As I packed up my gear following the Blue Jays sweep at the hands of the Oakland Athletics, I reached for my day-timer to see what the date was. I swore when I woke up that it was April 10, 2008. But there was a strange feeling in my head that this was still a continuation of the 2007 season.
Everyone - fans, players, media - were flying high after the Jays swept the opening series of the homestand against the Red Sox. The Jays pitched great, hit well and played some solid fundamental baseball. Granted, the Red Sox were at the tail end of a three-week odyssey that saw them travel from Florida to Tokyo to Los Angeles to Oakland and then Toronto. All told, a grand total of 24,282 kilometres were travelled spreading the game's goodwill across the world, but it was a tired Boston team that stumbled to Canada and was overwhelmed by the home side. For the Jays, coming off a three-game series in New York that saw them lose two of three (although with a break here or there they could have easily swept the Yankees), there was no time to feel sorry for the Red Sox and they beat them accordingly.
The feeling around the ball park was the Jays had finally turned the corner. The strength and depth of their pitching coupled with an infusion of new gritty players had positioned them perfectly to finally challenge for the post-season. Funny how all those fuzzy feelings from the weekend quickly dissipated over the next 72 hours after they sleepwalked - 2007-style - through the three losses to the Athletics.
Unfortunately, as has been the case in his two-plus seasons with the Jays, starter A.J. Burnett set the tone right off the hop on Tuesday when he showed why he will always be a .500 pitcher. As good as he was in his first start of the season, defeating the Yankees before a full house in the Bronx, he was equally mediocre against Oakland, lasting just 4.2 innings, giving up 10 hits and six earned runs while throwing a whopping 92 pitches to 26 hitters. Incredibly, Burnett had the cajones to roll his eyes when manager John Gibbons finally, mercifully, ended his night. Others arms came up woefully short over the three-game losing streak. Jeremy Accardo, who had saves the first three wins of the year, stumbled twice and was saddled with a pair of losses. Dustin McGowan went only five innings in his start, and Brandon League, who has made the transition from prospect to suspect, took the extra-inning loss in the finale, throwing nothing but fastballs with many of them tailing away from the strike zone.
The offence was no better. Runners would get on and they would wait for a three-run home run that never came. They went just 7-of-32 with runners in scoring position, including only 4-of-27 in games started by a pair of left-handed rookies. For a team that is predominantly right-handed hitting, they couldn't do much of anything. David Eckstein (3-of-15), Marco Scutaro (1-of-10), and Frank Thomas (1-of-12) made a lot of key outs when likely only a single hit could have broken the games open. Speaking of Scutaro, while his play at third in the absence of Scott Rolen is admirable, the veteran utility man is being vastly overexposed, just like John McDonald was last year. These are good, complimentary players, caulking if you will on playoff-bound teams, but should never play more than a couple times a week. Unfortunately, on a team that has little room for error, their thin roster is being exposed.
Now it's off to Texas, where they rarely play well for whatever reason, and then on to Baltimore to take on the upstart Orioles, who won six of their first seven games before dropping a double-header to the Rangers on Thursday. Like the A's before them, these are the teams that the Blue Jays must beat on a regular basis if their dreams of playing in October for the first time in 15 years can be realized. If they continue to play down to the level of their second-rate opposition, their dreams will turn to nightmares again.
