Raines '09 — right back where we started from...

Tim Raines: 22.6% support in the Baseball Hall of Fame voting.

All the screaming and yelling in the world and sitting at home eating can after can of dog food until your tears smell like dog food won't make it better. One of our contributors, who doesn't have the seamhead sickness, probably nailed it just now over MSN: "I think Raines is a lost cause."

Nothing is over until we decide it is, to quote a great man who never actually existed. In our heart of hearts, the belief is people will come around.

Neither Raines, Andre Dawson nor Bert Blyleven budged the needle. Raines' support dipped by 1.7%, while the Hawk and Rik Aalbert each jumped by 1%. It looks terrible, especially as a harbinger of what might be in store for Roberto Alomar in 2010, but everything looks clearer in time.

Congratulations are due to Rickey Henderson and Jim Ed Rice. The latter, thanks to the politicking of Masshole nation -- there's a mental image of Donny from Southie writing mostfearedhitterinthegame mostfearedhitterinthegame mostfearedhitterinthegame all over the walls of his duplex -- squeaked in by seven votes on his final try. Good for him. It's a baffling choice and it's just loser talk to point out, as Poz did, that a team of Rices, over a 162-game season, would score only 30 more runs than a team of Raineses, even though one played in Fenway Park and the other played at the Big O and was a much better defensive outfielder.

Mike Lynch at Seamheads did the calculating, based on a straw poll done through Facebook (full disclosure: I participated). No player had a bigger difference between his support in the Seamheads poll and the BBWAA vote than Rice, only his worked out in his favour in the official vote (76.4%, compared to 39.1% support among us geeks). Raines had the second-biggest (35.5%), only it worked against him.



Who knows where it goes from here. It's always better to veer away from being a drama queen. One comparable in Cooperstown voting for Raines is Billy Williams, the Chicago Cubs outfielder of the '60s and '70s. Williams polled in the low 20s in his first time on the ballot, 1982. On his second try, he jumped to 40.9% in '83, and was eventually elected in 1987. Raines didn't jump at all.

What can you say? Politics trumps ability.

Cooperstown: T minus one hour

The Baseball Hall of Fame voting will be announced in about a hour. In the meantime, some good background on the voters comes from King Kaufman at Salon wrote a pretty inspired rebuttal to Seamheads' interview with Dave Kindred. Kindred, as you'll recall, sniffed at the fandangled new stats, "when I grow up, I hope to have my elders explain them to me." Kaufman shot back:

"Sabermetric analysis is used not just by a wide swath of baseball fans and chroniclers, but also in baseball front offices. It's relied heavily upon by, among others, the Boston Red Sox, who have been one of the most successful franchises in baseball this century, winning two of the last five World Series, and by the (Tampa Bay) Rays, who beat the Sox on the way to the Series last year.

"It's what's going on in the world we're covering. In what other profession do practitioners brag about their ignorance regarding current events and developments? In what other area of journalism is lack of awareness a mark of distinction?"

One of the commenters on Kaufman's article likened it to political reporters persisting in referring to Russia as the Soviet Union. It's only sports, not geopolitics or even the Golden Globes, but there is a responsibility to keep up. No one who covers baseball has to become a babbling fount of BABIP (batting average on balls in play), DIPs (defence-independent pitching statistics) and VORP (value over replacement player) and such, but it's a professional obligation to at least understand how it helps puts players' performances in context. It's good background before you yammer on about home runs, RBI, ERA and win-loss records.

That's the end of the rant. Chances are, Jim Rice will squeak in along with Rickey Henderson today and no one else will. (Update, 2:02 p.m.: Yep, nailed it.)

Not to sound like a busted iPod, but hopefully Tim Raines, as his former Expos teammate Steve Rogers said on MLB Home Plate (XM channel 175) today, continues to "build a following," hopefully in the 40% range, but more likely in the mid-30s.

The best bet seems to 2010 will be Andre Dawson's year.

It's regrettable that this site didn't get around to doing a Keltner test on Rik Aalbert Blyleven, he of the 3.31 career ERA, 287 wins, 3,701 strikeouts (fifth all-time) and 60 shutouts (most of any post-1950 pitcher not named Ryan or Seaver).

Bert Blyleven, who is in his 12th go-round, should have gone in long ago. Speaking personally, it's never taken on the quality of a crusade the way it has with Dawson, Raines and Robbie Alomar, but it would be brutal if he's excluded. That being said, the BBWAA election is very much a poll and the Hall of Fame is very much a wonderful museum in a bucolic tourist trap. They're not electing the president or the pope.

That's one way of rationalizing it away, but ask again in a hour.

(Thanks to Pete Toms for the link.)

Related:
Ignorance is not a sportswriting skill (King Kaufman, Salon)

Zen Dayley: You know what? The Hawk's a lock

Out of Left Field is looking over the legitimate candidates for the Baseball Hall of Fame during the lead-up to the big vote on Jan. 12. Former Expos great Andre Dawson (second left in picture, beside the next manager of the Blue Jays) is getting closer to induction after receiving 65.9% support in 2008, his seventh try.

The biggest piece of context with Andre Dawson is that he was touched by the Mickey Mantle myth, which is a good thing.

Who knows, maybe sports talk radio has sucked the sympathy out of fans. The biggest piece of context with the great Expos outfielder is that he performed for a generation who had grown up on stories of athletes whose careers were cut short They knew the litany of legends whose careers had been cut short by bad knees -- Mantle, Bobby Orr in hockey, Gale Sayers and Joe Namath in football. It went double for him, since he was playing on the "concretelike turf of Montreal." (Sports Illustrated, June 15, 1987.) That should preface anything said below.

That was a very real phenomena that maybe isn't fully appreciated when you look through a stathead lens and see only the just-okay numbers -- 438 homers, 1,373 runs, 1,591 RBI, .323 on-base percentage. A gut feeling is that Dawson might make in this time. Getting past the 65% mark usually means it's inevitable a player will get the 75% needed for election.

Summing him up in three sentences: Eight-time Gold Glove winner. Won the MVP in 1987; was runner-up in 1981 and '83. One of only six players with 400 career home runs and 300 stolen bases.

Was he ever regarded as the best player in baseball? Did anybody, while he was active, ever suggest that he was the best player in baseball?

No, although he might have been one of the most respected men in the game.

Was he the best player on his team?

Dawson was a full-time player for 16 seasons and led his team in on-base plus slugging (OPS) only five times (1980, '81 and '83 with the Expos and '87-88 with the Cubs), which is low for someone who batted third or cleanup. Gary Carter was the runner-up for MVP in 1980 and Tim Raines had a monster season in 1983 -- 133 runs scored, 90 stolen bases, .393 on-base percentage.

That leaves Dawson with three seasons where he was his team's best player. One was strike-shortened.

Was he the best player in baseball at his position? Was he the best player in the league at his position?

He might been the best centrefielder in the majors in 1981. That was really the only season where he was the dominant player at his position. He was MVP runner-up to another centrefielder, Dale Murphy, in '83. In 1987, when Dawson was MVP (by that time, he had moved to rightfield), Darryl Strawberry was far more productive (.284/.398/.583) in Shea Stadium than Dawson (.287/.328/.568) did playing at Wrigley Field.

Did he have an impact on a number of pennant races?

He had an impact on four -- 1979, '80, '81 and '89. He had strong Septembers in '79-80 when the Expos were nosed out for the NL East pennant in the final days of the season (no one remembers it this way, but the team had strong finishes). He had a so-so final month in 1981, but on Sept. 21, homered in the 17th inning to give the Expos a 1-0 win over the Pirates; by the margin of that victory, they beat the Cardinals out by a half-game to win the second-half title.

Was he a good enough player that he could continue to play regularly after passing his prime?

Yes, he played until he was 41 years old and had his last season as a regular at age 39. The last six seasons of his career basically broke down to two average seasons with the Cubs, two seasons DHing about 80% of the time for the Red Sox and two seasons as a part-timer with the expansion Florida Marlins.

Is he the very best player in baseball history who is not in the Hall of Fame?

No. Raines, Ron Santo and Alan Trammell among others would rank ahead of him.

Are most players who have comparable career statistics in the Hall of Fame?

Five of Dawson's 10 comparables are in Cooperstown: Ernie Banks, Al Kaline, Dave Winfield, Billy Williams and Tony Pérez. Banks hit more than 500 homers, while Kaline and Winfield each made it to 3,000 hits, so they had no problems being inducted, plus they each played in big makrets. Williams needed six years to be elected and Pérez, who was a controversial, borderline case, got in on his ninth try in 2000.

Do the player's numbers meet Hall of Fame standards?

The magic 8-ball would say, "Outlook kind of hazy." His Triple Crown stats -- .279 average, 438 homers (only three seasons with more than 30), 1,591 RBI -- are such that you'd be looking for other stuff to put him over the top.

He's in a no-man's land when it comes to the HOF Standards test, scoring 44.1 -- not a lock, but more than a non-starter, and better than Jim Rice. He fares better on the HOF Monitor.

Is there any evidence to suggest that the player was significantly better or worse than is suggested by his statistics?

The testimonials to how he played through pain and had a throwing arm that was "legendary" (to quote Scott Miller, who's apparently a big Barney Stinson fan) suggest he was better than the numbers indicate. Contemporary evidence, namely that garden-variety .323 OBP, help make the case for "worse."

Joe Posnanski has debunked the myth that players of Dawson's vintage would have walked more if they had just appreciated the value of base on balls and a good on-base percentage. Poz found that walk rates have not budged in the past 30 years. The argument also falls apart when you compare Dawson's career OBP to other home run and RBI champions from the 1980s and early '90s. You could look it up.

Is he the best player at his position who is eligible for the Hall of Fame but not in?

No. Among centrefielders who played at the same time, there's Murphy, and there's Dwight Evans among rightfielders, to name just a couple. In the New Historical Baseball Abstract, James lists him as the 19th-best rightfielder, behind non-Hall of Famers Dave Parker, Bobby Bonds, Bobby Murcer and Ken Singleton.

How many MVP-type seasons did he have? Did he ever win an MVP award? If not, how many times was he close?

He had a MVP-like season in '81 (.302, 24 homers, 64 RBI, .553 slugging in the strike year) and again in '83 (.299-32-113, plus 104 runs scored and a Gold Glove). He won the award in the 1987, but in this day and age, he might not have won.

Nineteen eighty-seven was actually a watershed moment when it came to MVP voting: It was the last time that RBI champs were both MVPs. Neither Dawson of the Blue Jays' George Bell was the best player in their league.

Dawson had a ridiculous home/road split (1.041/.768). That was also the last full season of day baseball in Chicago, and he OPSed 1.016 by day and a .687 -- paltry -- by night. Sportswriters now would have made a much more informed choice.

How many All-Star-type seasons did he have? How many All-Star games did he play in?

He probably had about nine All-Star-type seasons. He was not picked in 1980 when he hit .308, scored 96 runs and had 41 doubles for a 90-win Expos team, but he was a near-automatic pick until he reached the other side of the hill.

Did most of the other players who played in this many go to the Hall of Fame?

Probably.

If this man were the best player on his team, would it be likely that the team could win the pennant?

A lot would have to go right for that to be the case -- like having Gary Carter and Tim Raines on your team.

What impact did the player have on baseball history? Was he responsible for any rule changes? Did he introduce any new equipment? Did he change the game in any way?

There was the matter of that blank contract he showed up at spring training with in 1987. It did prove to be a smoking gun in the players' collusion case against the owners.

Did the player uphold the standards of sportsmanship and character that the Hall of Fame, in its written guidelines, instructs us to consider?

He would not have got this close without it and there is not a thing wrong with that statement, other than the poor quality of the narration. Keep your fingers crossed he goes in at the same time as Jim Rice, to mitigate the Masshole love-in.

Post-script: Rob Neyer tackled Raines vs. Rice in an interview yesterday with Fire Brand of the American League.

"I can't support Jim Rice's Hall of Fame candidacy because I don't believe he's among the 20 best left fielders in major league history, or even among the five best corner outfielders who are today not in the Hall of Fame. Just to make the most obvious argument, Rice wasn't nearly the ballplayer that Tim Raines was. That's objectively true, and it's frustrating to me that so many Hall of Fame voters believe that Jim Rice was a great player, but Tim Raines was not."

Related:
Upon further review, Hawk belongs in Cooperstown (Scott Miller, CBS Sportsline)
My Hall of Fame Ballot -- Henderson, Blyleven, Raines, Morris (Dan Graziano, Newark Star-Ledger)
Hall of Fame ballot tests first-time voter (Joe Capozzi, Palm Beach Post)

Zen Dayley: Veni, vidi, vici for Vin

It's a trip, on a December afternoon, to watch Vin Scully speak outlined against the backdrop of Dodger Stadium.

Next season will be Scully's 60th calling Dodgers games, and judging from what he's saying, it could be the last one: "Certainly I'm very aware that the wolves are getting closer to the campfire, and I know that I've spent a lot of yesterdays and I have just a certain amount of tomorrows," he said. "I'm taking it day by day and year and year, so God willing, I will go through 2009 and then we'll just have to wait and see."

It's probably too glib by half to say that he is kind of the broadcast booth's equivalent to Johnny Carson, someone whom everyone knew and respected, even if they didn't tune into him all the time. In Scully's case, he even staked out Southern California 14 years before Carson, since the Dodgers moved west in 1958, 14 years before The Tonight Show.

Hearing Vin Scully string out the word "marvellous" brightens the day, that's for sure (hope this clip embeds properly). Broadcasters have to learn to read and write before they learn to speak (just like writers have to learn to watch and listen), and Scully, in his word, is a marvellous example.

Something is up

The cryptic sentence of the day, from Brew Crew Ball:"The Padres and Blue Jays both might sell for less than the combined contracts of CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett." (Emphasis mine.) What are you guys saying?


Very Brave

Bringing in the veteran Rafael Furcal and having him displace 26-year-old Yunel Escobar at shortstop seems too chancy by half.

Someone was bound to take a chance that Furcal can play a full season. Escobar, who's going to get moved to either second base or traded, drew good reviews for his fielding last season. His .288/.366/.401 slash stats would have looked better if he hadn't gone in the tank in July.

Furcal is the better player if he can play a full season, but that's a big if to contemplate.

This, that and the other

• Langley, B.C.'s Brett Lawrie is rated as the third-best prospect in the Milwaukee Brewers system. Minor League Ball notes that he was taken down a peg due to his lack of a defined defensive position, but the Brewers haven't done too badly with bringing along hitters and moving them around in the field (Ryan Braun, Bill Hall).
• If it's any consolation, Rob Neyer didn't like the Yankees giving a five-year deal to A.J. Burnett: "(Burnett)'s not reliable, and the Yankees have pretty obviously overpaid. Too many dollars, too many years. If the Yankees wanted an impressive fifth starter, they probably could have spent a little less money for a slightly better pitcher. But what's a few million dollars to the Yankees?"
• The Yankees probably still need to sign Mark Teixeira to really challenge in 2009.
  
• The best takedown you will ever read of the sportswriters who are lobbying for Jim Rice to get into the Hall of Fame.
• A six-word argument for why the Blue Jays should not try to trade Roy Halladay: "The Padres couldn't trade Jake Peavy."
• No word of a lie, Hall of Famer Rollie Fingers' mustache actually has scared small children.
  

Snark break... introducing the Poz Button

As you were renewing your subscription to The Daily Growl ...

The next step in the interactive sports-viewing experience will be the Poz Button.

Suppose you're watching a game and a team clearly outsmarts itself in a critical situation and gets smacked around by the sports deities -- as was the case with the Buffalo Bills yesterday. You'd hit the Poz Button and if enough people are like-minded, then something adverse will happen to the coach or manager, like a mild electric shock or having a bucket of green slime dumped on him, like in the old kids' show You Can't Do That On Television.

It wouldn't be for garden-variety physical errors. A pitcher hanging a curveball or a quarterback overthrowing a receiver is everyday. It would be reserved especially for when a team clearly avoided making a logical choice (and in this case, the Bills' coach for not much longer, Dick Jauron, overruled his offensive co-ordinator on the play call).

This idea first took root back in the spring. Joe Posnanski wrote a post about then-Jays manager John Gibbons intentionally walking one of the worst hitters in baseball, in order to set up a lefty-lefty matchup and a double play. (The next two hitters promptly got run-scoring hits to put the game out of the Jays' reach -- although granted, they were losing by one run in the eighth inning, so it probably was already.)

For anyone who needs a rehash since the other early NFL games available to most of Canada (Seahawks-Rams, 49ers-Dolphins and Lions-Colts) enthralling than the Bills-Jets games, Buffalo had the ball and a three-point lead just ahead of the two-minute morning.

Most teams call a running play there, make the other team use up its timeouts. Marshawn Lynch had been having his way with the Jets much of the afternoon, yet the Bills elect to trust J.P. Losman, the the shakiest gun in the AFC East, on a college-style rollout pass. He gets blindsided by a blitzing safety, Abram Elam, the ball bounces into the hands of the J-E-T-S Jets Jets Jets' Shaun Ellis who returns it for a touchdown. There is Brett Favre is on screen thrusting his hands heavenward like he actually had something to do with the game-winning play.



Dick Jauron deserved to get the green slime for that one. Please, make the Poz button happen. It would also come in handy when:

• ... An opponent of the Raptors hits a three-pointer off the inbounds play following a timeout (the Sam Mitchell Memorial Special).
• ... A NHL team gives up a short-handed goal after using one of its forwards as a point man on the power play.
• ... A baseball team doesn't score a run after laying down a sacrifice bunt. Actually, this should be any time a team sac-bunts except when it's tied in the ninth inning or later.
• A starting pitcher loses the lead after his manager lets him throw more than 110 pitches (another Gibbons specialty).
  
• A football coach goes for a two-point conversion before the fourth quarter.

On to the fairly obvious, not overly funny jokes

The Arena Football League is all but dead, but it says it's not. How is Ottawa not trying to get into this league?

Former President Bush (start saying it now), after that shoe-throwing incident, said, "The war is not over, it is decisively on it's way to being won." Please note that he didn't say which country.

Best text message to send to a friend who cheers for one of the Minnesota Vikings' rivals: "The Bears could use a receiver like Bernard Berrian."

If Diogenes was around today, he'd wander the earth trying to find a Boston-area sportswriter who isn't going to vote for Jim Rice for the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Red Sox reliever Hideki Okajima ran in the Honululu Marathon on the weekend. He finished in six hours 10 minutes, about the same length of time of the average game started by Steve Trachsel.

Headline from the Serious Sports News Network: "Former college journalism major furious with fantasy football leaguemates due to lack of appreciation of weekly newsletter."

Last but not least, please pass the hat around for New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon. He might not be able to afford that ivory back-scratcher.

This post is worth nothing, but this is worth noting:

• Please spare a thought for Whitby Dunlops defenceman Don Sanderson (a former Trenton Sting player), who struck his head on the ice during a fight in a senior hockey game Friday in Brantford and is in critical condition in Hamilton hospital.
• Women's Professional Soccer scored a big sponsorship deal, which should buoy some spirits.

Zen Dayley: Bats, balls and a pretty nice racket...

A tip of the cap goes to a former colleague who pointed this out years ago: The chances of a living player getting into the Baseball Hall of Fame via the Veterans' Committee are slim-to-none.

Why? His theory was that the living Hall of Famers don't want more competition on the lucrative autograph market. It certainly does make sense why long-dead Joe Gordon gets in among the "pre-1943" players and the Chicago Cubs third baseman from the 1960s, Ron Santo, was turned down again, along with Dick Allen.

It's a nice racket, huh? A retired ballplayer can hawk stuff on eBay and the home shopping channels, go sign autographs at card shows as Hall of Famer such-and-such. He also gets to choose if anyone else should get a piece of the pie, not that Ron Santo needs a Cooperstown plaque so his autograph is worth more (there are a lot of Cubs fans).

It's about the process (hey, stay awake!) whereby players who faced Allen, Santo or Tony Oliva --who would have been in years ago if it had been put to the fans, or maybe even the whole vox populi of the players they faced. It's too bad for Santo, obviously, especially since the scuttlebutt in the summer was that he should get in this time. (He'll wait two more seasons before the Vets vote again.)

For anyone who cares -- and frankly, I'm not sure anyone does -- Santo's case, speaking as someone who was born after his career ended, has one big flaw. As a career Cubbie in the days when Wrigley Field was the only park in the majors, he played much more daytime baseball than most of his peers.

Santo
Day: 6,508 PA, .875 OPS
Night: 2,889 PA, .717 OPS

Allen
Day: 2,548 PA, .957 OPS
Night: 4,767, .888 OPS

Oliva
Day: 2,933 PA, .836 OPS
Night: 3,947 PA, .825 OPS

Santo played a ey defensive position, which probably pulls him even with Allen and puts him ahead of Oliva. However, it's fair to say he had a home-field advantage that the chattering classes in his day had not fully comprehended.

(Of course, if Santo had been a Red Sock, we'd be hearing how playing all those day games hurt his number, just like people try to say that Fenway Park hurt Jim Rice's stats because of all those line-drive singles he supposedly hit off the Green Monster.)

Related:
Hall of shamers keep Santo out of their club (RosenBlog)
Previous:
Split over the Santo clause (June 25, 2008)

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: The arms shuffle

Did that really happen? A comeback from four runs down?

• Dustin McGowan is having a MRI, which means the Jays might have to shelve plans to trade A.J. Burnett and now that Rich Harden is a Cubbie, that should increase demand for Erik Bedard, even though he's pitched terrible everywhere but in his expansive home ballpark. Got all that? Good, because there'll be a test on it tomorrow.
• There's a sign Derek Jeter is past his best-before, even though he still got it done for the Yankees last night. The guy who threw him out at the plate, the Rays' B.J. Upton, wears No. 2 as a homage to The Captain.
  
  (There will be a full-length Rays post coming at some point soon -- it's amazing that people are having the knee-jerk "they'll fold" reaction. Teams that are 55-34 seldom fold.)
• It's worth mentioning Jays catching hopeful J.P. Arencibia, just to see if anyone else has noticed that he's still looking for his first walk since being promoted to Double-A. (He has five homers and is slugging .580 in 69 at-bats.)
• One modest suggestion; The Hall of Fame should have, What The Hell, They Were Better Than Jim Rice wing. This will have to wait until after Jim Ed's inevitable induction next season.
  

IT'S GRAVY FOR RICE

Everyone see that Jim Rice finally got into a Hall of Fame? So what if it wasn't the one in Cooperstown, N.Y.?