Before a short two-gamer against the division rival Blue Jays, I thought we should catch up on how the first weeks of the season have treated them. Tom Dakers was kind enough to respond -
1. What happened against Boston? Three runs in three games?
Sure, they just talk me off the ledge and you bring it back up....
Just your basic weekend from hell. The team couldn't hit, couldn't pitch and couldn't play defense. Unfortunately there isn't much more to the game than that. The amazing thing isn't that we lost 3 of 4 games, it is that we won one of them.
I try to remind myself that teams aren't as bad as they look when they lose or as good as they look when they win. No team could be as bad as we looked on the weekend.
2. Who is the ace of the staff, now and in five years?
Now the ace is Ricky Romero, though if Brandon Morrow can pitch like he did after the first month of last season, he can give Ricky a run for his money.
In five years? Kyle Drabek looks like a good bet, though we have a lot of good looking prospects in the minor league system and Ricky Romero is young and still will be around.
3. I know it's just 16 games, but who is Toronto's MVP so far?
At the moment, likely Yunel Escobar. He is hitting .333/.414/.563 and playing what would be Gold Glove defense if they didn't hand it to Derek Jeter every year.
Jose Bautista is also having a good start to the season, .306/.443/.510 and likely will be the team MVP by the end of the season.
4. How does the Roy Halladay trade look right now? Who won?
The Phillies got Halladay, so they won. But Kyle Drabek looks like he'll be a good starter for us. Travis d'Arnaud is a good catching prospect. The third piece we got for Doc was Michael Taylor who was flipped for Brett Wallace who we kept for a few months before trading him for Anthony Gose. Gose is a CF prospect with amazing speed, I saw him this spring and he covers a ton of ground in CF and likely could steal 50 plus bases in the majors. He is young and will need a couple of years to round out his game but I think he'll be a good one.
Thanks, Tom.