DETROIT, Mi. – The Blue Jays finished their last series by getting thumped 13-0 by the Red Sox, then finished this series by dropping the rubber game by a mere ten runs. At least they haven’t been swept yet. And hey, the 1998 Blue Jays had 88 wins, still the best record for the team since 1993 – and they lost their first three three-game series of the year, too.
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Here are three things that stood out to me about the miserable, chilly blowout in Motown:
STARTING PITCHING GETTING HARD TO BELIEVE
The main goal stated by Alex Anthopoulos after the disappointing last two months of the 2012 season was to improve the Blue Jays’ starting pitching. He accomplished that by acquiring reigning Cy Young Award winner R.A. Dickey from the Mets and hauling in Josh Johnson and Mark Buerhle from the Marlins. Between the three of them, they’ve made six starts so far, and in four of those six, one of them has allowed at least six runs.
Not exactly the level of performance we’d all been led to expect.
There have only been two starts from Blue Jays’ pitchers out of the nine that could be described as better-than-solid, though they were both terrific – Brandon Morrow against the Indians and J.A. Happ against the Red Sox.
The plan had been to build a rotation full of the big-time horses in hopes of getting the Blue Jays deep into games, thereby bolstering the bullpen as well. That hasn’t worked at all so far, as there has yet to be a single Blue Jays starter to have even thrown a pitch in the 7th inning. In this most recent trip through the rotation, with all but Happ having taken the ball (he’s starting Friday night in Kansas City), not one starter has even managed to complete five innings of work before getting yanked.
The first inning has been the killer, more often than not. There’s only been one game in which a Jays’ starter has thrown fewer than 20 pitches in the opening frame (Morrow with 18 on April 9 – a game in which he didn’t make it out of the fourth). Johnson threw 30 in his first inning on Thursday afternoon, and that was his good inning.
The big righty had the shortest appearance of his major-league career, recording only four outs – while allowing six runs on seven hits. In his defence, Johnson did just happen to get mauled by the BABIP Monster. The Tigers’ batting average on balls in play against Johnson was a ridiculous .778, and it wasn’t because he was getting raked all over the field. Only two of the seven hits he allowed came on hard-line drives, the others were ground balls, looping liners or little scoop jobs over the infield. They all count, to be sure, but they also usually even out.
The Blue Jays’ rotation’s first inning ERA through the first nine games of the season is 9.00 – though that’s skewed by Dickey’s five-run first on the weekend – and the first-inning WHIP is 2.111. No wonder the Blue Jays have only scored first in one of their nine games this season.
THE FAULT LIES WITH THE PLAYERS
Don’t blame this rough, but recoverable start on anyone but the people that wear the gloves, throw the ball, catch the ball and swing the bat.
Lately it seems there’s been a lot of online vitriol directed at Blue Jays’ manager John Gibbons, pitching coach Pete Walker and third-base coach Luis Rivera.
It’s not their fault.
Gibbons didn’t go 3-for-30 with runners in scoring position in the season-opening homestand, Rivera didn’t have trouble catching and/or throwing the ball on the infield and Walker has had no first-inning issues at all.
Sure, it’s the coaches’ job to prepare the players for their games and their specific opponents, but it’s up to the players to execute those plans. Sometimes they can, sometimes they can’t – they do remain human, after all.
The idea that Gibbons is reluctant to use the speed at his disposal is laughable. First of all, if we learned anything from the first nine games of the season, it’s that Melky Cabrera isn’t a speed weapon so don’t expect him to be running with the Reyes, Bonifacio and Davis crew.
From there, notice that in nine games the Blue Jays have stolen eight bases as a team without getting caught even once, and that Jose Reyes is on pace to shatter the club’s stolen base record with 72. Adam Lind even has a stolen base, the result of a missed hit-and-run play – another sign of aggressiveness from Gibbons.
Walker can’t go out and force his pitchers to throw strikes, which results in quick, efficient innings, nor can Rivera take to the diamond and field ground balls for Bonifacio and Izturis. Unfortunately, the infield madness is something the Blue Jays will have to live until Brett Lawrie comes back, though at this point I’m wondering which is the better option at third in the meantime – Mark DeRosa’s relatively limited range or Maicer Izturis’ second baseman’s arm.
UGLY WITH A CAPITAL "UG"
Getting smacked around to the tune of an 11-1 pounding doesn’t exactly leave a ballclub with a good taste in its mouth as it hits the road.
It was an absolutely miserable afternoon in Detroit, with the temperature hovering around 2 C all game, and anywhere from a light mist to a heavy rain falling through most of the day so that kind of added insult to blowout.
The weather can’t be blamed for the performance, though, since Doug Fister didn’t seem to have a hard time on the mound, allowing a run on eight hits (seven singles and a bloop double) over eight sharp innings. And the Tigers didn’t seem to have a hard time at the dish, with 16 hits for the afternoon.
Still the weather conditions were disgusting, and the Blue Jays will be happy to no longer have to deal with such things. Well, one more time – Friday night’s low in Kansas City is expected to be right around the freezing mark, but then things will get better.
I don’t tend to make guarantees, but I do guarantee this – things will get better. All this is is a slow start. The Blue Jays current 3-6 mark projects to a 54-108 record when all is said and done, and there’s not a chance that’s going to happening.