Thursday Bantering: Jays Thoughts

Happy Thursday, The game can’t be worse than yesterday’s, right?

I don’t know what is going on with the offense. Sometimes they are too aggressive, sometimes too passive.

My Twitter feed is full of ‘fire the hitting coach’, which is the usual. People always want someone fired. It is the usual. You can’t fire all the players, so fire the coach. Would it change anything? I doubt it. If you found someone with a different philosophy to hitting, he’d have to teach it to the players, get them to buy in and get to where they can put it into practice.

And, well, all batting coaches teach pretty much the same these days. Unless you want to bring Cito out of retirement, no one is going to preach ‘pull pull pull’ anymore. They all have the ‘let the ball travel’ idea now.

But who knows, couldn’t get much worse, I’m almost sure. But then that’s not a good reason to fire someone.

There is good news, the Jays have Kevin Gausman listed as Saturday’s starter.

Awful Announcing has posted its annual ranking of baseball’s TV Broadcast Teams. And the Blue Jays are number 4 on the list:

4. Toronto Blue Jays – 3.07

Play-by-play: Dan Shulman

Analysts: Buck Martinez, Joe Siddall

Most common grade: A (42.14% of votes)

Previous rankings: 20 (2014), 8 (2016), 21 (2017), 5 (2018), 7 (2019)

Previous grades: 2.06 (2014), 2.58 (2016), 2.08 (2017), 2.75 (2018), 2.64 (2019)

Comments: This is Toronto’s best rank and score ever, and it’s warranted. Dan Shulman is one of the best play-by-play announcers in all of baseball, and Blue Jays fans should be thrilled he calls nearly all of their games.

Dan is the best in the business. The broadcasts are great. I like it better with Joe Siddal in the second chair, but Buck is good too. There are just days where he goes off on an old man rant, but they seem fewer this year. And he’s given in on the catcher on one-knee stuff.

The Giants are at the top of the list, who I can’t say I’ve heard. Number two is the Mets, who have heard a lot and are very good.

At the bottom of the list is the Tigers, and the A’s are second last, which, since the fans vote this, is likely part of the fans’ hate of the team’s ownership.

The Athletic tells us that the Owners will re-elect Rob Manfred, with isn’t surprising. He does what he’s told, so they like him.

He’s not a favourite of mine, but he’s making the owners a ton of money, so he has a job for life.

The Jays announced they have signed 15 played from this year’s draft. Of note, their third-round pick, RHP Juaron Watts-Brown, their second pick, hasn’t been signed yet.

Today’s lineup. Luplow gets to actually play.