The 2013 baseball season in Toronto started amid great promise and fan fare. Baseball prognosticators from coast to coast were pencilling the Blue Birds in as perennial American League Champions and some went so far as to anoint the 2013 version of the Blue Jays as World Series Champions. Well now that the season is underway, the optimism that surrounded the team on opening day has given way to despair as injuries and lackluster performances have taken center stage.

The big-name off-season acquisitions have thus far disappointed. R.A. Dickey, Mark Buehrle and Josh Johnson have one combined win, while holdover from last season Brenden Morrow is still winless on the season. As a pitching staff, their ERA is an atrocious 6.83 with a horrific 1.78 WAR. Buehrle and Johnson are the biggest offenders as they each carry an ERA over 10.00.

This was not the kind of pitching that general manager Alex Anthopoulos was anticipating through the first 12 games of the season. Perhaps expectations were too high for this group coming in. One must remember that both Johnson and Buerhle were acquired from the Florida Marlins and together they combined for a 21-27 record in 2012. Dickey on the other hand was lights-out for the New York Mets last season and did manage to post 20 wins; however, his switch to the American League East does not necessarily translate to similar like success.

Entering the 2012 season, Dickey had a career record of 41-50. Now I realize that he reinvented himself as a knuckleballer and those career numbers are not indicative of his pitching as a knuckler, but still a career record of nine games under .500 shouldn’t be embraced with such euphoria. Also, working to Dickey’s disadvantage is the fact that of all divisions in baseball who are most familiar with facing knuckleballs would have to be the AL East. Tim Wakefield pitched for the Boston Red Sox for 16 years and as a result hitters throughout the American League and especially in AL East got intimately familiar with trying to hit the knuckler.

The woes of the Blue Jays cannot be borne solely by the pitching staff. The injury bug has struck the Jays lineup as Jose Reyes is out for a couple months with a severely sprained ankle and Brett Lawrie is just easing back into extended spring training action after suffering an oblique strain in the World Baseball Classic.

I’m not sure what Reyes was doing on that stolen base attempt, there is no reason to look back at the catcher so late in the steal attempt. If a base runner is going to sneak a peek at the pitch or the catcher it is done early in the attempt, not six feet from the base. If Reyes just steals the bag normally, he slides to the bag in stride and there is no issue. The fact that he got caught up in his steps and miss-timed the slide caused him to roll over his back ankle as he attempted to slide too close to the base. Check out this video of the play and you will agree with me. Reyes was the most productive offensive player on the roster and he was the true table-setter for the rest of the lineup, his absence will be sorely missed.

The rest of the order is not getting the job done. Jose Bautista is off to a slow start as he has a whopping seven hits in 35 at-bats, while Edwin Encarnacion has struggled to get six hits in 45 at-bats. Melky Cabrera is hitting for average but it would seem that without his “Canseco shakes” his power has vacated him; he has zero home runs, zero doubles and one RBI on the season. If this kind of power-outage continues then it will be a very long and painful season in Toronto.

Granted, no World Series are won in April, but they can be lost. Upside for the Jays is that they are only 2.0 games out of first place after twelve games and they have managed to go .500 over their last ten games. If the pitching doesn’t get on track and the hitting doesn’t come around then the postseason aspirations will be shot by the all-star break. Should this ensemble of talent fall completely flat on their face the Jays could be sellers come trade deadline as there are no Jays under contract with no-trade clauses.