Kind of a strange lineup:

I thought that was pretty much the lineup we've been expecting for a while now (Gross in for Rios is the exception).

Jordan, The D'Rays have indeed signed Charles Johnson.

I would think he'll join the team tomorrow.

I live in hope that he's had his season tickets revoked.

Okay, I think we can safely say that Doc's back. That K of Phelps was a thing of beauty. His cut fastball is just humming.

The heckler is a pathetic waste of life with a small child's need for attention.

I'd say that they're a bad baseball team in a town of unknown baseball properties. Let's see how they react to a good team before we write off the city. As I said above, I'd be willing to bet that the Jays would be at about 30-35K if their home opener wasn't against the BoSox.

How many saw the Gonzalez at-bat playing out exactly as it did? In ten years, Gonzalez never improved one iota as a ball player. No "peak until 27/28, decline thereafter" trend line for him. More like a Britney Spears EEG.

Hillenbrand, while he doesn't have the same power potential, will (I think) be a better overall hitter than Phelps.

He just did what he is very good at doing, getting out LHB.

I'm sure you're aware, but the controversy in these parts re SS was the price tag the team paid for a LOOGY.

"Shut Out!" "No Hitter!" "Perfect Game!"

Let's just get that all out of our system right now, shall we?

Apparently no Blue Jay farmhands. Interestingly, some pitchers on the list. I wonder if the (allegedly) steroid-enhanced sluggers will see some slack cut if it ends up being the case that many of the pitchers they homered off of were also juiced.

Nice season opener by gv27. The broadcasts will be so much easier to watch with an actual baseball fan calling the games.

They've got a list now, no Blue Jays.

Link

Am I being rose-coloured-glasses-ish if I can see 20HR potential in virtually all positions? (save Catcher)

The Bad: 1st Pitch Swings

Outs: Wells(2), Gross(2), Koskie(1), Cat(1)
Hits: Hillenbrand(1b), Adams(2b)

Patience, young grasshoppers

Brazelton pitched a great game today. Take out Cat-Dog-Wells and their 2B-HR-HR, and you have seven perfect innings. 10-9-9-9-7-6-11 pitches in those 7 innings without those three hits mentioned above. That's amazing. The applause he received after Colome came in was very well deserved, too bad the D-Rays couldn't get anything more. Too bad for Dewon, that is. I'm happy Gonzo kept striking out.

Is this the same Roy Halladay? He's supposed to suck in April.

Jamie Campbell had the line of the day: "In the background, you hear one of the annoying fans here in St. Petersburg."

Does anyone else know what Adams was doing on that play in the third? He threw it worse than I've ever seen him throw. Thankfully, he made me feel a little better in the ninth with those two plays on Hall and Gonzalez. Oh, and his non-play in the 8th was even better. I expected the rookie to try and push for the double play there, but he didn't rush the throw, knowing the pitcher would have to cover the base.

Wells' homerun is a front-runner for the best moment of the year. I'm not kidding. The O-Dog's blast was nice and it gave Toronto the lead, but V-Dub killed that baseball.

Pat Tabler, at one point, called Russ Adams "Russ Jackson." I don't know when or where Tabbie, an American, would ever encounter a CFL player from 20-30 years ago, and I don't know why he got the names mixed up. Jerry Howarth saying "Greg Gross" for Gabe is easy to forgive; Greg played 17 years in the majors. But Russ Jackson?

One last thing: Koskie did not strike out in the ninth. That was a terrible call. I thought the umpire was really inconsistent today -- Ed Rapuano. Our dear friend Philly C. was at second, if you didn't know.

Ooh, good point. I noticed that too -- Koskie cutting off Adams in the...well, I forget the inning and I can't find it on my scoresheet here. But it was good. I liked the defense today, not counting the third inning. If we can see 8 perfect innings and a couple of misthrows in the odd inning every game this year, I'm happy.

I think Tabler got his presidents mixed up. Andrew Jackson came right after John Quincy Adams. We'll have to see how Tabby handles Friday night. Hopefully David Clinton won't give up a homer that reaches Joe Reagan's banner on the Level of Excellence.

That would certainly indicate that Boston's offense is firing on all cylinders. If that's the case, I sure wouldn't want to be William Taft Lilly on Sunday.

Actually, Fordin reported a while back that the Left Fielder Of The Day would lead off. Tomorrow, it will be Johnson batting first against the lefty Kazmir. As for Gross, I can see the case to put him ahead of Zaun, for no other reason than to break up the three lefties in a row (The Gabe-Thrillhouse-Cat), but Gibby threw Reeder in there at the first sign of Casey Fossum warming up, thus removing the L-L-L at 8-9-1.

For what it's worth, my lineup for today's opener would have looked the same as the one Gibbons made up, maybe with Zaun and Gross switching spots in the order.

I look forward to that. I love the way Joe Buck does it on ESPN. Sometimes when a player grounds out, all he says is "inning over." There's no need to describe in detail what happened, we all saw it. I love that kind of broadcasting.

I'm almost tearing up here with gratitude. Thanks so much for realising (along with your producers, I suspect) that what we as fans need most is just to watch the game.

I was at Beer Club, so I didn't get the chance to hear much of the broadcast over the hubbub. Generally very well done, I thought - one thing that was remarked upon by a few of us was that you were apparently aiming for a deeper and more resonant tone than we're used to from your work on Sportsnet news. Is that deliberate? It sounded fine, but the delivery came off a bit slow-paced at times.

Jamie, first of all, thanks for taking the time to post.

One change I'd like to see is actually something from the past -- the old score bug that was in the top left corner of the screen. The current one across the top of the screen takes up too much space and it's not something that you can take a quick glance at to get all the information, unlike the old one. This topic came up here last year and there seemed to be strong support for bringing back the old bug.