How many Overbays would be enough?

This almost slipped between the cracks, but Sunday after the ball game the Blue Jays held their annual barbecue for season-ticket holders and, eventually, the team came out to sit at a long table and sign autographs for what looked like a very long line.

Four or five of the Jays, including Vernon Wells and Ricky Romero, came out wearing a Lyle Overbay uniform top turned around, with his name and number on the front.

Overbay, as everyone knows, is wildly overdue to break out of a terrible slump. He also had made a costly error in Sunday’s ninth inning during the eventual 3-1 loss to the Angels. One Blue jay official suggested this was a good team-type thing, that players were rallying around a teammate going through tough times.

The cynical among us thought it was their way of maybe avoiding signing too many autographs. Anyway, with all the whining and moaning about Blue Jays attendance, there weren’t even 15,000 in the park Sunday. Not to belabour this point, because these things go in cycles, but Baltimore drew 9,000 at home and Sunday afternoon in Cleveland, they didn’t even draw 11,000 – and nobody is saying the teams are finished there.

Go back to the 90s and the three toughest tickets in the league were Toronto, which sold out every night; Baltimore, after Camden Yards was opened; and Cleveland, which sold out the Jake constantly. They’re down now, but they’ll come back when the teams do.

And if you really want to cry about lousy attendance, wait and see what the Jays draw for these games this week at home to the Kansas City Royals. It won’t be pretty.

Comments

[Josh]

"Due to break out of a slump" is a phrase in this article. He's been in a slump for 4 years!!! Look at his batting against lefties. Look at his batting with runners in scoring position. The only difference this year is he can't hit righties or with bases empty. Imagine an organization that is paying the best pitcher in baseball $6 million to perform elsewhere, and Overpaid routinely is the automatic out in the middle of the batting order. Guys like Perkins or Griff need to stop acting as apologists for the Jays and actually do some analysis to earn their salary.

[KD]

While I was happy to see Awfulbay get those two hits last night (Monday against KC), and while I hope it's a sign of things to come, it's a long road back to respectability. These hits increased his hit total by 50%, and brought his batting average up to a 3-digit number. He was getting close to having his uniform number as high as his batting average. Seriously though, we can pick on Lyle all we want, but he's not the only problem - this team has 7 players (4 regulars) batting less than 0.200, and another 3 below .250, which is what I would consider "marginally respectable". Good thing the pitching has been solid - even Camp has been surprisingly good so far.