The New Guys

I feel like the fact that the Jays have never really been in any sort of playoff race this year, which has been blamed largely on the starting pitching, and, by association, injuries (Morrow missed pretty much the whole season, Johnson was probably hurt for a lot longer than he'd led on, and fucking Todd Redmond, Chien Ming Wang, Ramon Ortiz and whoever else have made starts this year), has sort of blinded us lately.

Yeah, Johnson was dick.  I'll give you that.   Put a big "X" on the face in the middle there.  I want to talk about Dickey and Buerhle or however the fuck you spell it.  I've been working so much lately that I'm hardly writing anything lately, and thus, haven't had practice writing his name.  In order to perfect anything, you need 10,000 hours of practice and experience, and I just haven't been putting in the time.

Anyway, we'll start with Dickey.  He had a pretty rough first half for the most part, throwing in the odd gem of a start here and there.  Cherry-picking his starts since July 1, Dickey's shown up with a 3.73 ERA.  He's still giving up too many HR's, but I suppose that's bound to happen in a park that is known for giving up a lot of HR's.  Most importantly, I think, is that he's throwing innings, which was one of the big reasons that he was brought in.  Assuming Dickey doesn't get injured or shut down or anything, he'll throw somewhere around 210 innings this year.  More on that in a minute.  I definitely don't think Dickey has been the guy that we were all hoping or expecting him to be, but what we've seen lately has been a lot closer.  Typically, that wouldn't mean a whole lot, but his last two months have been pretty close, performance-wise, to his projected performance heading in to the season, if not a more reasonable version of what we saw the last few years in New York.

As for Mark Buerhle, well, the guy that was brought in to be a "sure-fire, throw 6 innings+ a night 33 times this year, don't get hurt, don't get blown up" kind of guy has been pretty much that, save for a few funky performances early on.  His 3.88 ERA for the season is 0.07 runs above his career mark.  His strikeout rate is up relative to his career norm, though his walkrate is up as well, albeit barely.  Hits and HR's are about the same, and he's thrown 185 innings to this point, with probably four starts left.

Like Dickey, Buehrle is going to best 200 innings this season.  That's going to be 13 seasons and counting of 200+ innings from Buehrle.  The last time the Blue Jays had two guys throw 200+ innings in a season?  AJ Burnett and Roy Halladay, in 2007.

Things haven't gone well for the Jays this year, and there are all kinds of reasons for that.  Dickey and Buehrle were plenty to blame early on, but they've carried their weight nicely over the last few months.