Pretty Good Moments of 2009: Opening Day

After taking a few days to decompress, I figured it would be a pretty good idea to go back and pick out the few moments of brightness from an otherwise dark season to help remind us why we put ourselves through it day after day.

First up, opening day.

Highlighted by Adam Lind's home run and 6 RBIs, a homer by Travis Snider, hanging 8 earned runs on Justin Verlander, and the biggest crowd of the season, the Jays coasted to a 12-5 win with Roy Halladay pitching. Even Alex Rios and Vernon Wells had great games (2-3 with 2 walks and 2-4 with a walk, respectively)!

Of course, there were also the idiots who thought it would be good idea to throw paper airplanes onto the field and maybe could have caused the Jays to forfeit the game, but we can ignore that.

Can Hill Hit 43?

As I mentioned in the last Shitty Loss post, Aaron Hill's 31 home runs have him within grasp of at least the American League record for home runs by a second baseman, which is the 39 that Alfonso Soriano hit for the Yankees in 2002. The Major League record may be a bit more difficult, as National League second basemen Rogers Hornsby and Davey Johnson each hit 42, in 1922 and 1973, respectively.

In the last 5 weeks, or so, of the season, the Blue Jays have 35 games left. 15 of those games are at home, where Hill has hit 19 of his homers. A reasonable expectation of 2 or 3 more hit at the Rogers Centre is not out of the question, I don't think. The home games come against the Yankees, Twins, Orioles, and Mariners, who have given Hill 7 of his home runs this season.

Putting him in the 33-34 home run range with 21 games left on the road, a good chunk of those games come in home run friendly ballparks. 5 games at Fenway Park, 4 games in Arlington, and 2 games at Yankee Stadium. They also have 3 games left at Tropicana Field, 3 at Camden Yards, and 4 at Comerica Park. He has 6 home runs in those ballparks on the year, so I don't think assuming that he'll average about one home run per road series here on out is too crazy, either. Six home runs in those 6 series put him up in the Soriano range at 39 or 40. This season, against the teams the Jays still face on the road, Hill has gone deep a total of 15 times.

So, I don't think that matching (or passing) Soriano's mark is out of the realm of possibility. Coincidentally, on this date in '02, Soriano also had 31 home runs (Johnson had 36, while Hornsby had 32 in his 154 game season), so if Hill just does what he's been doing all year, I think he has a real shot at putting his name in the record book and having at least one positive thing come out of this awful season the Blue Jays have been having.

Also worth noting, Ranger's second baseman Ian Kinsler is not far behind Hill's home run total with 28 of his own (he may even be ahead of Hill had he not spent a few weeks on the disabled list earlier in the season), so if he gets hot, Hill may find himself needing to stay ahead of Kinsler in order to just lead the league in home runs for second basemen.

Hill & Lind

Because this season is circling the drain, let's take a look at some of the good that's come from it. For now, let's start with the team's top 2 sluggers, Aaron Hill and Adam Lind.

Hill's 28 home runs are good enough for a tie for 3rd in the AL, while Lind's 24 puts him in a tie for 8th. While some of their other stats might not stack up with other players in the top 10 (Hill's OBP is especially low), the fact that the team has two players who are on pace to hit over 30 home runs is so nice after last season's offensive nightmare, where the Jays needed 2 homers from Vernon Wells on the last day of the season just to have one player knock out 20.

As bad as things have looked in the past few months, imagine how much worse things would be without these 2 having break-out seasons. With the disappointing seasons that we've seen from Wells and the departed Alex Rios, the streakiness of Lyle Overbay, and that Kevin Millar has even seen 1 at-bat (let alone however many it's been now) out of the clean-up spot, the fact that we can consistently rely on those 2 guys to drive in runs has made this season seem at least little bit less shitty.

Not that I'll remember any of this when they're going to have their bad seasons that every Jay seems to have every few years, but, for now anyway, cheers to them.

He Gone

Well, it actually happened.

After a weekend of wondering, the Jays let Alex Rios (and all the money he's owed) walk and he's now a member of the Chicago White Sox.

Not getting anything in return (aside from salary relief), the Jays are taking a big risk here in the public eye, as, for all his faults, Rios is still a young, 2-time All Star who has shown a ton of potential. Sending him to the White Sox with nothing coming the other way is basically admitting they made a mistake with his contract extension.

I think the only way to really judge this is to wait until the off-season. If the team uses the 'financial flexibility' that dumping all the money they'd have to pay Rios gives them and puts all or most of it back into other areas of the team, then I think this could be a positive for the team. Now, I'm not terribly confident that ownership will do this, but I'm going to have to give them the benefit of the doubt, for now.

What I dread the most, however, is Rios reaching the 30-35 home run potential that most fans thought he was capable of a few years ago. The "wouldn't he look good in a Blue Jays uniform right about now" that we'd hear from whoever's giving us the highlights whenever he has a good game that coincides with a rough patch in the Jays season would get old fast. It's happened before with lesser players (Dave Bush).

Anyway, the eternal optimist in me thinks that this could end up being good for the team in the long run. Rios has shown that he can be a very good player, but if Rogers allows Ricciardi (or whoever the GM may be) re-spend his salary on free agents (or take on someone's salary in a trade), then the Jays could come out ahead.

The First Half

So, going into the 2009 season, it was generally assumed that the Jays were never going to be contenders. For some reason, despite not having a reason to since Joe Carter's home run ball sailed over the left field wall in the '93 World Series, I am more optimistic with the Blue Jays than I am with anything else in my life. Because of this, I had convinced myself that the Toronto squad was much better than they were getting any credit for and were victims of the laziness of sports writers who didn't want to waste any more ink talking about the AL East beyond the mainstays (Boston, New York) and the '08 Cinderellas, the Rays, and they would prove everyone wrong.

And, through May 18th, I was vindicated. My Toronto Blue Jays were the surprise of the baseball world. With a 3-2 victory over the White Sox on that day, they were 13 games over .500, 3.5 games up on the 2nd place Boston Red Sox, and only one half game behind the Los Angeles Dodgers for the best record in Major League Baseball. My eternal (and usually misguided) optimism had me wondering whether or not I should buy tickets to a Division Series game or wait and spend my money on ALCS tickets. Sure, I knew that they wouldn't play THIS good all season long. The patchwork pitching staff was sure to spring a leak or two here and there and guys like Aaron Hill, Macro Scutaro, and Adam Lind were sure to cool off a bit from their torrid paces that they began the season with. But, I didn't care. I was going to enjoy the ride, with all its bumps along the way, because at least they were going to make a statement that they were going to be players in the division all season long.

Well, so much for that. With a loss on May 19 to Tim Wakefield and his annoying knuckleball, the Jays have plummeted back down to Earth. That loss started a 0-9 road trip which knocked the team out of first place and since the high-water mark of 27-14, they have gone a terrible 17-32. In the American League, that is only (barely) ahead of Kansas City and is a few games better than the lowly Washington Nationals when taking all of baseball into account. To add to all this, the tailspin the team has gone into has lead to trade talks concerning perhaps the best pitcher in baseball and probably every Jays fan's favourite player, Roy Halladay.

Yet, despite all this, for whatever reason, I remain optimistic. I've grown to realize that my money probably won't be going towards post-season baseball tickets (unless I make a trip to Dodger Stadium), I keep moving closer to the realization that Doc's Hall of Fame plaque won't have "TORONTO, A.L., 1998-2016" and nothing else before listing all his career's accomplishments, and I know that another 4th place finish seems much more likely than any meaningful late season games.

I look at the team and it's easy to convince myself that they aren't as horrible as their .347 winning percentage over the past 49 games would suggest. I get just as frustrated as anyone else watching them lose completely winnable games, obviously, but I know (well, hope, anyway) that all the luck that went their way until that trip into Fenway that has seemingly pulled a 180 on them will even itself out and that an opposing outfielder won't make a near-perfect throw to cut down the potential winning run at the plate or someone will sneeze and push what might be a home run for the other team back towards the safety of an outfielder's glove.

Anyway, I'm already way into TL;DR territory (and on my first post!), but I guess I needed to vent a bit and provide a tiny bit of optimism into the abyss of pessimism (a lot of it deserved) that seems to be enveloping all the Blue Jays coverage these days.