GRIM NEWS FOR THE JAYS: PLAYOFFS ABOUT A ONE-IN-20 SHOT

Like the Blue Jays themselves, yours truly has been falling down on the job -- or is that falling down on the blog? -- lately.

The Jays dropped a 5-2 decision to the AL West-leading A's tonight -- yours truly got home from a night shift at the Sun just in time to see Eric Chavez drive in the eventual winning run off a fastball that Thedeore Lilly absolutely groved -- and fell to 1-3 on this West Coast swing.

Yours truly is falling down on the blog due to a combination of summertimes blues and terminal addiction to Madden 06. What's the Jays excuse?

OK, enough of that. Toronto Star baseball scribe Geoff Baker yesterday pointed out a website called Cool Standings, which uses a hodge-podge of factors to run 1 million simulations of the current season.

And ... it doesn't look good for the Jays, who entering last night's game were given only a 5.5% chance of the making the playoffs, be it as the division or wild-card winner.

The Red Sox have a 76% chance, the Yankees 59%, while Cool Standings sees the surging Minnesota Twins as the most likely to win the wild card. The Twins, of course, have only a snowball's chance in hell of winning the AL Central.

Still, it's a little like The Simpsons episode when Bart dates and dumps Rainier Wolfcastle's daughter, Greta, who then starts dating Milhouse.

"Milhouse! She's only using you to get back at me."
"My therapist says that's all I can hope for."

So to sum up, the Jays have a 1-in-20 shot at making the playoffs here entering the last weekend of July. That's the most The Geek can hope for.

OTHER BUSINESS

• Irony: ESPN tried to hype up Floyd Landis' pursuit of the Tour de France victory and it didn't have the same cachet as Lance Armstrong's wins. Now Landis is certainly as big a household name as Lance, for all the wrong reasons, thanks to his failed doping test. Maybe the test was a false positive, but no one should be stunned if it isn't and Landis indeed is a drug cheat. Even the least cynical among us realize that cycling is a dirty, drug-infested sport, and that it was only a matter of time until someone wins the Tour de France and gets DQ'd for doping.
• Well we're here, lay off the French-bashing. This isn't about the French having the knives out for any American rider since they could never "take down" Armstrong. Grow the hell up. A bunch of lab technicians whose names we'll neer know tested Landis' sample, probably not even knowing whose sample they had, and it came up positive for high testereone levels. All that stuff is double-blind.
• Au revoir, Alvin Williams: Scott Carefoot isn't buying the tissue-squeezing -- including the Pen of Doom's rather transparent attempt to seem sympathetic -- that surrounded the Raptors cutting their former starting point guard: "I appreciated him back in the day, but for the past two seasons he was nothing more than a useless roster-filler. It's a shame that this is his lot in life while a selfish prick like Alonzo Mourning gets a ring, but I'm not going to cry about it." One cannot dwell in the past, especially the Raptors' past.
• Anyone suspect there's a slight chance Ricky Williams might stay in the CFL past 2006? It's worth filing this away: Sports Illustrated's Paul Zimmerman spoke to a source with the Miami Dolphins and wrote that he came away unconvinced that Williams is in Miami's future plans. (This really should get its own post.)
• Someone who follows college basketball really well needs to explain the reason for this early September exhibition games between NCAA D-1 teams and Canadian schools. The Louisville Cardinals are coming to Ottawa from Sept. 2 to 4 to play Carleton, U of Ottawa and Laurentian; the Final Four champion Florida Gators are going to play Brock. What loophole are NCAA coaches trying to get around by playing in Canada two months before the start of the actual season?
• Best wishes to my parents, Dan and Kathie Sager, who are leaving today on a driving vacation to Atlantic Canada. Bring me back a St. John's Fog Devils shirt.

• Just clicked: Ottawa has a team in North America's top women's soccer league (the W-League), the Fury, which is in the playoffs this weekend. So who had the bright idea to schedule the playoffs on the same weekend that Canada and the U.S. are playing a women's soccer friendly? Both national teams would have no doubt liked to have some of those players available for the game.

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.