Rob Ducey turns 47 today.

Rob was born in Toronto. He signed as a minor league free agent with the Jays in 1984. That year he started his professional career in Medicine Hat and hit very well, .302/.406/.523. He moved up the system quickly, hitting above .300 most seasons, with good power and a good number of walks and some stolen bases.

Rob made it to the Jays in 1987 and played was them for most of May, hitting just .148 and was sent back to Triple-A, to be recalled in September. He spent bits of the next 6 seasons with the Jays, but it was tough to break into the Jays outfield when we had Bell, Moseby and Barfield. In May of 1992 the Jays traded Rob and Greg Myers to the Angels for Mark Eichhorn, a pretty good deal for the Jays.

Over the next few years Ducey bounced around through a bunch of different teams. From the Angels, he went to the Rangers, then Mariners, Phillies, back to the Jays, Phillies again and the Expos.

Over 13 seasons he played 703 games and hit .242/.331/.396 with 31 home runs and 146 RBI. He never really became the player we hoped he would. Maybe because he didn't get a real chance at the right moment.

Ducey played for Canada in the 2004 Olympics and coached for us in the 2006 WBC and the 2008 Olympics. The Jays employed him as a scout for the Pacific Rim until October 2009. Now he works as the Farm Director for baseball team Mexico.

I have fond memories of Rob, it was unfortunate that he was blocked our by the best outfield we've ever had. And then, when it looked like he was going to get a full time job, he fell on wet turf at SkyDome and wrecked his knee. It just wasn't meant to be for the guy, though he had a long major league career.

Happy birthday Rob, hope it is a good one.

Matt Cain has come up a bit recently as a player who has supposedly "broken" xFIP (expected Fielding Independent Pitching) by being able to keep an inordinate number of flyballs in the park. Now, for those who don't know, xFIP is essentially a version of FIP (a statistic that estimates luck- and park-neutral ERA based on K-, BB-, and HR-rates on a per-inning basis) that normalizes HR/flyball-rates to league-average based on the underlying assumption that pitchers can't really control whether or not flyballs become homeruns.

So, first and foremost, it's important to keep in mind that Matt Cain is a post hoc example, which essentially means that we're picking him out after he's done it. If you look at enough players someone is going to deviate from the norm, simply by random chance. However, Cain isn't entirely post hoc, people have been talking about this possibly being a skill for him for quite some time now. For that reason, we'll ignore the post hoc aspect of this for now and look at how Cain has kept flyballs in the park.

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We are past the 40 game mark and Eric Thames still isn't hitting much, .252/.299/.378. I've always been of the opinion that if you can't get on base more than 30% of the time, you aren't helping. Add in that Eric is supposed to be a power hitting and he's not even slugging .400.

The thing he is doing well is striking out, about 26% of the time. He's not hitting line drives at the same rate as last year (18.2% compared to 22.7%). Ground balls are up. Infield singles are up too, 15.1% compared to 5.4% last year. I don't think of Eric as a guy that gets a lot of infield singles, but he's at the same percentage as Brett Lawrie.

His defense has been nothing short of awful. All spring we were told how much better he was going to be. He's improved his reads on balls. He's improved his arm. He's so much better. Well, he isn't any better. His UZR/150 is -34.2, even worse than last year's -22.5, but then UZR needs more time to balance out.

The eye test? Wrong day to ask. He really frustrated me yesterday. He dives at ball when he has no chance to catch them, that really bugs me. If you have no shot at making a catch, you are far better off to be on your feet so you can chase it down. He takes strange routes to balls. Rolling balls, he doesn't get in front of, he lets them go past and chases them to the wall. They are easier to pick up after they hit the wall and stop rolling. His arm? He doesn't throw well, but the bigger problem is that he doesn't throw to cutoff men. You don't need a good arm in left, but you have to get the ball to the cut off man. Yesterday Hugo said that he never thought we'd look back fondly on Adam Lind's defense.

What can we do:

• Unfortunately Travis Snider is on the DL. Wrist injuries aren't fun, unfortunately he's going to have to show that he can hit when he gets back off the DL.
• My twitter feed is full of call up Anthony Gose. I can't see it, why add him to the 40-man now. He didn't start off well in Vegas, though he's been pretty good in May, .321/.402/.524. I really can't see calling him up to play left. It seems like a waste of his defense.
• Moises Sierra is on the 40-man, I think he's be the same sort of hitter that Eric is, but with better defense. He hit well in April .292/.370/.472, not so much in May .247/.315/.358.
• Put Rajai Davis in left and Eric on the bench. If Rajai could hit right handers at all, I'd be all for hit. He's 0 for 8 since the 2 home run game. SSS and all, but it looks like he is swinging from his heels.
• Could put Ben Francisco in left, other than he'd likely hit about the same as Eric is, at best. At least with Eric you could hope for better. His defense should be a little better though.

Beyond those choices, I don't know. I think we are stuck with Eric until Travis is ready to go. Let's hope for less days like yesterday.

What would you do?

Quick reminder, the Pick 6 deadline is noon Eastern today, so get your picks in.

Yesterday's leader board:

My picks went awful, picked 2 guys that got days off and a pitcher that got shelled, oh well.

The top 5 of the weekly battle are:

dannyofbosnia at 146.8

jays182 at 143.3

Kurupt at 142.8

JDUZ at 134.3

MDBlueJayfan at 128.1

Blue Jays 4 Rays 5 (11 innings)

It really shouldn't have gone 11 innings. We walked 10 and hit a couple of batters and yet we still made it to the 11th. In 7 of the 11 innings the Rays got the lead off man on base, including both extra innings.

Ricky Romero wasn't good at all. 6 innings, 7 walks, just 2 hits, 7 k, 4 earned. It should have been worse. Being fair, the 2 walks in the first inning included a few strikes that were called balls. Ricky might gotten out of that first inning, if we had a left fielder with some range. Thames let a Drew Sutton hit go over his head for a double. It really should have been caught.

Our bullpen continued to walk batters but managed to keep the Rays off the scoreboard for 4 and a third, in spite of letting the lead off hitter get on base too many times. Darren Oliver pitched a good 10th, but hit the lead off hitter in the 11th, though the batter turned into the pitch. He got Carlos Pena to strikeout but B.J.Upton hit a double to the wall in left. Thames, again, was slow to get to the ball, and then threw it over the cutoff man. If he got to the ball quick, if he hit the cutoff man, like he was supposed to, we might have got the runner at the plate.

On offense we didn't do enough enough. We had trouble with James Shields, striking out 10 times in his 7.1. Jose Bautista hit a homer off him in the first and we benefited from yet another Ray error in the 5th to allow Brett Lawrie to score on a Yan Gomes sac fly. That are all the scoring we could get off Shields. Edwin Encarnacion hit a 2 run homer off Joel Peralta, to tie things in the 7th.

Bautista, Encarnacion and Colby Rasmus had 2 hits each. All the other starters had 1 except J.P. Arencibai (0 for 5, 4 k) and Yan Gomes (0 for 3, 1 k, but the sac fly).

Jays of the Day are Edwin (.308), Rasmus (.136, nice to see him getting some hits of late) and Casey Janssen (.118). Honorable mention to Francisco Cordero, for a scoreless inning of relief, and Bautista. Suckage to Romero (-.267), Oliver (-.265, hardly fair as he was in his second inning of relief), Escobar (-193, 1 for 5), Gomes (-.181), JP (-.115) and Thames (-.097, plus some bad defense).

There was some good defense by the Jays, Rasmus covers a ton of ground in center, Yunel made a nice play, moving away from first but still making a nice throw. Best play of the game was by Omar Vizquel. With runners on 1st and 2nd, Casey gave up a ground ball to the right side, Omar made a nice stop, but Casey didn't cover first. The Rays sent the runner from second home, and Vizquel make a great throw to the plate to get the runner.

The Jays have a day off tomorrow and then start a series with the Rangers on Friday. Not a great day, but we are still in 3rd, 3.5 behind the Orioles and 3.0 behind the Rays for 2nd.

Forgot to mention that Kelly Johnson, after having a tough time with James Shields, left the game with tightness in his left hamstring. Hoping that a day off will make things better

Still tied....