Well, at least the Jays’ fans had a happy Canada Day.

In part deux of the Phillies-Jays series at the Rogers Centre Saturday afternoon, Toronto won its season-high fifth game in a row, 5-2, as the Phils’ supposed potent offense was again shut down.

I’ve been keeping my eye on Jays’ first baseman Lyle Overbay. He’s simply been molesting the ball the past few games (and no, I don’t mean in Brett Myers kind of way). Friday night, he put on an impressive power display, jacking one out to right centre and another to left centre to give him five dingers in five games.

While the Phils kept him in the yard today, Overbay still managed his sixth straight multi-hit game. In fact, he now has multiple hits in eight of the past 10 games. Scorching.

And he’s just jumping all over pitches. Overbay attacked the first pitch all four times today and why not? The damn thing must look like a beach ball to him right now. Thanks to Troy Glaus ending a pair of innings, Overbay had to lead off his first two trips to the plate. In the second, he crushed a line drive to the left-centre gap for a double, but was stranded. And in the fourth, he hit a hard grounder, but right at Chase Utley for an out.

In the sixth, Overbay again came up with the bases empty as Glaus, Mr. All or Nothing, had just gone yard. This time Overbay fouled the first pitch off and then actually took a pitch before hitting a sinking liner to centre field which was snared on a dive by Aaron Rowand, robbing him of a single. That was some rare footage there. When Overbay falls behind 0-1, he’s hitting .370 this year. How impressive is that?

Finally, with two outs and nobody on in the seventh, southpaw Rheal Cormier was brought in to try to neutralize Overbay. It didn’t work. He mashed a solid single to centre to cap a 2-for-4 day.

For the year, Overbay is now batting .304 with 14 dingers, putting him on pace for a career high 29 homers and 99 RBI.

We’re back down to the Rogers Centre Sunday afternoon as the Phillies look to salvage the series finale. Look for more on this series here on Sunday night.

He’s mostly a fastball pitcher, ranging from 86 to 91 mph, but seems to pitch most comfortably and effectively at 89 mph. Unfortunately, that leaves just a 4-to-5 mph spread between his fastball and changeup. But Janssen employed a liberal amount of north-south movement on his heater to change the batters’ eyes and that was very effective, on Saturday at least. He mixed in the occasional curve (ranging 74 to 79 mph) — which he can throw for strikes, and a slider that ranged from 83 to 86 mph. I’d like to see Janssen lean more on off-speed stuff, especially his breaking ball. I believe that would really complement his fastball. more