It's time for Cito Gaston to bite the bullet and change his line-up on a daily basis.
For Blue Jays fans, there doesn't seem to be any middle ground when it comes to manager Cito Gaston. The old school types point to his past, which includes a pair of World Series titles, where he wrote out the line-up card, let the boys play and the success is in the history books. His detractors have always shouted that he won because the Blue Jays in the early 1990's had the best and deepest roster in the game and he just tried not to get in their way. How could he not win that line-up?
But that was then and this now.
Since returning to his spot beside the bat rack on June 20th of last season after an 11-year absence from a Major League dugout, Cito's Jays have played surprisingly well despite their annual spate of injuries. Along with his trusted batting coach Gene Tenace, he took a flawed offensive approach and returned selective aggression to the batter's box. The results, for the most part, have been dramatic. Until recently, despite an uneven line-up that has seen little or no production out of the three and four spots, the Jays had the top team batting average in the American League. They were scoring an obscene number of runs thanks to extra-base hits and clutch hitting.
That all went out the window, though, beginning on May 19th when they went into Boston for the first time this season and got swept. That was followed by their first Interleague series of '09 (swept again) and onto Baltimore for yet another sweeping. A nine-game losing streak, the first time in franchise history that the Blue Jays didn't win a game on a three-city losing streak. The numbers weren't pretty: 2.6 runs per game, only two home runs, just .185 with runners in scoring position, and outscored 53-23. I've been around here a long time and I never witnessed anything like this.
It was around this time that the howls of discontent began on the post-game shows and in the blogosphere. With Alex Rios and Vernon Wells in the midst of season-long slumps, why were they not being removed from their key spots in the order many inquired? Cito's answers, every time, were "this is my line-up" or "they'll come out of it". Well, they didn't, and the 27-14 start quickly deteriorated and they started to back through the always competitive East division. After yet another Interleague sweeping last weekend against a scrappy Marlins team, the Jays have now lost 17 of their last 24 and currently find themselves one loss away from falling into fourth place.
Cito finally bit his lip and did some line-up shuffling on the weekend, moving Rios from third to sixth and moving everyone up slot. Rios responded by going 7 for 12 with a pair of home runs and four RBI. The rest of the line-up, not so much, combining for a .161 average (14 for 87). Wells, now hitting third, is in the midst of the worst slump of his career, hitting just .095 (4 for 42) with just two extra-base hits in June and is without a home run since May 6th in Anaheim, a span of 35 games. Wells, a career .283 hitter heading into '09, currently sits at .238, and is on a pace to hit just 12 home runs and drive in 69 runs. These sub-standard numbers are causing the G.M.'s in the seats to start raining boos down on Wells on a regular basis.
Now I listen to the post-game call-in show on the Fan590 in Toronto every night as I make my one hour drive back up north to the fortified and stately Carson compound. There's no doubt that, on the subject of Wells, and on some level Cito, the natives are getting restless. Much of their discontent is related to the fact that Wells' ridiculously back-loaded contract will see him start collecting $23 million in 2011, followed by $21 million in each season from 2012-14. I could get into this in depth, but that's a different column for a different time.
Getting back to the reason for this column, the time has now come for more tweaking of the line-up. Wells should also be removed from the middle until he gets his stroke back. The Blue Jays current batting order will never confused with the '92 line-up (WAMCO) or '93 (HAMCOW), where there was no reason to change things up and Cito didn't write the names out on a daily basis, he used the XEROX machine.
But that's not the case at this point and time. Massaging the line-up on a daily basis might be what is needed to keep the Jays within striking distance of the leaders. Anything else and fourth place, where all the pundits said they'd finish back in February, will be cemented. It's too bad because we all saw what was possible before their trip to Boston in May.
