Joe Maddon Dept: That brought a smile to the face of Rick Langford, the Blue Jays bullpen coach who was part of that 1981 Athletics squad that included the likes of Mike Norris, Steve McCatty, Matt Keough and Brian Kingman. Manager Billy Martin shredded those arms but Langford finished with 18 complete games that season – after completing 28 the season before, according to The Globe and Mail. Langford has been with the Blue Jays since 1996 in a variety of minor league capacities, and had an all-too brief stint as Jim Fregosi’s pitching coach. As a former roving pitcher instructor and pitching coach at Single-A Dunedin for three seasons, he knows more about the Blue Jays young pitchers than they know about themselves. Which makes him a good touchstone for a group of starters who had a 22-14 record and a cumulative earned-run average of 4.32 going into Monday – not far off from 2009’s 21-16, 4.17 mark when Roy Halladay was still here and the Rays, who played the first of three games at the Rogers Centre Monday, hit the 50-game mark with five pitchers with at least five wins. Only three other teams have done that in the past 25 years, and all went on to the World Series, with the 1986 New York Mets winning the world title. The Rays went into action on Sunday with four pitchers sporting earned run averages under 3.00 – the first American League team to be able to boast of that on May 30 since the 1981 Oakland Athletics. The Blue Jays young starters do not yet have the reputation of the Rays, who have the second-youngest staff in the Majors behind only the Detroit Tigers. But Ricky Romero, Brett Cecil and Monday’s starter, Brandon Morrow, are no less significant for the future of the Blue Jays. The idea’s simple: go with cost-effective young starters, add veteran relievers and pay money for position players. Mix … and pray. “A great formula, with the young starters and a veteran bullpen,” intoned Rays manager Joe Maddon. As
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