The Rise and Fall of the Ginger Jays

       This year's edition of the Jays has been reaching far beyond the usual humiliating predictions of a last-placed finish, and at this season's quarter mark things are looking good. There have been many articles, blogs, tweets, faxes, etc. about the secrets to the Jays reasonable success and most of those have focused on the long ball (chicks dig it), and the associated free-swinging nature of the team, as well as "The Ace-Off" starring Shaun Marcum and Ricky Romero. These are definitely key to the team’s winning ways, as the home run has been the catalyst for the team, with 66 dingers already counted (1st in MLB), and more surely on the way, when last years' Silver Slugging duo of Aaron Hill and Adam Lind come back into form. The pitching duo likewise has been key to Jays’ victories, as anyone outside of those two has been unpredictable, mixing gems with turds and leading my Toronto-based fantasy league into a frenzy of adds and drops of Brett Cecil and Dana Eveland (some even tempted fate on Brandon Morrow).

       These points are well made, but there is one trend that has gone over-looked in most analyses, and that has been one common thread between players (and other important Jays figures) who have either come, gone or otherwise fallen from grace, in the last year, and I want to clarify that this is in no way a judgment on the characteristics of these people, or the certain crimson-follicular demographic that they represent.

Article 1: Roy "Doc" Halladay


Roy was the Jays most dependable and likable player of the past decade, and without a doubt cannot be looked at as anything but a demigod (no, I don't know what that is). His intensity and commitment are legendary and he will no doubt wrestle at least one more Cy Young award from the lanky grasp of Tim Lincecum. But the bottom-line is that Doc is gone, and this team is drastically different without him, so far, in a good way. Many of the Jays young pitchers cited a more relaxed approach amongst the Jays pitching staff, and seemed to suggest that the presence of the stoic ace was so intimidating that many of them wouldn't even approach him to try to gain from his considerable pitching knowledge.
In the first year AD, Shaun Marcum and Ricky Romero are performing considerably better than expected, and some have said this may be due to the vacated ace spot, and the search for a new staff leader. Obviously, Roy has been pitching amazingly for Philadelphia, but at the end of the day, it seems more likely that the addition of Brett Wallace, Kyle Drabek, and Travis D'Arnaud, will do this team more good in 3 or 4 years than having Doc around for only one more year.

Article 2: Lyle Overbay

His bat has been quiet, his strikeout face has been prominent, Lyle is definitely the odd-man out on this swashbuckling crew of mashers known as the 2010 Blue Jays. Sure he's got 4 long-balls but Lyle has not looked pretty as he tries to join in the Jays "swing first, ask questions when you don't hit a homer" approach. More often than not, he's hit untimely pop flies with men in scoring position or come up with a clutch strikeout. This has lead to the hometown crowd jumping all over Overbay, with the jeers coming fast and plenty. Things got so bad that a group of Jays players all wore Overbay jerseys to the annual season-ticket holder BBQ, as a show of support for Lyle... this was only 13 games into the season! What are they going to do if he continues to slump into June? Take him out for ice cream, and tell him that sucking builds character?!
I'm not a big fan of Lyle's but I know Brett Wallace needs more time to ravage the Pacific Coast League, and I'll give Lyle credit for sticking in there, and he's really not all that horrible if you look at his career stats, but in a town that had to put up with the outfielder-formerly-known-as-Vernon Smells from 2007-2009, the rope is very short for an under-producing player with an over-producing bank account.

Article 3: Jamie Campbell




The voice of Jays TV broadcasts from 2005-2009 was unceremoniously relieved of his play-by-play duties in the off-season, as Rogers decided to go with former Jays catcher/colour-commentator/manager Uncle Buck Martinez. This seems pretty logical, Buck is a respected figure in baseball, and especially to Jays fans, Campbell meanwhile was a Rogers employee with no professional sports background. To add insult to injury, Campbell was redistributed (see: demoted) to a position in the Sportsnet studio where he simply throws to commercials or to the games that he used to commentate. The problems with Campbell were never glaring, but the flubs, missteps and other miscellaneous boners were aplenty. He was often excited for routine deep flies, and asked painfully simple questions to his colour-commentators, as if viewers were watching a baseball game for the first time. There was also a cringe-worthy occasion I remember, where a foul-ball bounced off the facing of the Sportsnet broadcast box, causing Campbell to jump backwards in sheer terror, to which the opposing team’s broadcasters quipped “I thought these hockey guys, were supposed to be tough?!” For shame, Jamie Campbell, for shame! Personally, I took great pleasure in deriding Jamie Campbell, as did most of the Jays blogging community, but the reality is that he is probably the broadcaster that is most similar to ourselves, but this unfortunately means Campbell was often just spouting stats, as he had no background to give specific insight into the game. To round things out, here are some good Jamie Campbell lines found by scouring the many anti-Campbell pages out there:

“I'm really puzzled with the defensive positioning of the SS Zobrist, he seems to be between 2B and 3B”

"and thats a fair ball down the first base line...oh sorry a foul ball...got a little confused after Overbay dove for it"

"And Rogers Sportsnet... has done it! They’ve done it! They’ve done it! No more play-by-play for Jamie Campbell! Oh relax Canada, you can breathe easy now, this great country finally has a credible play-by-play announcer right here at home!"