Roy Halladay

I guess the off day, and coming home after a nine game losing streak was exactly what the Jays needed. A sweep would have been nice, but considering the circumstances, taking two of three from the Boston Red Sox and pulling within a game of them is pretty good.

There is another much needed off-day today, so our series with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim starts tomorrow at the Rogers Center. Here are the pitching match-up previews.

Roy Halladay (8-1, 2.63 ERA) vs. Joe Saunders (6-3, 3.26 ERA)

Advantage: Jays

Week Nine Rundown

Randy Johnson takes the headline for week nine with his chase for 300 wins.  He will be taking the mound on Wednesday in Washington against the horrid Nationals.  This will be his first try at reaching the milestone, after a couple tries to get to 299 wins.

On Wednesday, May 27, 2009 Randy Johnson will attempt to attain his 299th victory, bringing him within one game of 300. He would be the 24th pitcher of all time to reach such a milestone. 

The question on many minds this coming Wednesday is not "will Johnson reach 300" it is, "Will Johson be the last to reach 300?"

The Toronto Blue Jays open a series in Atlanta tonight after an extremely disappointing series against the Boston Red Sox in which they got swept. The Jays are still in first, but by just 0.5 games.

Both Robert Ray and Brett Cecil were officially sent down today, and taking their places in the rotation will be Casey Janssen and Ricky Romero. This means that Janssen will pitch Game Two of the series, and both Scott Richmond and Brian Tallet will be pushed back a day.

Game One Pitching Preview: Roy Halladay (8-1) Versus Kenshin Kawakami (2-5)

Roy Halladay earned his league leading eighth victory this afternoon in a 8-2 victory over the Chicago White Sox, putting the Jays up 3-0 in the four-game set.

The game did not start off well for Halladay, as he gave up a double to speedy leadoff hitter Scott Podsednik and was down 2-0 before the Jays were even allowed to hit.

The Jays were able to get a run back in their half of the first when Alex Rios deposited a high fastball into the left field seats for his fifth home run of the season.

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Johan Santana, CC Sabathia, Tim Lincemcum.

All three generally considered the best pitchers in the game. But with the Toronto Blue Jay’s major league best 23-12 record, we can finally put Roy Halladay into the true upper-echelon of starting pitchers.

This article is a game recap based solely on what the author has read in the game's box score. If you want to know what really happened, you can go watch SportsCenter and pray that you don't change the channel before they put on the 30 second segment of the game.

Toronto Blue jays 5, New York Yankees 1

In what was claimed to be a regular off day for New York Yankee captain, Derek Jeter, 43,000-plus Canadian conspiracy theorists at the Roger's Center weren't having any of it.

Much like the scene at the OK Corral, Roy "Doc" Halladay stood victorious. He allowed only a single run over nine innings and defeated his one time protégée A.J. Burnett 5–1 at the Rogers Centre.

It was the Jays’ first true test of the season. After going up against the likes of the Cleveland Indians and the Baltimore Orioles, they had yet to meet a team of any importance, specifically the Yanks or the Sox.

As a resident of Toronto, Canada, it has become the norm to see our teams, such as the Maple Leafs, the Raptors, the Argonauts, and the FC having what can only be called mediocre performance at best.

Yet, people have been shocked with the performance from the Toronto Blue Jays.

The point of having a conversation regarding the Jays was to help change the subject from an awkward silence. However, the Jays impressive start to the season, has many people talking instead about the performance of our city's top team.

Major League Baseball is only 30 games into its season, but we already have seen interesting—and, in some cases, controversial—story lines pop up.

We all know the big headlines have been Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez being caught with performance-enhancing drugs.

But that isn't the only good—or bad, depending on your affiliation—news we have around the league.

The AL East, AL Central, and AL West have had some surprising divisional leaders up to this point.

So who is the big winner?