I've been a little busy and frankly, not in the mood to write about this team. But they have been scoring runs, so I guess I better do something. 31 innings without a run???

That unassisted triple play on Monday was pretty neat, except for the fact that it happened against my team and basically illustrates how low the Jays have fallen in the baseball karma department. Like seriously. Although, Shaun Marcum is some kind of karmic retribution. What a performance. I knew he was going to be fun, but I never expected this much fun.

A few mysterious things happened in last night's game versus the Twins. One was Sportsnet's graphic on Matt Stairs and homeruns with the hilarious title "I like...Twins", which was immediately followed by a Stairs HR. He does like twins. Second, was Gibby (more on him in a tick) pulling a low pitch count, cruising Litsch seemingly early. It turned out ok, but it was weird. Third, was Gardenhire's decision to IBB Rios, still a sometime resident of the Forest of Suck, to face Rolen, the Messiah, with the bases loaded. I literally said, "They are walking Rios to pitch to Jesus?" Much like the Litsch thing, it turned out alright (Rolen striking out), but it was a weird call from the Twins bench.

On Gibbons: Parkes over at Drunk Jays Fans, wrote a very interesting piece on silliness of firing managers which sparked a long debate in the comment section. More comments than I have ever gotten , but what else is new.

Managers most definitely have an influence on a team, just as a retail manager has on a store, a prinicipal in a school, a manager of a department in a company. A manager will completely set the tone. I don't know if Gibbons is having a positive or negative effect on the team, nobody is really talking about it. The team is losing because they are not hitting. They didn't hit last year either, at least not consistently.

The only thing I really know about Jimy Williams' clubhouse was what I read in David Wells' book. Boomer describes the clubhouse as being psychological warfare. Jimy Williams lost George Bell, who then got all the Latin guys on his side against Williams. Those guys isolated themselves, by lockering together and speaking only in Spanish. In that case, Williams had a negative effect on the clubhouse.