Monday bantering

Hello again dear friends, its been too long...

Australia was great - lots of good weather (28c!), too much good food and a good family time. Jake enjoyed his first overseas trip and fortunately it was only a 4 hour plane ride. We visited some great museums, galleries and adventure playgrounds (important with a 6 year old).

We stayed in an old house just outside Brisbane next to a large park and every dusk we had hoards of fruit bats swooping in and nesting in the trees. Slightly creepy but also very cool. Don’t get me started on the annoying possums on the roof every night though. (At least in NZ we can legally kill possums).

The highlight was a trip to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary- the largest in the world where we all got to cuddle a koala. Cute little buggers they are. I wanted to take one home but Immigration wouldn’t go for it...

In my absence (and after being wifi free for ages) i see we traded Granderson and Donaldson (the less said about the latter’s trade the better), we are still compiling losses at an alarming rate, we have about a million rookies on our roster and we are the 8th worst team in baseball this year. I see i haven’t missed much....

Sith slipping

Any win over the Sith is good and Thomas Pannone led us to victory yesterday in a 3-2 win that was tighter than a duck’s chuff. Matt W has your well rounded recap.

With the Jays winning two of three from the Yanks, there is certainly some angst in the Bronx as they try to fend off Oakland for the top AL wild card. Prior to Sunday, they were 69-3 when holding a lead after seven innings … Now the Yankees are 1-4 in their past five and 7-10 in their past 17.

I love it that we can play spoiler to them...

99 Miles Giles

Ken Giles has had only 10 save opportunities for the Jays since he was acquired at the end of July. The good news is that he’s been successful on all 10; overall Crazy Ken is 22-for-22 this season and has been striking out people for fun.

No word though on how many punchouts Osuna has...

The OrioLOLes again

For what seems like the 7,000 time this season we face the OriLOLes at Camden Yards today. The team that is 43-106 and quite frankly, seems to be mailing in the remainder of the season...i mean they still have Chris Davis on their roster.

Ryan Borucki (3-4, 4.26) will go up against..who knows? Probably some random guy Baltimore will pull out of the crowd. He will more than likely be a lefty and will dominate us, because baseball....

The Jays are 12-4 vs. the O’s this season, including 2-4 at Camden Yards. They lost three straight and were outscored 29-10 in Baltimore from Aug. 27 to 29, but have outscored the O’s 85-64 for the year.

Randal Grichuk has had a stunning season against the Orioles, batting .407 with five homers, 11 RBIs and a 1.300 OPS. He’s hitting .500 (9 for 18) at Camden Yards.

Play of the Day

Tyler Austin channels his inner Brett Lawrie....with painful results.

Oh and a huge thank you to Erik t, Matt W and especially Kate for all your hard work while i and Tom have been away. You guys did a great job!