Tuesday -- Jays 8, Orioles 5: Jays fans and on-his-way-out hitting coach Mickey Brantley will always have this endless summer of 2007.We will always be wistful about long, sultry nights of seeing runners left on base all night long, Roy Halladay throwing complete-game losses due to a total lack of run support and Aaron Hill and Vernon Wells flexing their warning-track-power muscles. Then there's Brantley's woe-is-me whine in Tuesday's National Post, "All the guys that stayed healthy this year had pretty good years."
Yeah, that would be Matt Stairs. One guy.
Alex Rios has the same park-adjusted OPS (118) that he had in 2006. Hill's walk-to-strikeout ratio has gone from being close to 1:1 to 1:2.5 (40 walks, 102 whiffs) this season, oh, but hey, he's going to break Roberto Alomar's club record for homers by a second baseman.
Then there was this on Chuck Swirsky's Fan 590 show (good catch by Drunk Jays Fans): "I went from having the best year in the history of the Toronto Blue Jays last year, to this year, with all sorts of injuries -- whether they're excuses or reasons."
Too funny. Brantley played four seasons in the American League, 1986 to '89, and the Jays were respectively second, third, fourth and third in runs scored in those seasons. Last season, in "the best year in the history of the Toronto Blue Jays," they were seventh. They weren't even that good last year.
Seriously, it's anticlimactic to read that Brantley is outta here. He hasn't been mentioned here since July 29, almost two months ago. The topic of his employment had been exhausted since it was so freaking obvious that he was a goner at the end of this season.
The game was over (despite Russ Adams' best efforts) after the Jays' eight-run first inning against their ex-mate Victor Zambrano. The Jays had so many runners circling the bases that Brantley probably said, "Ah, I'm getting dizzy. I'm gonna go back inside and take a nap." The only drama was how many names TSN's fill-in announcer Gord Miller would get wrong and how many times he would refer to his BFF, Sidney Crosby.
(Answer: He called Ramón Hernández "Ramón Martínez" and managed not to talk about Crosby. On the whole, Gordo didn't do a half-bad job.)
Monday -- Jays 11, O's 5: Two doubles and a single in four times at bat helped McGlovin push his OPS over the mythical .600 barrier. Man, he was a bargain at $2 million per year!
That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.
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4 comments:
N, you and I have disagreed about this all season, but one last time for nostalgia's sake...
The Globe points out yesterday that the Jays are 3rd worst in team BA this season and last season were 3rd best in team BA. Could Brantley's effectiveness as a coach have diminished that much over one season? I agree with the folks who say most of his best hitters played hurt this year.
The Globe also reports that Ernie Whitt will be replaced as dugout coach by Brian Butterfield (no speculation as to who will replace Butterfield ). If this is true, does it matter? I digrees, but I think the dugout coach is dumb ( not Whitt, the idea and practice of it ).
Where the hell do you get off blaming *Adams* for making two throws that any other first baseman in baseball catches with ease?
Matt Stairs (a ballplayer on whom I have always had a non-sexual man-crush, incidentally) is a complete nightmare at first base. If he never puts that mitt on again, I will be a happy man.
Tybalt, nothing wrong with bromance.
Didn't see the game last nite, but yes Stairs is very poor around the bag. Not his fault he is playing out of position though.
Adams' bad arm vs. Stairs' bad hands... six of one, half-dozen of the other....
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