Ok so the last set of games for the Blue Jays, Cardinals and Orioles didn't really have anything out of the ordinary with the exception of the Blue Jays, who seem to be incapable of staying on one side of the spectrum, and the Cardinals to a lesser extent.
Ok so let's get the Orioles out of the way, the Thursday game as well as the Friday game did not have anything unexpected, they played just like they have for about a week and a half, scoring well below double digit runs, the game being decided by a very small margin and the bullpen, coughed up a few runs that caused the loss for the team. So the obvious thing to say here is, just like last post, that the Orioles need help in their bullpen and their offence needs to get scoring more runs as they definitely have the talent at the plate with Chris Davis, Adam Jones and Manny Machado alone. Now outside of these theres not anything to complain about because the closeness of the games means that the Orioles starters are doing a good job of holding the opposing team to a small number of runs, Feldman allowed 2 on Wednesday, Britton allowed 2 on Thursday and Gonzalez allowed 1 on Friday all over 6-7 innings.
Next we have the Cardinals, who got back to their winning ways on Wednesday, completely destroying the Angels 12-2 with Shelby Miller on the mound which, considering his usual pitching performance, should come to no surprise. However on Thursdays game the Cardinals lost the series finale against the Angels 6-5, which was a bit of a surprise as Wainwright allowed 4 runs in the game and Mujica the closer gave up the runs that cost them the game. Now it should be noted that the runs given up by Wainwright were for the most part in one inning and the one that brought the Angels within 1 run was in the 9th inning so despite the bad line, he did pitch nearly an entire game, which is commendable. On the other side Edward Mujica was BAD, in just 2/3 of an inning he allowed 4 hits 2 earned runs and a home run and the Albert Pujols single scoring that Wainwright gave up should be attributed to Mujica as he was the one that allowed the home run by Josh Hamilton that brought in Pujols and tied the game. He then proceeded to allow singles by 2 more batters and then Erick Aybar came to the plate and singled in the final run of the game, a bit of a disappointment as Mujica had not had a blown save until that game and the performance itself was really bad. Now the Friday game was sort of back to the typical Cardinal play as they won 4-1, however this was against the Marlins and when you see the box score the one thing thats glaring back at you is 2 fielding errors by Matt Carpenter, which they only got out of because of lucky ground balls that they turned into double plays. So all in all it seems Matt Carpenter is beginning to show cracks in the armour as he has allowed a fair number of errors over the last week or so of games, though it would seem he just to get in more fielding practice as he is still solid enough at the plate that there is little to no chance he looses his starting position due to defensive inability.
Finally we have the Blue Jays, now I can't really understand what team these guys are anymore. the last 2 series against the Tigers and the Red Sox had me cringing every time I saw a hit from the opposing team and nearly every starting pitcher of theirs fell victim to the other team's offence. Now overall these series were immensely disappointing as the Tigers had been struggling and, in my mind, the Red Sox have one of the most over-rated offences in the MLB (with the exception of Pedroia and Ortiz, none of their players currently have the ability to hit with huge power, hell even the numbers say Napoli is in for a big regression). But thats neither here nor there, the problem of course is how the Jays can loose to the Tigers, without Miguel Cabrera I might add, 11-1 and then turn around and beat the Twins senselessly 4-0 the next day. Especially when the same pitcher, Mark Buerhle, was responsible for giving up 4 runs to the Red Sox not even a week ago. The Jays really need to decide what kind of team they are in order to move forward because there loosing streak up until today has almost completely negated the good that the 11 game winning streak did, which is a real shame because that would take them out of contention again and make a lot of fans angry. Now the theme for nearly all of the lost games over the last 2 games was bad pitching as all of the starters that had shown themselves as consistent individuals got rocked over and over again, and a few errors were made by Bonifacio and Rasmus, and I'll admit some of them did seem like a loss on concentration because those were routine plays that we've seen these players make hundreds of times and I'm sure everyone thought that Bonifacio was over the error hill. The game against the Twins though had the Jays back to what was good about them in the winning streak, consistent batting with runners in scoring position, good pitching and a near perfect bullpen, now they just need to hold onto that as Adam Lind and Edwin Encarnacion find their footing again after their few game absence. Overall this is nearly the end for the Jays season in my mind, if they can't get to within a respectable distance of the wildcard or first in the AL East in the next week (before the All Star Game) they won't have a hope in hell of reaching the playoffs.
-Eric
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