"We like Roy! We like Roy!"

Now, we all love Doc like family up here in The Great White North, but some effusive praise from south of the border courtesy of the New York Times:

Halladay is an old soul, a pitcher who tries to finish each start by pounding the strike zone and forcing hitters to flail at his zigging and zagging stuff. The Yankees were no match Friday night, with two hits and dozens of awkward swings in a 5-0 loss at the Rogers Centre.

And the view from the other dugout:

“He’s probably the best starter in baseball, I would think,” [Derek] Jeter said. “You could have thrown an All-Star team out there today and it wouldn’t have done much with Halladay.”

“Tonight was domination,” [Alex] Rodriguez said. “We weren’t even close.

"Any time you face Halladay and there is a deficit, you feel it is larger than it is," said Rodriguez, whose fourth- inning fly to center was misplayed into a single by Brad Wilkerson.

"[Halladay] has done what he has done for a long time and is very good at it," said [Joba] Chamberlain, who gave up three runs, seven hits, didn't issue a walk and tied a season high in strikeouts with nine in 62/3 innings.

That's right.

The Jesse Litsch Ride takes on Josh Towers clone Darrel Rasner this afternoon at 1:05 and the ESPN supercomputer is giving us more than a fighting chance (55%) of victory.

McLeod appears to be indicating that there's an struggle for power going on between Cito and JP:

Gaston also said that his plans to give reliever Brian Tallet the start on Sunday against the Yankees have been scuttled.

Instead, the Jays will hand the ball to A.J. Burnett, who will make the start on just three day's rest.

Can you say showcase?

Jays' general manager J.P. Ricciardi bristled at the notion that the Jays were giving Burnett the start because they are deeply involved in trying to engineer a trade involving the right hander.

“We have absolutely nothing going on in the way of a trade,” Ricciardi said. “We're not looking to trade anybody right now and we have no conversations going on with anybody in that regard.”

Right-o, it's not a lie if we know the truth. It's pretty hilarious hearing AJ doing his best to pretend that he's ok with staying here and JP pretending that the enigmatic righty with an "electric arm" just might actually stick around.

-- Johnny Was