The Jays are back home after a 3-4 road trip (that managed to improve their season winning percentage ha ha haaaa!) and are set to begin a three-game series against the Tampa Bay Rays.
News and Scuttlebutt
In a devastating blow to clowns who thought Josh Thole was an especially bad backup catcher, the Jays get less Salty https://t.co/jjtYm1m6xx pic.twitter.com/SiIa1xEmJI
— Andrew Stoeten (@AndrewStoeten) April 28, 2017
The Blue Jays released Jarrod Saltalamachhia today, meaning I took a stab at typing his name and didn’t bother checking to see if it was right. Luke Maile was called up, and will get a chance to make an impact immediately, as he’ll be in the lineup tonight, against his old team nonetheless.
Josh Donaldson and Troy Tulowitzki will head to Florida after Sunday's game to continue their rehabs. No timetable yet for either's return.
— Arden Zwelling (@ArdenZwelling) April 28, 2017
News that is neither good nor bad! Both Donaldson and Tulo will head to Florida this weekend for rehab, hopefully they’re back soon, obviously.
Aaron Sanchez threw a 22-pitch side session today; says he felt fine. No pain or discomfort; threw all his pitches. On track to start Sunday
— Arden Zwelling (@ArdenZwelling) April 28, 2017
Yaaaaaaaaaaaas! Aaron Sanchez appears to be all good to return on Sunday, which is great! Unless you’re Casey Lawrence of course.
Blue Jays option Casey Lawrence to triple-A Buffalo; recall Matt Dermody.
— Arden Zwelling (@ArdenZwelling) April 28, 2017
Speaking of that, Lawrence has been returned to Triple-A, and Matt Dermody has been called up. I imagine Dermody will be going back down after Sanchez is activated Sunday.
Today
TV: SNET1
Radio: SN590
And now, the lineups…
Blue Jays
Here's our lineup for tonight's series opener vs. the Rays pres. by @MajesticOnField. https://t.co/ANNQWLQyO2 #LetsRise pic.twitter.com/kWHFzezBba
— Blue Jays (@BlueJays) April 28, 2017
Marcus Stroman: 29 IP, 3.10 ERA, 9.6 H9, 0.3 HR9, 1.6 BB9, 5.9 SO9
Raymonds
Here's the card for tonight's series opener up north.#RaysUp pic.twitter.com/PlXFiWPqRJ
— Tampa Bay Rays (@RaysBaseball) April 28, 2017
Blake Snell: 21 1/3 IP, 3.38 ERA, 6.3 H9, 1.3 HR9, 6.3 BB9, 6.3 SO9
This is the exact pitching matchup we saw back a few weeks ago when the Jays earned their first win of the season. Oh, the good old days, when the team was 1-2, and everything appeared to be fine. Anyways, Snell walks everyone and the Jays, while they aren’t hitting at all, are still a lineup that knows how take a free pass, so this could bode well for the team.
So, last night I had a dream that Rogers fired Shatkins and Gibby. They hired Buck Martinez as President, Pat Tabler as GM, and Gregg Zaun as manager.
I just wanted to share that dream with people.
Did you wake up in pool of sweat and puke?
Worse – he woke up in the loving embrace of Jamie Campbell.
To quote Monty Python and the gang look on the bright side as at least you didn’t have a dream of premonition of tonight’s horror show.
I’ve been calling them the Boo Jays at work, this is gonna be a long summer.
Allstev I read one nasty blog that has odds on when the Jays first fans start wearing brown paper bags. The earliest suggestion is even tomorrow after the usual melt down to the Rays THAT OWN THE JAYS.
Kevin has become a franchise Pillar.
Stoeten really feels the need to defend buying that Thole jersey, doesn’t he?
In other news, the eighth inning just happened. By the glasses of Rance, it’s like the Rogers Centre was built on an old Mohawk graveyard or something.
Teddy sad but true. I was at a Jays watering hole out here in God’s country and the bartender cut us off when we all yelled, Joey Batts tried to lay a sacrifice bunt down. The bartender not being ambidextrous and busy as hell didn’t believe us, suggested we were drunken Jay fans and simply served only water for the rest of the night. To hell with that watering hole. Btw poor Joey failed on the attempt.
Switched over to the national geographic channel after the game as the finals of the loser leaves the water hole between the crocs and hippos best two out of three was coming on soon. The preliminary event was the graceful flamingos doing their long, long, long dragging of their necks into the water. It reminded me of how far poor Stroman’s neck sank after homer after homer after homer from our bull pen cost him another game. Sorry Andrew a lot of relievers at 41 have had their day in the sun. Grilli just proved that to be the case again tonight.
This site needs a Count Down to Trade Deadline Clock.
For those thinking the BlueJays is over, that’s categorically untrue. The Jays will end the night no worse than 6.5GB a playoff spot with 139 games left. This team is really, really good. Stupid good!
Mike, please! Excessive alcohol and marijuana are bad for you. Besides, I’m still in therapy from Matt Dermody’s game against the Orioles two weeks ago.
Mike, how are you doing? Why don’t the Jays get more gritty players that can bunt?
The “stupid good”players are on the DL, and we get told bullpens are volatile, so it could get better or not.
Quote from Osuna before last nights game.
I feel great warming up. As soon as I hit the field, I feel different. I don’t feel confident, and I don’t know why. I was warming up just seconds before, and I was feeling perfect, and whenever I cross the line … I don’t know, I can’t really understand it.”
The 2017 Blue Jays are off to a worse start than the 77′,78′ or 79′ Jays. So I guess the Jays got no where to go but up.
Mike I’d really like to know: Exactly how small a micropenis do you need to have before you pretend to be Mike Wilner in the comments section of a baseball blog?
The Jays have lost a tonne of games. Having said that, they’ve barely been beaten in in each of those losses. I would say that they had a chance to win almost every game other than the Baltimore massacre, and perhaps game 2 of the double header.
…and an Estrada start in TB. They’ve really been up to the task of challenging, but not winning. Looking at their key parts:
Rotation: very sturdy, and even seems to have a viable #6 in Latos…add a Fister in case of emergency and it looks even better.
Lineup: Had looked atrocious, but Pillar might be proving that he can just try really hard to become good at anything, Travis and Martin seem to be striking the ball better, Morales will be fine and even Smoak is likely to turn back into Smoak…Bautista and Pearce are likely to become reasonable facsimiles of themselves. Plus I heard the DL might be willing to trade us Donaldson and Tulowitzki for PTBNL.
Infield Defense: Phenomenal
Outfield Defense: will get better once Smoak pumpkins allowing Jose to 1st, and some combination of Pearce, Carrera, Coghlan, Pompey, Ramirez, Alford…to flank Pillar.
Bullpen: stinks, but we’ve seen this movie before. The arms have been so bad that they’re making it easy to replace them by experimenting with other arms. As we know, if you throw enough bullpen pitchers to the mound, a few of them will stick.
It seems like there’s a lot of reason this team can go on a nice run…bit if they do, it had better result in a WS, because I’ll be ticked if we blow a chance for a rebuild, only to get miss the playoffs or get knocked out early.
Some excellent points baseball guy especially regarding the defence and the depth of starters. I also wish we had a bit more speed out there as a few manufactured runs would have turned some of those close ball games into wins.
Save for Joe Smith, almost all the relief pitching makes me cringe right now. I think part of the problem is older players who are breaking down and thus, they are unable to be counted on consistently. Another issue is the simple fact that in the sports world, a teams fortunes can change rather quickly. If you go back 18 months, you’ll note that the Mets, Cubs, Royals and Blue Jays were playing in their respective league championship series. As of today, three of those teams are in disarray. It didn’t take long, but the good news is, with the right decision making, things can go from bad to good in a hurry as well.
Yeah I was thinking the same thing as there appears to be for most teams a two to three year window to really do something in the playoffs.