I always say the best time to be a baseball blogger is when your team is very good, or very bad. When they are .500 and you are hoping for that five-game win streak to put you near the top of the division or dreading that five-game losing streak that will drop you to the bottom.
The Tigers are coming for the weekend as our ‘rivalry’ team.
In the Sun, Kevin Gausman talks about the lack of depth in the starting rotation:
He’s well aware of the maddening inconsistencies with the team that have made the first 43 games of the season an ongoing battle to escape mediocrity.
And Gausman also is mindful of the organizational shortcomings in being able to continually feed that rotation with healthy, major-league-ready arms.
In fact that last weakness, which could ultimately be the Jays undoing, is a point of conversation amongst a group that well into the season is still without a fifth starter.
“We definitely talk about it,” Gausman said after his most recent start on Thursday. “It’s something that we know. Everybody knows our depth isn’t crazy. It’s the guys that we have here. It’s us. We’ve got to do it. We’ve got to put it together.”
Which is very fair. We have the four solid starters and Max Scherzer sitting on the IL, and they likely will be for a while longer.
And the lack of depth isn’t all the front office’s fault. They looked to have a good ‘sixth starter’ in Jake Bloss and, before that, Ricky Tiedemann, who is also out for most of the season. But this game of picking up guys that have been DFAed by other teams isn’t going to cut it for the fifth starter spot.
Has Jeff Hoffman earned your trust?
So far, this month, he’s pitched in six games and had three blowups (allowing 3, 3 and 5 earned) with a 24.75 ERA. He’s had two blown saves and three saves in the six games. He entered May with a 1.17 ERA, it is at 6.05 now. In April he had six saves and three wins, with no blown saves or losses.
Pitchers go through slumps, just like batters, but a closer having this rough a stretch stands out.
I love this….and I love how Pereda backs up with every pitch, because he doesn’t want to be killed by a line drive. I’m on his side. I’d throw and hit the dirt.
Position player Jhonny Pereda had Shohei in hell with this sequence
— Talkin’ Baseball (Bot) (@talkinbaseballbot.bsky.social) 2025-05-16T04:56:16.000Z
If you are in or near Calgary next Friday night, the world-famous Minor Leaguer will be in town, and we will have beers at Red Rock. If you want to meet Mr. Leaguer. He might even let you buy him a beer.