Totally projecting: Roy's record reaffirming realignment

It turns out there are a couple convenient lame justifications for diving into MLB realignment, even if it's making this blog more single-issue than a fringy mayoral candidate.

The one spur is Roy Halladay, as you know, has been credited with six wins in seven starts with the Philadelphia Phillies, with an ill FIP (two home runs allowed and a 48-to-7 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 56 innings). It seems like Doc, with another 27 or so starts ahead on his 2010 docket, could be on his way to the 25-win season some in Canada predicted when he went from an American League also-ran to a National League power. Some people might not even be sated with 25. Couldn't he win 28, matching what the recently passed Hall of Famer Robin Roberts did for the Phillies in 1952?

(Another way to pose the question is to ask how few losses Halladay will have at season's end. It's the same query yet it avoids parroting the media overemphasis on a pitcher's win total. Bonus!)

The perceived gulf between the AL and NL is obviously a big part of why people are predicting Halladay could hit a statistical mark only one NL pitcher, since divisional play was created in 1969, has reached while working in a five-man rotation. And Tom Seaver did it in 1969, no less.

That segues right into the second spur, the Wall Street Journal piece that pointed out, for the million and sixth time, how MLB's current alignment has screwed over Halladay's old team. It would not do to accuse Canadian ball fans of having ulterior motives, but perhaps we want Halladay to finish a record such as 24-2 or 28-1 since it would help prove the NL is really, really bad. As the Journal put it:

" ... The American League is clearly the stronger of the two, based on interleague records and the differences in performance of players who jump from one league to the other. Since interleague play began in 1997, AL teams have won eight of 13 World Series and 12 All-Star Games (there was a tie in 2002). They have compiled a .566 winning percentage against NL clubs over the past five years. Now that (MLB commmissioner Bud) Selig has blurred the line between the two leagues — he's abolished their separate league offices and umpiring crews — the time may be ripe to go all the way.

" ... if the leagues were united in one 30-team league, and each team had to play all the others a similar number of games, no more than two National League franchises would have even qualified for the postseason in the past five years.

"In 2008, the Toronto Blue Jays finished well out of the playoffs and in fourth place in the brutal AL East, which includes the powerful Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees. But in an adjusted schedule where all teams played one another, Toronto's actual .531 winning percentage that year would have been .564, with the improvement coming from playing the National League teams more often.

"That would have put Toronto in seventh place in the 30-team league, good enough to make the playoffs. That year's World Champions, the Philadelphia Phillies, would have finished in ninth place, out of the playoffs.

"The 2006 Blue Jays, Chicago White Sox and Los Angeles Angels suffered a similar fate, missing the playoffs despite weighted winning performances that placed them ahead of three National League playoff teams — the Los Angeles Dodgers, San Diego Padres and (World Series champion) St. Louis Cardinals." (emphasis mine)

The Journal's argument was for one 30-team league. That ain't happenin'. (The very notion has been well-parried by Jason Rosenberg at It's About The Money.)

It's for the best to ignore any blue sky realignment scenario such as a promotion-relegation system. The chance of that being installed in a North American league is remote for the same reason the National Football League won't adopt college rules for overtime and pass interference. Ego and simple chauvinism will not permit acknowledging someone else might have a better idea.

Major League Baseball is also married to having the AL and NL and calling its final the World Series. And there is no such thing as "pretty married." Maybe they do it that way over in Europe where they call soccer "football" (them and everyone except Canada, Australia and the U.S.) and teams get promoted and related at the end of the season. We don't know. Frankly, we don't want to know.

A personal theory, though, is MLB is due to make some change to zazz up its product. All this talk about realignment might really be over the shelf life of the current format.

Baseball is coming up on 20 years since it went to a six-division format in 1994. It had four divisions and a balanced schedule (those were the days) for 25 seasons, from 1969-93.

Look at the other leagues:

• The NHL was split into two conferences and four divisions for 25 seasons (1974-75 through '98-99).
  
  
• The NBA adopted two-and-four format a bit earlier and maintained a little later (34 seasons, '70-71 through '03-04).
  
  
• The NFL had six divisions for 32 seasons (1970-2001), before it went to eight in 2002 after expansion to 32 teams.

So, tongue firmly in cheek, there is more to realignment talk than the attendant issues of addressing competitive balance, revenue disparities and AL East widows having a hard shell of cynicism that all the Blue Jays' ninth-inning comebacks against AL Central teams can't crack.

They should remedy the fact that a Blue Jays fan can only be anhedonic about the team being 19-14, since it has yet to face the Yankees and is 10-4 against the AL Central. Granted, it's impossible not to enjoy Fred Lewis' ninth-inning three-run homer that decided today's game against the Chicago White Sox. There's an off-chance it forced Joe Cowley to madly revise his game story at the last minute, after all.

Beyond that, Major League Baseball is bored. The other two major leagues and the NHL have had the fun of fighting off competitor leagues, ill-advised expansion and franchises hopping from one city to another and possibly back.

They must feel left out. Using 1970 as a baseline, since that was the year Bud Selig bogarted Seattle's team and made it the Milwaukee Brewers, MLB has 22 teams which have continuously played in the same city for the past 40 years. That compares pretty well to the NFL (17), NHL (12) and NBA (11).

Those pro sports operators are like the rest of us. They like to switch it up every so often.

MLB is pretty locked into its traditional league lines, but keep in mind those are more happenstance, accidents of history. Baltimore, Boston, Cleveland and Detroit had National League teams once upon a time. Milwaukee, Philadelphia, St. Louis and Washington were in the American League. Baseball would look much different on the west coast if the Pacific Coast League had succeeded in establishing itself as a major league in the 1950s. Vancouver could have had the first team in Canada. There was also the Continental League threat in the early '60s.

Toronto was almost a National League city. The San Francisco Giants were thisclose to moving there before the Blue Jays franchise was granted.

Point being, it's all very elastic if you take a long enough view, and there's enough reason to believe the situation might change for the Jays sooner rather than later. It seemed best to mention this with the club holding a 19-14 record (built mostly on a 10-4 mark vs. the AL Central) with 51 games yet to come against the Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Rays.

Someday, MLB will have some alignment and scheduling that will prompt one to look at a team's actual record without first checking how it breaks down by division. Ooh, look, the team which leads the AL Central has also played 21 of its first 32 games within the AL Central. Gotta be a coincidence.

Meantime, Halladay's record for the Phillies might be the story of the summer for a Jays fan, even if the team manages to play .500 baseball. (Tip for Rob Neyer's Jays essay in his "eras" project: 2005-10 is the Roy Halladay era.)

A baseball fan of a certain vintage, with the exception of Pedro Martínez' 23-4 season in 1999, only knows gaudy won-loss records through old baseball cards. It's been exactly two decades since the last 25-win season and that by Bob freakin' Welch, who was the third-best pitcher on his own team.

One has to go back a few more years to the last time a pitcher earned 24 wins while being charged with less than five losses (Dwight Gooden in 1985 and Roger Clemens in '86 each managed 24-4 marks. Ron Guidry was 25-3 in 1978). No pitcher in the modern era has had 20 wins with two or fewer losses, although Greg Maddux was 19-2 in a strike-shortened 144-game schedule in 1995.

Small wonder it seems like every Seamhead of my acquaintance is riveted by whether Halladay could end up in that aforementioned Tom Seaver territory. Part of that is baseball being an exercise in statistic memorization by nature. Part of that is pride of having appreciated Halladay before he went to a big-market team and last but not least, being reminded it won't always be this way for the Jays. There is yet hope.

Rob's rational, reasonable swing at realignment

Everyone wants a piece of the realignment action, trying to resolve MLB's unbalanced schedule, unbalanced divisions and disparities in local revenue (which the media revolution might exacerbate). Yahoo! Sports baseball scribe Jeff Passan has floated the notion of unalignment, two 15-team leagues, no divisions, balanced schedule. Some called it a "writearound" with respect to the revenue issues (the Yankees will always make the most money, which is fine, but how do you control for that on the field?). Joe Posnanski wants the Pittsburgh Pirates and Kansas City Royals to trade leagues. Toronto Blue Jays president Paul Beeston has scenarios out the wazoo.

A little while back, after a desperate plea for a balanced schedule, cisblog.ca chief cook and a number-cruncher Rob Pettapiece offered to improve this writer's half-assed math. Here's his explanation:

So I took the 2008 results and built the RPI/SRS rankings, just like I do for CIS football and basketball and so on. From that I get each team's "true" winning percentage.

Then I figured out the odds that each team would beat every other team (e.g., Toronto and Kansas City is about 60-40 for the 2008 Jays). The divisions are the same as in 1990, except Tampa Bay replaces Milwaukee, so we have 13 games against divisional teams and 12 against the other half of the league. Then we can use the odds and the number of games to get an expected number of wins (again using Toronto-Kansas City), it's 7.3 wins for Toronto and 4.7 for Kansas City).

Add up everyone's wins and you get their record for this new season, below the jump:

Below are the standings, with "balanced wins" on the left and the actual wins from 2008 on the right.

AL East
94.2 BOS 95
92.9 TBA 97
87.2 TOR 86
86.8 NYA 89
80.2 CLE 81
72.8 DET 74
71.6 BAL 68

AL West
90.9 LAA 100
86.3 MIN 88 (in 163 games)
85.9 CHA 89 (in 163 games)
75.3 TEX 79
74.1 OAK 75
72.7 KCA 75
63.2 SEA 61

From 86 wins and fourth place to 87 wins and third place. Hooray.

(Neate: Yes, but with the league's fourth-best record.)

The problem isn't with an unbalanced schedule, it is with unbalanced divisions.

The "true" W-L record (RPI/SRS-based) of the seven teams in the new AL East was .553. For the new AL West, it was .521. The reason both are above .500 is that the AL was better than the NL in 2008. That difference is huge: five wins over the course of a season. So, just because you balance the schedule doesn't mean you balance the quality of competition.

Moreover, moving back to reality for a second, the five real AL East teams from 2008 averaged 92.2 wins (in "true" terms). Not only is that five wins higher than their actual 2008 average of 87, it's way higher than every other division:

92.2 ALE
85.7 ALC
82.0 ALW
79.4 NLC
76.5 NLW
71.0 NLW

Again, the solution isn't simply balancing the schedule, because your W-L record is compared against better competition to determine who finishes first, second, etc.

And getting rid of that problem is easy: just get rid of the divisions.

Okay, so that's not going to happen. But you could realign divisions each few years based on quality: No. 1 to the East, Nos. 2 and 3 to the West, Nos. 4-5 to the East, and so on. Rename the divisions to "Robinson" and "Koufax," similar to the NHL once upon a time. If we did that based on this "true" record, the 2009 divisions would look like:

Robinson Division: Red Sox, Blue Jays, Yankees, Indians, Rangers, Royals, Orioles
Koufax Division: Rays, Angels, Twins, White Sox, A's, Tigers, Mariners

The expected results don't change much, but at least they're more equal.

And hey, if you took all 30 teams, divided them in the same way for the 2010 season, made the DH home manager's choice (to remove the AL-NL difference), you'd have these five divisions:

Robinson: Red Sox, Cubs, White Sox, Indians, Mets, Nationals
Koufax: Yankees, Rangers, Cardinals, Mariners, Giants, Pirates
Ruth: Angels, Phillies, A's, Braves, Orioles, Padres
O'Neil: Rays, Dodgers, Tigers, Rockies, D-Backs, Reds
Clemente: Twins, Blue Jays, Marlins, Brewers, Astros, Royals

Each team would play 13 games against your own division (65 games) and four or five against three of the other four (adding up to 75 more). The five division winners and an at-large wild card would advance to NFL-style playoffs (3 seed vs. 6 seed 4 vs. 5 in the first round, top two seeds receive byes). The season is down to 140 games, which you could run from April 19 to Sept. 19. Playoffs go Sept. 21 to Oct. 10 and the World Series would be Oct. 15-23.

The first- and second-place teams would get about two weeks off before starting the playoffs, which is wonderful for them after a five-month season.

And that's a three-quarters-assed look at the situation.

The Blue Jays, the balanced schedule and why you ignore buffoons

This might be an appropriate time to vent some Jays angst that's been squeezed into a bitter little ball across the past few years.

Thankfully, we can do this without hitting any ignorami with a whiskey bottle. Joe Cowley got the reaming that should be coming to anyone who judges an entire city, let alone a quote-unquote "Third World country," by what's available on his hotel room TV. At least he provided a prod to finish off a post that has been in the hopper since about 2008 (and as The Ack noted, Cowley had little to say about Cleveland drawing about 5,000 less fans than the Jays did on both Friday and Saturday.)

Remember '08? The Toronto Blue Jays had the third-best run differential in the American League, but finished in fourth place in the AL East. Since most people make their judgment solely on won-loss records, this made their season a total fail to — appropriating the loose Cowleyian definition of most — most minds. You might recall that in '08, the Chicago White Sox, the team Joe Cowley covers and Ozzie Guillen manages, went to the playoffs after winning an AL Central tiebreaker over the Minnesota Twins. Those teams were a combined 1-13 against the Jays.

Going off on a rant at the time was ruled out — the whole whelp-of-a-beaten-cur thing. It did signal the Jays could no longer rate an emotional investment. It was, Call me when there's realignment or balanced schedule.

Call it a Captain Obvious statement, but it has hit the point where you need a schedule converter in baseball, similar to the "neutralize stats" function on Baseball-Reference. As a fan born in 1977 who follows a team which has not made the playoffs since 1993, it would be nice to know how a contemporary team would fare in that 1977-93 era of two divisions and a balanced schedule, and vice-versa. The current setup obscures a team's true worth, which is an intolerable cruelty to visit upon fans.

In the '77-93 era, an American League club played every other team 12 or 13 times. That's a far cry from today's unbalanced sked (18-19 games vs. division opponents, 6-10 vs. other league foes, plus 18 interleague games). Now, there is a general understanding the calibre of competition in MLB varies between leagues and divisions. People have known for years poor scheduling rigs the playoff races.

The popular understanding, though, seems to stop halfway. No one ever applies that 2010 knowledge retroactively, like the characters in Hot Tub Time Machine. It doesn't take Keith Olbermann — although it was gratifying he tweeted it — to know the Jays and Baltimore Orioles need a balanced schedule, or realignment, as Paul Beeston has lobbied for. Some AL East widowers would tack on, "And a salary cap," although that sidetracks the argument.

The reality between the Jays then and now is not so polarized. The difference between the winnin' times in the 1980s and early '90s and also-ran Aughties are less than some might think. It's provable.

To hear people who only pay casual attention to baseball tell it, from 1985 to '93 Toronto simply had awesometacular teams and brilliant management. It is just apologist to point out the scheduling inequities that exist now — what about the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays? Never mind Rays owner Stu Sternberg also wants a balanced schedule.

Many are somewhat unaware of how the schedule is different than it was when Toronto had an annual contender, let alone its impact on a a team's record and its general perception. A 20-something sports consumer might be completely in the dark, like Clark Duke was about meeting women in 1986. Two divisions? Seattle and Boston each having to visit each other twice a year? That sounds ... exhausting.

However, examples abound that if the balanced schedule cleared a path for the Jays' success. Toronto's first playoff team in 1985 fared better vs. the AL West (55-29, .611 winning percentage) than it did vs. the East (44-33, .571). Manager Bobby Cox's boys took full advantage of having a near-equal opportunity to beat up on the bad clubs on each side, going 37-13 vs. the sixth- and seventh-place teams.

Or take 1989. The Jays won the division with a garden-variety 89-73 record. They went under .500 except when they got to beat on the two cellar dwellars, Detroit (11-2) and Chicago (11-1), graced by starting shortstop Ozzie Guillen on-basing a whole .270.

Perhaps lack of confidence stemming from not having the sabermetric chops to do it right, or worrying about not having the influence to make people listen inhibited writing about this in 2008. It kind of lay there dormant. Last week, though, Jonah Keri and Jeff Passan got into a little parry and thrust about the long-term outlook for those aforementioned Tampa Bay Rays.

Passan wrote a column about the Rays' pending loss of heart-and-soul leftfielder Carl Crawford that was pessimistic in outlook. Keri, who is writing a highly anticipated book about the inner workings of the Rays, was more pragmatic.

Keri touched on the realignment question, which one need not point out has been a hot topic since "floating realignment" was put forth as a trial balloon in a Sports Illustrated column.

"Why can't baseball get rid of its unbalanced schedule? Does it help MLB and its teams to have 18 games played between division rivals? Has anyone ever examined all the implications — on-field and off- — of this set-up? I’m not even necessarily advocating for it (we all love to see the Yankees and Red Sox spend 5 hours a night bludgeoning each other to death, 18 times a year, after all), I’m just asking."

It seemed like a fun exercise to try to retro-fit some the Jays' recent records into a balanced-schedule format, and guesstimate how some of their great teams would have fared with the unbalanced sked. Some problems creeped up, of course:

• It's not so simple as sorting teams into their current or former divisions. For instance, in 1992, the Jays could have used 18 games against the Yankees. They went 11-2 against them. The Red Sox finished last.
  
  In '89, the Kansas City Royals had the second-best record in the league. That sort of shoots down the idea of floating realignment, or realignment based on revenue. No one can know who will be good in 10 or 15 years.
  
  
• Won-loss records alone don't prove where a team ranks. Pythagorean W-L (run differential, essentially) is part of casual conversation. Next time you encounter a Jays fan, ask her/him which team had the best run differential in club history.
  
  Chances are, the answer would be one of the World Series teams, or the '85 club. It was actually the 1987 team which lost the pennant to the Detroit Tigers on the final day of the season. You could look it up.
  
  
• Lack of math smarts. Someone much, much smarter would have to figure out how to control for how scheduling affects won-loss records and run differential, then rank teams. (In other words, don't read too much into the conclusions.)
  
  
• No interleague data. There is no way of knowing how the late '80s and early '90s Jays teams would have handled interleague play. The fact the '92-93 teams each won the World Series in six games (small sample size! small sample size!) doesn't mean each would have gone 12-6 in interleague play.
  
  The Jays are an all-time 108-121 in interleague play. That .472 winning percentage works out to 8½ wins per 18 annual interleague games.

One half-assed way of going about it is to rank the Jays' opponents 1-13, making some adjustments based on run differential. For instance, in 1985, the Red Sox finished fifth in the East with an 81-81 record, but had the league's third-best run differential. (In hindsight, that makes their 1986 pennant seem lot less improbable that it was made out to be at the time.)

This is full-on admittedly simplistic, but the method is to take the 2008 team's record against each opponent and pro-rate each based on the earlier team's schedule. (For argument's sake, let's apply that 8½ interleague wins per season when modernizing an '85-93 team's record.)

Conversely, you can put the '85 or '92 Jays into the context of 2008, when Toronto played 63 games against the top four teams in the league, 11-15 more than they would have with a balanced schedule.

In '08, the AL was grouped thusly:

East: 2, 3, 4, 12;
Central: 5, 6, 7, 10, 11;
West: 1, 8, 9, 13

In 2008, the Jays won three of nine games against the league's top team, the L.A. Angels, and seven out of 18 against the second-best, Tampa Bay. In 1992, they placed 12 games apiece against the Nos. 1 and 2 teams, the Oakland Athletics and Minnesota Twins. So the 2008 team gets half-ass pro-rated to four wins in 12 tries against the Angels, 4.666666 in 12 vs. Tampa Bay, and on down the line.

Conversely, that '92 team which went 5-8 against the Milwaukee Brewers would play them 18 times. It's all spread-sheeted, but here are a few of the results:

'08 Jays, with the '92 schedule: 91.09 wins (actual wins: 86)
'92 Jays, with the '08 schedule: 91.66 wins (actual wins: 96)

'08, with '89 schedule: 90.56 (actual: 86)
'89, with '08 schedule: 87.5 (actual: 89)

'85, with '08 schedule: 92.6 (actual: 99, in 161 games)
'08, with '85 schedule: 91.27 (actual: 86)

'08, with '91 schedule: 91.43 (actual: 86)
'91, with '08 schedule: 85.8 (actual: 91)

The 2008 team ends up with 90.1 wins when teams are simply put back into two divisions. (By the same method, the 2006 club had 87.6, not far off its actual total. They'd still have to bust ass to earn it, the way it should be.)

By no means is this a claim any recent Jays club was as good as the fondly remembered teams which went to the playoffs and World Series. The point is to show how much the unbalanced schedule has messed with our heads. The first-place 1991 Jays and fourth-place '08 Jays practically end up trading records.

With the old balanced schedule and no interleague play, the '08 club would have at least had a puncher's chance at winning 90 games, having one of the top four records in the league, and being in a playoff race.

In most seasons, the AL has four 90-win teams.

That shows why MLB should go back to two divisions in each league, with two wild-card teams. It would increase the chances of the four best in the league making the playoffs and prevent the deck from being stacked against teams due to geography.

What's so wrong with that idea? (Better yet, get rid of the divisions in each league and have the top four teams advance to the playoffs, the same way the top four finishers in the English Premier League play in the Champions League the following season.)

No one could say with certainty how this would affect the Jays off and on the field, but one can imagine there would not be this hard crust of cynicism like the one that has formed around the franchise.

Perhaps they would even have enough momentum at the corporate level to justify building a real ballpark, like the new one in Minnesota, or the ones in northern cities such as Milwaukee and Seattle, whose teams have never won one World Series, let alone two. At the very least, FAN 590 callers would be able to "unbind their panties" (Mike Wilner, FAN 590) when there is an early-season crowd of 10,000.

(About that: It was the first two nights of the Stanley Cup playoffs, the Toronto Raptors had a must-win game the first night, Toronto FC had its home opener the second night, and have you noticed what happened to the global economy? The Jays aren't going the way of the Expos, since there is nowhere to go. Relocating the Oakland Athletics is more of a priority for MLB.)

Perhaps this is getting into Ken Dryden territory, where the golden age of sport is whatever it was like when you were 12 years old. However, following the Jays came about thanks to their proximity to Kingston, and their success in those days. Watching the franchise try to push the boulder up the mountain has taken that away.

Going back to the old schedule would not address revenue disparities. It would remain a related issue. Through all of this, there is an awareness baseball's excessive focus on big-market teams has not hurt its equity. It has gone from a $1-billion-per-year industry in the early 1990s to about $7 billion. Small wonder it can abide having about a third of its franchises busted down to being an outlet mall. You grimly walk in to Rogers Centre, get what you need (a baseball fix) and file out without being repaired emotionally or spiritually.

(As an aside, in all those then-and-now Blue Jays comparisons the media likes to make, no one seems to acknowledge how much the business of baseball has changed. The Jays' success coincided with a period when the Red Sox and Yankees each had ineffectual management, the former thanks to the wrangling over the Yawkey Trust and the latter due to George Steinbrenner was batshit insane.)

However, the Yankees and Red Sox could pass the division title and the first wild-card berth back and forth for the next 40 years for all I care, so long as it was possible to have three AL East teams make the playoffs.

Eliminating that unnecessary third division leaves a playoff berth that would still be there for the Jays, Baltimore Orioles, Kansas City Royals and yes, the Tampa Bay Rays. Beyond that, post-season baseball is a crapshoot. A short series in any sport offers a chance for a team make up for inequities in revenue or scheduling, à la the eighth-seeded Edmonton Oilers eliminating the No. 1 seed Detroit Red Wings in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs in 2006.

Until that happens, Toronto is deprived of having real baseball. Continuing to follow it makes me a total hypocrite.

Please do not judge. Resenting a professional sports league yet still obsessing over it is what a simple kind of man must do to trick people into thinking he's "so motherfucking complex it's ridiculous." (Assist to fellow redheaded Kingtonian Jay Pinkerton.) Plus following a ballclub day in, day out, helps frame in that little world one lives in when he's too scared to change.

Obviously, no one gets to stay in the same world they knew when they were younger. Hopefully this shows why it's hard to believe in the Jays until they get to rockin' the same schedule they had when leg warmers, cassette players, George Bell's Jheri curl and V-neck jersey were popular.

A trip back to 1986 scheduling-wise might restore hope, just like it did for the guys in Hot Tub Time Machine.

Please excuse the forced reference to a popular movie. It just seemed like the best way to let Joe Cowley to know that Canada finally got its first movie theatre.

Jusssst a bit outside: the Boston Red Sox

Duty calls to preview the MLB season, providing up to 30 things somewhat about each of the 30 teams. At bat: the Boston Red Sox.

1. Waiting for lefty: Jon Lester Josh Beckett, Clay Buchholz and John Lackey could all be signed through 2014, leaving one spot open for a left-hander to balance out the group. Paging Cliff Lee ...
   
   
2. Winning with pitching and defence at Fenway? Runs scored across MLB have dropped for four consecutive seasons, so the Sox are following the curve by adding centrefielder Mike Cameron (right in photo) and building an Adrian Beltre-Marco Scutaro-Dustin Pedroia-Kevin Youkilis infield.
   
   
3. Over-under: 94½ wins.
   
   
4. Take the ... Over. It takes 95 wins to make the playoffs in the AL East, but more than that to win the whole shootin' match.
   
   
5. Blatantly obvious: Blowing smoke about Dustin Pedroia and Kevin Youkilis. They're good and glorified to death. We get it.
   
   
6. So cute how: How far Boston diehards will go to avoid giving rightfielder J.D. Drew, who puts up a near .900 OPS each season, any credit for their success. Yankees fans have learned to abide that Alex Rodriguez doesn't play more than 140-145 games anymore.
   
   
7. For the record: That line was written before Bill Simmons' better late than never "I like sabermetrics" column. Just look how long it took him to mention you-know-who. (Third paragraph.)
   
   
8. One flaw in Theo's genius: GM Theo Epstein's regime has yet to draft and develop a power hitter (as the Boston Globe noted the other day), but other than Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Jimmie Foxx and Manny Ramirez, the Red Sox have never been known for that sort of thing.
   
   
9. Designated scapegoat in case of struggle: Probably Cameron, on account of coming as a free agent, on account of his .748 on-base-plus-slugging vs. righty pitching last season and the fact it's Boston.
   
   
10. Don't kid yourselves: They're still wicked talented, even if they're still lugging around Jason Varitek.
    
    
11. Needless manufactured drama: Whether Daniel Bard is going to usurp the closer role from Jonathan Papelbon. Just let it happen organically, people.
    
    
12. Trouble spot: Middle relief, but that's every team. It's like 12-man pitching staffs put a strain on every team's depth.
    
    
13. Smoke screen: With respect to Jacoby Ellsbury, there have only been about three players in recent history who could hold down a left-field job without hitting for power. Rickey Henderson, Tim Raines and Carl Crawford actually had power.
    
    
14. Potential deal-breaker: Whether Manny Delcarmen and Ramon Ramirez provide sixth- and seventh-inning relief. Yea to the former and not sure on the latter.
    
    
15. Prediction that may not come true: "With Scutaro batting ninth, he should be able to score at least 100 runs." Yeah, lots of players score 100 runs hitting last in the lineup.
    
    
16. Carbo reload: Everyone has linked to it already, but a should-read is the story about former Sox outfielder Bernie Carbo's journey out of depression and drug abuse.
    
    
17. Just stirring the pot: Manager Terry Francona just can't stop playing Jason Varitek, no matter how little he hits.
    
    
18. FanGraphs notes Boston has gone over slot 16 times in signing draft choices, just in the last three years, proving teams which abide by the slotting system are a bunch of suckers.
    
    
19. Milestone alert: Mike Cameron is 202 strikeouts away from a career 2,000.
    
    
20. Fenway folk hero: With a name like his, Boof Bonser was born to play somewhere where fans still have a capacity for zaniness.
    
    
21. Actual conversation on Toronto subway after Red Sox-Jays game in 2008: "How long has Toronto had a team?" ... "They've won as many World Series as the Sox have since 1920."
    
    
22. How long has Tim Wakefield been pitching? He was on the Pittsburgh Pirates' last winning team.
    
    
23. It is novel their top pitching prospect Casey Kelly (TINSTAAPP notwithstanding) dabbed at shortstop in the minors. It's like how the Jays gave Dave Stieb a chance to try centrefield before he realized where he belonged.
    
    
24. Zing! Ellsbury's entry in Baseball Prospectus 2010 notes, "Jim Rice thinks Ellsbury has Hall of Fame potential, which is true if you work under the assumption that the standards will continue to erode, thanks to the induction of players like Jim Rice."
    
    
25. .328 was also his blood-alcohol level: It has to be an urban legend that Wade Boggs once drank 64 beers on a cross-country flight.
    
    
26. PECOTA says: 95-67, first AL East, 847 runs scored, 696 against.
    
    
27. In English, please: What does contempt breed?
    
    (Why 27? Carlton's Fisk's number.)
    

Jusssst a bit outside: the Tampa Bay Rays

Duty calls to preview the MLB season, providing up to 30 things somewhat about each of the 30 teams, even the sucky ones. At bat: the Tampa Bay Rays.

1. Tremendous upside: The Rays still put runs on the board last season (803) despite centrefielder B.J. Upton and DH Pat Burrell producing very little and Evan Longoria going in the tank for two months in the middle of the season. They are not that far from the top.
   
   
2. They know the odds: Stuart Sternberg (a Jays fan's favourite MLB owner, insofar it's nice to see a team where the owner has a name and a face) also wants a return to a balanced schedule and expanded playoffs. It's worth sharing Stu's sentiments with all the fearless defenders of the status quo who say, "Look what the Rays did." Even the Rays know it can't happen all the time.
   
   
3. Over-under: 89½ wins.
   
   
4. Take the ... Over, slippery slope that is the AL East be damned.
   
   
5. The thinking fan's team: Rays coordinator of baseball operations James Click said last December, "The less sure writers are of their own superiority, the higher up my list they go."
   
   
6. Get your anti-ESPN rants ready: Just in case Longoria has a MVP-worthy season and gets hosed in the balloting due to the influence of the worldwide leader.
   
   
7. A for Awesome, Z for Zobrist: Their best hitter last season, Ben Zobrist,, didn't even have a regular fielding position.
   
   
8. It's called elasticity: The Evil Empires have better starting rotations, but there's a little more deviation in either direction with Tampa Bay's Fab Five of James Shields, Matt Garza, Jeff Niemann, David Price and Wade Davis, who as you know are all between 24-28 years old. They could blow sky-high, or pitch T-Bay to the playoffs.
   
   
9. Possibly encouraging sign: They didn't burn out the bullpen last season despite winning 13 less games than in 2008. That might help with their bounce-back.
   
   
10. Heading to the dark side: Pretty much everyone assumes leftfielder Carl Crawford, a free agent to be will end up with the Yankees. Don't get mad; it's like journalists who jump at the money available in public relations, plus the Double-C could continue abusing Jays pitching.
    
    
11. It's more than a one-year window: The media will probably revive the next-year's-too-late rubric if the Rays are in contention, but they kind of have outfielder Desmond Jennings waiting and four pitchers among the top 40 prospects in the game. That somewhat balances out the belt-tightening that's in store for next season.
    
    
12. Dwelling too much on small things: Closer Rafael Soriano had a lousy spring, but didn't the Rays win the pennant two seasons ago with no regular closer?
    
    
13. Understanding Upton: The centrefielder's home run outburst in the '08 playoffs left everyone salivating, but he's more of that all-around hitter who'll put a few over the fence just by being good. At least that's according to his former youth league coach, Michael Cuddyer (yes, the same one who plays for the Minnesota Twins).
    
    
14. Well, it is Florida: Having Sean Rodriguez and Zobrist rotate at second base is naturally being called a "time share," rather than the traditional platoon.
    
    
15. X factor: Shortstop Jason Bartlett carrying over some of that hitting awesomeness from '09.
    
    
16. CUZ, that's why: Crawford, Upton and Zobrist, if he plays right field most of the time, will need a nickname.
    
    
17. Out on a limb: Peter Gammons is picking Upton to be AL MVP.
    
    
18. The best team no one goes to see: The Rays might not sell out their home opener, thanks in part to a double-digit unemployment rate and having a stadium that is in St. Petersburg, not Tampa. Speaking as an Ottawa resident, is there any other team which refuses to acknowledge the location of its arena or stadium is a problem?
    
    
19. He's hip. He's cool. He's 56: It's passé to point out "look who's using Twitter," but you have to like manager Joe Maddon reviewed a California Pinot Noir by calling it "stupid good."
    
    
20. If you guys could hit a little, it'd help: Their catchers hit .233/.276/.349 last season, which explains picking up Kelly Shoppach to time-share with Dioner Navarro.
    
    
21. Potential drama: What to do if Burrell struggles and one of the younger, inexpensive hitters rates time at DH.
    
    
22. Who knew qualm could be used a verb? Outfielder Fernando Perez is an Ivy League grad (Columbia), describing how the style of glove he was wearing contributed to a wrist injury last season: "I never, ever qualm over equipment."
    
    
23. The endless debate: Whether taking Price over the Orioles' Matt Wieters with the top pick in the 2007 draft was the right move.
    
    
24. Baseball geek brain candy: Noticing Baseball Prospectus 2010 lists Rays farmhand Alex Colome as a left-hander when he's actually a righty. In fairness, he's listed immediately after left-hander Matthew Moore in the prospect ranking, so we're all human.
    
    
25. So God-fearing even Tim Tebow is put off: Zobrist's son is named Zion. As in Zion Zobrist.
    
    Zarley Zalapski would approve.
    
    
26. Taking this third-rail thing a little too far: When asked recently "Leno or Letterman?", owner Sternberg said "Kimmel."
    
    
27. Expos reunion: 1980s-era 'Spos Dave Martinez and Tom Foley are on the coaching staff, which creates nostalgia for those who started following baseball just before Nos Amours vanished from English-language broadcast TV.
    
    
28. Jinx! Sports Illustrated is calling for them to lose to the Phillies in the World Series.
    
    
29. PECOTA says: 92-70, second AL East (wild card), 820 runs scored, 705 runs against.
    
    
30. In English, please: Quoth Bono circa 1992, "We shall continue to abuse our position and fuck up the mainstream."
    

Jusssst a bit outside: the New York Yankees

Duty calls to preview the MLB season, providing up to 30 things somewhat about each of the 30 teams. At bat: the New York Yankees.

1. Shallow men believe in luck: And with that being said, they outperformed their Pythagorean W-L by eight games last season (their run differential factored out to 95 wins, not 103) and
   
   
2. Parks and rant creation: Keep an eye peeled for how many home runs are hit at the new Yankee Stadium, which yielded 237 last season. Small wonder the Yankees have more lefties than the typical Canadian national team.
   
   Jeff Passan termed it the "poke-and-joke show." It bears reiterating that the baseball establishment would scream bloody murder if someone built a park like that in Houston.
   
   
3. Charting their downfall: A.J. Burnett and Javier Vazquez have off-seasons, age starts catching up to Jorge Posada and Derek Jeter and the fielding is only-OK when awesome is needed.
   
   
4. Not to mention: CC Sabathia chucked 266 1/3 innings last season, counting the World Series run.
   
   
5. Perish the thought: Albert Pujols could be a free agent in two seasons. It seems worth mentioning in the Yankees preview.
   
   
6. Over-under: 95½ wins.
   
   
7. Take the ... Under. The East is too tough.
   
   
8. Reasons No. 1 and 1A to hate them: That $1.5-billion stadium they didn't need and the fact any traces of the original Stadium have been wiped away.
   
   
9. Reason No. 1 not to hate them: The way It's About The Money keeps Yankees fans accountable.
   
   
10. Total schaden-fail: Hating on Derek Jeter went out of style around 2005 or '06.
    
    Besides, just ask his closest comp, Robbie Alomar, what happens to 36-year-old middle-infield maestros. That'll be fun to watch. The Captain could play two more seasons, get the 253 hits he needs for 3,000, and head off into the sunset and the inevitable embarrassing public divorce from Minka Kelly. That'll be funner to watch.
    
    
11. Free Joba: If the Yankees are so bent on salting the earth for Joba Chamberlain the Starter, why not deal him while he still has potential to start? One pictures Chamberlain brooding to himself it would all be different if he could have just been drafted by some derelict team that just pockets revenue-sharing cheques.
    
    
12. Missing out on Joe Mauer: Yeah, GM Brian Cashman might hear about that one.
    
    
    
    
    
13. Dumb question answered: Centrefielder Curtis Granderson's fielding overrides his human frailty vs. left-handed pitching. Platooning in centrefield just seems like an overthink.
    
    
14. Really, New York magazine, really? Mariano Rivera's 70-75 innings pitched is more vital to the Yankees than anything the everyday players regulars do?
    
    
15. Granted ... anything to avoid putting Alex Rodriguez first, AMIRITE?
    
    
16. The voters lurve him: AL home run champion Mark Teixeira was runner-up for American League MVP last season, but didn't get a single first-place vote.
    
    
17. How soon they forget: They were just treading water (38-32, six games above .500) as late as the third week of June last season.
    
    
18. Hip hip, Jorge: One or more of Austin Romine, Francisco Cervelli or Jesus Montero is waiting in the wings for when 39-year-old catcher Jorge Posada finally fades to black as an everyday player.
    
    
19. Acronym alert: Second baseman Robinson Cano has a very high BAIR (Big Apple-influenced Reputation). He's a good player, but the Yankee gloss masks a somewhat empty batting average.
    
    
20. Future Hall of Very Gooder: Left-hander Andy Pettitte, possibly in his last go-around, will have a thorny case someday, since he was pretty much forgiven after he 'fessed up to using PEDs. He does score 117 on the HOF Monitor.
    
    
21. Fun Jeter stat: Do people realize only three shortstops are in the 3,000-hit club, and that the only one who was still playing shortstop when he reached that plateau was some guy named Honus Wagner almost a century ago?
    
    
22. Killer line for the captain: Incidentally, Jeff Pearlman once described Jeter as being "as guarded as a Social Security check."
    
    
23. Instant rooting interest: Right-handed reliever Mark Melancon. Explanation for any U.S. readers: Canadians will root for any guy with a French-sounding name.
    
    
24. Maybe John Sterling's head will explode: Rodriguez is 17 homers away from 600 for his career.
    
    
25. Info that could save your life one day (or not): A.J. Burnett is one of 19 major leaguers who goes by his initials.
    
    
26. For anyone wondering: Switch-pitcher Pat Venditte writes with his right hand.
    
    
27. Not a coincidence: All the eras of competitive balance in baseball occurred when the Yankees got tired of meat-and-potatoes pennant-winning and went for a piece of strange. See World War II, the CBS era from 1965-72 (then as now, being owned by a TV network is counter-productive) and that period in the 1980s when George Steinbrenner was certifiably insane.
    
    
28. This explains the sucking up to the Yankees: They can't be all bad if Nick Swisher could tickle Robin Scherbatsky's fancy.
    
    
    
    
29. PECOTA says: 91-71, third AL East, 859 runs scored, 749 against.
    
    
30. In English, please: They still have to play the games, dammit!
    

Jusssst a bit outside: the Baltimore Orioles preview

Duty calls to preview the MLB season with up to 30 things somewhat about each of the 30 teams. At bat: the Baltimore Orioles.

1. What would Wieters do: A .500 record might not be in the offing for the O's, so the main question is what switch-hitting catcher Matt Wieters will do in his first full season after hitting .288/.340/.412 as a rookie.
   
   
2. Over-under on wins: 74½
   
   
3. Take the ... Over. They'll clean out enough bad teams to override suspect pitching (MLB-worst 5.15 ERA last season). An 11-win improvement is scalable.
   
   
4. Good young pitching, but they've been burned before: Rookie left-hander Brian Matusz represents hope the way Daniel Cabrera and Adam Loewen did for a time.
   
   
5. A fair shot: Oriole Post also wants a balanced schedule (like the one that existed from 1983-93 when the Blue Jays were winning. FanGraphs also summed up how hard it is for a non-Evil Empire team (or the Rebel Alliance down in St. Petersburg, Fla.) to make the playoffs out of the AL East:
   

   "(Baltimore GM Andy) MacPhail needs to continue to hit home runs on trades, have every draft pick pan out, and they need to stay completely healthy – if all those things happen, they could challenge for the AL East crown in a year or two, until their core gets so expensive that they’ll struggle to surround them with enough quality players to keep up.
   
   "It’s the crappiest situation in baseball, outside of Toronto, anyway."
   

   (Thanks.)
   
   
6. Another comparison of an ornithological variety: Twenty-eight of their first 35 games are against teams which finished above .500 last season, including 12 in a row vs. the Yankees or Red Sox. So, expect a season arc that resembles the 2008 Blue Jays, but without the manager getting replaced by the guy who was around in the glory days. That being said, a hologram of Earl Weaver in the dugout would be cool.
   
   
7. Working class zeroes: Somewhere, late Chicago Blackhawks owner Bill Wirtz is smiling, since a dispute between telecoms means basic cable subscribers have to go to the ballpark if they want to watch the Orioles live.
   
8. Feb. 8, 2008: The day GM Andy McPhail traded Erik Bedard to Seattle. Including subsequent flips, netted the Orioles the good Adam Jones, a third baseman in waiting in Josh Bell and some potential arms in Kam Mickolio and Steve Johnson.
   
   
9. That ... that doesn't make any sense: Aging Miguel Tejada is hitting cleanup in a lineup that includes DH Luke Scott (115 OPS+ last season) and the young turks, Nick Markakis (109), Nolan Reimold (117) and Jones (106).
   
   
10. The 40-25 club: Markakis (finally learned to spell it!) is in select company, since the list of players who have had 40 doubles in a season by age 25 includes Albert Pujols and Carl Yastrzemski.
    
    
11. Checking out: The Orioles are 25-59 after Sept. 1 during Dave Trembley's tenure. It's like they figure the Triple-A season ends on Labour Day, so theirs should too.
    
    
12. A biography yet unwritten: Their Triple-A affiliate in Norfolk, Va., has a 78-year-old general manager, Dave Rosenfield. His first GM job was in 1956.
    
    
13. Priced to move: Scott gets lumped in with the Orioles' young core, but he turns 32 this summer. Some NL team would love his right-handed bat.
    
    
14. The method to the badness: The Orioles' sub-mediocrity has kept leadoff man Brian Roberts from being that pesky, scrappy, gritty white dude that broadcasters extol endlessly until you just wish Joe Buck was dead. It's nice to just get to appreciate Roberts as an overachiever.
    
    
15. The law of diminishing returns: It seems to be kicking in with de facto No. 1 starter Jeremy Guthrie, who throws hard but oh-so-straight.
    
    
16. Mispronunciation-based pun alert: Outfielder Félix Pié's name is not said the way you might think.
    
    
17. More proof the medium is out of control: Reading a MLBTR post asking if the Orioles should give 23-year-old catcher Wieters a contract on the order of the deal Joe Mauer got from the Minnesota Twins. It is only Wieters' second season, can't that question wait?
    
    
18. Take out that Moeller: Cutting backup catcher Chad Moeller (which has raised a ruckus) leaves the Orioles with Wieters and Craig Tatum, who have a combined 122 games' MLB experience.
    
    
19. A story that writes itself: Discussing whether super-ute Ty Wigginton can be a power hitter again. Short answer: He's never been that good.
    
    
20. Fondly remembered: The Orioles' first two World Series titles included the irrepressible Moe Drabowsky, who was known to slip a goldfish into the opposing team's water cooler.
    
    
21. OK, why is Peter Angelos going to hell: He's the owner who didn't want Jon Miller as his announcer or Davey Johnson as his manager.
    
    
22. Would you believe: Right-hander Kevin Millwood has an ERA+ of 108 for his career, which is similar to the 109 Jack Morris had at the same age, 34.
    
    Please use this next January when people make the same thin Hall of Fame case for Jack Morris.
    
    
23. June 14, 1987: Yes, that's the date Newman references in the Seinfeld episode with Keith Hernandez, but it lives infamy in Orioles-Jays history. That was the date when Baltimore's present-day pitching coach Dave Schmidt, then a pitcher, threw seven-plus innings to help snap the Jays' franchise-record 11-game win streak.
    
    
24. Small world: Manager Dave Trembley once played senior baseball for the Kingston Ponies. The coach of that team was Toronto Sun baseball writer Bob Elliott. True story.
    
    
25. Not a coincidence: One of their celebrity fans is Joan Jett, who like her favourite team rocked in the late 1970s and early '80s and has kind of been a memory ever since.
    
    
26. PECOTA says: 78-84, fourth AL East, 797 runs scored, 831 against.
    
    
27. In English please: They are the No. 1 seed in an imaginary tournament between all the fourth-place teams.
    

Why only 27? Time is running out and it's been 27 years since their last pennant.

MLB playoffs: California dreamin' of L.A.-L.A. Series?

The Bill James Playoff Predictor went 4-for-4 in the pre-dilly-ictable first round of Major League Baseball's second season, so why not try it again? You know the drill.

1. 1 point to the lead team for each half-game in the standings
2. 3 points to the team that scored more runs
3. 14 points to the team with fewer doubles
4. 12 points to the team with more triples
5. 10 points to the team with more home runs
6. 8 points to the team with the lower team batting average
7. 8 points to the team that committed fewer errors
8. 7 points to the team that turned more double plays
9. 7 points to the team that walked more batters
10. 19 points to the team that had more shutouts
11. 15 points to the team whose ERA was lower
12. 12 points to the team that has been in postseason most recently or went further.
    
13. 12 points to the team which won the season series.

It's by no means definitive, especially in areas where one team's statistical advantage is small. Nevertheless ...

ALCS: ANGELS vs. YANKEES

1. The Yankees were 103-59, the Angels were 97-65. (Yankees 12)
   
2. The Yankees scored 915 runs, the Angels scored 883. (Yankees 3)
   
3. The Angels hit 293 doubles, the Angels hit 325. (Angels 14)
   
4. The Angels hit 33 triples, the Yankees hit 21. (Angels 12)
5. The Yankees hit 244 home runs, the Angels hit 173. (Yankees 10)
   
6. The Yankees batted .283, the Angels batted .285. (Yankees 8)
   
7. The Angels made 85 errors, the Yankees had 86. (Angels 8)
   
8. The Angels turned 174 double plays, the Yankees turned 131. (Angels 7)
   
9. The Yankees walked 574 batters, the Angels walked 523. (Yankees 7)
10. The Angels had 13 shutouts, the Yankees had 8. (Angels 19)
    
11. The Yankees had a 4.28 ERA, the Angels' was 4.45 (Yankees 15)
    
12. The Angels won the AL West in 2008 and lost in the division series. (Angels 12)
13. The season series was split 5-5.
    
    TOTAL: Angels 72, Yankees 57
    

NLCS: Philadelphia Phillies vs. L.A. Dodgers

1. The Dodgers went 95-67, the Phillies were 93-69. (Dodgers 4)
   
2. The Phillies outscored the Dodgers 820-780. (Phillies 3)
   
3. The Dodgers hit 278 doubles, the Phillies hit 312. (Dodgers 14)
4. The Dodgers hit 39 triples, the Phillies 35. (Dodgers 12)
   
5. The Phillies hit 224 home runs, the Dodgers 145. (Phillies 10)
6. The Phillies batted .258, the Dodgers batted .270. (Phillies 8)
7. The Phillies made 76 errors, the Dodgers made 83. (Phillies 8)
   
8. The Dodgers turned 134 double plays, the Phillies 132. (Dodgers 7)
   
9. The Dodgers walked 584 batters, the Phillies 489. (Dodgers 7)
   
10. Both teams had nine regular-season shutouts, the Phillies had one in the first round (Phillies 19)
    
11. The Dodgers' staff ERA was 3.41, the Phillies' was 4.16 (Dodgers 15)
    
12. The Phillies won the World Series in 2008, the Dodgers lost in the NLCS. (Phillies 12)
    
13. The Dodgers won the season series, 4-3. (Dodgers 12)
    
    TOTAL: Dodgers 71, Phillies 60
    

Zen Dayley: We might yet get saved from a Red Sox-Yankees ALCS

This time of year, you're bound to hear all sorts of October-only baseball fans coming out of the woodwork to make mountains of random statistical molehills.

For instance, the Philadelphia Phillies are vulnerable because closer Brad Lidge has sucked out loud. They're throwing Cliff Lee in Game 1 instead of Cole Hamels, who was vice-president of awesome in the 2008 playoffs but pitched like the assistant undersecretary of only OK for most of this season (but found his form the past couple weeks.)

The L.A. Dodgers dawdled and dragged their feet before finally wrapping up their division. The L.A. Angels have lost to the Boston Red Sox three consecutive times in the playoffs. The Yankees will not have Jorge Posada's bat in the lineup for a couple games, since weak-hitting Jose Molina is the personal catcher for A.J. Burnett. The Twins are scrappy -- they got shut out only four times all season!

All of that is well and good, but you might succumb to paralysis by analysis. The Bill James Playoff Predictor makes it nice and simple. (Or not.) It might be just as off and more serious Seamheads have likely discredited it, but at least it's is a fully hacked-out framework suitable for clipping and saving:

1. 1 point to the lead team for each half-game in the standings
2. 3 points to the team that scored more runs
3. 14 points to the team with fewer doubles
4. 12 points to the team with more triples
5. 10 points to the team with more home runs
6. 8 points to the team with the lower team batting average
7. 8 points to the team that committed fewer errors
8. 7 points to the team that turned more double plays
9. 7 points to the team that walked more batters
10. 19 points to the team that had more shutouts
11. 15 points to the team whose ERA was lower
12. 12 points to the team that has been in postseason most recently or went further
13. 12 points to the team that won season series.

Please click through to find out who is going to win. Long story short, you won't be so happy that the Minnesota Twins and not the Detroit Tigers won the AL Central title:

TWINS vs. YANKEES

1. Yankees were 16.5 games better, 103-59 to 87-76. (33 points)
   
2. Yankees scored 98 more runs, 915-817. (Yankees 3)
   
3. Yankees hit more doubles. (Twins 14)
4. Twins hit more triples. (Twins 12)
5. Yankees had 244-171 edge in home runs (Yankees 10)
6. Yankees hit .283, Twins .274 give or take a point. (Twins 8)
7. Twins made 76 errors, the Yankees had 86. (Twins 8)
8. Both teams turned 131 double plays. (no points and may God have mercy on your soul)
9. Yankees walked 574 batters, Twins 460. (Yankees 7)
10. Yankees had eight shutouts. The Twins had seven. (Yankees 19)
11. Yankees had a 4.28 ERA, Twins 4.50. (Yankees 15)
12. Yankees last reached the playoffs in 2007, Twins in 2006. (Yankees 12)
    
13. Yankees won the season series 7-0. (Yankees 12)
    
    Totals: Yankees 111, Twins 50
    

RED SOX vs. ANGELS

1. Angels were two games better, 97-65 to Boston's 95-67. (Angels 4)
2. Angels have 883-872 in runs scored (Angels 3)
3. The Red Sox hit 335 doubles, the Angels 293. (Angels 14)
4. Angels hit 33 triples, Red Sox 25. (Angels 12)
5. Red Sox have 212-173 edge in home runs. (Red Sox 10)
6. Angels hit .285, Red Sox hit .270. (Red Sox 8)
7. Red Sox made 82 errors, Angels made 85. (Red Sox 8)
8. Angels turned 174 double plays, Red Sox 119 (the most and the fewest in the AL, although that says more about each team's pitching staff). (Angels 7)
9. 7 points to the team that walked more batters (Red Sox 7)
10. The Angels had 13 shutouts, the Red Sox had 11. (Angels 19)
11. The Red Sox had a 4.35 ERA, the Angels' was 4.45. (Red Sox 15)
12. Red Sox were in the ALCS last season after eliminating Angels in division series. (Red Sox 12)
13. Angels won season series, 5-4. (Angels 12)
    
    Total: Angels 71, Red Sox 60

ROCKIES vs. PHILLIES

1. Phillies were 93-69, one game better than the Rockies' 92-70. (Phillies 2)
2. Phillies scored 820 runs, Rockies 804. (Phillies 3)
3. Phillies hit 312 doubles, Rockies hit 300. (Rockies 14)
4. Rockies hit 50 triples, Phillies hit 35. (Rockies 12)
5. Phillies hit 224 homers, the Rockies hit 190. (Phillies 10)
6. Rockies hit .261, Phillies .258. (Phillies 8)
7. Phillies made 76 errors, Rockies made 87 (combined that is only 10 more than the Washington Nationals, true story). (Phillies 8)
8. Rockies turned 144 double plays, Phillies 132. (Rockies 7)
9. Rockies walked 528 batters, Phillies 489. (Rockies 7)
10. Phillies had nine shutouts, the Rockies had seven. (Phillies 19)
11. The Phillies had a lower ERA, 4.16 to 4.24, but the Rockies had a better ERA+ (106 to 103) and despite Coors Field, allowed only slightly more runs per game (4.41-4.38). (Rockies 15)
12. 12 points to the team that has been in postseason most recently or went further (Phillies 12)
    
13. Phillies won the season series, 4-2. (Phillies 12)
    
    Total: Phillies 74, Rockies 55
    

CARDINALS vs. DODGERS

1. Dodgers were four games better, 95-67 to 91-71. (Dodgers 8)
2. Dodgers scored 780 runs, St. Louis 730. (Dodgers 3)
3. Cardinals have 294-278 edge in doubles. (Dodgers 14)
4. Dodgers have 39-29 edge in triples. (Dodgers 12)
5. Cardinals hit 160 home runs, Dodgers hit 145. (Cardinals 10)
6. Dodgers hit .270, Cardinals .263. (Cardinals 8)
7. Dodgers had 83 errors to Cardinals' 96. (Dodgers 8)
8. Cardinals turned 167 double plays, Dodgers 134. (Cardinals 7)
9. Dodgers walked 584 batters, Cardinals 460. (Dodgers 7)
10. Cardinals had 11 shutouts, Dodgers had nine. (Cardinals 19)
11. Dodgers had a 3.41 ERA to Cardinals' 3.66. (Dodgers 15)
12. Dodgers reached NLCS in 2008. (Dodgers 12)
    
13. Cardinals won the season series, 5-2. (Cardinals 12)
    
    Total: Dodgers 79, Cardinals 56

Enjoy the post-season. Is there any chance we'll see a promo for George Lopez's new talk show?

Liveblogging, with implied oral consent of Major League Baseball

It is self-promoting as all get out, but yours truly is liveblogging this afternoon's Blue Jays-Red Sox game for The Score.

Roy Halladay, who has actually lost two starts in a row, is pitching for the Blue Jays. Paul Byrd is soft-tossing them up there for the Red Sox.

Zen Dayley: Rios' release is a payoff kvetch

Saying something is hard really is code for wanting an easy way out, hardly a human failing.

The cynical, snarky response to the hue-and-cry over the Rogers Jays letting Alex Rios go was, "Too bad they don't have a 21-year-old outfield prospect who has popped 14 extra-base hits in his last 45 at-bats in Triple-A. Wait, they do!" That is rather insufficient, on some people.

It is understandable why jettisoning Rios was upsetting to Jays followers. No talk of financial flexibility or how much God's Gift of Sunshine, Travis Snider, is smacking the ball around in Las Vegas is going to brighten the picture immediately, especially for a lower-revenue team. Rios getting the ax is a splinter under the fingernail.

It's right to be irrational and kvetch about the salary dump, for a day or two. There is no reason to buy a full-priced Rogers Jays ticket for the duration of this season, although there are the 20,000-30,000 diehards who keep turning out. The lone reasons to attend a game are to watch Roy Halladay and Ricky Romero pitch or throw support to the Tampa Bay Rays (who come to Rogers Centre Aug. 24-26).

If that smacks of being fair-weather, so be it. Being a sports fan is not supposed to be exceedingly difficult. It is supposed to be fun. Only a deranged few, guilty as charged, get their jollies peeling back the onion and trying to understand the how and why of a team being only-OK when people's vanity and egotism demands awesome. The rank-and-file have enough on their plates. Adding the burden of being emotionally involved with a ballclub which is trying to mow the lawn with a pair of fingernail clippers by playing in the AL East is a little much to ask.

"Toronto is not Cleveland, with its budget problems, Pittsburgh, with an organizational model that has been a complete failure, Kansas City, which is awful but still wastes money on second-tier journeymen who don't know how to win, or San Diego, which will check out of the contending business for the next couple of years until its farm system improves. Toronto's problem is that it is a good team in the wrong division. 'Good isn't enough,' Ricciardi said. 'You have to be great.' "

Tom Verducci, Sports Illustrated, Aug. 4

In that regard, The Tao was nails for saying, "Then there is the 'fan' in us, who is totally irrational and has spent roughly about a thousand hours over the past couple of years irrationally feeding into the hopes and dreams and misery and agony of Jays fans through this very blog. And that part of us is really finding it difficult to root, root, root for the home team's corporate ownership's bottom line."

That is where good friend Dan Rowe got the idea of terming Rogers' approach to its holdings "uninterested ownership." (Jan. 18, 2008). There is scarcely little rebuttal. Jeff Blair's column was spot on: There is every reason to believe Rogers is trying to sell the team. It probably ties in with their NFL ambitions, since that league dictates that owners cannot own teams in another sport.

There is stability with having a corporate owner. Stability is close to stagnation and stasis in the dictionary. The playoffs are a pipe dream with the current ownership and divisional alignment, but the unknown could be worse unless Jim Balsillie is a secret Seamhead.

Within the past couple months, greater minds such as Ottawa residents Howard Bloom of Sports Business News and Pete Toms of The Biz of Baseball have each voiced some variation of "baseball is dead and dying in Toronto." Pete's point is supported by sociologist Reginald Bibby's findings that only one in 10 Canadian teens follows Major League Baseball, down from one in three in the early 1990s.

Rogers can sense the break of the waves. It might well believe Blue Jays baseball is being affected by what Business Week calls the "incredible shrinking Boomer economy" or has run its course as a consumer product in Canada. (That might not necessarily be right.) Stephen Brunt recently related the story about when the late Ted Rogers wanted to invest in wireless. The vote among his company's directors was however many opposed against one in favour, but Rogers was the one in favour. Now you know the rest of the story.

They might have decided to punt, the way so many Buffalo Bills possessions end. The fact the aforementioned Rays might be before to trade leadoff man extraordinaire Carl Crawford (Jonah Keri, SI.com) is an indication that baseball has swung back toward the unfair system it had in the late 1990s.

That being said, talk about the Jays being headed down the same path as the late and lamented Montreal Expos is a bit much. For that to happen, there needs to be a viable market for relocation. MLB already has one lame-duck franchise, the Oakland Athletics, which cannot move.

Toronto is stuck with a stadium no one likes, a corporate owner who does not seem to care and a stacked deck for a division. People can hardly be blamed for begging out of the situation.

As for Rios, the player was often accused of being a no-brainer. It remains to be seen with the move. Baseball Prospectus and Game of Inches thought the White Sox must be out of their minds for taking on Rios' contract. FanGraphs thought it was a steal for Chicago. Walk-Off Walk pointed out if you want to blame anyone, blame Paul Godfrey and Vernon Wells:

"Ricciardi's hand was forced because Rios' talents could not fully shine when an even larger bag of waste was blocking up the dollar flow. Blue Jays CF Vernon Wells is owed almost $100 million before 2014, at which point he'll be 35 and have a mailbox clogged with AARP junk mail. In a move reminiscent of Sophie's Choice, J.P. was stuck choosing between the two big OF contracts and ended up giving up the more attractive one. If Wells wasn't around, Rios could rotate into center. But Wells will be around, jingling the pocket change from his Albert Belle-esque contract without the Albert Belle-esque production."

Bottom line, the anger over Rios is understandable, but misdirected. Whether the Jays pried a player loose from Chicago is irrelevant. Since Kate Hudson was at Monday's Jays-Yankees game, you at least wish they could have got $50 and a case of Heineken, like in Almost Famous, but would people really feel any different if Dayan Viciendo was now in the Jays system? No, they wouldn't. No one wanted to hear about the players whom J.P. Ricciardi got in return for Scott Rolen. Try to be consistent, please.

The point is the obvious, it was right to give into emotion for a while. It's a little rich to start being doom-and-gloom and always blame Ricciardi, who is out the door in October. At the end of the day, the desire is to always want Major League Baseball in Canada, in the worst way. Hopefully that's not the way you'll start getting it in Toronto.

Big Papi (and what it means to a Jays fan)

In another time and place, there was a young reporter who knew "here it comes" when an editor peered at him and said, "Question for you ..."

Would that George Mitchell could be held to account. As Jason Rosenberg pointed out, the question for him is how is that the much-ballyhood Mitchell Report failed to make mention of David Ortiz and Manny Ramírez and it now it's alleged the Red Sox's erstwhile slugging tandem apparently testing positive for steroids? How could that be when Mitchell, the former U.S. Senate majority leader, is employed by the Red Sox. (You also know the same media outlet which broke this also owns a stake in that baseball franchise, right?)

That's about it. With respect to Ortiz, you can't convict based on an anonymous survey test, which is what it was in 2003.

Releasing all the names at once just to stop this slow drip is a no-go since there is that troublesome due process, although Rosenblog suggested, tongue-in-cheek, "(Commissioner Bud) Selig sells Fox the rights to the names that get released as part of a one-hour special."

People certainly do care. Ortiz is the top trending topic on Twitter at this moment, with the 3-4 slots occupied by "Manny Ramirez" and "Big Papi," just like Boston's batting order during their championship years (well, actually Ortiz hit third and Manny hit cleanup). It's just that they're not necessarily angry.

Really, though, everyone is compromised and anyone who says they are "done with baseball" due to steroids, well, in Bill Daly's phrasing, you have to question their bona fides as fans.

The schadenfreude of it all, speaking as a Blue Jays fan whose team which isn't the darling of the U.S. media, is that MLB's symbiotic relationship with ESPN and FOX Sports means there is less incentive to expose a Toronto player. It is far-fetched to think the Jays would not have someone among the 104 names.

In other words, praise Buddha the U.S. media is only interested in uncovering positive tests by players on big-market teams, with bonus points if the player is a visible minority.

It (turn on your sarcasm detector) means the Jays are safe since 2003 was their White Jays phase. They don't have anyone who put up big numbers in 2003 and has seen his stats fall down the side of a cliff like Ortiz did for the first part of this season. That doesn't sound like anyone on the Jays, least of all their starting centrefielder. Carry on.