As the final week of workouts winds down before the Spring Training matchups start, Blue Jays fans are beginning to get signs that perhaps the question of Left Field isn’t as much of a question as we’d previously thought.

A year ago, Travis Snider seemed cemented in the starting lineup. But that was before a rib injury that sidelined him for the early part of Spring Training. And then a disappointing April that saw him bat only .184 in 25 games.

He was sent down to Las Vegas AAA to work on his swing mechanics. After showing good progress, Snider was brought back to Toronto where he continued to struggle. He spent the tail end of the season in Las Vegas and then nursing a wrist injury that kept him from being a September call-up.

In his place, rookie Eric Thames started 95 games in left field and hit reasonably well, particularly against righties, with an overall .262 average. Thames needs to work on his plate discipline, but that should come with experience. If he can learn to spot the ball a bit better, he’ll be able to improve on his walk and strikeout rates and leverage a bit of his power more often.

This off-season, Thames worked on his muscles, gaining incredible guns through more than his usual yoga workouts. He also worked on his throwing game after being criticized for a lack of range and accuracy.

In comparing the two players, most sources agree that Snider has the greater potential, but analysts are beginning to wonder if he’ll get the chance.

Last season, left field was Snider’s to lose. This year the tables are turned, and the ‘question of left field’ has been touted as one of the most compelling stories of the Spring.

But is it really a question at all?

As reported by Gregor Chisholm, Blue Jays Beat Reporter, Snider’s been noticeably absent from the presumed opening day outfield workouts. Thames has been in left field for all of the team workouts with Bautista and Rasmus, along with Rajai Davis and Ben Francisco; all expected to be part of the 25-man roster when the season starts.

Thames has also done a significant amount of promotional work for the team. He recently filmed a scoreboard promo for the Blue Jays. We learned this from this photo from the Blue Jays Official account. Among others recording similar features; Ricky Romero, Sergio Santos, Brett Cecil. Along with JP Arencibia, Ricky Romero, and Brett Lawrie, Eric Thames traveled around Canada to meet Blue Jays fans in other provinces as part of the Winter Tour.

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Farrell and Anthopoulos have practically stated that the job is Thames’ to lose this Spring, and it sure feels that way. From the outside looking in, Snider’s still the odd man out. He’ll have to show significantly improved discipline at the plate and a return to that potential we saw earlier in his career.

Will it happen for Snider this year? We won’t know for some time yet. But you can bet that if he gets lots of work – and shines at it – early this Spring, the ‘battle’ may get more serious than it feels right now.

It’s now been months since the surprise deal that sent Vernon Wells to the Angels in the first move of Anthopoulous’ chess game to contention. The team had faced their old Center Fielder before; at the beginning of April in Anaheim. But last night was Wells’ first return back to his home turf.

Vernon was the face of the franchise for 10 years. Whether or not the contractual move to Anaheim was something fans have fully accepted, one thing was clear when he left; although he’d embrace his new team, Vernon didn’t want to go anywhere.

Within seconds of Wells’ stepping up to the plate for his first at-bat at the top of the 2nd, most of the 24,000+ crowd had risen to their feet, applauding the veteran Blue Jay.

In an interview with the Canadian Press after the game, Vernon described the moment as being understandably emotional.

“I just tried to hold back the emotion in that moment,” he said. “I didn’t think there would be much but there was and I just tried to enjoy it an obviously not be a crybaby at home plate. It’s just a moment I’ll never forget.”

Hold it back? I’m not sure if he did. Vernon Wells seemed to harness that emotion to smash Brandon Morrow’s first pitch out of the park. In the same moment? The cheers turned to boos.

Wells’ solo home run in the 2nd gave the Angels an early 1-0 lead, one they extended with 3 more runs in the 3rd. The final score was 5-1; the Jays only on the board with Eric Thames’ 6th major league home run in the 9th.

The game was a collection of errors and missteps for the Jays. The Angels scored 5 on only 4 hits. 3 Jays errors helped them out. So did Morrow’s lack of control.

Morrow, a pitcher known for his high strikeout totals, only struck out 3 in 7 innings, making this performance by far his lowest strikeout rate of the season. He walked 4.

It’s easy to point to Morrow to find what went wrong. Certainly, the more batters who reach base, the more runs will probably come in to score.

The errors didn’t help either. Over the past 2 games, the Jays have racked up a whopping 5 defensive errors.

After the game, Manager John Farrell criticized this, saying that defense is something the team needs more control over, and that the clumps of errors are “glaring”.

But the Jays offense also made a right mess of the 3rd inning at the plate. Jose Molina (my Molina!) hit an outstanding double to Center Field. For some reason, he kept going around second. Molina is many wonderful things, but he’s no speed demon. It was unclear to me whether he got the green light to run, or just misjudged Wells’ accuracy. He was tagged out at third.

Following that play, Brett Lawrie took a walk to first. And was soon after caught stealing second.

Had both stayed on for Escobar’s 1-out at bat, the team may have been able to get some runs early in the game, and build some positive momentum.

Oh well.

The Jays are back at .500, and are now 14.5 games out of first place. More importantly, they’ve slipped to 5 games back of 3rd place Tampa.

Today’s game should be a tough pitching duel as Ricky Romero faces Jered Weaver. With an ERA of 1.78, Weaver leads the AL starters. Romero, with 2.96, ranks 8th.

Tonight, the Jays welcome the Seattle Mariners to town. It’s just the second meeting for the teams in 2011, and much has changed since that rough road trip in early April.

Starting Pitching

In the April Series, the Mariners faced Jesse Litsch, Ricky Romero, and Kyle Drabek. Of the 3? Only Drabek netted a win, despite Ricky’s strong 8.0 inning performance in game 2. Of the 3? Only Romero remains on the active roster.

This time, the Mariners will face Romero to close out the series, with Brett Cecil and Brandon Morrow for games 1 and 2.

Offensive Upgrades

Hopefully, we’ll see Jose Bautista return to the lineup tonight. His bat was missed during the last two games against the Yankees, and it would be great to start off with as much power against Michael Pineda as possible tonight.

But even if Bautista needs a few more days of rest and rehab, the Blue Jays have a stronger lineup to face the Mariners this time around.

Gone? Juan Rivera and Jayson Nix. To be fair, Nix had gone 5 for 12 in Seattle, but his reasonable April turned into sub-Mendoza May and June.

Improved? Travis Snider. Snider’s visit to his home state netted just his 6th hit of 2011, and highlighted his struggles at the plate. The Snider we saw last week is the one we knew would be back; he’s batting .391 since his return from AAA.

A different kind of Edwin Encarnacion is in the mix as well. Eddie’s batting .327 for July, and actually played an outstanding third base last weekend.

New? Rajai Davis wasn’t in the lineup for any of the Seattle series. Look for Davis – if he can get on base – to take a few extra off of Jason Vargas tomorrow. Vargas has 10 stolen bases against him so far in 2011.

Eric Thames adds a lot of punch as well. Currently batting .308, the leftie has proven to be dangerous against RHP. How he handles Michael Pineda tonight will be interesting. Thames was thrown by Sabbathia on Saturday, and didn’t seem to recover his swing for the final game of the series. Hopefully the day off has given him some perspective.

What to Watch
After the bi-polar Yankees series this weekend, I’ve got 3 big questions that I’ll be looking to answer over the next few games.

1. Can Thames rebound? His swing looked…well… awful on Sunday. We need him back in business ASAP or the wins will keep slipping away. It’s good for him to be facing another strong pitcher in the first game tonight. Hopefully he can adjust. His stats give him a good shot against Pineda.
2. Is Snider in it for the long haul? He’s no longer on a hitting streak, but it doesn’t matter; the man with the ‘Stache looks at home at the plate in a way he hasn’t for months.
3. What about Corey Patterson? Man, this guy had a great May. .308, with judicious use of baserunning. June and July so far are sub .200. If we’re going to put up with Patterson’s free swinging ways, he needs to connect just a wee bit more often.

With any luck, the Jays will be back at .500 – or over – before they head to Texas this weekend.

Last night, Jays fans were treated to a pitching duel between Brandon Morrow and Paul Maholm that kept the game to only 3 runs total. Jays batters faced a slightly easier time of it, with 9 hits. And yet, they only scored 2 runs off of the Pirates.

Even without run support, Brandon Morrow secured a win with an overall consistent, strong performance. Brandon Morrow K’d 10 batters last night, and improving his K/9 average to 9.87, good enough for 4th in the AL among starters.

» Continue reading “Swashbuckling Through The Duel, the Jays Manage a Win”

When the lineups were announced yesterday afternoon, many were shocked that catcher Jose Molina would be DHing instead of Eric Thames. Looking at the stats, though, the decision made sense.

Molina has had the most hits off of Buehrle; going 8 for 20 lifetime. Molina’s also killing left handed pitchers this year. He’s batting .571 against lefties for a total AVG of .310. Not too shabby.

The decision worked. Jose Molina got on base 3 times out of 4, including 2 singles and reaching on a White Sox error.

Technically, the winning run for the Jays came off of Yunel Escobar’s increasingly hot bat in the bottom of the 7th. Escobar hit a long double that brought Jayson Nix around to score from first base.

Molina, though, can be credited for the important insurance run.

» Continue reading “Now I’ve REALLY Seen Everything! Molina Double Steal FTW!”

For a brief, shining moment, I thought maybe the Jays could pull a few games closer to the top of the AL East. After all, the Houston Astros had a sad .341 winning percentage, and were on a 5 game losing streak before coming to town.

Assuming an easy win – or even an easier set of games – could be what brought us down.

Here’s how we looked:

» Continue reading “Series Recap: A Loss to the Worst Team in Baseball”

I’m one to generally focus on the good stuff, particularly after a game has concluded. Win or lose, there’s always some glimmer of hope, some Silver Slugger lining.

Last night’s game against the Rays was a tough loss. I have an easier time to accept losses where the team played at it’s best.

5 errors on the night?

Not. Our. Best.

If even a few of those errant throws had worked out better, maybe we would have ended the game 1 run ahead.

If Lind had been on first instead of Encarnacion (who was pegged with 2 of the 5 in an amazing feat of creative game scoring), maybe Litsch could have kept it better together, avoiding beaning those two batters.

It’s easy to ask, “What if?” and hope the outcome had been somewhat different. After all, last night was a chance for the Jays to scoot closer to first in the AL East. A win would have placed them just 2 games out of first.

But despite the comedy of errors that made up the first third of the game, I found plenty to enjoy.

» Continue reading “Should You Laugh? Or Cry? Looking for Highlights Despite the Loss.”

Actually, it’s not really pronounced like the river at all. It’s not Tems. It’s not Thems. It’s pronounced just like it’s spelled – Th-ay-mes.

Yeah, it took me awhile to get used to that too.

But who is this guy, this cool dude? And why should you care?

Last night, the team announced that Adam Lind would be going on the 15-Day DL, retroactive to May 8. While the Jays could have called up someone from the 40-Man Roster, they chose to DFA Robert Ray, the 27 year old right handed pitcher who had yet to appear in any games due to an injury.

Eric Thames, a 24 year old leftie, was voted AA New Hampshire’s MVP in 2010, hitting .288 with 28 home runs and 104 RBIs. The team took a long look at Thames throughout Spring Training. He hit a total of 60 at bats; as many as Bautista and Lind, and scored 13 runs on 13 hits, including 2 home runs.

He’s continued to hit well in AAA Las Vegas; Thames’ AVG is currently .342 with 6 home runs over 36 games. Defensively? He has just 1 error in left field.

The Jays are going to be looking to him to fill two gaps in our current lineup; left field and DH. Both have been trouble spots for the team recently. Corey Patterson has struggled in the outfield, although he’s error-free so far in 2011. The Jays have been playing Rivera more and more in the DH role, but he’s now on a 3 game hitless streak, going 0 for 12. Considering this isn’t new for Rivera, the Jays have to be considering giving him some time on the bench.

Will we see Thames in Detroit tonight? I sure hope so. I’m not the only one who was impressed with Thames’ hustle in Spring Training. The kid looked great out there, and I welcome him to the big leagues.