After starting out gangbusters in sweeping the Yankees, the Rays have subsequently managed to lose two of three to the Tigers, then get it handed to them by the Red Sox. They lost the first three games of a four game set by a combined margin of 31-11, though they did salvage yesterday's finale 1-0 behind a fine effort from James Shields and sit at .500. However Tampa has the worst run differential in baseball and have scored the fewest runs of any team in the division. Of more concern perhaps is that their fine staff has been pretty poor so far, Shields aside. They're tied for the most runs allowed in baseball, and Tampa's non-Shields pitchers have now walked 39 batters in 62.2 innings, against 42 strikeouts. It's early, but that is, as the kids say, not good.

At least for Tampa's sake they get to face a familiar punching bag in the Blue Jays. Over the last four seasons the Rays are 47-25 against the home nine, which works out to about a 106 win pace over the course of a full season. All of this is a long winded way of setting up unstoppable force vs. immovable object - the Rays slow start vs. their traditional dominance of the Jays. Which will prevail?

Well, really, the Rays continued success against the Jays and their slow start are probably and definitely not statistically significant, respectively. Sometimes statistics are no fun though, which is why we have THE ADVANCE SCOUT.

The pitching gave the affiliates a chance to win all four games Monday.  It was a 2-2 night on the farm with the losses coming from a doubleheader sweep.

The Jays affiliates combined for a 2-1 record on the night, while one club got the night off thanks to Mother Nature.

April 15, 1947 -- the most inportant, significant debut by a rookie player in Major League Baseball history took place as the Boston Braves visited Ebbets Field to take on the Brooklyn Dodgers. Attendees at the game saw a lot of notable ballplayers that day -- Johnny Sain, Mort Cooper, Sibby Sisti, Tommy Holmes, Earl Torgeson, Bobby Bragan, Pee Wee Reese, Hugh Casey, Carl Furillo, Arky Vaughn, Dixie Walker, Pete Reiser, Eddie Stanky - plenty of All-Stars with a few future Hall of Famers mixed in. But none more significant than the young fella playing 1B and batting second for the Brooklyns.

Kid named Jack Roosevelt Robinson. Jackie.  #42 ... a number that, after this season, will never be worn by another major league baseball player again. After Mariano Rivera, perhaps fittingly the greatest closer to ever play the game, hangs up his spikes, that number, the one Douglas Adams once wrote was the answer to the great question of  Life, the Universe and Everything, will fade into retirement as well, to honor Robinson, not the greatest, but absolutely the most significant player ever to wear a big league uniform.

To mildly misquote the renowned Simon and Garfunkel tune, So here's to you, Mr. Robinson ...

Thank you, Jackie.

Just one win on the farm but each game featured some last-inning dramatics, both good and bad.

Las Vegas came to town and brought their lumber with them, humiliating the crew from Colorado.   The Fisher Cats put up just a meow against the Rock Cats.  Dunedin did their thing besting Brevard and Lansing’s Lugnuts lost to West Michigan.  All in all, the Blue Jay farm boys out hit opponents 43 to 33.

The Baltimore Orioles roll into town to face the division leading* Toronto Blue Jays. And given that they are the Baltimore Orioles, this three game set presents a good opportunity to extend their leading margin. That's not just me being glib. The Jays haven't had a losing season to the Orioles since 2004, going 11-7, 11-8, 10-8, 12-6, 9-9, 15-3 and most recently 12-6 against them. Can they keep it up in 2012? All signs point to... Advance Scout.


*well, co-leading.

(Too big a stretch?)

The Blue Jays minor-league squads were 2-2 on the night. As you might guess, in places where the pitching was right good things happened, in other places not so much. Since there's now one full week of the season in the books (okay, 8 days, humor me) , along with tonight's game updates I'll be highlighting those hot and cold starts worthy of comment.

More photos on the Jays and Red Sox from Wednesday afternoon as the Jays debut their brand new blue uniforms at the Dome.

This POTD looks at the rubber match between the Blue Jays and Red Sox at the Dome Wednesday afternoon.

It was a 3-for-4 night for the affiliates, as New Hampshire’s bats were relatively quiet while those in Las Vegas exploded. Perhaps that’s not a huge surprise. However, given all the young hitting talent at Triple-A, it may surprise you to see who was leading the offensive attack.

The lower three teams won while what happens in Vegas needs to stay in Vegas.   The undefeated Lansing Lugnuts continued to roll behind unheralded starter and Michigan native Jesse Hernandez who pitched seven shutout innings.  Andrew Burns hit his first home run to get the scoring going.  Dunedin also won again to run their record to 4-1 behind Casey Lawrence.  New Hampshire won 3-2 with Drew Hutchison pitching six shutout innings but it wasn't Hutch's best start.  Brad Glenn homered and scored twice to lead the offense.  Las vegas were bad, the bright spot was Adeny Hechavarria who had three hits, including a based loaded triple.

 

A major league manager expressed his admiration of a former head of state and was met with a 5-game suspension. Fidel Castro is not an MLB-approved strongman - could we imagine such a penalty for expressing admiration for a dictator who did far worse, such as Pinochet? Would the same punishment have occurred if Guillen had been manager of the Tigers?

The affiliates did very well in towns beginning with Dayton.  Everywhere else, not so much.

I'm not sure how one would look this up, or even if it's worth looking up at all. But as the Yankees finally erased the "0" in the team's 2012 win column today, I started thinking about an oddity regarding the team's pitching staff.

Nobody has noticed -- again, perhpas because it's not worth noticing? -- that four of the five pitchers in the '12 Yankee starting rotation have last/family names that end in vowels -- Sabathia, Kuroda, Nova and Garcia. (Thanks a lot, Phil Hughes.) And that doesn't even count recent off-season acquisition Joel Pineda (yet!) ...

When you also consider the Bronxpen is anchored by a guy named Rivera and includes stalwarts named Rapada and Soriano (but we're not counting the silent-lettered Cory Wade here), there could be an awful lot of Yankee games pitched entirely by pitchers with Italian/Latin/Far Eastern vowel-ending names. And when Pineda returns from injury, if he bumps Hughes back to the 'pen (though he seems more likely to bump Garcia), the Yankees could get upwards of 140 starts from the ends-with-a-vowel Name Club For Men. Would this be a record?

I have no idea. Do you?

The following wholly unscientific observational data is pulled from BaseballReference.com's list of the Top 200 winningest pichers of all time, From Cy Young's 511 at #1 down to Sandy Koufax's T200 total of 165 ...