We're so over Overbay

The mutterings around the GM meetings in Dana Point, CA, have it that the Jays are ready to move Lyle Overbay, possibly to the Mariners.

To which we say: Fine by us.

Don't get us wrong. We're not going to toss around that tired line about first base being a "power position", as we heard any number of JaysTalk callers spit out all season. But there's plenty of reasonable questions to be asked about Lyle. And at 32, we're guessing that his best years are already behind him.

We respect that Overbay was a high OBP guy who could hit a ton of doubles when he was right and his hand wasn't hampering him. But the two-year promise that Overbay would overcome his hand injury and return to form has not yet borne fruit.

What has returned is a player with a long swing that has too many moving parts. Weight shift, twist back, pull back hands, drop hands, step forward, through the zone with the bat. Too often, all of this sound and fury results in weak ground balls, or balls fouled directly down at his feet.

(His swing is not exactly Molitoresque in its efficiency.)

Once a doubles machine, Overbay's numbers have fallen off the table in the past two years. In 2008, he was tied for 9th amongst MLB first basemen in doubles with 32, along with Carlos Delgado, Adrian Gonzalez, Adam LaRoche, and Joey Votto. Which might seem like good company, until you glance down the stat column and compare Overbay's homer total (15) against theirs: 38, 36, 25 and 24 respectively. Clearly, Overbay is just not hitting the ball hard as often as he used to, and as often as his peers currently do.

(And as a side note: Is there any one of those four first basemen that you wouldn't take over Overbay?)

More comparisons with his peers: Overbay drove in just 69 runs last year, which ranks him 22nd amongst first sackers, while his OPS was 19th.

His purported stregnth is getting on base, and yet Overbay ranked just 13th amongst first basemen in OBP.

We know that there are plenty of passionate defenders of Overbay (see, Wilner, Michael), but when you line him up against the quality of first basemen around the league today and those emerging in the next year or so, you can see how he's about to slip from a mid-range to a low-end option in very short order. We're talking Mientkiewicz territory.

It's probably time to send him and his reasonable two-year $14 million contract down the road.

Jeff Blair would like to reignite the rage of Reed Johnson fans

If there is one thing that was missing in our obsessive following of the Blue Jays this year, it was our best pal Jeff Blair's insight on the comin's and goin's on. Being otherwise engaged in serious business in Beijing and the hinterlands of Hamilton, Blair's input on the Jays in the Globe this year has been somewhat minimal. And it has been missed.

In Blair's absence, we've just been re-reading our own hackish blog posts about how the Jays' performance makes us feel. It's like taping a therapy session, then watching it obsessively. Blair's return has come in a nick of time.

Which is why it is a little disappointing to see one of his first columns back on the baseball beat is a big wet sloppy somethin'-somethin' for Reed Johnson. It's an outright paean to Reed's gritty gutsy gamitude, and frankly is going to reignite the flames of misguided passion that was only recently extinguished in every Dougie and Gordie in the GTA. Thanks for that Jeff.

Maybe the excessive rage over Reed Johnson's release has faded in Blair's memory because he was on the other side of the world when it finally petered out.

We, on the other hand, had just finally reached a point where anonymous commenters had given up on bitching and moaning about what a horrendous error in judgment this was, and how J.P. should be fired for this roster move alone. We'd even gotten used to listening to JaysTalk and not hearing Reed Johnson's name mentioned obsessively but the goofballs and drunken security guards venting at Wilner.

Blairsy, we beg of you: Stop feeding the animals and stop rattling their cages.

It's oh so quiet on JaysTalk
Speaking of peace in the valley, we had figured that every J.P. hater was going to read Dick Griffin's speculative article yesterday on the Jays' GM return for 2009 and totally lose their shit on the Wilner-Ricciardi Fan 590 Hoe-Down last night. Instead, we had an episode so genteel and polite that it has already been optioned to be a Merchant-Ivory film. (Colin Firth plays Wilner, Alan Cummings plays J.P., and Emma Thompson plays Lady Steeles from the North of Marcum).

We though for a minute that we were hearing crickets chirping on the air until we figured out that it was J.P.'s Blackberry going off.

Why are these men smiling?

Because Richard Griffin has employed his unparalleled skills in deductive reasoning to figure out that both of them will be back next year.

We assume this means that Wednesdays with J.P. is going to be fierce tonight. With the paroxysms of rage blasting from the lunatic fringe of JaysTalk callers, tonight's show is going to be like Black Hawk Down, only a little more intense.

Tune in.

Well, that's a pisser

While we're not prepared to raise the white flag, we have to admit that it is hard to bask in our own idiotic sense of superior unbreakable noble loyalty to the team when hanging onto the rail of this ship means that we've been breathing water since Friday night. If we were a little smarter about this, we'd recognize the difference between "holding on for dear life" and "going down with the ship".

But as we've said before, we're willing to hold on until we hit bottom.

So what's left to root for? How about 90 wins? The Jays would need to go 10-2 in their remaining games to hit that mark, which would be the most wins since 1998...the salad days of Tim Johnson and José Canseco.

Angry idiot fans are all over the place
The comments section in yesterday's post by the Ack features one of the most ludicrous statements that we've ever read in our comments section...and of course, it was left by an anonymous commenter:

Bottonline: Doc has been a rose upon a dungheap BUT he needed to get it done and didn't.Guess what the two last games he pitched were arguably the most meaningful of his career , what happened? Lester, former cancer victim, AND winner of a world Series game outpitched him. Right now, Lester is the better pitcher and beat Halladay. To win big games, either you tie OR put zeroes on the board. In this case two runs was too much.

So...what's your point? You're gonna look at one game where Halladay pitched well enough to win but lost, and somehow question his manhood because it was a "big game" and therefore he should have pitched a complete game shutout one THREE DAYS REST to prove his bona fides? Really?

Lester is an excellent pitcher, but the fact that he gave up one fewer earned run (and two more walks, for whatever that's worth) than Halladay and the fact that he recovered from cancer two years ago somehow proves that he's better than Doc? Really? You're gonna say that about the same Roy Halladay who had his appendix yanked out with rusty instruments and was back on the mound two and a half weeks later?

The other awesome example of idiocy is the second caller from yesterday's JaysTalk, who pretty much spouts off all of the stupid arguments that angry JaysTalk callers have made over the past year in one fell swoop. He also earns double bonus points for dropping the fact that he played Division 1 baseball, as if to prove that his ramblings meant any more because at some point he warmed the pines at Upper Appalachian Tech. Wicked.

Adam Lind is ridiculously awesome

There's some spooky numerological stuff going on with Adam Lind right now.

In 22 games since being recalled on June 22, Adam Lind has 22 RsBI. Weird.

Lind also has five homers, a .361 OBP and a .641 slugging percentage. Which adds up to a 1.002 OPS...which is really good. (Small sample size or not.)

In those 22 games since being mercifully brought back into the fold, Lind has one fewer homer than Alex Rios has in 94 games this season.

If Lind were to maintain that pace over a full season, he'd drive in 162 runs, hit 37 homers, and generally make everyone forget about whatshisname with the stupid chin hair and old creaky legs from the days of old.

(BTW, for those of you who are still pining for Reed Johnson, we'd note that the boy has a .717 OPS in 65 games with the Cubs. So stop.)

All of this raises two questions for us:

1) Who's idea was it to send Adam Lind down for more seasoning?
2) How can you trust the talent evaluation skills of someone who can make such an egregious error?

Mrs. Tao's Baseball Analysis
Our better half, upon seeing Brad Wilkerson's diving catch in the nervous ninth last night: "Holy shit! That's the second time this week that he's made an awesome catch like that! Why doesn't he play more often?"

We love her dearly and admire the straightforward simplicity of her assessment of Wilkerson. She might just be ready to be a JaysTalk caller.

The infinite sadness

Four losses in a row. Three games below .500. Six series losses in a row. Last place in the AL East.

However you slice it, these are the worst of times for the Toronto Blue Jays.

We're not sure if there was anything emblematic about last night's game. It was just another loss in a series of losses that leave you thinking that this team just isn't good enough, and that the pieces that we thought we had here aren't what we might have thought.

(By the way, does anybody remember a time about 14 months ago when people would make the statement "Oh don't worry...the Blue Jays are going to score plenty of runs." Yeah. Those were good times.)

Denial, Grief, Anger, Acceptance - All in one episode of Wednesday's with J.P.
It shouldn't surprise that the callers came with knives out last night on the weekly call-in segment with the General Manager after the game. Ricciardi alternated between reassuring the fans that he's a frustrated as they are and flagellating himself over the ballclub's poor performance.

But what was stunning last night was hearing J.P.'s comments about Adam Dunn when a caller suggested that there was something wrong with the Jays' brain trust if they didn't already have him locked up.

"What do you know about Adam Dunn?" J.P. shot back at the caller. "Do you know that he doesn't like baseball?"

We won't reprint the whole exchange (go listen for yourself...it's towards the end of the episode), but for anyone (admittedly, like us) who had visions of big number 44 hitting cleanup for Toronto, J.P.'s incredibly frank assessment of the Reds' slugger should pretty much put those notions to rest. We've never heard J.P. (or any other GM) speak this frankly about a player, although we're sure that if he had a do-over, he might not have let his frustration with the petulant tone of the caller get the better of him.

Our question now though is: If not Dunn, then who? Big Sexy Richie Sexson?

Mike Toth: Media Critic

Before anyone takes Mike Toth too seriously when he starts to act as a media critic, burying vastly superior broadcasters on the air, let us take a moment, and remember the time when Mr. Fun Stuff said the following on the air in the middle of a highlight package:

"Antero Nittymaki, smoking that wacky tabacky..."

Yeah, he said that. So clearly he has the moral high ground.

Ernie Whitt for General Manager!

Getting this out of the way first: hooray, a win. Lyle Overbay rocks, just like we knew he would.

But the real fireworks tonight were on the post-game show, and we can only hope that Wilner gets the thing posted soon so that you can hear the lunacy for yourself.

One particularly well-informed caller complained about J.P.'s lack of GM skills, then suggested that Ernie Whitt should be named the General Manager (not Manager, mind you, but GM!) We get the fact that sometimes, these alleged Jays fans are looking for any port in a storm to sort out what ails the team, but this has to rank up there with the all-time nuttiest ideas ever. (Not just on JaysTalk...we're talking in the history of the world.)

Wilner was so flabbergasted, he actually thought out loud "I don't know how much longer this being nice to the callers thing can last." (That might not be it word for word, but it is pretty much what he meant.)

The audio should be up in the familiar Rogers Radio digital confines later tonight, so go have a listen, and check out the subsequent pro-Ernie calls.

In a season that has been decidedly "meh", the JaysTalk callers never disappoint with their abilities to provide highly entertaining nonsensical pontifications.

Speaking of "meh"
A.J.'s mohawk? Lame. It's like he went to get a hair cut, but the strip through the middle opted out.

(In our head, that was way funnier).

Radio silence?
We're off on a secret mission for a week or so, but will be checking in as time permits.
We're traversing time zones, so cut us a little slack if we're not necessarily on top of the latest news and notes.

Don't you forget about we.

Some gems have jagged edges

Yeah, it's May, but we were perched on the edge of the chesterfield in the nervous ninth inning of tonight's 1-0 win over the ChiSox. Rocking back and forth, uttering curse words of encouragement to B.J. Ryan...you would have sworn that tonight's game meant something.

In the end, the Jays win, sweep the series, win their fifth in a row and remain undefeated in May. How's that for meaningful wins?

A few random thoughts below.

The greatest McGowan since Shane
Maybe the lambchops were holding Dustin McGowan back early in the season, because in two starts since razing them, he's been ridiculously awesome. In tonight's 7.1 innings of four-hit, six strikeout, shutout ball, McGowan looked calm and in control the whole way. He was never in trouble, but even when runners reached base, he looked cool as ice on the mound. And maybe that was all a big heap of cliché, but we felt like McGowan was fully in control the entire time, in spite of the Jays lack of run support.

Shannon Stewart does not run like a girl
Didja see Shannon Stewart beat out that throw in the eighth? Or leg out the triple in the sixth? Didja? Because if you did, could you do us a solid and shut the fuck up about Reed Johnson for at least one day? Thanks!

Things we never thought we'd say
John Gibbons managed an excellent game tonight. Seriously. The lineup made great sense, with Scrappy Doo hitting ninth, where he belongs. Moreover, Gibby smartly brought in John McDonald in the ninth (FINALLY!), even if the Prime Minister of Defense didn't need to make a play.

The Mainstream Media is awesome!
For all of the bitching and moaning that we've done week about the media, mad props go to the crew at Sportsnet for catching the ninth inning conversation between home plate umpire Ron Kulpa and White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen. The Southsiders' pitching coach Don Cooper began chirping about B.J. Ryan's delivery, calling for a balk on every pitch after Paul Konerko's walk. Kulpa eventually took off his mask, looked into the dugout and declared "He's stopping." That Sportnet not only had a mic open but also had a close up of Kulpa on the ready added immensely to the drama.

Speaking of media, welcome to a whole new era
The Drunk Jays Fans are on the air, in podcast form. Their inaugural episode was recorded this weekend, and is sitting on the Score's website for your listening pleasure. The first week's guests included JaysTalk's Mike Wilner, former in-game hostess Jill Clark (mrroawr!) and a certain Blue Jays blogger, who liked to use the words "ummm" and "y'know" a lot, and stopped in mid-sentence to sigh a lot. Not that we're obsessing.

Let's turn the page on April

And with tonight's tremendously entertaining, brutally heartbreaking 2-1 loss to the BoSox, that's a wrap for the first month of the season.

11-17.

Good riddance to April.

Random thoughts on tonight uniquely spirit-crushing loss

• Dustin McGowan, sans lambchops (not porkchops, as Jamie Campbell called them), looked brilliant on the mound tonight, and deserved better. (Hmm...where'd we hear that before?)
• Speaking of Campbell, dude has to get over his mancrush on all things to do with Boston. We know he's a ginger and his people are there in Boston, but please, JC, stop gushing over every play, every tradition, every Neil Diamond singalong, every douchebag in the stands...just stop.
  
• Johnny Mac's margin of error is very slim, so a gaffe on the bases like tonight's is going to stand out for a while.
• You've got to feel for Vernon Wells, who made one great throw and one good throw that hit the mound in the ninth. Redemption is such a fleeting thing.
• Quien es mas macho? Scott Rolen (four doubles and one homer in five games) es mas macho. Muy macho!
• One image we're totally fucking tired of seeing: Kevin Youkilis and his gigantic cranium and his stupid goatee dancing around the infield in celebration. There's a roll of loonies and our gently used copy of the August 2001 copy of Playboy (featuring Belinda Carlisle!) to the first Jays pitcher who plants one in his ear.
  
• Another futile plea for sanity from JaysTalk callers: Reed Johnson was not going to go into the stands to bring back that Big Papi homer, and Rios didn't have a shot at it unless he ran full speed into the stands (and even then...)
• Speaking of JaysTalk callers: We're weeping for the state of the English language. We missed the first few minutes, but was there some sort of announcement that tonight was Malapropism Night, and we just weren't in on the joke?
  
• It's not even May yet, but listening to J.P. Ricciardi on Wednesdays with J.P. is already pretty classic. The GM was wound pretty tight tonight, especially when giving his unequivocal assurance that the Jays would not in any situation sign Barry Bonds. It sounds to us like he's sick of answering the question.
  
• Did you see that kid in the stands that got the David Eckstein foul ball in kisser? Yeesh. It was only a fleeting shot of an anguished bloody face that showed up on TV, but that was some serious nightmare fuel.

The wit and wisdom of talk radio callers

We'd rather not discuss last night's 4-1 loss to the Rangers, in which the Blue Jays were asleep at the plate and Doc Halladay sacked up and went the distance to preserve the bullpen for the weekend series. (For whatever that moral victory is worth.)

Instead, we'd like to focus on the Jays Talk callers, and specifically, David from Toronto.

The old philosopher Dave, who sounded like Bubbles from Trailer Park Boys and seemed about as lucid. His comment for Wilner after last night's game has to rate amongst the all-time headslappers.

Dave was of the considered opinion that the Jays need "to bring up some rookies to get those guys around." We're presuming that Ranger rookie David Murphy's 3 for 4 night had something to do with this, but when Wilner tried to inject a little sanity into the situation by noting that maybe veterans with experience would do as good if not a better job at "bringing those guys around", Dave made clear that the rookies "want to prove themselves."

Also, Dave assured us that Gibby was an idiot for how he used the bullpen in Wednesday's 14 inning game. "Any good manager's always got plan for a 14 inning game!" Dave informed us. Wilner offered that the Jays might have a couple of those sorts of games per year, our baseball savant wasn't having any of it.

"This is the AL East! Come on!"

It's hard to argue with logic like that.