Go Time: Striving for Excellence

Ricky Romero will head out there tonight with the hopes of extended the Jays win streak to four against the Tampa Bay Rays.  Given that he'll be up against the Rays, I'm sure Danks theory will be in full force.  Here's hoping that the new Ricky Romero isn't the same as the old Ricky Romero, but that Joe Maddon hasn't figured that out.

If you've no idea what I'm talking about, basically Ricky Romero has, and has always had, a reverse platoon-split, getting righties out at a much better clip than lefties.  All kinds of lefties in the Rays lineup, but no Matt Joyce, oddly enough.

About last night now-- another nice little fight back, and JA Happ, aside from having a slight fracture behind his ear, and needing stitches there as well, also happened to tweak his knee, apparently.

Happ says he got stitches and there's a fracture in his skull behind ear, says it's nothing serious. Doc will check knee later. #Bluejays
— Mike Wilner (@Wilnerness590) May 8, 2013

 That's a relief.

Speaking of relief, assuming Happ misses a start or more, something's going to need to happen with the rotation.  Looking at the schedule moving forward, the rotation will continue as normal through the end of this week, with Dickey going tomorrow, then Morrow and Buehrle getting the first two games against Boston on Friday and Saturday.  Sunday will be Happ's spot in the rotation, which could be filled in any number of ways.  The Jays have an offday Monday, and another the following Thursday, so if someone needs to work on short rest, everything else can level itself off after a couple days.

Shy of that, the depth in Buffalo is shoddy at best; Justin Germano, Ramon Ortiz, or Claudio Vargas could be called up for a spot start, but jeeze.  I'd prefer the option of calling up an extra reliever and letting Brad Lincoln go for as long as possible, letting the bullpen cover the whole thing.  It makes sense with the two offdays in the week, even if that reliever happens to be one of the aforementioned Germano, Ortiz or Vargas, using them for mop-up purposes if need be.  Mickey Storey and Joel Carreno are two other options. Carreno has started in the past, and Storey has thrown 17.1IP over 9 appearances in Buffalo, so he can certainly be abused a little bit of needed.

The other options are guys like Sean Nolin or Deck McGuire, but that seems unlikely as well; the former is just off the DL and has made 1 appearance so far this year, the latter is apparently terrible now.

[Update- Edgar Gonzalez has been added to the 40-man and called up.]

Stuff
Andrew Stoeten at DJF is back with the latest "Dear John" letter.  Always classic.  One part in particular is the mentioning of Adam Lind facing Cesar Ramos in a rather important situation last night.  Now, if you'll refer to my twitter, I was rather vocal about pinch hitting Rajai Davis for Lind in that particular spot.  Davis is good against lefties, Lind is not.  Simple enough.

My best guess, and I'm not really sure what's the right move here, is that Davis would have hit for Rasmus and taken over in CF, so as to not burn through the rest of the bench, had Lind not ended the inning.  Mark Derosa had already entered the game by this point, so the only options left other than Davis were Bonifacio and Blanco, neither of whom are very useful at all these days.  By pinch hitting Davis for Lind, you then need to yank Rasmus as well once the inning doesn't end, assuming a strikeout, pop-out, shallow flyout that doesn't score a run, etc.

My only real issue with the whole thing, in hindsight, is that Cesar Ramos must pitch to at least one batter, since he was brought in specifically to face Lind.  We don't know for sure what Joe Maddon would have done had Lind not ended the inning, and Davis pinched for Rasmus, but he probably would have brought in a righty, which not only loses the platoon advantage, but also remove Rasmus' defense at the expense of Rajai's non-Rasmus defense.

Of course, Rajai may have had diarrhea and may not have been available to hit, so it's tough to speak in certainties here.  And the Jays won, so it's all water under the bridge.  Still, had Lind not grounded in to an inning-ending double play, and Rajai came up for Rasmus, I doubt this would have been as big a deal as it was made out to be.

Elsewhere, this is how a human brain processes a 100MPH fastball.  Cool stuff.

Deadspin has a surreal Steve Carlton story.

Anthony Gose did a straight steal of home last night.

Lineups
Jays
Lawrie
Cabrera
Bautista
Edwin
JPA
Davis
Derosa
Izturis
Bonifacio

Romero

Rays
Jennings
Johnson
Zobrist
Longoria
Loney
Escobar
Scott
Lobaton
Fuld

Moore