2 games - 2 solid efforts

Overall, the Blue Jays fan has to be pleased with the effort put forth by the club in their first two games of the season. The performances of the two starting pitchers were absolutely stellar (Marcum) and solid (Tallet). On Monday, Marcum briefly flirted with history, almost joining Bob Feller as just the second pitcher in major league history to throw a no-hitter on opening day as he took the no-no into the 7th inning. Gritty as usual, Brian Tallet battled through 6 2/3 innings. He had to deal with some poor defence behind him, and a little hiccup in the 4th inning giving up back-to-back home runs, on back-to-back pitches to Vlad Guerrero and Nelson Cruz.

Offensively, Vernon Wells has (surprisingly) been the story for the Jays so far. The wrist must be feeling better for Wells because now he's making solid contact with the ball as opposed to getting under the ball, popping it up, and slamming his bat down in frustration - a sight that was all too familiar last year. Wells has gone 5 for 7 so far, with 3 home runs and 6 RBI - most definitely doing his job so far as the cleanup hitter. Given that Wells never blamed his wrist last year for his performance, it is doubtful now that he will attribute his performance to a healthy wrist. Wells will most likely never live up to his rich, back-loaded, 7-year, $126M contract, but if the wrist his 100% healthy, I would predict him having a season that the average Jays fan can be very pleased with.

If these two games were played with Vernon Wells circa 2009, the Jays probably lose these two games. Taking a cursory look over the box scores from the last 2 days, you may think that the Jays received some timely hitting with runners in scoring position given that today in particular, the Jays scored 7 runs with just 5 hits. But in fact, the Jays actually went 1 for 13 with RISP. But when you're hitting 5 HRs, 3 coming courtesy of your cleanup hitter, and when you make the opposing team pay when they make mistakes (walks), you put yourself in a very good position to win (as long as your closer doesn't blow a save).

Canadian pitcher, Rich Harden, looked dominant and out-of-place all at the same time on Wednesday night. It's not often that you see a pitcher rack up 8 strikeouts over just 3 2/3 innings. (5 of the first 6 outs for Harden were recorded by way of the K). The walks killed the Rangers' first two pitchers of the day - Harden & Dustin Nippert - who walked 9 collectively over 6 1/3 innings. Back-to-back bases loaded walks surrendered by Harden to Snider and Bautista in the 4th marked the end of the day for the Canuck.

So far, so good. Don't get too excited, don't write them off. Just sit back and enjoy some baseball

Reasonable and rational comments are always welcome.