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.


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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.


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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.

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.

4 thoughts on “Whimsical Wednesday Wonderings

  • June 29, 2011 at 5:52 pm
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    I'd cut Lyle slack on that piece – there are enough cases where the journalist wants to tell a story, gets into a conversation with the interviewee, and somehow gets the interviewee to tell the story. None of it is directly critical, and he probably was preparing himself to play in the dome while hearing boos. To be fair, that is how a lot of dumb ass "fans" treat a guy who played out his contract (and did so well, in my opinion) and then looked for another one (and didn't even go to a rival team for that matter).

    So … did Lyle hear it much? I didn't see the game.

  • June 29, 2011 at 6:02 pm
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    QJays, I didn't take Overbay's comments as coming from a place of anger or disdain towards Blue Jays fans at all. There's some truth to what he said, but that's not why I think fans are holding out in Toronto (in Canada for that matter).

    I think Overbay got a bad rap during the past few years of his contract, mostly because other teams first baseman were big, burly, slugging players and Lyle just did not fit in with that group. And I can only imagine that wrist injury hampered things for Overbay anyway.

  • June 30, 2011 at 12:58 am
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    Man does that Encarnacion video ever kill. The Dotel one was great as well.

  • June 30, 2011 at 3:09 am
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    King Cats, thanks for the kind words. Just so happens that EE was the focus of both videos!

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