The Blue Jays beat Boston 2-1 yesterday, as Gustavo Chacin outpitched Daisuke Matsuzaka in his Canadian debut.
Matsuzaka pitched outstanding, striking out 10 in 6 innings against an ailing, but still very potent, Toronto lineup. Despite leading the league in batting average, the Jays were only able to get three hits off Dice-K. The Jays were able to touch up Daisuke for two runs in the fourth, thanks to an infield hit by Wells, a walk to Frank Thomas, a single by Overbay, and two more walks. That was it offensively for the Jays. However, that fourth inning was all they would need.
Toronto's pitching was spectacular. Gustavo Chacin allowed only one run in his 6 2/3 innings, allowing 6 hits and no walks. The Venzuelan pitched a game that was so smooth it could have been from one of the other great Venzuelan pitchers: Johan Santana, Carlos Zambrano, or last week's Dice-K dominator, Felix Hernandez. Venzuelan pitchers may not get as much attention as Dominican hitters, or the recent Asian imports, but right now they are the most dominating subset in baseball.
Casey Janssen deserves props for a solid inning of relief, and when he left with two outs in the eighth Jason Frasor stepped up and finished the game, getting the last four outs with no problems (8 pitches it took, in fact). He got David Ortiz to groundout in a critical junction in the 8th, with two out and two on. In doing so he earned his first save of the season.
Interesting sidenote on Yankees DH/1B Josh Phelps, a former Jay: On Wednesdays The Toronto Star runs a column of letters written to baseball columnist Richard Griffen. Today he field a question about Josh Phelps, and why he has bounced around baseball as much as he has. Here's his response:
"As for why Phelps has bounced around and what happened to his production, there are some theories. As a minor-leaguer, Phelps was a tall, skinny, gangly catcher. As a major-leaguer he was built like a brick pagoda, packing on pounds of muscle in a short period of time. He was never a warm and fuzzy personality in the clubhouse and ended up not really having a defensive position at which he was proficient. He seems leaner now, which may be attributed to a changed training regimen...or something else. In any case, the Yankee clubhouse is a perfect spot for misfits."
The not-too-subtle implication is that Phelps is a steroids user. Which is fine with SML, since SML suspects all baseball players of using steroids, so one more to add to the list of players not associated with steroids nearly enough (which includes Clemens, the Gile brothers, Nomar, Todd Helton and now Josh Phelps). Of course, that last line - "...the Yankee clubhouse is a perfect spot for misfits." - sounds like a weird mix of sour grapes and another not so veiled steroid accusation. Now if only beat writers like Griffen had the balls to speak up and call out names, instead of villifying one or two big names that not coincidentally the media has always had it out for since they entered the major leagues....
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