Towers....

[d_umengan]

If the jays are serious about making a penant run this year.. they definately can't afford to be givin up sure loss every time around the pitching rotation...

towers has been hit hard and for a lot of runs on all 5 of his starts.. and just does not seem to be a major league starter right now.. sure he's faced the yankees and the bosox lately... but thats the reality of our division... hes gonna have to face those two teams a handful of times this season cause of the scheduling

i dont even think they can send him to the bullpen cause even if he were to be in for spot relief.. hed still be hamered for a few runs

send him down... get some pitchin coaches on him and let him develope and come in when we have an injury

as for a replacement starter... if burnett, lily, halladay, chacin can stay in there... they can fill the 5th spot with that new kid jansen...

[starkeeper]

The Jays spotted him 2 runs in the first against Johnson and he still gave it back. Not just with poor pitching, but with little league fielding. He blew a sure out and maybe even a double play just by not knowing what to do with the ball when it was hit to him.

With Towers taking a regular turn the jays will wear out their bullpen and take a loss almost every time.

He's gotta go!!

[Chris from NY]

I'm starting to lose paitence with Towers. I'm hoping he can turn it around but I don't want him to cost the Jays games while he's turning it around. Some sort of change has to be made and quick.

[Big_Mac]

i have a feeling that towers is going to be dfa once burnett gets of the dl. 0-5 for a team with an offense like ours and hopes like us is inexcusable.

[WinnipegJaysFan]

I know it's easy (and convenient) to say now, but I have personally never been sold on Towers. He's not overpowering, has very little movement on any of his pitches...I say give him one more chance, and if he's mucks it up...:waving

[starkeeper]

There is his one more chance.:waving J.P. has got to make a move with this guy, even for his own good. What kind of confidence can he have now?
Syracuse for a spell would be good for him and for the jays. I don't know what options there are, other than minor league call ups, but how much worse can it be?

[Reed Johnson]

if only Towers could have won at least 2 of his games we would be in first! He really needs to be sent down because im really not liking him right now.

[Chris from NY]

Gibbons and Riccardi have to do somethin and fast. I don't care how well he pitched last year, right now he's costing tohe Jays games and is clearly a weak point on the team.

[Brad Chadford]

if only Towers could have won at least 2 of his games we would be in first! He really needs to be sent down because im really not liking him right now.

2006 stats for Dave Bush with the Brewers:

W L ERA G GS CG SHO IP H R ER HR BB SO
2 3 3.86 6 6 1 1 42.0 35 19 18 4 6 32

So you're saying we traded the wrong guy?

[Big_Mac]

those numbers on bush are good. i knew he was doing well but not that well, i am surprised to tell you the truth. i guess maddux is working his wonders with him in milwaukee. mike is the 2nd best pitching coach in the game imo.

oh ya, towers, get rid of him, i'd rather have mr. bean pitch. you got mcgowan up, lets use him for something productive instead of mop-up duty.

[Brad Chadford]

those numbers on bush are good. i knew he was doing well but not that well, i am surprised to tell you the truth. i guess maddux is working his wonders with him in milwaukee. mike is the 2nd best pitching coach in the game imo.

oh ya, towers, get rid of him, i'd rather have mr. bean pitch. you got mcgowan up, lets use him for something productive instead of mop-up duty.

The best being who? Leo Mazzone? IYO...

We've got McGowan up and also Scott Downs who has certainly been a more effective starter than Towers.

[Reed Johnson]

2006 stats for Dave Bush with the Brewers:

W L ERA G GS CG SHO IP H R ER HR BB SO
2 3 3.86 6 6 1 1 42.0 35 19 18 4 6 32

So you're saying we traded the wrong guy?

Yes. Despite Bush;s slow start last year it wasn't as bad as Towers is this year and Bush came back from AAA and pitched much better! He actually looked good near the end of the season last year.

[Big_Mac]

[QUOTE=Brad Chadford]The best being who? Leo Mazzone? IYO...
QUOTE]

ya, i should have been more specific.

i dont believe either that we could habve traded towers to the brew crew instead of bush, i dont believe they would have done that.

i saw last night as well that they will stick with towers, for at least one more start. id just really hate to lose the division by a few games and we have a 0-10 pitcher.

[starkeeper]

I think that Gibbons pulled the plug on Towers a little early last night.
If he had left him in another inning or so there would have been a better indicator as to what to do with him. He pitched well for the first few and made a couple of mistakes in the fourth.
It just shows that Gibbons is starting to get frustrated with him just like most of the rest of us.
I really hope he pulls out of this funk.

[Chris from NY]

You'd think because he's been fairly patient with him so far that he would have let Towers tough this one out a bit longer considering he pitched decent for the most part.

[d_umengan]

i think gibbons made the right call... u get what u can outta towers... once he starts making mistakes... it doesn't take long for the whole thing to fall apart.. take him out before he self destructs

[starkeeper]

Big game for Josh tonight in Colorado. He better be on it in Denver. The thin air will make for a homer fest if he's not. I really hope he does well.

[starkeeper]

Towers has to go!! I don't know where or what the options are, but he cannot continue in the rotation at this level of performance. Perhaps a stint in the bullpen, but this has got to stop.:eek:

[starkeeper]

HELLO!! How much longer????

1 2/3 innings 6 hits 4 runs!!!

They have to pull him to salvage his career let alone the team's record.

Thank goodness the bullpen and the offense is helping out so far tonight!!

[Roy31]

Send frasor back down too while were at it. What a freaking bum...

[starkeeper]

Towers has been called up for the start in Atlanta on Tuesday evening.
Lilly asked for an extra day because of a sore shoulder, so Towers gets the call. Burnett gets the call on Thursday.

[Jays4life]

The orginal I idea was to get a pylon, but the pylon they had recruited was busy making sure nobody stepped in a puddle of water. Josh Towers was the next best they could find on such short notice.

Honestly I'm hyped up about this match. Josh Towers is 1-8, Jorge Sosa is 1-9. This is like the battle for 2nd worst pitch in the league! How can it not be exciting!

[Reed Johnson]

Taubenheim will start on Saturday instead of Josh Towers

http://toronto.bluejays.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/article.jsp?ymd=20060627&content_id=1525914&vkey=news_tor&fext=.jsp&c_id=tor

TORONTO -- The empty locker just inside the door to Toronto's clubhouse provided the answer. The Blue Jays needed to make a roster move in order to activate reliever Pete Walker from the 15-day disabled list and there were questions as to who else would be involved in the transaction.

Until Tuesday morning, the vacant stall had been occupied by starter Josh Towers.

Towers, who continued to struggle in his second stint with Toronto, was outrighted to Triple-A Syracuse before Tuesday's game against the Nationals.

The right-hander was originally sent down on May 24, after falling to a 1-8 record and posting a 9.00 ERA over 10 starts. He didn't show much improvement in his two outings since rejoining the staff on June 20, going 0-1 with a 9.64 ERA in those starts.

"I let him know today," Toronto manager John Gibbons said. "I thought it was a step back the other day. The bottom line is we weren't winning the games he was starting."

In his most recent start, Towers gave up six runs on seven hits, including two home runs, in just four-plus innings on Sunday. He has given up 16 homers this year -- dating back to April 16 -- allowing at least one shot in his last 10 starts. His most recent outing also marked the sixth time in 12 starts that Towers has failed to pitch at least five innings.

"You've go to be able to give your team a chance to win," Blue Jays pitching coach Brad Arnsberg said. "The thing we were concerned with, mostly, was we were falling down so quickly in his games. In the first two, three innings we're down by two, three runs and you'd see a different offense."

"It's tough to put your team in press mode every fifth day," he added. "That's what we were finding with Josh. I'm not stabbing him in the back or anything like that. I love him to death and we worked hard together. We just weren't able to get him figured out."

Arnsberg said that he and Towers tried many different things to try and solve his early-inning issues. In his dozen outings, Towers had allowed 19 first-inning runs and 33 runs in the first three innings.

"I've run out of ideas -- I really have -- to help him get better," Arnsberg said. "We tried several things for his early woes in innings this year. We tried starting him earlier. We tried letting him face hitters before he went into the ballgame. He'd go through an inning's worth of hitters."

For now: Rookie right-hander Ty Taubenheim, who has made five starts for Toronto this season, will take Towers' spot in the rotation on Saturday. Gibbons noted that Taubenheim would only be making one start as the replacement, though.

"We like seeing Ty coming out of the bullpen," Gibbons said.

Taubenheim is 0-4 with a 5.09 ERA as a starter and 1-0 with a 2.45 ERA in four appearances as a reliever.

interleague 2006
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Toronto isn't decided on who will fill in for Towers after Saturday, but Gibbons said that right-hander Dustin McGowan, who is currently in the rotation at Triple-A Syracuse, might be an option. Gibbons doesn't want to move left-handed reliever Scott Downs into that rotation spot.

"We're talking about possibly digging down into the Minors and bringing McGowan up," Gibbons said. "If we want a guy who is a true fifth starter, after Saturday we could do that. We want to leave our 'pen pretty much the way it is."

McGowan began the season as a reliever for Syracuse. After a stint with Toronto earlier this year, though, he was moved back into the starting rotation when he was optioned back down on May 11. Since then, he has gone 1-2 with a 4.08 ERA, 36 strikeouts and 17 walks in 35 1/3 innings as a starter for the SkyChiefs.

After the break: When Toronto initially signed A.J. Burnett to a five-year deal worth $55 million in the offseason, the plan was to slot him behind 2003 American League Cy Young winner Roy Halladay in the rotation. Burnett's two trips to the DL haven't allowed the Jays to line the staff up that way.

After the All-Star break, though, Toronto may finally get to align its rotation the way it originally planned. Gibbons said that Halladay, Burnett and left-hander Ted Lilly could be slotted into the top three spots, in that order, when the schedule resumes after the Midsummer Classic.

"If Burnett is pitching well, you'd like [Halladay and him] to go back-to-back," Gibbons said. "After the All-Star break, we'll look at whether we want to separate them with the lefty, or not. Ideally coming in, it was going to be Halladay, Burnett and Lilly anyway."

Quotable: "To go 1-9 is unacceptable and nobody would accept it in the big leagues. Josh knows that and nobody feels worse about it than him. Just go out and win us a couple games or even take no-decisions in those games." --Arnsberg, on Towers

Coming up: Lilly (7-7, 4.15 ERA) will take on Washington righty Shawn Hill (1-2, 4.26 ERA) when the Blue Jays host the Nationals in the second game of a three-game Interleague set at 7:07 p.m. ET on Wednesday at Rogers Centre.

Jordan Bastian is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

[Solair Wright]

It's not going to be long until he is designated for assignment or released. Poor pitching and poor location is not a good thing, and if he screws his next time Towers call up to the majors, in the words of White Sox announcer Hawk Harrelson: "He gone!" Well look at it, his offense allowed stats are awful (hits/runs/sb's/home runs allowed were high). The last thing the Jays need is Rob Deer to pitch for Toronto.

[mikethegreat8899]

i think we need to face the fact that this guy, for whatever reason, just plain sucks. He's awful, and all his stats show that. The jays need another pitcher, but the market is thin and there are not many assets the jays can give away. I think all we can hope for is for God to intervene and grant him a 98mph splitter.

[albertpujols]

All I know is Josh is playing garbage as hell.

I never liked him, his stuff was never overpowering.

[Chris from NY]

It is still possible to be successful in the big leagues without having really overpowering stuff. Towers can throw good junk pitches, but his problem this season has been with his control.

[Big_Mac]

It is still possible to be successful in the big leagues without having really overpowering stuff.

this is something i have to explain over and over again to my friends. they believe that kyle farnsworth is a better pitcher than jamie moyer, it gets a little annoying after a while.

i think another reason they are hanging on to towers is even with his awful record, it seems like there is a starting pitching sortage this season and if a team sends a pitcher on the 15-day dl late in the season, they can get towers to fill a gap for 2-3 starts.

[Chris from NY]

Towers will finish the year as a Jay then he will be bought out, simple as that. Unless he seriously turns things around. Which is, at this point, highly unlikely.

[albertpujols]

It is still possible to be successful in the big leagues without having really overpowering stuff. Towers can throw good junk pitches, but his problem this season has been with his control.

Yeah that was the problem. He has been hanging his stuff definanty.

I wasn't trying to say that the overpowering pitchers was the nessesary key to success. What also comes to mind is break and control. That is what Maddux / Moyer has relied on their entire careers. They are good in inducing ground balls which would surely lead to an out in that case.