Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Toughen Up, A.J.

I'm writing this with two outs in the top of the third. By the time you read this, hopefully you'll wonder why I bothered to criticize A.J. after a 28-3 Blue Jay win.

The guy has been around too long to go through what he's going through in this here third inning, seemingly on a regular basis.

He blew through the first two innings, striking out five of six. Then the #7 hitter leads off the third, bloops a fluke single, and the freakin' wheels fall off. A.J. walks the next guy - the utterly shite and completely non-Overbayesque Gabe Gross - on 4 pitches. Before you can say "Gross is terrible - throw a goddamn strike", three runs are in.

With the way our offence is going, we might not overcome a three-run deficit if we're given 81 outs to play with instead of 27.

If it's a question of discomfort while pitching from the stretch, then Arnsberg needs to do something about that. If it's a mental thing (more likely), A.J. should be seeing a child psychologist. Christ, I thought A.J. was supposed to benefit from his closeness to the Doc. Well, it looks to me like not an ounce of the Doctor's mental toughness has rubbed off on our problem child.

Come on, now. Let's get those runs back. And let's pray the Rays don't get a single baserunner the rest of the way.

1 comment:

Canate said...

Two problems with this post. The Jays lost, and Gabe Gross is good.

Also I get a strong feeling that Doc hates AJ. Mostly because AJ doesn't give a shit about improving. I remember there was an article on Doc's preparation for game and some mental memory games he plays to get focused, when asked AJ basically said "I don't have to do that stuff" insinuating that he had the raw talent to get guys out that Doc may be lacking. I was incensed when I heard it. Razzer may remember the details better, but I think that's pretty close to how it played out.