Friday, May 29, 2009

Time to make Frasor the set-up man

The Blue Jays bullpen is a mess right now, with few pitchers worthy of being relied upon right now. A big issue, now that Scott Downs is the closer, is having a trusted set-up man work the 8th inning to gives Downs the opportunity to close a contest out. Jesse Carlson has been horrific, as has Blow Jay Ryan. Brandon League could possibly do the job well, but Cito Gaston doesn't have extreme faith in him either.

Enter Jason Frasor. Apart from one awful outing on the road trip, Frasor has enjoyed a renaissance season. Frasor is 4-0 with an ERA of 2.41, which is skewed because of the aforementioned bad game in Atlanta, where he gave up 4 runs. Having been the closer in the 2004 season, Frasor is used to working late in ball games, and he consistently is getting the job done this year. Why not see if he can get the job done? There's nothing to lose (apart from more games with the current set-up guys at the helm.)

Now is not the time to be experimenting in trying to let Carlson, Ryan etc. work through their problems in tight games. The Jays are still in contention in the A.L. East, and if they blow games against Boston in this upcoming series, it could crush our chances immensely of making it back to the playoffs for the first time in 16 years.

Penciling Frasor in as the set-up hurler gives us the best chance to end that nasty drought.