[flames_1987]

Overly-sensational title? You bet your right nut it is. Because apparently that’s the game we’re playing today, as whoever provided the title for whatever #### dribbled out of Richard Griffin’s mouth and into the pages of this morning’s Toronto Star.
“Blue Jays home opener loss an ominous sign,” we’re told, as Griffin queues up to make a play for the title of this city’s Media King of Stoking the Flames of ####ing Stupidity. “Troubling,” he calls last night’s performance. “A disturbing development.” The Jays now “must be concerned about their closer and his psyche.”
Right, because it isn’t blindingly goddamn obvious that anybody ready to make wild pronouncements a month into a 162 game season– let alone after four ####ing games– is either genuinely stupid, or genuine keen to employ the classic trolling techniques of Damien Cox, baiting readers and bloggers into angrily driving traffic towards whatever preposterous thing they’re pretending to believe.

“There are signs of trouble for the inexperienced closer, who has only been pitching professionally since 2009 and had logged only logged 28.2 innings before making the majors,” he writes, adding to an unspoken, asinine theme throughout the piece: you should have listened to ol’ Griff when he was dispensing easily-torched traditionalist horse#### about the club needing to get a proven closer this winter. (Also, we’re now supposed to be unduly scared that the arm of a converted position player may turn to dust at any moment, apparently.)
“Every aspect of Monday’s game should have been in the home team’s favour,” he later adds, conveniently forgetting to notice that THEY’D EACH PLAYED THREE GAMES AT THAT POINT. “The Jays’ three games in Cleveland resulted in two wins, while the Sox were being battered by the Tigers in Motown. The Sox bullpen was the one that was a mess.”
I mean… I understand Griffin has a job to do and maybe can’t tell all his readers that what’s happening day-to-day doesn’t really mean a whole lot for a month, but for #### sakes. What do you even say to that?
No, Santos hasn’t pitched well. He’s looked like he’s overthrowing, and to say he hasn’t had great command is an understatement. Last night he left a ball up that Pedroia pounced on, he missed so badly on the pitch to Gonzalez you see in the screen grab above that it’s hard to fault JP Arencibia for not being able to keep it in front of him. But he could have. Just as he could have managed to get his glove on Jose Bautista’s throw to the plate when the go-ahead run scored, and Bautista himself could have made a better throw.
Ahh, but there is to be only one villain in the tiny minds of the tools who’ve elevated the save– and now the blown save– into something intelligent fans are going to have to keep on bashing their heads against… at least until Santos settles down and pitches the way anybody who’s not an idiot knows he is fully capable of. It’s more of the same, they cry, as if there’s some sort of curse on the Jays bullpen. April wins count too, they’ll sputter, and the Jays are pissing away games letting their best reliever pitch!
We know, losses are bad and last night’s was a punch in the gut. But… it’s baseball. The best teams lose upwards of 70 times, and Santos will be fine. Just like Frank Francisco was fine. Simmer the #### down, please.

http://blogs.thescore.com/djf/2012/0...unkJaysFans%29