others (only the Giants have hit fewer homers than the Jays' 81 so far), isn't it reasonable to ask whether if there is something in the environment that is causing the offense to be depressed in Toronto's games?

Somebody get us Oliver Stone on the phone.