Thoughts on the first half of the Blue Jays season

We have hit, what baseball considers, the halfway point of the season. I thought I'd ask your opinions about the first half and how confident you are in the team going into the second half.

The Blue Jays are 51-40, tied with the Red Sox for second place, 2 games back of a rather surprising Orioles team. Last year, at the break, we were 45-46, in fourth spot, 4.5 games back.

There have been surprises.

The offense wasn't what we expected, at least to start the season. Much of the team got off to a very slow start, but they have started to hit like the Jays we were expecting over the past month or so. We still seem to be having the odd off day, but we've had 8 games. in the past month, where we scored in the double digits. We didn't have our first game of over 10 runs until May 5, more than a month into the season.

The starting pitching has been a huge surprise. Who figured we would have 2 starting pitchers in All-Star game? And we could easily have 3, J.A. Happ is deserving of a spot on the team. And R.A. Dickey seems to have turned his season around. He has a 3.34 ERA in his last 5 starts and has gone 7 innings in each of his last 3 starts. It looks like he'll be great over the second half again. And Marcus Stroman's slump looks like it has come to an end.

The less said about the bullpen the better, but, it hasn't been the disaster it was at the start of the season. Gibby seems to be figuring out which guys he can trust. It is a much better looking pen when Brett Cecil is there and pitching like Brett Cecil. Now if Drew Storen could start throwing the way he's supposed to, all would be good.

The biggest positive surprises:

• Michael Saunders: If you had asked me, before the start of the season, my top five choices for guys that might make the All-Star game, Saunders wouldn't have been on the list. That he's played 82 of 91 games is enough of a surprise for me, never mind that he has the second highest OPS on the team. Yeah, his defense hasn't been all we could want, but we've learned to have pretty low expectations for left fielders.
• Josh Donaldson: I'm not sure surprise is the right term, but who expects the reigning MVP to have a better season the next year. I know runs aren't a stat that means all that much but having 80 runs at the break shows things haven't been all bad offensively. And a 4.8 bWAR, at the break, is pretty amazing too.
• Ezequiel Carrera: Playing way more baseball than any of us would have wanted, Ezequiel has a .370 OBP. Yeah, I know, it's dropped from a high of .433 a month and a half ago, but no one figured he would keep it up in that range. His defense has looked much better than last year. And he's set a career high in home runs (ok, 4 isn't something to be excited about). My Twitter feed is fulled with 'we are winning with Carrera, we should trade Bautista', which has me asking when was the last time you saw a player with 5 and 10 rights traded from a contender (and also makes me grieve over the lack of baseball sense on Twitter), but Ezequiel has been far better than we could have expected.
• Darwin Barney: A guy that couldn't hit well enough to keep a spot on a lousy Cubs team, even with Gold Glove defense, had people suggesting we should bench Tulo, and play him (remember that?). As much as that was all kinds of stupid, Barney has been everything a utility infielder should be, and he's been hitting.
• J.A. Happ and Marco Estrada: I think it is fair to say that we were kind of underwhelmed by Shapiro/Aikens' signing these two but, as a pair, they are 14-4 and both have ERAs under 3. I'm really sorry I doubted them.
• Aaron Sanchez: I expected him to be a good starting pitcher. I didn't expect him to be this good. I am hoping they keep him in the rotation. I would like them to skip him the odd time and maybe don't push him for 8 innings every start, but, as long as he isn't showing fatigue, keep starting him.