Yay

Joyous occasion!  A sweep against those Red Idiots.  The Jays have won three in a row, and without the help of their starting Right Fielder, whoever that guy is. Travis Snider gets his first Zaunhead of the year.

Meanwhile, the Jays are at home, taking on the red hot A's.  Billy Beane has gotten so much out of a team that was supposed to be so bad.  Don't forget AA, Billy is the original ninja.

Brett Cecil tonight.  More importantly, we finally get to see Yoenis Cespedes.  A's starter, Travis Blackley, is left-handed, which means Rajai Davis and not Anthony Gose.  Think AA and Farrell would like to revise their statement about Gose and Snider being in a competition?  Stoeten tackled this at DJF yesterday.

What else?  Oh right, trades.  Sweet, sweet trades.  My heavens I like the trades.  In case you missed:

In the day's biggest news, since the Yankees were involved, which automatically breaks the internet, Ichiro was moved to the Yankees for absolutely nothing.  Ichiro sucks now, though, so that's no big surprise.

Ryan Dempster was rumored to be on the move to Atlanta, but he hasn't approved the deal yet, thanks to his no-trade clause (10-and-5 rights, more accurately).

Lastlly, because it kind of ties in with more stuff that I wanted to touch on without having a massive tangent away from trade talk, only to come back to those trades listed above (*deep breath*), the Tigers broke my heart, dishing pitching prospect Jacob Turner to Miami, in exchange for Anibal Sanchez and Omar Infante.  I saw that they broke my heart, because I was really hoping that they'd send Turner our way in exchange for Kelly Johnson.

This, of course, shows us that the Marlins are giving up on this season, and are selling off a bunch of pieces.  I can't wait to see what they're going to do this offseason, but it's probably going to include equal parts of "not enough" and "what the fuck are you doing?!?", not unlike this past winter.  Look for them to make an offer to Cole Hamels and/or Zack Greinke, if either makes it that far.

Anyway, like I was saying before I hit that very tangent that I was looking to avoid, the Marlins are apparently willing to move pretty much any non-Stanton and non-Reyes piece (and probably won't move Mark Buehrle either).  Oddly enough, I hint-hint'ed at Josh Johnson the other day, and wouldn't you know it,  the Jays are interested in Josh Johnson.  Son of a bitch, I'm good.

The Jays are also said to be interested in Hanley Ramirez, hopefully as a "buy-low" candidate.  Like, really low, please.  Ramirez has been worth 2.7 fWAR (0.4 rWAR) over the last season and a half, and has wOBA's of .317 and .330 in those seasons.  Not exactly what dreams are made of when we're talking about a guy with suspect defense ~$38.5MM left on his contract, especially when he will soon need to be moved to a corner outfield spot.  So yeah, it's not like he can replace Yunel Escobar if a trade happens there, Hanley is more of a might-not-be-that-good-anymore option, instead of an upgrade.

Okay, go watch your game.

Lineups
Jays
Lawrie 3B
Rasmus CF
Edwin 1B
Lind DH
JPA C
Johnson 2B
Escobar SS
Snider LF
Davis RF

Cecil P

A's
Crisp CF
Gomes DH
Reddick RF
Cespedes LF
Carter 1B
Inge 3B
Norris C
Hicks SS
Weeks 2B

Blackley P