BASEBALL ON THE BRAIN

The Geek has some baseball thoughts to share:

• There should have been no surprise that lefty Gustavo Chacin (five earned runs in 1 1/3 innings in a 6-0 stinker against Oakland) would struggle in his first start for the Blue Jays in almost two months. Simply put, he wasn't having very good results in his minor-league rehab efforts. The Star's Geoff Baker made note in his game story that "(t)here had been talk of Chacin possibly needing Tommy John ligament transplant surgery on his elbow if he didn’t recover sufficiently." Better keep that in mind.
• More on Roy Halladay and no-hitters (see Aug. 21 and July 26 posts). Finished Scott Gray's The Mind of Bill James tonight (making it 29 books on the year) and it mentions a study James published on the very subject about 15 years ago. The No. 1 factor in determining the likelihood of a no-hitter is the quality of pitcher. "Power pitcher, at home, in a pitcher's park are the next biggest factors, followed by facing a tired team that strikes out a lot," Gray summarizes. That last factor may go back to the original point: That Halladay's preference for letting hitters put a lot of balls in a play works against him throwing a no-hitter.
  
  (There's a risk on quoting Bill James: You can usually find something to back up what you're saying, but you have to be careful of the context.)
• Are close playoff races interesting if none of the teams involved are worth a damn? You have Philadelphia, St. Louis, Cincinnati, L.A. and San Diego fighting it out for three National League playoff spots, but not one of them has a better record than the Jays, who are an also-ran team in the American League. Even the Arizona Diamondbacks and San Francisco Giants, who are below. 500, can't be considered to be totally out of it.
• What's more offensive: A major-league baseball team that makes the playoffs with less than 85 wins or an 8-8 team in the NFL playoffs?
• The AL wild-card spot will hinge on which AL Central team can beat up on the Kansas City Royals. Chicago, which has a half-game lead, has only one remaining three-game series in K.C., but the Minnesota Twins have seven games left against the Royals -- all of them at home.
• Here's some numbers on the Detroit Tigers that are even scarier than what they're proposing to charge for playoff tickets: They are next-to-last in the American League in drawing walks and while leading the league in strikeouts. Not a good combination.

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