They didn’t manage to, though. I guess the Royals will just have to win the division outright by a good margin, and hope that the Rays’ end-of-season situation does not require that game to determine it either.
Nats win tonight. Dan Haren looked much better. I was surprised how many empty seats there were in Atlanta.
Toronto’s odds of making the playoffs are now probably 500-1. Never before has there been such a catastrophic organizational failure; they went all-in, and have found out their pair of kings is actually 7-2 offsuit. The team is doomed to fail this year; the fans are furious and walkup ticket sales are cratering; the owner’s investment into the team is souring, and the management will all be fired. The team is doomed for years. No, I’m not exaggerating; the wreckage will take many seasons to fix.
Wake me up in 2017.
I don’t think Toronto will win the division, but they won’t play this poorly all season. The entire offense is under-performing and that’s bound to improve. The bullpen is solid. Not so sure about the starting pitching, though. Did anyone really think adding Buehrle and Dickey would make the Jays championship caliber?
Yeah, lots of people. Even if you were to assume the two would be just okay, that would have been, right there, a six to eight game improvement over the 2012 squad.
Nobody on the team is even playing just okay. Except for the bullpen, every player they have is playing badly, all of them, with the sole exception of Jose Reyes, who played awesome and is now out until July. We’re talking 18 guys all playing worse than any expectation. It’s amazing to behold.
That’s the spirit!
Maybe Buehrle should take a page from Clay Buchholz and start throwing spitters.
Breaking out the spitter against a team as woeful hitting as the Blue Jays have been this season is just excessive.
There’s no whining in baseball!
The stuff on his sleeve is called “rosin”. You might be familiar with it. The stuff in his hair is called “water”, and he wipes it off. Any team that doubts it can ask the ump to check. That includes the Jays. It hasn’t happened yet.
Oh, you know he did it. I mean, look how grubby and untrustworthy he looks. He looks like Theon Greyjoy. He probably shoots dice in an alley on his days off.
Something I saw posted on Facebook yesterday: “May 2nd in Kansas City. It’s snowing and the Royals are in first place. Go back to sleep, this is just a dream.”
Yanks keep losing players and so far manage to do better than tread water.
Here is the injury list for the Yanks:
No Player AGE 2013 SALARY
47 Nova, Ivan (DL) 26 $575,600
35 Pineda, Michael (DL) 24 $528,475
62 Chamberlain, Joba 27 $1,875,000
29 Cervelli, Francisco (DL) 27 $515,350
2 Jeter, Derek (DL) 38 $16,729,365
13 Rodriguez, Alex (DL) 37 $29,000,000
25 Teixeira, Mark (DL) 33 $23,125,000
36 Youkilis, Kevin (DL) 34 $12,000,000
14 Granderson, Curtis (DL) 32 $15,000,000
Also Nunez has been hurt with an early in the year hit by pitch to the wrist.
I know no one will ever feel sorry for the Yanks but 3 starting Infielders, the starting catcher, Youk the high priced replacement starting infielder, the starting Center fielder and 2 starting pitchers and the 7th inning man are all down.
I doubt any other team could handle this many injuries and I find it amazing even the Yanks can. I was hoping the team could stay near .500 until the injured started returning, instead more have got injured and the team is actually doing well.
I think last year’s Marlin’s fans felt the same way. Now there are few left that will attend a game in a very new park. Other franchises have seen similar huge spending sprees fail as badly. The Rockies of Hampton & Neagles + friends come to mind. Even the early Tampa team, they brought in a lot of over-priced poorly evaluated aging players and to years to recover from it.
Of course, the Marlins fanbase was a bit skeptical to start with.
The Marlins, however, were able to trade off much of their salary for good prospects. The Jays will not be able to do that if they don’t have some of these guys play well this year.
What’s puzzling is WHY. If you’d told me “they’re not as good as Vegas says; 84-78, I think” then, well, that would be a believable outcome. Right now I think they’re on pace for 57-105 and they really are that bad, but NOBODY saw that coming. They look just dreadful, worst Jays team I’ve ever seen. It will be interesting to see if Anthopolous has the moral courage to dismiss Gibbons and his coaching staff in midseason.
Of course, over in Anaheim, they’re just as terrible; do the Angels give Mike Scioscia his walking papers if things don’t improve?
The Giants continue to have mediocre pitching (last night notwithstanding), and killer clutch hitting…but it’s working for them. If their pitching returns to form and they keep hitting the ball the way they are, they could run away with things.
That’s probably too much to hope for, but all things considered I haven’t found too much to complain about so far.
Seems like Jays might as well fire the manager. No other quick fix for the team.
I think Scioscia has been handed an ill-conceived team that will only get worse as the seasons go on. They would probably be doing him a favor by firing him and any youngish team built around pitching and speed would gobble him up fast and do well with him.
It’s just gotta get better. I’m not asking for five sub-two ERAs from the starters, but c’mon, now. There have been so many big innings this season against the starters. I wanted to vomit during the fifth last night…
Josh Hamilton continues to be a pathetic joke.
BA HR RBI OBP SLG
.207 2 9 .250 .289
Gio has a rough first inning for the Nats, but then decides not to have a nervous breakdown on the mound. My boys are growing up.
Well so many negative nellies in this thread. Let me bring some sunshine to the discussion and just say my Tigers are really looking like they know what to do with a baseball bat these days. 37 runs against the Astros (I know, I know), and 10 wins in their last 12 outings.
I’m pretty sure their bats are motivated by their desire to keep Papa Grande off the mound, but whatever. If they can keep this level of scoring up for another 130 games, I think we’ve solved out closer problem.
And as much as I like Albert Pujols as a person, it seems that the Cardinals exited the Pujols train just as it started to come off the rails. Today he has .237 BA, .319 OBP, and is on schedule to have under 30 HR. This is not what Arte Morales had in mind when he signed that contract, I’m sure. Pujols seems to have hit the aging slugger tail-off at a younger age than expected, even for someone who’s never been suspected of being on steroids.
David Eckstein wrote the back page of Sports Illustrated a few months ago and said that baseball GMs are still operating on the data they got on aging sluggers in the pre-testing era, and think they’re going to get Palmeiro, McGwire, Bonds, etc.
For STL, Pujols never hit below .299, had fewer than 32 HR, and only once dipped below .955 OBP. His Angels years are starting to look like Reggie Jackson’s.
Keeping in mind, of course, that he also got off to a bad start last season - significantly worse, I think - and wound up with strong numbers (even those numbers still suggested he’s in decline).