MVN - Most Valuable Network

Jays bats come through; Litsch finally wins

To be honest, I didn’t think the Toronto Blue Jays had a chance on Thursday.

Yes, the Jays had tallied 14 runs on Tuesday and followed that up the next night with 5, splitting the first two against the Cincinnati Reds at Rogers Centre.

But the Jays were facing the Reds’ Edinson Volquez, who entered with baseball’s best ERA at a sparkling 1.71. Volquez had a 10-2 record and had won three straight decisions, including a big win at Yankee Stadium in his previous outing.

Meanwhile, the Jays had Jesse Litsch going, and I felt bad about his situation too. See, after I’d praised him time and time again in previous articles, he’d been in a funk of late.

Litsch had been winless in four June starts, going 0-3 while the team had lost all of those games. Some of my buddies were taking jabs at me for putting a “jinx” on the sophomore.

But the tables were turned Thursday night, as Volquez just didn’t have it, and Litsch came through with a fine performance.

And the Blue Jays’ bats also came through in a big way, and have scored 34 runs in the last four games.

To put things in perspective, the Jays had scored exactly 34 runs in the two weeks (spanning 12 games) prior to this recent run.

Now, of course, Toronto lost Wednesday, 6-5, in a game in which ace Roy Halladay uncharacteristically gave up five runs including a home run to the slumping Ken Griffey Jr.

Still, three wins in the last four ain’t bad.

But getting back to Thursday, Griffey went 0-for-3 against Litsch and was hitless in four at-bats, as the Reds’ cleanup hitter (why is Griffey even batting that high in the lineup with that silly .241 average?) and the rest of his squad couldn’t solve the Jays’ fifth starter.

Litsch allowed only three hits and a walk in his eight innings, and Brian Tallet finished up in the ninth, and Toronto won 7-1.

Litsch retired the first ten batters of the game and was in control throughout, getting 1-2-3 innings five times in the contest, and finally picked up his 8th win.

The Jays, meanwhile, got to Volquez in a hurry, as someone other than Matt Stairs finally hit a home run.

Scott Rolen hit a two-run bomb off the Reds’ ace in the second, and the Jays pushed across three more runs in the third, and three doubles in the fifth finally KO’ed Volquez, with the Jays up by six runs by then.

A surprising outcome, to say the least, but it does appear with new manager Cito Gaston, the team has started to come around.

A great series for the Jays, who are still four games under .500 at 38-42. But definitely an encouraging sign that they won the series–which was definitely a must-win if the Jays have any aspirations of battling for a wild card berth.

The Atlanta Braves come into Rogers Centre next for a three-game weekend set starting Friday, and these are not the same Braves as the 1990’s version.

The 2008 Atlanta squad is two games under .500 (39-41) and are nowhere the same caliber as the ones that won all those division titles. The Braves have had many injury problems this year–to their prized veterans such as Chipper Jones, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz, to name a few–and again, are a team that Toronto should be able to take care of.

Can Toronto continue its recent hot streak? We’ll have to see.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 27th, 2008 at 2:01 am and is filed under Uncategorized. 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.