You will be missed

Cerutti dead at 44
"Cerutti was scheduled to handle colour commentary for Sunday's broadcast of the final game of the regular season. When he didn't report for an 11:00 am production meeting, Rogers Sportsnet officials and hotel staffers attempted unsuccessfully to reach his Toronto hotel room. Ultimately, police officers and emergency medical service workers entered his room and found the 44-year-old absent of all vital signs. It is believed he died of natural causes. No foul play is suspected."

This is truly a sad day for the Blue Jays family. Cerutti a player and now a broadcaster died this morning of natural causes, only 44 years of age. John had come a long way as a colour man, with him and Faulds really forming a tight group as the season went on. All of our thoughts and prayers go out to his wife and 3 kids, goodbye John, you will be missed.
03 Oct 2004 by Rivux


Sun, July 25

Goodbye Pat
Pat Hentgen called it a career today midway through a frustrating season with the Jays. Pat was 2-9 with a 6.95 ERA and was dropped from the rotation in June. The 3 time All-Star and 1996 AL Cy Young winner retires with a career record of 131-112 with a 4.32 ERA while pitching for the Jays, St. Louis and Baltimore.

Hentgen was always one of my favourite Blue Jays and I was excited to see him return this past off season. It is a shame that this season has turned out the way it has, both for him and the Jays, as there was so much hope with the way he finished last season with Baltimore (6-3, 3.18, 13 starts).

Hentgen hasn't made a decision about whether he will return to coach baseball and plans on taking the summer off to spend time with his famliy. I hope he does decide to come back, and hopefully it is with the Jays, who would benefit greatly from having Hentgen in the organization.
25 Jul 2004 by Rivux


Tue, July 13

A look back
Since we are at the traditional half way point of the season I thought I would take a look at how Blue Jays pitchers have faired home vs away. For those that visit the site often, you will know that I use Game Scores a lot, which is what we will be using today. These numbers are only for pitchers with a minimum of 4 away or 4 home starts. Which is why David Bush isn't on here.

Away Starts (starts)
56 M. Batista (8)
55 T. Lilly (10)
47 R. Halladay (8)
42 J. Towers (4)
37 P. Hentgen (7)

Home Starts (starts)
54 R. Halladay (8)
51 J. Miller (6)
48 M. Batista (11)
46 T. Lilly (8)
45 P. Hentgen (8)
40 J. Towers (4)

Just a quick look at these Game Scores and you can see that Halladay is not having a good year at all. He is performing the best of all the starters at home with a GS of 54, but that isn't saying much considering that Miller is the only other one with a GS over 50. This isn't suprising if you look at their record and see how poorly they have played at home, yes there hitting has been off but so has the pitching.

Halladay's numbers are really off this year, and not just W/L or ERA, but OOBP, OSLG, Hits Allowed etc etc are all up. I don't know if he is hurt or just having an off year but he needs to get his shit together or the Blue Jays are going to be in trouble, not just this year but next year as well.
13 Jul 2004 by Rivux



Mon, May 17

Tasty Twinkies
The Blue Jays host the Twins tonite at Skydome, I will write more about it after the game.

My big interest today is Moneyball from Michael Lewis, yes the book has been out for ages and yes it's been hashed out more often then a college dorm party, but it is still worth talking about.

The new edition which I picked up on the weekend has an additional Afterword that was written earlier this year. He talks about the backlash from the book, how people (like the cranky Joe Morgan) who never read the book assume Billy Beane wrote it and just has a giant sized ego. Well the ego part is correct, he knows he is smart and doesn't suffer fools lightly, which is perfectly ok, in fact, more people need to be like that. Lewis was shocked that so many people missunderstood the book and what it was about, the book wasn't about Billy Beane, it was about a new way of evaluating baseball players, Beane just had to be a prominent character.

For those that haven't read the book yet, I urge all of you to go out and pick it up, it is insightful, funny and an extremely good read. In fact, buy two copies because I am sure you will wear the first one out.
17 May 2004 by Rivux

Sun, May 16

Dueling Aces
Halladay pitched his best game of the year today in a 3-1 win over Boston at the Skydome. It was really good to see Halladay get out of his funk and hopefully he can keep it going and Toronto can get on a winning streak. Adams picked up his second save of the season and it looks like Tosca is going to go with him as the closer for the time being.
16 May 2004 by Rivux

Tue, May 11

Hurray for Hentgen
Another great game by a Blue Jays starter propelled Toronto to its 6th straight win and to within 5 games of the Red Sox who fell to Cleveland 10-6 on Monday. Hentgen was absolutely masterful during his 6 and 1/3 innings, with the Royals getting very few good swings and most outs coming on lazy flyballs and easy groundouts. He showed his age a bit in the 7th as he wore down and became winded, but Nakamura came in and cleaned up to end the Royals threat.

With Halladay up tomorrow and Lilly on Wednesday, they Jays have a very good chance to stretch this win streak to 8 and really make a push back to .500 and up in the East standings. They have a huge series against Boston starting on Thursday when Bautista faces Schilling too kick off a 4 game set. They must at the very least take 3 of 4 from Boston to stay in this race. I know it is still early but losing even 3 or worse, getting swept will be a severe blow to their season.
11 May 2004 by Rivux

Sun, May 09

Clap For Clapp
Not sure how I missed this one, but the Blue Jays acquired Canadian Stubby Clapp from the Indians last Tuesday for a player to be named later. Clapp, born and raised in Windsor Ontario was a hero at the '99 Pan-Am Games with his game winning single versus the US. He was assigned to New Hampshire (AA) and will join the other 14 white second basemen that the Blue Jays have acquired over the past 3 years.

Stats wise he only has 26 big league plate appearances so there is not enough data to draw upon, but if you look at his minor league numbers things are not looking too bright for him. He has no power, no speed, can't make contact and strikes out like a mofo. On the upside, he is willing to take the occasional walk, which is the only thing keeping his OPS from looking like most other players SLG. Actually with it in the .670 range the last 2 minor league seasons, his OPS does look like most peoples SLG.

One other note, with the gem that Miller threw today, he has passed the Doc for average GS. Just another sign that something isn't right with Halladay.
09 May 2004 by Rivux

Thu, May 06

No Holiday For Halladay
Roy Halladay picked up his 3rd win of the season yesterday, but once again he didn't have his real good stuff out there. He gave up 11 hits over 7 innings striking out only 4. On the upside he didn't walk anyone and threw 74 of 101 pitches for strikes.

Though there has been no reports or rumours of an injury to Doc, he has given up 56 hits in 49.1 innings so far this year, which is the first time he has given up more then a hit per inning since 2000. He has also given up 7 home runs in 7 games, well ahead of last years numbers when he allowed only 26 home runs in 36 starts. Given the fact his walk total is about normal and his only real issue is that people are knocking the snot out of the ball, it makes you wonder if its an injury rather then something mechanical.

If you look at his numbers over the past 4 years you can see that this years OPS number is off the charts, based mostly on the fact that hitters are slugging .424 against him this year, but even his K/BB ratio is higher then normal.

Year K/BB OPS
2001 3.84 .613
2002 2.71 .627
2003 6.38 .664
2004 3.17 .743

So unlike last years slow start when his secondary numbers were good but he just wasn't getting the wins. This year his other numbers aren't looking nearly as good, which doesn't bode well for a quick turnaround.
06 May 2004 by Rivux

Mon, May 03

Royal Treatment
I saw that the Jays were facing Jeremy Gobble tonite and I also saw that he was sporting a 1-0 record with 2.82 ERA after 3 starts. I thought to myself, damn he is having a nice year, until I looked at his other numbers. It turns out he has done it so far this year with smoke, mirros and the help of David Blaine, because there is no other way to explain 22IP with 6 BB and 6K, that is a walk to K ratio of 1:1, which isn't good, ever. Also, 6 strikeouts in 22 IP means he isn't missing a whole lot of bats, he has just gotten lucky and balls have been hit right at people.

This of course is a great sign for the Blue Jays who have struggled scoring runs this season All they have to do is stay patient with him and the hits will start falling, if they can get a few timely ones (unlike yesterday) then we should be in good shape.
03 May 2004 by Rivux

Sun, May 02

So much for so little
The Blue Jays lost today 3-2 to the White Sox even though they outhit Chicago 11-5. Catalanotto followed up yesterdays 6 for 6 with a 2 for 5 effort today and someone switched Johnny Bench for Greg Zaun as he went 4 for 4. I guess Zaun was inspired by the performance of Catalanotto yesterday and decided to have his own perfect hitting day.

The big story of the game though was 21 men left on base by the Blue Jays, with the top 3 hitters in the order leaving a combined 13 on. Batista went the distance and put up a very respectable line, but the Jays hitters felt today wasn't the day to be productive.

Random Notes:
Game Score for Batista was 63, a very good score in a losing cause...The White Sox are now 9-1 in one run games...Zaun tied a career high with 4 hits...Game attendance: 15,550
02 May 2004 by Rivux

Double Dip
The Jays played a pair of games yesterday, splitting a double header with the White Sox in Chicago. They lost 4-3 in 10 innings in game one, but then came back to whip the chisox 10-6 in game two, highlighted by Catalanotto going 6 for 6. He became the first Blue Jay in franchise history to record 6 hits in a nine inning game and the first AL player to do it since Damion Easley in 2001 for Detroit.

They finish their road trip on Sunday with the finale against Chicago before returning home to play the Royals on Monday for the first of three.

02 May 2004 by Rivux

Sat, May 01

Lets Play Two
We have a double header today which is always exciting. Halladay goes in the first game with Lilly pitching the second, which gives us the best opportunity at a sweep and making up some serious ground in the AL East.

Boston also has a double header today, as they face Texas for a pair to make up for their rainout yesterday. If the gods are listening, a sweep by the Jays and two losses from the Sox today would be very much appreciated.
01 May 2004 by Rivux

Goodbye and Farewell
It was a sad day for Blue Jays fans today when they learned that Bruce Chen after a spectacular 0 games for the Jays was traded to Baltimore. Chen was picked up in the offseason and signed as a minor-league free agent but never got into a game for the Blue Jays.

From BlueJays.com: Baltimore will be Chen's eighth organization since 2001, a statistical oddity if not a record of some sort. Amazingly, he's pitched for at least two different franchises in every season since 1999, when he started and finished the year with Atlanta
01 May 2004 by Rivux