You know, we'd like to think that we're a bit more rational and emotionally stable than we've been acting over the past week, but clearly, that's not the case.It's taken all of eight days and eight losses to turn us into a typical hysterical JaysTalk-calling bandwagon jumper, ripping every player and every member of the coaching staff and writing off this season and probably next and threatening to stop following the Jays altogether. It's incredibly unbecoming.
The upside is that the fantastic start that this team had over the first seven weeks (remember when?) has left them in good stead and on the plus side of .500. If they decide to take advantage of a typical Roy Halladay outing and score more than a handful or runs today, maybe we can all put this ugliness behind us and focus on the last four months of the season.
Fingers crossed.
Cito's logical fallacy
Our pal MRB, the philosopher and lifelong Red Sox fan (yes, such a thing exists), would be proud of us as we worked our way through this undergraduate Logic 101 proposition.
Cito's notion is that he doesn't generally want to monkey around with the lineup because maintaining that consistency allows players to relax and feel comfortable. While over periods of time it might seem like shifting hot bats into higher leverage spots in the lineup would be beneficial, Cito's notion is that in the long term, it's best to stay the course, losing one today to win two in the future. Sounds reasonable enough, even to a hysterical ninny like us.
But here's the catch, and the spot where this logic falls apart: It presupposes that Cito chose the best lineup in the first place. If, in fact, Cito began with a lineup that wasn't his strongest, then he's holding onto a flawed model for the sake of consistency.
Players progress and regress from one year to another, so it would be reasonable in the early going of the season to adjust and ammend the lineup based on what we're seeing now versus past performance.
Because Vernon Wells' 2003 season is a distant blip in the rearview mirror.
