Wednesday Bantering: Slow start links

Everyone is talking about the 1-6 start. I thought Matt Gross did it best, but I’m biased.

It’s tough to get your head around, no one expected the team to start this way, so we are all trying to figure it out. Teams will all go through a bad stretch at some point of the season (we went 1-6, in a 7 game stretch, last September), but when it comes at the start of the season, it seems to mean more than a 1-6 stretch in the middle of the season.

The team has looked bad, it is hard to look good when you are losing every night. The bats look terrible. It’s hard not to wonder if some of the guys have gotten old suddenly.

Let’s take a look at what people are saying:

Jon Morosi thinks we should be worried, very worried. He says that once you fall behind it is hard to catch up. Well, yeah, but there are 155 games to do it so, ok. Among other things, he says:

Only three teams in the past 39 seasons have made the playoffs after starting the season 1-6, which is what the Blue Jays fell to after a 4-3 loss to the Brewers in their home opener Tuesday night at Rogers Centre.

Things like this drive me nuts. “Only 3 teams”, but he doesn’t tell us out of how many. It’s the laziest use of stats. Is it 3 out of 10 teams, well then life is good. Is it 3 out of 100, well then life isn’t good. Not a lot of teams start the season 1-6, so we have no clue what this means. Then perhaps Morosi could tell us how many playoff teams go 1-6 at some point of the season. We could see if 1-6 starts are different than going 1-6 in say July.

Anyway, Jon goes on to mention that the Jays had an “uneven spring”, with players going the the WBC and players dealing with injuries, but then every team dealt with much the same. I know the team talked about not playing the regulars so much this spring, wanting to keep them fresh. Maybe that turned out to be a mistake. I don’t know. It seemed most of the veterans had a pretty good spring.

Jonah Birenbaum, at the Score, also wonders ‘what the deal with the Blue Jays’. He mentions that the 4-2 Orioles are also not hitting, with a team .610 OPS (a little better than the Jays .568) and yet, for them wins are happening. As he says “Baseball is Weird”

Over in the Sun, Steve Buffery quotes some Jays telling us not to panic.

“If you compare it to maybe a 15-round fight we’re barely into the first minute of the fight right now. So I don’t think there’s going to much panic in this locker room. We’ve got a lot of guys who have a lot of talent, a lot of belief in themselves,” said the Montreal native.

Martin understands why the fans might be worried, but insisted the players aren’t.

“I would say people shouldn’t worry in the first place because that’s focusing on the negative stuff,” Martin said.

Yeah we shouldn’t panic, but then we can’t control things. The players, one the other hand, like Martin....well it must be tough to look up at the scoreboard and see .000 beside BA on the scoreboard.

ESPN has dropped the Jays 5 spot in their ‘power rankings’, from 10 to 15. Well, actually, that was a couple of days ago, but I wanted to point out their comment that “So far, the departure of Edwin Encarnacion has been evident in the Jays' lineup”. I need to mention that Edwin is hitting .185/.267/.333, so Edwin would fit in great in the middle of our lineup.

Personally....in my head I know there is a lot of baseball left, I should relax. In my heart....if the Jays lose tonight, I’m going to drink.