Game 24 Recap: Timely Hitting, Quality Pitching = Blow Out

Your Toronto Blue Jays put up a bunch of crooked numbers on the boxscore.  A 10 - 2 thumping tends to include that.  Looks like the team has done some sort of voodoo ritual on the bats.  Thank God.  Hopefully we can keep it going.  We were 3 for 7 with runners in scoring position and had 6 two out RBI.

Everybody except Fred Lewis and Jose Bautista got in on the fun.  A quick look at some of the individual hitting performances:

Alex Gonzalez went 2 for 3 with 2 homers and 4 RBI.  The first one was a three run job to get us on the board in the second inning.  The other one he hit in the sixth was a frozen rope to the pull field.  He got his average up to .289 for the season.  Impressive display from the all glove shortstop.

Vernon Wells went 3 for 4 with a homer his 200th for the career.  It took him nearly 5,000 at bats to reach the milestone.  Congrats is in order.  Oh, and one more thing: #SorryVernon.

Aaron Hill was 1 for 4 with a walk and 2 RBI.  He seems to still be a little banged up from his hamstring injury.  Playing on the turf can not be helping. 

Travis Snider was 1 for 3 with a walk.  His plate appearances are getting a little easier to watch.  Still swinging for the fences but at least now he seems to be grasping the concept of working towards a hitters count.

John Buck continued his hot streak with a 2 for 3 night.  He managed to get his average up to .215 for the year, which is 60 points higher than it was on Thursday.

The pitching side of the house did a fantastic job tonight as well.  Brandon Morrow seems to have found his groove and won his second game of the year.  Just keeping pounding that zone down early in the counts, then climb the ladder with the hard stuff Brandon and everything will be ok.  I promise.

Tonight his line was 6 IP, 7 Hits, 2 ER, 2 BB, 9 K on 109 pitches.  73 of those were strikes.  Nice outing.

Jason Frasor came in and tried the pitching thing again.  First pitch he threw almost took his head off on the comebacker.  To his credit, he settled down and striking out two batters in his inning of work.  Mr. Umpire missed the call on the back end of a double play or else he would have faced the minimum.

Looking Forward:

We got Dana Eveland taking the ball for us against Gio Gonzalez for the 1:07 start.  Eveland is coming off a bad start against Boston where he gave up 7 earned runs in just three innings pitched.  I wonder if he has another bad one or two, will he be a candidate to move to the pen?  He is out of options and would need to be exposed to waivers if the brain trust tries to send him down.  Wolverine is scheduled to begin his "rehab assignment" soon and will do so as a starter.  His return is said to be sometime in May.

Quickly:

Speaking of waivers, much to my surprise Merkin Valdez passed through them unclaimed on Thursday!  He will join the 51s in Vegas after being outrighted to the minors.  Bonus.

Game 9 Recap: The Curious Case Of Brandon Morrow

 

Dude with the glove makes a huge catch to take away an out from Pierre and the White Sox.  Next pitch Overbay grounds into a double play to end the inning.....it was that kinda game folks.

For the first time this year your Toronto Blue Jays entered the last inning of a baseball game without it being a save opportunity.  And we made sure we did it up right!

We got blown out 11 - 1 in front of an announced attendance of 10,610.  Dirk had this to say on twitter.

What I want to talk about is the games starting pitcher Brandon Morrow.  This is the second time I have watched him work and I'm starting to make some observations that I wanted to share.

I totally see why Seattle jerked this kid around so much.  He is tough to hit: THE FIRST TIME THROUGH THE ORDER.  It appears to me that he really only has two pitches that he believes in.  They both are thrown above 85 MPH.  And that is just not going to get you very far against Major League hitters.  He is unable to throw any wrinkles at them we he gets into a  hitter's count.

The velocity on his fastball is very inconsistent.  Now I know what your thinking, it really isn't suppose to be the same speed all the time, and you are right.  But hear me out.  He works the top part of the strikezone a lot.  With a 95 + MPH fastball, you can do just that.  Morrow can keep it up near that speed for about two innings.  That's it.  After that he loses anywhere from 3 to 9 MPH.  And no, they were not change ups.

The final pitch he threw to end the 4th inning was 88 MPH.  Omar Vizquel and his 78 career bombs in twenty fucking years took that batting practice heater to the warning track in rightfield.   

I'll bet you can guess what happened THE THIRD TIME THROUGH THE ORDER.  Yeah, check this out:  hard single by Pierre, a hit batter, grand slam, double, shower.

I want to believe that his arm strength is not where it needs to be after being shut down in Spring Training camp for a couple of starts.  But if there is anything more to it than that, you may want to think about dusting off the panic button.  He needs to have that great fastball velocity for a few more innings or he needs to start pitching down in the strikezone.  He still has a player option and can be sent down to the minors but I think we are a little ways away from that still.

He may be a great pitcher someday but I'm not so sure it will be every fifth day.

Quickly:

When we put up the game line ups I asked how many fastballs you thought Randy would see in 4 AB's with Johnny Mac hitting behind him.  I counted 3 in his 3 AB's.

Mr. Umpire(s) missed two calls.  One on a Rios Cruz stolen base and the other on a Vernon tapper to third base.  I want to know why this profession has not been totally computerized yet? 

The scouting report on Vernon Wells is you can get him out with the hard stuff up in the zone.  If any of you know him, tell him to raise his hands up a little early in the count please.  He needs to make the adjustment.

Play by play man Buck Martinez said two things that blew my mind:

"extra effective" 

Isn't effective an either or type deal?

"future Hall of Famer, Omar Vizquel"  

Seriously?  Here are Omar's numbers and the guys who are in the Hall that played shortstop.  What do you guys think?

More Quickly:

Is there some help on the way?  Maybe this guy.