I know what you’re thinking. The team from up north is a bunch of impostors, birds with their wings clipped but pretending to be predatory. They’re a paltry 4-5 against other teams from the AL East, and that includes a 1-5 record against the two stalwarts of the division, New York and Boston. After a sweep of the Jays by the Red Sox, Boston is only a half-game back of the division lead. The Jays have chewed up the AL Central and West and are doing the baseball equivalent of throwing sandbags up against a breached levee. Eventually, it will break, and the Jays will float back to .500.

I’m not buying it yet.

Every team goes through swoons. As I write this, the Yankees are on a nine-game winning streak. The Red Sox have won something like 13 of their last 15 at home. Consistency is definitely the name of the game in the MLB season. I find it very hard to believe that a team like the Jays, who were the best team in the AL for most of the first quarter of the season, would crumble and blow away after a slightly rocky May.

What you’re seeing here is the good teams exploiting the weaknesses of the Jays, namely their starting pitching. It’d be a fool’s errand to think players like Robert Ray, Brett Cecil, and Brian Tallet (the three starters of this Boston/Toronto series) are going to put up great numbers throughout the remainder of the year. One or two of them, maybe, and even that would be an unexpected surprise. For the Jays to really compete, they need their opening day starting five to be healthy and pitching up to their potential.

That means they need Litsch back. They need Romero to return. If they could squeeze in Janssen or McGowan at all this year, all the better. Roy Halladay (8-1, Cy Young favorite?) can’t do it all himself.

The young players and future stars of this team (e.g. Adam Lind, Travis Snider) are going to falter, along with the young pitching, on the road every once in a while. Fenway is not an easy place to pitch, and that’s a credit to the raucous New England crowds that come out every game. You might take note of that, Ontario natives.

While relief hasn’t quite yet arrived (and probably won’t until the beginning of June), it’s not time to hit the panic button in Toronto. It’s not even an option. The bats will pick up – 5 runs in a series is not a new pattern, it’s an aberration – and yes, we will win a series or two against the big guns. The baseball season has a flow similar to that of an NBA playoff game. Teams will go on “runs” and build up leads. The veteran teams will chip away at that lead little by little until they’re within striking distance. They will attack when given opportunities. They will exploit known weaknesses and cover their own. And at the end of the year, there will be a flurry, a fantastic finish, that will leave us all breathless. Let’s not throw up our hands at the end of the first quarter and determine the fight over.

I’m personally attending next week’s game against Baltimore – if everything stays on track, Roy Halladay should be the starting pitcher. I’ll try and get some quality snapshots from where I’m parked (left field seats, pretty close to the field). Maybe I’ll catch a long ball, too. If you spy me at the Yards, I’ll be the one in the black Jays hat cheering like crazy for every Doc strikeout, every Overbay double, every Wells long ball.

Holler, Canada.