Coming into the season, Toronto picked up the most recent NL Cy Young award winner, along with two starters from the Marlins -- all or which were decent bets. Mark Buehrle has a career ERA of 3.85, pitched to a 3.74 ERA and a 13-13 record last year on a bad team. Josh Johnson's 2012 ERA was 3.81, which is a spike from his career ERA of 3.23, RA Dickey has had a spotty career, but has been one of the most consistent and best starting pitchers in baseball over the previous three seasons.
Currently, Dickey is 2-4 with a 4.50 ERA. Buehrle is 1-1 with a 6.35 ERA. And Johnson? 0-1, 6.86.
Seriously, what happened? Before the season, some said that these pitchers wouldn't adjust to the AL East quickly, but I don't buy that. With the Braves and Nationals in the NL East, it's not like that division lacks offensive firepower. Something else is up here, because the Blue Jays' hitters are dead in the water, too.
Like everyone predicted, the Blue Jays are getting their home runs in -- 33 homers so far, more than the first place Red Sox -- but their team batting average is .229; OBP .291. The Red Sox have them beat by a mile, with a team batting average of .272 and OBP of .347. The Jays' best hitter, Reyes, is on the DL. He was hitting .395. The team's superstar, Jose Bautista, has 7 homers but he's hitting a paltry .192; .280 OBP.
Toronto's bench players are doing worse, and one has to wonder why the DH combo of Mark DeRosa and Rajaj Davis hasn't been replaced by promoting Mauro Gomez from Buffalo. Forget Gomez's AAA numbers, his MLB numbers with Boston last season beat the production that DeRosa (.161) and Davis (.267) are giving them.
As the Bobby Fuckin Valentine-led Red Sox taught us, when a team has a bunch of players performing well below expectations, the root cause of this problem might be the coaching staff. And it looks like the Blue Jays have a mess at the top.
Manager John Gibbons, who looks perpetually drunk and out of touch, was Farrell'ed by the club in 2008 when they fired him and reached back dinosaurs and the Land of the Lost to bring back fucking Cito Gaston to be their manager. After blaming their woes on John Farrell, the Blue Jays got rid of him and, shockingly, hired John Gibbons back.
After bring Gibbons back, they saddled him with a hitting coach, Chad Mottola, with no MLB experience coaching, and promoted last year's bullpen coach, Pete Walker to be their pitching coach -- and his only MLB coaching experience was spent answering the bullpen phone last year. The Jays' old hitting coach was demoted to be their first base coach, so who knows if there's any resentment stewing there.
Toronto's version of "best team ever" sits 9.5 games back in the AL East and has the second worst record in the league, behind only the hapless Astros in that category. It took the 2011 Red Sox until September to collapse, so all things considered, the fall of the Blue Jays right now is pretty epic. If they continue playing like this, don't be shocked to hear that John Gibbons is fired in mid-July. Maybe the Jays can bring Cito Gaston back again, because, well, I'm afraid that John Farrell will be occupied.
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