The Rosin Bag: Attrition

1. Dustin McGowan
2. Shaun Marcum
3. Jesse Litsch
4. Ricky Romero

If you were the GM of an expansion team, wouldn't you be feeling pretty good about your team if those were your first four starters in the rotation? I bet you would be. The Jays would be happy to have them too, if they weren't all on the disabled list. You can also add B.J. Ryan to that list, but we'll notch that one up as addition by subtraction. My blood pressure thanks you, "tight trapezius muscle". I can just see the meeting in JP's office now:

Ricciardi: Robert Victor, are you SURE you're not injured? Like, pretty please?

Ryan: No JP, like I told you, I feel fine. I'm just sucking like a rented mule right now.

The Cito: I don't know B.J., or whatever your real name is. It looks to me like you have a tight trapezius muscle...

Ryan: Come again?

Ricciardi: Yeah B.J., like Cito said. A tight trapezoid is not something you want to mess with.

Ryan: (looking worried) Well, ummm, how would I know I have that?

The Cito: (reassuring nod and reaches out to squeeze B.J.'s forearm) You just leave that up to us, son.

All joking aside, didn't you feel 100x better seeing Scott Downs coming out of the pen for the save last night? No drama, no anxious moments, just 1-2-3 game over. As it should be. Also nice to see Rios start swinging the bat and actually getting on base. Welcome to the party, Alex. My buddy Big Turk and I were discussing his struggles the other night, and it's like being the parent of an underachieving teenager: you want to smack him because he doesn't seem to care that his grades are in the shitter. Of course we have to remind ourselves that Alex has never been one to exhibit much emotion, whether he's hitting .320 or .230.

Five series wins to start the season. They're now 12 wins away from the 14 I called for out of this 20-games-in 20-days stretch. Tonight the Jays begin a weekend series against the Chicago White Sox, who currently occupy first place in the Central with an 8-7 record. Brian Tallet gets his second start, facing off against Gavin Floyd. Could you give us another solid six innings Brian? Thanks.

The Rosin Bag: Deflation

Dammit! And here I was starting to think the Jays would go 162-0! Ok maybe not, but that two game winning streak to start the season was fun, wasn't it? Didn't really feel like letting go of it, to be honest. 

But here we are, and Jesse Litsch kinda wet the bed in his first outing. If Ricky Romero can give us a good performance today, all will be forgotten. Oh, and where did the bats go? Zach Miner giving the Jays hitters all kinsd of headaches? Yeesh. Third base coach Nick Leyva also needs to share part of the blame after killing a rally with an ill-advised green light given to Alex Rios on a sac fly with the bases juiced in the bottom of the first (result displayed in picture, right). At least Brian Tallet looked good (and I'm not just talking about his 'stache). Miguel Cabrera is on fire though, he'll be sad to leave Rogers Centre today - he's hitting .700 with 2 dingers. 

It was nice to see the boys in HD last night, but today we revert back to what I presume will be Fox Sports Detroit's feed in standard definition, since we're being asked to tune in to the free preview channel. I guess I'll live. At least I'm home to watch the game (vacation coinciding with the start of the baseball season? What a coincidence!). I'm quite intrigued by this Romero business; 1st round pick looks like he's going to be a bust, then suddenly has a great spring and makes the team, both because of what he showed and the necessity to show that a first round pick was not wasted. I'm still somewhat of JP guy so I hope he does well. 

That's all I've got this morning, so enjoy the game and I'll be back soon with something non-baseball related, most likely. Here's a drunk Red Sox dancer to lighten up your day!