It's the final $2 Tuesday of the year! Will there be Bauxites in the house? Where will they be sitting?

Baseball for a toonie!

The second-place Orioles are the Jays' last opponent before interleague play. Baltimore will throw their top two pitchers and an Adam Loewen replacement at the Jays this series, plus one shellshocked closer too.

People do dumb things - you, me, and major league managers.

I'm only including myself to be gracious, by the way.

With all the injuries on the major league team the Jays have had to bring in new players to fill the gaps in the minors.  Three of them played Sunday, Andrew Good started for Syracuse, Mike Venafro pitched in relief.  Howie Clark played for New Hampshire.   Syracuse blew a lead but won in extra innings with a home run, New Hampshire and Lansing lost.

The affiliates only won one game but there were some encouraging pitching performances.  Ismael Ramirez only allowed one earned run in seven innings for Syracuse.  Russell Savickas made his AA debut and gave up two runs in six innings.  Kristian Bell made his first start of 2007 and pitched five shutout innings and Nate Starner had one bad inning but struck out eleven in six innings.  Curtis Thigpen played second base and made an error.

Someday we'll look back on this and it will all seem funny.
--Bruce Springsteen

With nothing going right for the parent club, some Jays fans hoped maybe the minor leagues would bring some good news. If that’s the case, it’s not going to happen today, as two blowouts and one extra-inning loss means only one win on the farm. We’ll take a look at what happened, as some pitchers continued to struggle, some batters continued to hit and the low minors continued to make errors. However, nobody got hurt, and that's what's important. Seriously.

I'm here in the press box, and they just made the following announcement:

Toronto Blue Jays have placed Roy Halladay on the 15 day Disabled List. He is having surgery for acute appendicitis. It is estimated he will be out for 4-6 weeks.

Two intriguing pitching matchups and Shaun Marcum's long-overdue first start of the year highlight this weekend's series.

Ten days into May and the best day of the month so far has been Monday's off day.

Jesse Litsch was the top performer yesterday as he threw 7 hitless innings.

Might as well give this nugget a thread of its own ...

B.J. Ryan Has Tommy John Surgery

So ... erm, uhm, let's change the subject ... what's up in your life?

 

If the players who are the core of a great team are not worthy of Hall of Fame selection, then who is?
-- Bill James, Historical Baseball Abstract (first edition)

I think that's a hell of a question.

The Friday Minor League summary is on Thursday this week. If you promise to ask no questions, I'll promise to tell no lies. It works out better that way. The farm affiliates went 2-2 yesterday.

The Jazz Singer wasn't the first "talkie" but it was the first film with sound to enjoy widespread commercial success. In the first spoken line in the picture, Al Jolson says "you ain't heard nothing yet."