Lawrie looks lovely at leadoff.

Allright, I called this a while back.

Brett Lawrie lead off for the Blue Jays today, going 3 for 5 with a double and 3 runs scored.

The Jays don't have a true leadoff hitter until Anthony Gose is ready to rock in the Majors, which won't be this year. Brett Lawrie is the closest thing to it and will provide something thats been lacking at the top of the order; EXCITEMENT! Yunel and Kelly Johnson are vanilla at the dish and on the base paths, but Brett Lawrie has all the sprinkles and chocolate sauce (my blog just popped up on gay-google searches everywhere).

The OBP needs to go up, no doubt, but I don't think the Jays are going to want to curb Lawrie's aggressiveness much at the dish. I believe it is the natural progression for young hitters to be aggressive first before they can become selectively aggressive, which is where you should be to be a successful hitter for any sustained period of time in the bigs. His style of play is disruptive, and he always puts pressure on the opposing defence to contain him on the base paths. This can lead to rushed, slide step deliveries to Colby Rasmus and Jose Bautista. Any pitcher with a high leg kick is going to be really worried about Brett over there at first, and that can wreak havoc on pitch locations and finish.

So I was listening to Jay's talk after the game and fans as well as Mr. Wilner, his genius self, were saying that this was only on a trial period (Brett and Colby hitting 1-2) and that it wouldn't be a whole season thing or anything. What idiocy. I bet Ricky Henderson hit leadoff as a trial run as well at one point. Duuuh guys. You can bet we will keep seeing these two at the top as long as they are producing at a respectable clip, with this being a permanent fixture by no means out of the question.. I heard lots of callers answering the question of whether Lawrie should be the leadoff man with "Yes, if he performs like tonight". Yeah, I'd take a .600 hitter as a leadoff guy too. Dummies.

Lawrie will hit wherever he is stuck in the lineup, but who knows what this experiment will drag out of him. Maybe he will learn a little patience trying to see a few more pitches. He's not too bad in that regard anyway, he doesn't walk that much but doesn't swing at a ton of balls out of the zone. Stat wise, I would suspect maybe his average will drop slightly but his OBP will go up as will his SB's and certainly runs scored will improve.

Anyway, until Edwin Encarnacion is back, I believe we will see a lot of this formation atop the lineup, and I am excited to see what Lawrie can do with it. From seeing his personality so far in his young career,  I believe he will thrive in this role. Let's hope his infectious energy trickles all the way down through the rest of the batting order.

Oh yeah, and Colby Rasmus went 5 for 5 with a dinger and 4 runs scored. Not bad either.