Tag Archives: Minnesota Twins

Thinkin’ baseball… Koskie calls it quits. World Baseball Classic still great to watch. Can the Blue Jays lose 120 games? Who is Stephen Strasburg?

Posted on March 22, 2009 by Scott Taylor| 2 Comments

ORLANDO — Four more things rattling around in my cranium…

1) My friend Corey Koskie officially hung ‘em up on Saturday. No wonder.

 

After spending last Sunday in hospital getting treatment for his 6-year-old son Joshua, who had hit his head and suffered a concussion, Koskie was reminded of his own 2 1/2 years in a fog.

 

So on Saturday, three days after he pulled himself from a game complaining of lightheadedness, Koskie decided to call it quits.

 

“The risks just outweigh the rewards,” Koskie told me, not long after he ended his comeback attempt with the Chicago Cubs. “The way I felt on Wednesday, well, it just wasn’t worth it.”

Koskie, 35, dove for for a ground ball in a spring training game in Arizona on Wednesday and said “I felt really weird.” He knew, at that moment, that he couldn’t play big league baseball again.

“I kind of decided, do I really want to be looking over my shoulder and asking, ‘How do I feel? Is it OK?’ after every single play,” Koskie said. “After everything I’ve gone through over the past 2 1/2 years, I know I don’t want to go back into the fog again.”

Koskie finished his career as Manitoba’s greatest baseball player (no, Russell Ford was not really a Manitoban, but a Minnesotan), a .275 lifetime hitter with 124 home runs. His best year came with the Minnesota Twins in 2001 when he hit 26 homers, stole 27 bases and drove in 103 runs and became the first third baseman in baseball history to hit at least 25 homers, steal 25 bases and drive in 100 runs in one season. 

Officially, the record will say, his career ended as a member of the Milwaukee Brewers on July 5, 2006, when he fell backward and suffered a concussion while trying to catch a pop fly off the bat of Felipe Lopez.

2) I’ve watched every World Baseball Classic game that I can watch and I’ve loved every minute of it. This is a great event and should be played every two years, not every four as planned.

As a Canadian, nothing beats international sport, and this event has been so much fun to watch. It’s simply great to be watching baseball in March and have it mean something.

For me, spring training has lost its edge. To pay up to $40 to watch a Grapefruit League game in which the best players play no more than three innings is simply a rip-off. If you’re a fan of one particular team and you want to watch Single A players who could not make the Goldeyes but might make your favourite team someday, then spring training is for you. But frankly, I’ll take the World Baseball Classic every time.

Granted, it’s an event the mainstream media hates because the mainstream media hates being in Florida on the company’s ticket watching Single A players at spring training who won’t make the big team for five more years. And the mainstream media members who aren’t in Florida just like to follow the mob and rip things they know nothing about. It’s a bad habit, but like Barry Bonds, the hypocritical steroid issue and the Duke Lacrosse case, it’s something we’ve learned to live with.

Frankly, nothing beats a great international tournament at a time when baseball is charging $25-$40 a ticket to watch freakin’ practice.

Long live the WBC.

3) Here in sunny Florida, the outlook for the Toronto Blue Jays is not so sunny.

Insiders say that after Roy Halladay, the Jays have marginal pitching, at best, and the team’s hitting simply won’t be good enough to score the seven or eight runs a game they’ll need to win more often than they lose.

In fact, one highly respected seamhead down here in Florida has suggested that the Jays could lose 120 games this season.

Do you think that will get J.P. Ricciardi fired?

4) Remember the name Stephen Strasburg. Most major league scouts believe Strasburg will be, and I’m quoting here, “The greatest pitcher in baseball history.”

There are even seamheads here in Florida this spring who are drafting Strasburg in Fantasy Keeper Pools because they believe he is going to be great for a long, long time.

Strasburg is a junior at San Diego State who is 6-foot-4, 220-pounds and is the No. 1-ranked player in the upcoming Major League draft. He played on the 2008 U.S. Olympic team and is already called “flawless.” He has a 102-mile-per-hour fastball and an almost unhittable 80-mile-per-hour 12-6 hammer curveball  that he often throws after setting up a hitter with two straight unhittable fastballs. 

This season he is 10-0 at SDSU with 75 strikeouts in 34.1 innings, He has an 8-1 strikeout-walk ratio.

The last-place (2008) Washington Nationals have won the Strasburg Sweepstakes. If the kid stays healthy, he will be the next great big league ace.   

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Koskie signs with the Chicago Cubs

Posted on March 1, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Anola, Manitoba’s Corey Koskie is a member of the Chicago Cubs.  This weekend, the latest member of Canada’s national baseball team in the World Baseball Classic, signed a minor league deal with the Cubs. He’ll join the Cubs at spring training in Arizona after the World Baseball Classic. If he doesn’t make the Cubs opening day roster, he has agreed to go to Triple A Iowa.  

This is a story that gets better all the time. Koskie, 35, who suffered post-concussion syndrome in 2006 and hasn’t played a game of baseball in 2 1/2 years, wasn’t even on Team Canada’s provisional roster in January. Although he’d been working out at the Minnesota Twins spring training complex in Fort Myers, Fla., he didn’t face live pitching until last week.

 

Now, he’s in Dunedin, Fla., playing with Team Canada and when the tournament is over, he has a contract with the Cubs.

 

“As you know, back in early January, I wanted to play with Team Canada and then finish my career,” said, who played nine years in the majors with Minnesota, Toronto and Milwaukee. “My wife and I thought it would be a great way to finish up.

 

“Now I have a chance to play again. I even had a choice of teams to sign with. I’m excited about this.”

 

He has every right to be excited. If he just makes the Cubs, he’s comeback player of the year. 

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Koskie on Team Canada. Now has offers from two big league teams.

Posted on February 27, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

It has been February’s good news story. After more than 2 1/2 years away from baseball because of the effects of post-concussion syndrome, Anola, Manitoba’s Corey Koskie, once a third baseman for the Minnesota Twins, Toronto Blue Jays and Milwaukee Brewers, had returned to the game.

But he did more than just return to the game. He went out and won a spot on Canada’s national team, the one that will compete in the World Baseball Classic that begins next week. He’ll wear his old No. 47 and while he’s listed as a backup third baseman right now, he still believes that if he’s given a chance, he could give Mark Teahen a run for the starting job.

 

He also as two offers to play professionally this summer.

 

But first, to his chances with Team Canada. 

 

“I really believe that I’m given a chance to win the job in the exhibition games, then I’ll win the job,” Koskie said, via telephone from Fort Myers, Fla., on Friday afternoon.

 

“I feel really good. No more concussion problems, no more nausea. I’m about 10 pounds heavier than I was when I played in Milwaukee so I find that I’m sore every day. I haven’t played 2 1/2 years and while I feel like I’m shape, I’m going very hard every day. Two years ago, if I was sore in the spring, I would take a day off, say, from infield practice or running or whatever. But right now, I can’t do that. I’m trying to come back in order to be ready for the tournament. I can’t afford to take a day off.

 

“And it’s great to be playing again. I’m just happy being out there again.”

 

Koskie, now 35, played nine years in the majors, but he hasn’t played a game since July 5, 2006. That’s the day Koskie, then with the Brewers, was involved in a terrific play with Milwaukee shortstop Bill Hall. The two combined to make a miraculous catch of a flare to short leftfield off the bat of the Reds’ Felipe Lopez – a play that made the highlight reels all over North America.

Since that day, however, Koskie has been a mess. As the former Twins third baseman tried to make that spectacular over-the-shoulder catch, his legs slipped out from under him and he slammed his shoulders against the outfield grass. He didn’t hit his head (despite what a number of lazy newspaper reporters and news services wrote), but he did suffer the same symptoms a car accident victim would get from a severe case of whiplash.

 

Brewers’ doctors confirmed he had post-concussion syndrome and he hasn’t played a game since. However, in early January he started feeling better and said he’d like to end his career with Team Canada at the 2009 World Baseball Classic.

 

Well, he might not be ending his career at all.

“I have offers on the table from two teams,” he said. “As you know, I’ve been working out at the Twins complex in Fort Myers so because they were good to me, I went to them first and asked if they wanted me. They weren’t interested, but my agent talked to a number of teams and there are two offers out there. I will agree to terms soon, maybe even this weekend. They’re minor league deals, but they are deals and I will play baseball this summer.”

Granted, the comeback of Corey Koskie pales beside the comeback of Tiger Woods, but it’s still a wonderful story. At age 35, after two and a half years out of the game, Manitoba’s greatest baseball player is getting a chance to play again.

Call me a homer. Call me whatever you like. I’m going to spend the summer cheering for him.  

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Renney gone, Koskie on Team Canada, New CFL Rules… the banging in my head goes on unabated…

Posted on February 24, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

What’s that clanging around in my noggin? 

 

Must admit, can’t think that anyone was surprised when Tom Renney was fired as head coach of the New York Rangers. Great guy, excellent coach, wrong team, wrong time.

 

At the start of the season it appeared as if the Rangers were going to run away and hide, but as the playoffs approach and the Blueshirts have lost 10 of 12 and fallen to within two points of ninth place in the East. Losing to the Leafs on Sunday night was the end of the road for Renney.

 

It’s been clear for awhile that Glen Sather was going to make a change and the move to John Tortorella, a hard-ass, native New Yorker, was so painfully obvious, it bordered on cliche.

 

Tortorella won a Cup in Tampa and also finished last. Of course, he won the Cup with Nikolai Khabibulin in goal and finished last without his Russian netminder, In the end, it always comes down to goaltending and if the Rangers intend to turn this swoon around, Henri Lundqvist had better be ready to carry the load.  

 

2) On the baseball front, Team Canada manager Ernie Whitt confirmed yesterday that Anola, Manitoba’s Corey Koskie, who hasn’t played a game in anger since July 5, 2006, would indeed be one of the 28 players named Tuesday to Team Canada’s preliminary roster for the 2009 World Baseball Classic. Team Canada opens camp March 2 in Dunedin.

 

We first reported this story here at rivercitysportsblog.com at 10:03 a.m. CDT on Sunday, Feb. 22. Later in the day, a story on Koskie’s good fortune appeared on the St. Paul Pioneer Press’s website and the next day the story appeared at cbc.ca. Of course, cbc.ca — which only occasionally gets things right — wouldn’t credit rivercitysportsblog.com. 

 

The mainstream media continues to act despicably. One can only hope the Harper government one day shuts down the CBC, a $1 billion-plus waste of taxpayers money. We live in a time when private broadcasters — the people in this country who pay their own way — are struggling to survive and yet we toss public money down that big CBC toilet.

 

That has to stop. And soon.

 

3) Meanwhile, in the CFL, for the first time, Canadian Football League fans are being asked to propose rule changes that can “make our great game even better,” according to commissioner Mark Cohon’s comments on cfl.ca. 

 

Fans are asked to send their ideas by visiting CFL.ca/rules or by e-mailing rules@cfl.ca by this coming Friday.

 

My suggestion was simple. If a CFL team employs a Canadian as its No. 3 quarterback, then that team should get to use an import starter at another position. It’s time CIS quarterbacks got some training at the pro level in their own country.

 

Interestingly, I’ve heard from a number of 92-CITI-FM listeners who suggested we simply play NFL football in Canada. “One game on one continent,” said our friend Fort Rouge Ted.

 

It’s certainly not patriotic, but it does make sense. 

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Koskie could be going to the World Baseball Classic.

Posted on February 22, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Our old friend Corey Koskie might just have taken a very big step toward returning to Major League Baseball. Saturday night, Koskie — who was not listed on Canada’s provisional roster for the World Baseball Classic roster — was told he will be named to Team Canada’s roster for the 2009 WBC. 

Koskie, now 35, played nine years in the majors with Minnesota, Toronto and Milwaukee, but he hasn’t played a game since July 5, 2006. That’s the day Koskie, then with the Brewers,, was involved in a terrific play with Milwaukee shortstop Bill Hall. The two combined to make a miraculous catch of a flare to short leftfield off the bat of the Reds’ Felipe Lopez – a play that made the highlight reels all over North America.

Since that day, however, Koskie has been a mess. As the former Twins third baseman tried to make that spectacular over-the-shoulder catch, his legs slipped out from under him and he slammed his shoulders against the outfield grass. He didn’t hit his head, but he did suffer the same symptoms a car accident victim would get from a severe case of whiplash.

 

Brewers’ doctors confirmed he had post-concussion syndrome and he hasn’t played a game since. In fact, for more than two years, Koskie couldn’t watch much TV without getting sick. He couldn’t sit at  his computer without getting dizzy. Walking into a big venue like Rogers Centre or the Metrodome in Minneapolis would leave him disoriented and prone to panic attacks.

 

However, in early January he started feeling better and told me he’d like to end his career with Team Canada at the 2009 World Baseball Classic. 

“I still don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’d like to play for Canada. It would be a great way to end my career,” Koskie said, from the living room of his home in the suburbs of the Twin Cities last month. “I’ve talked with the Twins and they said they’d let me use the facilities in Fort Myers in early February. Nobody has given me any indication they’d look at me in terms of a contract or anything like that and I haven’t asked. I just want to see if I can still play. I mean, I’ve been out of the game for 2 ½ years. That’s a long time. I’ve just been hanging out with my kids for two years. I might not even want to play again. But I want to see how it feels.” 

 

It must be feeling pretty damn good. 

 

Koskie, who lives year round just outside Minneapolis, did ask the Twins if he could work out with the club at its spring training facility in Fort Myers and it looks like the best ask he ever made. On Saturday, during a workout with the big club, he faced live pitching for the first time in more than two years and looked comfortable. Doctors had already given him the green light to play again and he now believes Team Canada GM Greg Hamilton will put him on the club’s final roster, a roster that must be submitted this Tuesday. 

 

Team Canada will begin its formal training camp at the Toronto Blue Jays’ facility in Dunedin, Fla., on March 2.

 

If the dream does come true tomorrow, what a wonderful, wonderful story. 

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All around us, the insanity runs rampant…

Posted on February 16, 2009 by Scott Taylor| 1 Comment

It’s amazing, sometimes, how people think. In Ottawa, Eugene Melnyk wants to build a soccer stadium in hopes of attracting a major league soccer team, but he refuses to discuss allowing a Canadian Football League franchise to share the facility.

So Melnyk, the man who has helped kill his own Ottawa Senators, fights the CFL’s backers from government funds.

Insanity.

Here’s another.

Former Minnesota Twins reliever J.C. Romero will serve a 50-game suspension for “using steroids,” and the fat, drunk Philadelphia media likes to call him a cheater.

Why? Because Romero was suspended in january for testing positive for a banned substance — an over-the-counter sbstance he purchased at the GNC in the mall.

“I didn’t do nothing wrong,” Romero told reporters at training camp.”It’s ridiculous. I don’t think I should be suspended 50 games. It doesn’t make any sense to me. They have some rules they have to follow, and it’s very unfortunate that I have to be the one paying the price. In my mind, I think it’s insane. I think it’s unfair. I’m being, they say, negligent, but then I’m being accused as somebody who takes steroids. That doesn’t fly too well. But it is what it is.”

He did NOT use an illegal drug, but his name will forever be linked with players who took steroids. The product he bought, “6-OXO” contains androstenedione, a steroid pre-cursor, and the same substance Mark McGwire used in 1998. Baseball banned it after McGwire used it.

Until baseball bans beverage alcohol and tobacco, two substances that are addictive and are scientifically proven to cause illness and death, the witch-hunt that continues for real and even non-steroid users will remain a monument to the insanity of the people who run baseball. 

Or a monument to the baseball media which is quite possibly even more insane than the owners.

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Sad to say, but One of the Biggest Problems We Face Every Day is an Insane Mainstream Media

Posted on February 7, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

After awhile you just kind of get tired of it. Day after day, more and more mainstream media opinion on that horrible Michael Phelps and his bong smoking and how he’s supposed to be a role model and oh, my god, what about the children??? 

Oh, put a sock in it you clowns.

 

Michael Phelps didn’t lose his deal with Kellogg’s because he sucked on a marijuana pipe. He lost his endorsement because the brain-dead media made an issue out of something that stopped being an issue in 1965. Kellogg’s couldn’t take the heat. (I’ll never eat Frosted Flakes again, you gutless cereal-flogging swine.)

 

What decade is this anyway? Marijuana should be legal for goodness sake. I thought we stopped worrying about marijuana — for anything other income tax evasion — about 1975.

 

Let’s cut the B.S. There is nothing on the planet worse for society, or for one’s health, than beverage alcohol. However, for these Scotch-slurping media giants, booze is fine, but that old wacky tabacky? It must be stopped.

 

Drunken brainless hacks.

 

The worst recession in decades is upon us. People are losing their jobs by the factory load (my buddy Marty York and EVERY ONE OF HIS COLLEAGUES at Metro Canada were laid off this past week) and yet, the mutton heads in the international sports media were more concerned about a kid being a kid. Oh yeah, and they were also concerned about how they might be able to ruin the kid’s life. Just for fun.

 

Used to be the mainstream media stood for something. It went after crooked politicians and the hypocrisy of every day life. Sadly, that’s long since passed. Here in Winnipeg, the MSM doesn’t even cover question period at the Legislature anymore.

 

Fact is, the ONLY thing the mainstream media does well these days is hurt people. Even if those people don’t deserve to be hurt.

 

This Michael Phelps witch hunt smells almost as bad as the MSM’s last great witch hunt — the Duke Lacrosse case. And we all know how bad that one stunk.

 

* * * 

 

By the way, here’s our Stat of the Day, sent along by a regular reader. (by the by, we checked his numbers): The New York Yankees’ starting pitching staff this season — C.C. Sabathia, A.J. Burnett, Andy Pettitte, Chien-Ming Wang and Joba Chamberlain — will be paid $44 million. The Minnesota Twins’ starting pitching staff this season — Scott Baker, Francisco Liriano, Nick Blackburn, Kevin Slowey and Glen Perkins — will be paid $2.4 million.

 

Huh? Sorry, can’t come up with anything more clever than… Major League Baseball is stupid.

 

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It’s time to stop the insanity. Get baseball writers out of the Hall of Fame…

Posted on January 14, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

For the 12th straight year, former Minnesota Twins starter Bert Blyleven was snubbed by baseball’s Hall of Fame.

He had 287 wins as a big leaguer and should be in the Hall, but once again, he was turned away from the shrine. This time by a mere 67 votes (he got 338 total) and needed 405 to reach the necessary 75 per cent of ballots.

Normally, Blyleven, who is now a Twins broadcaster, handles his disappointment with quiet resignation. This year, however, it was obvious he’d had enough.

“It’s not right,” Blyleven told ESPN. “I considered myself a great competitor, and all of a sudden, you are dictated into the Hall of Fame by writers that never played the game. I always had trouble with that.”

Blyleven told ESPN that being inducted into the Hall of Fame would be one of the highlights of his life and added: “The writers need to do their homework a little better. They need to ask other players who competed against that individual. … I’m happy for Jim Rice, I’m happy for Rickey Henderson, but there are some guys who get snubbed, and it’s not right.”

There are baseball writers I know personally who not only know nothing at all about the game, but can’t even throw a baseball. They have NO right being in charge of the Hall of Fame destinies of some of the game’s greatest players.

Stop the insanity. Get the idiot sportswriters the hell away from the Hall.

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Manitoba’s Koskie thinking about a comeback.

Posted on January 4, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Corey Koskie has been roughhousing with his kids again. He no longer becomes nauseated when he sends out an e-mail. He can now watch entire movies on his giant HD TV without getting a splitting headache.

In fact, Koskie feels so good, he’s starting to get the itch. He’s going back into the gym this month and maybe, just maybe, he’s going to go to Fort Myers and work out with the Minnesota Twins. 

 

“I still don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’d like to play for Canada in the World Baseball Classic,” Koskie said, from the living room of his home in the suburbs of the Twin Cities last week. “I’m going back into the gym next week to see if I can go through a full workout. If, by the end of the month, I’m comfortable there, I’ll go to Florida just to see if I still have my bat speed, can still throw.

 

“I’ve talked with the Twins and they said they’d let me use the facilities in Fort Myers in early February. Nobody has given me any indication they’d look at me in terms of a contract or anything like that and I haven’t asked. I just want to see if I can still play. I mean, I’ve been out of the game for 2 ½ years. That’s a long time. I’ve just been hanging out with my kids for two years. I might not even want to play again. But I want to see how it feels.” 

 

Manitoba’s greatest baseball player, the young hockey goalie from Anola who grew up and made it to baseball’s big leagues, has not played a game with his last team, the Milwaukee Brewers, since way back on July 5, 2006. That’s the day Koskie, now 35, was involved in a terrific play with Brewers shortstop Bill Hall. The two combined to make a miraculous catch of a flare to short leftfield off the bat of the Reds’ Felipe Lopez – a play that made the highlight reels all over North America.

 

Since then, however, Koskie has been a mess. As the former Blue Jays third baseman tried to make that spectacular over-the-shoulder catch, his legs slipped out from under him and he slammed his shoulders against the outfield grass. He didn’t hit his head, but he did suffer the same symptoms a car accident victim would get from a severe case of whiplash.

 

Brewers’ doctors confirmed he had post-concussion syndrome and he hasn’t played a game since. In fact, for more than two years, Koskie couldn’t watch much TV without getting sick. He couldn’t sit at  his computer without getting dizzy. Walking into a big venue like Rogers Centre or the Metrodome in Minneapolis would leave him disoriented and prone to panic attacks.

 

“It was so frustrating,” Koskie said. “I’d feel good and then my head would start to spin. There was no explanation.”

 

It was kind of a sad, unfortunate way to end a career. Especially when one considers that at the time, his eighth season in the majors, he was playing his best baseball in two years. The Brewers formally released in 2007. It appeared as if he was done.

 

But in the last couple of months Koskie seems to have staggered out of the fog. The nausea doesn’t dog him. There are no more anxiety attacks.

 

“I’m going to find out if I can play again,” he said. “But if it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out. 

 

“And I’m not even sure I want to play again. I’m not sure I’m ready for the pressure of two-out, two-on bottom of the ninth. But I’m going into this giving everything I have, but expecting nothing in return.”

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Blue Jays fire Gibbons. Wrong guy gets the axe.

Posted on June 21, 2008 by Scott Taylor| Comments Off

The Toronto Blue Jays should have fired J.P. Ricciardi, but instead, the people who run Ted Rogers’ baseball team, decided on Friday that manager John Gibbons should go.

The Jays, wallowing in last place in the American League East, were 35-39 and had lost five straight when Gibbons was gassed and replaced by Cito Gaston, the special assistant to Jays president, Paul Godfrey. 

 

When Gibbons was fired, the Jays had lost 13 of 17 and fallen 10 1/2 games behind first-place Boston in the AL East. On Friday night, when Toronto played Pittsburgh — and Gaston was the manager — the Jays lineup went like this…

 

1. Marco Scutaro, 2B

2. Lyle Overbay 1B

3. Alex Rios RF

4. Vernon Wells, CF

5. Scott Rolen, 3B

6. Rod Barajas, C

7. Kevin Mench, LF

8. John McDonald, SS

9. Roy Halladay, P

 

Frankly, that’s an awful lineup. Barely big league. Late in the game, the Jays used Brad Wilkerson, Matt Stairs and Joe Inglett as pinch hitters. Still, it didn’t matter. The final score: Pittsburgh 1, Toronto 0 in 12 innings. The Jays fell to 35-40 and they’d now lost six straight.

 

Well, why wouldn’t they lose? Why should they win, even with Doc Halladay on the mound? Marco Scutaro is a .248 hitter with nine extra base hits in 202 at bats; Lyle Overbay is a .262 hitter with six homers; Alex Rios is hitting .272 with only three homers and 27 RBI in 290 at bats hitting out of the No. 3 hole; Vernon Wells has struggled through injuries and is hitting .277 in only 148 at bats; Scott Rolen has battled through injuries and is hitting only .268 with three homers; at .289 in 142 at bats, Rod Barajas is the best hitter on the team (Rod Barajas???); Kevin Mench, who had been released by Milwaukee, is hitting .217 (no surprise there); John McDonald is hitting .171; Brad Wilkerson, released earlier this year by last-place Seattle is hitting .244; Joe Inglett is hitting .291 with only one home run in 86 at bats; and Matt Stairs is hitting .255, but at least he has eight homers.

 

The Jays are hitting .257 as a team, baseball’s 21st best overall. In terms of the major league standings, they are 19th overall. That’s the Blue Jays. People who believe the Jays have a good team are delusional. The pitching is decent, but the team has no power and doesn’t hit for average. Only the Minnesota Twins (46) and Los Angeles Dodgers (48) have hit fewer homers than Toronto (49).  It doesn’t run badly (47 steals), but has been caught stealing 23 times, third most in the game. And they field the ball pretty well, fifth in the American League.

 

But they can’t hit. They can’t score. And if you can’t score in the Majors today, you can’t win. 

 

J.P. Ricciardi handed John Gibbons a bad team. Cito Gaston won’t be able to fix it. Unless the Jays find themselves a general manager who can legitimately build a team (Pat Gillick, perhaps?), then the franchise will never again find success.

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