Tower Talk August 7, 2013: Josh Johsnon Doesn’t Suck?

Late last night I was laying in bed, watching the Toronto Blue Jays face off against the Seattle Mariners. It quickly became clear to me that something was up however, as Johnson repeatedly got batters out, putting up 5 shutout innings, while being staked a lead by his teammates that managed several hits with runners in scoring position.

I must have fallen asleep right? This is all some wonderful dream? There’s no way that Josh Johnson aka the worst pitcher in all of baseball according to Twitter could turn things around. No one could have seen this coming *cough*click the link*cough*.

Johnson finally had a decent outing, throwing 5 innings of shutout ball giving up 5 hits, walking 2 and striking out 5. Not the dominating stuff we had come to expect from Johnson entering this season, but a definite and substantial improvement over what we’ve seen. In the span of 5 innings Johnson went from “send him to the bullpen” to “we can offer him a qualifying offer right”.

Blue Jays

Josh Johnson pitched well and the Blue Jays lit up Felix Hernandez, but it all happened on the west coast so if the game went on past your bed time check out Richard Griffin’s recap.

In case you didn’t know, Colby Rasmus can play some serious baseball. Last night Rasmus made this gorgeous catch at the wall to rob Kendry Morales of a hit.

Also at the

Toronto Star,

we’re told that

is set to make his return to the mound for the Blue Jays on Wednesday night, his first start since a scary incident where he took a line drive off of the temple. The way the Blue Jays pitchers have fared this season Happ might as well be

circa 2000 with the boost he can provide.

At Bluebird Banter, Blue Jays prospect Johnny Anderson takes a stab at being a scribe and gives us a Dirk Hayhurst like peer into the world of minor league baseball.

At DJF Stoeten gives us a trifecta of good reads, starting with his latest hijacking of the Griff Bag; he also takes a look at some tidbits from Keith Law’s latest chat, and gives us some miscellaneous thoughts from the weekend.

Maple Leafs

Pension Plan Puppets are giving us the Top 25 Leafs Under 25 leading up to the NHL Season, up today is #24 on the list, Viktor Lööv. Taken in the 7th Round of the 2012 Draft, he will be 21 years old this season playing his second season playing in the Allsvenskan, Sweden`s second division, and impressive feat for a youngster.

In other news, the Nazem Kadri/Cody Franson watch is still on full alert, with non-MLSE like moratorium on rumours and whispers. I’ll take this as Nonis and company thinking leaking numbers to the public would be counter intuitive here.

Raptors

The Raptors schedule as officially been released, and RaptorBlog breaks it down for us. I’m not normally one to care about something like the schedule being released but there’s not much else going on in Raptor Land these days, so here we are.

TFC

Kurtis Larson at the Toronto Sun thinks the TFC need to look past their Friday friendly against AC Roma to fully focus on their Saturday match against the Seattle Sounders. I can’t say that I disagree, 3 straight matches where they manage to take 3 points would be a huge (if only moral) victory for this franchise

Argos

Ricky Ray was officially cleared to play in the Argos next game against the Alouettes. I was hoping to see Zach Collaros again just to see if he could repeat his performance and give the Argos a slightly better feel for what they have. Alas, a healthy Ricky Ray is better for the team right now.

Bills

NFL.com tells us that the Bills plan on running CJ Spiller “until he pukes” this season. While from a fantasy perspective, if I own Spiller this great news, as a Bills fan I wonder how wise this strategy is when they have a capable back up to split carries in Fred Jackson. When you have two RBs that good, why not keep them fresh?

ProFootballFocus gives us their Bills preview, going over the good and the bad that Doug Marrone and his new coaching staff have to work with in their first season on the job.

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