Jays starter needs to be changed. Johnson out, Laffey in: http://www.rotoworld.com/headlines/mlb/392714/josh-johnson-%28triceps%29-scratched-from-start

Hopefully this isn't a Laugher for the Yankees.

Aaron Laffey gets the start.  "Ivan Nova" backwards would be "Avon Navi", which is a considerably cooler name than "Yeffal Noraa". 

Nova's career platoon splits are weird.  He has been noticeably better against LHB , exclusively because of a 50 point higher BABIP against RHB.  He walks lefties at a much higher rate, and gives up HRs at a higher rate to lefties, and has a very close to equivalent strikeout rate.   He's faced 850 batters from each side, so you'd think that the BABIP would be pretty close to stabilized at this point. 

Line drives, everyone.  Please.  Dr. Longball spreads diseases as well as dispensing cures.

What I thought when I read "Avon Navi":

"Hey! Listen! Wanna buy some moisturizer?"

Rajai Davis leading off today.  In light of Nova's reverse splits, that might be all right.  Colby Rasmus batting second.  In light of Nova's reverse splits, that might be not as good an idea as you might think. 

Just keeping Lind's seat warm? As a harbinger of how the #2 hole will be handled in the future, maybe not so bad.

Why does Nova have reverse splits, anyway? I usually just take that as given when there's a cutter/changeup type on the mound, but Nova's out pitch is the hard curveball. Without looking it up I would've guessed about 40 points of OPS in the normal direction, but he's faced more than 800 each of RH and LH batters, so the reverse split sounds legit.

Hard to watch another loss. Bautista and Encarnacion should be flipped in the lineup. As long as he's not hitting, move Bautista one batter lower in the lineup every week until he does.

With lots of actual good players on the team this year (though none actually playing well) the insufferable hipsterism of boosting Kawasaki is really grating.

If you go 4 for 5 but your 5th AB is a K Richard would want you traded, cut, moved down in the lineup, or sent to independent ball.

Rajai Davis is a terrible base runner. Constantly makes very bad decisions. Why would you try to steal third in that situation?

Have the Jays played one fundamentally sound game this year? Because I can't recall one.

What makes this April doubly horrible is that Farrell's Red Sox are rolling. And they're doing it with Butter, Lovullo, short-term free agents, an intact farm system, and payroll to spare for deadline acquisitions. Plus, they've dealt away their bad contracts (in exchange for quality prospects).

You will need an 8 man pen if you don't give somebody more than an inning in a game like this.  Maybe this signifies a move for Loup into the low-leverage long role. 

I have no issue with the boosting of Kawasaki as long as it doesn't translate into people disproportionately valuing his talent and skills (which may be what Craig is referring to).

My reasoning is two-fold: A) I'd rather fans enjoy themselves by cheering for Kawasaki than by doing several more obnoxious things they could be doing (doing the wave, throwing paper airplanes on the field, cheering on players based on attractiveness) and B) Kawasaki actually does a lot of small things very well, such as working the count through patience and fouling off baseballs, bunting and playing fundamentally sound baseball. After watching Bonifacio's attempted "bunts," Kawasaki's been a breath of fresh air.

Is it just me, or do the Yankees have Wells in a deeper crouch at the plate than previously?  If so, I am wondering if that is helping him go the other way.

So, Edwin is hot.

Not another PB.

How many runs have been directly related to our catcher not being able to catch?

Arencibia's bat giveth, but his glove taketh away. (Sometimes his bat taketh away, too.)

"I really f***ed it up this time, didn't I, my dear?"

Theme song for the Jays' season. Greenfrog, if there has been a 100% fundamentally sound game in 2013, I haven't seen it either.

Nice move trying to corral a pitch in the dirt with just a glove, while you have a runner on 3rd...

In related news, Josh Thole went 2-4 with a triple tonight.  He's hitting .392/.446/.588 in the early going in the IL.

642-651
248-264

Anybody know what these numbers mean?

Laffey DFA. AA is ruthless.

Well.....I probably would have DFA'd him before the game was over, but I'm not sure that's even in the rules.

!989 Blue Jays: 9 and 15 after a loss to Angels. 12 games left before Jimy Williams gets fired.

2013 Blue Jays: 9 and 15 after a loss to Yankees. John Gibbons?

And yet Thole still toils in AAA.

I have no issue with the boosting of Kawasaki as long as it doesn't translate into people disproportionately valuing his talent and skills (which may be what Craig is referring to). My reasoning is two-fold: A) I'd rather fans enjoy themselves by cheering for Kawasaki than by doing several more obnoxious things they could be doing (doing the wave, throwing paper airplanes on the field, cheering on players based on attractiveness) and B) Kawasaki actually does a lot of small things very well, such as working the count through patience and fouling off baseballs, bunting and playing fundamentally sound baseball. After watching Bonifacio's attempted "bunts," Kawasaki's been a breath of fresh air.
I have seen this kind of thing in my youth. He was called .... Rick Bosetti. Fun fact: Bosetti played two seasons as a regular and was 19 for 41 stealing bases those years. I'd wager not another player since WWII has done that (or worse).

I have seen this kind of thing in my youth. He was called .... Rick Bosetti.

Wasn't Bosetti alleged to have peed in the outfield of every MLB park? Maybe that's what the Jays need to turn things around. Can't hurt at this point.

Laffey DFA. AA is ruthless.

Being the 25th man on the Jays is like being the drummer in Spinal Tap.

Love the Spinal Tap analogy, Chuck, but I'm sure I wasn't the only one who could see it coming when he couldn't make out of the 3rd.

BTW, 20 of his last 27 pitches were balls.

Heh.  Like that one Chuck. 

I've mentioned a few times, but after this game it is even more true. 
5 Jays have 11 relief appearances and their ERA's range from 1.38 (Cecil) to 3.60 (Oliver) with Oliver the only one over 3.
Janssen is next with 8 appearances and an ERA of 1.13
Santos comes next with 5 appearances and a 2.08 ERA.

Then things get ugly.  5 relievers with 2 or fewer appearances, 12 2/3 IP, 12 earned runs.  Mix in Laffey's 2 2/3 IP and 2 ER and the '8th man' crew has 15 1/3 IP allowing 14 ER for an ERA of 8.22.  Ugly.  Best ERA of the group is 5.40 for Gonzalez and Ortiz.  I can see why AA sees that group as 'so what'.  Lincoln is the best hope to improve out of that group of 6 (Gonzalez, Lincoln, Bush, Jeffress, Ortiz and Laffey) as he seems to have the 7th man slot right now while the rest (and more) fight it out for the 8th. 

Now, ERA isn't the best way to measure relievers but geez does it ever tell a tale here eh? 

It's pretty clear how the last man in the pen can work himself off the roster. What Izturis, Blanco and Bonifacio have to do remains a mystery, however.

The problem with those passed balls, they can be much more deflating than a home run.

Near the end of last year I starting thinking that maybe this team needed a manager that lets the guys play and just sits back with a set lineup and lets them have at it. Similarly, there were defined bullpen roles and the defence did little shifting. I think the micromanaging of Farrell just started to wear on me.

I'm starting to want that back as I don't know if this group is deserving of that level of respect that they have defined roles and a set lineup. Moreover, there just seems to be an overall lack of accountability. Guys seem to go up there without a team-first approach. "I just want to hit the long ball," seems to be the dominant trait of many of our hitters. Where are those 10-12 pitch at-bats? Where are the walks? The amount of quality at-bats each game is way too low.

I notice Arencibia and Rasmus are hacking away at a rate that would see each man finish with more than 230 strikeouts in the season. Which would be remarkable. (The franchise record is 159, Jose Canseco in 1998.)

It must make them crazy in Anaheim to see Vernon Wells hitting better than Josh Hamilton and Mike Trout. It's not a situation I'd count on continuing through the year, but I'm enjoying the moment.

Here's all we need to know about the Jays offense this season: the Jays are 2nd in the league in home runs, but 14th in the league in OBP. And of their 31 homers this season, 21 have come with the bases empty.

Very few teams can make the playoffs with an offense based on the solo HR.

It's possible, but you need pitching.

Interesting comparison, but the Jays are more dependent on the solo HR than even the 2005 White Sox. The Jays this season have 31 HRs and only 89 total runs. The White Sox of 2005 had 200 HRs and 741 total runs.

The pitching is also an interesting comparison (and not just because of the presence of Mark Buehrle on both teams). Just using ERA for a quick crude comparison: the White Sox rotation had a 5th starter with a 5.12 ERA, which should be possible for Happ to match. The top 4 starters had ERAs between 3.12 and 3.61. Last year, Dickey and Morrow did better than the best of those ERAs, and Johnson and Buehrle were very close to that range. Entering this season, one would have thought that the current Jays rotation could be potentially as good as the 2005 White Sox rotation -- even without Romero. Doesn't look like it will happen.

The 2005 White Sox had a fabulous defence- Cameron, Podsednik, Crede and Uribe were all top-notch defenders.  This chart illustrates that the pitching was good but not great. The Jays of 2013 will have to do it either with better pitching or a better offence.  I think that they can...

When Colby Rasmus came up to face Rivera last night, I thought Rivera's going to throw him nothing but cutters and is going to strike him out.  Joe Maddon probably would have thought about Rivera's effectiveness against LHB, and Rasmus' ineffectiveness against pitchers who can control moving pitches and looked for a RH pinch-hitter.

"642-651
248-264

Anybody know what these numbers mean?"

The top number is the Jays W-L record under Riccardi. The bottom belongs to AA.

If the Jays miss the playoffs, I finally expect the honeymoon to be over when it comes to the media giving him a free pass on pretty much everything.

The Jays 2009 OF is looking really good right now:

Snider: .305/.388/.424
Wells: .308/.368/.590
Rios: .288/.374/.563