Back to May 2008

Robert Ray, praying for it to end quickly and painlessly.

The Jays found themselves on the wrong end of a sweep tonight, at the hands of the Boston Red Sox. The most unfortunate part about it is, with their other series lost to New York, the mindless braying about the Blue Jays being unable to compete against the AL East is now extended likely all the way to the All-Star Break.

To be honest, in the series against the Bosox, the Jays looked snakebitten. Tallet pitched a gem against Boston, mostly shutting them down, only to have Wakefield have one of his on nights when his knuckleball is all but unhittable for any kind of power. Then the Jays drill Penny all over the park, but can't find the gaps or the fences, while Cecil has one of the most impressive pitching meltdowns since the good old days of Josh Towers. Finally, Lester get batted around, but in each inning, the Jays can't find a way to cash home baserunners, and we lose 5-1 with a not so good outing by Ray.

Not being able to hit once we have men in scoring position? It looked like a little trip on the wayback machine to May 2008.

In all honesty though, while the losses hurt, it's not as bad as it could be. The Jays were only blown out in one game, and the red Sox bullpen nearly gave it back up to us. Games one and three were games the Jays could (and argubly should) have won, but our hitting jammed up. It's possible that the pressure of the series had the Jays trying too hard, and in the case of both Cecil and Ray, they each had a bad inning that did them in.

The positive is that the Jays are still hitting, although the power wasn't there in Boston. It's quite a feat to put up 11 hits and only have a run to show for it. Or 14 the night before for only 3 runs. In fact, despite being outscored 15-5 on the series, the Jays outhit the Bosox 30-29. As much as I hit to say it, sometimes, you just have bad luck. It's a little worrisome about the lack of extrabase hits during the series, but the Jays are making good contact, and the Sox matched up a veteran knuckleballer, a legitimate number two starter, and their ace young lefty against a reliever, a AAA prospect, and a AA prospect. This does not fill me with dread for the future.

Lunchbox has been sent down to AAA, as expected, while the Jays roll into Atlanta for the utterly worthless spectacle of interleague play. I'm kind of excited about hearing Bobby Cox get interviewed by Jerry Howarth about the 80s Jays, but gamewise, I couldn't be more disinterested. There is noise that Russ Adams might be called up, for the left-handed bat and his strong performance so far in Las Vegas. My guess would be that Snider will be down mostly to correct his swing a bit, and give him a boost to come back up. You'd hope that would be in time for the series against Boston at home, assuming that he stops swinging at outside breaking balls. Over his last ten games, he's hit .269, with only one extra base hit and ten Ks, which is really scuffling at the plate.

It's very possible we'll see Ray or Cecil sent down soon, to make way for Janssen. Both pitchers have certainly impressed the Jays, but there's no point in chewing up service time when they're getting hit. Possibly Ray will have his start against Baltimore, and Cecil will need to have a second bad outing to head up going back down, but Janssen is a veteran presence, and his numbers are too good in AAA to bolster a rookie ahead of him.