Ohka is OK
I woke up this morning in Aurora, Ontario (north of Toronto) at my friend Ryan’s place and saw the sun was shining outside. Nobody else was up yet as we had a pretty late night on Saturday so I took a walk outside and the weather was fantastic. My first thought was that the dome would be open today and I really wanted to go to the game.
Sadly though, I couldn’t make it for a few reasons. One, my wife and my friends who I was driving back to Ottawa didn’t wake up until after 12 p.m. Two, my one friend injured his ankle in an incident that involved a shopping cart and beer, clearly not in that order! He rolled his ankle rather severely and couldn’t put much weight on it so he wanted to get back to Ottawa to get it x-rayed. As I was driving him, I didn’t think he’d want to stop at the Rogers Centre for three hours.
What a game it would have been though. For those of you reading that have never been to Rogers Centre/Skydome, it is a completely different atmosphere when the roof is open. With the roof closed, it doesn’t feel like a ballpark, it feels like a multi-purpose facility. You notice the exposed concrete more and it is just not the same. With the roof open, you have the sun shining, the CN Tower is peering in, and the crowd tends to be a little livelier. One thing Toronto fans are not known for is noise!
It was the first game the roof was open and the Jays played well and hung onto their lead the entire game unlike Saturday. Instead of being in the stands, enjoying the game and the sun, I was on Highway 401 listening to the game on the radio. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this yet but Alan Ashby is fantastic with Jerry Howarth on the Jays radio broadcasts. A huge improvement from the last couple of years with Warren Sawkiw in the booth. Sorry Warren.
Toma Ohka was on the mound and went seven innings which surprised me given he was having control problems early on. With the Jays announcing that Josh Towers was moved to the bullpen yesterday, I was curious to see how Ohka would perform as my thinking is that based on each pitcher’s performance thus far, I’d rather have Towers in the rotation than Ohka. However, I think the plan from the start was to have Zambrano enter the rotation at some point this season and given that Towers wasn’t getting wins, now was as good as time as any to insert Zambrano. My thinking is that they will try and work Dustin McGowan into the rotation by mid-July if Zambrano and/or Ohka are struggling and McGowan continues to pitch well in Syracuse.
Alex Rios was not in the starting lineup today as Gibby opted to rest him. In a somewhat curious move, essentially moved up his regular starters one spot in the order. Lind was batting leadoff, Wells second, Thomas third etc. I guess Gibby was still ticked off about yesterdays game that he just threw a lineup together. It may have been a message to his bullpen to say ‘does it really matter how I set my lineup if you guys are just going to blow the lead anyway?’ Who knows?
Of note, Rios did pinch hit later on in the game and ended up hitting his fourth homerun of the year.
The Jays have a good chance of splitting the series with the Rangers as Roy Halladay is on the mound tomorrow night. I’d be somewhat happy with the series split but the blown save on Saturday still stings!
Blue Jays: A to Zed 