Ok then, first off sorry for the lack of post lately, things have been a bit busy, with that said lets get right into it. In this I'm going to be covering all 3 of the birds, first off looking at the Jay's recent games (series in Tampa and Thursday's game against Baltimore), the Orioles newly called up prospect Kevin Gausman, his first outing and the odd habit he has, and the continued winning of the Cardinals keeping them above all other teams in all of the MLB (and of course why that is).
Alrighty so first off we have the Jays, not their last set of games from the start of their series against the Rays went with them winning the series 2-1 and now they've taken the first game of a 4 game series against the Orioles at home. Now when we look at these 4 games there are good and bad things to take away from it, on the positive side our pitching has been performing much better as Dickey, Buehrle and Morrow managed to pitch pretty damn well in the games they started, in addition it seems we're also getting a glimpse of improved defence down the middle with Bonifacio at 2nd. Now this surprised me a great deal, and it should surprise you too if you read my 'extra stats' post, now what's shown this? Well it's the number of double plays that have directly involved Bonifacio, Kawasaki and Encarnacion/the pitcher the first two being some of their bigger defensive issues. The number of them is 6 double plays involving those two players, which is a good indication that their defensive ability at their respective positions has improved. Now another positive is that our bullpen has been performing well, with the exception of casey Janssen but I expect that would be because of his 18 days of no activity. Now on to the negatives! Ok so first off the Jays are falling into the same pit fall that they fell into for the majority of the start of the season, not being able to make anything happen at the beginning of the game. All of the Jays games against the Rays were only 1-2 run games that were won late in the game and in each of them they only managed to get 8 or less hits, which is not the number we should be expecting from this kind of offence. J.P Arencibia continues to swing at terrible pitches outside of the zone, though Colby Rasmus is slowly but surely getting better at holding back on his swing. The last of the negative things I could pick out was Jose Bautista's attempt at stealing 2nd two games in a row and each time being thrown out by a mile, I'm not sure if it was a product of desperation since they hadn't been hitting very well for the past few games or if he just wanted to get something on the board but both times it was a stupid move to make and he should have shown better judgement.
Now why I tabbed the Jays portion of this post 'count down to destruction' is because I personally believe that their chances to get into the post season are pouring away and if their not at or within a game or two of .500 by the time May comes to an end I'm sure they won't make it. However the game on Thursday was different from the games against the Rays, but was a bit deceiving because despite being high scoring, most of those came on hits or homers after multiple walks and later in the game, meaning they were having the same hitting problems. Either way the Jays need to keep this winning up and pick up the pace with hitting if they plan on making the playoffs.
Ok then we've got the other end of the Thursday game, the Orioles. So the Orioles a couple days ago called up one of their top pitching prospects, Kevin Gausman, now if you payed attention you might've seen Gausman pitch during spring training and he did a pretty good job at it and Thursday's game was no exception he kept the game flowing at a fast pace, his control was good (he only walked 2 batters) and struck out 5. Now the line he left may not sound good, a 7.20 ERA, 7 hits, and a home runs, however we must remember that this was his first pitching performance at the major league level, hell he hasn't even played at the AAA level either and the main thing to remember about this is that he was unbelievably solid for the first 3 innings of work and only started to falter in the 4th and 5th. And even then he only gave up 4 runs, which anyone would consider a good performance by a 2nd or 3rd pitcher in the rotation of a standard team. Now then theres the odd thing I read about early in the game, Gausman has a habit much like most pitchers do and that is that he eats a powdered sugar doughnut between innings he pitches. A bit strange huh? But heres where it gets interesting because when he first arrived in the clubhouse after being called up guess what was sitting in his locker courtesy of CF Adam Jones? 1500 powdered doughnuts and a hostess sign in and above his locker. Guess Gausman will have to make sure he stays in the majors so he can finish all of those doughnuts.
Now then just a brief bit on the Cardinals because not much has changes. First they continue to lead the NL Central with a recored of 30-16, now while its great their in the lead in their division, they also have the highest winning percentage in all of the MLB by one game (the second highest being the Texas Rangers). Now while this is amazing, one of their key young pitchers, Jaimie Garcia went down earlier in the week and is going to have season ending surgery. Now any team would consider this a huge blow to their post season chances, but not the Cardinals, why is that? Well it's because they keep their farm system stocked to the brim with high quality pitching and hitting prospects, I mean look at their latest call ups Shelby Miller, Trevor Rosenthal, Don Kelly, Allen Craig, Pete Kozma and Matt Adams whoa are all tearing it up. Thats not all though, much like the Tampa Bay Rays, the Cardinals are very careful about developing their young pitchers to provide a low chance that they will be injured within the first few years of playing at the major league level and making sure they are indeed ready to take on hitters at the major league level. Now I may not be a fan of teams like the Cardinals or the Rays but I do respect their managers and GM's for being able to produce such potent minor leaguers and develop them in a way that makes them even more of a threat when they eventually make it to the majors.
-Eric
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