Batter up: New York Mets

It's that mystical, wonderful time of year where you commit to a team who you know fully well won't win. This season, in honour of an popular Internet meme, we'll present 25 things tangentially about each Major League Baseball team. At bat: The Nye Mets.

1. Carlos Delgado will hit his 500th career homer on Sept. 25 in Florida. That's not a guess. That's what's going to happen.
   
   
2. Left-hander Johan Santana, in his second go-round in the league, seems like a decent pick to win the Cy Young Award. Pedro Martínez and Randy Johnson each won in their second season after changing leagues, so ...
   
   
3. The estimable Allen Barra is positing that it's The Year of José Reyes. The leadoff man has been Tall Poppy Syndromed. Slow starts in 2006 and '08 didn't help hus cause. Reyes hit .356/.442/.596 in the first month of the '07 season and this is an odd-numbered season ...


4. There's been good debate all winter whether Citi Field will be a death valley park, even more so than Shea Stadium, which had exceptionally poor visibility.
   
   
5. Their starting pitching probably just has to be good enough. There are no big names, but right-hander Mike Pelfrey allowed only six home runs last season. Oliver Pérez is always going to be NYC tabloid fodder all season, but he was good over the final three months last season. John Maine is good except he's made of glass. Please keep in mind it's better for the old media if everyone just accepts the Mets have no starting pitching outside Santana.
   
   
6. Santana is being played up as a clubhouse leader. Championships are won in the clubhouse (even Bill James says so — probably), so it's possible the Mets felt the older Santana and Pedro Martinez together would not work.
   
   
7. David Wright, Delgado, centrefielder Carlos Beltrán and rightfielder Ryan Church are a decent meat of the order, at least for the National League.
   
   
8. Random announcer babble: "Daniel Murphy sees a lot of pitches." Drink!
   
   The 24-year-old is pencilled in as the No. 2 hitter. The Mets had a cast of thousands in the 2-hole last season.
   
   
9. Can Beltrán ever get any attention in MVP voting? No Met has ever won MVP.
   
   
10. No Mets pitcher has ever thrown a no-hitter, either.
    
    
11. You've heard it ad nauseam that the Phillies are attempting to become the first National League team to repeat as World Series champions since the '75-76 Reds. It might be hard to do it as second-place team behind the Metropolitans.
    
    
12. Picking up Gary Sheffield (obvious joke: Will he hit his 500th before Delgado, who's only 30 behind him?) is no-fuss, no-muss, for the most part. What's the worst that can happen with signing a 40-year-old tainted by the Mitchell Report, who cannot be stashed at the DH spot?
    
    Sheffield could give the Mets 350 good plate appearances.
    
    
13. A theory that can be ignored is that since David Wright had a big game-winning hit in Team USA's comeback win over Puerto Rico in the World Baseball Classic, he'll carry the Mets all season.
    
    
14. Give a good team enough chances and they'll be bound to win sooner or later. That held for the Phillies in 2008, so ipso facto, the Mets should make the playoffs are losing on the last day of the season two years in a row.
    
    
15. It would be a shame if Pedro Martínez doesn't sign soon.
    
    
16. Their Triple-A team, the Buffalo Bisons, is giving free tickets to the unemployed. That's not going to fly in Western New York. (The Jays having their top farm team there would have been nice, but it's not Buffalo's fault it didn't happen.)
    
    
17. The Mets don't do the whole farm-system thing much at all. It's cute that their Double-A team in Binghamton, N.Y., is called the B-Mets, and the logo includes a bee. Ralph Wiggum would approve.
    
    
18. One reason to be sentimental about the Mets: Starting catcher Brian Schneider is a former Expo. He gets the job done, although when a team's missed the playoffs a
    
    
19. There wasn't a lot of news coverage about it, but they added two closers from the AL West, JJ Putz in a three-way trade involving the Mariners and Frankie Rodriguez from the Angels. It could have been three, but Huston Street had a bad year and no one could figure out who was closing for Texas, including the Rangers (C.J. Wilson, 22 saves, but a 6-something ERA).
    
    
20. The 20th anniversary of Darryl Strawberry punching Keith Hernandez during a team photo session passed rather quietly last month. The joke at the time was, "It was the first time Strawberry hit the cutoff man all year."
    
    
21. It was easy to get sucked into being a Marxist about the new stadium bearing the name of a major recipient of the U.S. federal government bailout. Few bothered to point out that Shea Stadium's namesake, Bill Shea, was a heavy-hitter lawyer who lobbied the U.S. Congress to pressure the National League into putting a team in New York City — and then helped get a stadium built at, wait for it, the taxpayers' expense. Putting Citi Group's name on the new place is actually true to history.
    
    
22. Great trivia answer: They won a World Series before winning an Opening Day game (thank you, Real Clear Sports). The Mets lost their first eight openers before the Miracle in 1969.
    
    
23. Opening Day in Cincinnati might be snowed out. You can question the wisdom of scheduling a game in Ohio on April 5, but baseball season always starts in Cincy, except when there's a game the night before.
    
    
24. Former Met Gary Carter is managing the Atlantic League's Long Island Ducks, which the Good Lord willing, will provide further comic fodder.
25. "Unfortunately, the immutable laws of physics contradict the entire premise of your account ..."
    
    
    
    

Zen Dayley: Carlos and the Bagman

It's been around the blogosphere and back, but a pre-eminent baseball writer batting out a column calling ex-Jay Carlos Delgado "the lost slugger of the Steroid Era" demands a response, especially when you totally called this spin:

"It's been hard, as a Jays fan, to shake the idea that Carlos Delgado's reputation might improve even though there's no way to presume anyone was clean as a bean."
-- Feb. 10, 2009

Discretion seemed like the better part of beating the Delgado drum two weeks ago.

It is zero-sum to play the guessing game of who was clean and who was juicing in baseball in the 1990s and 2000s. Tom Verducci, though, makes six figures writing about baseball (oh, the envy is just dripping off the computer screen), so maybe he can feel a little safer stepping out on to that ledge. The rest of us, who don't have editors and advertisers to answer to so much, can, as Jason at It Is About The Money, Stupid did, call this a "fool's errand." There is no way of knowing, so you can't turn Delgado into this smiling, ebullient bald-headed beacon.

It is also curious, mildly, whom Verducci doesn't seize upon as the Lost Slugger as he did his tour of spring training camps, carrying a lantern in the daytime. Delgado hit the ninth-most home runs in baseball from 1996 to 2003, which is taken to be the full run of the Steroid Era, to which Jules in Superbad would say, "Wow, that's a bit of an oversimplication there." Another first baseman of that period, Jeff Bagwell, is tied for sixth on the list (with Mark McGwire, who actually didn't play in two of those seasons).

Bagwell was not forgotten. He was simply underrated. He is also retired as a player, plus there was a New York Daily News report last spring that a trainer supplied drugs to him, Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte when all three played in Houston. It didn't have much of stickiness factor, perhaps since "the rules of American sports journalism prohibit steroid allegations from being directed at average-sized Caucasian ballplayers on teams based in Red States." (OOLF, Dec. 15, 2006.)


Point being, Jeff Bagwell is not as good a literary device as Delgado. He's also not as a big skin to hang on the wall compared to Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa or Clemens and Mark McGwire. Being underrated and playing your whole career in a football state has its perks. (As an aside, someone claimed the spike in Bagwell's home-run rates was fishy, failing to point out he hit only four homers in his Double-A season in 1990 because he played in an extremely pitcher-friendly league; no one on his team hit more than five homers, and Bagwell led the league in doubles, which is an indicator of a burgeoning home-run stroke.)

Getting back to Delgado, it's easy to see why he would put on such a pedestal. He plays for the other New York ballclub and he could soon be in rare company when it comes to his counting stats.

"This season, be it anything close to ordinary for him, Delgado will become only the 11th player in baseball history with 500 home runs, 500 doubles and 1,500 RBIs. It is a club with no back door. The others: Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Frank Robinson, Eddie Murray, (Ken) Griffey, (Manny) Ramirez, (Rafael) Palmeiro and (Barry) Bonds. And yet Delgado never is talked about as a first-ballot Hall of Famer, and is rarely discussed as a Hall of Famer at all."

It's a fun thought, although piling up the big career hit, home run and RBI totals is somewhat a combination of longevity and the era where someone played. The first five names on that list are all-time greats beyond that doubt. The next five involve a guy who played forever and four who had the benefit of playing in the ArenaBall era, including two whom most people would call drug cheats.

Delgado should not be turned into a hero after the fact. He was a terrific hitter in Toronto. The vibe with him was the same as it has been with Roy Halladay since the start of the 2005 through on or around July 31, 2009,. He made it feel like the Blue Jays would always have some hope as long as he was as around. Perhaps Hall of Fame voters, who tend to give a lot of credence to someone having won a MVP award or Cy Young Award, will consider looking at it as if he won in 2003, when he was edged by Alex Rodriguez.

The bottom line, as ShysterBall noted, it's really hard to except people to believe who was clean and who was dirty.

"Look, I appreciate what Verducci is trying to do here. He, like so many of us, wants to bring some kind of certainty to bear on steroids' impact on baseball. He wants to draw a line around certain players and statistics so we can at least have some kind of a foothold for assessing the era in which we find ourselves. The fact of the matter, however, is that no analysis, such as it is, like this one going to achieve that certainty or allow us to separate the wheat from the chaff. Rather, it's going to take a lot of time and a lot of reporting and scholarship. In the meantime, we're just going to have to live with our vague senses about this stuff and have some faith that the enduring nature of the game -- and the work of history -- will sort all of this stuff out for us."

In the meantime, Carlos Delgado is 31 homers from 500. He'll probably achieve the milestone in September. Sure, it would have been great if he could have done it in a Blue Jays uniform.

Bloggers can't be choosers, though. Only Sports Illustrated gets make such choices.

Related:
Appreciating Carlos Delgado, the lost slugger of the Steroid Era (Tom Verducci, SI.com)

Saturdays with Stieb: Imaginary baseball is getting painfully real

One of us is owner of the the all-time Toronto Blue Jays team — the ATJs — in the Seamheads Historical League., So, how about those Blue Jays?

It's tight-collar time in T-Dot as July beckons.

The All-Time Jays' division lead has been cut to two games coming into a three-game home series with the Arizado D-Rocks — "four-pointers," to borrow a term from hockeyheads calling into the FAN 590 use just to push Mike Wilner's buttons. The somnolent Seattle Mariners, led by Edgar Martinez, Ken Phelps ("They kept saying, 'Ken Phelps, Ken Phelps' ") and others are also threatening to make it interesting.

At 39-28, the All-Time Jays have the best record of any of the expansion teams, and that two sub.-500 clubs are in first place in the other expansion groups. Still, there's a whole lot of frettin' and fussin', like there was back in the early 1990s when people called for Cito Gaston to be fired on a nightly basis while has was coolly guiding the Jays to back-to-back titles.

The blame has to fall on the ATJs general manager, who recently defended his decision not to get Dave Winfield based on his one season in Toronto as a 39-year-old DH) for his right-field problem by saying, "Do you know the guy doesn't even like baseball that much? Maybe we know some things about him that you don't." He later explained that in classic Sagerian knowitall fashion, he just trying to point out that the Hall of Famer played college basketball and was once drafted by the Minnesota Vikings. Not a lot of people know that.

The big snag has come on the mound. The staff ERA has ballooned like a blogster's waistline, all the way to 4.51. The 1-2 punch of Roger Clemens (5.17 ERA in June) and Roy Halladay (9.43 for the month, losing all four of his starts) have taken some body blows, possibly from overwork.

The SHL's 154-game season includes a lot of scheduled off-days. The effort to squeeze as many starts out of the top three of Doc and Dumber, along with left-hander Jimmy Key, appears to have left them plumb tired.

The rotation has been shuffled in a vain attempt to address the situation; from this point forward, a strict five-man rotation is in use. David Wells and A.J. Burnett have been summoned from Triple-A Las Vegas. It took 25 U.S. marshals to get Wells away from the craps table, but in his second start since being brought up (he refuses to call going from Las Vegas to Toronto as a "promotion"), he shut out the Milwaukee Brewers on three hits. Key and Dave Stieb have more or les picked up the slack, winning 5-of-6 decisions between them in June, while middle reliever Scott Downs is doing yeoman's work.

Actually, Stieb hasn't. The namesake of the best Jays blog going has a 5.96 ERA but somehow has a 7-3 record, usually because he's matched up against the dregs (relatively speaking) of the other team's rotation. The Jays have scored at least nine runs in five of his past seven starts, a little ironic considering he was always known as the pitcher who could never win 20 games. (Remember 1985, when he won the ERA title, but had just a 14-13 record?)

Naturally, Stieb was on the mound June 18 for a 26-3 curb-stumping of the New York Mets, when the ATJs pounded out 33 hits. All nine starters, including the one-time Southern Illinois Salukis outfielder who converted to pitching, had at least two hits. Stieb went 3-for-6 with two doubles.

That was a ray of sunshine in otherwise cloudy month. The ballclub is scoring a lot of runs (367, sixth in the league), but the hitting has been peaks-and-valleys. The corner spots have been hit-and-miss. The infield corners are getting it done, more or less. Carlos Delgado is leading the SHL in OPS (1.070), on-base percentage (.432), slugging (.632) and isolated power (.304). Across the diamond, lefty-masher Troy Glaus (five of his six dingers have been off portsiders) and the original professional hitter Rance Mulliniks are providing adequate production.

The outfield spots, not so much. The SHL version of Alex Rios (.273/.294/.439) has some pop in his bat, but has no clue how to control the strike zone (seven bases on balls, 50 strikeouts). George Bell has been busted down to platoon status in the left field. He's been bumped out by switch-hitting Devon White, who playing centrefield vs. right-handed pitchers, is OPSing 1.104 in June with five homers on the month.

Leadoff man Lloyd Moseby is moving between two positions and is still on pace to score 120 runs.

It promises to be bumpy, but it's provided some great brain candy over the past few months. A few highlights from the recent games:

Ill Devo: Putting White in the starting lineup up felt like a masterstroke after his two-run, walk-off homer in a 5-4 win over the Marlins-Rays on June 12. It also cut the Florida version of A.J. Burnett out of a victory, as an added bonus.

Caught napping: For some reason, the computerized ATJs manager is more notorious than John Gibbons was for overworking his starters. The Angels' 7-6, 14-inning win on June 21 looks like it would have caused our inner geek to drop-kick at least three inanimate objects across the living room.

Clemens was at 127 pitches and had a 6-2 lead going into the last of the ninth, but was left in for God knows what reason. Two singles and a four-pitch walk loaded the bases. Normally reliable Tom Henke came in and induced two tension-abating popouts, but then Mike Napoli (who has better numbers in the SHL than in real life) ripped a game-tying grand slam.

Napoli, a catcher no less, later tripled and scored the winning run in the 14th. Having the opposing catcher leg out a triple was a perfect capper to a dismal night all around, especially since in the 13th, White was thrown out trying to steal third and Moseby made an out after swinging on a 3-0 pitch.

Call goes out for Carter: Bell has been so bad that as of this moment, he's been sent to Triple-A, with Joe Carter catching the red-eye. Carter was shipped out early in the season and has been raking, with 11 homers and 42 RBI in 53 Triple-A games; he's even managed to draw 15 bases on balls.

This actually happened: Downs has earned two wins in a four-day span, which means he'll probably soon feel a twinge in his elbow like his real-life counterpart. On June 22, he pitched a shutout 10th and 11th in a 4-2 extra-inning win over the Angels. Three days later, he was in the right place at the right time in a 9-8 decision where Moseby hit a game-winning homer off Willie Hermandez in the bottom of the eighth inning.

That came on the eve of the big series vs. the D-Rocks. If you believe momentum exists in baseball, feel free to believe the ATJs have some.

Rodriguez: Thirteen thoughts on the baseball Judas

It is better for your health to "ignore these blowhards" with regard to the media coverage of the Alex Rodriguez scandal, to quote FanGraphs, which has created the Hyperbole Index (HI, for short).

Good friend Pete Toms notes this is a chattering class issue. The majority of people who will attend ballgames, just for something to do or on a company outing, will have forgotten about this by April. For sanity's sake, condensing the whole Rodriguez matter to 13 thoughts seems appropriate for putting the matter to bed for a few days.

1. Rodriguez breaking the home run record... good thing: Contary to what you might have heard, Rodriguez has not destroyed the game's history. His shame will serve to liberate it from the conceit, kept up by self-appointed gatekeepers such as Bob Costas, that baseball is the best game of all because of its record book.
   
   Those of you who have also watched all 18½ hours of Ken Burns' Baseball, six times over in the past 15 years might remember this part. At one point, Costas says the grand old game stands alone since you can rhyme off numbers such as 56, 755, 4,256, .406 and everyone will get the reference. In other sports it is, "How many yards did Jim Brown have when Walter Payton passed him? How points did Wilt Chamberlain have when Kareem Abdul-Jabbar passed him to become the all-time leading scorer in the NBA?"
   
   Statistics are a good backup for confirming what you saw or filling in what you missed. It's mostly a reflection of the competition player faced, the conditions (i.e., segregation, scouting, home ballpark), the way the game was played at the time and whether he was fortunate enough to enjoy a long career. Everything needs to be put into context, not just the Steroid Era.
   
   The failure to understand is this is why Dick Allen, who played in the low-scoring 1960s and early '70s, is not in the Hall of Fame. It is also a big part of why Jim Rice got in last month by the skin of his teeth. Oh, and remember, anyone who played before the game was fully integrated, their numbers are a bit suspect too.
   
   It's a fair leap, but if the top two home run hitters of all time are a pair of universally hated cheaters, perhaps it gets slower-thinking sportswriters to stop furrowing their brows in a vain attempt to understand the situation. This is a small, nerdy point to list first.
   
   
2. Marvin Miller must be laughing. The now 91-year-old former players' union boss warned five years ago (The Biz of Baseball, July 13, 2004) that the U.S. government might step all over players' constitutional rights in order to be the white knight on Steroids in Sports. No one was listening (guilty as charged):

   "... it's one thing if an employer makes it a labor-management issue. It's quite another when the government says, 'I now will subpoena records of confidential tests and I will use the material,' which, after all is tantamount to saying, 'I will require self-incrimination and I may send some of you to jail.' I think the sports media, like so much of the other media, is just asleep on this issue."

3. This shall pass. This is only the second-worst scandal in sports history, according to the estimable Seattle baseball writer Geoff Baker. (Canadians might be interested to know what claimed the No. 1 and No. 5 berths.) People are so jaded that they can shrug this off, noting it was timed so it keeps Steroids in Baseball on the front burner in the lead-up to the start of Barry Bonds' trial (which is going so, so well for the prosecutors).
   
   
4. Statistics can prove anything; 14 per cent of all people know that. Baseball was due to see an attendance decrease in 2009 due to the recession. Expect someone to blame that on the Bonds and Rodriguez fallout.
   
   
5. Putting the media on trial: The Sports Law Professor turned the cannon on Sports Illustrated's Selena Roberts, who broke the story Saturday.

   "Where is the reporters' complicity? I see Selena Roberts, Sports Illustrated's new back-page moralizer ... being interviewed on evening news programs without having to answer for her conduct. If it not permissible for an insider to reveal the contents of sealed evidence, then why is it morally permissible (if not illegal) for an outsider, especially a veteran reporter experienced in prying admissions out of reluctant innocents, to cajole and entice such insiders to break their known legal obligations? Isn't luring another to commit a wrong just as culpable as the wrong itself?"

6. In other words, Rodriguez didn't have to make stuff up: Rodriguez steered some of his ESPN interview with Peter Gammons around to spewing invective about Roberts. He even went so far to accuse of her of committing a B&E:

   "What makes me upset is Sports Illustrated pays this lady Selena Roberts to stalk me. This lady has been thrown out of my apartment in New York City. This lady has, five days ago she was thrown out of the University of Miami police for tresspassing. And four days ago she tried to break into my house while my girls are up there sleeping, and got cited by the Miami Beach Police. I have the paper here. And this lady's coming out with all these allegations, all these lies, because she’s writing an article for Sports Illustrated. And she's coming out with a book in May. And really respectable journalists are following this lady off the cliff, and following her lead. And that to me is unfortunate.

   Jeff Pearlman has some choice words for Gammons for not challenging Rodriguez's assertions. Roberts was also slagged by The Futility Infielder last night.
   
   
7. Yes, him again: Rodriguez's infamy means that Pete Rose, who's been sent down the river so many times only to keep bobbing up like some raspy-voiced Rasputin, can continue his two-decade-old image rehabilitation.
   
   Rose was on MLB Home Plate on Tuesday afternoon, where he drew a distinction between his crimes as an athlete-gambler and a juicer: "What I did had nothing to do with the direct outcome of a game. What I did (betting on baseball), I did as a manager." That might be a flimsy premise, but taking a banned substance definitely impacts
   
   For what it's worth, Rose did not buy any claim Rodriguez was young and naive in 2001-03, pointing out "he wasn't a kid." Granted, at the time Rodriguez was playing for a team whose former managing partner who referred to things he did in his 30s as "youthful indiscretions." Maybe that gave him the idea (kidding).
   
   
8. Cooperstown needs new shorts: Rose, who of course wants to be in the Baseball Hall of Fame worst than anything, said, "I just got a call from a guy in Cooperstown. He's all pissed off. He's like, this is going to ruin us because no one from the last 10 years is going to get into the Hall of Fame because of steroids."
   
   There would not be a problem if the Baseball Writers' Association of America would get off its collective high horse, but that's another 100 posts. To borrow a phrase from one of Kinger's contemporaries, Tim Cunningham, the Hall of Fame voting system is "totally broken." A-Rod sticking a needle in his bum doesn't let anyone off the hook.
   
   
9. Comfortably numb: Please keep in mind that some other big name will get out at some point.
   
   
10. Who is innocent by association? Poz noted Frank Thomas, who was just naturally huge and cooperated with the Mitchell Report, comes out very well. Thomas was huge naturally and his career has wound down at a normal pace. Some of the pitchers who played through the Steroid Era, such as Mike Mussina, might have stronger arguments for the Hall of Fame, assuming they were on the level.
    
    It's been hard, as a Jays fan, to shake the idea that Carlos Delgado's reputation might improve even though there's no way to presume anyone was clean as a bean. The former Toronto slugger, as you probably remember, finished second to Rodriguez in the American League MVP voting in 2003. Delgado was fourth in 2000, behind the tainted Jason Giambi, Thomas and Rodriguez.
    
    Being a former MVP draws a lot of water with the BBWAA. The view might take hold that Delgado actually should be looked at as the winner in 2003, which would help his borderline Cooperstown bonafides. As a first baseman who has OPS+'d 138 over his career, Delgado is an iffy Hall of Fame candidate, but he is getting close to the 500-home run plateau which once meant automatic induction, along with 500 doubles and 1,500 RBI.
    
    
11. Talk about timing: The Rodriguez scandal has done for the new MLB Network what the first Gulf War did for CNN back in 1991, as Sports Media Journal noted. It's been a real coup for the digital channel, although Canadians have to take everyone's word for it since the channel is not available in Canada, thanks Rogers.
    
    
12. Why the shrug? It is tough to feel scandalized when one made his peace with the Steroid Era three flippin' years ago:

    "Baseball’s hamfisted attempt to put a gloss over the steroids scandal last year makes every fan a little bit guilty. We are taking pleasure in a sport that you know has been altered by drug cheats, knowing that there are strings attached."

13. Barry Bonds is still in the 10th circle. It makes no sense to draw a distinction between Rodriguez and Bonds because the latter is a more arrogant jerk. No one thought to call Rodriguez a cheater before Saturday, and Bonds was pilloried far, far worse.

The ATJs: A case of the 'Spos daze

One of us is owner of the the all-time Toronto Blue Jays team — the ATJs — in the Seamheads Historical League.

It figures the ATJs' first series loss would come courtesy of Jonah Keri's Montreal Expos.

Dropping the first two games of a three-game set at the Big O (a 17-1 curbstomping in the opener, followed by a 6-4 setback at the hands of Triple-A callup Charlie Lea hurts, man. The Expos have been just a memory for nearly five years, but it has not been forgotten that 'Spos fans never liked to admit anything about the Blue Jays is very good or useful. Toronto, after all, could never hold a candle to Montreal when it came to the finer things in life, no matter how many World Series titles or Canadian head offices of Fortune 500 companies it boasted. It sucks to see them gain imaginary bragging rights. These outrages will not be forgotten.

The Expos won the first all-Canadian interleague game. On June 30, 1997, the eve of Canada Day, Pedro Martínez, on his way to his first Cy Young, Award, beat Pat Hentgen, the Jays' first Cy Young winner, 2-1 in a tidy one hour and 57 minutes. (This is burned in memory since I was umping a ball game that night and had counted on getting home in time for the last couple of innings.) The Expos also won the final interleague game against the Jays, on the Fourth of July in a minor-league park in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The fact that Canadian Shawn Hill earned his first major-league W (to go with the one he now sports as a member of the Washington Nationals) provided the lone grace note.

Saying that it is just two games out of 154 is cold comfort. The ATJs are rolling otherwise, leading their division with a 23-12 record, good for a six-game lead over the D-Rox and the best record among the 12 expansion franchises.

Losing to the Expos sucked. The Jays have won 4-of-7 since the last update, scoring 48 runs in that stretch.

That day, he was Tom Terrible: Some of you might not know that the great Tom Seaver pitched for the Cincinnati Reds for a few seasons.

Cincinnati Tom could only get through three innings against the ATJs in a 15-3 shellacking on May 14. The starting corner infielders, Carlos Delgado and Troy Glaus, apparently begged out of starting against Seaver. In their stead, backup infielders Fred McGriff (3-for-5, three runs) and Rance Mulliniks (4-for-5, three runs) each got on base to start big rallies, a four-run second and a four-run fifth inning.

Grab some Bench: Right-hander Roy Halladay shaved his ERA down to 1.23 after pitching eight solid innings in a 4-1 win over the Reds on May 13. He struck out Johnny Bench, whom some consider the greatest catcher of all time, twice.

Clutchiness: Toronto's 9-2 record in one-run games does not include late-game breakthroughs they had in consecutive wins over the D-Rox on May 10-11, winning 15-8 (in 13 innings) and 7-3.

The lineup shuffle: The rule of thumb is you're supposed to stick with what works. Tony Fernandez, batting of the No. 9 spot, is on-basing .431 and is second on the team with 8.46 runs created per 27 outs. (Delgado leads at 9.31.) Fernandez has been more productive than leadoff man Lloyd Moseby (6.64 RC/27) and 2-hole hitter Robbie Alomar (5.22). Fernandez might rate some time in the 2-hole, much the same away that Cito Gaston flip-flopped Alomar and Paul Molitor in the lineup in 1993 depending whether the other team was starting a right- or left-handed pitcher.

Regardless, some changes might be coming. Cleanup man George Bell is racking up RBI (team-high 32 in 35 games), but his .245/.262/.396 rate stats are barely replacement-player level. Bell has come alive in the last week, so he stays put, for now. None of the other righty-hitting corner outfielders seem to offer much pop, so he's the best option.

Regrets, there a few: Not taking Dave Winfield based on his one season in Toronto in 1992 might have been a mistake, keeping in mind that the 40-year-old would have had to play the outfield every day. There's no need to double-check that Winfield only played the outfield 26 times during the regular season.

The not-as-cold corner: Third baseman Troy Glaus has hit safely in six consecutive games (big woop), including his first two homers. He's still hitting a tepider than tepid .196/.304/.278, which isn't cutting the mustard for a No. 6 hitter. He's lost at-bats to Mulliniks, who gets on base but offers no power.

The tall tactician: Jonah Keri has pulled out all the stops to keep his Expos around the .500 mark, going with a "seven-man rotation and a shuttle bus between Montreal and Ottawa," to cobble together a pitching staff.

How nuts is fretting over this? Well, not this nuts. (Tip of the cap to Baseball Over Here.)

The ATJs: Hey, nineteen (wins, against only nine losses)

One of us is owner of the the all-time Toronto Blue Jays team — the ATJs — in the Seamheads.com Historical League (SHL). So how about those Blue Jays? At this writing, they are 19-9, having opened a four-game lead in the SHL's Expansion 3 division.

Fair play to Pittsburgh Pirates owner Curt Schilling for reaching deep into the recesses of time and coming up with a stopper in Jesse Tannehill, who denied the All-Time Jays a chance to tie for the best record in imaginary baseball.

Jesse Tannehill? Nope, never heard of him, until yesterday. He was a lefty control artist who pitched for the Pirates, New York Highlanders and Boston Americans at the turn of the 20th century. Score one for Schilling. The old-timey moundsman flung a three-hit shutout to top Roy Halladay and Co. 5-0 in a matchup of the top pitchers on the celestial circuit. Doc's ERA took a beating, shooting all the way from 0.90 to 1.25, which still leads the league (thank you very much).

That was just a temporary setback; at 19-9, the ATJs are rolling, with the rest of the offence starting to pick up the slack behind the Mad Men of Moseby, Alomar and Delgado. Sun Media's veteran baseball writer (and fellow Kingstonian) Bob Elliott, captured the spirit of the thing yesterday with a post on the SHL for his indispensable Canadian Baseball Network. Missing a chance to sweep one of the established franchises, especially Schilling's, should not sting too much.

That 19-9 record is the best among the 12 franchises which began play in 1961. The ATJs are holding their own with 9-7 record vs. the charter franchises. Far from letting down against lesser teams as their real-life counterparts have been known to do (perception is reality, friends), they're 10-2 vs. the franchises who began play in 1961. Here's some highlights:

Clutchitude: It's a word, look it up. The ATJs are 9-2 in one-run games, which, reasonably speaking, means they are overdue for an evenout soon. In the here and now, utilityman Kelly Gruber picked a perfect time for his first home run, a walk-off job off Big Bob Veale in a 5-4 win over the Schilling's stacked Pirates on May 7. They won't being calling him Kelly Buber.



Gruber's big blast made a winner of Dave Stieb, who hung in vs. a Pirates lineup with seven Hall of Famers in the starting lineup (every position except catcher and pitcher).

Express this: A player can appear on more than one team, so the ATJs got to lay a lickin' on one Lynn Nolan Ryan twice in one week. On April 29, Texas Nolan didn't get past the third inning in a 10-2 romp, going to an early shower after the good guys put a 7-spot up on the board. Four days later, Houston Nolan did better, but couldn't match, Harry Leroy Halladay scattered seven hits across eight innings in a tense 3-1 game.

The two-Martinez lunch: Since players can appear on more than one team, the Boston version of Pedro Martinez and his Montreal incarnation are each tied for second in the SHL in strikeouts, with Toronto Roger Clemens.

Mad Men: Hughsy will probably hate seeing his all-time favourite show co-opted by an extreme nerd, but the all lefty-swinging top of the order of leadoff man Lloyd Moseby, No. 2 hitter Robbie Alomar and Carlos Delgado in the 3-spot deserve a nickname. They are carrying the offence:

Moseby: .333/.387/.447, 21 runs scored
Alomar: .325/.366/.439, 24 runs, 15-of-19 on steals
Delgado: .284/.373/.642, team-high eight homers

Mushy middle: Third sacker Troy Glaus is batting a brilliant .147 with zero home runs (at this rate, he'll be hitting behind the pitcher). Gruber and Rance Mullliniks might yet re-create their job-sharing role at third base.

Injury report: None. It's a miracle. The Cardinals have already had Stan Musial and Dennis Eckersley each go down; the Eck apparently "was hurt while cutting a brownie out of a pan and sustained an undisclosed injury."

Looking ahead to May: Thirteen of the next 19 games after against those expansion teams, including a three-game set vs. Johan Keri's Montreal Expos next week.

Thanks again to Seamheads' Mike Lynch for organizing the league, and to Bob Elliott for writing a nice article. You know what would have been even nicer? Winning both games vs. Schilling's team, but bloggers can't be choosers.

The ATJs report: Determined to win this dork-o-rama

One of us is owner of the the all-time Toronto Blue Jays team — the ATJs — in the Seamheads.com Historical Sim League (SHL). Other owners include HDNet's Roy Firestone (Orioles), ESPN.com's Jonah Keri (Expos), Kansas City Star writer and blogging god Joe Posnanski (Indians), godfather of Sabermetrics, Bill James (Red Sox) and Curt Schilling (Pirates), who has struck out 3,116 more major-league batters than any of us will. So how about those Blue Jays?

The secret handshake with Jays fans is realizing the 1980s generation of players were the team, not the 1992-93 back-to-back World Series teams.

The Jays in those days, Jesse and Lloyd and Rance and Garth and Er-nie, Er-nie! toiled down at the Mistake by the Lake, with its rock-hard artificial turf, cramped clubhouses and the aluminum bleachers which did not face home plate. They wore funny blue-and-white hats and powder blue pyjamas with all the dignity, as was the style at the time, with all the dignity one could muster. It is a good nostalgia wallow to see some of the 1980s players fuelling the ATJs' early-season rise to first place in its division, with a 12-6 record after 18 games. That is only one game off the best record in all sim baseball, held by Schilling's Pirates.

The ATJs manager, to quote Casey Stengel, wants it known he couldna done it without the players. The formula which only gets the real-life Jays so far in the current AL East, pitching, solid fielding and sporadic run production, is working in the Expansion 3 group. They actually have a different leader in each of the six Triple Crown categories, which speaks to their balance.

The division consists of Arizona/Colorado D-Rox, the Marlin/Rays (an amalgam of the two Florida teams) and Toronto's 1977 expansion cousins, the Seattle Mariners (dead last at 5-13). The D-Rox are 10-8, good for second.

Jimmy Key (3-1, 3.19, 1.16 WHIP) has emerged as a solid No. 3 starter after Dumb and Doctor, the 1-2 punch of Roger Clemens and Roy Halladay, . In his most recent start, Key went the route on a seven-hitter, striking out 10, to beat Florida/Tampa Bay and, wait for it, Marlins/Rays starter A.J. Burnett. (The big blow in that one was a three-run homer by leadoff man Lloyd Moseby.)

Fourth starter Dave Stieb, has been slower to come around, but did win his last start. Tom Henke is tied with the league lead with six saves.

Hitting-wise, Moseby is leading the club with a .917 on-base-plus-slugging and team-high 14 runs scored. Tony Fernandez, batting .288/.377/.407 out of the No. 9 spot, has also proven to be a good table-setter.

The seven spots in between them are, uh, problematic. Roberto Alomar has cooled off, which might be the effect of being one of the only players on four different SHL teams (he's also on Firestone's Orioles, Poz's Indians and the Padres, owned by Geoff Young of Ducksnorts.) The ballcubs is is 20th or worse in the SHL in almost every offensive stat, except stolen bases (with 35 base swipes, they're third).

Carlos Delgado has been a big bat out of the 3-hole, slugging .554, while George Bell is cleaning up with 18 RBI after 18 games despite some execrable rate stats (.225/.230/.422.) At least this group is opportunistic. A good case-in-point came April 19 in Chicago, when Delgado ended in an eight-pitch battle with Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown by hitting a two-out, two-strike, walkoff homer in the bottom of the ninth for a 2-1 win over the all-time Chicago Cubs.

That isn't going to happen every day, so the skipper has find some winning combination in right field and third base, which make up the 5-6 spots in the order. An Alex Rios/Joe Carter quasi-platoon has been installed in right while Jesse Barfield gets some swings in down at Triple-A Las Vegas. Over at third, the original professional hitter, Rance Mulliniks, might yet push Troy Glaus into a platoon role.

It has been a lot of fun following this. All of this is couched in the acknowledgement that it is a dork-o-rama, but for a Jays diehard, this been a joy. Thanks for listening.

Schilling's masterstroke

Curt Schilling gets a slow clap for choosing to be owner of the Pirates, even though he never played for the franchise.

It's a downtrodden franchise on account of those 16 consecutive losing seasons, but it dates back to the 19th century and it has employed some all-time great players. Their regular lineup has six Hall of Famers, seven if you count Bill Mazeroski, who's in there somewhat dubiously:

1. Honus Wagner, shortstop
2. Paul Waner, rightfield
3. Barry Bonds, centrefield
   
4. Willie Stargell, first base
5. Ralph Kiner, right field
6. Jason Kendall, catcher
7. Pie Traynor, third base
8. Bill Mazeroski, second base
   

Some would say that it was disloyal on Schilling's part. The word "shrewd" seems fairer.

Zen Dayley: A royal snub to Prince Albert

Someday the Seamhead echo chamber, in the wake of an award announcement in baseball, will not have to do a takedown on the guys who did not vote with the pack.

ShysterBall gets credit for this pickup: A writer in Milwaukee had the St. Louis Cardinals' Albert Pujols, who won his second National League MVP award today, seventh on his ballot. Seventh. On some level, what are you going to do? It comes down to opinion, so if a member of the BBWAA in good standing likes to "weight my voting to teams in the playoff hunt because I think that puts more pressure on players and separates the men from the boys," so it goes. Hey, you always need one dentist to cast the dissenting vote when four others recommend something. On another level, it's just plain wrong.

It seems like a pretty simple concept to comprehend. Baseball is about a gift for dailiness. Like Earl Weaver said, "This ain't a football game — we do this every day." The most valuable player is the one who was the most consistent across the six-month grind of a 162-game season. Talk about players being clutch and coming through in big games has some merit in post-season play, but most valuable is the best position player in the league. (Starting pitchers have the Cy Young Award and relief pitchers have their own award.)

Pujols out-OPS'd the league by 70 points (his combined on-base-plus slugging was 1.114, followed by Atlanta's Chipper Jones at 1.044). To put in perspective, the last National Leaguer to lead the circuit in OPS by that much, notwithstanding those who had help from Coors Field or steroids (Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire) was future Hall of Famer Jeff Bagwell in 1994. He was MVP. 

If you need a guy whose season wasn't cut short by a strike, well, Kevin Mitchell in 1989 had a 71-point edge over his closest competition. He was voted MVP. Offensive numbers are not everything, but seventh-best in the league when your margin of victory in one of the offensive categories that has the biggest cause-and-effect with team success is better than anyone else's in the past decade?

For the record, the man in question's ballot went Ryan Howard-CC Sabathia-Manny Ramírez-Carlos Delgado-Aramis Ramírez-Prince Fielder-Pujols.

The Nos. 2 and 3 on the ballot, Sabathia and Manny Ramírez, were not even in the National League for the bulk of the season — how valuable were they to the Milwaukee Brewers and L.A. Dodgers, respectively, when they were working for another organization? As far as being in a playoff race goes, Pujols' fourth-place Cardinals won more games (86) than Ramírez's first-place L.A. Dodgers (84, as we've made light of several times).

Fielder supposedly had "a much better September when the Brewers were clawing to get in the playoffs." Funny he should mention that ... here are the slash and counting stats for the Pujols and the five players, in order of OPS:

Howard: .352/.422/.852, 11 HR, 32 RBI, 26 runs
MannyBManny: .370/.465/.753, 8 HR, 28 RBI, 15 runs
Pujols: .321/.427/.702, 8 HR, 27 RBI, 17 runs
Delgado: .340/.400/.649, 8 HR, 22 RBI, 21 runs
Fielder: .316/.398/.600, 6 HR, 21 RBI, 12 runs
A. Ramírez: .342/.386/.566, 3 HR, 11 RBI, 12 runs

Pujols still hit in September when the Cardinals faded from the playoff race. He outhit three of the five players who were involved in playoff races and one's involvement was sketchy. In case you're wondering why someone who covers the Milwaukee Brewers would rate Cubs third baseman Aramis Ramírez so highly, it probably stems from a three-game series the teams had from September 16-18.

The Cubs came in with an eight-game lead with 12 to play when they faced the Brewers. One need not read Baseball Prospectus every day to know that 99 per cent of the time, that's a safe lead. Ramírez had a good series, going 7-for-11 with three doubles and two homers, and the Cubs won 2-of-3 to cinch the National League Central. But there was no pressure at that point — the Brewers were foundering, and the race was all but over.

Is is that hard to look this stuff up, when it's your job? Baseball beat writers probably have 60-, 70-hour weeks and no one should envy their long hours and the flak they catch on all sides. Seriously, though, if you're going to have some personal rule of thumb for your MVP vote, at least apply it consistently. It's no big deal, but Pujols should not be seventh on anyone's MVP ballot.

Other business:

• Toronto native Joey Votto is in Bill James' Top 25 under 29, but there is nary a Blue Jay to be found. The Jays' young talent which is currently on the roster is ranked 28th of the 30 teams. It will get better, though.

Zen Dayley: Some real howlers about the underappreciated

The larger point with Cliff Lee vs. Roy Halladay --is that we have no idea where fans' understanding of baseball is heading.

Lee, the Cy Young Award winner over the Jays' talismanic tall right-hander, put up numbers -- 2.54 earned-run average, 22-3 record -- that, if he had not won, you might imagine people looking at in 20 years and saying, "How did he not win the Cy Young?" It's a good ketchup answer that sort of shuts out any fresh insight. In 20 years, it could just as easily be, "How did Halladay not win when he faced the second-toughest hitters and Lee faced the second-weakest?"

Rob Neyer has written a pretty good analysis of Lee vs. Halladay, mostly in reaction to a column out of Toronto on the subject. It appears the latter writer has pulled the same stunt in five years ago when then-Jay Carlos Delgado was edged by Alex Rodríguez for the MVP award, going against his principles to stump for the hometown player.

Neyer's piece might be firewalled. ESPN is doing pretty well financially, so here's what he had to say, in its entirety:

"(Name redacted) somehow has missed the single best argument for Halladay: He faced better hitters. He faced significantly better hitters.

"This year in the American League, 39 pitchers pitched enough innings to qualify for the ERA title.

The hitters Halladay faced finished the season with a .766 OPS, No. 2 out of 39.

"Lee's opposition finished with a .735 collective OPS, No. 38 out of 39.

"There are 14 teams in the American League. Quick and dirty, we can split them down the middle; the top seven teams in the league are the Good Hitting Teams, the bottom seven the Poor Hitting Teams. Of Lee's 27 starts against American League teams, 14 came against Poor Hitting Teams. Of Halladay's 30 starts against American League teams, only 12 were against Poor Hitting Teams.

"The best-hitting teams in the AL were the Rangers and the Red Sox. Halladay started against them seven times; Lee, just three times. The worst-hitting teams in the AL were the Royals, the Mariners, and the Athletics. Lee started against those teams nine times; Halladay, only four times."

(Editor's note: What would Doc have done if he got to face the Jays' hitters?)

"Halladay pitched 23 more innings than Lee, against tougher competition. He walked five more batters than Lee, and struck out 36 more. Halladay completed nine games; Lee completed four.

"Now let me make the argument for Lee, without even mentioning wins and losses.

"There's not much difference between their ERAs: 2.54 for Lee, 2.78 for Halladay. If Lee had given up six more earned runs all season — just one earnie every month — their ERAs would have been identical.

"But unearned runs count on the scoreboard, too. Lee gave up only five of them, and Halladay gave up 12. Add everything up, and Halladay gave up 20 more runs than Lee. Halladay's 'run average' — all runs included — was 3.22; Lee's was 2.74. That's a significant difference, in a conversation like this. We've grown a lot, we baseball fans, over these past 25 years. But we continue to completely ignore unearned runs, and there's really no reason for it.

"There's no wrong answer here, though. Superficially, Lee's numbers are more impressive. Dig a little deeper, and Halladay's are almost exactly as impressive. If you could have one of them for one game tomorrow, you'd have to pick Halladay. But the award's not given for talent. It's given for performance, and Lee's performance was almost exactly as impressive as Halladay's.

"Lee won the award, because baseball writers have traditionally favored Cy Young candidates who win a great number of games and lose very few. Lee won more games than Halladay, and lost many fewer. (Name redacted) is a traditionalist, usually. I can't avoid the sneaking suspicion that if he covered any team but the Blue Jays, he would be throwing his full support behind the guy who went 22-3."(Emphasis mine.)

Not to be too repetitive, but as noted in the summer, Lee winning is like when Brigham Young was voted NCAA football champions in 1984.

"They had to, though, since BYU was the only unbeaten. The baseball writers might not want to vote for Lee ... At the rate he's going, though, they might have to vote for him.

If memory serves, that "how did he not win?" line of argument had some currency in 1997, when the National League MVP debate was between Larry Walker, Mike Piazza and Jeff Bagwell. Walker, who hit .366 with 49 homers and 130 RBI while playing in the thin air of Denver, won in a landslide, taking 22 of 28 first-place votes. The two future Hall of Famers who each played in pitchers' parks split the other six.

It was less understood at the time that Piazza had a better park-adjusted OPS+ (185 to 178) as a catcher than Walker, a corner outfielder (true, Piazza was not much of a catcher, but he still contributed more to his team's overall defence than Walker would have in right field, and more important, he was all man). Walker might have still got the MVP, but with 2008 standards, it might have been a closer vote.

(Update: Joe Christensen and Geoff Baker were two of the writers who gave Halladay a first-place vote.)

O Overbay, where art thou?

Jon Hale at The Mockingbird has done a takedown on the whole notion of jettisoning Lyle Overbay. So what if he doesn't "do everything?"

"It’ll be a great PR move because it 'goes right after' the main problem of last year, but just like spending 55 million bucks (for B.J. Ryan in 2006) on the most highly overrated position in the game in a knee-jerk reaction to the Miguel Batista closer experience, if J.P. (Ricciardi) forgets that the whole reason he pushed hard for Overbay in the first place was that he is more valuable than he looks to the HR-duhhhh-RBI crowd and wastes money just to get him off the team, it will ... thus be punished accordingly."

A Toronto team make a move with more of an eye to PR than wins and losses? It's never happened.

Related:
Lee, Halladay really performed equally well (Rob Neyer, ESPN.com)

Zen Dayley: Travis will soon have as many big hits as Gordie Johnson

Top of the fifth inning at Fenway Park, Travis Snider, three-run home run off Paul Byrd to break open the game on the way to an 8-1 victory. He also adds a double and finishes with five RBI.

This one's for you, Massholes:



(What do you mean, there's still another game to play today? Details.)

Noteworthy

• Those among you lot who like to play GM should take note that Canadian starters Rich Harden and Erik Bedard are each free agents after next season.
• Sorry for the horn-tooting, but the weather-inflict scheduling snafus -- six doubleheaders today, along with the Houston Astros having no idea of when or where they'll play a big series vs. the Chicago Cubs -- occasions reviving a pet idea: A shorter schedule with more built-in off days.
  
  It doesn't have to 162 games crammed into 180 or 181 days.
• The Rays have called up phenom lefty David Price. This is like Christmas morning for a baseball geek.
• Mike Greenberg, the New York radio personality, argued that Manny Ramírez should be National League MVP for his quarter-season with the L.A. Dodgers. He's just as far gone as John Klima.
• Carlos Delgado sprucing up his case for Cooperstown. He's still no MVP.

Damn, the Jays

• An 8-0 lead over the Red Sox? Someone's decision not to follow the first game of today's doubleheader (had a date with a bunch of men who wear yellow and call themselves Gaels) is paying off.
• Sun Media's estimable baseball writer Bob Elliott is reporting that the Jays will have their Triple-A team in Albuquerque or New Orleans next season. Finally! An excuse to buy an Albuquerque Isotopes cap.
  
  Basically, your preference comes down to which Simpsons episode you like more: The one when Homer went on a hunger strike to keep the Springfield Isotopes from moving to Albuquerque, or when Marge played Blanche Dubois in a musical adaptation of a Streetcar Named Desire (with Ned Flanders cast against type as Stanley Kowalski)?
  
  Glove tap to John Edwards, who called that the Jays would end up with a far-flung farm team.
• Elliott caught up with John Gibbons, who says that he has a Sarah Palin t-shirt. (And Gibby was considered a dumb manager?)
• The DJF linked to an article in the London Guardian by a BBC personality Colin Murray, who inexplicably, cheers for the Jays. It's always good to get a Brit's perspective on North America's version of rounders (but seriously, Roberto Alomar was one of the "greatest short stops" of all time?).

Zen Dayley: Method to the madness for the amazin' Rays

The playoff races are fully on, so there will be some Zen Dayley, nightly, from here on out through the World Serious.

It seems like an all-time Deus ex machina.

Dan Johnson arrives directly from Triple-A and hits a game-tying, ninth-inning homer off Jonathan Papelbon at Fenway Park. It ultimately kept the Tampa Bay Rays, who went on to win 5-4, in first place in the AL East, at least for another 48 hours. As a side benefit, it was a wicked burn on the smart alecks who have been forecasting the Rays' demise on a daily basis, since they -- all together new -- don't know how to win. It might be new to their players, but when it comes to robbing the Red Sox, Tampa's front office has the joint cased.

It need not be said that Johnson's hit is the stuff people cling to when they tell and retell the story of dramatic playoff races. He barely got out of Scranton, Pa., where he was with Tampa's Triple-A team, was kept from getting to Fenway when his cab got caught in Boston traffic nd had to be scratched from Tampa's lineup. Also, get this -- Johnson started the season by sitting on the Oakland A's bench when they were the designated opponent for the Red Sox during their trip to Japan. He travelled all that way, didn't get to play in either of the regular-season games in Tokyo and was let go by the A's

There's all that, but last night showed how the best playoff races are these Russian-novel-thick histories. The Rays winning a big game where Johnson and another Triple-A callup, Fernando Perez, who singled and scored the winning run, illustrates what that franchise does so well.

It's kind of convenient to the narrative that the Red Sox were by virtue of a two-run homer in the eighth by Jason Bay, whom the Rays tried and failed to get at the July 31 trade deadline. This is good a time as any to point out that even through he's had 31 RBI in 30 games since going to Boston, Bay's hitting about the same as he usually does. A right-handed hitting RBI man for the Red Sox is always going to have a lot of ribbies -- see Rice, Jim Ed.

The Rays ended up countering through a couple of lesser lights, Johnson and rookie outfielder Fernando Perez, who following the homer doubled and came home with the game-winner on Dioner Navarro's double off the Green Monster.

Honestly, who but the most godforsaken baseball geek knew Johnson was in the Rays system? There are dozens of guys like him floating around between Double-A and the majors. Teams keep them in the system because they have offer just enough in power and on-base percentage that they can hit as well as anybody for a week before they tumble back to earth. The Rays were smart enough to scoop him up and have in Triple-A Durham, almost as if they were saving him for just such a moment in September. That speaks to the kind of roster management they practise, while certain other AL East teams have been farting around with Brad Wilkerson and Kevin Mench.

It's similar with Fernando Perez. His main claim to fame is that he's a rare position player out of the Ivy League (Columbia; other than Doug Glanville a few years ago, the Ivies are more known for producing pitchers and wildly unpopular presidents). He's been blocked by the Rays' surfeit of outfielders. Tampa will probably offer him up in a trade at some point soon and someone will take him, since he's got leadoff guy skills (.361 on-base percentage, 78% stolen-base success rate in Durham this season).

To sum up, there's two subtle moves that paid off for the Rays in lieu of one headline-grabber. It's not terribly sexy, but it got the job done.

There's still the drama, though, which is amped all the more by the fact Dan Johnson was 0-for-15 as a pinch-hitter. On the same day, the Oakland A's also released the Mike Sweeney, the first baseman/DH they kept instead of him.

(It's no, "And all of a sudden the ball was there, like the Mystic River Bridge, suspended out in the black of morning" -- which was Peter Gammons' lede after Game 6 of the 1975 World Series, the Carlton Fisk game, but the unadulterated joy comes through all the same in DRaysBay's account. ShysterBall is also recommending reading this morning.)

Errara

• Why Carlos Delgado -- two more homers in a big Mets win last night! -- should not be National League MVP, in 25 words or less ... You don't think the New York Mets would have a bigger lead if they had either Lance Berkman or Albert Pujols at first base instead of King Carlos?
  
  Twenty-five words -- bang on! Here's the numbers:

  King Carlos: .266/.350 /.518, 35 HR, 103 RBI, 83 runs
  Prince Albert: .361/.467/.655, 33 HR, 98 RBI, 89 runs
  Lance: .331/.403/.633, 28 HR, 100 RBI, 109 runs

  There is a precedent for a veteran first baseman on a NL East team being voted MVP by virtue of being absolutely nails in the second half -- Willie Stargell in 1979. It's a bad, terrible precedent, though.
• The L.A. Dodgers making the playoffs, well, that would be the new definition of obscenity.
  
  L.A. and the Arizona Diamondbacks are each below .500 outside their terrible division, yet one of them will wake up on Sept. 30 seven wins away from a spot in the World Series.
  
  With playoff teams like that, it's almost an argument not to care too much about whether the Jays ever make the playoffs again. Making the playoffs out of either West division is like winning a Grammy.

Damn, the Jays

• Ten wins in a row. Oh right, it doesn't matter.
• Travis Snider outpolled the Rockies' super-outfielder Dexter Fowler 64-35 in a "Who would you rather have?" poll at Minor League Ball.
• FanGraphs has some details on the Jays' catcher of the future, J.P. Arencibia. The best way to quit drinking is to do a shot every time Arencibia draws a base on balls.
  
  (He's a bit of a free swinger. That's the joke.) The Tao has some choice words for anyone who believes that Jays' win streak is moot.
  
  Winning when the pressure's off is a canard. I got disabused of it several years ago, and man, I had it coming.
  
  Rob Neyer from ESPN.com had just come out with his Big Book of Baseball Lineups. On his website, he'd set up a page on his website where eagle-eyed baseball obsessives could alert him to tiny factual errors. (What it says about someone who has to be the one to poit out that Tony Batista hit 41 home runs in 2000, not 45 -- who cares, did it take away from the enjoyment of the book, really? -- is best left unsaid.)
  
  Neyer had flubbed some picayune detail about the 1988 Blue Jays, who as he had written, came within two games of winning the AL East. An e-mail was quickly sent, but it pointed out, "The '88 Jays were never a contender -- they were under .500 at the start of September and went on a window-dressing 22-7 run to get to a final 87-75 record."
  
  Neyer's rebuttal was that any team which finishes two games out was close to winning the pennant.
  
  Remember, the better the Jays' record, the more it validates the self-righteous indignation Jays fans will feel in about a month when some National League team is playing for a spot in the World Series.
• Scott Downs should stay in the bullpen. Don't mess with success.
• It's sounding like it's not such a sure thing that the Jays will put their farm team in Buffalo. They might end up in New Orleans.
  
  (It's all hands on deck in Syracuse to get a deal done with the Mets.)

Zen Dayley: All hail Snider

The last laugh is on all the people who will spend their Labour Day weekend up at some cottage. Unless they've got a satellite dish, they're all going to miss seeing Travis Snider make his major-league debut this weekend, at Yankee Stadium no less. Enjoy your idyllic pleasures and time away from the hustle and bustle, jerks.

It's kind of appropriate that Snider's callup came on the very night that the college football season started in the States, since GM J.P. Ricciardi, pretty much called a Hail Mary pass with this move. As you probably know, Ricciardi probably has to start pulling out all the stops if he's going to keep the Rogers beancounters from wondering where all this spending is going when the Game 162 passes with no Game 163 in sight.

Having Snider slam a few homers in September would go much farther toward convincing the highers-up that the Jays have some prospects than any glowing reports out of Dunedin or New Hampshire or Syracuse. It's not a total stunner that he would get called up, since it was expected that Snider (cue the reactionaries: "But he hasn't done anything in the major leagues yet!") would be in The Show by early next year.

It does mean it's the end of the line in Toronto for Matt Stairs of Fredericton, N.B., the balding, pasty hoser baseball nut's pride and joy, which is too bad, but he handled it like a champ. Stairsy is apparently headed to the Phillies for a prospect. He'll get to be in a playoff race, and he gets to scratch another club of the short list of teams he still has to play for before he's done.

The story back in July was that the Phillies apparently dangled a couple prospects when they were trying to get A.J. Burnett. It goes without saying Stairs wouldn't fetch as much, but another half-decent arm in the system wouldn't hurt. (It's probably too much to dream for to think that the Jays got Carlos Carrasco, who averaged more than a strikeout per inning across Double- and Triple-A.)

The upshot of Stairs going to a contender is that between the Phillies, the Mets (Carlos Delgado), the Cubs (Rich Harden and Ryan Dempster; ex-Jays Ted Lilly and Reed Johnson), the Brewers (Canadians Doug Melvin and Gord Ash in the front office), the Diamondbacks (Orlando Hudson), the Red Sox (Jason Bay) and the Rays (Eric Hinske) is a smorgasborg for the Toronto media. They'll have plenty of Canadians to write about during the playoffs and will be able to point out all the ex-Jays who are on post-season teams, as if they could have used NFL rules and had a 53-man roster instead of 25.

Anyways, there is a case hat this is too early to bring up Snider and you shouldn't be too cavalier about hurting his development. He's 20, he strikes out a lot, but he's hit everywhere he's been since signing out of high school in 2006. The only grounds to oppose this on is from the mental aspect. Anyone who's concerned about starting the free-agency clock on Snider this early can slag off. This is something a smart organization wouldn't do, but for god's sake, live a little. Go stuff your GM fantasies in a sack.

Damn, the Jays

• Apparently, Matt Stairs played in 150 games this season when the Jays have only played 133. No wonder he was so worn down. (Adventures in copy-editing; I've had a few.)
• The indirect comedy of Balls, macleans.ca's sports blog, really beggars language.
  
  Steve Maich, who's a brilliant business reporter, actually suggested a 2009 Jays lineup with Joe Inglett as the everyday shortstop, with an ideally healthy Aaron Hill staying at second.
  
  That's sterling, suggesting a guy who's 40-man roster flotsam can handle a position that he never played regularly in the minors and has played for a grand total of 11 innings in the majors. Hill is one of the best fielders at second base in the majors, but the Jays have never toyed with moving him to shortstop, because he doesn't have the skillset. If Hill doesn't, what would make anyone think that Joe Inglett did?
  
  Mr. Maich, you stick to IRAs, and the rest of us will handle the ERAs and the like. How's that for a fair compromise?
• Snider and J.P. Arencibia will play for the Phoenix Desert Dogs in the Arizona Fall League, in case anyone is interested in tracking their progress through the non-baseball months. (A glove tap to Pete Toms for the link.)


• The Toronto Star baseball writer Richard Griffin got FJM'd big-time for his absolutely straight-off-the-Ork-cloud rant about baseball being a "team sport."
  
  Drunk Jays Fans also lampooned it in the guise of channeling frustration over Wednesday's 1-0 loss where David Purcey pitched so far over his head (no walks, 11 strikeouts in a complete-game five hitter) that his nose will probably bleed for a week to 10 days.

Zen Dayley: Bumbles in the Bronx

There's no such thing as good. There's just varying degrees of bad.

• That Jays-Phillies six-hour marathon seems like another strike against interleague play (although Roy Halladay pitching in relief was kind of novel). Normally, the game would have been called and rescheduled.
• There's no enjoy-it-while-it-lasts about the Yankees' nosedive (four games below .500). Cool Standings has them projected to finish 76-86, last in the AL East, with less than an 8% chance of making the playoffs.
  
• Carlos Delgado still has his sense of humour even though the Mets are sucking. It's either that or Jayson Werth rubbed him the wrong way during their short time together with the Jays.
  
  

  ESPN showed the highlights from the Phillies-Blue Jays game from (Friday) night, when Jayson Werth homered in his first three at-bats, Delgado stood nearby watching. "Only one of us can hit four home runs in a game," he said. As Werth fouled out his fourth time up, Delgado said "sucker" and walked away.

• Some events are so cataclysmic that you're stunned into a delayed reaction. But enough about Reds manager Dusty Baker asking 6-foot-6, 250-lb. slugger to Adam Dunn to bunt in the ninth inning on Saturday.
  
  (Dunn hit a 449-foot game-winning home run after failing to get the bunt down. Dusty Baker then told him, "Go home and tell your mom you're a flop."
  
  Anyone who gets the reference is getting a church built in her/his honour.)
• The Red Sox have called up Bartolo Colón. A large gut feeling (there's no other kind when it's Bartolo) is that he's going to work out for the Bostons.
• It is somewhat sad to have actually noticed that the Jays' Triple-A team, the Syracuse Chiefs, are leading the IL wild-card race. If the Chiefs make the playoffs, this means J.P. Ricciardi is just as adept as John Ferguson Jr. at building a winner in the minors.
• Phillippe Aumont's pitching line yesterday in the Midwest League: 4 2/3 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 3 SO with two wild pitches as he took the loss for Wisconsin. He's 19, it's going to happen. His ERA remains a tidy 1.07.

That's all for now.

BATTER UP: NEW YORK METS

It's baseball season, that mystical, wonderful time of year where you commit to a team for six months, knowing full well they won't win. Here's a starting nine for the New York Mets.

1. Why they might win: The Mets have uber-lefty, Johan Santana, who as you know, is already a sure bet to win 30 of his 32 starts, strike out 275 batters and maybe even go all nine innings some night.
   
   The gut feeling is that it's about 70/30 that Pedro Martinez can get it up for 160 innings.
2. Why they might not win: The Mets seem to like starting pitchers who can light it up for a half-season, including Pedro, Oliver Perez, John Maine and Orlando Hernández. All of them more of less have that pattern. It's not a big deal, though, in a game where every wins or loses 60 games in spite of themselves.
3. Remarkably accurate spitballing from last spring: "Teams with big-name offensive stars who play in major media markets are always overrated. The Mets, who had everything go right in '06 until the NLCS -- Pedro Martinez's elbow woes nothwithstanding -- are riding for a fall."
   
   Blind pig; acorn: The Mets went 5-12 in the stretch run to blow a seven-game lead and hand the NL East to the Phillies, in one of the all-time, top-5 choke jobs.
4. Figure this one out: Leadoff man José Reyes the game's greatest basestealer, had a 79% success rate last season, which was lower than the rest of his team (83%).
5. The experts speak: "Unable or unwilling to undertake a needed rebuilding of their aging roster, the Mets will suffer more disappointment in 2008, only this year it will start on Opening Day." -- Baseball Prospectus 2008
6. The torch has passed: Before we got started on this project, Neil Acharya wrung out a promise that there would no references to VORP, with a penalty of buying the first round at Friday's Jays home opener. Well, it's worth pointing out that the Beep has David Wright down for a higher VORP than New York's other third baseman, Alex Rodriguez.
   
   It still won't help Wright in the MVP voting if his team craps out short of the playoffs. He'll probably be fourth or fifth in the voting again. No Met has ever won MVP.

7. For no reason, here's Apu: That Simpsons episode where he's trying avoid detect as an illegal alien and refers to the "Nye Mets" as his "favourite squadron" does it every time.
8. Carlos in Cooperstown? Probably not. It's an outside shot at best for Carlos Delgado, the ex-Jay. Even Davidson found out eventually that you can't on outside shots.
   
   Delgado has 431 homers entering his age-36 season. Five hundred homers is also not going to lock up a Hall of Fame plaque in the future, even for players who didn't have the slightest taint of the Steroid Era. Among his analogs, only one, Andres Galaragga, ever had 500 at-bats in a season from that age onward.
9. Need-to-know: The no-cojones pick is to say the Mets won't win the division, but will take the wild-card. Between the Mets, Braves and Phillies, though, the Mets are a safe pick.

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