Day 4 pick: Toronto under 86.5
First, a little family background. My sister-in-law is pregnant with her second child. When my wife and I found out we asked our 2-year-old daughter whether she thought it was going to be a boy or a girl, and she said boy no matter how many different ways we asked her. We found out last week that she was right -- I'm going to have a little nephew in a few months. So congrats and good luck to Carrie and Chris.
Sitting at lunch today and looking at two different plays I liked in this spot, I decided to put my daughter on the spot and see what she thought. She very definitively said she didn't like the Tigers over 86.5, but that she liked Toronto under that same number. And I asked her several times and always got the same answers, so that's what I'm going with. (It's getting hard to find numbers I like, as you can tell.)
So why Toronto under 86.5? Other than my firm belief in my daughter's precognition, how about the Blue Jays' manager, who seems to enjoy getting into fights with his players. John Gibbons challenged Shea Hillenbrand to a fistfight in front of the entire team last year and then actually came to blows with Ted Lilly in the tunnel after taking him out of a game in the middle of an inning. Don't be surprised if his act starts to wear a little thin with the players this year.
In picking the Rangers yesterday, I mentioned how much I liked the addition of Frank Catalanotto. Conversely for Toronto, I don't like the loss of Frank Catalanotto. There's no significant pitching to speak of after the first two starters, Roy Halladay and A.J. Burnett (and both of those players have injury histories to boot). The Red Sox should be better than last year (their over-under number is a hard one to call at 90.5), meaning it's going to be tougher for the Jays to get back to the 87 wins they put up in 2006.
Plus, there's a chance Victor Zambrano will be in the starting rotation within a couple of months.
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tjfurman) wrote,
