The first week of the season is in the books. Here in Toronto, things are good - the Jays are 5-2, the Leafs are done for the year, the weather is starting to get nicer. The pitching has been as expected - Halladay is awesome, the first six guys in the bullpen are awesome; the rest of the rotation has been a tad shaky and BJ Ryan has looked horrible, but the offence pounced on a pair of shaky staffs in Detroit and Cleveland.

("the offence pounced" being the more important descriptor, as there is no shortage of shaky staffs in the upcoming schedule. There's not much else I can about the Jays that Bobby Cox hasn't said better*)

David Purcey made his second start yesterday and it was a doozy - 4 2/3 innings, 6 walks, 10 strikeouts. Purcey is big, left-handed and has a nasty slider, but not the world's greatest command. I expect that we will see more starts like this one... oh well, some guys grow out of it, many others don't.

The most curious event in Toronto this week was probably this one, on opening day, when some fans threw debris onto the field, prompting the Tigers to walk off the field. The Jays' public address announcer had to tell the fans to stop, or the game could be forfeited.

The general reaction in the city was surprise that Torontonians would act that way - but of course, "Torontonians" emcompasses a fairly large group that defies generalizations. I wasn't at the game, but I was hardly surprised, for reasons outlined in this article I wrote last April about sitting in the upper deck. A culture of, um, heavy inebriation has developed over the years, as well as a culture of tolerance for frequent fights breaking out and objects hurled to the levels below. Although it would have been pretty awful to forfeit opening day (and a Halladay start), part of me thought that it wouldn't be so bad if the Jays were jolted into getting serious about bringing order back to the fifth deck. The previous attempt didn't seem to work out so well.

Even though the Jays took 3 of 4 from the Tigers, they got the snot beat out of them by Miguel Cabrera. Miggy appeared to be in good shape to win Player of the Week before Evan Longoria went on a tear. Anyways, it got me thinking about Cabrera's Triple Crown chances in 2009:

1. he turns 26 this week, and is entering the magic phase when many players have their best years
2. with the Marlins he was twice runner up for the batting title
3. with the Tigers last year he won his first home run title and was third in RBI
4. he's not playing in a league with Albert Pujols or Ryan Howard or Prince Fielder or Manny Ramirez (or Chipper Jones or Adam Dunn or Ryan Braun)
5. Alex Rodriguez, Ichiro Suzuki and Joe Mauer have all yet to play a game, while David Ortiz has zero extra-base hits

It hasn't been done in 42 years, but April is always a good time to get dreamy about the possibilities.

* despite yesterday's loss, coolstandings.com still gives the Jays a 35.2% chance of winning the division and a 52.5% chance of making the playoffs - only the Angels have better odds. This is a pretty cool website - the name is not undeserved. The flaw, I guess, is that the algorithm has no idea what the Jays did (or did not do) during the offseason - it only sees a team that won 86 games last year (and had 92 Pythagorean wins) and is now 5-2.

Or who knows, if the Jays have a good year then maybe it's not a flaw at all - perhaps it helps to be a cold-blooded computer who has no emotional investment in losing A.J. Burnett or an intense dislike of J.P. Ricciardi.