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?

A One-(Run-On)-Sentence Post on...Happy Surprises

With all of the incessant offseason rosterbation that took place over the winter, and with all of the knowing analysis about how the team looked on paper, there's no one or nothing that prepared us for just how much we were going to love watching Fred Lewis play, which has been a welcome surprise and provided inspirational happiness a washed out blog hack like us.

Welcome FredDotLew to the T-Dot-O

It's probably a pretty clear indicator of the extent to which we are so far gone in terms of our baseball obsession that we are completely geeked out over the Jays' acquisition of Fred Lewis.

Lewis is a guy who struggled to find a full time spot in a big league lineup, and when things went well for him, he managed a little bit of power, a bit more speed and a pretty-good-but-not-otherworldly OPS. And on defense, don't even ask us because we have no idea how to parse through the factors that allow a man to have both a +29.3 and a -59.9 UZR/150, as though some days he's Willie Mays and some days he's Pete Incaviglia.

Maybe this is overly glib, but given the description above, there's a part of us that keeps thinking of Fred Lewis as the Black Reed Johnson. (Although without Johnson's JV girls field hockey running style, which is a big plus.)

Still, this is a pretty snazzy deal for the Jays, who give up pretty much nothing and get a decent player who profiles well as a leadoff guy (.355 career OBP) and who can step into any of the outfield positions in a pinch. His presence immediately send Jeremy Reed back to Vegas, and gives the Jays some additional strength off the bench.

Of course, that's as things stand today. Where this acquisition gets really interesting is in a week or so, when Aaron Hill comes back from the DL. When the music stops at that point, who is left scrambling to find themselves one of the 25 seats? Is it Randy Ruiz, who is getting no love from The Manager anyhow? Does Travis Snider return to Sin City? Does Jo-Bau slide to third, leaving EE without a spot? Does Lyle Overbay get paid to sit at home and explore further adventures in facial hair?

And maybe the most important question that this trade raises: Is Ghostrunner on First's Lloyd the Barber a Savant, a Soothsayer, a Witch or a Double-Agent, sent by Alex Anthopoulos to infiltrate the Jays blogosphere.

FredDotLew is a social media monster
Love the story, as recounted by Big League Stew, of how Lewis broke the news of his trade via his Facebook page. That's so 2007! Lewis is all over the interwebs, so he may end up wresting the mantle of Most Beloved Jay on the Internet from the rehabbing Dirk Hayhurst. The Pinch Runner's Gospels, anyone?


Travis Snider is a lovable dude
Speaking of the Rosy-Cheeked Phenom, his bat flip on his first homer of the year gave us a little jolt of happiness in the depth of our cockles. Pair that up with a beauty of a diving catch, and our belief in Snider grew exponentially last night.

(Although someone might want to teach that kid how to lay out for a ball. We want to pat Snider on the back and tell him: It's cool and all that you're hard as fuck and you're gonna catch that ball no matter what, but landing shoulder first to catch a ball in an April game scares the shit out of us. Land on your chest and belly if you want to hit the turf, mmkay?)

Friday Rock Out - Because you miss them, don't you?
Since we've stopped tossing up random music clips, we get tweets and emails all the time suggesting this band or those guys who should make the cut. But today's selection is just for us: Cracker's "Low". We've been getting nostalgic lately, and this is a hat tip to our angry white boy days, when we'd pull on our torn denim and plaid and our Doc Martens, groom our goatee and get ready to take on the world with an arsenal of sullen looks and post-adolescent sarcasm. Enjoy.