gotta say I love Walker going out to talk to Hutch after altuve got on to leadoff the 6th. Had to be telling him to just ignore Altuve and worry about getting out of the inning with a lead.

I forget how young Hutch is sometimes. The guy is clearly having a bit of a problem maintaining his composure in tough spots this year. That was a perfect mound visit there IMO.

oh god he's letting Thole hit in a one run game in the 7th with 2risp. dammit.

oh thank god. pitcher throws 4 balls nowhere close to a strike. that works.

Off-topic, but Gose went 4/5 today with a walk and a triple and is now hitting 348/394/500. In his last seven games, he has 13 hits (including three doubles and a triple), 1 SB, and a 4:4 BB:K ratio.

The Gose-Travis trade is working out very well for both teams so far. Good for Gose and good on the Tigers for helping him tap into his potential.

That was something special, Loup. Nice outing.

Gibbons had 2risp in the top of the 7th with a one run game.

He let Thole and Carrera hit.

The Jays need to find a way to win this one.

and martin gets ready to pinchhit in the 9tg. that's twice now he's refused to pinchhit for thole in the key situation and then got russel ready to hit in the 9th anyways.

Jays' pitching is 29th in walk prevention, 27th in strikeouts and 28th in homer prevention. The Jays' pitching woes have very little to do with luck.

And given the (mostly very young but occasionally very old) ages on the staff, there is probably less of an evidentiary basis for hope than with any other club.

Last year's visit to Houston was the high-water mark of the season (winning that first game, that is)...I don't know what it is about Texas, but it's never kind. Maybe the Jays need to visit the Alamo just to remind themselves that a visiting foreign team can win a game in the state.

I'm starting to think of Shea Hillenbrand's famous comments with this team.

Gose is BABIP'ing .500.  FIVE HUNDRED.  And his BB and K rates are both worse than last year and his career averages.  I am expecting a massive, massive crash.

Seriously?  On May 15?  With a team that is 2 games under .500?

I started coming back here again because I was tired of other message boards where everyone was overreacting to every loss.  I really hope that isn't going to happen here too.

This looked like a good time to use Loup. He just wasn't effective. It's too bad those things don't happen when the Jays are already losing 5-1.

Loup himself hasn't given that many homeruns and he's got only 3 walks on the year. I'm not ready to discount bad luck on this one.

Gose's BB/K ratio is trending better of late (and his BABIP has actually come down). For sure, his numbers are going to normalize, but I'm not sure what his new normal is going to be (fangraphs recently did a piece on the adjustments he has made at the plate, expressing some very cautious optimism about their potential to improve his hitting). There is some reason to believe that he'll be a useful-to-good player for Detroit. He's still only 24, so the Tigers have a true center fielder with speed and some offensive potential for his prime years. That's something. They also appear to be platooning him with Rajai - probably the intelligent thing to do.

I'm sure the Tigers are happy with the 0.8 fWAR he's produced for them so far.

Absolutely.  The swing does look better...but I'd be a bit concerned if the results are still the same from a BB and K perspective.  I think he can be an adequate platoon OF, with seasons where he plays like a full time starter, but at this point, I'm very happy to have Travis.

My apologies for the snippy earlier response.  I was admittedly in a bit of a grumpy mood after reading the comments referencing Shea Hillenbrand.

I couldn't agree more Jervant -- there seems to be more gripeing on this site than normal.

A .500 team is what everyone pretty much expected at the end of spring training, no? And if we were told on April 1st that Norris and Pompey would be demoted by May, the current Jays OF and a lengthy injury to Reyes, is there anyone who would have predicted that the team is one 10 game hot streak from 1st place?

The team is frustrating to watch for the third year in a row, perhaps that bee that is getting into people's bonnets? This division will likely be tight all year, .500 at the ASB will probably be enough to keep the team in contention.

Agreed an all fronts Christaylor. I'm assuming people are frustrated because the last three years we've actually been hopeful of meaningful October ball. It's almost more painful to watch a team that good be really good fail to reach their potential.

Great read on Martin's mediocre framing numbers this season at Fangraphs.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/a-theory-on-russell-martins-framing-numbers/

the main takeaway:

"here’s my theory: Martin has not, suddenly, lost his considerable gifts as a pitch-framer. Rather, when he sets up the target on the edge of the strike zone, hoping to steal a pitch on the fuzzy edge of the strike zone, this young staff is unable to hit the target, making it difficult to establish a convincing frame. You could almost blame the whole decline just on Sanchez. Usually we only talk about catchers when we talk about framing, but perhaps there’s a bit more teamwork at play when it comes to stealing strikes."

When I read that, my first thought was "thank goodness for Russell Martin behind the plate...can you imagine what the rotation numbers might look like without him??"

Let's win one tonight, boys.

It's the umpires that decide the strike zone, not the catchers.

My interpretation is that Martin is good at finding exactly where the ump will call a strike and set the target there.
That skill is useless if the umpire is not consistent or doesn't want to call the 3rd strike.

Y'all might want to read this, on ball-strike calls and separating the individual effects of the catcher, pitcher, batter and umpire, if you haven't already. Definitely looking forward to seeing what numbers it spits out at the end of the year. The Jays are a fascinating test case for all the reasons above.

Not to mention their best two hitters have still yet to get on any sort of hot streak, and two veteran starters have gotten off to bad starts.

The starting pitching had been much better the last 10 games. There are key players returning from injuries by the end of the month. If this team is still losing games like this a month from now, and has the same record, maybe then we can making nautical references.

Well, at least Dickey finally struck out somebody...

Blech.

This Astros team is no fluke. Top to bottom, there is a lot of high ceiling two way talent. And, Altuve is just ridiculous.

While it remains early - questions do need to be riased regarding AA's ability to put together a pitching staff - based on the whole body of work.

The (paid for) rotation is not a cheap one - even if you take Buehrle average contract value per year you are talking about:

Buehrle - 14.5m
Dickey - 12.0m
Estrada - 4.0m
Romero - 7.5m
Hutch etc - 0.5m

The Johnson trade was a diaster and very few of his starting pitching acquisitions have really come off at all. At the same time the discarded players (Alvarez, Syndegaard, DeSclafani) have all seen their stock rise.

On the one hand it speaks to good drafting and on the other to some questionable decision making on roster choices in terms of who is discarded.

Losing a Sam Dyson becuase of poor roster management and the Castro/ Osuna stuff this year (Osuna has been great of course) - its all a bit much.

Some of the decisions on high risk/cost players with high injury risk just haven't worked out - and I dont think with a top 10 payroll they were all needed in the first place.

He's obviously done some good stuff to but it's hard to see this rotation as currently put together 'going on a run' as AA claims will happen. And it may end up costing him his job.

Ultimately AA's body of work is looking more and more 'average' - good and bad. And good and bad probably won't work in the division with such a long track record of not making the playoffs and a top 10ish payroll.

Ultimately it may turn out that AA's key strategic error was in using prospects to essentially trade for other teams' expensive free agent signings (the Miami trade) instead of focusing on continued prospect development and opportunistic trades for controllable players like Donaldson and Travis.

It was arguably also a strategic error to pass on the wave of talented Cuban IFAs that weren't subject to spending limits or draft compensation (Cespedes, Soler, Puig, Abreu, Chapman). On the other hand, I think we're all happy that Tanaka and his mammoth contract didn't end up in Toronto. And Darvish has been great for Texas but is now injured.

There also seem to be more than a few instances of players the Jays have had who have excelled since leaving the organization (Gomes, Chavez, Dyson, Jeffress, Happ, Hill, Gose). Not sure whether or not this is a meaningful phenomenon.

Given that last off-season AA signed his own premium free agent (Martin) and traded for controllable inexpensive talent (Donaldson, Travis, Saunders), it may be that his philosophy has evolved. He also seems to have focused more on acquiring players with good makeup over talented players with makeup issues (Rasmus, Escobar).

"Turns out that AA's key strategic error was in using prospects to essentially trade for other teams' expensive free agent signings (the Miami trade) instead of focusing on continued prospect development and opportunistic trades for controllable players like Donaldson and Travis." *fixed

I've been saying this for awhile now, and I don't see any reason to wait to declare it. The Blue Jays were not real contenders in 2013 and 2014, and it's quite obvious the Jays would be a much better team having never made those trades that winter. They'd have > 50m of salary being spent on Reyes/Buehrle/Dickey to disperse elsewhere, and they'd still have Adeiny Hechavarria, Henderson Alvarez, Jake Marisnick, Anthony Desclafani, Noah Syndergaard, and Travis dArnaud, among others.

Heck, I think this team would be better WITHOUT being able to spend that 50m in saved salary.

And none of this is post-hoc analysis. Some of us were pointing to the untenability of the roster's future based on escalating salaries and payroll parameters, and that's exactly what happened - as the players acquired had their salaries rise on the back end, the team's payroll ballooned while its talent level did not, forcing the GM to improve his team by keeping payroll at the exact same level as it was the year before, no easy feat.

Just checking over the Houston bullpen so far and... wow. Their top five guys (Gregerson, Will Harris, Qualls, Neshek and Sipp) all have WHIPs under 1. The five of them have combined 6.58 K/BB ratio. So yeah boys, get those early leads.

Here are the top six bullpens in all of baseball by ERA, according to FanGraphs:

1. Royals (1.61)
2. Astros (2.07)
3. Dodgers (2.28)
3. Cardinals (2.28)
5. Mets (2.76)
6. Yankees (2.77)

All currently first place teams. Whatever that means...

While I'd doubtless be happier with the roster you outline at this point 92-93, I certainly enjoyed the last two seasons more in light of those big trades.  In hindsight, nobody would do those deals again, but trades involve risk - some work, some don't.  I'd rather have a smart risk-taker for a GM of a rebuilding team than a smart but cautious sort. 

we might have to cut dickey. he might be done.

Makes me wonder, where would this team be if Stroman didn't get hurt?

Stroman might have 3 or 4 wins if the bullpen didn't blow them out. That would replace who? If you  say Sanchez (3-3) then maybe it would not have changed much.

Losing a Sam Dyson becuase of poor roster management and the Castro/ Osuna stuff this year (Osuna has been great of course) - its all a bit much.

I'd be interested to hear what's been "a bit much" about Osuna on the roster. He appears to be the best reliever on the team. Heck, he may be the best pitcher on the team. He's not used well by the manager, but I fail to see what been "a bit much" about him.

we might have to cut dickey. he might be done.

I was pondering Dickey's future during the game last night. At the beginning of the season it appeared his $12m option would surely be picked up. Based on his performance to date, that's now unlikely. If he turns it around, like he has in the past after a poor start to the season, I wonder if there''s anything to be had trading him.

there's always the chance that the knuckler just starts knuckling again and he dominates.

who the frick knows?

On the big trades, while most people commented on how much money the Jays were picking up on the back end, most people thought that the trades put the Jays as a favorite for 2013 PR 2014.

Would anybody be sniping at AA if there was playoff baseball or a world series? Maybe, but everyone would dismiss the comments. The Jays shouldn't have to only build from within, they can and should be able to take on some big contracts.

if stroman hadn't been hurt i'm guessing neither norris or sanchez would have started in the rotation. i'd like to say castro and osuna wouldn't have been on the team either but we have to remember they earned those spots with absolutely dominant springs.

there was an interview with AA in an NY paper in spring where he was talking about how he flipped when stroman got hurt, had to go for a long drive, and came bavk from the drive convinced that the solution was to go all in with the kids. that may have been rash.

then again, i'm glad osuna is on the team and i'm thinking he should start.i've always had a mancrush on the kid but he's starting to creep past hutch and norris in my personal Future Rotation rankings.

While I'd doubtless be happier with the roster you outline at this point 92-93, I certainly enjoyed the last two seasons more in light of those big trades.

I'm the opposite. For me, the last two years were anything but enjoyable. The team's struggles left me frustrated and discouraged, and now I'm also largely disengaged. In all the years that I've followed this team, this is the first time that I can recall having a complete lack of enthusiasm heading into a baseball season.

pretty weird coming off an offseason where we got Donaldson and martin, have a bunch of exciting youth, and arguably the bestvlineup in baseball, imo.

are you a leafs fan by any chance?

are you a leafs fan by any chance?

There's no need for name-calling. :-)

I'm just fed up after 21 seasons of mediocrity. I need to see some actual results, and not just a couple more big names in Blue Jays uniforms.

i was pretty damn excited. And then our young Ace blew out his knee in the first week of spring training.

I have no idea if Dickey is done. It wouldn't really surprise me if he was, but then it wouldn't really surprise either if he's our best pitcher from now until the end.

If Stroman is on the team, I believe Norris AND Sanchez aren't in the rotation. Sanchez would have been the CP and Norris in Buffalo. Stroman has the ability to pitch deep into games, so that would be less taxing on the bullpen. IMO, if Stroman is healthy, the team has 4 more wins than they have now.

It was certainly fun when the Blue Jays had a 6 game lead in the division last year, but then it became a massive disappointment when they couldn't do anything at the deadline. Hopefully if the team is in the race this year that will not be the case.

Estrada was good enough the first time through the lineup. We'll see what the second time around brings.

I'm just fed up after 21 seasons of mediocrity.

That's one thing to be irritated about. Want something else? Remember 2010, Anthopoulos first year? The Jays went 85-77 that year. They haven't been able to match that in subsequent seasons, so forget about actually improving on it. Meanwhile, other records of interest in 2010: Baltimore (66-96), Kansas City (67-95), Seattle (61-101), Washington (69-93), Pittsburgh (57-105).

IMO, if Stroman is healthy, the team has 4 more wins than they have now.

Last year Stroman was worth 2 WAR over 20 starts. Replacing one of the -.5 WAR starter you'd get 2 WAR.

Stroman is not Doc.

Can't say I'm a fan of pulling Estrada after five very effective innings. Why not see if he can give you six? You can always have somebody warming up in case he gets into trouble. Pulling him now likely means relying on four relievers to finish the game, rolling the dice that those four guys will be sharp on this particular night.

I hate being right sometimes.

the impact of losing Stroman isn't just the difference of his WAR vs the 5th starter. There would also be a lot less Jeff Francis, and that's invaluable.

I'm not sure how a team with aspirations of making the playoffs this year can be running Francis out there in close ballgames.

Loup didn't do sp well 2 days ago, so naturally Gibby goes with Francis because there's 2 lefties up and, you know, Cecil is the closer and can't pitch in the 6th.

Eventually, somebody will see the light and  Rasmussen will take over as the low innings LOOGY.

Eventually, I think they will be able to find guys to get outs late in games. Osuna, Hendricks, Cecil, Loup, and Delabar should do fine. Estrada should be back in the 'pen soon. It's not a bad group, certainly the Jays have had much worse. This trip to Houston has sucked, no question, though.

What worries me more, even more than the starting pitching (which believe it or not, has been much much better of late) is the injuries. Watching Jose Bautista most of this season has been frustrating. He seems off-balance at the plate, and frankly, looks like he's guessing up there most of the time. His swing also looks longer, and he doesn't seem to be getting full extension through the ball. Could the bum shoulder be affecting his normal BP/training routine? Anyways, he just looks off to me.

Reyes, Navarro, and Saunders all out for extended periods already. Travis might need a DL stint. Best hitter playing hurt. Seems that health is once again threatening to doom this team.

Before the season, my keys to the Jays' season were (1) player health, (2) performance of the young players, and (3) willingness of Rogers to add talent (and payroll) at the deadline. That still seems like a good framework, although you could argue that "ability of veteran pitchers to maintain their previous level of performance" has been another one.

It's one thing to carry extra pitchers to use for mop-up, it's another to let these guys rack up losses.

AL team lost charged to the pen:

Baltimore 3
New York 4
Boston 5
Tampa Bay 8
Toronto 10

Forget about a new starter. The Jays would have won 5 or 6 more games  if they had a proper closer when the season started and AA had all winter to figure this out.

Gybby has no idea who to use when and it will probably take another month until he figures it out through trials and errors.

Scott, I don't that is all that independent from the SP. The bullpen has pitched too many innings, which is taking a toll on all bullpen related stats.

The Jays are 17-21. To finish with 92 wins, giving them a good shot at the playoffs, they need to go 75-49 the rest of the way (a .605 clip).

If the Jays play the rest of the season at a 90-win clip, they'll finish with 86 wins.

The Jays can get back in the race, no doubt. But every loss makes it that much harder.

The issue is unquestionably the starters. The worst ERA by inning is the 5th, at 7.82 (also bad are the 1st at 6.68, and then the 3rd at 5.92). innings 1 through 3 and 4 through 6 both have ERAs comfortably above 5 (innings 7 through 9 are at 3.59). The component stats also fall in line with these numbers.

Either way you want to slice it, the starters are either letting in the runs themselves or letting teams get to the fleshy underbelly too often. Francis, Hendricks (who I like long-term), Loup (who is a fleshy underbelly until he finds the break on his slider again) et al are pitching far too many times in close games because the starter can't get to the later inning guys.

I was pretty excited about the season prior to Stroman's injury and the subsequent rushing of Castro/Osuna. Everything since then has had the all too familiar "same old crap" feeling to it, where you knew how the story would end but hoped for everything to fall into place anyway (carrying so many rookies, not adding any SP depth in the off-season, not improving the pen, etc). Alex's roster management has been a mess for the most part since then, likely out of desperation.

Disengaged is a great word to describe how I feel about the Jays right now. Even the excuses made by more optimistic posters feels like deja vu ("look at all the great prospects on the horizon", or "if Stroman wasn't hurt things would be different", and so on).

I think the Jays, at this point, need to move on from Bautista and EE. They clearly wasted that window already, and holding on to them any longer is just prolonging the inevitable. Whether they have the guts to do something like that will have to wait until the off-season, most likely.

If the Jays and O's finish at the bottom of the AL East standings this season, I wonder if the Duquette stuff starts up again.

Disengaged, disinterested, disappointed, disturbed and probably a whole bunch more that are not in the dictionary. I've taken to watching hockey, soccer and car racing

I distinguish between 2013 and now. The 2013 team had every right to expect to contend. That it didn't work out comes down to underperformance and bad luck, but I don't blame AA or ownership for that season.

This season, on the other hand, is a colossal failure by AA. They splashed the cash on Martin before then opting not to plug gaping holes in favour of cheap replacement-level-or-worse players. And they rushed not one, but virtually ALL, key young assets in order to pinch pennies.

Even if there was a mandate to slash $11 million -- which is offensive -- then obviously the solution would have been to reallocate money through trades rather than replace all departures through dumpster diving and prospect rushing. Why play hardball in Navarro trade talks if there was nothing left to spend?

The pitching disasters, save arguably Hutchison, have been foreseeable. The injuries to injury-prone players should not leave a team totally adrift. It's just an abject failure of creativity and guts.

Obviously conjecture on my part, but I think spending money on pitching was contingent on moving Navarro and freeing up most of his contract.

Anyway, the way I'm looking at things at the moment is that the Jays are a game behind Baltimore and 1 1/2 behind Boston - which isn't far off the pace I thought they'd be on to start the year. The only reason that looks bad at the moment is because the Yankees are shockingly good (and I don't think they can keep it up) and that Tampa has been better than expected. They're not where I'd like them to be in the standings, but right now it's still early enough that a 10 game home stand can rearrange things substantially (knock on wood).

No matter how the season turns out, I'll still be watching as often as I can. The beauty of baseball is that something spectacular can happen at any time, in any game, at any point in the season.

I've taken to watching hockey, soccer and car racing

I know it looks bad now but there's no reason to torture yourself....

Exactly my sentiments, Jimbag. It's going to take more than a couple of bad early season road trips for me to say uncle. Granted, I live overseas, and haven't seen much firsthand of the bullpen blowups and disgracefully bad starting pitching.

Yep, we need some breaks. And a winning streak to boost the spirits 'round here.

Reading the news about Miami, Ron Washington's name was brought up. Which made me remember he's not with a team. Toronto's a good place for second chances, and he's only 63.

Googling some teams that got off to bad starts, and still won the division.

Interesting to note the 2007 Yankees. 22-29 on May 29th. Handed 17 starts at that point to a combo of Matt DeSalvo, Tyler Clippard, Darrel Rasner, and Jeff Karstens.

Ended up with an ERA of 4.50 but scored 977!!!! runs, won 94 games, and took the division. That's pretty incredible.

I'd say that's a similar blueprint to what the Jays could do, but that Yankee lineup went through the season injury free.

That's why I've said I'm not concerned so much about a flawed team, as much as they just can't seem to keep guys healthy.

Oh, and I forgot that Yankee team had Kei Igawa making 16 starts, pitching to a 6.30 ERA.

So you're telling me there's a chance.....

The other beauty of baseball is there are 29 other teams. Well, 25 other teams, can't enjoy watching the other teams in the AL East...

Don't resort to hockey...

Jeff Francis has been DFA'd, no surprise there. Redmond will start today, that is a surprise. No news yet about whether someone gets bumped from the rotation.

what an utterly depressing, demoralizing series. We may actually be too far out of it already.

On another note, i wish they gave rasmussen a shot instead of redmond.

So redmond is starting today. All the other SP pushed back a day. probably means estrada back to the pen, even though he probably doesn't deserve it the most.