Snap judgements

Your new starting catcher?
Rod Barajas, who slid like a motherfucker into that random Molina's shin guards to put the Jays up in the fourth and drove in a pair to bust it open in the seventh, now has five homers and 19 RsBI. Meanwhile while Gregg Zaun has two and eight respectively in about 30 more ABs. (Oh, and Zaunie likes breakfast, which we won't hold against him in this matter.) We hate to make too hasty a judgment, because we're invariably wrong on these things, but you're gonna have a hard time jamming the Sportsnet Playoff Anchor Whose Teeth Shall Go Unseen back into the lineup when he comes back.

Hey, you know what the Yankees could use?
Another sleeve patch. No, really. Let's add another commemoration of the end of this version of Yankee Stadium (vintage, 1976). It's the House that Graig Nettles Built, so we guess we should all genuflect and show it the respect that it deserves, right? How about some Chris Chambliss patches on the ass of every player? How about a patch sewn into the skull of every Yankee to honour the truly awful and stupidly expensive boiled hot dogs at the Bronx House of Botulism?

Can everybody just shut up about Joba already?
Fat ugly toad Joba Chamberlain lasted just over two innings. There's your god damned saviour, Yankee fans. And while we're at it, Joba (born 9/23/85) has done pretty much fuck all as a major league starter aside from having some overhyped "rules" named after him, while Jesse Litsch (born 3/9/85) is 7-1 this year with a 3.18 ERA (and 14-10 with a 3.58 over his first two years.) Not that we think it is an injustice necessarily, or that things won't play out differently in the end...but it does make us want to smack Michael Kay in the face with a Rideau Crusher every time we hear about how great Joe-Bah is.

Instead of apologizing for nebulous reasons, Jason Giambi should apologize for that really stupid mustache.
That's really stupid mustache. We bet he goes to all the hipster bars in New York, orders up bottle service for all his hangers-on, and then points at his supposedly ironic lip hair exclaiming "Hey man! Check out my mustache!" He should really stop trying so hard to be cool, because we all know that he's just a scared little jock douchebag who wants the world to love him again, even though he's a fraud and a sellout. Trying that hard only reinforces it.

Watching moving pictures...what a concept!

It's amazing how much more you can glean from watching game action as opposed to reading boxscores or watching Kathryn Humphries' attempts at humour. Not that seeing a handful of innings gives a fulsome view of the progress of the team, but it was certainly revelatory to see our boys on the field.

A few thoughts:

Chacin is a Machine in need of serious repair: As ugly as the line score was, it didn't nearly do justice to just how messed up Gustavo Chacin is at this point. His arm slot has dropped noticeably, with two major repercussions. First, he's not able to hide the ball nearly as well as when he came over the top, meaning that batters are getting a really good long look at the pitch before he delivers it. Second, he has absolutely no velocity. Not that he was a flame thrower before, but now his delivery is much more suited to tossing a bean bag through a clown's nose at the county fair than it is to getting big league hitters out. This guy is toast.

Shannon Stewart is not as gimpy as we thought: Stewart worked the count well in his at bats, and looked good legging out a double. Also, we were reminded of the fact that while he has a pop gun arm, he compensates by getting good jumps on the ball as he did when he made a nice catch in foul ground.

How can we not love Buck Coats? Coats crashed into the wall in the 8th inning to make a sweet over the shoulder catch off of Jorge Posada. Also, dude is seriously lanky. Like, Bargnani lanky.

Aaron Hill is in mid-season form: Hill went deep into the count in a couple of at bats, fouling off pitches and hanging in there long enough to stroke a solid run-scoring double late in the game.

Purcey brings heat: David Purcey's control isn't all there yet, but he was dealing in his inning of work. He did get tagged for a Jason Lane homer, but dude definitely has an arm. (Or maybe anything looks fast after watching two innings of Chacin.) He's not ready for prime time, but he's almost there.

Michael Kay is a douchebag: The YES booth of Kay, David Cone and John Flaherty spent close to two innings picking apart a J.P. Ricciardi quote on the strength of the AL East which ended with the words "we just need a little more." We took the quote to mean that the Jays need a little more out of their personnel, but Kay was dismissive, assuming that he was asking for some sort of handout from the league. Flaherty assumed that they were looking for more revenue sharing, while Cone assumed that it meant that they need more fan support. Seriously, two innings spent on a throwaway sentence which probably didn't mean all that much at all.

So many Wang jokes, so little time

The Jays face Wang for three to four innings today at 1:15 pm. (On Sportsnet! For reals! Are you shitting me?)

Here are the lineups and scheduled chuckers, cut and pasted from the LoHud Yankees blog:

YANKEES
Cabrera CF
Jeter SS
Abreu RF
Rodriguez 3B
Giambi DH
Cano 2B
Duncan 1B
Lane LF
Molina C

Pitching
Wang (3-4)
Rasner
Farnsworth
Phillips
Albaladejo
Ohlendorf

BLUE JAYS
Eckstein SS
Stairs RF
Wells CF
Rolen 3B
Thomas DH
Overbay 1B
Stewart LF
Hill 2B
Zaun C

Pitching
Chacin
Purcey
Davis
Carlson
Wells

Baseball on the TV. What a concept!

Since last weekend's CityStyle infomercial/telethon hardly counts as a baseball broadcast, we're excited to see some actual games make their way to the tube.

On Sunday afternoon, we managed to catch some Mets-Astros action on WPIX, and we tuned in to WGN to see a Cubs game only to be met by a broadcast of MXP: Most Extreme Primate (the Citizen Kane of snowboarding monkey movies.)

Sportsnet, which has apparently exhausted its supply of televised poker (Zzzzzzzz) will get into the baseball broadcasting game this week. On the slate are today's Red Sox-Yankees fake game at 1pm, and, wonder of wonders, tomorrow's Jays-Yanks game at 1pm as well. We're presuming that it will be the YES broadcast, so if you've forgotten how much you hate Michael Kay, you might want to record tomorrow's game to provide you with a helpful reminder.

Two Sweeps* in a Row!!

Yep, the brooms were out in the Big Apple last night as the Jays took the one game series from the Yankees. We'll take what we can after the horrendous play this past weekend. In any case, here are some highlights:

- AJ Burnett! AJ Burnett! AJ Burnett! Burnett's curveball was nasty last night which meant that he could really laser in some fastballs. The result was a 4 hit 7 innings of shutout ball against the Yanks. Good on you AJ. Now, do that 20 more times.

- John Gibbons for quietly continuing to allow the Jays to be aggressive on the basepaths. Vernon Wells has done as much damage on the basepaths in the past week as he has with his bat or glove. The pressure on the Yankees defence last night was obvious.

- The bullpen combo of Jeremy Accardo and Scott Downs shut things down in the last two innings.

The lowlights:

-The umpiring in Yankee Stadium continued to be convenient for the Yanks. Even the heavily biased YES broadcast team admitted that a couple of key calls were clearly wrong. "Looked like a strike to me" Leiter was forced to admit after seeing a replay on a pitch that Burnett badly needed to stop a Yankee rally.

- Watching the YES broadcast was annoying to say the least. Al Leiter seems to have forgotten that he was a Jay at one time (when he wasn't nursing blisters for 3 years) and takes every opportunity to crap on them. He was highly critical of AJ Burnett (a former teammate in Florida) last night in ways that are unnecessary and ultimately embarrassing given the outcome.