I think the issue with McGowan and Morrow is less how they'll pitch than if they'll pitch.

Well, they're out-hitting JPA anyway (111/158/167).

Playing in Korea.

Love the early season. His OPS+ is propped up by 2 HBP (absent which his OBP drops from 333 to 272).

Though I guess Gose would do all those things as well.

In discussing the team offense as a whole, uglyone's posted numbers might seem, at first glance, to confirm the axiom that early on, pitchers tend to be ahead of the hitters. No team in the AL East is hitting yet. But something else is going on. AL teams scored 4.3 R/G last year and are at 4.2 R/G this year. Maybe the AL East hitters have simply been at the mercy of a disproportionate amount of good pitching to this point.

At the individual player level, it's hard to tease out the Seitzer effect. In my mind, a bunch of players will attempt to do things the way they always have and for them, Seitzer's presence is largely irrelevant. Is EE going to alter an approach that has worked for the past two years? I doubt it. I am guessing that his struggles are his alone and not somehow Seitzer-induced.

I may be way off, but to me, Lawrie is the big Seitzer project. And Lawrie has not looked good. The results have been awful, of course, but Lawrie has looked awful in producing them rather than merely hitting into bad luck. He looks absolutely lost at the plate, taking hittable fastballs and lunging at breaking balls. When he does swing at fastballs, he is way behind them and only able to slap them to the right side, usually foul.

TB wins the prize for quietest games: 3.3 RF/G, 2.6 RA/G.

Yeah, the ball looked a good 5' 8" off the ground.

"Beurhle has thrown 80 pitches but has plenty in the tank with his Fastabll averaging 82 MPH over the last 10 pitches".

Why stop at 15? Casey Janssen is a former infielder and he could probably hit about as well as Ryan Goins, so the team wouldn't lose much by sticking him in the field when he's not pitching.

With Rasmus not 100%, this is a really bad time to go back to the 8-man bullpen. If Rasmus isn't ready to go by Tuesday, the team will be playing with a 2-man bench in Minnesota barring another roster move.

I would love to know what the team thinks it has in Esmil Rogers, other than free advertising whenever his name is mentioned. For the past six weeks he's pitched like someone destined for the waiver wire. Why not get it over with?

Remind me why so many people were ready to jump of the bridge if we didn't get U. Jimenez or Santana.

McGowan was super studly on Friday.  Hutchinson was prime and Beurle  has been amazing.  This is so different than last year.  The jays just need to get the bats to wake up and I think that is going to happen when Reyes comes off the DL in a week.

Tied for first! 

The issues surrounding Morrow, McGowan and Hutchison are likely more to do with durability than quality. I think all three have the tools to be better starters than Jimenez and Santana, but it's anyone's guess how many starts they provide. Morrow and McGowan have a history of injuries. Even a fully recovered Hutchison will be constrained by his youth.

There's a decent chance that Happ ends up starting more games this year than one of the three aforementioned.

Uglyone, crunching those numbers is interesting, but you note it rests on a full, healthy season. Again, the SP debate I think resolved more around an assessment of the likelihood the pitchers would remain healthy and the likelihood the Jays would have to tap into their 7th and 8th options at a period of time before Stroman was ready or if he struggled upon promotion. Those WAR figures you provided probably look different if you're assessing Santana vs. Hutchison and Santana vs. Rogers or Redmond or Jenkins.

Of course, there may have been a rarely thought-of benefit to the Jays having to dip further down the depth chart of starting pitching, which is perhaps pushing Rogers or Redmond into the rotation would have got rid of this stupid 8-man bullpen nonsense, at least until a period of time where it was necessary.

Also, your assessment of last year's payroll vs. this year's payroll doesn't seem to factor in Josh Johnson. A healthy Johnson wouldn't have made the difference between contention and what actually occurred last year, but if the deferall stories are accurate, the Jays either never had the money to resign Johnson; at some point during the last calendar year decided they didn't have the money to make that addition or made an assessment that not only Satana and Jimenez, but also Kazmir, Haren, Drew and Mark Ellis and a number of other palpable options weren't worth the additional expenditures.