Because at this point in a lousy season, we could all use a laugh

We're not sure exactly whose batting stances this kid (in a Red Sox cap, it should be noted) is emulating. It's like a weird confluence of Rod Carew, a cricket batsman, a ping pong player, our drunken uncle and Tommy Tune.



Someday, this kid is going to look back on his decision to post this video as a learning experience, we're sure.

(Via All Your Base Are Belong to Rios.)

Trying to accentuate the positive

If nothing else, at least the Jays didn't get their asses handed to them on Sunday. Right?

While we're trying to fight back at the darkness, Jon Hale drops the knowledge on us that Frank Thomas is hitting marginally better in his time with the A's. And although he's still not setting the world on fire, he's still hitting better than just about anyone on the Jays over the past few weeks.

Let's play two
It doesn't appear as though Sportsnet will be airing the early game today, which is too bad because the matchup (Fausto Carmona versus A.J. Burnett on an extra day of rest) should be a good one. The late game kicks off 30 minutes after the conclusion of the first, and features the reincarnation of Sandy Koufax, Cliff Lee (6-0, 0.81 ERA) versus Shaun Marcum, which is nothing to sneeze at.

(Update: According to the preamble on Gregg Zaun's blog, Sportsnet will be airing both games, so feel free to go ahead and fill your boots.)

The message to Lind
Speaking of Sportsnet blogs, Jamie Campbell wonders about the message being sent to Adam Lind with his demotion and the team's acquisition of Brad Wilkerson. To be honest, we don't think that Lind got a fair shake, as he faced more major league calibre left-handed pitching in his brief recall than we think he should have in an ideal world. Still, it's better to have Lind in the lineup and getting his reps everyday than to have him in some sort of job-sharing situation with Matt Stairs and Shannon Stewart, never mind Wilkerson or Kevin Mench.

Still, Lind is 25, and by now he should be established as a part of the team's present, not their future.

Vernon Wells would like you to sign his cast

Vernon Wells is gone for six to eight weeks with a broken wrist. Jeremy Accardo's on the DL. All the ugliness is available at Globesports.ca.

John Gibbons could build a complex of townhouses with the bricks he must be shitting right now.

Nobody panic. Everything is going to be just fine, now that we have Kevin Mench.

What a Mench!

Hey now!

Not only have the Jays made it official by acquiring Brad Wilkerson, but they've also gone out and traded a sack full of mountie quarters to the Texas Rangers for Kevin Mench and his gigantic fucking cranium. (Which, as we pointed out before, couldn't have come from excessive intake of Lik-a-Maid. Swedish Berries, maybe.)

DFA'ed to make room for the two new dudes? Sergio Santos (we barely knew ye) and Gus Chacin. The Machine is dead. Long live the Machine.

Incidentally, it was Mench who hammered a comebacker off Roy Halladay's leg a couple of years back in Texas, so Doc should at least be allowed to get one good lick in on Heavy Kevy before his first game. Towel whipping, bag tag, indian burn, purple nurple...whatever the weapon of choice, Mench should prepare himself for the worst.

Now the question is: where in hell do you find the lineup spots for Stewart, Mench, Wilkerson, and Matt Stairs? And what happens when Scrappy Doo and the PMoD are back in the house in 15 days?

Moreover, What's Edgardo Alfonzo up to these days?

Waiting for Wilkerson

We're still waiting for the official word, but who are we to doubt Jeff Blair's report from last night that the Jays are about to sign Brad Wilkerson.

We've got mixed thoughts on this one. We like Wilkerson, but he really hasn't played well since leaving Montreal. There could be an argument made that the spacious grounds at RFK Stadium ate into his power numbers, but that wouldn't explain why his strikeouts have gone up and his walk rate has diminshed over the past few seasons. (Unless he was always swinging for the fences.)

As for the odd stat that he hits lefties better than righties, we can't shake the feeling that somehow, that's a bit of a fluke. We know that sounds stupid, but we also remember the lousy year he had against lefties in 2006, and wonder why he suddenly couldn't hit them.

Still, Wilkerson is a versatile player who can play anywhere in the outfield and at first. For the dirt cheap price that the Jays will end up paying, he's at least worth a look.

Useless Wilkerson Trivia
This will be the third Canadian city in which Wilkerson plays, after stints in Ottawa and Montreal. We'll bet he's still got a sack full of loonies and mountie quarters that he'll want to get rid of.

Also, Wilkerson's always worn a single digit number in the big leagues (usually 6 or 7), but all of the single digit numbers with the Jays have been claimed. Maybe a nice Timex watch express posted to Curtis Thigpen would wrest lucky number 7 out of his grasp.

(And yes, sad as it is, we care about such things. Numerology matters. Just ask our numerologist.)

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.

Shaun Marcum's so awesome that Gregg Zaun had to touch his bum

Whatever happened in the ninth, Shaun Marcum pitched his ass off in tonight's 6-2 win over the mighty Rays. And in case you didn't know by now, Marcum leads the Jays starters in ERA (2.59) strikeouts (44) and wins (4, for whatever that's worth).

We had our apprehensions about Marcum before the season, especially after a couple of lousy spring outings. But seeing the great control he has demonstrated over his pitches over his past three outings and watching him get the strikeout when he needs it (22 over his past three outings) has us wondering if this isn't a whole other sort of breakout season for the supposed number four starter.

Oh, and another thing. Marcum's singlehandedly delivered a free slice of pizza for all of the fans in attendance at his last two starts, so show his some appreciation. Shaun Marcum is your pizza man. Manga!

Six runs!
As Jerry and Alan pointed out on the radiocast, the Jays hadn't scored more than five runs in twenty games coming into tonight's contest. The last team to have that sort of streak? The 43-win 2003 Detroit Tigers. Kinda makes ya think: If it weren't for the starters pitching their asses off in this first five weeks of the season, this could be much uglier.

With that in mind, we were immensely relieved in the eighth inning after the Jays, apparently using some sort of tantric approach scoring, finally put a five spot on board. Hell, Marco Scutaro drove in two runs, so you know that something was working.

Actually, we think that what was mostly working for the Jays in tonight's game was that they finally got into a team's bullpen. Seeing the Jays have the chance to get their cuts in against the three stooges the Rays brought in to relieve Matt Garza reminded us of just how many starters were going late into games against them over the past few weeks.

Hinske: You suck, tubby!
Watching Hinske go 0 for 3, with 2 Ks reminds us of the old days. The days he seems to have forgotten, but that are etched in our mind like a teenage cutter's scars. The days when he squandered his promise, ate himself out of a job and stole the Blue Jays' money for four years. The days when he worked his hardest to make sure that Marty Cordova wasn't the biggest Rookie of the Year flameout in recent memory.

One last thought
Scott Rolen is the greatest Jay ever.

O Cruel Fate!

We were in transit from the gym to the Tao's heavily-fortified Fortress of Solitude when we heard that Scrappy Doo was taken out of the lineup due to some nebulous injury which hampered his grittitude.

So we thought to ourselves: "Isn't this a great opportunity for Johnny Mac to steal the job away from the little blonde moppet?" And certainly, when McDonald stroked a solid base hit, we had this great notion that this would be a turning point in his season.

Alas, it was only too true.

There's nothing quite as sickening as seeing a look of panicked pain like the one on McDonald's face after he caught a cleat on the Rogers Centre turf in the sixth. That look pretty much foretold of a long stay on the DL. Groan.

As Wilner said to open the JaysTalk, welcome to the Jorge Velandia era.

The word from the Jays' PR shop (via Wilner) isthat they are waiting for the swelling to go down, and having been there before ourselves, we're guessing that means ligament damage. Ouch.

Thou shalt not lust after other teams' shortstops
Not that we think that we have this sort of power, but we'd been thinking all day about Rafael Furcal. Thinking about how he might be available for the right price at some point this season. Or about how he might be available to the highest bidder next year.

We thought longingly about his .448 OBP and his 1.045 OPS, and the fact that if anyone is this mythical "prototypical lead-off hitter" that people talk about endlessly, it is him. (Eckstein and Reed Johnson couldn't hold his jock in this respect.) Furcal is a plus fielder to boot, and would be an upgrade over Scrappy Doo if nothing else.

But wait! Are we being punished by God for our covetousness? Have the heavens rained down calamities on our middle infielders because we yearned lustily for the middle infielders of others? Cripes...Guess this means it's back to the self-flagellation for the rest of the night.

If anyone is having second thoughts about Eric Hinske after watching him hit that bomb...
Remember that if the Jays hadn't sent him packing, and if he didn't realize that he was at the very end of his career rope, then he'd be here in Toronto as a fat, cheese-eating dead weight with a stupid goatee and a stupid flattop taking up more than his share of the bench. And he probably wouldn't have taken the, er, "necessary steps" to get himself game ready for this year. (And for Tampa fans: there's still plenty of time for him to discover all of the fine waffle houses that Florida has to offer.)

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.

We do not fear Aaron Rowand and his hot streak

So the news came across the wire that our arch nemesis Aaron Rowand hit a couple of bombs last week.

Oooh. We're soo scared.

Sure, this puts the San Francisco centerfielder a few homers closer to forcing us to make good on our promise to eat a pound of raw bacon if he hits 20 for the season. But even with last week's offensive onslaught, the man with the second dumbest contract on the Giants is still on a pace to hit just 15 homers for the season. Plus, his two dingers last week came in Colorado (thin air!) and Philadelphia (Little League dimensions!), and you had to figure that he'd get a couple in those surroundings anyways.

Rowand still has just one homer at Telephone Company Park, and is posting a .684 OPS in the ballpark by the Bay.

We're not sweating this. Yet.

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.

Middle aged white dudes have had enough of your blogs and your hippity hop music

We were going to look the other way on this whole Buzz Bissinger vs. the Blogs nonsense, until we saw the overly sympathetic treatment that Buzz and his pathetic, howly, angry old man routine got from the Globe's Bill Houston. Now that we have the local angle, let's dive in.

We're sure that this has been pointed out in about a thousand other sports blogs by now, but somehow, it's hard to take someone seriously who professes to be shocked and appalled at the profane and thoughtless nature of the vast majority of blogs by spitting out profane inanities like: "This pisses the shit out of me."

Bissinger cried and moaned about how Leitch's stated preference not to have "access" and his aversion to the press box mentality somehow equates to an aversion to the facts. And yet, as this interview with Boog Sciambi from a couple of years back painfully demonstrates, Bissinger is as averse to doing any legwork as anyone, preferring to lord his access to the anecdotal thoughts of Nolan Ryan or Tony LaRussa over anyone who would dare question his "facts". When confronted on what seemed to be a lack of real information about pitchers allegedly being rushed to the majors, Bissinger scampers and bites like a cornered ferret, calling another host a "slimebucket". So, yeah, Bissinger is doing a great job upholding journalistic civility.

In the aftermath of the televised battle royale, Bissinger is doing little to make his own case, telling Dan LeBatard that "I never want to be an expert in the field of blogs. That would be way too pathetic."

Well, that's fine. But why present yourself as a dissenting voice against them if you don't really know much of anything about them? If you can't distinguish between the content and the comments, then why set yourself out as a the voice of authority on all that is wrong with the blogosphere?

Between Costas and Bissinger (and to a lesser extent, Houston), there seems to be this generally accepted notion that the huge, vast majority of sports blogs are ugly, crass, poorly written, mean-spirited and ultimately detrimental to society.

Then again, maybe these aging journalists would do well to look back in their own lives, when a multitude of other media were referred to in the same way. Movies, television, rock and roll, Pop culture, talk radio...hell, even newspapers if you go back far enough...all of them have been singled out as a corrupting influence at some point or another.

The reason why blogs raise the ire of these types is that they are struggling to preserve what they view as an inherently good thing (sports journalism), and yet they look out every day and see this sacred thing being undermined by the fast, quick, profane poor quality blogs.

But they're missing the point.

Blogs haven't caused the decline of sports journalism. Sports journalism has caused the decline of sports journalism.

The reason why we now are as likely to seek out information on blogs every day isn't because we want to take glee at the misfortunes of others. It's because there is so much more out there than the perfunctory ramblings of the columnists in the daily papers.

The whole idea that bloggers are somehow going to eat the lunch of newspaper writers is ludicrous. We'd suggest that Houston get on the horn with the web crew at the Globe and see how many in-bound visitors they have received over the past year to their website courtesy of the Tao, or the Drunks, or the Mockingbird, or the Southpaw, or whoever. Then tell us what the value of those links were to Globe. Because the fact is that we're not making a cent on this, and as Leitch quite rightly pointed out, this is hard work.

We link to the Globe or the Star or wherever because we want to continue the conversation on our own terms. We don't want to sign in to your site to make a two line comment. We want to go on at length, and examine and discuss. Journalists don't have an inherent right to the last word on any subject, and there is immense value to the extension of the dialogue beyond the newsprint and ink. Sometimes we want to hold up your writings to be praised, and sometimes we post them out of scorn. But it's ultimately healthy to have someone out there watching the watchers.

As to the quality of the writing, we'd point out that we don't have the luxury of sitting in a newsroom, formulating our thoughts, running our work past an editor and then past a copy editor to ensure that all of the kinks are ironed out before our posts get sent out into the world. So "professional" "accredited" newspaper writers shouldn't get all up on their high horses about the low quality of the writing on blogs unless they'd like to share with us their unexpurgated first drafts.

And as for all of this talk about your sanctified "objectivity"? Get over yourselves. The truth is that there is no such thing as objectivity, just shared subjectivity. And the reason why we read the blogs we do is because on some level, they share an interest or a viewpoint. They provide further context (sometimes statistical, sometimes historical, sometimes hysterical) that help amplify our ability to defend our own position, or completely tear our arguments down.

We love that. That's a good thing.

Win! Woohoo! Break out the party hats! PLAYOFFS!

Jays win. Fuck yeah.

Now if you'll excuse us, we're going to put down this drink of sorrow, and pick up a drink of joy.

Mmm. Tasty.

What if we're really this bad?

Here's the scary thought that popped into our head as we woke up at 3 am: What if this isn't just a bad streak? What if this isn't just a spot where our boys are hitting some "at 'em balls" and having some bad luck?

What if the 2008 Toronto Blue Jays are really this bad?

The reason that this pops into our head is that last year's paltry performances from a number of the club's putative offensive contributors were pretty much written off before the season began. Bad shoulder, bad wrist, bad whatever...the 2007 Jays were said to have underperformed for a number of reasons, but that should not have been taken to mean that they weren't capable of much more this year.

But what if Vernon Wells really is a .260, 20 homer, 85 RsBI, sub-.800 OPS kind of player? What if Lyle Overbay is destined to hit .270, with a dozen homers? What if Alex Rios topped out last year?

It might have been easy to cast these dark thoughts aside a few weeks ago. But after watching this team go 1-7 on this road trip, and 4-12 since the sweep of the lowly Rangers in Arlignton, those awful thoughts are getting harder to suppress.