It has been two weeks since the last site update; I have several articles that I keep meaning to write - Ryan Howard, the Florida Marlins, Kenny Williams, run scoring - but they all require concentration and I am easily distracted. But now is a good time to jot down some random baseball thoughts to take my mind off of the world beyond the baseball bubble.

I half-expected, this morning, to find that the home town Blue Jays had fallen into last place in the league in runs scored - but no, they triumphed 7-1 over the Royals last night, and remain comfortably in 13th place.

The curious thing about these two teams is how they got to where they are. The Jays actually have a decent offence, but have a brutal .229 batting average with runners in scoring position. By contrast, the Royals are batting .280 with RISP, a point behind the Red Sox - but remain last in runs scored. They have one absolutely brutal lineup.

The Jays are back to .500, with a 25-25 record. The good news is that they appear to have three-quarters of a contending team. As you may know, they have a very good starting rotation (currently fifth in the league in ERA, and it will get better) and the top bullpen in the AL. They are also finally getting production from the bench and 6-9 spots in the batting order.

Rod Barajas, signed as an upgrade over Jason Phillips, beat up his former team in Philly and now has a 118 OPS+. Marco Scutaro, signed to replace the Smith/Clark/Adams monstrocity from last season, had a big night last evening and is now batting .270 with more walks than strikeouts. Lyle Overbay, after a dismal start, now has his OPS over .800 - perhaps still not where he wants to be, but moving in the right direction and a hundred points better than, say, Carlos Pena.

Unfortunately, spots 1-5 are still pretty much a basket case. Rolen has been good but they still need to find a quality leadoff hitter not named Brad Wilkerson, plus they need Wells back and they need to move Alex Rios permanently into the #2 spot in the order. And they need a left fielder - after sending 24-year-old Adam Lind to minors after a 1-for-19 start, the Jays have invested 67 ABs in Wilkerson and Kevin Mench, and have been rewarded with 11 hits (.164 average).

Fourteen months ago, I wrote the following about Shaun Marcum: "I think that fans in every city have a player that they feel very lonely rooting for. I actually like Shaun Marcum quite a bit; he could be the next Woody Williams, a guy who doesn't get any respect from the fans or media or even the team itself, but who ends up becoming a good pitcher... with another team."

The first pleasant surprise is that six weeks into this season, Marcum has decided that he would rather be Roy Oswalt, which is fine by me if he can keep it up. The second pleasant surprise is that he is doing it in a Toronto uniform - and while it would be nice to be able to credit Jays' management for this, I think the reality is that they just got lucky. Five pitchers had to fail in 2007 (Chacin, Towers, Thomson, Ohka, Zambrano) before they finally gave Marcum his first start.

For Marcum, see Adam Lind... one of the keys to making good decisions, in baseball and in life, is to start off by asking the right questions. When the Jays released Frank Thomas a few weeks ago, the question that everybody seemed to be asking was whether or not the Jays could afford to wait to see if Frank's bat would heat up. The correct question was, Did they have any other choice? (Answer: No.) Making good decisions is easy when you have no viable alternatives.

Likewise, fans, media, even the team itself, seem to be asking whether or not they can wait for Adam Lind to adjust to the major league level, when the correct question is, Do they have any choice? Lind has struggled badly in his last 300 at bats in majors, but it doesn't matter; what matters is whether or not the team wants him to succeed.

Compare Lind to Justin Morneau: both are young, left-handed power hitters; both are summer babies (Morneau was actually born in mid-May, Lind in mid-July). Here are their age 23/24 seasons:

Both struggled badly. Morneau, incredibly, was batting .400 as late as May 13; the rest of the season, he hit only .207 with a .655 OPS. He struggled so badly during the summer that there were semi-serious rumours of him being dealt to Toronto for Miguel Batista or Corey Koskie.

This is Lind's age 24/25 season; his numbers at the time he was demoted (May 7), as well as Morneau's on the same date:

The next day, Morneau's batting average fell to a season-low .202. He started to pull out of it - and as you probably know, in November was crowned the league MVP.

I don't think that Lind is as talented as Morneau, but that's OK; the Jays don't need him to be the MVP, they just need him to be better than what they currently have. Getting back to making decisions...

GIVEN that during their difficult age 23/24 seasons, the Twins invested 200 more at bats in Morneau

GIVEN that during their early struggles in their age 24/25 seasons, the Twins continued to play Morneau regularly while Lind was demoted after six games

GIVEN that the Twins were richly rewarded for their time and patience, and have been a lot more successful the past few years than the Jays have

GIVEN that the current alternatives to Lind are the corpse of Shannon Stewart, the corpse of Brad Wilkerson and the corpse of Kevin Mench - none of whom can be described as "viable"

...I think that fans are justified in questioning the team's management - not just in whether or not they are making the right decision, but in whether they're even asking the right questions.