Nifty little picture here of Jose Reyes, by way of Will Hennessy– aka @Williciousness– who tweets that “Reyes made good contact, ran well, fielded smooth today.”
That’s… just… fucking… awesome.
The pic is from the sim game referred to here, by Shi Davidi, who has even more decent news on the injury front:
Most of my contributions to DJF have been Kawasaki-related, and this one is no different. I just came across this commercial this morning, and it’s awesome. Here’s Kawasaki in a Nishi-Nippon Railroad commercial from 2007. Take a moment and appreciate that luscious hair… after the jump!
The Jays won last weekend’s home series with the Texas Rangers, getting away with one– while picking up six hits and three walks– against the outstanding Yu Darvish, which is what they’ll be looking to do again tonight. This time, though, they’re in Texas, with Esmil Rogers– not Mark Buehrle– on the hill, and with Adrian Beltre back at third base (which he avoided on the Rogers Centre turf) and Lance Berkman back at his usual DH spot, having played in only one of last weekend’s series, at first base.
I have a strange sense of confidence not gloom going into this series, which of course means nothing and will probably be blown apart by weekend’s end, but it’s a nice little feeling, and all too rare of late.
And holy fuck, apropos of nothing, is it just me or are the Jays’ typical home start times– 7 PM on weekdays and 1 PM on the weekend– kind of the fucking worst? Love these 8 PM our time starts, or the ten o’clock ones when the team is out on the west coast. They’re at four and three o’clock on Saturday and Sunday this week, too. Humane!
Now a little something to kill time on a Thursday afternoon: it’s the DJF podcast!
And today we’ve got just Drew and I, with no one filling in for the hopelessly disinterested Wally Pip, as we talk about Jose Bautista’s awesomeness, R.A. Dickey’s comments, the Rule 4 Draft, and more!
Leading off, as always (or usual), it’s today’s edition of the Getting Blanked Podcast– which for the duration of the season will be coming at you daily! We’re not double posting this year, but I’ll be sure to include the link in the first Daily Duce or Game Threat that follows the post going up over at Getting Blanked. Otherwise, you can find the podcast at Getting Blanked on iTunes, get it via the RSS feed we have setup, or like Getting Blanked on Facebook in order to get each day’s podcast straight into your news feed (if we bother to post it). While you’re at it, go ahead and like DJF on Facebook, too.
Fantastic stuff from Jim Margalus of South Side Sox, who absolutely excoriates ChiSox broadcast crew Hawk Harrelson and Steve Stone for shitting on the Jays’ placement of Jose Bautista in the two-spot in their order, prior to Bautista hitting a game-tying home run in the bottom of the ninth this week– an at-bat he wouldn’t have had if John Gibbons had used some scrub in the two-hole, like a lot of teams still do.
Another gem here from Matthew Kory at Sports On Earth, who looks at whether hype and expectations have played a role in the underachieving of the Jays, Angels and Dodgers this year.
In a notebook post at Sportsnet, Shi Davidi gives us the latest on how Jose Reyes is progressing. “If it feels like my swing is there where I need to be, I don’t want to take too long because I need to be here and not down there,” Reyes told him. “When I start to see live pitching and I feel like my swing is comfortable enough to be here I’m going to come up.” Fucking eh!
In another piece, crazy as it sounds, Davidi is probably right when he writes about how Esmil Rogers and Chien-Ming Wang are bringing stability to the Jays’ rotation.
For those of you who have yet to see it, via the Toronto Star (and probably elsewhere– what am I, Google?), we have a clip of Jays shortstop Munenori Kawasaki singing a (partial) version of O Canada. Because… uh… pageviews.
Hey, like, did you know he was Japanese?
Check out the video after the jump…
Not that I want to try to make something out of nothing here, but R.A. Dickey had a wide-ranging talk with Eno Sarris of FanGraphs published this morning, and while it’s all pretty interesting– particularly the stuff about Dickey’s health, which sounds not even close to 100%– a couple comments really stood out to me, and maybe not in a good way.
Sarris: How does this relate to, you called it 75% effort vs when you were a conventional thrower… Did this remind you of your age? The thing about knuckleballers is “oh, they can pitch forever.”
Dickey: I don’t know if it reminds me of my age, as I look to my left and right, I see far younger players on the DL for far lesser things.
Sarris: Touche.
Dickey: So it’s hard or me to equate this with just my age. What’s much more important to me is to take the ball every fifth [day] and be counted on for 200 innings. You have to be able to take the ball when you’re not feeling great. The guys that can’t really pitch unless they are 100% that don’t ever get to those milestones. Do I feel old? Not really. Am I old?
Hi Brandon Morrow and Josh Johnson!
