Gibbons dismisses criticism of fundamentals

TORONTO -- When it comes to examining the Blue Jays' season, fundamentals is one of the major points of criticism, but that's not something that manager John Gibbons buys into.

"I've been with six organizations, and everybody [practices] the same in baseball. It's always been the same," Gibbons said.

With every team following essentially the same regimented schedule, one typically doesn't spend any extra time on fundamentals than any other.

Although if there's one thing that Gibbons feels is a concern this year, it's too many offline throws from the outfield.

But the biggest issue, simply, is a rotation that has not lived up to expectations. The Blue Jays are second to last in the Majors in ERA, and has the third fewest innings thrown from their starters.

"We've taken our lumps in the starting rotation," Gibbons said. "Defensively, we've made some errors, but I think what's hurt us is a lot of balls we didn't get to that don't turn into errors. Melky [Cabrera] was a little banged up in left field, so he wasn't getting to a lot of balls, and that effected our pitching. Some balls up the middle of the infield, we didn't get to. It's not always an error, [but] it's the balls that you don't get to that you need to get to."