Flight Deck

What a rollercoaster that was.

The Blue Jays, fresh off of an ugly two-game set with the Red Sox badly in need of some wins, rolled into Flushing to face the Mets. They got shut down on Friday, exploded on Saturday, and then lost a heartbreaker on Sunday. One step forward, two steps back.

Me and BK discussed the team's new lineup composition, why it's ideal to have Bo Bichette in the four-hole, Hyun Jin Ryu's tough start, Ross Stripling's bounce-back, and Alejandro Kirk's return to the lineup. We also waved goodbye to T.J. Zeuch, who we fear might become the next Chris Carpenter in St. Louis, and then talked about how the Blue Jays should approach the trade deadline.

There are many suggestions out there suggesting this team should sell, but we explained why that's a bad idea.

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That was ugly!

The Blue Jays got smashed on Monday, rained out on Tuesday, and then they lost an incredibly frustrating game on Wednesday against a struggling starter with their ace on the mound. Oof. 

With Tyler on vacation, me and BK talked about the Red Sox series, why they might not actually be frauds, especially with Chris Sale nearing a return and killing it early on in his rehab assignment. 

We also talked about a whole bunch of different stuff from this week, like the T.J. Zeuch era coming to an end, Nate Pearson going to the bullpen, and what we can expect from the trade deadline given Ross Atkins' comments about how the starting pitching market is thin right now. 

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The Blue Jays and kicking the crap out of the Texas Rangers — name a more iconic duo. We learned on Friday that the Blue Jays are FINALLY coming home on July 30!

The team seemed to be charged up by that so they went ahead and pounded the Rangers by a score of 10-2, powered by perhaps Vladdy's biggest homer of the season. The game on Saturday was rained out, which led to a doubleheader sweep on Sunday by scores of 10-0 and 5-0. All told, the Blue Jays outscored Texas 25-2 over the weekend. You love to see it. We talked about the good stuff from the series, which was literally everything, and then we talked about how good the vibes are going to be on July 30. I also made a bold prediction about who's going to be taking the mound for The Return.

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It might be the All-Star break but The Content never sleeps! We did a special edition of BJN Radio this week, talking about the Toronto Blue Jays beating the National League in the All-Star game thanks to a monster homer from Vladdy, a double from Teoscar Hernandez, and an RBI from Marcus Semien.

After that, we welcomed MLB.com jack-of-all-trades beat reporter Jordan Horrobin to the show to take a trip around the American League. We touched on whether or not the Red Sox are frauds, why the Yankees have been so stunningly mediocre, what the Blue Jays should do at the trade deadline, and whether or not there are any other teams in the wild-card clump that we should be worried about.  Finally, we looked ahead to the upcoming series against the Texas Rangers and talked about how the Blue Jays should acquire Joey Gallo, Ian Kennedy, and Kyle Gibson before the first pitch is thrown on Friday night.

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As usual, times at The Top weren't the best.  The Blue Jays' bats went limp on Friday and Saturday but they managed to avoid being swept by the Rays thanks to Robbie Ray throwing a seven-inning one-hitter on Sunday. The team is now heading into the All-Star break with a good-not-great 45-42 record, so there's plenty of work to be done in the second half.

We talked on this episode about Ray's excellent season and what it means for his next contract, the interesting rumour that the Blue Jays have ticked tired on slugger Nelson Cruz, the early returns from the couple of bullpen trades the front office has made over the past few weeks, and what to expect from the upcoming draft. 

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Two out of three ain't bad.  The Blue Jays hosted Those Pesky Rays this weekend in Buffalo and nearly earned a sweep, picking up wins in the first two games but dropping the third on Sunday.

Alek Manoah had arguably the best start of any Blue Jay this season on Friday night, Ross Stripling was again excellent on Saturday, and Robbie Ray was great in the finale but the bats didn't show up. We talked about all that good stuff, argued about whether we can firmly call Ray the ace of the staff, and also talked about some bad stuff, like the ugly return of The Rafael Dolis Experience and some shoddy defence in the series finale. 

Also, we talked about a story out of Chicago involving two members of the 2015 team. Liam Hendriks sounded off on Josh Donaldson, saying he didn't like what he saw behind the curtain when playing with The Bringer of Rain. Many have suggested the idea of a Donaldson return in order to fix the hole at third base, but this comment from Hendriks sheds some new light on that whole saga. 

All that and more in a busy BJN Radio!

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That was disappointing! A couple of weeks ago, the Blue Jays embarked on what we all pointed out could be a season-changing stretch against bad opponents. 

They swept a two-game set with the Marlins and won five of seven against Baltimore, setting up an opportunity to really put together a good result for the stretch in the final series against Seattle. Toronto won the first game but then dropped the next two and ultimately went 8-4 in that 12-game easy-ish opponent stretch. Not terrible, but not exactly season-changing, either. Anyways! We talked about everything from the Seattle series, ranging from Hyun Jin Ryu's rough start and recent struggles to Adam Cimber's debut and what kind of difference he can make to the team's bullpen. We also talked about Teoscar Hernandez's amazing rise from going down to Triple-A to fix his swing to being voted in as an All-Star game starter.  

Finally, we looked ahead to a very, very important set against the Tampa Bay Rays. The Rays are limping a bit right now and the Blue Jays see them six times before the All-Star break. Doing well against them now would certainly help the Blue Jays make up some ground in the American League East standings.

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The Blue Jays continued their dominance against the Trash Birds, winning three of four games over the weekend.  Despite the good result, it was still a bit of a downer given the fact the team threw away yet another winnable game on Friday night.

That Blue Jays really should have pulled off a four-game sweep, but that ain't easy to do when you only have one reliable bullpen arm. We complained about the meltdown, talked about Charlie's odd decision to use Tayler Saucedo in a key spot, and also looked at some positives from the series, like Vladdy mashing, Cavan Biggio doing well since coming back from the Injured List, and Reese McGuire's hot stretch. 

We then jumped into some trade talk because Silly Season is right around the corner. We discussed the idea of trading one of the five catchers on the 40-man roster and debated whether it would be wise to deal Nate Pearson to acquire a top-end arm such as Jose Berrios. 

Finally, we previewed the upcoming series against the red-hot Mariners, an objectively bad team who somehow pulled off a four-game sweep over Tampa and won two of three against the White Sox. 

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Boy, playing terrible teams sure is fun!

Fresh off of winning back-to-back games against the Orioles on Saturday and Sunday, the Blue Jays rolled into Miami for a two-game set with the Marlins and picked up a sweep, ultimately pushing their winning streak to a season-high four games. We talked on the post-series podcast about George Springer's ho-hum return and where he should be in the lineup, the excellent pitching of Robbie Ray and Ross Stripling, and the bullpen bouncing back with six effective innings.

We also talked about Mark Shapiro's radio hit on Thursday morning in which he said he was confident the team would add pieces to help them be competitive.

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Tyler is back from his soul-searching expedition in the woods and the Blue Jays are back in the win column!

This weekend with the Trash Birds didn't look very good right off the hop as the Blue Jays got pounded 7-1 on Friday and then appeared to be on their way to another loss on Saturday. But a six-run rally in the ninth inning led by an incredible at-bat from Bo Bichette saved the day and the team rode a great Hyun Jin Ryu start on Sunday to a series win.

We talked about the good from the weekend, like Bo and Ryu, and also the bad from the weekend, mostly the bullpen this episode of BJN Radio. We also touched on how the lineup should look when George Springer returns, how the team could move Gabriel Moreno up the system, and the two new (old?) bullpen additions, John Axford and Jacob Barnes.

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