FTW

Toronto Blue Jays, Opening Day: One Day Away!

Tomorrow’s the day, the Opening Day, for the Toronto Blue Jays and I’m really not all that excited.  The WBC earlier this year provided me with my baseball fix, and I’m not craving it like last year at this time. The Blue Jays look awful, and I have no clue where the runs come from.

I haven’t even grabbed my Toronto Star Pass yet. For 95 Dollars Canadian, you get to spend way too much time at the Rogers Centre, formerly SkyDome.  Essentially, all you’ve gotta do is show up prior to the game and present your pass in order to get a ticket to the Upper Deck.  While the passes are non-transferrable, they don’t exactly have a picture of your super-sexy mug on ‘em — so you’re free to lend them to whomever you choose. I can go on and on about the Toronto Star Pass, but for a little more than a dollar per game, you get to check out every single Jays game.  The seats are almost always decent, as no one goes to Jays games.  It’s what we here in Canada call a win-win situation.

The Rogers Centre, as of last year, also allows you to bring in drinks in sealed bottles (No CANS!) and whatever type of food you can fit into a 9 x 16 inch box. Pizza Hut, Subway, whatever floats your boat.  Going to a ball game is actually affordable! The Jays win because they weren’t going to sell those seats anyways, and once every homestand I’ll splurge and spend 12 dollars on chicken fingers for my better half.

So it’s Halladay vs. Verlander, tomorrow at 7:15PM, which I’m sure if you’re so inclined you can check out on MLB.tv’s Extra Innings Preview. I’m not sure what the MLB Extra Innings package costs you from your Cable Company, but 100 Bucks for a years worth of all the good stuff, aint too bad.

Unfortunately, the ass-hats at Rogers High-Speed, now charge you for going over your monthly upload/download quota.  I can only imagine what a high definition broadcast does to the quota.

The Jays line-up is looking pretty much league average:

C: Rod Barajas, 1B: Lyle Overbay, 2B: Aaron Hill, SS: Marco Scutaro, 3B: Scott Rolen, LF: Travis Snider, CF: Vernon Wells, RF: Alex Rios, and DH: Adam Lind.  With Kevin Millar, Jose Bautista, and John McDonald filling key utility roles.

Unfortunately, it’s only league average when everyones healthy.  At this point, it appears as though everyone’s healthy-ish.  Realistically, Vernon Wells, Alex Rios, Adam Lind and possibly Travis Snider are rosterable in most leagues.

The Jays’ pitching staff was their strong suit last year, but after the loss of Burnett to free agency, Marcum to season ending surgery and McGowan until mid-season due to injury — they’ve got some bigga-bigga-bigga problems. The Bullpen’s still terrific, and it might even be solid enough to allow some of the youngsters in the backend of the rotation to get away with a few bad innings.

Doc pitched a lot of innings last year, so I’m pretty worried. Litsch is an injury waiting to happen,  I may start referring to him as the White-Gustavo Chacin, who knows.  I have zero faith in either of these two pitching more than 200 innings this year.  The ass-end of the rotation is blessed with Purcey, Romero and Richmond at this point.  There’s back-up on the way, thank God, with McGowan expected back before the All Star break, and Janssen being stretched out in AAA.

I can see quite a few scenarios where the Jays finish last in the AL this year; behind both the Royals and Mariners.

There’s also more than a couple scenarios where the Jays could win the AL East, but all of them require America to cease existing.

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