Remember the Maine!

Sunday, August 14 2005 @ 10:27 AM EDT

Contributed by: Pepper Moffatt

Unless you're a Jays fan, of course. Then you might want to forget him.

Orioles 1, Jays 0

This is another one for the youneverknow column. Good teams don't always beat up on bad teams, and pitching duels aren't always of the Carlton-Seaver variety. Given the peripherals, though, this doesn't really look like much of a pitching duel. Bush went all 8 innings, walking nobody and striking out 3. Maine went 5, walking three and striking out three. The game wasn't a pitching duel so much as a lot of hits finding gloves. These things happen.

The Jays are now 7 games back of a playoff spot with 46 left to go. According to BP they have about a 5% shot at making the playoffs. Things aren't looking too good right about now.

The Jays have surprised me this year. I thought they'd win about 73 games, given that they lost Delgado and I thought they botched the off-season rather royally. They've surprised me, but it hasn't been because of their off-season signings. Well, other than Hillenbrand. He's been pretty good. But Koskie and Schoeneweis haven't looked too spectacular this season.

Is it time to start calling the Koskie contract an albatross? Joe Sheehan of Prospectus would seem to think so. He recently wrote:

"There's some self-immolation going on here. Because of the disastrous decision to sign Corey Koskie last winter, the Jays are virtually incapable of playing their best nine guys on any given day, forced to sit someone like Aaron Hill (.274 EqA), Russ Adams (.280) or Eric Hinske (.266) so that Koskie's contract (.240) can play. Since being so rude as to come off the DL on July 26, Koskie is 11-for-48 with a double, a homer and four walks. Hill, who lost his regular status so the contract could play, is 6-for-28 with no extra-base hits or walks since Koskie's return. He recently went almost a week without getting an at-bat in a game."

I've got to agree with Sheehan. I thought the Koskie signing was bad at the time and it's looking worse and worse with the great play of Aaron Hill this season. This off-season should be interesting, since there doesn't appear to be room for both Koskie and Hinske on the roster. Everybody and their brother seems to think Hinske is gone at the end of the year. I'm not so sure.

What do you think?

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