Two struggling pitchers faced off tonight, as the Jays tried but failed to get their record to 3-3 on this lengthy road trip.

Joe Blanton checked in at 0-5 with a truly apocalyptic ERA of 6.66. Now he's got his first win, and an ERA of 6.14.

And Ted Lilly shaved his ERA from 7.60 to 7.41, even if his pitching coach doesn't want to talk to him any more. Whoop-dee-doo. He did it His Way.

When Frank Catalanotto hit his lead-off homer in the 4th to open the scoring, somehow I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one thinking “OK! This game is now ours, babies!”

Or, as Vince Carter once said in happier times, “IT’S OVER!”

I can't buy a win in the big-league game reports, it seems, but this is my second minor-league organizational sweep in a matter of weeks. I'm not sure what to say on this momentous occasion. What I really need here is a Repoz inspiration.

"I haven't been this excited ... since the CD release party for The Spaghetti Incident?!"

Okay, I have a ways to go yet....

The Jays have lost 3 of 4 to a couple of the worst teams in the American League. Luckily, we have the Doctor, and he's matched up with the immortal Seth Etherton Ryan Glynn tonight.

It looked like a mismatch, and it was. Doc gets his 9th win, first AL pitcher to that mark, as the Jays win it 6-2.

When the Batter's Box All-Q team was posted recently, user HippyGilmore astutely noted, "I suggest combining the Q's with the U's, a pair of seemingly hopeless letters that may find the strength to compete together. Plus, Q just naturally goes with U."

Well, we're not going to resort to that quite yet. For while it is true that this will be a difficult team to assemble -- perhaps it's not as difficult as we originally feared.

April ended with the team's record at 10-11 and we all assumed that May would see an improvement, an incorrect assumption as it turns out. Syracuse's May record is 12-18, a huge disappointment for a team put together to be competitive. Their season record of 22-29 puts them eleven games behind the divison leader.

Here's Corey Koskie homering off of David Wells from way back at the start of the season. Yes, it's Friday and I got lazy.

...in Lansing. Cannon-ating drives and enormous saves were the order of the day as the farm affiliates went 2-2.

Prologue

At 3:00 am this morning, little Theodore woke up and decided he wanted to play. For two hours. So he and I played. I figured when he went back to sleep he'd be out for at least three hours and I could get enough sleep to cope with the day. Instead, he woke up again at 6:30, raring to go.

It's okay, I thought, I'll just nap when he does. Well, he napped, but never for longer than 15 minutes at a stretch, and every time he woke up full of beans and energy.

As 10:00 pm approached, I knew I'd need a little extra to get through the game, so I purchased a magic elixir known as the Red Eye: a cup of dark roast coffee with a double shot of espresso in it.

This should explain some of my game notes.

On May 30, the defending Eastern League champion Fisher Cats stood at first place in the EL's Northern Division with a 28-20 record, after winning 6 of their previous 7 games. Today, a few days later, that record is 29-23, with the Cats tied for first place with Portland, to whom they lost last night. But I froze the stats on May 30 to write this report, so that's the snapshot we're using for the May 2005 Fisher Cat review.

Came down to the last pitch, anyways. Your thoughts?

The A's come into this weekend four-game set coming off their first series sweep of the season. Is it the tonic that might send the A's on one of their trademark charges up the standings, or was it simply the case of playing a club -- Tampa Bay, naturally -- that might as well have a "SWEEP ME" sign stuck to the back of their road uniforms this season? I actually think it might be the latter. When was the last time the Jays played a four-game set at Oakland where none of the starting pitching matchups looked particularly daunting?

Sure, Billy Beane has had some awful luck, with injuries and/or poor play plaguing most of his talent. But on the field, the A's have been full value for their sorry last-place standing; the club is 7-9 in one-run games and 7-15 in games decided by four or more runs (they were 5-15 before the visit by T-Bay). The club struggles mightily to hit righthanded pitching, fields an unquestionably subpar starting rotation (at least until Rich Harden returns), and has a badly depleted bullpen. The A's can creep back into contention with simultaneous returns to health and form from most of the roster, but to assert that they definitely will is by no means obviously true.

This week's Scout features a big-league debut of a minor-league star, a fading rookie and a starting pitcher with more important things on his mind.

On to the Advance Scout!

Dunedin had an excellent month in May, and now stand at 32-20, the second best record in the Florida State League. Unfortunately, they play in the same division as the Lakeland Tigers, who possess the best record in the league at 34-17. Still, the gap was closed this month, and with a good run in June, the D-Jays stand a chance at the first-half title.

What can I say about this one?

Not a whole lot, really. It's Frank Catalanotto in the on-deck circle, adjusting his batting gloves:

And my season's record drops to 0-5. Have I mentioned that I'm the only member of the Roster who hasn't written up a Game Report for a win yet? And that includes two losses in spring training.

Okay, I'll stop whining now.