A good friend of mine and I immersed in a debate this evening in the context of whether or not it would be beneficial for the Blue Jays to catch the skidding Kansas City Royals for the first overall position and end up playing the American League wildcard representative which could very well end up being the New York Yankees. I took the correct stance that there's not one team in all of baseball that'd I'd rather least suit up against in the divisional series round. Statistics will point out that the Blue Jays have had a relative amount of success against the Bronx Bombers as of late but statistics don't tell the entire story and frankly the Yankees are not a good matchup for us(see what I did there, I'm beginning to act like a fan that's supported this team for years). With the exception of games started by Ivan Nova who will not be one of the starters when the post-season dance commences, the Jays have consistently struggled to produce runs particularly against Tanaka and Pineda. If we lived in a world where an assurance was made that the Blue Jays could finish first overall and avoid the New York Yankees in American Divisional series then I would be on board, but that's not the kind of world we live in and due to that there are far too many risks inherited with securing that number one seed. Heck, and some will be able to vouch for me when I say that I've been on the lookout for the Cleveland Indians for some time now and even facing off against the Tribe would not be the most endearing scenario ever. Say what you want about this team up North, but the fact is when it comes to squaring off against the opposition's one or two best pitchers, the success level decreases drastically although in fairness to the Blue Jays this is just the nature of sport of when you face the best, the likelihood of winning goes down. Playing one of the Twins, who like I have said on past occasions will eat crow if they make the post-season, the Astros or the Angels I could stomach because I've witnessed enough flaws with these ball clubs to have the confidence that the Jays could handle them with relative ease. I pose my hypothesis the following way, would you rather go to the dance with a rotation that will fire out a combination of Severino-Pineda-Tanaka or dance with the boys from the state where everything's bigger that will send over Cole Hamels-Yovani Gallardo-Derek Holland? Is that even a thought provoking question? It's not, as much as I respect the work of Gallardo who I believe I pegged as one of the Cy Young candidates coming into this season, I'd much rather take my chances beating Hamels and Holland then the nucleus of great young Yankees pitching I'll tell you what you can take way form this blog posting and from my thoughts in general. Tonight, I've struck internal fear with facing the New York Yankees or Cleveland Indians and have essentially written off the Minnesota Twins, Los Angeles of Anaheim Angels and Houston Astros. My prognostication track record is so bad, that it's become something of infamy so in other words any true Jay fans out there should be praying to the heaven's that they don't end up battling this trio as a jinxed series loss is inevitable.
My apologies Canada!
If you enjoy my work, please shoot me a line via e-mail at brett_h_murray@hotmail.com or through my twitter handle at @bretzky26. I appreciate you taking the time to read as I continue look to grow this "enterprise".
No comments:
Post a Comment