Game 6: Toronto at Cleveland pregame
Some more on Adam “A Mighty” Lind after yesterday’s performance against the Tribe:
Since RBIs were first recorded in 1920, only four players have launched at least three home runs and knocked in at least 10 runs in their team’s first five games. The list includes Bobby Doerr (1941), Lou Brock (1967), Kal Daniels (1988) and Larry Walker (1997), according to the Elias Sports Bureau.
Now, those four have some new peers. Adam Lind has three homers and 11 RBIs through the first five Jays games and Detroit’s Miguel Cabrera has three homers and 10 RBIs through five for the Tiggers. Lind also happens to lead baseball in RBIs right now and he ranks second with 10 hits.
The last Blue Jays player to have three homers in the club’s first five games is Carlos Delgado, who accomplished the feat in 2001 — he had five in that span. Also, Lind didn’t have 10 hits last year until his 14th game, needing 45 at-bats to achieve that many knocks.
Speaking of 2001, the Jays are off to their best start since that season, when the team opened the year 5-1. Toronto hasn’t been much of an April team over recent seasons. In ’01, they finished the month 16-9. In the seasons since, they never ended the first month more than one game over .500.
Asked manager Cito Gaston today if he thought the Jays and Indians should’ve tried to play through the rest of the fifth inning last night to make the game official in the books. He replied with a stern, “Absolutely.” The game was called in the top of the fifth with Toronto up 4-3 and then sat through a 3:47 rain delay — the longest in team history.
Today’s lineups:
TORONTO BLUE JAYS (4-1)
1. Marco Scutaro, SS
2. Aaron Hill, 2B
3. Alex Rios, RF
4. Vernon Wells, CF
5. Adam Lind, DH
6. Scott Rolen, 3B
7. Kevin Millar, 1B
8. Rod Barajas, C
9. Jose Bautista, LF
Starter: RHP Roy Halladay
CLEVELAND INDIANS (0-4)
1. Grady Sizemore, CF
2. Mark DeRosa, 3B
3. Victor Martinez, 1B
4. Shin-Soo Choo, RF
5. Jhonny Peralta, SS
6. Ryan Garko, DH
7. Kelly Shoppach, C
8. Ben Francisco, LF
9. Asdrubal Cabrera, 2B
Starter: LHP Cliff Lee
~JB
Major League Bastian 
Talk about missing a bullet, great job by Halliday.
I can’t beleive that Ryan almost blew Halladay’s win. Man, something needs to happen with the closer situation. Downs looked pretty good in his inning. That would have been criminal. Nice outing by Doc……as usual. Good win (whew!)
Oh, and add me to the folks complaining about this site. Very slow lately and goes to a unable to locate site message. Did post my response eventually though.
Great game by Scutaro, Hill, Lind and another excellent start by the Doc. Fireman of the year award to Fraser for closing this one out. Talk about high trauma.
Ryan needs to be sent down to Florida to see if he can work this out. He’s over throwing to try to keep him velocity back and as a result, he’s losing control and movement.
He went 3-2 for almost every hitter, walked 3 of 6 hitters he faced, gave up 2 hits, 3 runs which could have been 4 if Fraser hadn’t saved him. I just hope he’s not done.
Downs should be the closer. Hopefully, Jansen recovers soon and Cecil is ready soon. I now think we need Janssen in the pen as the 8th inning guy.
Not to whine about Wells too much, BUT it’s now 6 games and he’s only driven in 1 run. We’re lucky Lind has been so hot right behind him or we wouldnt be 5-1.
I still think Rolen should hit 4th and Wells 6th until Wells gets going, we can’t expect Lind, Snider, Hill and Scutaro to stay hot forever.
There is nothing worse then the pen almost blowing a great starting pitcher outing.
Julia
http://werbiefitz.mlblogs.com/
Particulary two in a row by the so called closer
Watching Frasor pitch today, I thought he was different but couldn’t figure out what it was until I read an article in the Globe, part of which is as follows:
With his new “generic” split-finger fastball, Frasor struck out Cleveland first baseman Victor Martinez for the save.
That’s exactly what Frasor was able to do against Martinez. The Jays reliever first began flirting with a splitter in 2005 with bullpen coach Bruce Walton. But Frasor refined the pitch when he made an off-season stopp in Tennessee to visit and work with former Major Leaguer Doug Bochtler.
“I stopped in for a minute,” said Frasor, who added the get-together was setup by a mutual friend. “Tomorrow it could be a knuckler. I’ll keep throwing it as long as it works.”
**This brings a total different dimension to Fraser, going from two pitches to three. Now he’s got a 95 mph fastball, slider and the split in the arsenal.
Results so far have been great with 2.1 innings, 1 hit, 2 k’s and no bb’s and no runs. Couldn’t have came at a better time.
Ryan has done this before, when he came on in a non-save situation and made things interesting. I’m just hoping there’s nothing wrong with his shoulder that they are keeping mum about, and that he can work through this. Of course, the rest of the team can help by piling on enough runs that the save situations are kept to a minimum!
I actually thought Wells was having a pretty good start this year, considering that he’s a notoriously slow starter. 7 hits in 24 AB (.292) with 3 doubles is a pretty good start for Wells. If you know this, you don’t go disturbing your lineup, especially when the rest of the team can pick him up, and they are winning games. If Wells stays healthy this year, he will hit .300 with 30 taters, and a lot of those come in August and September when the money is on the table.
This team is off to its best start since 2001, so if it ain’t broke, don’t go fixin’ it!