As of today I have now joined Twitter. I have neglected doing so until now - largely because I am, in fact, a rather large Diplodocid - but trying out new stuff is what I do for a living, so Twitter it is (next month, I expect to try out something called PointCast).

I would not advise anybody to follow my tweets, which I expect to be highly inconsistent, error-prone and below-replacement-level. However, like Fernando Martinez, I hope to be pretty good in another 4-5 years.

The subject of my first tweet ever was today's Florida-Toronto game, in which the home town Jays lost 11-3 and were swept out of their own building by the Marlins. The Jays are now three games out of the wild card... and though they are still very much in it, they are playing so poorly right now that they have to considered sellers rather than buyers (Roy Halladay's groin injury yesterday didn't exactly lift local morale).

After much reluctance, manager Cito Gaston shook up the lineup on Friday, dropping Alex Rios to the #6 spot. They are 0-3 with this new configuration, giving creedence to Cito's original point, that it didn't really matter what the batting order is. The tweaks should help a little bit; it doesn't hurt to bunch up your best hitters as much as possible. But I think that there is another, much more important, tweak that the Jays need to make.

Vernon Wells is now the #3 hitter, but continues to slide; in his last 30 games, Wells is batting .188 with zero homers, and has been a totem pole in centre field. A decent case can be made that Wells has been the worst player in baseball for the past month. But Gaston is clearly going to stick with Wells; he either starts hitting, or he doesn't. And to be fair, Cito's not wrong about that; the Jays really have no choice except to wait for Wells to hit.

In the spring, I was worried that Wells' body was no longer up to the task of playing centre field - but it's worse than I imagined. Wells is cooked defensively; his quad muscles are five years older than he is and they're never coming back. Vernon hired a personal trainer over the winter and lost 10 pounds - but he can't go forward or backward or hardly even sideways anymore. He HAS managed to steal 10 bases - woot.

The Jays seem to be souring on Rios, and I understand that - he's unpopular, his performance has been disappointing, and he made an ass of himself on YouTube. Rios had seven hits and two homers this weekend - if he heats up a bit, he could be attractive trade bait, and the Jays could rid themselves of a headache. On the other hand, he's their only centre fielder; if they trade Rios now, the Jays will likely enter next season with a Lind-Wells-Snider outfield - and that will be a defensive catastrophe.

As a fan of the team, I hope they turn it around and stay in contention at least into August. But now is a GREAT time for Gaston, Ricciardi and Beeston to get together and show some real leadership - they need to switch Wells and Rios in the outfield. It should help the pitchers in the short term, and in the long term I think it will also help Wells. Vernon is 30 years old; it's time to grow up, and move on to the next phase of his career.

[Update: two weeks later, I realize that I am tilting at windmills... I still think Rios has more range than Wells, but Cito will never tolerate his brain cramps in centre field. The best the Jays can do at this point is to trade Rios for, I dunno, Franklin Gutierrez or somebody, move Wells to right field, and hopefully everybody will be happy.]