Three games against the team with the best record in the major leagues. Who have some pitchers you're probably familiar with....

It wasn't so long ago that four celebrated veteran managers walked off into the sunset, shaking all cares and business from their age and conferring them on younger strengths, so that they, unburdened... okay, enough with the King Lear.

Any excuse for a new thread! Anyway, Eric Thames is back, and Mike McCoy's frequent flier points are becoming truly awesome. Do you wanna go to the moon? Mike can take you...

Yesterday there was a debate raging about how close the Jays are to being a competitive team. Let's examine that question in a little more depth.

Zach Stewart was the headliner on Thursday as he showed why the Jays are excited about his future.  There were no angels on this day, at least not for the bullpen, who conspired to lose the game in the ninth inning.  The Jays were in some ways lucky to get to the ninth inning tied, Jeremy Guthrie had been knocking them down but he injured his back and had to leave the game after five innings.  His replacement, Jim Johnson, was not really ready and what usually happens in these situations is that the pitcher can be hit around.  The Jays did and scored twice but EE snuffed out the rally by hitting into a DP.  That was it until Jon Rauch gave up three ground balls, only one of which was hit hard, in the ninth.

The battle for fourth begins.

Anybody get the license number on that truck?

The arrival of Brett Lawrie....

Today's thread is a Giant Data Table.

Mystiqued.

The day the universe changed.

Litsch and Romero lead the world-beating Jays into a two-game home series against the first-place Rays.

And what have we learned?

With offense way down for the second year in a row, I figured it'd be worthwhile to take a quick and dirty look at the Jays' stats so far, and compare them to the league totals from this year and last.

Let's just not talk about that last series, how's about that?