Game 4 – Baserunning

Took awhile for the Jays offence to kick in but after Stairs’ HR, and some BB’s they managed to give Marcum some support. The Hill 1B in the 6th was about the longest 1B I have ever seen and further more it didn’t even advance the runner from 2nd. Overbay kind of got caught not knowing what the call was on the flyball that Ellsbury dropped. The issue was whether Ellsbury had control of the ball and then hit the wall causing the ball to be jarred loose. The key in those situations when you are running is find the umpire. B/c the ball was hit so deep what Overbay could have done was stay closer to 2nd. If the ball is caught he is close enough to the bag to tag up advance, if it drops in he would more than likely still be able to score. And in this case since he didn’t know whether it was ruled a catch or not, he could have tagged anyways and that way at least advanced 1 base.

That was the 1st time Overbay should have scored. The 2nd came on the next play, but this one wasn’t Overbay’s fault. Scutaro sent a base hit into LF and Ramirez basically conceded the run but Pevey put on the stop sign. I’ll cut Pevey some slack b/c he is new, but he also sent a runner in NY that would have been out had Abreu made a decent throw. I for one liked Butterfield as a 3rd base coach, he always seemed to be aggressive at the right time. The Jays can only hope Pevey has a quick learning curve.

Interesting to note Gibbons used Tallet in the 8th knowing he would be facing 4 RH’s, I assume Gibbons figured they would PH Crisp if he went to Tallet. I think Gibbons is too easy to dismiss certain pitchers after 1 or 2 bad outings, specifically Frasor and League. Last year Frasor was very good for the 1st month as the setup guy before he got moved into the closer role. After a couple rough outings I understand taking him out of the closer’s role, but he was basically buried the rest of the year despite pitching well. Yes Accardo and Janssen were doing well in their roles, but Frasor didn’t even get a shot at getting back to say the 7th inning setup guy instead having to settle for pitching in games they are losing. As for League, you can write off all last year b/c of the injury. If you go back to 2006 after they changed League’s arm slot and they were getting move movement on his fastball and he wasn’t throwing as hard, he was very good in the 2nd half the 7th inning guy in front of Speier and Ryan and even the 8th inning guy in Sept. when Speier went out. Now I’m not saying he should automatically be given the setup role but I think you have to give him the chance to prove that he is back to 2006 form. He’s too good to toil away at the end of the bullpen.

Now for some stats:
NAdv: Wells (2), Rios (1)
Pitching NAdv: Wakefield, Delcarmen
WG: Scutaro (2)
ME(r): Overbay (1)