THE JAYS ... SWEEP? WHO KNEW?

Granted, it was against the Braves, who at this point are pretty much a Cadillac façade on an '84 Chevette, but with the Blue Jays' epic problems finishing off teams, The Geek is very happy with last night's 3-2 win over Notlanta.

(For the uninitiated, The Geek is the little man in my head who climbed in some time around the Jays' Drive of '85 ... and subsequent playoff gag job against Kansas City.)

A.J. Burnett pitched decently -- not well enough to make you run out and get a couple champagne bottles for the pennant celebration in October, but half-decently -- and the Jays got some good bullpen work in the late innings. The team nursed the tying and winning runs across in the eighth and survived an uncharacteristically nervous ninth from B.J. Ryan. And hey, Ty Taubenheim even got his first major-league win.

Poor Bobby Cox. All these years the Braves' supposed Achilles heel has been their bullpen (which was always better than most people believed), and now he really doesn't have relievers he can trust. When someone named Chad Paronto came on in relief to protect a one-run lead in the eighth and promptly issued a four-pitch walk to Bengie Molina, all manner of troubling thoughts washed across the venerable Atlanta skipper's weathered visage.

Yours truly empathized with Cox, who was a Blue Jay once upon a time, but The Geek sneered, Good, I hope he still sits up nights wondering why the hell he stuck with Dave Stieb so long in Game 7 of the '85 ALCS. Jim Clancy was ready to come in.

The interesting move of the night, through, was John Gibbons yanking Alex Rios with the bases loaded, one out and the score tied in the eighth to put up lefty-hitting Frank Catalanatto. Leadoff guy Reed Johnson achieved the rare feat of getting on base all five times without scoring a single run, largely since the likely American League all-star batting after him, Rios, was 0-for-4 and had hit into two double plays. (With that, Rios has lost 25 points on his average in the past 10 days, dipping down .319. Don't say you weren't warned he might fall back to earth.)

The move more or less worked. Cat hit a grounder that was too slow for a double play, allowing the winning run to score. It showed, once again, the Gibbons-Davey Johnson-Earl Weaver line: On this team, anyone can be pinch-hit for or replaced, and no move is going to be ruled out. So you get Troy Glaus playing shortstop, or an All-Star outfielder being pulled for a pinch-hitter.

It should be interesting to see how Rios responds coming home -- especially with Tom Glavine starting for the Mets tonight in the big Carlos Delgado homecoming.

Getting back to Gibbons and his strategic forebears, it's too bad the newspaper guys don't write about this. Their editors -- and my opinion of editors was never improved by my being one for a time -- want to see stories about personalities and trade rumours and backroom dealings. The popularity of writers such as Bill James and Rob Neyer do show, however, that it might be a good idea to actually focus on how the game is played once in a while, too.

But that's another column.

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