Can Richmond keep it up?

As many Canadian baseball fans might know, B.C.'s Scott Richmond is 3-0 with a 2.70 ERA for the Blue Jays.

Well, will that good success last?

Probably not.

There are scores of pitchers who do well in their first sniff of the big leagues, but then once the hitters figure them out, it's pretty much downhill from there.

Besides, before last season, Richmond was just a journeyman pitcher in the independent leagues.

Every time I see a pitcher with a good record early on in his career, I think about Chris Michalak, a lefty who pitched for the Blue Jays in 2001.

Remember Michalak?

He made his ML debut with Arizona in 1998. He was then bounced around to other teams. Finally, he was released by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 2000.

(When you get released by those awful D-Rays from those years, you must be really bad!)

Michalak started the 2001 season with the Blue Jays.

He beat the Yankees TWICE in his first three starts with Toronto (and the first three starts of his big league career). He was 3-0 with a 1.62 ERA in those first three outings.

Then 3-7 with a 5.13 the rest of the way before being claimed off waivers by the Texas Rangers.

We'll see how Scott Richmond fares in the month of May and onwards.