More on last night’s Jays win

We win one despite several stupid mistakes. It would be nice if we could cut down on the stupid.

So this was really weird:

A couple of times a year we’ll see a batter who thinks ball 3 is ball 4. Generally, if they start moving the umpire catches them before they get far. In the clip you see that the plate umpire takes a look at his counter, likely wondering if he had it wrong. I umpired little league for a bit and I was often looking at the counter when there was confusing moment.

It’s funny that Brandon Drury faked out the commentator and he faked out Buck too, on the Sportsnet broadcast.

And you also hear yelling from everywhere. Some of it is the first baseman calling the pitcher to throw to him. I’m sure some is from the dugouts. To me the loudest should have been our first base coach, but then he might have been faked out too.

At least we got to see what it takes to make Charlie Montoyo angry. I don’t think we’ve seen that yet.

It’s nice to see Teoscar start hitting the ball hard. He brought his batting line up from .204/.298/.286 to .245/.328/.377 in one game.

One of the interesting story lines we have going this season is to find out who are going to be our outfielders in the future. We know Randal Grichuk will be part of it. I kind of figured Teoscar wasn’t unlikely to make the cut. But he’s looked some better in the outfield (minus the awful dropped ball in Boston).

Last year he had the hot start with the bat and then didn’t hit much at all for the rest of the season. From May 1 on he hit .229/.291/.437 and when the slow start this season, I figured the league had caught on to him. But he has made some adjustments this year. He has been more patient at the plate. If he can mix that with some power, he could be a good outfielder. I’m hoping he gets a lot of playing time so we can see what we have with him. I’ll admit I was cheering for Anthony Alford to get a the left field job, but I’m willing to have Alford stay in the minors until we open up a spot for him, maybe with a Smoak trade to free up the DH spot.

On the other side of the outfield we have Billy McKinney. I don’t know if he has a future with the team either, though he could be a good 4th outfielder type or a platoon hitter. Finding a right-handed hitter to share time with him would be good but I don’t want Alford to be that guy. He is hitting better after a slow start too. His last 7 games he has hit .276/.300/.517, which we could live with.

It is nice to see Joe Biagini get the save last night. He’s looking very good so far this season. I’m sure the 33.3% strikeout rate is totally sustainable.

After another game of stupid mistakes, I guess we can bury the idea that it was John Gibbons’ that we weren’t good at the fundamentals. Buck and Pat have told us, almost every game, that they worked on fundamentals more this spring than ever before. Maybe they will retire that line for a bit now. I really don’t think fundamental mistakes have much to do with coaching.

Ryan Tepera should be called up today. I’m curious to see who goes the other way.

Not Jays related, but this is news: