Whimsical Wednesday Wonderings

I’ve been waiting since the beginning of the season for an excuse to post this video once again, and finally after 3 months I have my reason. The Edwin Encarnacion optimism ship sailed long ago, but of course just as I write him off, that’s when Encarnacion comes back and proves me wrong.

As Shi Davidi noted in his game recap, Edwin Encarnacion is the quintessential streaky hitter: 10 of his 21 home runs came in two series last May and September. Just as EE might be in the discussion for a DFA, he puts up a game like last night and buys himself a couple weeks of freedom from the doghouse.

Nobody expects Edwin to sustain the current pace, but somewhere Alex Anthopoulos is mimicking Mr. Burns and saying “exxxxcellent”.

Brett Cecil’s back

Speaking of giving up on players, just as I had written off Brett Cecil in my head as a possible member of the Blue Jays starting  rotation, they call him up from the minors. The best word to describe my feelings on this recent development is … indifferent.

Maybe that’s because the Blue Jays haven’t been all that desperate for stating rotation help. At this point in the season, they didn’t really need Brett Cecil but they probably owe it to him to bring him back for a second shot.

There may have been some initial shock at the decision to send Brett Cecil to Las Vegas in the first place, merely for the fact that the Blue Jays were demoting someone who had won 15 games the previous season.

Remember, this is why pitcher’s wins should not be as revered as they are. The argument “Cecil led the club in wins last year” bares no weight on how great of a pitcher he is. All this tells me is Cecil probably pitched okay and the offense scored enough runs to win during his starts.

Overbay oversteps his boundaries?

So I guess some people were irked by Lyle Overbay’s comments to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. The article itself focuses on how attendance has dropped off for the Blue Jays since the glory days, but it’s not like the Pirates themselves are selling out PNC Park every night.

Overbay made it sound like Canadians are still bitter about the baseball strike, and for many Expos fans that’s still the case, but if you’re not over the baseball strike 17 years later, then you probably are never going to get over it.

I myself admit I was one of the droves of people whose baseball fandom fell by the wayside after the 1994 MLB strike, but I came back. That’s not the reason why attendance numbers are below average in Toronto, it’s because they haven’t made the playoffs in 18 years.