Saturday, May 30, 2009

Silver lining in 9 game losing streak?

It's hard to imagine there being anything positive to take away from the worst road trip in the entire Blue Jays franchise history. The Blue Birds lost all 9 of their games, dropping from a sensational 27-14 record to 27-23. However, could there be a silver lining to take from that dastardly trip?

Unequivocally, the worst part of the losing skid was falling all three times to division rival Boston. However, it made the club realize that youngsters Brett Cecil and Robert Ray aren't quite ready for the big stage, so they were comfortable with sending the young starts back to AAA and replace them with Casey Janssen and Ricky Romero.

The 2nd part of the excursion was the awful three game sweep at the hands of the Atlanta Braves. Silver lining in that? It's 3 games that we lost to a club that's not in our league. Not a complete disaster. And that leads us to the 3rd series sweep in Baltimore. The last loss was the hardest to stomach, with the team blowing a 5 run 8th inning lead, and then a 2 run 11th inning edge, but it's not like the Orioles will be contending in the American League East, so it's not the worst team to lose to.

We should count our lucky starts the brutal stretch of losses didn't occur to the likes of Boston, New York Yankees and the Tampa Bay Rays. There would have been no words to describe how demoralizing that would have been. It's tough to take any positives from losing so many games in a row, but maybe, just maybe, Toronto got their terrible losing streak out of the way, and can now focus on getting their season back on track against the teams that they'll be in a battle with to make the playoffs.

Rolen ignites the rally; Jays FINALLY snap skid

It's about damn time! The Blue Jays finally won in their first game back home after losing all nine games on the worst road trip in franchise history. They end their skid against the team that started the miserable stretch, the Boston Red Sox.

Scott Rolen was the star of the Jays 6-3 series opening win. Twice in the contest, in the 3rd inning and again in the 5th, the crafty veteran doubled to drive in the tying run. The second time he ignited a rally, as the Jays scored five times in the 5th frame. That was all the run support Casey Janssen (1-1) needed to secure a victory.
Rolen, like many of the other Jays hitters during their recent power outage, now has 3 RBI in his last 2 games, this after having none in an astounding 13 contests.

It's only one game, but this was a huge W. The Jays ensure they are only 1 game back of the Red Sox, and can pull even with them with another win tomorrow afternoon.