Well Mr Marcum, that didn't smell very acey, Cecil announces himself, Kyle Phillips makes a late move

I'm not saying Marcum sucks, I'm just saying calling him the "ace" or even making a big deal of the fact that he's the acclaimed opening day starter is pretty dumb. He couldn't even make it to the 6th inning today. I'm sure there's a good reason, he was probably throwing nothing but changeups or something. But still any talk beyond "we hope he makes it through the regular season healthy", especially in spring training is just dumb, dumb, dumb.


Overbay suffered some kind of injury that knocked him out in the top of the first. Hopefully not serious.


Very nice outing by Cecil today. I assume he was throwing curvy stuff. I think I hope he starts in AAA and pitches great and gets called up when there is an opportunity to start. I worry he'll get stuck in the bullpen doing nothing if he makes the big club.


Any news on Morrow throwing in the bullpen today, did the arm stay attached?


Kyle Phillips with 4RBI and a HR today. Don't think he's going to unseat McCoy though in the "has to make the team gone by may sweepstakes".


You know none of either Bautista, Ruiz or McCoy is likely going to have an above average MLB career. But if even one does it would boost the Jays futures immeasurably. 

Wherein I try to avoid wrecking the whole purpose of this blog

Knowing that I have forsworn Bastian for at least a week, and I'm not supposed to be doing media criticism, I promise I did not read this article, but only the headline, and just skimmed it. I also know that Bastian doesn't write the headline. BUT. Come on people, neither of these guys has even started 30 games in a single season yet (yes I know Romero got 29 starts last season, maybe i would set some different goalposts in this ridiculous rhetorical contraption if it wasn't somebody else's). Neither of these guys is an "ace" by any reasonable standard. Now you want to imply there's some controversy over who the ace is?

I have no idea how the rest of the idiot media is handling this, i just fear it isn't any better. I can only hope that this will contribute somehow to them all going away if they are doing it as stupidly.

The Jays have an Ace!

Well  nobody's saying it yet, but after Marcum's 3IP yesterday everybody seems to be sure he's the opening day starter. 2 weeks ago this was a team in the dire straits of having not even a opening day starter, so it shouldn't take any time at all for people to start proclaiming him the ace.

I don't know what's going on in the broader media with this, but it is one of many things that I wish people would get their head straight about. I think Shaun Marcum would just like to prove to himself that he can stay healthy for a whole season while pitching 200+ innings, and really I don't think he should try to get there until next season. I think a nice 25 start year would be great! Maybe he'll have only 1 trip to the DL for something small! Awesome!

I think this is the kind of thing where poorly managed public expectations can really become a problem. If this "Marcum for ace" stuff starts to get out of hand, and he has a good April and May say, X-1 with a ERA in the 2's, things could get silly. By September he could be trying to gasp and wheeze himself to the end of the year in some vain attempt to win 16 games because that's what an ace would do. If things go generally crappy with the rest of  the team there really could be pressure for this. Will that damage him in the future? I don't now, he has pitched close to 200 innings in a season before, but is it worth the risk?

I think it would be a lot better if the team was saying he's just another guy and it doesn't matter who starts the 1st game (because really it doesn't), maybe even that he's going to only get 25 starts and that's it.

Makes a good argument for my 6 starter approach I think.