About last night. Sweet. A real nice effort in making the comeback. It's games like that that make me want to hold out the tiniest glimmer of hope for this team.
After all, we're going to need to see a stretch of baseball akin to nothing we've seen from any team as of yet this year just to get things back to shouting distance of the wild card, let alone the division. I'm talking a 15-game winning streak, or at least something like 20-of-24. Those stretches are typically made up of a game or two that probably should have been losses, but weren't.
Look at the Moneyball A's of 2002, who won 22 straight. I can definitely remember a game late in that streak where Billy Koch blew a save by giving up a 3-run HR in the top of the 9th, only for the offense to bail him out in the bottom of the 9th with three of their own. Colorado in 2007 were 77-72 with two weeks left in the season, and went ahead and won all but 1 game through the 2nd round of the playoffs, including the tie-breaker to determine the wild card. They allowed 2 runs in the top of the 13th, only to fight back and score three of their own in the top half.
Sometimes, you just need a little bit of nonsense.
As far as Mark Buehrle is concerned, if you remove the third inning of yesterday's game (I'll stop myself here; we're not going to get in to the habit of cherry-picking innings from games, or reducing our sample sizes), he wasn't nearly as bad as his line would suggest. 6 of 9 hits, and 1 of 2 walks came in that 3rd inning, and all of those games came around to score. Aside from that, 3 hits and 1 walk over the other 5 innings will do just fine. Not to sugar-coat, because Buehrle has been ugly so far, yesterday included. Just saying that this instance was more of a big, ugly, hairy blip, rather than a 3.1IP stinkfest. Nice job by Oliver, Rogers and Janssen to shut things down from the bullpen.
I'd also like to point out that despite the low batting average, Jose Bautista was on base three times last night, and that the Toronto Blue Jays baseball organization earned a ghastly SEVEN walks last night.
Stuff
Rob Neyer for Baseball Nation analyzes the chances at the two big AL disappointments to this point-- Our own Toronto Blue Jays and the Anaheim Angels. Unsurprisingly, Neyer gives the Angels better odds, thanks to their schedule. The Astros are the only team with a worse run differential than the Jays and Angels, and they happen to be in the Angels' division. The Mariners, also in the AL West, have Joe Saunders pitching semi-regularly.
Jose Reyes is standing on his own feet, apparently.
Shi Davidi says things as well:
Sergio Santos says he's thrown 3 bullpens, expects to pitch in game Thursday. Still feels triceps issue a but, but is strong enough to pitch
— Shi Davidi (@ShiDavidi) May 7, 2013
Dustin McGowan to start rehab stint next week. Seeing good results from weighted ball program.
— Shi Davidi (@ShiDavidi) May 7, 2013
Drew Hutchison to throw live BP in three weeks. Kyle Drabek to start BP next week or week after. Both happy with progressAs I've said many times before, if you want more about the weighted ball velocity program, check out Kyle Boddy's site Driveline Baseball.
— Shi Davidi (@ShiDavidi) May 7, 2013
E60 is about perfect games tonight. Trailer.
Someone found a copy of Bo Jackson's scouting report.
Lineups
Jays
Lawrie
Melky
Bautista
Edwin
JPA
Lind
Rasmus
Izturis
Muni
Happ
Rays
Roberts
Zobrist
Longoria
Scott
Rodriguez
Loney
Molina
Escobar
Hernandez (Fausto Carmona)
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