Reflections on a Winning Streak

Photo courtesy the outstanding @james_in_to's Flickr stream.

It would be redundant to re-hash all the super duper great things that have been happening during the Toronto Blue Jays' current 11-game (!) winning streak.  They've hit the ball well, they've fielded it well, and they've pitched well.  They haven't necessarily done all of those things at the same time in eleven straight games, mind you, but in instances where one of the legs of that precarious three-legged stool has wobbled a bit, the other two legs have been more than sturdy enough to keep things upright.

Good lord, it's been a blast, hasn't it?  I like to think I'm generally a pleasant person regardless, and I've learned over the years that loyal support of a baseball team that usually loses more than it wins is not a good reason to allow a sunny disposition to be disturbed.  Still, over the last couple of weeks, even knowing a streak like this won't last, I've gone from cheerful to being about two steps removed from skipping down the street like a giddy schoolgirl.  

If you wear your fandom on your sleeve, on your head, on your desk, on the bumper of your car and everywhere else, you've probably suffered through much of the same mix of mockery and sympathy that I have since the beginning of April.  "What's wrong with your boys?" they asked.  "Worried yet?" they asked.  You try to keep a brave face, you try to convince yourself it's early and they'd at least make things interesting at some point.  But when you were honest with yourself, you accepted what seemed to be staring you in the face -- the disappointment of a likely third or fourth place finish in the monstrous American League East, by virtue of a brutal start to the season from which the team was unable to recover.

And now it's all changed.  On June 21, as the season turned officially to summer, the Jays won the first game of an eventual sweep of the division-rival Baltimore Orioles, their third consecutive such sweep to open what was anticipated to be an angst-ridden ten straight within the division.  They've crept to within five games of the division lead  (not just the Wild Card, mind you).

There are nearly three full months ahead of us before the calendar tells us it will be fall, and the nip in the evening air reminds us playoff baseball is on its way.  Three full months of streaks to begin and end, for the ebbs and flows of a long Major League Baseball season to separate the real talent from the pretenders of April and May.  Injuries, substitutions, stars emerging, veterans fading away, brilliant plays and boneheaded mistakes -- all of the things that make every baseball season intriguingly unique.

It's been a helluva long time since the Jays have well and truly been in the mix to emerge at the end of a long, hot summer with a chance to experience what the fall has to offer.  Yet here we are, fans riding the euphoria of the the longest winning streak in franchise history (tied, yes, I know... come talk to me tomorrow night).  The caps and jerseys are worn a little more proudly; the water-cooler chatter is a little more confident.  It's true that the Jays haven't won anything yet, but it sure feels better to know they haven't lost it all yet either.

Nobody Said It Would Be Easy

It's amazing what a short losing streak can do to a team in the American League East, isn't it?  Make no mistake, the Blue Jays are in the midst of a bit of a funk, but it's not a historically bad spell of losing, nor has it come against teams they "should" be beating with more regularity.  Yet here they are:  at the time of writing, they've been swept in Arlington, after losing two of three in Tampa, and all of a sudden, they're back to being .500 for the first time since April 19.

All of which wouldn't be so bad if the Jays were in a normal, sane, happy division where a team can coast along winning one game for every one they lose, maybe get hot at some point in the summer, and still be in the thick of a playoff race.  But that's not the AL East.  Things are still a little topsy-turvy in the division -- I maintain that there's something altogether unholy about the Baltimore Orioles even being close to first place this late in the season, and I'm stocking up on holy water just in case -- but, as Mike Axisa of Yankees site River Avenue Blues pointed out on Twitter, it's starting to look a little more familiar.

So the Jays will wake up tomorrow far closer to last place in the American League East than they've been all season.  Last place!  After being in a playoff spot just a few short days ago!  The arse is gone right out of 'er!  Would you say it's time for our viewers to crack each other's heads open and feast on the goo inside?  Yes, I would, Org Guy.

Now: let's not be too sarcastically sanguine about things.  Winning is better than losing, and I'd be a helluva lot happier if this team could find a way to win again.  It's a lot more challenging, though, when you're already dealing with health issues in the batting order that created the curious double play combination of Brett Lawrie-Omar Vizquel in the later innings today.  Kelly Johnson's cortisone shot in his leg, stacked on top of Yunel Escobar's departure with a groin issue, will likely necessitate more roster moves.  Don't look now, but the shuttle between the big club and Las Vegas is getting much more frequent, and there are no signs of it slowing down.  We might get an Adeiny Hechavarria sighting on the big league roster before the week is out.  Unfortunately, far too many of his 51s teammates, especially in the bullpen, have been summoned ahead of him, and having Texas take a... well, a Texas-sized chunk out of the pitching staff this weekend didn't help matters.

If there are tickets for flights back to Vegas in the travelling secretary's desk drawer, it feels like only a matter of time before one ends up in Eric Thames' locker.  The somewhat defensible decision to take advantage of Travis Snider's last remaining option year, keeping Thames in Toronto for the start of the season, has simply not been a success.  Unlike the clear improvement over time that we've seen from Colby Rasmus, it doesn't look like more at-bats will make it much better for Thames.  It's easy to say we all predicted this and that Snider should have been up the whole time, but it shouldn't be forgotten that Thames didn't do anything to lose the job to open the year.  Fair's fair, but by now, after -0.5 bWAR on the still-young season, I think the team knows what it has in Thames, and it isn't anything special.  I'd be a lot more optimistic about not only a switch in left field, but an overall improvement out of the position, if Snider didn't seem to have some lingering wrist issues he can't seem to shake.

A Travis Snider injection, or a Vladdy Guerrerro, Adeiny Hechavarria or Anthony Gose, aren't going to make this team an instant contender (or at least not a significantly greater threat to contend than they are currently).  But a winning streak -- a real, honest-to-goodness streak of like seven straight wins -- would sure mean a lot to this team.  The Jays have won four in a row on three separate occasions in 2012.  In the AL East, four in a row just never seems like enough, and there are so many landmines in between those strings of wins.  They need to start dodging more of them.

That's a big 10-4, good buddy

Sure, we could spend our sleepy Monday off-day quibbling about Cito's carved in stone lineups, or Alex Rios' awful start, or David Purcey's inability to find the strike zone. We can pick nits with the best of 'em, but frankly, when the Jays finish up their second week of the season with ten wins and at the top of the AL East, it seems more than a bit ungrateful to start looking for the downside of up.

We've got the Scoots Fever
Though he went hitless in the last two games, Marco Scutaro's start to the season has been nothing short of awesome. His four homers and 10 RsBI are worth celebrating, but more than that, his 12 walks and .418 OBP out of the leadoff spot have been a crucial part of the Jays' offensive success to this point.

Scutaro didn't get a whole lot of respect before the season started, with people questioning his suitability as a leadoff hitter and his defense at short. So far, Scoots has been equal to the tasks, nothwithstanding a bobbled ball here or there. Certainly, Marco's first two weeks has quieted the hue and cry for John McDonald to get starts at short down to the faintest of whispers.

Podcasted Taoisms
We were fortunate enough to be invited to share our views on the Jays' hot start with the fellas over at the Drunk Jays Fans on their weekly podcast, and appropriately enough, we were wickedly hung over when we spoke to them. If you're interested in hearing us make incomprehensible jokes about Gary Carter having an orange shadow (wha?), or if you want to listen to us contradict ourselves on Cito, Gibby, and Brian Tallet (whatchyoutalkinbout?), then tune in later today when the podcast gets posted. A good time was had by all.

(Update: Hey look! It's posted! Enjoy listening to us prattle on. We've already listened to our segment four times.)

All good things must end

Go figure. Ten straight wins, and the Jays lose with Roy Halladay on the mound. It just goes to show that nothin' in baseball makes no sense anyhow.

And to think that we had sweet photos of Racquel Welch, Farrah Fawcett and Heather Thomas lined up to post to celebrate the extension of the streak.

Nothing making sense: Gibby Defense League Edition
With the loss, the Jays slip to a mediocre 15 games over .500 under Cito Gaston. We've been led to believe by some dudes and their acolytes that the change in the team's fortunes can be attributed to progressing to the mean, which they would have done under John Gibbons anyhow. The same John Gibbons who was let go with the team four games under .500.

Maybe this win streak has skewed our view, but the gap between Gibbons' 35-39 record and Cito's 43-28 record is distinct enough for us to make some basic assumptions about the relative merits of their managerial skills.

Around the Horn

• Jays Blog of the Year Ghostrunner on First talks upended bandwagons and recaps last night's Wednesdays with J.P.. Also, mentions Bill Caudill.
  
• The Mockingbird has pretty pictures which apparently explain something about why David Purcey is awesome.
  
• Joanna @ Hum and Chuck talks uneasiness in the face of unexpected success, and Alex Rios' love of Vernon Wells giant cranium. Also, she is the originator of "Pink, Round, Efficient". Just putting that out there.
• Neate @ OoLF talks catchphrase thievery. Which in no way motivated us to mention Joanna's ownership of one of our favorite catchphrases.
• Go Jays Go has a photo of a hot J-Crew seventh-inning-stretching tart. Mrroawwr.
• The Drunks develop a case of Houston-Zelkovich syndrome.
  

10

Ten games, and no losses in September. Seriously, this is getting ridiculous. Isn't is strange to think that at some point years from now, we'll look at great winning streaks in the history if the franchise and see the past few weeks as one of the most wickedly awesome stretches ever.

No, really. And we don't even care at this point how much of a long shot the postseason is. We're going down with the ship.

We know that the chances are remote, but the irrational fan in us is doing somersaults when we see the Jays' chances at the Wild Card increase over the past week from 1% to 2.8% according to Coolstandings. (UPDATE: Actually, it went from 1% to 2.8% in one day.)

You see? They're saying that we still have a chance!

Have you noticed that the Jays are unbeatable?

We're still trying to wrap our heads around it. After yesterday's 1-0 win over the Tampa Rays (all hail the mighty Purcey!), the Toronto Blue Jays have won eight straight against teams ahead of them in the standings, and look like world beaters.

If only there were another month to the season.

Unfortunately, the majority of the intellectually slovenly Toronto media has already written this hot streak off as a team winning "when the pressure's off" (fuck you Dave Feschuk), and the Jays will slip into obscurity this month as the sports pages/screens are taken over by discussions of the Leafs' seventh defenseman, the NFL season, the Leafs' fourth line centre, CFL playoffs, the Leafs' pre-season power play performance, jai-alai updates, the Leafs' farm team's assistant deputy to the associate head scout's liaison, poker, and of course, updates on the never-boring story of the Leafs.

It's too bad that no one is going to pay attention to these final weeks of the baseball season. As Whitey Herzog once told an umpire: Yer missin' a great game!

The point is not that the Jays have an outside shot at a playoff (which they really don't, even if we refuse to stop believing.) The point is that much of this roster which is pulling off this streak of wins against legitimate contenders will be back next season. And while the bankrupt cynicism of the Toronto sports media (fuck you Dave Feschuk) will shrug next March and write off whatever chances the Jays have to seriously contend since they will not have blown up the franchise field and front office personnel, the 2009 Jays are proving their mettle now.

Baseball is an ongoing narrative. If you don't recognize that the final pages of this volume lead into the first pages of the next, then your understanding of the progression and the movement of the franchise's fortunes is likely to be incomplete.

Are we a little thin-skinned this Monday morning? Why should we care about what mediocre basketball writers (fuck you Dave Feschuk) snort mindlessly about the Jays on Sunday morning gasbag programs? We really shouldn't care...Maybe we just need more NyQuil.

Do you remember the time?
Speaking of the media, does anyone remember the times from 1986 through 1991 - now regarded as the franchise's salad days - when the Jays were regarded by some writers and pundits as "chokers". That they could never "seal the deal" and "get over the hump"...it's instructive to remember this now, because it is easy to see how the writers were missing the point in retrospect, just as they are now.

Win streak!

Two wins in a row! All is well! Go ahead and shovel your antidepressants back into their industrial-sized tub!

Even with last night's 6-4 win over the Tigers, the Jays remain eight games back of the Red Sox for the Wild Card, although such considerations are probably way beyond moot at this point. Though they may be able to make up some ground on the BoSox, Yankees and Rays over the next two weeks of head-to-head matchups, the more likely scenario is that they split those series and end up pretty much where they are now.

And don't forget that with his acquisition by the Red Sox, the Jays will have to face the mighty Paul Byrd a few more times before the season is over. Given the fact that he easily disposed of the Jays with a 94-pitch complete game performance on Saturday, the Jays had better hope that they miss him in the rotation and draw punks like Dice-K and Josh Beckett instead.

Cito's lineup madness
It's probably best for everyone if we just forget Cito Gaston's bizarre insistence over the weekend on batting Brad Wilkerson in the second spot in the lineup. Maybe the dusty old book of baseball says that a left-handed hitter should hit second, but Wilkerson's big long wild stroke makes Adam Dunn look like Rod Carew.

Still, we're watching with interest how Cito utilizes Adam Lind. After a great game at the dish on Friday (2-4 with a couple of solid singles), Lind was bumped up to the cleanup spot on Saturday, where he promptly went 0-4. Lind was dropped to the five-hole on Sunday (0-4 again) and down to the seven-hole for the last two games, where he's gone 3-8 with a homer and three RsBI.

It's probably all a load of shite to speculate that any of this means anything, but we'd prefer to see Cito leave Lind lower in the lineup for the time being. We get that it must be tempting to move him up, especially since he is hitting better than anyone else on the roster at this point, but just let him settle in and hopefully see some fastballs with Rios, Wells or Overbay on base ahead of him.

Conspiracy theories? We got one.
A strange notion struck us over the weekend after we saw one too many hard-hit balls by Jays hitters die on the warning track: is there something funny going on with the baseballs in Toronto? We know that Colorado keeps theirs in a humidor or a deep chest freezer or something, but what about at Rogers Centre?

If the Jays pitching staff is mighty like few others (3.66 ERA ties them with the Dodgers for tops in the Majors), and their hitting is lowly like few others (only the Giants have hit fewer homers than the Jays' 81 so far), isn't it reasonable to ask whether if there is something in the environment that is causing the offense to be depressed in Toronto's games?

Somebody get us Oliver Stone on the phone.

Three things to celebrate about a three-game win streak

Shaun Marcum is back (knock on wood): Although Marcum pitched better than his pitching lines indicated over his first three starts, last night's performance (seven innings, one run, three hits and seven strikeouts) was the first time that he truly looked comfortable and in control since his return from the DL. It doesn't hurt that he was facing the inept Oakland A's lineup, but nevertheless, it's good to have him back.

Rod Barajas is an offensive monster and a defensive beast: In addition to his montrous first inning dinger off rookie Gio Gonzalez, Barajas had a stellar game behind the plate. Rod the God made a great play to pick a John McDonald throw out of the dirt to get a force out at home with the bases loaded, and he called an excellent game for Marcum. We think...or we suppose...Maybe we're just piling on Zaunie here, but it seems to us as though Jays pitchers look more comfortable pitching to him.

Alex Rios is quietly turning things around: In his last seven games, Rios has scored eight runs and has 11 hits. While only two of those hits have been for extra bases, Rios is putting good wood on the ball and is keeping the line moving. His OPS this season is still sitting at about 100 points below last season's, but it has been ticking slowly upwards since his dreadful May, when he posted a .585 OPS.

Given his performance this season, we're coming around to the idea that instead of thinking of Rios as a a corner outfielder who mashes, maybe he should serve as the Jays' leadoff hitter going forward, somewhat in the vein of a Johnny Damon (in his prime): a leadoff guy who hits for average with a bit of pop and lots of speed. Assuming, of course, that the Jays have a better option next year in the middle of the lineup.

Weekend win streak

As we brace ourselves to go back into the breach for another week, at least we can look back at a weekend where the Jays were able to get a few breaks and four straight wins.

That extra hit here or a missed call in their favour there, and that's pretty much the difference between last week's losing streak and the current four-game winning streak. The line between losing and winning is really that slim.

3-0! Undefeated in May

The powerhouse Jays are unstoppable! Sure, the Chicago Southsiders booted the ball around the park in today's 5-2 win, but at least the Jays were able to take advantage. It certainly wasn't the case last month...but April seems like so long ago, doesn't it?

More media thoughts
We're not going to beat any dead horses, but we would like to concur with the Drunk Jays Fans' Stoeten with regard to the fact that the Prime Time Sports crew should stop talking baseball. In Friday's show, the assembled crew got themselves worked into a lather about two year old minor league contract signings, and actually got simultaneously angry about the fact that J.P. Ricciardi had a "FIVE YEAR PLAN!!!", and that he had "NO PLAN"!!! Seriously guys...would you all like for J.P. to send you the Jays' player personnel strategy in a duotang so that you can review it and sign off on it?

We get that BobCat McCown hates J.P. since he refused to come on the show, but his petty vendetta against the Jays GM is tiresome.

And by the way: Is it just us, or is James Deacon getting a little dimmer with each passing year? Maybe we just gave him too much credit to begin with, since he is well-coiffed and well-dressed and wears glasses. Lately, Deacon sounds like Captain Obvious on the air, piping in with incredibly dull "insight". We get the impression that he's just hanging around the studio, agreeing with McCown, because he's got nothing better to do.

Jays Spank Nationals

Back for the second game in their three game series against Washington, the Jays did their best to look like a team that could put together a winning streak. Strong pitching (Sean Marcum was tremendous with 11 Ks over 7 innings) and timely hitting (more like 'about time' hitting from Vernon Wells with his first HR in 88 at bats) carried our heroes to a 7-3 victory for their third straight victory bringing the Jays to within a game of .500. Nothing can stop them now! Wait...do you smell gasoline?

Winning Streak!

Two wins against the Rays, and Jays sneak out of the basement.

Accardo looked like an actual living breathing closer today, mowing down Tampa quickly in ninth for his first save as a Jay.

We're ecstatic.