Toronto Blue Jays

Counting the Toronto game, the Jays system went 4-1 today. Dunedin Blue Jays (25-16) beat St. Lucie Mets 4-3 Josh Johnson made his first rehab start, it went well. 3.0, 3 hits, 1 earned, 0 walks, 5 k, 4 ground outs, 0 fly outs. Looks like a good first step. Danny Barnes: 1.0, 1 hit, 1 earned, 1 walk. Blow save and Win. Jon Berti: 1 for 2, double, walk. .262/.326/.327. Matt Newman: 2 for 5, k. .295/..378/.395. Andy Burns: 1 for 4, k. .329/..418/.540. Jon Talley: 1 for 4, 2 k. .220/..267/.430. K.C. Hobson: 1 for 3, double, walk. .216/.245/.427 Mike Crouse: 1 for 4, double, 3 k. 300/.417/.500 in 6 games. He missed more than a month with an injury. Pierce Rankin: 2 for 4. .180/.268/.220. Buffalo Bisons (25-18) lost to Charlotte Knights 5-1 Dave Bush: 6.0, 6 hits, 4 earned, 1 walk, 7 k. Loss. 4-4, 5.36. Buddy Carlyle: 2.0, 2 hits, 1 earned, 3 k. 4.30. Mickey Storey: 1.0, 2 k. 3.44. Jim Negrych: 0 for 4, 2 k. .386/.450/.583. Moises Sierra: 1 for 4, double, k. .324/.373/.497. Mauro Gomez: 2 for 4, k. .252/.336/.512. Ryan Goins: 1 for 3, walk, k. .274/.325/.349. New Hampshire Fisher Cats (23-22) beat Portland Sea Dogs 7-3 Marcus Walden: 6.0, 8 hits, 2 earned, 2 walks, 2 k. Win. 3-4, 2.96. Evan Crawford: 1.1, 2 hits, 1 walk, 1 k. 4.05. Joel Carreno: 1.2, 5 k. 1.85. 5th save. 5 outs, 5 k. He has 42 k and 8 walks in 24.1 innings. I think he's trying to suggest he shouldn't be in Double-A. Ricardo Nanita: 1 for 3, 2 walks, k. .255/.322/.365. Ryan Schimpf: 2 for 4, 2 home runs, 5 RBI, 1 walk, k. .219/.360/.521. Clint Robinson: 1 for 4, double, walk, k. .295/.397/.443. Brad Glenn: 1 for 4, double, walk, k. .256/.363/.421. Adam Loewen: 1 for 4, walk. .202/.312/.330. Lansing Lugnuts (18-23) beat Great Lake Loons 4-3 in 10 innings Alonzo Gonzalez: 6.1, 6 hits, 2 earned, 1 walk, 2 k. 5.62. Griffin Murphy: 1.2, 3 hits, 2 k. 3.44. Arik Sikula: 2.0, 2 hits, 1 earned, 2 walks, 1 k. Win. 2.01. Dwight Smith, Jr. 2 for 5. .295/.375/.423 Christian Lopes: 4 for 5, triple, home run. .319/.347/.425. Gustavo Pierre: 2 for 4, steal. .277/.275/.468. 0 walks in 141 at bats. How can you have 141 at bats and not take a walk? Balbino Fuenmayor: 2 for 4. .208/.287/.396.

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Rays 5 Blue Jays 8 That turned out closer than it needed to be. One of the several reasons I hate 8 man bullpens (or 9 man, depending on how you count Chad Jenkins) is that the guys you count on don't get enough work. Casey Janssen last pitched on the 11th. Today he wasn't sharp. It wasn't a save situation, it was 7-3 when Casey came into the game. He wasn't good. It started with a Luke Scott single against that stupid shift. Normally, I'm ok with the shift, but when you are up by 4, in the bottom of the 9th, don't give the batter an easy way to get on. A couple of ground outs later, it looked like it wouldn't matter but Yunel Escobar's hit 2 run homer and it was a game suddenly. A single and a walk later, the Rays had the tying run on base. Thankfully Casey got Ben Zobrist to strikeout, ending the game, or this laptop would be broken. It almost spoiled a nice start by R.A. Dickey. He went 8 innings, gave up 4 hits, 3 runs, 2 earned, 4 walks and 5 k. one runs scored against him in the 2nd. Evan Longoria singled, went to 2nd on a passed ball. A ground out and walk later, he had runners on the corners. Jose Lobaton, ground into what was almost an inning ending double play but Emilio Bonifacio and Munenori Kawasaki were just a little slow with it. A walk, single and Evan Longoria 2-run double, in the 3rd inning, scored the Rays other runs against him. I thought that Jose Bautista made a poor effort on the double, it was over his head, but he didn't take the best route to it. Henry Blanco had 2 passed balls today. Catching a knuckleball isn't all that much fun. I'm also finding that AL umpires are having a tough time calling balls and strikes on the knuckleball. On offense, we scored 2 in the first. Melky Cabrera and Edwin Encarnacion singles gave us runners on the corners. An Adam Lind sac fly (great at bat for Lind, he saw 12 pitches before the sac fly) scored Melky and Edwin went to third on Escobar's throwing error, trying to double off Edwin, when there wasn't a change. How many errors has Yunel made against us this year? Brett Lawrie tripled to bring in Edwin. In the second, doubles by Blanco and Cabrera got us another run. Blanco was clearly out sliding into second on his double, but we haven't had that many calls go our way this season, we'll take it. In the 7th Bonifacio, Kawasaki and Jose Bautista all walked, to load the bases, and Edwin doubled, to clear them. In the 8th, Bonifacio singled, but was picked off first. Blanco walked and Kawasaki tripled him home. I'm not sure what was the bigger surprised, the triple or that Blanco could score from first on anything that did leave the park. We had 8 hits and 6 walks. No home runs, but 3 doubles and 2 triples. All of the starters reached base, except for Colby Rasmus. Jays of the Day are Encarncion (.340 WPA, 2 for 4, 3 RBI) and Dickey (.196). No Suckage Jays. Rasmus had the low mark at -.076, but then he made a very nice catch at the wall, in the 3rd inning. Brett Lawrie also made some nice plays, as usual. It was nice to see Anthony Gose get into the game, even if he almost collided with Colby on a catch in left center. Nice GameThread again today, 38 of us totaled 932 comments. shortofbrillant led us all with 112, a royal performance on Victoria day. # Commenter # Comments 1 shortofbrillant 112 2 expos&nordiques4ever 85 3 Tom Dakers 77 4 MjwW 74 5 Belisarius 58 6 ABsteve 48 7 Hathorian 44 8 Qd6 43 9 rob.magnificent 41 10 MapleMan 38 11 Super Bass Hallways 35 12 stolarz88 33 13 Bowling_Guy25 32 14 Minor Leaguer 32 15 PFHLai 24 16 Ellipses 21 17 fatpuppy 19 18 GatorJay 17 19 Playoffs!!!!1 14 20 edliuen 12 21 JaysfanAtlanta 11 22 TFSML 10 23 MartsB 10 24 brockbirds 7 25 benzenec6h6 6 26 REMO 6 27 Gerse 6 Toronto Blue Jay Tickets

TORONTO, Ont. — The Toronto Blue Jays came home energized after a rainout in The Bronx, and they and the Tampa Bay Rays combined for an entertaining afternoon of baseball before a holiday Monday of almost 30,000 at Rogers Centre. Here are three things that stood out to me about the homestand-opening win over Tampa Bay: BIG HIT, BIG SPOT There have been many, many times this season when the Blue Jays have been dying for a big hit in a big spot and it hasn’t come, but on a beautiful Victoria Day afternoon, Edwin Encarnacion rewrote that story. Encarnacion came to the plate in the bottom of the seventh with two out and the bases loaded in a tie ballgame against a shaky pitcher and got the job done in rather emphatic fashion. He took a strike from a wild Josh Lueke, then hammered the next pitch off the left-field wall. Encarnacion hit the ball so hard that Sam Fuld couldn’t corral the carom, and three runs scored easily. It was only the Blue Jays’ second hit this season with the bases loaded and their first since April 10, a span of 36 games. WALKS WILL KILL YOU R.A. Dickey was cruising along, enjoying a two-run lead with two out and nobody on in the third inning when he issued a four-pitch walk to Matt Joyce. That opened the door for the Rays to tie things up, as Ben Zobrist followed by bouncing a single to left and Evan Longoria then hit a fly ball to right field on which Jose Bautista got a bad break. The ball landed on the warning track (Bautista likely wouldn’t have been able to catch it even with a good jump) for a two-run double and the game was tied. The walk to Joyce was a big part of the Rays’ game-tying rally, but walks were an even bigger part of the Blue Jays’ game-winning rally. With the score still tied in the bottom of the seventh, the Blue Jays took the lead thanks to that big swing by Encarnacion, but that was their only hit of the inning. Lueke had a lot of trouble with the strike zone, walking three of the first five batters he faced (and one of the other two, Henry Blanco, bunted) to bring Encarnacion to the plate with the sacks juiced. Rays pitchers issued five unintentional walks to the Blue Jays in the game, and four of them scored. WORKING THE PITCHER (AND THE BASERUNNER!) Adam Lind had a spectacular plate appearance in the bottom of the first inning with one out and runners on the corners. Lind, who has an OPS over 1.000 in his terrific month of May, worked a full count against Rays rookie starter Jake Odorizzi and then fouled off six straight pitches until he found one he liked and drove it to left field for a sacrifice fly to give the Blue Jays the early lead. It was a great job of hitting by Lind, and the only one who didn’t appreciate it was Encarnacion, who happened to be the runner on first base. With Lind not a big strikeout guy, Blue Jays manager John Gibbons wanted to stay out of a double play had Lind hit the ball on the ground, so he had Encarnacion running on each of the seven 3-2 pitches that Lind faced, sprinting for second only to have Lind foul the pitch off half a dozen times. Encarnacion was on fumes by the time Lind hit the sac fly, but he had to race back to first base because the Rays had a shot at doubling him up. Yunel Escobar’s wild relay throw went into the Rays dugout, though, which meant that Edwin was granted free passage to third base. As he had every right to do, he took his sweet time walking those 180 feet, which no doubt left him with enough energy in reserve to be the hero in the seventh. The post Wilner: Blue Jays receive rare timely offence appeared first on Sportsnet.ca.

Hang on, this is an afternoon game? Anthony Gose is up with the Jays for some reason, but not in the lineup. Apparently this is something resembling big news. I don’t know. Happy Bastille Day.

Will the Jays reverse course? Tampa are 8-2 over their last ten games. Will home cooking work for the Jays? Can Dickey do it? The answers to these, and many other questions, will be revealed over the next 3 hours. The Jays face some fresh meat, Jake Odorizzi is making his first major league start.

As much as people enjoy R.A Dickey as a guy, and as much as it's fun to watch the knuckleballer pitch, it cannot be denied that he is not off to a good start. Through nine starts Dickey is sitting on a 4.83 ERA, a far cry from his 2.73 mark last year. It's not even as if he has solid peripherals and has been the victim of poor luck. His BABIP is at .270, which is pretty much normal for him over the last three years and his FIP is 4.81 suggesting that Dickey deserves to be giving up the amount of runs that he has. The only bit of bad luck you notice when scanning over R.A's stats is his HR/FB rate which sits at 14.8%, which is probably a little bit inflated. The point is that no matter which may you slice it Dickey has fallen short of expectations so far. When a star player struggles, the fans and the media tend to conjure up a myriad of explanations as to why. These explanations range from perfectly rational, to wildly speculative, to utterly false. When you are dealing with an enigmatic 38 year old pitcher that throws a knuckleball the likes of which the world has never seen, one can image that there are quite a few explanations floating out there. Some say that Dickey problems are a result of nagging injuries. It's hard to dispute that but it's also hard to comment on because I can't say that I have any idea how Dickey feels and to what degree neck and back soreness is hampering his pitching. It's a feasible explanation but it's not a complete one. Others seem to think that it's the adjustment to the AL East that is a problem for Dickey. There is probably some truth in this explanation also. The AL East has some of the smallest ballparks and best hitters in baseball. R.A Dickey's ugly 1.5 HR/9 mark could be a function of pitching in the most difficult circumstances in the major leagues. Once again, this isn't the whole story, and probably isn't the most important part either. Lastly, some people seem to think that R.A Dickey's 2012 was a one-time fluke and that he has no chance of being that pitcher again. To this claim there are two rebuttals. Firstly, Dickey was an excellent pitcher in 2010 and 2011 and the Blue Jays got production somewhere between his 2012 levels and his 2010-11 self then the fans ought to be happy. Secondly, the main difference between Dickey in 2012 compared to the previous two years is that he discovered how to miss bats and get K's. The following chart shows Dickey's K%, Swinging Strike% and Contact % since 2010: Year Strikeout % Swinging Strike % Contact% 2010 14.6% 8.4% 82% 2011 15.3% 7.8% 83.4% 2012 24.8% 12.2% 75.4% 2013 20.9% 10.2% 76.7% The 2013 Dickey looks most like the 2012 version when it comes to missing bats and, although he hasn't been quite as good as he was last year, it seems the adjustments he made that helped him strikeout batters have lasted. It is therefore unfair to describe Dickey's 2012 as a fluke and declare him unable to repeat those results. The narrative that has not been very prevalent in discussion of R.A Dickey's struggles is his inability to throw strikes this year. It is my view that this is the most important reason we are not seeing R.A Dickey of 2012 this season. Whenever Dickey has problems with control the mysterious knuckleball itself is said to be to blame. Commentators will say things like, "the knuckleball is dancing unpredictably tonight" or "the knuckleball is moving just a little too much" instead of attributing any blame to Dickey himself. The reality is that Dickey has had well above-average control since 2010 compared to conventional pitchers. This is part of what makes him extraordinary, and more importantly, what makes him effective. This year has been a complete outlier in that regard whether you are looking at BB% or BB/9: Year BB/9 BB% 2010 2.17 5.9% 2011 2.33 6

Toronto recalled outfielder Anthony Gose from Triple-A, which surprised Blue Jays fans and media members because he was hitting just .227 with a .667 OPS in 40 games at Triple-A after struggling in his first taste of the majors last season. And you know who else is surprised by the call-up? Anthony Gose. Gose, on… View full post on Yahoo! Sports – MLB – Toronto Blue Jays News

The Toronto Blue Jays have recalled OF Anthony Gose from their AAA affiliate the Buffalo Bisons, and have optioned RHP Micky Storey to Buffalo. Gose's stat line? 40 games played, 35-154 (•227 AVG), 23 BB, •343 OBP, 36 R, 2 home runs, 12 RBIs, 5 SB, and has been caught stealing 4 times. So not the most impressive stat line, but he does get on base quite a bit. But what I'm wondering is, why did the Jays even call Gose up? Earlier on, Alex Anthopoulos stated that he did not plan on bringing Anthony Gose up to the MLB at all this season. Funnily enough, all that made me think was that Anthopoulos will, in fact, recall Anthony Gose from his AAA assignment. And who would've known? Will Gose even play much? Are the Jays going to use him to pinch run? They can't try manoeuvring the DH and the outfielders at this point because Adam Lind has really picked up his game, and Melky is hitting quite well. So why not let Gose just play down in Buffalo until he can start for the Jays, instead of calling him up into a limited role! Are the Blue Jays looking to play him at CF instead of Colby Rasmus? I guess they could do what they were originally doing with Rasmus and Rajai Davis, but what happens when Davis comes back from his injury? Are they just going to send Gose back down to the Buffalo Bisons? Is someone getting traded? Released? Optioned down to Buffalo? Is this just too much change? Will this move pay off? Will the 22-year old OF be able to contribute in the MLB, or is this just a desperate attempt to turn things around? However, considering the Jays' poor start, perhaps it would be a smart decision to change things up a bit. The Toronto Blue Jays have recalled OF Anthony Gose from their AAA affiliate the Buffalo Bisons, and have optioned RHP Micky Storey to Buffalo. Gose's stat line? 40 games played, 35-154 (•227 AVG), 23 BB, •343 OBP, 36 R, 2 home runs, 12 RBIs, 5 SB, and has been caught stealing 4 times. So not the most impressive stat line, but he does get on base quite a bit. But what I'm wondering is, why did the Jays even call Gose up? Earlier on, Alex Anthopoulos stated that he did not plan on bringing Anthony Gose up to the MLB at all this season. Funnily enough, all that made me think was that Anthopoulos will, in fact, recall Anthony Gose from his AAA assignment. And who would've known? Will Gose even play much? Are the Jays going to use him to pinch run? They can't try manoeuvring the DH and the outfielders at this point because Adam Lind has really picked up his game, and Melky is hitting quite well. So why not let Gose just play down in Buffalo until he can start for the Jays, instead of calling him up into a limited role! Are the Blue Jays looking to play him at CF instead of Colby Rasmus? I guess they could do what they were originally doing with Rasmus and Rajai Davis, but what happens when Davis comes back from his injury? Are they just going to send Gose back down to the Buffalo Bisons? Is someone getting traded? Released? Optioned down to Buffalo? Is this just too much change? Will this move pay off? Will the 22-year old OF be able to contribute in the MLB, or is this just a desperate attempt to turn things around? However, considering the Jays' poor start, perhaps it would be a smart decision to change things up a bit.