In the meantime, the Jays needed a patch at third, and their selfless slugger stepped in to fill the void by returning to his original position, which he played until the end of the 2008 season. In 2009, Toronto relocated Bautista to the outfield, he went on a September tear to close out the season, and the rest, as they say, is history. He’s played 600 combined innings at the hot corner scattered over the past two years, although he hasn’t picked up his infield glove yet this season, so he’s not exactly starting from scratch. He started fielding grounders at third before the Jays’ Interleague contest in St. Louis last night, and could be starting at third by Monday.

Although switching a player’s position, especially when it’s your team’s best bat, is always a risky proposition, this was a move that needed to be made. Bautista has already fielded questions from reporters about whether the move will affect his swing, confidently asserting that he’ll maintain the same degree of offensive excellence. If he does lose any ground on offense, it’s more likely to be because it’s nearly impossible for anyone to keep up the level of production Bautista has given Toronto so far this season than because of his switch.

Of course, this move will alter the Blue Jays lineup in several other ways. Five Blue Jays third basemen have combined to be below replacement level this season, the primary culprit being Edwin Encarnacion and his -0.9 WAR. Encarnacion has put up an ugly but not completely unsightly (comparatively speaking) .250/.287/.364 triple-slash, but negated any value that might have had with an incredible -7.4 UZR in only 149 innings. Mark Reynolds and Chris Johnson have both cost their teams more at third, but both have done so in over 500 innings. The only possible explanation is that Encarnacion has been doing his shoe shopping with Jimmy Hoffa. The most valuable Blue Jays third baseman has been Jayson Nix, who has accrued a total of 0.4 WAR despite a pitcher-esque line of .173/.250/.316. Congratulations, Kroger. You’re at the top of the Delta pledge class.

Bautista won’t be fantastic defensively, but he wasn’t exactly a wizard in right, either. Over nearly 3000 career innings, Bautista has given up about 10 runs per 150 defensive games at the hot corner. In right, he’s been worth -4 runs per 150 games. Factor in the positional adjustment of +2.5 runs at third vs. -7.5 in right, and Bautista’s third base defense actually makes him more valuable, despite the fact that he’s further from being an average defensive right fielder than he is a third baseman. However, he may be rusty, as he hasn’t played the position yet this year, and there’s always the chance that having to put extra effort into his defensive shift will affect his bat. I think we can quite conservatively say it’s a wash in terms of Bautista’s overall value, although it’s likely to make him slightly more valuable.

However, add in the production they’ll get from their replacement right fielder to the fact that they’ll finally be getting something out of the hot corner, and it’ll be huge for the Jays lineup. Sliding into right field will likely be prospect Eric Thames, recently recalled after posting a .352/.423/.610 triple-slash for a wRC+ of 151 in Triple-A. Travis Snider was off to a poor start this season, but seemed like he was beginning to find his stroke before suffering a concussion after getting beaned a week ago in a Triple-A game. If Snider can continue to revive his season at the plate, he could also be a major beneficiary of the increased playing time for right fielders not named Bautista.

Though Lawrie’s extended injury timetable is certainly unfortunate, AA has done his best to turn the situation into a positive by deploying the best possible lineup given the players he had. He correctly diagnosed that that lineup did not include any of the players who had been manning third for the Blue Jays so far this year, and the team will benefit from giving regular playing time to any of several promising outfielders who will look to use this shot to get out from underneath the massive shadow of Bautista. Whichever of these outfielders does end up playing the field on an everyday basis, they’ll almost certainly provide more value than what the Blue Jays were getting from Encarnacion, Nix, and the rest of their ugly procession of third sackers.

Jose Bautista photo by Icon SMI

What are we doing well?  We are hitting home runs. A lot of home runs. Leading the league with 167. The team with the second most are the Red Sox with 142. Leading the way is Jose Bautista. Jose has more homers, this year, than he has had in any two previous years. A little known Jose Bautista fact: Jose Bautista’s bat is considered Canada’s first weapon of mass destruction. For more Jose Bautista facts go here: http://www.bluebirdbanter.com/2010/7/28/1592993/jose-bautista-facts.

Jose isn’t the only Jay hitting the ball out of the park. Players who have hit more than 10 homers for the Jays are John Buck, Lyle Overbay, Aaron Hill, Alex Gonzalez, Edwin Encarnacion, Vernon Wells and Adam Lind.

We aren’t that great at getting on base. There aren’t many Jays that like to take a walk. It really isn’t  something that the Jays try to do. They like to be aggressive at the plate. Manager Cito Gaston has never been one that liked his batters to take a lot of pitches. Go up, look for your pitch and swing hard. With this group of players, that might be the best plan.

Our young starting staff is doing quite well too. With Ricky Romero, Shaun Marcum, Brandon Morrow, Brett Cecil and Jesse Litsch we have a rotation whose average age isn’t even 25. And yet they have been pretty consistently good. With prospects like Kyle Drabek, Zach Stewart, Chad Jenkins, Henderson Alvarez and Marc Rzepczynski ready to come up in the next few years, the future of the rotation looks good.

With a number of veteran players having surprisingly good seasons in Jay uniforms, one would have expected the Jays to have been big time sellers at the trade deadline. Well we weren’t. GM Alex Anthopoulos held out for big returns on his players. When he wasn’t offered what he was looking for he decided to hang on to guys that could be A or B type free agents, figuring the draft picks we could pick up would be better than what he was offered.

Yunel Escobar photo by Icon SMI

He did make a couple of trades. He traded veteran SS Alex Gonzalez, who had a wonderful first half of the season, and a couple of minor leaguers for Yunel Escobar. Escobar, apparently, had worn out his welcome in Atlanta because he wasn’t hitting like he had the previous two seasons and the team had decided he was ‘lazy’. I’m not sure they were watching the same player we are. He’s been just great with us. Smiling and laughing with his teammates and making unbelievable plays in the field. He has very quickly become a favorite of mine.

The other deadline trade Alex Anthopoulos made was a shocker to us fans. The player we all thought was our future stud first baseman (starting next season in most of our minds) Brett Wallace for 19 year old, A-ball, CFer Anthony Gose. This is a tough sudden change for us fans to take. Wallace was at or near the top of everyone’s Jay prospect lists. He was number 27 on Baseball America’s top 100 prospect list for all of baseball. Gose isn’t on that list. His numbers in the Florida State League, at least at first glance, don’t look great: .263/.325/.385 with 36 steals in 63 attempts. But then he is a 19 year old, playing against guys that are, for the most part, older than him. He has great ‘tools’. Fast, good glove, great arm (he was a pitcher that could hit 93 on the radar gun). The Jays expect power to come as he comes into his 20’s.

Most of us think that the Jays could have gotten more for Wallace, if they really felt it necessary to trade for him, but maybe they know something about Gose that we don’t. CFers are harder to come by than first basemen and Wallace might not become the player we hoped he would. But it is an interesting move and since Gose is just 19, it will be a long time before we know if it paid off or not.

Those were the only moves that Alex made even though he had many valuable trading chips. Many teams would have liked to have Scott Downs, Jason Frasor, John Buck, Jose Bautista, Kevin Gregg and Lyle Overbay but we entered August with them still on our roster. Alex, to his credit, didn’t want to make trades for the sake of making trades. He knows that to win in the AL East he needs to find special players. Sometimes that means taking chances on players like Anthony Gose. Trading for players you don’t think can become special would be just spinning your wheels.

The Jays might be over .500 at the moment, but the month of August looks to be our toughest test yet. This month we have series with the Yankees, Rays, Red Sox, Angels, A’s, and Red Sox again, Yankees again, Tigers and Rays again. Finishing the month above .500 won’t be easy, but we are playing good ball at the moment and just took 2 of 3 from the Yankees in New York.

So the immediate future looks tough but the longer range future looks bright. Alex Anthopoulos is proving to be a very intelligent GM. We have a number of good prospects in the minor league system, one that we are going to get to see for the next two weeks. All-Star catcher John Buck took a pitch off his throwing hand, he ended up with a cut that needed stitches so J.P. Arencibia is getting a call up. He is hitting .303/.360/.639 with 31 home runs in Las Vegas, so we fans are anxious to get a look at him; he’s likely our catcher starting next season. Buck will be back after the 15 days so this is just a short look, but it will be nice to get a look at our future.

That’s all the news from Toronto; we’ll not take so long before checking in next time.

As some of you already know, I was asked over the weekend to be a guest on the up & coming webcast, Pro Rumors TV with hosts Allan and Ted (a Yankees fan). This was my second time on the show with them. The first time I just called in not knowing this was a video webcast (I thought it was a plain podcast). But this time around we conducted the show via Skype.

The episode aired live this past Sunday, May 16th at 7:30pm PST (10:30pm EST). For those who missed it, we are providing you, our loyal readers, the video of the show below.

Be sure to tell me how I did in the comments below!

_

-T.S. Eliot, the Wasteland

_It’s been an interesting April here in Blue Jay land.  It’s been something of purgatory for the Jays, so far, with many key players from better-than-you-thought late aughts teams — Roy Halladay, Scott Rolen, Marco Scutaro, Alexis Rios – gone, but many of the guys who are slated (at least in our dreams) to be the next great Jays team may not yet make major-league contributions.  So we are left with a lot of in-betweeners playing key roles, guys like Jose Bautista, John Buck, Brian Tallet and Dana Eveland getting a ton of face time.   Only 4 of the 9 players currently making up the Jays’ starting lineup have anything resembling a future in a Blue Jays uniform.

One piece of the future who is up with the big team has been Travis Snider, and while the results haven’t been as expected (.127/.257/.254), there are some reasons to be optimistic going forward.  He has a 23.4% line drive rate (14.9% last season in the bigs) and has seen over 4 pitches per plate appearance (3.6 P/PA last season).  He is also walking 15% of the time (10.5% in 2009), while striking out 25% of the time (a third of the time in 2009) and a ridiculous .133 BABIP.  Give him time.

Photo by Icon SMI

_Adam Lind is doing his best to show that his huge 2009 wasn’t a fluke and has been hitting the ball well of late.  Aaron Hill got off to a slow start, hampered by a hamstring injury, but is back now.  Vernon Wells has turned heads with a huge start to the 2010 season (.333/.400/.716) with 17 extra base hits in 21 games.  On the pitching side, the returning Shaun Marcum has been mostly terrific while with sophomore southpaw Ricky Romero, you can omit mostly from that construction.

The others have been either better than expected (Jose Bautista, Alex Gonzalez) or not (John Buck, Lyle Overbay, Brian Tallet), up and down (Dana Eveland, pretty much the whole bullpen), or hurt (Edwin Encarnacion) but let’s face it – it really doesn’t matter unless you thought that someone was going to give up a lot for one of these fellows in a trade.

The important thing is who will man these positions going forward, not who is keeping their places warm now.  First base prospect Brett Wallace is tearing up AAA and looking like a viable everyday player down the stretch if the Jays find a place to stash Overbay.  Catcher J.P. Arencibia is hitting very well in AAA himself in an effort to rehabilitate his prospect status after a terrible and injury-hampered 2009 and has made strides on defense.

Photo by Icon SMI

Lefty starter Brett Cecil has already found himself promoted to the bigs after a hot start and the early returns have been quite good.  Fellow lefty starters Marc Rzepczynski (broken finger) and Brad Mills (rib injury in 2009, but off to a great start in AAA) don’t look to be all that far behind.  The Brandon Morrow experiment is ongoing.  Kyle Drabek and Zach Stewart, starting pitchers that came back in the trades for Halladay and Rolen respectively, are pitching at AA and are having some significant, if qualified, success there, while 2009 first-round pick Chad Jenkins just had his first dominant start (8 shutout innings, striking out 9 and walking one) in A ball.  Exciting young starter Henderson Alvarez is mowing them down in high-A ball, too.  And there are some early discouraging performances and injuries in the minors, too.

But this is what really matters, not whether Randy Ruiz should be seeing more at-bats than Lyle Overbay (he shouldn’t) at first, whether Jose Bautista is really good enough to play every day (so far, so good, though the platoon splits aren’t favorable), or whether manager Cito Gaston has been missing opportunities to pinch-hit (almost certainly yes).

For my part, I’m enjoying 2010, and plan on enjoying it even more as the pieces of the future play increasingly important roles on the team.  That may take some time, so patience is required at this point.  I don’t expect unqualified success, but it will be fun to see!

Photo By George Campbell

One of the most popular part-time players of recent memory will return to the Blue Jays organization, marking a new chapter in his baseball career.

Sal Fasano recently retired as a player and has been appointed as manager of the Toronto Blue Jays Single-A minor league team, the Lansing Lugnuts of the Midwest League.

The Chicago, Illinois native is making his coaching debut after 17 professional seasons as a player, 11 of which were spent in the major leagues.

The right-handed hitting catcher played in 427 Major League games with nine different clubs, including the Toronto Blue Jays in 2007.

Sal began his big league career with the Kansas City Royals in 1996. In 1998, while with the Royals, he was second in the American League with 16 hit by pitches. Fasano’s Fu Manchu mustache earned him cult status by the Phillies fans during his time in Philadelphia in 2006.

Phillies fans started a fan club devoted to Sal called Sal’s Pals. They would attend games dressed with wigs and drawn-on mustaches like Sal’s. During one game, Sal had pizzas delivered to the group.

Retiring wasn’t a tough a decision once he was offered the managing position with the Jays.

“In the offseason I made contact with Tony LaCava (Blue Jays assistant general manager),” Sal explained. “Tony called me and asked me what my plans were for next year, and at the time I wasn’t really sure. I know that if I had to play this year, I would have had to have a couple knee surgeries, and I didn’t really want to have to do that. So they basically made me a really good offer and told me I could have the job I really would like to have, so I took it. So I get to be the manager of the Lansing Lugnuts, in A ball. I’m pretty happy about that.”

Sal is 38 years old now, and if he had played another season, this would have been his 19th spring training camp as a player. This is now his 19th spring training, but it is in a completely new role.

“I’m not really missing it (playing) at all,” Sal said after a preseason spring training game in Dunedin. “I’m happy I can turn the page on playing, it was a fun career, but the body hurts, you know. Its easier to make that decision when that’s the case. Its been really fun, the kids just give you so much energy, you want to teach, you want to learn, its really been a lot of fun so far. Its a new challenge.”

He was able to accumulate enough service time on major league rosters to build up a decent pension, but he has not maxed it out—yet.

“I got 70 percent of my major league retirement, which is good enough, and hopefully I can end up coaching in the big leagues and build it up. Retirement’s nice, baseball’s a pretty good deal, now I have to think about providing for the family and if I can have fun doing it, that’s all a bonus.”

Sal will be replacing Clayton McCullough, who will be taking over the Jays’ Single-A team in Florida this year. Sal is hopeful he will be successful with the Lugnuts and eventually move up the chain and eventually land a coaching position with a big league team.

“I hope so, you know, development’s nice, but there’s still only one place to go,” Sal said. “There’s one place to manage, there’s one place to play, and that’s in the big leagues. So  that’s a goal of mine and I’m gonna try to learn everything I can to try to get there.”

Sal is definitely one of the nicest guys in the game, and will hopefully go on to have a long, successful career as a manager/coach in professional baseball.

Jeff Pearlman on ESPN.com once wrote about Sal, “When I think of Sal Fasano, I think of greatness. Not of Willie Mays or Ted Williams greatness, but of a uniquely excellent human being who, were class and decency the most valued standards of a career, would be the easiest Hall of Fame inductee of all time.”

The Lugnuts’ season will begin on Apr. 7th and run through Sept. 6th.

Greetings from the frozen north, and man is it frozen this winter.  Anyway

There is the odd thing he’s done that I’m not thrilled with, he is keeping manager Cito Gaston for the season, with the understanding that after the season he will be retiring from managing. I’m not sure that Cito is the right man for this team, we will have a very young team this year and Cito prefers veteran players. Cito is also, how best to put this, pretty inert as a manager. You won’t see lots of moves during a game. There won’t be a lot of pinch hitting, hit and runs, bunts or, you know, other things a manager can do to affect the game.

Keeping Cito also cost us pitching coach Brad Arnsberg. Cito and Arnsberg apparently didn’t get along.  Arnsberg has been the pitching coach for the Jays since the 2005 season and has kept the Jay’s team ERA near the top of the league ever since.  Former bullpen coach Bruce Walton will take over as pitching coach while Rick Langford is moving up from Triple-A Las Vegas to become bullpen coach. Hopefully they can do as good a job with our young pitching staff. Also leaving the pitching staff is batting coach Gene Tenace.

Image via Wikipedia

Anthopoulos has also made a couple of trades. One I’m sure you haven’t heard about, it was kept pretty quiet. I’m not sure if any newspapers or web sites picked up on it. The Jays traded Roy Halladay (and $6 million) to the Phillies for three prospects: pitcher Kyle Drabek, catcher Travis D’Arnaud and outfielder Michael Taylor.  Taylor was quickly shipped to the A’s for third baseman Brett Wallace.

I think Anthopoulos made as good a trade as we could have hoped for, Halladay had a no trade clause in his contract and there were only a few teams he would have accepted a trade to. The Yankees and the Red Sox didn’t offer much but he was able to talk the Phillies into a deal they weren’t willing to make at the trade deadline. I don’t know how he did it.

In Drabek, we have a potential number one starter who should be ready for the majors by the 2011 season at worst.  He throws a mid 90’s fastball and a very impressive curve.  Travis D’Arnaud is a little further back, he’s just 20 but projects to an above average catcher, who should have some power. It is likely we won’t see him in the majors until 2012.

The swap of Taylor for Wallace is interesting to us Jay fans. We have a hole in RF at the moment and Taylor looked like the guy that could fill it. I was really looking forward to seeing him play. But Anthopoulos figures Wallace is the better prospect. Wallace played third in the minors last year but the Jays think he would be better as a first baseman. We do have other first base prospects but I guess Anthopoulos didn’t think any of them will pan out. It is a very tough trade for a GM, going straight prospect for prospect. If Anthopoulos had kept Taylor and he didn’t turn out to be great, no one would have blamed him. Now if Taylor turns into a better player than Wallace, people will be ragging on him. But you can’t be a General Manager if you don’t have guts.

Anthopoulos has made some other moves. He made a trade with the Mariners getting Brandon Morrow for Brandon League and minor league outfielder Johermyn Chavez. I was a big fan of League’s but getting a starting pitcher for a reliever and a prospect is not bad. Morrow is still just 25, throws hard and has a lot of potential. Of course, Morrow hasn’t yet proven he can start in the major leagues, but we are hopeful.

Anthopoulos has also made a couple of free agent signings.  He picked up catcher John Buck to a one year deal. He also signed short stop Alex Gonzalez to a one year $2.75 million contract with a club option for a second year. He also resigned John McDonald to a 2 year contract. I’m not sure what the point of signing two guys that are good glove, no bat types to play short but they are ok to fill the short stop spot until we find someone that can be a more long term solution.

We have also allowed free agents Marco Scutaro, Rod Barajas and Kevin Millar to leave. I liked Scutaro but we will get two draft picks back from the Red Sox for him. Barajas had decent power for a catcher but then a .258 on base percentage isn’t something you want to see from any position. Kevin Millar should never have been signed in the first place.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

All in all, things seem to be looking up in the long term for the Jays. In the short term? I think this season might be a rough one. We really could use a right fielder. I wouldn’t mind them putting Travis Snider in RF and Adam Lind in LF, but Cito seems to be totally against the idea. It might not be the best defensive outfield but I think it would be the best use of the players we have.

Unfortunately it seems like we are going to have the great fun of having Jose Bautista playing right and leading off. Jose did have a good finish to last season, but he has a career .227/.316/.366 batting line against right handed pitchers. He does hit lefties well, but he’s not the type of player I’d want in RF or lead off.

We have about a dozen possible starting pitchers this year, but none of them have much for experience. Right now the starting rotation could include Ricky Romero, Brett Cecil, Brandon Morrow, Shaun Marcum, Brad Mills, David Prucey and Robert Ray. All guys with potential but lacking on experience. Jesse Litsch and Dustin McGowan could join into the list of possible starters as they come back from injury. And then prospects Zach Stewart and Kyle Drabek could force their way into consideration as the season goes on.

About a month away from pitchers and catchers reporting to spring training and there is time for more to happen, but it looks to be we’ll have an interesting season. Maybe not a good season, but it will be interesting to watch.

Hi all. Time for our monthly look in from north of the border. Actually, it is well past time.  Sorry,

What has happened in the world of the Jays in the last month? You might have heard that we didn’t trade Roy Halladay after the most publicized trade negotiations in the history of baseball. JP Riccardi stated at the start that he would only trade Doc if the price was right. I’m actually kind of proud of him that he stuck to his guns on that one.

We did trade Scott Rolen. Rolen was a favorite of mine, he is great fun to watch on the field. Defensively he makes at least one amazing play a series and he was hitting terrific for us this year. Apparently he wanted to be traded closer to home. I think JP did pretty well getting Edwin Encarnicion, who is not near his equal defensively, but he had 26 homers last year. He’s not been as good this year but then he hurt his hand at the start of the season. It will likely take till next year before he is 100% again.

But the best part of the trade is the 2 young pitchers we picked up: Josh Roenicke (son of Gary who played for the Orioles) is in our bullpen now and looks like he could have the stuff of a future closer and Zachry Stewart looks like he could be a terrific starter in the future. He’s in Triple-A now but likely will be in the fight for a starting job next year. If he doesn’t make the team out of spring training he likely will be up at some point. For a trade that Rolen asked for, Riccardi did a good job of getting value for him.

What else did the Jays do? Oh yeah. We gave away 2 time All-Star Alex Rios for nothing. Rios has great talent. I guess the best way I could put it was to steal something Bill James wrote years ago about another underachiever: he’s a $100 million airport with a $50 control tower. His mind often doesn’t seem to be in the game and I’m not sure he is teachable. His contract really isn’t that bad but he wore out his welcome in Toronto. So when the White Sox claimed him the Jays said ‘go ahead’.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

On the field the Jays have finally called up Travis Snider again. Which is good since we aren’t playing for anything at least we ought to get a look at our best prospect. We also called up long time minor leaguer Randy Ruiz. Randy hit a homer in each of his first two games against the New York Yankees. He likely won’t be great but he can’t be worse than Kevin Millar has been for us.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Beyond that we are just playing out the string now. The good part is that we have 3 really good looking left-handed starting pitchers that are making our future starting rotation look like it could be good. Brett Cecil, Ricky Romero and Marc Rzepczynski (who we are calling Scrabble for his 40 point name) are all looking good. Cecil will likely have to be sat down for September to keep his innings pitched down to a reasonable amount this season. Each of the three look like they could be strong members of our rotation next year and in the future.  And we get to watch Doc pitch every 5th day.

There are rumors that Jay’s ownership are going to loosen the purse strings this off season. Some figure they will give the team $20 million more to play with for player salaries.  Other interesting off season stories will include the possibility that the Roy Halladay trade talks will heat up again and JP Riccardi’s future with the team will likely be a topic of conversation. JP’s been GM for 8 seasons and hasn’t lead the Jays into the playoffs yet.

When my partner in crime, Tom, penned his last epistle about our beloved azure corvidae, things were just going great in the

the people so suddenly jumping off of it. Folks decried that the Jays were pretenders who fattened up against weak teams but now the real Jays were showing themselves.  The truth, though, is that the Jays are neither as fantastic as their April play would have you assume, nor as dismal as they were during that 9-game losing streak. Since that losing streak, the Jays are 12-10 (.545), and, well, that’s about the kind of team they are. Not great, not terrible, but a reasonably well-constructed team with strengths and weaknesses. Currently, the Jays sit 6 games over .500 (39-33), tied for the lead in the American League wild card race with the New York Yankees.  That’s not such a bad place to be with the season nearing the halfway mark. And the Jays have managed that without significant contributions from Alex Rios (.774 OPS, he has picked it up of late) and Vernon Wells (.688 OPS, though he, too, has come on a bit recently).

Marco Scutaro continues to defy any rational expectations, reaching base at a stellar .397 clip and playing world-class defense at shortstop.  Scott Rolen’s days of hitting 30+ home runs may be long gone, but Rolen, too, is playing incredible defense, providing highlight reel plays on an almost daily basis, and hitting .332/.396/.485 for good measure.  Aaron Hill has fallen off a bit recently but is still doing the job on both sides of the ball, and Lyle Overbay is having a career year so far (.938 OPS) at the plate and playing his usual stellar defense.  Adam Lind is having a breakout season with a .307/.381/.540 line, 22 doubles, and 14 home runs and he has been particularly hot in June.

You might have noticed a trend in the rundown of the Jays’ offensive contributors – reference to their stellar defense.  The Jays have one of the best defenses in the league, and that’s gone a long way to helping the pitching staff cope with a medical report longer than an ER ward.  Shaun Marcum, the second-best starter on a fantastic pitching staff last season – Tommy John surgery.  Dustin McGowan, once one of the better-looking young arms in the league – labrum repair surgery.  Jesse Litsch, two seasons of better than 120

ERA+ before his 24th birthday – Tommy John Surgery.  Casey Janssen, considered the number 4 starter heading into camp this year – continued problems stemming from 2008 labrum repair surgery. Ricky Romero – missed time due to an oblique strain.  And most recently, Roy Halladay – strained groin.  With all those injuries, it’s a wonder that the Jays’ starting corps have been able to hold things together, and their stellar defense deserves a lot of the credit.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

That’s not to say that the Jays’ starters haven’t been equally deserving, if not more so, however.  Rookie pitchers Brett Cecil, Ricky Romero, Scott Richmond – all have done a great job, as well as long-reliever turned starter Brian Tallet.  And while the Jays’ pen has been mercurial at times, particularly ex-closer B.J. Ryan, generally speaking they have gotten the job done, though the loss of closer Scott Downs is a big blow and the fact that he sprained his big toe running out of the batters box in an interleague game makes it sting all the more.

So, when you think Jays, don’t think “flash-in-the-pan April” or “showed-their-true-colours May.”  Think of a team that is contending with a ridiculous injury list and two AL East juggernauts and is still very much in this fight almost halfway through the season.  And if you like to root for the little guy doing his best in trying circumstances, send a few cheers our way, eh?

Part of the reason that it is so hard to believe we are winning is that our starting rotation has been decimated by injuries. Our rotation at the start of the season wasn’t anything that would strike fear in the hearts of evildoers or, you know, the other teams in the AL East, with Shaun Marcum and Dustin McGowan on the DL carrying over from injuries suffered last season. Of our original starting 5: Roy Halladay, Jesse Litsch, David Purcey, Ricky Romero and Scott Richmond, only Doc and former Edmonton Cracker Cat Scott Richmond are still in the rotation a month into the season.  Those two have been great, Doc has been Doc (7-1, 2.95) and Richmond has been far better than anyone could have imagined (4-1, 3.29).

The others? Well, rookie Romero is DLed with an oblique strain after a sneeze (yeah, I know) but not before he made 3 great starts (2-0, 1.71), he is due to be back pitching for us in the next week or so. Jesse Litsch wasn’t doing as well before he went on the DL with a forearm injury, but the injury may have been effecting him since the start of the season; he is due back soon too. David Purcey wasn’t injured, he just wasn’t good (0-2, 7.01) so he was farmed out.

In their places Brian Tallet was moved from the bullpen to the rotation where he has had 4 good starts and 1 bad one. Top Jay pitching prospect Brett Cecil was called up before the Jays had intended to fill out the rotation. After 2 starts he has thrown 14 innings and only allowed 1 earned run. Robert Ray has filled the 5^th spot in the rotation the last 2 times through, he wasn’t as great but he has been serviceable. Our much maligned GM JP Richardi really deserves credit for having so many major league ready arms in the system.

As well as our starting pitcher troubles, our closer BJ Ryan is on the DL with crappy pitching disease (the dreaded CPD). Thankfully Scott Downs has been terrific in the role in Ryan’s absence. So good in fact that when Ryan comes back to the team later this week or early next, Downs will keep the closer job. The rest of the pen has done a fine job too.

Offensively, the team that was awful with the bat last season has the highest team batting average and runs scored in the AL. The team seems to have taken to manager Cito Gaston and batting coach Gene Tenace’s teaching. The team that couldn’t hit with runners in scoring position (RISP) last year is now great at it.

A lot of the offensive improvement has come from the DH spot. Last season our DHes weren’t good, batting a big .247/.325/.418, but this year our DHes, mostly Adam Lind, have hit .319/.397/.560. That’s a huge gain from one spot in the lineup. Lind has 31 RBI in our first 35 games.

2B Aaron Hill

Another big improvement from last year is the return of Aaron Hill. Hill you might remember, missed most of last season after suffering a concussion in a collision with David Eckstein (Hill was pretty much the only thing Eckstein hit hard all season). Joe Inglett was a nice fill in for him but watching Hill for the first 35 games of this year, we now see what we were missing. Hill plays a terrific 2B, though he’s had a few errors. But what we are really seeing is how great his bat is. He leads the Jays with 9 homers, has 30 RBI and is hitting .357/.396/.567.

Hill’s double play partner, Marco Scutaro has had a great start to the season too. Batting leadoff for every one of our 35 games, he has really taken to the role as he has 29 walks and a .396 on base percentage (OBP). Watching him every day, you get a feel for how good he is defensively; he seems to make at least one amazing play per game. If he doesn’t win the Glove Glove this year there is a major problem with the voting system.

Other players who are having a great start to the season are Scott Rolen (.319/.375/.466) who is playing his usual great defense, catcher Rod Barajas (.309/.335/.495) and bench players Jose Bautista (.328/.443/.431) and Kevin (x-nay on the ow-boy-k) Millar (.327/.364/.481). We, at Bluebird Banter, have banned the C-word term as way too silly, but we are having fun finding new C-words for the term. So far my favorite is cosmopolitan up.

A couple of others like Vernon Wells and Lyle Overbay have been merely good, not great. And Alex Rios and Travis (Moonraker) Snider, have had a slow start to the season.  They have a lot of room to improve as the season goes on, and there have been some encouraging signs from both of them that might suggest they are pulling out of their respective slumps. Or it might be wishful thinking on my part.

Backup catcher Michael Barrett, suffered an unfortunate injury early in the season forcing the Jays to call up good glove, no bat catcher Raul Chavez. Defensive savant John McDonald hasn’t had enough playing time to show us anything. With luck that will continue.

All this adds up to the Jays being first in the AL East with a 23-12 record at the time of this writing, but likely the best game of the young season was earlier this evening (as I write this) when Roy Halladay bettered former Jay number 2 pitcher and current overpaid Yankee, AJ Burnett 5-1. I don’t think I’ve ever had as much fun watching a game.

Anyway it is a great season to be a Blue Jay fan. Will the Jays continue to play this well all season? Oh I don’t know, but what I do know is that the Jays are more fun to watch then they have been in several years and that I expect to continue. So if you want to enjoy some great baseball join Hugo and me over at Bluebird Banter. Talk to you next month!

So spring training is over, the season is underway, and the Jays have gotten off to a decent start – not that it has changed any of the seemingly

After a spring training pitched battle, the Jays’ rotation was rounded out with former first-round pick Ricky Romero, surely much to the delight of GM J.P. Ricciardi, who is still the victim of scorn for drafting Romero ahead of players like Troy Tulowitzki, Cameron Maybin, Jay Bruce, and Colby Rasmus.  Romero started off the season, and his big league career, with a matchup against the Tigers and fellow first-rounder Rick Porcello, the first time in baseball history that two former first-round draft picks have opposed one another in each pitcher’s major-league debut.  Romero pitched excellently and got the better of the matchup and the win, though Porcello also did quite well.  Romero pitched great his second time out too, though he was denied the win through no fault of his own.

The Jays’ top pitching prospect, Brett Cecil, a sandwich pick in 2007 who has risen very quickly through the system, made a bid for the starting rotation as well but ultimately was sent to the minors to work on his consistency, his command, and his delivery (which apparently tips the pitch as the ball is released).  My guess is we will see Cecil before June 1^st.  Another young pitcher who was sent down was Brad Mills, yet another lefthander (like Romero, Cecil, and third starter David Purcey) and one who the Jays seem to like a lot.  With just a handful of starts in AA, though, the Jays ultimately decided that Mills could use just a little more experience in the high minors.  He’s another guy that is likely to contribute in 2009, as is Casey Janssen, a former top 10 Jays prospect who did a great job in the Jays’ bullpen in 2007 but missed all of 2008 to labrum surgery.  Janssen’s recovery has been somewhat slowed recently, but word is that he is likely to be ready to start in the majors sometime in May and reports on his pitching have been quite encouraging.

With all these bright lights on the horizon, why is the outlook on the Jays for 2009 so pessimistic?  Certainly the offense should be better, given that the Jays are returning all the major offensive contributors from 2008 and can expect a full season of wunderkid Travis Snider and young slugger Adam Lind, who has gotten off to a very fast start, not to mention Aaron Hill, who missed most of 2008 due to a nightmarish set of post-concussion symptoms but is healthy and off to a great start in 2009.  The Jays are also hoping for healthier seasons from Lyle Overbay, who played regularly in 2008 but experienced problems due to a broken hand in 2007, Scott Rolen, and Vernon Wells, who strained a hamstring this spring but was back in plenty of time to start the season in centrefield.  That said, Wells’ hamstring strain was the same hamstring he hurt late in 2008, so there are concerns it could be a chronic problem.

Well to answer the question, the Jays are relying, to a great extent, on a set of young starters to hold the line after Roy Halladay.  The most experienced among them, Jesse Litsch, is only 24 and his recent injury has brought into even harsher focus the lack of experience among the Jays’ starting corps..  Folks see 4 of 5 rotation spots filled with young and/or inexperienced pitchers and they figure, understandably so, that it’s going to be a long season.  They may well be right, but, for my part, I am looking forward to seeing the youngsters pitch and there is no shortage of options should the first line falter.  Maybe I’m just seeing the world though azure-colored glasses after a great start to the season, but I’m having a hard time believing the Jays will be in a battle to stay out of the cellar.

Hugo also writes for Bluebird Banter. Please follow the link provided to read his work there.