It was another bottom-up night for the Blue Jay farm system. Class A Charleston won, High-A Dunedin split a double-header, AA New Hampshire lost a close one, and AAA Syracuse lost by three.

With tonight's game, the Blue Jays will be just about one-quarter the way through the season. If their performance continues at this rate, then they will finish 66-96, or 20 games behind last year's pace. Since the odds against that are phenomenally high, it stands to reason that this team simply has to get better. So maybe the best way to look at it is that tonight's matchup with the Twins (Miguel Batista vs. Johan Santana) marks the end of one truly ugly quarter and the start of a brand new and better one. Aren't companies always telling shareholders to ignore those pesky first-quarter results? There you go. Enjoy the game.

Snake just wrote this fantastic post in the Cheer Club thread, but the idea is so grand that it requires its own thread for planning, organizing and daydreaming:

The draft eligible college hitters are generally regarded as a weak class this year. As opposed to the strength of the college pitchers, as few as a handful of hitters will be selected in round 1 on June 7th. However, there are plenty of gems to be found if you’re willing to mine for them.

Another tough day in the minor leagues. Syracuse and Charleston lost on Sunday to complete losing weeks. New Hampshire lost on Sunday and lost their weekend series with Binghamton. Stubby Clapp only needed six pitches to retire the side.

Since the Cheer Club began operations in earnest this month, we have had a lot of reports of SkyDome "security" personnel acting to repress cheering for the Blue Jays.

In the late 1990s, I personally (along with the people I was attending with) was given instructions several times by ushers to be quiet or face ejection, in response to perfectly clean cheering. I had been under the impression that this was changing; that the team was fully behind the idea of the fans trying to make noise to support the team. I am convinced now that this is no longer the case.

The Toronto Walrus continue to set the pace in the BBFL Alomar division, this week chalking up a 9-2 victory over hannibal's cannibals. The Walrus are now at a .764 winning percentage, proving to be, if memory serves, even more successful than last years oustanding gashouse gorillas. My own Mebion Glyndwr were able to ride the O-Dog to a 12-0 victory over the Horse Field Hammers and second place, taking advantage of a timely off-week from Barry Bonds. AGF are third following a 9-3 win over the Mashers.

Once again, duty intrudes...Nevertheless, here's a quick bite-sized Scout for the three-gamer at the dome with the Central-leading Twinkies.

On to the Advance Scout!

Okay, I couldn't think of anything clever to include in the title of the thread. The Blue Jays are 16-22 after a tough split of their four-game series against the Red Sox, and now face the Minnesota Twins, leading their division by 2 games with the second-best record in the league. Ted Lilly shut down Brad Radke and the Twins at the Metrodome last month in his best outing of the season; he'll need to do it again in the rematch, as the Jays bats are still cold. Slumps and false starts have been the order of 2004, and Toronto still hasn't shown that it's a team to be reckoned with, or even to be particularly concerned about; tonight would be a good time to start changing that.

All of us at Da Box would like to thank Rob Bradford for his great answers in our interview that we published on Friday. Rob and his publisher, Brassey's, were kind enough to allow us to run this excerpt from Chasing Steinbrenner, which will hit bookstores early in June. It's available for pre-order now (click the link above) from Amazon.

Enjoy!

Alexis Rios has been struggling badly at the plate for the last two weeks. I decided to do some investigation to see if there was a pattern to his hitting.

The day after a fine win, everyone's probably basking in the memory of yesterday's sunshine.

Here it is, the thread to talk Cheer Club strategy for Monday and Tuesday's games. And yes, we will have the drum, so come on out and join us in section 518, which is quickly becoming the Loudest Section in SkyDome.

It's pretty remarkable that arguably the two best starting pitchers in the American League East have faced each other three times before Memorial Day. In their two previous matchups, Pedro Martinez has emerged victorious over Roy Halladay, by 4-1 and 4-2 counts. Today, Doc needs to be especially sharp to keep Pedro and the BoSox from winning their third straight game at Skydome and sending the Jays back into their home-field doldrums. After an encouraging start on Thursday night, the Jays have been let down by their bats and their bullpen in consecutive losses; today, Roy Halladay might need to do it all himself.

The Jays bats were quiet yesterday while the Red Sox were able to hit 3 balls out of the park. The result was a 4-0 loss to the Red Sox.