We are 57 games into the season and sitting at 30-27, just 2 games back from the AL East leading Rays, and yet, the Fanbase doesn't seem happy about the the way things are going. Makes me wonder why that is. Some reasons:
- We really haven't gotten on a roll yet. We win some, we lose some. It doesn't seem like we get all parts clicking at the same time. The offence works, the starting pitching doesn't. The starting pitching works the bullpen doesn't. We can't get everything working.
- Players we counted on haven't been great. We had a predictions thread for Brett Lawrie, I guessed a .280/.350/.500 line with 24 homers. Right now he is hitting .281/.318/.381, with 4 home runs. He's not driving the ball like we hoped and he's not taking walks. Last year he hit .293/.373/.580 in 43 games. We shouldn't have expected the same, but it's fair to say we expected better than he has done so far. His defense has been amazing, which has been the saving grace.
- Jose Bautista has had a slow start. He doing better now but his .229/.336/476 line isn't what we expect out of him. It isn't what he expects either and he's been a little cranky. I guess we all get cranky when we don't do as well as we expect.
- Adam Lind and Eric Thames. Both had poor starts and both are now in Vegas. Most of us didn't expect all that much from the pair but Adam hitting just .186....I don't think anyone saw that coming. We didn't think he was a middle of the order bat, but we thought he could hit his weight. Eric? His OPS dropped from .769, in his rookie year, to .652 this year. No power, low on base and just awful defense. I didn't think a lot of his bat last year, but at least it was a little better than league average, and I didn't see much reason to think it wouldn't be about the same this year.
- Yunel Escobar always hit a lot of ground balls, but there would be some line drives in there to keep his average up. This year, it's been all ground balls. I keep thinking he'll turn things around and he doesn't. He'll get better, right?
- The bullpen. We thought Sergio Santos would be the answer to the closer problem. He blew his first couple of save chances, then got injured. Francisco Cordero took his place and was awful. Thankfully, Casey Janssen is doing a great job now.
- I allowed myself to believe Dustin McGowan would be back. He's not. Brett Cecil, well, he is doing ok in New Hampshire, but I'm doubting we'll see him in Toronto. So the back end of our rotation is Henderson Alvarez, Kyle Drabek and Drew Hutchison. Young pitchers, and they have had their ups and downs. Which isn't surprising.
Anyway, this was going to be a quick post (I'm away from home still), introducing an open thread. How do you think things are going? Are you optimistic? Pessimistic? Is 2 games back better or worst than you thought we'd be? Where do we go from here?