The Jays could not salvage a split of their four-game set with Oakland this afternoon. Chad Gaudin's ERA is now higher than Ted Lilly's.

This is a simple game.
ya throw the ball,
ya hit the ball,
ya catch the ball.

And when you don't...

Great starts from newly promoted starters and a few key hits lead to a 3-1 evening for the farm affiliates.

I remember the night the kid cut off his right arm
In a fit to save a bit of power
He got fifty thousand watts
In a big acoustic tower

Thought that headline might get your attention.

This team has no room for Bobby Wine (or son Robbie, even if he is younger and therefore arguably a "Wine cooler") ... as for the harder stuff, even Australia's largest group of independent liquor retailers (catch on -- that'd be Porter's) has no place here, where it's all about the Beers... just sidle up to the bar and be careful not to spill, man!

So, what's on "tap" for our All-Beer team?

Two struggling pitchers faced off tonight, as the Jays tried but failed to get their record to 3-3 on this lengthy road trip.

Joe Blanton checked in at 0-5 with a truly apocalyptic ERA of 6.66. Now he's got his first win, and an ERA of 6.14.

And Ted Lilly shaved his ERA from 7.60 to 7.41, even if his pitching coach doesn't want to talk to him any more. Whoop-dee-doo. He did it His Way.

When Frank Catalanotto hit his lead-off homer in the 4th to open the scoring, somehow I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one thinking “OK! This game is now ours, babies!”

Or, as Vince Carter once said in happier times, “IT’S OVER!”

I can't buy a win in the big-league game reports, it seems, but this is my second minor-league organizational sweep in a matter of weeks. I'm not sure what to say on this momentous occasion. What I really need here is a Repoz inspiration.

"I haven't been this excited ... since the CD release party for The Spaghetti Incident?!"

Okay, I have a ways to go yet....

The Jays have lost 3 of 4 to a couple of the worst teams in the American League. Luckily, we have the Doctor, and he's matched up with the immortal Seth Etherton Ryan Glynn tonight.

It looked like a mismatch, and it was. Doc gets his 9th win, first AL pitcher to that mark, as the Jays win it 6-2.

When the Batter's Box All-Q team was posted recently, user HippyGilmore astutely noted, "I suggest combining the Q's with the U's, a pair of seemingly hopeless letters that may find the strength to compete together. Plus, Q just naturally goes with U."

Well, we're not going to resort to that quite yet. For while it is true that this will be a difficult team to assemble -- perhaps it's not as difficult as we originally feared.

April ended with the team's record at 10-11 and we all assumed that May would see an improvement, an incorrect assumption as it turns out. Syracuse's May record is 12-18, a huge disappointment for a team put together to be competitive. Their season record of 22-29 puts them eleven games behind the divison leader.

Here's Corey Koskie homering off of David Wells from way back at the start of the season. Yes, it's Friday and I got lazy.

...in Lansing. Cannon-ating drives and enormous saves were the order of the day as the farm affiliates went 2-2.

Prologue

At 3:00 am this morning, little Theodore woke up and decided he wanted to play. For two hours. So he and I played. I figured when he went back to sleep he'd be out for at least three hours and I could get enough sleep to cope with the day. Instead, he woke up again at 6:30, raring to go.

It's okay, I thought, I'll just nap when he does. Well, he napped, but never for longer than 15 minutes at a stretch, and every time he woke up full of beans and energy.

As 10:00 pm approached, I knew I'd need a little extra to get through the game, so I purchased a magic elixir known as the Red Eye: a cup of dark roast coffee with a double shot of espresso in it.

This should explain some of my game notes.

On May 30, the defending Eastern League champion Fisher Cats stood at first place in the EL's Northern Division with a 28-20 record, after winning 6 of their previous 7 games. Today, a few days later, that record is 29-23, with the Cats tied for first place with Portland, to whom they lost last night. But I froze the stats on May 30 to write this report, so that's the snapshot we're using for the May 2005 Fisher Cat review.

Came down to the last pitch, anyways. Your thoughts?