There isn’t much for news this morning. They are telling us that Brett Bateman’s injury isn’t serious, he likely won’t go on the IL. I feel like ‘not serious’ tends to mean ‘season ending’ but I’m not going to jump to that.
The problem with having a guy on the active roster who can’t play is that the size of bullpens teams use these days, you don’t have many options on the bench. Yesterday it was Clement who couldn’t play, so it made pinch hitting tougher, and when a player might have to come out
of the game, I started thinking about which pitcher they should put in the outfield. Insert your own Sanchez joke here.
The old man in me can’t believe you need 8 guys in the bullpen. And they are all overworked. When I was young, there was 5 guys in the bullpen. The closer, a setup man, a third decent reliever and two guys who were really starters and were there just in case that day’s start gets ejected early in the game. The fifth guy would pitch in 10-15 games a year. He was really there so they could still play cards when one of the others had to warm up.
But the game has changed. And I get it. Pitchers throw at 100% every pitch. They didn’t in the old days.
Anyway, today’s lineup. No Sanchez:
Yesterday’s umpire was pretty good:
The Jays starts at 1:00 Eastern, which makes it 11:00 my time, which really works well with my laziness. I can’t go workout, because I have to get a post up, and get the game thread ready. All I can do is sit and watch comedy clips all morning.
