J.P. Arencibia should have a big head. He's hitting .323 as the Jays travel to Fenway Park.
Win one for the JEFfer?
That might be the war cry for J.P. Arencibia and the Blue Jays as they head into Fenway Park, where their rookie manager, John Edward Farrell, was the Red Sox pitching coach for three seasons.
If there’s any extra incentive to latch onto in the next 10 days, the Jays should cling to it like a Barry Bonds’ alibi. They play four games in Beantown against The Best Boston Red Sox Team Ever — who just happen to be 2-9 — before returning home to face the hated Yankees and the Rays next week. That’s nine games against the AL East. If the Jays (6-6) can go 6-3, they should be happy.
Scary thing about the Red Sox is that you know they’re going to bust out at some point. The Jays just hope they wait until next week to do it. Boston is off to its worst start in 15 years. Terry Francona’s team lost their first six games and no AL East team has ever made the playoffs doing that.
Friday’s series opener features two struggling and winless pitchers both with 7.20 ERAs. For the Jays it’s Brett Cecil (0-1) and for Boston it’s Clay Buchholz (0-2). Hmmmm…. think we’ll see some runs?
On Wednesday, Arencibia was sitting dead on .300 when he came up to the plate in the eighth inning. He’d gone 0-for-3 against the Mariners, following an 0-for-3 performance on Tuesday night. The kid kept the average up there, though, bouncing a groundball into leftfield, scoring Travis Snider from second and capping an 8-3 win for Toronto. The Jays snapped a four-game skid as Marc Rzepczynski (1-0) got the victory in relief of Kyle Drabek.
MORE DJPATCW*
Days 11-12: Swinging and missing
Days 7-10: Not going to Disney World
Day 6: Running and gunning
Day 5: OK, Blue Jays
Day 4: No post (off-day)
Day 3: Rope burn
Day 2: Call him Johnny Bench
Day 1: Opening Day hero
J.P. Arencibia 2011 Season Stats:
Avg.: .323
H: 10
R: 3
AB: 31
HR: 2
RBI: 6
*The Daily J.P. Arencibia to Cooperstown Watch predicts the Miami-born Blue Jay will be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2033, after a 17-plus-year career spent entirely in Toronto, except for a brief stint with his hometown Florida Marlins that goes awry when he realizes the benefit of the American League’s DH rule for guys like him and the value of the Canadian dollar that will be worth twice as much as the greenback by the quarter-century mark. He belts 440 home runs, evoking Toronto’s latitude (44 degrees north) and tops the homer record for a catcher by roughly 50. He also becomes the first Toronto celebrity to have an entire sorority house at U of T named after him for reasons we will leave to your imagination and captures three MVP awards, two World Series rings and the hearts of more than a few aging Justin Bieber fans, and inspires a good number of fantasy baseball geeks that it’s okay to have a crush on a guy.
Adrian Brijbassi 
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