Thursday Bluebird Links

A win, a win! Nice to see the bats wake up and a pretty solid outing from Drabek last night. Game recaps as usual from Mike Wilner, John Lott, Gregor Chisholm and a minor league recap of yesterday's Fisher Cats double header split.

JAYS LINKS

New York Yankees at Toronto Blue Jays - May 17, 2012
Gameday preview of tonight's game where the Jays take on Phil Hughes. Hughes, although good last game, hasn't had a good start to the season so hopefully we'll see another offensive outburst tonight. Also of note:

Bautista's shot on Wednesday was his 122nd with the Blue Jays, tying him with Jose Cruz Jr. for ninth in franchise history.

Pitching key to Toronto's Interleague fortunes
Gregor Chisholm previews this seasons interleague schedule. This part=ouch:

The Blue Jays are coming off four consecutive losing seasons against the National League, and overall, the club is just 123-142 since Interleague Play was introduced in 1997.

Vladimir Guerrero begins journey back to the big leagues
Apparently Vlad's main goal is to make it to 500 home runs. I'm pretty sure he doesn't have another 51 HR's in him.

Toronto Blue Jays' Adam Lind looks to turn his luck around
Apparently Lind thinks he's been a victim of bad luck.

Regression to the frakin' mean
A few thoughts from The Southpaw

The Weight of Expectations
Let's manage those expectations, shall we?

Thoughts on AL East strength
Joe Lemire writes about the dominance of the AL East so far, along with a few other early season trends, including a decrease in multi-homerun games and longer appearances by starting pitchers.

Greetings From Dunedin
Another prospect update from Bradley Ankrom.

Appealing or postponing?
Here's my one and only article covering the Lawrie helmet throw and subsequent suspension (because quite frankly, I'm sick of hearing about it). Shi Davidi wonders if Lawrie (and the Jays) are appealing the suspension, or postponing it so that the four games aren't against an AL East rival.

Best baseball blowups
Well, I guess this one is related to the Lawrie incident too - the Toronto Sun has 9 videos of baseball's 'best' blow ups. The rosin bag as a grenade was pretty funny.

Lots more from around the league after the jump!

AROUND THE LEAGUE

HE EMBARRASSES SELIG SO HE’S GONE
I'm sure that most of you have heard by now that Shyam Das, the arbitrator that ruled against MLB in the Braun case, has been fired. Murray Chass tells us that this isn't the first time that the owners have fired an arbitrator for ruling against them in a high-profile case.

Does above-average K/BB and HR/9 lead to a high BABIP?
Zack Greinke and Curt Schilling seem to have something in common. Amazing peripherals, yet not so amazing BABIP's - is there a chance other pitchers follow this trend?

Beltran’s Best Season?
Michael Barr at Fangraphs compares Beltran's fantastic start to his huge 2006 season, and wonders if this one has the potential to be his best. At 35, Beltran should be past his best years, and that's the best part of his great start.

Broadcaster Rankings (Radio): #20 – #11
FanGraphs is ranking the radio broadcaster teams. The Jays group hasn't appeared yet, so keep an eye out for them in the top 10 when FG releases the rest of their list.

The Dramatic Decline of Domonic Brown
And one more from FanGraphs. Remember those days, when the Jays were trading Halladay, and Brown was the guy everyone wanted? He hasn't been doing too hot lately.

PNC Park guard loses finger, Pittsburgh cop injures shoulder in struggle with belligerent fan
Class act's here.

Orioles’ priority should be keeping Jones and Wieters
Keeping up with the division teams - I think this one should be pretty obvious.

MLB announces Mets as 2013 All-Star Game host
For the first time since 1964.