Swept at home by the Detroit Tigers. Swept at home by the Baltimore Orioles. That's 0-6 to start the season at home, the Toronto Blue Jays worst start in history. This team is showing us nothing. No consistent starting pitching, no dependable relief, no offense, unrealiable to poor defense, stupid baserunning mistakes, and a consistent stream of mental errors that may not make the "E" column, but cost us all the same.
Take this recent home series (please!) 0 hits in 11 at bats with runners in scoring position over the last 2 games. Embarassing scores of 11-2 and 7-0, and one we lost 5-3 when we allowed 2 runs in the 9th. The crowd was booing today. The crowd should have been booing today. The whole game was just painful to watch.
The Batters Box has a valid point when it says (in rhyme) that all is not lost. Still, every game counts - and the Toronto Blue Jays are playing like a last place team on all levels. It's bad, bad baseball. This team should be better than that.
On the one hand, TBB is right. There's really no alternative but to stick with the plan (for the first half of the season, at least), see what we have this year, and try to identify some more building blocks that will make us competitive in 2005-2007. On the other hand, reputations tend to stick - and the 2004 team is building one that will make it hard to bring fans back to the SkyDome this year.
Go O's!
I savored this weekend. It's been years (since '94) since the O's have swept Toronto in Toronto. And the 'Jays have completely owned Baltimore for the last few seasons.
I think the Bluejays are a better team than this, and I'm still skeptical that the O's will play to this level throughout the season. We'll see though. It all comes down to pitching for dem darn birds.... (gotta be a Bal'moron to appreciate that one)
Keep the spirits up, Joe. It's a long season, and I think you'll have more to be happy about than not.
First, congrats. Your pitchers are looking much better these days. We're doing our bit to help, but I've also seen some very good pitches and good poise this series from the Orioles staff.
RE: The Jays... If it was just bad breaks, hitting slumps, or whatever, that's one thing. It's the defensive lapses and stupid mental mistakes, happening consistently, that have me worried.
Those are the kinds of things that will turn a team into less than the sum of its parts in a big, big hurry... and I'm not sure they're "fixable", just as lack of patience at the plate isn't usually a player trait that can be fixed.
But it's a long season. We'll know pretty soon if this was just a really bad couple of weeks, or a pointer to something deeper.