Anything But General Mills


Image courtesy of Daylife

He came, he saw, he conquered, then he took the red-eye back to Las Vegas.

Brad Mills may not have spent very much time in Toronto this trip around, but his short-lived spot start left a lasting impression.

The young lefty did exactly what the Blue Jays asked of him, and then he delivered a little more. For some reason, I had visions of Brad Mills coming out and no-hitting the Baltimore Orioles, and he actually wasn’t too far off.


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Last night I said something to the effect of the Baltimore Orioles make any opposing pitcher look good. While that may be true, I take back what I said and give full credit to Brad Mills. The Orioles have some very talented hitters in that lineup, and he had no problem mowing them down.

After all, didn’t Stephen Strasburg make his big league debut against the lowly Pittsburgh Pirates? Basically, I came to the revelation that a great pitching performance is a great pitching performance – it doesn’t matter how horrible the opponent is.

I know it was just one start, but now Brad Mills makes the Blue Jays starting five picture even more complicated over the next few years. Now the Jays have to choose between Shaun Marcum, Ricky Romero, Brandon Morrow, Brett Cecil, Jesse Litsch, Marc Rzepczynski, Brad Mills and possibly even Kyle Drabek and pair it down to five starters.

Obviously there just isn’t enough room for all of them in the starting rotation, so one would have to assume that Alex Anthopoulos is getting ready to package one of those arms in a trade, or he’ll be shopping them at the Winter Meetings.

It’s a nice problem for the Blue Jays to have, as I’m sure other organizations would kill to have the level of talented young pitchers that Toronto is so fortunate to have.

But I digress … we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, and I’m sure Alex Anthopoulos will find some way to capitalize on the arms surplus in the Blue Jays organization and turn it into some position players or he’ll stock up the relief corps.

As Brad Mills enjoyed his late night flight back to Sin City … watching an unbearable in-flight movie like “Cop Out”, I hope he realized that it definitely won’t be the last time he’ll be back in Toronto … not by a long shot.

Ian Hunter

Ian has been writing about the Toronto Blue Jays since 2007. He enjoyed the tail-end of the Roy Halladay era and vividly remembers the Alex Rodriguez "mine" incident. He'll also retell the story of Game 5 of the 2015 ALDS to his kids for the next 20 years.