MVN - Most Valuable Network

It’s a Beautiful Jay: Toronto Wins 5 straight

The Blue Jays won their fifth straight game today, capping off a 4-game sweep of the ChiSox. Many predicted the Jays to make a splash in the AL East this season, and as of this past week, those people have finally been vindicated.

No team can boast the kind of starting pitching that Toronto does. The days of waiting for a losing streak to end when Doc takes the mound are over, this is the most consistently productive starting rotation in the majors. The starters’ 3.37 ERA is not only impressive in its own right, but pits them atop the majors in that category.

The Jays knew what they would get out of Halladay and to some degree, AJ Burnett, but the pitching staff has become something special due to the performance of the guys at the end of the rotation.

Sean Marcum, considered one of the team’s biggest question marks coming into this season has quietly become one of the most reliable starters in the AL. His worst start of the season was one in which he lasted 5.2 innings and the offense barely showed up, giving him one run of support. He has pitched into the seventh inning in all of his other starts and in this current winning streak, he shut the ChiSox out to the tune of 9 Ks and 2 hits allowed.

The hefty righty, Jesse Litsch, has been another pleasant surprise, winning his last two decisions and pitching into the eighth on both occasions. The Jays knew Halladay would be able to give their shaky bullpen a break once in a while, but no one saw a Jesse Litsch start as anything to phone home about, and believe it or not, Litsch has mowed down hitters like the Doc himself.

The concern of everyone in Blue Jay Nation a week ago was the offense, doing its best impression of a 2007 Vernon Wells: they couldn’t come up with a clutch base hit and looked as though they’d rather be anywhere else.

Now the Jays are making a climb back to .500 because the offense is finally becoming opportunistic. The Jays pitching has been solid all year, but this team will live and die with an offense that has a tendency to become dormant. While they aren’t in danger of ever being confused with the ‘27 Yanks, or any team with power for that matter, the Blue Birds offense has come up with solid situational hitting and clutch hits in the last week to earn 5 straight wins.

Take Sunday’s win for example. Alex Rios was inadvertently tagged out at short, called safe, and the Jays proceeded to capitalize and score 3 runs in the inning. If you were saddled with the painfully homer-ish Chicago broadcast of the game (which I was), you would have thought the Jays got away with murder and were lucky to be on the same field as that foulmouth sore loser Ozzie Guillen and his squad.

What was missed is the fact that the Jays of old would not have capitalized on a blown call, they would have struck out, grounded out, or done any number of things to make us wish we had a different hobby. The new Jays have an opportunistic offense, one that is good enough to win, and who knows, maybe good enough to still be kicking around in October.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 12:05 am and is filed under John Gibbons, JP Ricciardi, BJ Ryan, Matt Stairs, Jeremy Accardo, Rod Barajas, Ozzie Guillen, Jesse Litsch, AJ Burnett, Roy Halladay, Vernon Wells, Scott Rolen, Toronto Blue Jays, Aaron Hill, Alex Rios, Gregg Zaun, Adam Lind, Shannon Stewart, Lyle Overbay. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.