Time to consider the bench.

Moving right along... the outfielders and the DH.

I'm enjoying this, even as I feel the collective wisdom of the readership leaning on me to revise some planned grades upward.

We'll see whether you can move me!

You know it's coming.

And it's not going to be pretty.

It has been a roller-coaster ride for Blue Jay fans this season.  There were the highs of the early season when the Jays were at the top of the division and able to take on all challengers.  Now the Jays wins are few and expectations are low.  The Jays record in August was 9-19, a 52 win season pace.  But the Jays won four of their last five games in the month, two in New York and two against Tampa.  From August 1 through August 25 the Jays record was 5-18, a 35 win season pace.  Now the Jays have started September 0-3 and there is little expectation of a win on any night.

Help make the tenth annual survey a success by providing your opinion on  fielders.

http://www.tangotiger.net/scout/

Last month, I received an invitation to a meeting of the Northwest Chapter of SABR (Society for American Baseball Research) at Nat Bailey Stadium and one of the guest speakers was Vancouver Canadians pitcher Matt Johnson.  He shared some interesting stories about his baseball career.

Vancouver Canadians righthander Matt Johnson taking a breather after speaking at the August 11 SABR meeting at Nat Bailey Stadium.

There was discussion in the Bronx Therapy thread about the correlation between the Yankees reliably high total of walks and their reliably high total of runs scored.

Jose Bautista's season is over. He's having surgery on his wrist.

In the last 32 seasons, the Blue Jays have lost 90 games exactly once.

On July 28, despite all their trials and tribulations, the Blue Jays had a 51-49 record. While there was a posse of contenders in their way, they were still 3.5 games out of a post-season berth.

Then came what can best be described as a Death Spiral.

We can use a new thread - and besides, let's marvel at this lineup!

Having just vented on how much I hate seeing 21 year olds in a major league rotation, I thought I'd journey back through time and see if this franchise has ever made such a thing work.

 (HINT - They have. Once or twice.But it was a long, long time ago.)

I haven't given you a Data Table in a long time.

Consider this, then:

Lovely article in the Globe about Don Wakamatsu's practice of writing out the Jays daily lineup cards in near perfect Gothic script. He's a self taught “bootleg calligrapher”, who's glad he's not coaching Jarrod Saltalamacchia any more. Apparently they sell these things for charity, and I'd like to buy one.