36 Hours

I swear that this post is quasi-perfunctory, but I think I need to make it nonetheless: a few administrative notes on the Twins and maybe a bit of Blue Jays stuff, depending on how I feel.
The three stories I wrote last night based on the team’s practice should be up on Friday (today, as I write this post-midnight) and I strongly encourage everyone to check them out at www.MississaugaTwins.ca – supposedly, the www. part is important. I think they offer some good background on the team heading into the season, and, well, even if you don’t consider them good, there’s nothing better out there. Sorry.

As has been mentioned more times than I would care to count, the home opener goes on Saturday at 2 pm Meadowvale Sports Park (har har, get the post title?). The ICBL arrives in Mississauga! After that, they’re at Christie Pitts on Sunday and back home against Barrie on Wednesday. As I said in yesterday’s entry, I should be at all three games, and as a result, you should get some hard-hitting sports journalism.

That said, I’m not entirely sure how the blogging and stuff will turn out on Saturday – the game is at 2, and I’m going downtown to a friend’s concert around 6.45, so I don’t know when I’ll get to write in between. I’ll be back around 11, if I had to guess, and now that I think about it I probably won’t have had enough to drink that I won’t be able to write, so you can probably bank on something on the blog inre: the Saturday game on Saturday night, and my bit for the team’s website will be filed then too – but who knows when it’ll be up.

The Blue Jays got swept out of Boston tonight, and now head to Atlanta to kick off Interleague play – a part of the schedule that has historically destroyed them. With the Boston sweep, a lot of people are diving HARD off of the bandwagon, but we won’t miss them.

The Jays, as we all know – even if it doesn’t factor into everyone’s reasoning – remain in sole position of first place, although they’re at the mercy of the outcome of Red Sox’ games in hand. The basic facts here are that there isn’t a single person who follows baseball closely in this city that wouldn’t be startled to have learned before the season that the Jays would be anywhere near first place at this juncture in the season (let alone in sole possession of it after being swept by Boston), and help is on the way – in Ricky Romero’s case, help is ready as soon as they decide they need it.

Robert Ray, I think, needs to go down. Prior to the slew of injuries that devastated the starting rotation in late April, he was never on the Jays’ radar, and one good start against an awful team (8 innings with only an unearned run against the White Sox) mixed in with several mediocre starts isn’t enough to change that fact, especially when better options are available. It’s great that he’s had his cup of coffee, and maybe he gets the nod over someone else in a future extreme emergency because of that cup, but I don’t see how you can defend keeping him around with Janssen and Romero just about ready to go.

After the game, Travis Snider was sent to AAA – he’s looked lost ever since a torrent first three weeks to the season. Obviously, his bat will not be missed and whatever combination of players replace him will be hard pressed to do worse than he has done of late. Snider, in all probability, will be just fine – if you know anything about his personal life (and if you don’t, know that it’s been really tough) to date, you know that a baseball demotion isn’t likely to faze him.

The bottom line here is that this season is far from lost, and there’s still a very good chance that things will work out well for them (you can fill in whatever that means to you). They have absolutely dominated the AL East over the past several years, and obviously their sub-200 winning percentage against the Red Sox and Yankees will not continue. I’m going to go out on a limb and call for them to sweep the BoSox on the last weekend in May at home, a prediction based on absolutely nothing than a desire to write something silly.

Many people seem to think that these early Yankees/BoSox series represented some kind of ‘test’ that the Jays failed, and maybe they did – but the test is hardly the exam, in fact, it’s barely even a pop quiz, and if you’re going to use series in May as your measuring stick for the rest of the season, we can state with absolute confidence that the Yankees will be in the fight of their lives for fourth place, since they’re 0-5 against Boston this year.

Silly, silly, silly.

Don’t forget – Twins’ season opener on Saturday! Take a look at my previous entry for a bit of a preview of the kind of journalism I hope to get done at the game. Be there for 2.00 if you want to see the first pitch, and feel free to come as early as noon if you have young kids (or you are a young kid) and you’d like them to get the chance to see how some really good ballplayers approach preparing for a game. I really have no expectations in terms of turnout, but I do think the atmosphere is going to be great, and I’d be very surprised if anyone who attends winds up regretting having done so.