Thoughts on Saturday
by Tom Dakers on Jul 11, 2009 3:06 PM EDT
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PrintYesterday's game was a lot of fun, it is nice to win one again. It is an interesting series, the Jays have 3 left-handed, rookie pitchers starting the three game, with Brett Cecil last night, Ricky Romero tonight and Marc Rzepczynski tomorrow.. I wonder if this has ever happened before. I'm sure it hasn't happened for the Jays but I wonder if it has ever happened in major league history.
Watching Cecil pitch last night and Rzep's first start and Romero all season, I think things look bright for our future. If the don't trade Doc, our starting staff looks great for next year with Doc, Romero, Cecil, Rzepczynski and Marcum with Richmond and half a dozen other arms available if someone gets injured. If we do trade Doc we still have a good staff with Richmond proving to be a very good 5th starter this year.
I know we are conditioned to think the sky is falling all the time but I think we have a pretty good second coming up. I thought, before the season, we had a 86 win team, with luck a little better. I also thought the second half would be better than the first half, because, I thought, i would take time to figure out who are starting pitchers should be. In reality we started much better than I figure. but with the injuries, we still are trying to get the rotation figured out. At the moment I'm pretty happy with the rotation. I am hoping that when Richmond returns, Brian Tallet will go back to the pen.
Yeah with 4 rookies in the rotation, we'd have some ups and downs but each of the four of them look to have potential. If one of them shows they aren't quite ready, Marcum might be ready to go in August.
I know there is a great rush to write the team off, but most of our loses lately have been just by 1 run. if we were a bad team we'd be getting blown out, we aren't. Are we going to make the playoffs, I don' t think so, but then I didn't when the season started and I didn't imagine the 85 injuries to the pitching staff. But they are a fun team to watch and sports are supposed to be entertainment. In enjoy watching the games.
It could be a lot worse. As much as people hate JP, he hasn't made a trade like the Kansas City did trading two top prospects for Yuniesky Betancourt. Think Royals fans are happy people? Look here. Or we could be Met's fans whose GM traded a almost useful outfielder Ryan Church for Jeff Francoeur. I love this from Amazin' Avenue:
My favorite argument, a line straight from Minaya's press conference, is: "One thing we like about Francoeur is the amount of games that he plays." Hey if the Mets wanted someone who could play everyday, why didn't they just trade for me? I'm both: A. significantly worse than Ryan Church and B. not prone to injuries. The whole concept of replacement level is that a player, playing any amount of time, is better than Jeff Francoeur playing infinite amount of time. 100 AB for a good player and 400 AB for a bad player is always better than 500 AB for a bad player.
Anyway, read the story. It is quite funny, if you aren't a Met fan.
So enjoy the rest of the season. At worse it should be interesting. Watching young pitchers develop is something I enjoy a lot.
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being a hockey fan first,
And paying serious attention to the Jays for the first time in years, I can agree that its been an exciting first half. I hate to use the ‘what if’ spiel with regards to the injuries, though it is hard not to speculate about our fortunes had we not been hit so hard by the injury bug. This is an exciting team to watch, and even though the last couple weeks have been frustrating, I am going to keep watching this team through the second half (win or lose). These players have my interest, which is the first time a blue jay team has done so in quite some time.
by Temujin on Jul 11, 2009 6:19 PM EDT via mobile reply actions
injuries havent been our problem
our lineup has been remarkably injury free this year. and except for the short term losses of downs and halliday, the pitching injuries haven’t really affected us that much— the replacement pitchers have been pretty remarkable on the whole.
what has hurt us has been lack of a left hand bat at dh/lf spot and maybe another one on bench. When snider was in and tearing cover of ball, we went 27-14…when he was sent down, we never replaced him…
His hole in the lineup had a deleterious effect not only on his spot in the order but throughout all spots. combine that with a weak first half at the 3 and 4 spots, and instead of being 50-40 we are at 45-45.
as for the second half, barring an infusion of talent from the minors and/or improvement from wells, i can’t see us doing any better than .500…the schedule is a killer
Roy Halladay before the injury
was 10-1 with a 2.52 ERA and hadn’t thrown less than 7 innings in a start. He missed two starts and only went 3 innings in the start he was injured. Since coming back his ERA has been 4.50. I think Doc’s injury has effected the team.
Ricky Romero before his injury was 2-0 with a 1.71 ERA, he missed 5 starts, and his first two starts back he had an ERA of over 9.00, I think that effected the team.
Jesse Litsch career ERA is 3.83, helped a lot by our great defense. His replacement in the rotation has been Brian Tallet whose ERA is 4.95 this year.
I also think that not getting McGowan back hurt the team some. So, I would say that the injuries have hurt the team. Your mileage may very.
actually injuries to starters have been dealt with pretty well
considering we started without AJ , Marcum etc and were counting on Halladay plus basically unknowns, we have done as well as could be expected. The starters we have lost to injury, Litsch etc, are not stars and have been replaced as well as can be expected.
As well, the difference between BJ last year and this year has hurt us.
True
the replacements have done as well as could be expected. The point, however, was not that the replacements have been bad, but that they have not been as good as the starters who they’ve replaced, which I think is tough to argue against.
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