"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

The Roundup

As someone who started following the Jays as a gawky 11-year-old back in the miracle summer of 1989, I can't ever give in to the thinking that these Jays can't storm back despite improbable odds. Figuring that you wouldn't believe me if I told you the '89 Jays didn't break .500 for good until August 15 (!?!), here's the sched, disbelieving disbelievers!

Nevertheless, that such an odds-defying run has happened only once in franchise history does give me great pause. What's the answer now? Another Mookie Wilson at the trade deadline? At 35-37 (and trailing both the Rays and Orioles) for 7 games back in the Wild Card race, we near the half-way point of the season in a highly unenviable position. It's a struggle to stay upbeat is what I'm driving at.

There's been plenty of analysis on what's gone wrong and subjectively we've all got a good idea on that note. So, rather than rehash that line let's spread the misery around a bit.

Sharing our pain:

Cleveland Indians (33-38). They were a game away from a World Series berth last year and now sit at a disappointing 6.5 back in the AL Central and 8.5 back in the WC race. They're not hitting like they usedta could, Fausto Carmona is hurt and Cliff Lee has been their best starter to date? Yeah? Not a team to discount though, not by a long shot.

Detroit Tigers (33-38). I admire GM Dave Dombrowski for going all in and trading prospects for Edgar Renteria and Miguel Cabrera (but not Dontrelle Willis) because he saw an opening and wanted to exploit it. When I started following baseball back in the late '80s prospects were an unproven commodity you'd gladly ship off for proven veteran talent. Now that player salaries have skyrocketed, it seems like GMs have gotten way too overprotective of their younger talent if for understandable reasons. It hasn't really worked out according to plan in Motown, though, as the Bengals find themselves tied with the Tribe in the nether regions of the AL Central. They haven't exactly torn the cover off the ball as we expected them to, but that doesn't mean they won't in the second half. Trader Dave is so committed to winning this year so don't be surprised if he makes another big buy move before the deadline.

Atlanta Braves (35-37). This is a team that only a fool would abandon hope for even though their record is no better than the Jays. Their record in 1-run games has been laughably bad and they sit at third in the weak-ish NL East despite the league's second best ERA and 6th best offense. Go figure. Losing John Smoltz for the season hurts bad, real bad, and injury to the Ghost of Tom Glavine isn't helping matters, either. But as Ken Rosenthal says, this is a team "that's programmed to win." There's alot of room for improvement from Jeff Francoeur and Mark Teixeira, not forgetting that this is a team with the minor league depth to make a big deadline deal. I'd expect them to win the NL Wild Card.

New York Mets (34-36). Willie Randolph has paid with his job because Omar Minaya put together a very expensive club with an average offense and average pitching. I kind of like the idea of seeing them fall flat this year if it means they'll be bidding hard against the Yankees on Teixeira in the offseason.

Los Angeles Dodgers (32-38). You're probably sensing by now that I don't really like talking about NL teams that aren't the Braves or Diamondbacks, so I won't linger here. Bushels of young talent (Russ Martin, James Loney, Matt Kemp, Andy LaRoche, Chad Billingsley, etc.), and an equal dose of crappy, underperforming, overpaid veterans. You'd rightly demand that JP be strung up had he authored either of the Andruw Jones or Juan Pierre contracts. Nedco did both and still remains employed. The Joe Torre Touch isn't helping much, but Raffy Furcal will save the team when he comes off the DL, right? They'll probably linger in the NL Wild Card race, but really need to swing a deal to really be competitive.

Taking S&M to a whole new level:

Seattle Mariners (25-45). They finally fired Jim Bavasi, the Peewee Herman of GMs, this week, but there's just no righting this ship in the short term. Everything about this team sucks ass, everything. That they'd fall off from last year's 88-win season was no surprise, but this far this fast, well, also not much of a surprise. I did think the Orioles and Giants would suck more, admittedly.

San Diego Padres (31-41). They've been much improved of late but still can't score for shit, a problem that's compounded by the fact that they play in the most extreme pitchers' park in the history of the game. These dudes were in the mix for a playoff spot until the final game of the season last year and look at them now. Just look at them. Pfffffffft!

So, what do you do with the drunken sailor early in the morning? You've got to let him sleep it off and sober up a bit. Give the Jays another month or so before you officially proclaim that they've been on the mat for a 10-count. And then at that point feel free to launch into all the "Fire JP/Gibbons/Jamie Campbell" torrents you like or wear a paper bag over your head when you go down to the Rogers Centre. In fact, I'll lead the letter-writing campaign if the movement needs a leader.

Tonight in Milly-wah-kay, the Jays send Shaun Marcum to the hill against the Brew Crew's fragile flower of an ace, Ben Sheets. The ESPN Supercomputer says the Jays only have a 42% chance of victory, so maybe they just might win one. Or maybe they won't. Trying to predict this game is like ordering a dog's breakfast.

-- Johnny Was

The Roundup

BA Barajas: Man on Fire

Let's hope the Royals, Astros and Padres all got the memo: wait Joba out and let him run out of gas. I don't think I've been prouder of the Jays that I was during Joba's 2 1/3 innings last night: patient, selective and totally in the driver's seat. Piling it on in the 7th was nice, too, but still, it was early display of chutzpah that impressed me most of all. Many in Yankeeland feel that the Joba transition hasn't been as well-planned out as it should've been, and assessment I'm in full agreement with.

Tonight young Jesse Litsch takes on ancient shitballer Mike Mussina, who now dials his fastball up into the mid-80s. A win for Litsch would tie him for the AL lead, which, frankly, would probably be the single most shocking early season development for yours truly. The ESPN Supercomputer (wrong last night, but right all through the LAA series) lists the Yankees as heavy-ish favourites (57% chance of victory) even though the Jays slapped Mousse around on April 2.

The Yankees have not seen Litsch this year and will have to swing the bats if they want to beat him: this Ginger has walked a mere 9 batters in 65 IP. He's only had one Yankee Stadium start and it was a Jim Dandy. Jorge Posada might be in the lineup for the Yanks today or tomorrow, but even if he is he'll have more rust that a 1979 Chevelle.

FYI, the amateur draft will be broadcast live at mlb.com tomorrow, starting at 2 p.m. EST. I passed along some draft commentary on Monday if you'd like to get up to speed. Here's a good Jerry Crasnick piece on some late-rounders who turned out to be gems. (Russ Martin, this year's winner of the Tip O'Neil Award for best Canadian player in baseball, went in the 17th round back in 2002).

A short draft update: the verbally-challenged Bob Elliot of the Sun (seriously, did any of you hear that rambling Prime Time Sports appearance yesterday?), doesn't figure Canuck Brett Lawrie will fall to the Jays, who pick 17th. He expects the Astros, Brewers, Twins or Reds to snap him up early. We shall see.

I know a guy who used to party with this drug-addicted ex-Jay guy back in the early '90s when he was trying to restablish himself as a minor league coach here in London. He never could overcome those demons and spent 14 years in the clink because of it.

-- Johnny Was

The Roundup

I'm only repeating it for the benefit of those of you who've been up in a cabin with no TV or radio for the past week: get out your air sickness bags because pancake-faced Joba Chamberlain makes his ML debut as a starter tonight in Yankee Stadium against the Jays and Doc Halladay. Even if he throws a no-hitter, he still won't be able to live up to all the hype.

The ESPN Supercomputer (batting 3 for 3 since I started checking it regularly), gives the Jays a 46% probability of victory. Doc's on the hill, Joba will likely be out after 5 innings max, and the Yanks have few arms at present to bridge the gap to Mariano Rivera, but that's the Yankee Stadium Effect for you.

The Yanks are coming home off a 3-4 roadtrip and their bullpen lost one in the later innings last night. I mention that because the key to tonight's game is getting to the Yanks bully as early as possible. With Joba to the rotation, the only effective reliever the Yankees have before Rivera is sophomore Edwar Ramirez, a 27-year-old righty strikeout artist. The relievers upon which they rely most heavily (Kyle Farnsworth, LaTroy Hawkins and Ross Ohlendorf) have all been train wrecks to varying degrees.

Frankly, I would not be bothered if the Jays went back to their Scott Kazmir playbook and left their bats on their shoulders early to let the young starter run out of gas. With a strict pitch count of 65-70, that shouldn't take too too long, though Chamberlain admittedly has much better command than Kaz.

Not to encroach on the eminent Jon Hale's territory, but this is what you can expect from Chamberlain in pretty graph form courtesy of Fast Balls:

Joba Chamberlain’s main pitch is a 95-100 mph fastball, delivered roughly from the 1 o’clock position. His fastball has a little bit of cutting action, moving away from a right-handed hitter more than a typical four-seam fastball, but I wouldn’t say he’s throwing a cutter, as such.

His second pitch is a slider with a lot of break, running 84-89 mph. Some of his sliders look almost like very hard curveballs. He throws the slider more to righties (39% of pitches) than to lefties (26%), but he definitely relies on it to both.

He'll also mix in the occasional, average curveball to lefties and will presumably look to rediscover his changeup if he's going to stick as a starter. The Jays as a team do not fare will against this sort of power pitcher (.242/.323./.346), though Overbay and Rios have had some success against Chamberlain in an extremely limited number of ABs.

And it doesn't really mean anything (unless you're offended by people who make crass remarks to attractive women), but minor controversy ensued a little over a month ago when Chamberlain apparently said something distasteful to ESPN Sportsbabe Erin Andrews after a quickee interview on the health of his father. The mic cut off before it could catch what he actually said, but the look of disgust on her face clearly tells the story.

How about the disgruntled Bill Hall as a trade target for the Jays? He could play CF for us now (as he did for the Brew Crew in '07), allowing Rios to go back to right and Wilkerson back to the dole queue. He's signed through 2010, so with V-Dub healthy he could play short for us in 2009 with J-Mac as his defensive caddy. The move would be a salary dump/expunging of a disgruntled staff member, so I can't imagine the asking price would be outrageous. And JP and Doug Melvin have had a fruitful trade relationship in the past. I'd have him somewhere near the top of B list candidates, probably behind Raul Ibanez. Thoughts?

With David Ortiz out for a month and possibly more, do the Bosox trade for a slugging LF and shift Manny to DH, denying us the joy of his crazy antics? They certainly have the pieces to make something happen, so it'll all come down to will and the severity of Papi's injury. They could just slot Coco Crisp back into CF and move Ellsbury to LF, but you never know.

I'm guessing that the vast majority of our readership plays fantasy baseball and gets a huge kick out of it. You'll be pleased to know that the Supreme Court has rejected MLB's bid to force fantasy baseball operators to pay a licensing fee to use baseball statistics. My poolies and I use Yahoo for baseball and hockey and have had nothing but satisfaction with its product and value for money. If he had to pay, say $50 in fees instead of the $15 you shell out for Stattracker so MLB could get its cut, I think maybe one or two of us might think twice about participating. Those cheapos could be easily replaced by new poolies, but still.

Stop raining on our good times, MLB. I'm hooked on your product, you've got me paying $45 for tickets, $10 for beers, and $50-100 on t-shirts and hats every year. Squeezing me for any more is just overkill.

Class dismissed.

-- Johnny Was

J-Money

Back in late April JP did a little roster shufflin', DFA-ing Chiefs starter Josh Banks (50th overall pick in the 2003 draft) to make room on the 40-man for minor league invitee Shawn Camp. There was little outcry at the time; Banks had scuffled through 2 tours at AAA in 2006 and 2007, showing little beyond excellent control and a propensity for surrendering bushelfuls of home runs. Banks didn't help his cause by getting off to a craptacular start this year and had fallen down on the starting depth chart behind the likes of veteran roster fillers John Parrish and Kane Davis.

Sharing a first name and skill set with another recently departed starter I'd rather not name, there wasn't the remotest chance he'd crack our rotation at any point this year and the DFA gave him an opportunity for a fresh start. The Padres picked him up. Score! What pitcher wouldn't want to ply his trade in the friendly confines of PETCO? Camp, meanwhile, has been a productive member of the Jays bullpen and will probably stick after guys like Brian Wolfe and Jeremy Accardo come off the DL. Seemed like a win-win for all parties. So far so good?

When you're off to a horrible start and temporarily unemployed, why not tinker with your game a bit? That's what Banks did.

"I just kind of modified my delivery on my own," he said. "That was one of the things I had thought about doing with Toronto before I came over."

Easy shmeasy, right? Who needs a pitching coach? The result? 17 scoreless innings and counting for the Pads, including a complete game victory over the Giants in his last outing. Teammates are over the moon for the guy. A sampling of their comments:

"He's got a little of Roy Halladay, the way he turns," [Jake] Peavy said.

"He's got like 13 pitches and throws strikes with all of them," said Padres reliever Heath Bell.

"He's a crafty righty," [manager Bud] Black said.

One man's garbage is another man's treasure, I suppose. Jean Machi must be praying he gets DFA'd too.

The ESPN supercomputer says the Jays have a 46% chance of victory as the enigmatic AJ Burnett takes on the less mystical Jon Garland. Garland hasn't pitched particularly well against the Jays through his career, but always seems to end up winning (10-2 with a 4.17 ERA in 16 career appearances).

A win today putting the Jays at 4-2 in California through this trip would leave me ecstatic. The Jays really had no business winning last night's game (which they lost), but Gibby really muffed it badly in extras.

Walking the bases loaded with less than 2 outs in a tie road game in extras is like betting heavily on a pair of twos. If you're curious, here's a numbers heavy piece from Tom Tango at The Hardball Times on when you should and shouldn't intentionally walk the sacs full. Short version: it's like the bunt; traditional baseball wisdom goes that you should set up the inning-ending double play with runners on second and third and one out, but cold hard mathematical probability says you've just increased your opponent's probability of scoring by doing so. When one run wins it, that's just not smart. And never, under any circumstance, should you intentionally walk a hitter as bad as Jeff Mathis.

-- Johnny Was

The Roundup

Breathe in. Breathe out. That's it.

In a victory so beautiful it simply could not be televised without running the risk of damaging your retinas, the Jays clobbered the A's 12-0. BA Barajas (3-4, 3 doubles, 3 RBI) was playing like a man who'd like a full-time job this year rather than next, Shannon Stewart socked a dinger, and Jesse Litsch carried on just as he did last time out against the Royals. The sole bit of bad news was that David Eckstein crashed into Aaron Hill (2-3), knocking him out of the game. Stop doing that to superior players, ass! Hill is listed as day-to-day; I'm guessing he won't play tonight and Scutaro, with whom Gibby is now smitten like a school girl, steps in there for him.

And Alex Rios somehow managed to go 0 for 6 and ground into 3! double plays. They're gonna have to invent a new kind of sombrero for that sort of ineptitude. Saving it up for the Angels, I hope.

Tonight it's McGowan vs. Jered "skid, brother of skid" Weaver in LAA past your past your bedtime. Nice Barry Melrose mullet, skid! Sorry, had to get that out of my system. ESPN.com's supercomputer says we've got a 50% chance of victory and Matt Stairs has a 19.2% chance of going deep. I like those odds...

Still, I think we all recognize that adding offense in left field will only help improve the Jays' prospects for success this year. MLBTR has compiled a list of guys who could be available. Aside from the usual suspects, you can add Raul Ibanez, Chris Duncan, Juan Rivera and a bunch of losers like Frank Catalanatto.. Pat Burrell? Hrumph.

Jeff Blair goes War and Peace in the Globe Baseball blog, which is cool and all. The highlights:

* The Jays have been playing coy on the June draft, but Godfrey is pushing hard for B.C.'s Brett Lawrie (3B/C) to sell the fans/ownership on a new Canuck angle. Blair doesn't like nationalism determining draft strategy, and I totally agree. Lawrie's a great-looking player and all, but it's unclear what position he'll end up playing long term. The Jays would like to select Brett Walace (1B/3B) with their first pick, but Keith Law doesn't see him dropping that far.

* Barajas will supplant Zaun as the team's no. 1 catcher.

ELSEWHERE:

* Jorge Posada is expected to rejoin the Yankees within a week or so; right after the Jays leave town.

* The Rays fall 5-1 to the Chisox.

-- Johnny Was