Hit up Getting Blanked via the official blog feed on Twitter or harass us via the standard channels (email and the like.) Or subscribe to our fancy new Youtube channel so you can bypass all this silliness and mainline the Getting Blanked good stuff. (You’ll also want to find the iTunes pages for Getting Blanked audio, Getting Blanked video, the DJF Podcast, and while you’re at it, like Getting Blanked and DJF on Facebook).

Now it’s time for all the stuff I don’t figure on making full posts out of, with the spiffy graphic by Matt English (aka @mattomic). It’s your Afternoon Snack… er… Afternoon Hangover… er… links!!!

At Getting Blanked, Parkes would like to let you know that he’s cultured. And also some shit about Brett Lawrie maybe not being as good as he’s “been overrated by an audience inundated with his praise from a team broadcaster that wants to develop the idea of a Canadian star attraction on the only Canadian team in baseball, who view his unquestionable drive and effort as though it was skill and accomplishment.” The Summer of Trolling continues!

The basis of some of what Parkes is on about comes from Colin Wyers, who at Baseball Prospectus (not paywall’d!) looks at Lawrie, and how the Jays shifting appears to be breaking DRS– one of them fancy defensive metrics everybody is so enamoured with now that they can use them in their all-out defence of the Golden Brett.

You’re welcome, world: tonight’s massive crossroads of a must-win Jays-Orioles tilt is MLB.tv’s free game of the day (you’re still behind the blackout restriction in Canada, though), and as such, it’s featured in Carson Cistuli’s Daily Notes at FanGraphs.

“Nothing has been decided yet,” says John Farrell of possible skipping a starter in the weekend’s Boston series, thanks to upcoming off days, according to the Toronto Sun. “We’re monitoring everything. We have the ability to adjust over the next week because of the two off-days. We’ll see how we come out of the next two days, how guys (Romero and Morrow) are physically. If we decide to keep them on regular rest and choose to hold back one of the other guys.”  He adds that “If our rotation maintains what they’ve done for the majority of this year, the off-day Thursday, plus the off-day Monday … my guess is we’ll be ready to make an adjustment shortly.” I’m thinking, if they’re not insane, they’ll skip Drabek and let Romero pitch Sunday against the Sox.

Alex Anthopoulos laid down some radio gold on Montreal’s the Kaufman Show this week, explaining– among other things– that Vlad Guerrero will find himself either in Double- or Triple-A very soon, and that they’ll send him to New Hampshire if they want to see him face harder throwing opponents, or to Vegas if they feel he’ll benefit more from seeing some more crafty, fringe Big League pitching.

Jon Morosi of tweets that the agent for Edwin Encarnacion says the Jays haven’t approached him about a contract extension for his client. He discusses this in the article at Fox Sports that also touched on the Arencibia-to-1B stuff Parkes went to town on earlier.

“Sport officials are treated like Gods who can do no wrong,” says a commenter on a Bob Elliott piece in the Toronto Sun about the Jays relationship with umpires, who is presumably fucking serious, amazingly. (Also amazing: it’s not the only piece Elliott has penned on the subject in the last week. Man, his drinking buddies in the umpiring crew must be giving him an earful about it. HEYO!)

Elsewhere at Getting Blanked, Parkes wonders why the Orioles were playing in Canada on Memorial Day in the US, while the Jays were out of the country on Victoria Day, the Royals will be here on July 4th, and the Mariners on September 11th. Is scheduling really so hard?

And in more stuff from there, Bill Parker wonders if the Jays may have themselves a Bautista 2.0 in Edwin Encarnacion. Interesting stuff– the similarities are pretty striking.

Miked Up– or maybe what used to be called Miked Up– has a new home over at Sportsnet. I don’t know if the full blog has a page, but here’s its first post– and a link for the RSS feed. Wilner’s got a post saying as much in the old space.

The Tao of Stieb ruminates on the demotion of Eric Thames, admitting to a nagging feeling we may see Thames back here again before Travis Snider ever gets a shot. Ugh. It’s possible.

Questions arise about the Jays in Jonah Keri’s latest power rankings at Grantland, as the bluebirds slip from seventh to 13th.

In case it wasn’t clear from the fact that they didn’t demote him in their bullpen shuffle, I think the Jays like Jesse Chavez, as MLBTR passes along a report from Patrick Newman of NPB Tracker that the Jays rejected a $1-million offer from the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks for the reliever.

Ex-scout Bernie Pleskoff of MLB.com writes of Anthony Gose, going over his many raw tools, and some of the problems he’s going to have convincing an MLB manager to play him– as has been the case for outfielders of a similar profile, like Peter Bourjos, Jarrod Dyson and Ben Revere. It’s all about getting on base.

Guy Spurrier of the National Post wonders what it will take for Adam Lind to hit his way back to the big leagues, and takes a look at tonight’s starter Brandon Morrow’s Texas destruction.

Lastly, we get a look at Sal Fasano’s rules for his New Hampshire players from Gray Matter, including the one that goes, “Can’t use the word ‘swag’ or ‘that’s what she said.’ If used it will result in a punch of my choice.” The one that’s most telling of baseball culture, though, I think is: “Just a reminder about DUI and DWI, and how hard it is to be a Toronto Blue Jays player because you have a hard time getting into Canada.” Yes, because that’s why you don’t want to drive drunk.

With Kyle Drabek’s disappointing development and the bullet dodging transactions that eventually turned Michael Taylor into Anthony Gose, D’Arnaud’s status as the top catching prospect in baseball (again according to Goldstein) is the only good news to directly come out of the infamous trade that sent Roy Halladay to the Philadelphia Phillies and a new team dynamic to the Blue Jays.

The only problem with bringing D’Arnaud up is that there happens to be a young slugging catcher already in place at the Major League level in J.P. Arencibia, or Aaron Cibia if you prefer. The most likely scenario will see D’Arnaud eventually usurp the fan favourite as the starting catcher, offering the Blue Jays a prized trading chip in Arencibia, who could be described as a young, and hopefully more consistently powerful, John Buck.

The problem, which I suppose is a good one to have, is how to break D’Arnaud into the role for which he’s been anointed while also ensuring that Arencibia’s trade value isn’t diminished by decreased playing time. Both Goldstein in the article linked to above, and FOX Sports’ resident Detroit Tigers super fan Jon Paul Morosi on Twitter, suggest that the incumbent catcher can play first base in the absence of anything remotely resembling a contributing offensive force at the position on the team’s roster.

I would counter such suggestions with the following statement: No, he can’t.

Among catchers, Arencibia’s offensive contribution, both realized so far this season and projected for the remainder of the year, suggest that he’s a little bit below the average catcher at the plate. As a first baseman, his numbers simply don’t carry. By ZiPS, he projects to be only slightly better than the recently demoted Adam Lind offensively. And that’s not even beginning to consider the growing pains associated with learning a new position.

As a designated hitter, his updated wOBA projection for the remainder of the year would rank him as the very worst in baseball.

I suppose there’s nothing wrong with this if the team is ready to admit defeat for the season, but if it’s serious about competing for the division crown or a Wild Card playoff position, making Arencibia the full time first baseman is not the answer.

I like the idea of calling D’Arnaud up and easing him into the role of every day catcher, but not at the expense of the current season. So, here’s what I’d do, at least while there’s something still to play for:

Once Vladimir Guerrero is done his Minor League appeasement tour (brought to you by the Toronto Blue Jays), I call him and Lind up. I wait on D’Arnaud until the mathematicians in the front office tell me of an increased likelihood of avoiding Super Two should he never need Minor League seasoning again.

At that point, Arencibia and D’Arnaud split time at catcher, in a 50ish/50ish manner. Guerrero becomes the regular DH against left handed pitching, while Edwin Encarnacion gets called on to face righties as the DH, and southpaws as a first baseman. Lind then becomes the first baseman only against right handed pitching.

Once the dream of making the playoffs is dead, I’d do whatever the front office deems necessary for the betterment of the team’s future, even if that means ensuring plate appearances to both Arencibia and D’Arnaud, but until then, a lineup with the highest likelihood of success must be filled out. And in my opinion that lineup should have nothing to do with J.P. Arencibia at first base or designated hitter.

Some of you may have already noticed, while others– brought on by the frustrations of viewing the site on your mobile device prior to today– may have simply been coming here on desktop only since we moved over to theScore, and it’s to this latter group that I’d like to happily announce that DJF– and all the other Score blogs, in fact– finally has a spiffy-looking, nicely-functioning, ass-kicking, name-taking, blasting-across-the-alkali-flats in a jet-powered, monkey-navigated mobile site. So get DJF’in on your phones again already. I know many of you have been asking for ths…

Jake Arrieta was on TV… for some reason.

RR’s Quest for Strikes continues tonight, and I’ve got another good feeling here, as… well… screw what the standings say, it’s the Orioles! And, I mean, why the fuck would you be worried about the standings in May anyway?

To wit: here’s what some devilishly handsome blogger I follow tweeted earlier today:

Old friend the Chairman emailed today to remind me that the 2005 O’s were 42-30 and in 1st on June 24. Finished 74-88. bit.ly/L2d5jl

— Andrew Stoeten (@AndrewStoeten) May 29, 2012

Well, tit fuck me sideways and call me scrambled eggs! Ain’t that somethin’!

Scuttlebutt

Holy shit, Colby Rasmus is hitting fifth, which… I guess that’s what happens when your left-handed hitters all turn into minor leaguers. Some may be a little taken aback by this development, but honestly, even if it hasn’t exactly come about like this, to me it’s like the team is kinda finally rounding into shape. Snider will be here soon, most suspect, Rasmus hitting in a key spot– and earning it, based on a really small sample over the last couple weeks– and what we can all continue, until we actually see him, to pretend is a big bat coming to the rescue in the shape of Vlad Guerrero, possibly by the end of the week! Switch Davis and Cooper for Snider and Vlad, and do you not feel better about this lineup than at pretty much any point in the season? Because I kinda do.

TV: Sportsnet

And now the lineups, by way of the live box score at theScore.com. And for those of you who’ll be out and about, be sure to follow all the action on your phone with Score Mobile…

Toronto Blue Jays

K. Johnson 2B
Y. Escobar SS
J. Bautista RF
E. Encarnacion DH
C. Rasmus CF
J. Arencibia C
B. Lawrie 3B
D. Cooper 1B
R. Davis LF

R. Romero LHP

Baltimore Orioles

R. Andino 2B
J. Hardy SS
N. Markakis RF
A. Jones CF
M. Wieters C
M. Reynolds 1B
C. Davis DH
W. Betemit LF
S. Tolleson 3B

J. Arrieta RHP

Holy shitballs, who knew that Jays fans were so full-on thirsty for the opportunity for some good, old fashioned, staggeringly-moronic pants-shitting panic?

While there remain a lot of completely reasonable folks out there beating back the trolls with cool-headed logic, things sure have gone shit ape bonkers in the comments on this morning’s post about Eric Thames’ demotion. Because… y’know… what reason isn’t there to lose one’s mind after the completely reasonable and expected demotion of a guy who’d barely scraped past an at-his-worst Travis Snider on the depth chart, coming– as it did– on the heels of a great pitching performance from Drew Hutchison, a shitty road trip in which the club was two extra innings losses away from going 3-3 against very possibly the two best teams in baseball, and the thoroughly sane decision to demote Adam Lind, after the defensible– yet admittedly questionable– decision this winter to give one more go at squeezing some value out of what could have been an eminently team-friendly contract, had Lind ever managed to regain his 2009 form.

Thing is, I find it hard to entirely blame the casual– or dim-witted hardcore– fan for losing his or her shit when the ridiculous “Jays in Crisis” meme is being endorsed (read: milked for all its worth) by the mainstream media likes of Richard Griffin of the Toronto Star, and Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun– who fills his piece with enough screaming idiocy to get it shit on by Toronto Sun readers and to make Griffin’s essay look rather quaint by comparison. These guys could combine forces to write as “Richard Simmons” and would still have trouble churning out this kind of panicky fucking dreck– but I bet they’d look fabulous doing it! HEYO!

“The buoyant optimism of spring training, the optimism of even a week ago, is guarded if at all apparent,” writes Simmons, as I begin gargling back the puke. “And just as troubling, has been the body language of several Jays players. Too many acting entitled, too many showing too little respect for the game, too many talking a better game than they have played.”

“Rather than talk like contenders,” he adds, about to drop a fourteen tonne shithammer onto our minds, “the Blue Jays have to play like them.”

Whoa! And apparently that has to start NOW, because, as Griffin says, “the result of Romero’s start on Tuesday will be huge for the Jays.”

“This series and this homestand are crossroads for the Blue Jays,” he tells us.

A crossroads!!! Good lord.

I mean, he creates terrific theatre for a throwaway series, I guess, but he sure as fuck is playing fast and loose with anything resembling the truth. This is a crossroads? Seriously?

It isn’t… I don’t know… kinda exactly where you’d expect a halfway decent team to have muddled their way to at this point in the year? I mean, this kind of doom and gloom might make sense if the Jays had been forecast to run away with the division or something, but when did they not have the look of a club that was going to be OK enough to keep their heads above water, hoping for some young players to over-perform, or to come up and give them a boost in the second half, to catch a break in the form of some poor play from their division rivals and maybe sneak into the second Wild Card spot? And how the fuck is that not still totally the case?

It’s not a sexy position to be in, granted, but they’re doing the best they can to find a combination of talent on the 25-man roster that works– and don’t get confused by Mike McCoy or David Cooper (or Rajai Davis against right-handers), because Vlad Guerrero and Travis Snider will be here as soon as they’re ready, and the knocks on the door from Travis d’Arnaud are getting louder with each passing week.

Yes, it’s easy for certain fans to get sanctimonious about the club not having done enough in the off-season to load the roster with talent, but that brick wall of an attitude is, I think, going to have to be run into over and over and over again, no matter how many times people are reminded that the Jays were spurned by some free agents, rightly felt other contracts being given out were absurdly bad, similarly felt the price in prospects was too rich for some trades, or didn’t have the MLB-ready pieces coveted in others.

It happens. And this ain’t sexy either, but it’s true: doing nothing is better than doing something stupid. Besides, the Jays did much of their roster construction in the twelve months previous. And clearly the club will continue to look to the trade deadline, when more teams will have pieces on the market than did over the winter– if maybe not as many as in previous years, thanks to the additional Wild Card berth in each league. If they feel they have the opportunity to make a September run, they’ll have the resources to upgrade the team, and if they don’t, they’ll be able to continue adding to their excellent young talent base by potentially offloading free-agents-to-be like Kelly Johnson, Edwin Encarnacion, Francisco Cordero, Jason Frasor and Darren Oliver.

They can’t really go wrong either way, so unless, for some inex-fucking-plicable reason you’ve decided to put all your cheer-eggs into the 2012 basket, there isn’t a whole fuckload to worry about right now. Frankly, they’ve probably done better than they should have so far, with Romero having not been his best, and three-fifths of the rotation made up of Kyle Drabek and two guys born in the 90s.

The Jays remain a team with holes, yet a pretty good team, with lots of guys who can get better, and the honest-to-fuck ability to maybe hang in the race long enough to really get rolling, get some help, and possibly even make some kind of an unlikely run.

That would have been true if they’d managed to beat Texas in extra-innings on Saturday, only I’m pretty sure nobody would have been going off the deep end far enough to make it necessary to fucking say so.

The Yankees have acquired RHP Ryota Igarashi off waivers from the Toronto Blue Jays.

— Mark Feinsand (@BloggingBombers) May 29, 2012

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!! [deep breath] ahhhhhhhhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Cue insufferable dickholes convinced he's going to get onto the Yankee roster and not suck, because the Jays bullpen is a wretched cursed place where no mortal can survive without contracting a desperate case of right- or left-arm shittiness.]

Hit up Getting Blanked via the official blog feed on Twitter or harass us via the standard channels (email and the like.) Or subscribe to our fancy new Youtube channel so you can bypass all this silliness and mainline the Getting Blanked good stuff. (You’ll also want to find the iTunes pages for Getting Blanked audio, Getting Blanked video, the DJF Podcast, and while you’re at it, like Getting Blanked and DJF on Facebook).

One has to imagine that if he was healthy, eternal prospect of the Blue Jays fans’ mind, Travis Snider, would be the player receiving a promotion, but alas, our lunch box hero is still attempting to get himself right after injuring his wrist earlier this season.

As for Thames, the demotion is overdue. In addition to collecting outs in more than 71% of his plate appearances, the personality plus regular was terrible in the outfield, taking paths to fly balls that would be too extensive for a shitty Family Circus cartoon to document. This, combined with power numbers that suggested Thames bat of choice was a flaccid pool noodle, put the writing on the wall for the left fielder’s immediate future.

I say immediate, because I firmly believe that Thames can be a useful contributor on a Major League roster. With a little more patience at the plate, he can certainly be a useful fourth outfielder or bench bat against right handed pitching. I just can’t see him as a regular on any roster, but the very worst.

I’m not sure that Mike McCoy offers an immediate offensive upgrade, but with Rajai Davis slowly taking playing time away from Thames and the day to day injuries with the current set of middle infielders (plus a winded bench coach who can’t play every day), McCoy will certainly be useful, even though he’s unlikely to be replacing Thames directly.

It’s a sure sign you’ve lost the plot when a shot at catching a home run ball takes precedence over celebrating the actual home run. Take, for instance, Edwin Encarnacion’s home run in the bottom of the third inning last night versus Baltimore. A fan bro seated in the first row beyond the left centerfield fence narrowly missed catching Encarnacion home run ball 16/42.

What we’ve got here is failure to celebrate. Some men, they just can’t catch. So you get what we had here last night — which is the way he wants it.

Well, he gets it.

And I don’t like it anymore than you.

Let’s take a look from a closer angle…

There’s so much going on here. First of all, I’ll forgive this 20-something for bringing his ball glove out to the game on account the undue risk to a man’s cock and balls now associated with sitting in the outfield seats. There’s also the expression of fan bro’s friend seated to his left… is this guy also devastated at the lost shot at home run ball glory, or is he an Orioles fan? Let’s not overlook the healthy feed of mockery directed at our protagonist here either… not that every ounce of it isn’t warranted.

Thanks for the GIFfable moment heads up via Twitter all-star Thomas Drance