Ben Schulman

I'm doing well.

If you thought that, that loss last night was ugly.

Now you get to look at me.

So things can get a little bit worse for you, but I appreciate you having me on.

I might, I might like just for men mind, just to look like yours a little bit, like get a little fake gruff going for me.

I feel like it's something that might work.

yeah you know i might loop in he's maybe not quite the defender that that jimenez is but i think at third base they've been pretty happy with what okamoto has provided them defensively but yeah it's overall team-wise it's just not been the defensive group that i think a lot of people would have projected going into the year some of that is due to guys who are not on the roster but like you said i mean valenzuela's filled in pretty well and you might have argued that kirk would have been the biggest defensive loss they could have had

It's been a couple other spots where they haven't been able either to replicate production last year or which I think is the bigger problem.

The second problem is because certain guys are down and certain guys are maybe not producing offensively.

The Blue Jays have to create lineups with this sole idea in my mind of putting as much offense out there as possible.

And again,

Because of that, they're not necessarily putting out their top defensive lineups or even really their medium defensive lineups.

They're just selling out for offense, which I totally understand.

But that leaves you in a situation where, very unlike the Blue Jays the last couple of years, they might have a couple guys on the field at once that are really a lot more known for their bat than they are for their glove.

And when they're not getting, you know, a ton of strikeouts, which they actually are striking out a lot of guys as an overall staff, but some of the pitchers that they have healthy and active right now are pitching to some weak contact pretty effectively.

You still need your defense to bail you out.

So you put all that together.

And then I thought yesterday, Kevin Barker mentioned this on Jay's talk as well.

that the Blue Jays aren't hitting that much.

So every time you make a defensive mistake, it costs you a whole game too.