All good things must end

Go figure. Ten straight wins, and the Jays lose with Roy Halladay on the mound. It just goes to show that nothin' in baseball makes no sense anyhow.

And to think that we had sweet photos of Racquel Welch, Farrah Fawcett and Heather Thomas lined up to post to celebrate the extension of the streak.

Nothing making sense: Gibby Defense League Edition
With the loss, the Jays slip to a mediocre 15 games over .500 under Cito Gaston. We've been led to believe by some dudes and their acolytes that the change in the team's fortunes can be attributed to progressing to the mean, which they would have done under John Gibbons anyhow. The same John Gibbons who was let go with the team four games under .500.

Maybe this win streak has skewed our view, but the gap between Gibbons' 35-39 record and Cito's 43-28 record is distinct enough for us to make some basic assumptions about the relative merits of their managerial skills.

Around the Horn

• Jays Blog of the Year Ghostrunner on First talks upended bandwagons and recaps last night's Wednesdays with J.P.. Also, mentions Bill Caudill.
  
• The Mockingbird has pretty pictures which apparently explain something about why David Purcey is awesome.
  
• Joanna @ Hum and Chuck talks uneasiness in the face of unexpected success, and Alex Rios' love of Vernon Wells giant cranium. Also, she is the originator of "Pink, Round, Efficient". Just putting that out there.
• Neate @ OoLF talks catchphrase thievery. Which in no way motivated us to mention Joanna's ownership of one of our favorite catchphrases.
• Go Jays Go has a photo of a hot J-Crew seventh-inning-stretching tart. Mrroawwr.
• The Drunks develop a case of Houston-Zelkovich syndrome.
  

Holy shit!? Cito?!

You know what will be the worst part about the Jays bringing back their former manager from the the franchise's halcyon days?

The sense of empowerment that it will give to all of the insane retreads who called JaysTalk over the past five years to ask why they didn't just rehire Gaston. Next up: calls for J.P.'s dismissal in favour of Pat Gillick.

We've got much more to come on this, but let us reiterate one thing: Holy. Shit. This. Freaks. Us. Out.

The Pit and the Pendulum

Let's start with this: it's not fair.

Then again, fair's got nothin' to do with it.

No matter the level of genius or motivation or scrappy gritty leadership a manager demonstrates, the Pink Slip is coming for him, sooner or later.

And that time is creeping sooner for John Gibbons. Let's face it: Gibby was on borrowed time to begin with, seeing as how even his best moments we're never quite up to snuff. Now, the blade is getting closer, the walls are heating up and closing in, and the eternal pit of unemployment is gaping hungrily below him. His time's almost up.

The fact is that this team, with the way they have played since April of 2007, is a bad team. At best a middle of the pack team with an outside shot at contention, this team has played to the lowest ends of its potential. This is a team that is going to have to scrape and claw to regain its traditional slot in third place in the AL East, never mind contending for a Wild Card berth. And does the responsibility for the assembly of players on the field fall with Gibby? Not especially.

Gibby's managerial decisions have been marginally better in the later part of 2007 and early in 2008, but again, that's not going to help him make the case for continued employment with this club. It's a bottom line business, and the bottom line shows the Jays four games in the red.

We don't want to make any guesses as to the when and how it happens, nor do we want to take excessive glee in his downfall. Know this: If Gibbons gets canned, it's not likely the start of a turnaround for the 2008 Jays. It's more likely to be the start of another three-to-five year cycle of re-evaluation and rebuilding.

Gibby ain't Jimy
What we're going to hear in the days that follow Gibbons' firing are a lot of analogies to the 1989 Blue Jays, who shitcanned Jimy Williams and went on to win the division. That kettle there ain't this kettle here.

Jimy was a hard ass manager who had lost the respect of some of his players. He didn't have the people skills to manage a group of young players (a fact that would be replicated in Boston and Houston), nor could he deal with a team that was transitioning from one era to the next.

And while Cito had initial success that year, the teams that eventually won the World Series three and four years later were significantly different from the one he took over. The 1989 Jays made the best of a down year in the AL East (their 89 wins would have put them in fourth in the West that year), but they weren't a championship team that just needed Cito to unlock their potential.

The incremental changes made in each year throughout that period (including the acquisition of Mookie Wilson in 1989, the elevation of John Olerud and Pat Borders in 1990, and the acquisitions of Joe Carter, Robbie Alomar and Devon White and the emergence of Juan Guzman in 1991) made the Jays a radically different and vastly improved team by the time of their back to back championships. It wasn't Cito, it was the personnel.

If the current Jays think that they can move forward by continuing to champion mediocrity with long-term deals to players who don't even remotely belong amongst the elite at their position, than this is going to be a much longer process indeed.

Jays Shit The Bed In Orlando

Things aren't getting any better for John Gibbons' crew. Bringing Scott Rolen and Adam Lind will help, but we still feel like there is a lack of cohesion on the team that results in uneven efforts every single night. The blood is in the water.

We're too distraught to even comment

We don't know what was worse: Accardo having a Armando Benitez-like meltdown? Or seeing the expression on that stupid prat A-Rod's face as he came home with the winning run in the Yanks' 3-2 win.

Sharing our frustrations: Drunk Jays Fans, Out of Left Field, Fire Gibbons.

And moreover: Hum and Chuck.

And also: Blair takes down Gibby like a drunken uncle wrestling a six year-old.

Heartbreak

Such a shame to squander such a fine pitching performance from Shaun Marcum, who dropped his season ERA to 3.18 with his eight innings of six-hit, one-run ball.

And was it just us, or did Wells pull back a bit on that catch in the bottom of the 12th to avoid colliding with Royce Clayton? (We watched the play about ten times on the PVR last night, and it looked that way to us.) Maybe we just need a whipping boy (someone to despise) and Clayton is an easy target.

Of course, Clayton didn't strike out 15 times last night by himself.

Bonus Coverage: Neate at Out of Left Field lays this loss at the feet of the other favorite whipping boy, John Gibbons. It did seem to us that he was shortening up his bullpen a bit much, but we wrote it off as managing for a road win in extras. Whatever...anything to get the Fire Gibbons train back on the rails is fine by us.

When you're struggling offensively...

...it's a really good idea to leave your best bat on the bench.

Again.

We can't wait to not hear Gibby's reasons for sitting Rios this time.

Update: Hey, look who just got a base hit in the eighth! It's almost as though he belonged in the lineup!

Another Update: Hey, look who just hit the go-ahead home run in the 10th!

The Big Lead - Gibby'll be first to go

The Big Lead has assessed the job security of several embattled managers. Guess who they peg as most likely to walk the plank?

John Gibbons, Toronto Blue Jays - 5:1
Ready for the injuries that have caused these guys to start 17-22 out of the gate? Roy Halladay, BJ Ryan (out for the season), Gregg Zaun, Victor Zambrano and Reed Johnson. There are more, but you get the picture. Still, Gibbons is the guy who essentially chased Ted Lilly out of town, and it doesn’t help that he’s enjoying success with the Cubs. Won’t make it to July 1.

(With a tip of the casquette to Neate at Out of Left Field.)

"I've got my reasons.... You don't need to know everything."

Thus spake John Gibbons, describing the rationale that went into nailing Alex Rios to the bench, and pinch hitting John McDonald for Jason Phillips late in Sunday's game.

The Sun's Mike Rutsey has the full rundown of wit and wisdom of Gibby.

(Wouldn't it be so much more efficient for Gibby to walk into the media briefing, tell everyone there to go fuck themselves, and walk out?)

Gibby's lineup madness

Once again, Jays Manager-for-the-Moment John Gibbons decided to jerk around with the team's lineup today.

We get that some days, you want to give a guy a day off, especially late in the season. What we can't understand for the life of us is Gibby's insistence on rotating players into the lineup from what is really a pretty weak bench.

At a time when the Jays are struggling to score runs, why sit Alex Rios? He's first on the team in homers, second in RsBI, second in slugging and fourth in OPS. He's a central cog in an offense that has sputtered, and has hit well (2 HRs and a 1.037 OPS) over the past week.

Moreover, his OPS versus righthanders is fifty points higher than Matt Stairs, so don't even try to run that jive past us.

And we'll get on this soapbox again: it is 37 games into the season, and Aaron Hill has hit in six different spots in the order. Alex Rios has hit in five different spots, as has Overbay. Even Wells and Glaus have hit in three different spots in the order.

It's this sort of willy-nilly jerking around with the lineup that makes us wish that someone would bring back Cito.

Eight ways to salvage a sinking ship

In honour of the Jays eighth consecutive loss, we humbly offer eight suggestions to help salvage this wretched season, before it's too late

1. Fire Gibbons - I don't think this requires that much explanation.
   
2. Send Zambrano to Syracuse, or even Dunedin - As terrible as he's been, the Jays allowed him to pitch to big league hitters months before he was projected to be ready. He needs to go down and get himself stretched out and build up his arms strength gradually. (We're not even certain if they'd be able to do this without having him pass through waivers, but it's possible that he could go on a rehab assignment.)
3. Designate Josh Towers - His contract is the only thing keeping him in the Majors. He's a lousy starter and even worse coming out of the bullpen. It's time to cut bait.
4. Move Janssen and Marcum into the rotation - At the very least, they pitched better last year as starters than three-fifths of the rotation has this year.
5. Play Jason Smith, or return him - J.P. has a habit of grabbing guys in the Rule 5 draft and holding onto them for dear life, even if they never really pan out. (Corey Thurman? Aquilino Lopez?) Smith had a tremendous Spring, but has been relegated to the role of a pinch hitter as of late, while Matt Stairs is allowed to lumber around right field with impunity.
   
6. Stop screwing around constantly with the batting order - Is Aaron Hill hitting first? Seventh? Fifth? Second? Is Overbay second or sixth? What day is it? Gibby (or whoever replaces him) has got to stop jerking guys around the lineup and leave them as much as possible where they are comfortable.
   
7. Scour the wires - Yes, you'll be grabbing the scrubs who weren't good enough to play for other teams, but just about any living, breathing biped with major league experience would be an upgrade in the Jays bullpen over Towers or Zambrano.
8. Hire Ken Macha - He's available. He's won. He's turned Oakland teams that started slowly into playoff teams.

But hey, what the hell do we know?

UPDATE, 4:10 pm: In and amongst all of the sad, sad news of the demise of B.J. Ryan's ulnar collateral ligament, we see that J.P. has managed to check off item number 2 (Zambrano's on his way to the DL, and likely a rehab stint), and half of item 4 (Marcum will take Zambie's spot into the rotation.)

Hey J.P.! If you are reading this - and why wouldn't you? - then how about items number 1 and 8?

Hang the JG, hang the JG, hang the JG

As noted in the comments yesterday, friend of the blog The Great Lakes Knuckleballer has had enough of a certain mumblin', fumblin' Texan, and has launched the Fire Gibbons blog (firegibbons.blogspot.com).

The Tao abides.