A two-word review of tonight's 7-1 loss to the Royals

Shit sandwich.

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?

Missed opportunities

Well that sucks.

Not that we want to engage in any discussions of the relative merits of scrappy left fielders. But Shannon Stewart has to take that bat of his shoulder with a man at third and the pitch dead red right down the middle of the plate in extra innings. That was just brutal.

There's no excuse for the Jays handing this game back to the Rays. None.

P.S. We think Shawn Camp may be a double agent. Somebody hook up some electrodes to his nether regions and make him deny it.

Stop dragging my heart around

If the past two games had us yelling at the TV screen and pulling our hair out, can you imagine what they would have been like if the Jays were playing for something more than pride?

Last night's 5-4 14 inning marathon sent us into conniption fits, especially when Aaron Hill flubbed the ninth inning game that would have sealed the deal.

In today's 12-11 extra inning loss to the Yanks, it was Matt Stairs getting called out on a close play at the plate that sent us into hysterics. We're actually pretty sure that he was out, but our fandom and wishful thinking had us convinced that he beat the tag.

We can only imagine how physically ill we'd be right now if this team were on the brink of a playoff spot and lost like that.

Wouldn't that be awesome?

The Return of the Gas Can: The Jays did a good job of hiding away the Gas Can for sixteen days, but Josh Towers managed to get out of the bullpen, see his shadow, give up the winning run, and then scamper back to the security of the clubhouse, where he can tell himself what an amazing control pitcher he is, and what a chump Tony Pena is.

Three more to the sick bay: We're wondering just who the hell the Jays are going to run out there in the final week, given that Shaun Marcum, Frank Thomas and Scott Downs all left the game with injuries today. We guess we're going to have to get used to the John-Ford Griffins and Joe Ingletts of the world for the next couple of series.

Someone change the sheets

Because Jeremy Accardo utterly and completely shit the bed last night.

That was painful.

It's worth remembering, though, that even good closers blow games. Henke, Ward and Ryan all blew five or six games in the run of a year, and last night's ninth inning BP session against the Devil Rays was Accardo's fifth.

But you still have to figure that A.J. Burnett wanted to grab Accardo by the mullet and tear it out, strand by strand, after watching his brilliant eight inning, one run, eight strikeout night go for naught.

Question for Miss South Carolina

How many baserunners can the Blue Jays leave on base in extra innings, and still expect to win? Moreover, how can the Jays hammer Huston Street for a couple of bombs in the ninth, and then politely hand the home side a 5-4 victory?

Or, alternately, tell us what you know about maps, South Africa, "US America" and "The Iraq".

Other questions
-Quien es mas macho? Matt Stairs es mas macho!

-So, about Lyle Overbay's hand...does it only hurt when he grounds out? Because that was a pretty frickin' monstrous shot in the ninth.

-The Globe and Mail has two baseball beat reporters. Understanding that maybe the national fishwrap didn't want to send them out to the coast, after having blown their travel budget on Blair's Barry Bonds Bonanza^TM, would it kill one of them to update their eight-days-stale blog?

Down with the sickness

We're not sure what we've got...maybe it's just a general malaise, or maybe it's a rockin' pneumonia, or maybe our will to get out of bed in the morning is just slip-sliding away. Whatever the case, we don't think we can pin all of our nausea and vertigo on the Jays' performance lately.

In our weakened state, we bailed on last night's 6-4 loss to the A's in the 5th. Generally speaking, if you're watching a game where Jason Frasor is on the mound, and Gas Can Towers is warming up in the bullpen, it's probably time to go through your mental list of household chores that you've been putting off for too long. (Or you can do as we did, and pull the covers over your head to really make the most of your fever dreams. Trippy!)

What we missed, though, was Dusty Lambchops coming into the game as a pinch runner in the eighth, and coming around to score. How cool is that?

Splitsville

So that's that. Another frustrating evening at the plate, topped with three Jays errors lead to a 6-2 loss and a split against the mighty mighty Royals.

Wilner, unleashed
We haven't had much of a chance this year to listen to Mike Wilner's postgame Jays Talk program this year, but decided in our frustration last night to tune in. Wilner was every bit as good as the fellas at Drunk Jays Fans describe, while the callers were just brutal. If you've never listened, just imagine a bunch of puckheads spewing the inanities that they use all year in their frustrations at the Leafs latest defeat, but trying to impose that axiomatic bunk onto baseball. "The Jays, they just don't got any heart." "They need some veteran leadership." We were half expecting someone to break out the idea that if the Jays were going to win, they need more Canadian players. (Maybe they can sign Gary Roberts.)

Oh, and one more thing
Odalis F'ing Perez? You've got to be kidding.

Join us in our antipathy, won't you

And now that we're done praising the opposition, allow us a moment to unload on our heroes.

You know what we can't handle?

We can't handle seeing another goddamned postgame interview with Gregg Zaun, where he spouts earnest platitudes about this team having to step up. That whole song and dance is especially galling to us because we never see Frank Thomas or Vernon Wells or Troy Glaus - you know, the guys who are supposed to be the heart of this offense - step up and be counted. Oh, sure, we hear Glaus swear and curse at the plate after popping up to the infield for the umpteenth time with runners on, which we suppose means that he's "intense" and that he's a gamer.

But you know what? We'd really like to see those guys eat some shit once in a while, when the Jays put up an execrable effort such as they have on this road trip. Maybe it'll motivate them to do, you know, not suck.

And you know what else? You can say what you will about A.J. Burnett being a wuss (and we have), but at least the dude has the balls to show up in front of the media and answer for himself.

We can't handle another game where the offense squeezes the bats so tight when there are men on base that the grounds crew has to sweep the sawdust from around the plate after each non-rally. On this 2-4 road trip against two of the lesser lights of the AL this season, the Jays looked positively awful at the plate, and completely removed from the team that put up big numbers in a modest five-game win streak.

We know that J.P. "likes this team", and so do we...as an idea. But there is something so fundamentally amiss here. This is a team that gets the yips every time there is someone in scoring position. By all rights, they should have BURIED the Rays on multiple occasions in every game of this series (and that 2-0 win was not exactly a salve for the Jays fan's soul). But they don't seem to have that ability that good teams do to step on the other guy's throat when they have the opportunity. (This is something that teams that make the playoffs like Boston or the Yankees do with impunity.)

Sadly, we can hear the echoes of the future, when the Vernons and Troys and Reeds start talking about "oh, we woulda been great if it weren't for the injuries..." It's getting to a point where we wish we could walk in and deliver a five minute speech to these guys, like a scene out of Glengarry Glen Ross:

The wins are out there, you pick it up, it's yours. You don't--We have no sympathy for you. You wanna go out on those games this week and win. Win, it's yours. If not you're going to be shining our shoes. And you know what you'll be: Bunch of losers sitting around in a bar. "Oh yeah, I played the Devil Rays and White Sox...it's a tough racket."

You know what it takes to make the playoffs? It takes brass balls to make the playoffs.

Go and do likewise, gents.

You have got to be joking...

...but that shit just ain't funny.

This was a game that the Devil Rays were handing to the Jays all night, and no one in the Jays' lineup seemed remotely interested in nutting up and taking it. That's why this season is swirling around the drain.

Hopefully, in between the postgame Nerf Olympics and Tickle Fights, someone in the dressing room takes a second to look at themselves in the mirror, and ask themselves why they are accepting losses like this. To have had the opportunities the Jays had in the 10th and 11th, not to mention the entire freaking game, and to cough it up like a furball time and again...it just demonstrates that something is seriously amiss in the heads of some of this team.

The final four innings of tonight's game gave us enough grey hairs that we're heading out tomorrow to audition to be the next Glad Man.

Carl Crawford Kicked Our Ass: After this afternoon's gleeful exaltations on his absence, Crawford runs wild on the basepaths to tie the game, then hits a walk-off homer with a mangled wrist, like he was playing the Tampa Bay Dinner Theatre production of The Natural, and the Jays were invited for opening night.

And seriously: Gibby or Ernie or the ghost of Al Widmar...whoever made the decision to keep Tallet, League, and even Frasor on the bench in favour of another inning of Brian Wolfe...what were you thinking?

Gargh! Back below .500

Last night's 5-3 loss to the Mariners was enough to make Alex Rios break his bat over his knee. (We fully expect to hear that he'll be out of the lineup with a crack patella any minute now.)

The game was also a friendly reminder that Dustin McGowan is still an emerging pitcher, and not yet Bob Gibson.

What you miss when you can't see the game: With an afternoon game airing only on the Rogers Preview channel, most of us didn't get the chance to see A.J. Burnett's hissy fit after being pulled from his first game back. Burnett has to realize that was being treated with kid gloves because of all the times that he has had to pull himself from games. You can't be a pepper racing wuss one day, and expect to get treated like the Man of Steel the next.

It's Time To Panic!!!

It's May now and the Jays' inconsistent ways aren't funny anymore. The offense is fine. The defense is ok. There are two issues as we see it:

1. Pitching - Surprise! The pitching is the main issue. Sure the loss of BJ Ryan is a major factor, but the biggest factor is that beyond Roy Halladay, no other starter seems to be able to go past the fifth inning (I realize that Ohka went into the eighth last night). This puts a heavy strain on the young guys in the pen. Toronto needs another arm. But how? Hard choices will need to be made.
2. The Mental Game - Unless the Jays are at the plate, we don't see much intensity from the team. This is squarely a management issue. Either they have players that aren't capable of being in the game mentally, or the management doesn't know how to keep them in the game. Maybe it's time for a change at the head of the team. We love Gibby and value the job that he did through some tough times, but we have the feeling that he is a better manager for a group of loveable losers, than a team with playoff expectations.