It's not the pitching. Which you knew already, no doubt.
Yup. Despite everything that's happened, and there's been plenty. Brandon League was not available to start the season, B.J. Ryan went down until mid-summer and then for the year, Josh Towers was weighed in the balance and found wanting, Tomo Ohka has been more or less wanting from the get-go, Gustavo Chacin went down, and then Roy Halladay himself got sick... yadda yadda yadda. A lot of problems, a lot of things have gone wrong.
So what was the impact? The Jays have allowed 219 runs in 47 games. They're on pace to allow 754 runs. Which is exactly how many they gave up last season, and roughly right in the middle of all the pre-season forecasts around here (which ranged from 737 to 780 runs against, more or less.)
Granted, scoring around the AL is down about 4 percent from last season - AL teams are scoring 4.77 runs a game to date, as opposed to 4.97 in 2006. The main reason for this is the weather - April is the coolest month, and it accounts for half the games played so far. Offense heats up with the weather.
And the AL teams haven't yet had an opportunity to get up close and personal with those NL pitching staffs...
But on the whole, Jays fans should be very, very happy with the ways the runs are being prevented.
Which leaves us to discuss the other half of the equation. Next time.
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20070525232142762