Damien Cox strikes out, but why is José Bautista hitting all those homers?

Saying someone doesn't know rate stats from counting stats is the new "doesn't know his ass from second base." Put another way: it's tough to trust a journalist with semantic data if her/his age exceeds José Bautista's home-run total — 40.

That's a gross generalization intended it makes the point. Greater minds have hit Damien Cox's weak-ass cheese about the Blue Jays' Bautista out of the park -- Cox Bloc even came out of retirement -- but whatthehell.

A couple points: One is that Cox showed what can happen when the perpetuation of PED hysteria is combined with an age of digital democracy. It's possible for anyone to write a So-And-So Must Be On Steroids post any day of the week. (Bleacher Report must exist for some reason, people.)

Every sport is in play (Mike Wilner: "You can either choose to believe those who have passed [drug] tests are clean or you can choose to believe that cheating is still rampant in the game and enjoy the game anyway.").

That makes it awfully curious that since every sport is fair game, a hockey writer such as Cox went out of his way to ding a ballplayer. Just saying.

The second point is that Lloyd Dobler principle from Say Anything, "I know that I don't know." One of daily journalism's old saws is the "good at English, bad at math" stereotype. Speeding up the sports culture hasn't changed that; it's only served to reveal it. And it's not any more prevalent among older journos than younger ones.

The difference, though, is some realize journalism is not the totality of one's personal experience and general knowledge. As a former mediocre math student, I know I am the wrong person to come up with all-encompassing, quintessential answer for why Bautista has been such an outlier, with 40 homers and counting through Monday. (His previous single-season high in the majors was 16.)

(Update: Dave Cameron, who might be that right person, has looked at it over at Fangraphs.)

At the very least, you gotta make an effort, you know?

Cox's first mistake, of course, was focusing only on the raw sum, Bautista's home-run total. It's not about the counting stats. It's about the rate stats.

At a glance, Bautista seems to be on a unique if unsustainable run. Only two everyday players in the majors have had a higher percentage of their batted balls become fly balls than Bautista (53.2%, according to what was posted at Fangraphs as of 12 a.m. Eastern on Aug. 24).

Only three had had a higher percentage of their fly balls go out of their park than Bautista (20.8% home run/fly ball rate). You want to question anything, question why he's able to get more loft on the ball, and hit it so far (although we know steroids don't make you hit the ball farther).

Rogers Centre, according to Hit Tracker, is the homerdome this season, yielding a MLB-high 2.86 gopher balls per game. New Yankee Stadium is next at 2.78, then there's a huge drop-off down to the 2.5 range.

Bautista has hit 25 of his 40 homers at home, in about 50 fewer at-bats than on the road.

That helps make the case Bautista is just an outlier. It doesn't give us all the answers, but it gives us a good framework.

Only one other everyday player hits more of his batted balls in the air and has also seen at least 20% of his fly balls sail over outfield fences — the Arizona Diamondbacks' Mark Reynolds. But you know where this is heading. Reynolds, who had 27 homers through Monday, is famous for striking out in a 40% about of his at-bats, nearly twice Bautista's whiff rate. Reynolds' home park is also a launching pad.

Who else is beating Bautista in home run/fly ball rate? The Cincinnati Reds' Canadian first baseman, Sports Illustrated cover boy Joey Votto (26.1%), leads the majors. Votto doesn't hit the ball in the air with any great frequency, which is part of why he's vying for a batting title in the National League while also being up with the leaders in home runs (and guess what, Votto's home park in Cincy also is notoriously generous for homers, 2.39 per game).

Tampa Bay's Carlos Pena (23.5%), has a ratio of almost three strikeouts for every two base hits he collects, for pity's sake. Next up is another Three True Outcomes slugger, the Washington Nationals' Adam Dunn (21.7%).

Bautista has struck out 95 times in 522 times at-bat this season, which isn't a lot for a cleanup hitter. He's more of 2 1/2 True Outcomes & mdash home run, base on balls, a few strikeouts.

A mathematician, I am not, but there is some plausibility to saying Bautista is on a roll, derived from changing his approach to produce more fly balls in his home run-friendly home stadium. The increase in his home run/fly ball rate from 2009 over the past season (12.3% to 20.8) is almost identical to that enjoyed by Votto (17.5% to that aforementioned 26.1). But no is wondering how that came to be for Votto, even in his hometown of Toronto. Nor should they.

None of this completely explains away why Bautista made it to 40 homers this season before anyone else reached 35. He did show signs when he put up a .339 on-base / .606 slugging with 10 homers in 125 times at-bat in Septemeber. It wasn't meant to, since I ain't that smart. The point is it's not that hard to at least be in the ballpark, so to speak, when an ballplayer's performance improves markedly. It's asinine and reductionist, not to mention played-out, to just automatically mention steroids. You could even say it's pathetically naive to think going for shock value for its own sake works.

The truth is out there if you care to learn how others are looking for it. Perhaps Damien Cox will learn to do that someday.

(The gist of Cameron's post:

"For the most part, he’s been hitting bombs like the two he drilled [Monday] night. If we look at his HR/FB rate, you can see that his frequency of getting balls to clear the wall isn’t that unusual: 21.5 percent of his flyballs have left the park this year, which still ranks him behind Joey Votto (25.7%), Carlos Pena (23.7%), and Adam Dunn (21.7%). Over the past three years, five players have averaged a HR/FB rate of 21.5% or better, which isn't exactly uncharted territory.

"Bautista will likely never have a year like this again, but there’s no reason to think he’s going to revert back to the version we saw before last September."

Good stuff.

(Image credit: The Canadian Press.)

Sports media: Wilner to baseball-yak it up on the old yak-box

This ought to be good for the geek love. The FAN 590's Mike Wilner announced on his blog tonight that his station is adding a daily baseball show, to run in Hockey Central's normal noon-hour time slot.

"Starting tomorrow, Monday the 6th, the Fan590 will be carrying a daily, one-hour program dedicated solely to the discussion of the greatest game there is — Baseball Today will be on Monday through Friday at noon Eastern and (for the time being, at least), be hosted by yours truly. It's still kind of open as to what kind of show it will be. I'm going to want audience interaction. I'm going to want discussion of not only the goings-on in Blue Jay land, but across the landscape of MLB. I'm going to want to have the audience learn about newer metrics to measure and predict performance. I'm going to see if I can get a Blue Jay or two to pop by in studio (when they’re at home, of course) to chat and take phone calls. All kinds of things. Tomorrow’s premiere edition will be a phone-in show, because I'm going to want to hear from you, the listeners, about what you want from a daily hour-long baseball show."

It might even take more of a commitment. You are going to have to take a leave from a job and dissolve all personal relationships.

Clearly, this might have come out of Rogers bean-counters figuring a hour of baseball talk each weekday might be good cross-promotion for the Jays. The FAN 590, case in point, has a tennis show that's a pretty obvious attempt to whip up interest in the Rogers Cup. It's either that or there are a lot of males 18-49 who want to call in and talk about Juan Carlos Ferrero's second serve. Nevertheless, this is welcome news, presuming CSIS will not trace all the calls since anyone in Canada who wants to talk about baseball instead of hockey in the middle of July is probably capable of treason.

Zen Dayley: Cito and the DH thingy

Plus more Vernon Wells vitriol and a short dissertation about tradition...

Just another day from the "Cito Gaston is not the brilliant tactician I thought he was" files. The same manager who complained about pitchers having to bat in National League parks after closer Scott Downs injured his big toe running out a ground ball almost ended up running out of pitchers on Thursday because he did not double-switch in the eighth inning in order to, wait for it, avoid the pitcher's turn in the order. As Mike Wilner put it:

"The Baseball 101, incredibly obvious, only correct move - especially since the Jays only had two pitchers left in the bullpen ... was to bring Rod Barajas in to catch as part of a double-switch, with (Jason) Frasor coming in to bat in the 8th spot and Barajas, the new catcher, batting ninth and leading off the ninth.

"Instead, Gaston only brought in Frasor, with the intention of having him lead off the ninth inning if he had been able to hold the lead." (The Phillies tied the game.)

" ... It was a ridiculous non-move to make, and almost cost the team the game. If Gaston didn't realize that the double-switch was the move, then one of former National League manager Nick Leyva or former National League coach Brian Butterfield should have been screaming in his ear. Just terrible.

You know the rest of the story. The Blue Jays ended up winning, 8-7, by the margin of Barajas' pinch-hit home run in the ninth inning (a fastball up and away that he hit over the centrefield fence 401 feet from home place). The dude who replaced the dude who was replaced by the dude who hurt himself running to first base (duuuuude, just say Jeremy Accardo got the save) ended up getting the save. The Jays won the damn game to complete a series sweep of the World Series champions (which was probably just an evenout since they could not be as bad as they were last weekend vs. the Florida Marlins), so what is it to anyone if the manager and his coaches flunked Baseball 101?

There is much less receptiveness for playing armchair manager when the team ends up winning the game. However, talk about a manager flirting with disaster The amusing part, speaking personally, was arriving at work shortly after 4 p.m., having forgotten the Jays had a day game and assuming it was over. It took all of 10 seconds to establish that the score was tied and, hey, what was regular catcher Barajas doing batting .in a day game after a night game? It seemed strange it had come to that point. It was even stranger that Gaston, after saying, "My pitchers don't take batting practice every day and don't run, so things like this are going to happen," would risk putting another pitcher in that situation only two days later. But hey, he is the manager.

To be fair, he did have a point

Gaston's rant did blow the dust off the DH debate. Whether it should be in both leagues, or just used for all interleague games (there is no political will to change it, since the AL is dominating once again in the interleague play contagion).

Not to over-intellectualize it, but one's position might hinge on a working definition of tradition. It seems like to some tradition connotes doing something the way you believe it's always been done just because. Tradition, though, means something is handed down, passed over to another generation. It's more like a trust to keep and if there's a way to improve on it without making a radical change, you do it.

Sun Media's Bob Elliott, to whom this author is very indebted, wrote a follow-up column on the skipper's comments. Elliott quite rightly pointed out that it was a bit of a CYA move to complain about Downs getting hurt. As he noted, the Jays knew interleague was coming. Downs had also hit before, plus running to first base should not be beyond a pro athlete's grasp. Plus, the Jays had left a lot of runs on the table.

"Gaston had every reason to be angry, but not at the National League designated hitter rules.

"He could have been angry at Alex Rios having a brain cramp and neglecting to tag with the Jays down 3-2 in the eighth when Marco Scutaro lined to left-centre.

"Or he could have been angry at the Jays hitting 2-for-17 with men in scoring position, or leaving 15 men on base in regulation."

Those were all good points. The rub is eight of those 15 stranded runners were a byproduct of starting pitcher Ricky Romero batting in a real game for the first time in his professional career. Romero struck out three times. On eleven pitches. José Bautista or Kevin Millar would have stood a far greater chance of driving in a couple of those runners.

The craw-sticker, though, was the closer, "Pitchers hit in the NL, and it's how baseball was created." That is very well and good. However, the counter to that is that the players would still go without gloves if everything was done according how baseball was created.

Games and sports evolve. Football pays a lot of lip service to tradition. However, with regard to specialized roles, they stopped asking the quarterback to double as a free safety generations ago. You don't see the starting split end (as wide receivers used to be called) coming off the field to get his kicking shoe on before he tries a field goal, straight-ahead style.

The best compromise as an American League guy is that the NL is free to keeps its antiquated rules. It's not necessary that the so-called senior circuit swings with the times. It just can't impact on any meaningful game affecting an AL fan's favourite team, or any game of significance. Sound fair?

P.S. ... about Vernon...

What was that about how Vernon Wells' production (his OPS is down to .676) might be about as good it gets?

"Of course, there was no mention of something most sentient Jays fans have already contemplated, that maybe this is as close to as good it gets for Wells. Five minutes of reading The Hardball Times or FanGraphs combined with a willingness to reason will show anyone that 40% of the way into a major league baseball season, a player's production has usually close to finding its own level, just like water."

Take it away, Fangraphs:

"ZiPS doesn’t see Wells improving all that much this season with the bat, ultimately finishing with a .254/.310/.400 line. The projected 15 HR and 18 SB help elevate the wOBA to .316, but a below average rate like that coupled with a UZR perhaps on pace to be worse than -15 runs makes Wells a replacement player. In a full season in 2007, Wells produced just 1.2 wins. He added another 0.8 more last year albeit in just 108 games. This year: -1.0 wins. Rios is proving that he can be a good, not fantastic player, while Wells is showing that he does not deserve a starting spot in the big leagues, let alone one at such an important position." (Emphasis mine.)

A Jay A Day: Statistics say, keep Wells and Rios together, just much lower in the lineup

You can see by the look of Vernon Wells' numbers it's time to get into this again.

One wonders what was behind Wells having been written into the fourth spot in the lineup day after day. (Tony Ambrogio's Twitter says he'll hit third, with Adam Lind — finally! — hitting cleanup and Alex Rios dropping to the six-spot. Why did it take this long? Was it part of a power struggle, with Paul Beeston as the permanent interim president and J.P. Ricciardi trying to stay employed? Is it the cult of personality around Cito Gaston that kept Toronto baseball writers from saying, "My wife, she has been most vocal on the subject of Vernon Wells. Where is he hitting today? When are you going to move him out of the cleanup spot? And so forth."

The Jays are not dumb on the baseball side. Someone working for them must be aware that 274 plate appearances into the season, a player's numbers are pretty much are what they are. The upside of fan anger, best represented by Sports And The City's Vernon Wells Hatred Advisory System, is that at least there's a way to show leaving Wells in the cleanup spot on faith is unsubstantiated baloney, in the parlance of our times.

Baseball Musings has a lineup analysis tool which anyone can use to determine the best batting order. You type in the on-base and slugging percentages of nine hitters, hit the submit button and voilà, find out that yes, it is crazy for Cito (more like Sito, since he's sitting on his hands) to keep writing Wells into the middle of the order. The $126-million-dollar man has the worst slugging (.387) and second-worst on-base percentage (.307) among the Jays' everyday players, for pete's sake. This is the best possible Jays lineup that it returned, with each's players on-base and slugging percentages in brackets:

1. Marco Scutaro, SS (.400/.451)
   
2. Lyle Overbay, 1B (.397/.553)
3. Scott Rolen, 3B (.382/.455)
4. Adam Lind, LF or DH (.381/.562)
5. Aaron Hill, 2B (.346/.500)
6. Rod Barajas, C (.303/.408)
7. Alex Rios, RF (.319/.423)
8. Vernon Wells, CF (.307/.387)
9. José Bautista, LF or DH (.400/.368)

For argument's sake, the team's splits vs. lefties suggest that against southpaws, Overbay could be dropped to the sixth spot, with Barajas sliding into the 5-hole and Hill batting second.

In a run-neutral setting, that collection of data representing Blue Jays hitters would average 5.82 runs per game. The worst possible lineup, which would have Barajas, the paunchy catcher, in the leadoff spot with Wells batting second, would still average 5.25 runs.

The current Jays are averaging 5.03 runs (above the league average, 4.78). That's good, but it suggests they could be more productive if Wells wasn't dragging them down.

Another feature of BM's tool is that it shows outcomes for a number of possible lineups. The constants are Marco Scutaro hitting leadoff, some combination of the two lefties, Lind and Overbay, and the righty-hitting infielders, Hill and Rolen, in the 2-5 slots, and Wells being well down in the lineup. There were a few that show the Jays could get away with Alex Rios as the No. 3 hitter.

Data representing Blue Jays players does not fully capture their mental or physical well-being, or if they have just been hitting a lot of at-'em balls, or have a flaw in their swing which can be corrected. If you liken the baseball swing to a golf swing on another plane, Wells does not look like he was what golf nuts call "quiet hands," which makes it harder for him to square up and make solid contact. That might explain his low batting average on balls in play (.258) and why any improvement the rest of the way will probably be marginal.

The point is as a fan, either take it on faith that Wells will snap out of it or accept that in a snug-panted exercise in statistic memorization such as baseball (fist bump: Jay Pinkerton), there's usually a reasonable projection of how someone's going to produce. Wells is nearing 300 times at bat for the season. The water has found its own level. FanGraphs has Wells projected to end up with 15 homers and 75 RBI. Those aren't cleanup hitter numbers in any generation.

Meantime, the FAN 590's Mike Wilner said Gaston will consider making a change in "a month" if things don't improve. A month? We have seen enough already.

The bottom line is the sample sizes are big enough to know Wells will only improve somewhat over the last 100 games of this season. As The Tao of Stieb noted today, he has not produced to the point where it is costing the ballclub:

"In the 32 games since Vernon Wells last hit a ball out of the park (May 6th versus Anaheim), he has posted a .574 OPS and driven in a grand total of seven runs in 134 plate appearances. Each one of which, it should be noted, with him hitting fourth in the Jays batting order, just to beat that dead horse again.

"And dare we mention that Travis Snider was exiled to Las Vegas after posting an OPS of .686 in 108 plate appearances? If that sort of performance merits a demotion - and it did - then shouldn't Vernon receive some sort of demotion himself? Like maybe a week or two of hitting seventh or eighth in the lineup?

"Most importantly, the Jays have gone 14-18 in those games. We'd hazard a guess that not many teams would do much better with their cleanup hitter putting up numbers that could be bested by the fourth outfielder on their Triple-A team."

Personally, there was reluctance to get into this, since it would be running over some well-trod ground.

Most Jays and/or Toronto sports blogs have been harping about this for several weeks. It seemed best to just to fall back on the old standby adopted by office drones the world over, "You don't want to know what I think." However, there was a spur to speak up after hearing Gaston tell Jerry Howarth prior to last Sunday's game that he wasn't giving consideration to dropping Rios and Wells. The gist of it, from Gaston's point of view, was that "you don't want to panic." He also said you can't "hide" struggling hitters in the lineup, which did not answer the question of why he would keep them in the two spots in the lineup which get the most chance to produce runs, either by driving in the table-setters or. Now he's going to wait a month?

The irony is that there is a counter-argument that the Jays might be reluctant to take decisive action since Rios and Wells are perceived as their two highest-paid players. They would open themselves up to criticism if they take two players due to earn close to $200-million US through the 2014 season and hit them 7-8. (Technically, the Jays' highest-paid position players are actually Rolen and Overbay.)

However, there is a lot of cynicism in the Toronto sports market. Jays attendance is down a bit this year, although their TV ratings have risen about 7%. There is interest in this team, but not blind devotion. A demotion for Wells and Rios probably would be good from a bottom-line point of view.

A strong organization would ride it out and make the best of being stuck with Wells, instead of exacerbating the worst of it.

The first secret of armchair managing: Stay seated

The proof is in the eating, eh? Dave Cameron (of USS Mariner fame), writing for The Wall Street Journal, figures Cito Gaston is on to something by not pinch-hitting.

"Toronto has sent a pinch-hitter to the plate only five times this season, fewer than any club in the AL. Despite conventional wisdom that says managers should play the percentages (bat righties against lefties, etc.), Mr. Gaston prefers to stick with his starters. Rather than making a knee-jerk replacement of a lefty hitter like Lyle Overbay when the other manager brings in a left-handed pitcher, Mr. Gaston simply stands pat.

The numbers support Mr. Gaston's strategy. So far in 2009, AL pinch-hitters are batting a paltry .187 AVG/.275 OBP/.301 SLG, compared to the average AL starter that is batting .268/.340/.428. So when your local announcers are babbling about how hard it is to sit around for three hours and then be asked to pick up a bat and hit, they are actually making good sense.

"In fact, there appears to be a league-wide trend away from pinch-hitting."

Earl Weaver, who went to extremes with pinch-hitting, was of the belief that it can hurt the team if the manager doesn't make a move that everyone in the dugout realizes is begging to be made. Cameron's example would be such a situation, given Lyle Overbay's career platoon split, which includes a .118 average vs. left-handers this season. However, Cito Gaston is managing people, not actuarial tables.

Two games stand out in particular with regard to the way Gaston manages his roster, and this is not necessarily related to pinch-hitting. Last Saturday vs. the Chicago White Sox, José Bautista made a rare start vs. a right-handed starting pitcher, Bartolo Colón, as he filled in for the veteran Scott Rolen. Bautista, a righty, historically, has OPS'd about 130 points better vs. lefty pitching.

Gaston ended up having Kevin Millar replace lefty Travis Snider against a left-handed reliever in the bottom of the seventh and the Jays down by one run. Millar struck out, but as Mike Wilner noted, he stayed in the game at an unfamiliar defensive position:

"My guess is that Cito: A - really wanted to give (Scott) Rolen the whole day off, and 2 - didn’t want (John) McDonald coming up to bat in the 8th or 9th in a big situation. But wow - it was Millar's first action at third base since 2002, when he played all of 11 innings there with the Marlins. For some strange reason, Alexei Ramirez didn't drop a bunt down the third-base line leading off the 8th. Millar didn't wind up making a play, with (pitcher Robert) Ray throwing a 3-up, 3-down inning on two fly balls and a strikeout.

"Rolen wound up coming in to watch the 9th, anyway, having as busy an inning as Millar did. So this may well be our only chance to say that Kevin Millar and Scott Rolen were defensive equals at third base in the same game."

And what happened? Bautista ended up getting the game-winning hit, off a right-hander, no less. Rolen, refreshed and recharged after one inning as a defensive replacement, made about three highlight-reel plays over the final two games of the Chicago series. One of them was critical, since it came one batter before Chicago's Scott Podsednik hit a triple.

The other example came a month ago, an eventual extra-inning win vs. Texas on April 22. That is more remembered as the night B.J. Ryan lost the closer job after coughing up a three-run lead in the top half of the ninth inning and Darren O'Day made his major league debut while wearing Kason Gabbard's jersey (and Gabbard was traded the next day).

After Ryan blew the save, Rolen and Millar were due up second and third in the bottom of the ninth. It seemed quite possible that Gaston would have Overbay pinch-hit. Instead, he burned Travis Snider by using him a pinch-runner for Adam Lind, and left Millar in the game. It was a major tooth-gnasher, since that move amounted to having a slightly faster runner forced out at second base when Millar rapped into an inning-ending double play.

Of course, you know the rest of the story: Two innings later, Vernon Wells cadged a leadoff walk, was bunted ahead to second base by Snider. After an intentional walk, Millar came up with the winning run in scoring position. There was no chance of seeing Overbay. Millar promptly drove in the game-winning run, off a right-hander.

Point being, Gaston's way of trusting players to do a job seems to have some wisdom. It ma only seem brilliant because the Jays are winning right now.

Related:
Toronto's Secret Strategy: Don't Pinch Hit (The Wall Street Journal)
Cito Gaston realizes that less is more (Craig Calcaterra, Circling the Bases)

Roy Halladay with a nod to the gods

Thank goodness for Roy Halladay. He removes the need to get too deep about baseball.

The big appeal of Halladay's night on Tuesday, beating A.J. Burnett and the Yankees 5-1 with a complete-game five-hitter, was that it feels like it's taking one back to when pitching a ball game was like giving a performance, a real art. It is probably better articulated recently by blog post the veteran broadcaster and former pitcher Jim Kaat wrote last week about today's hurlers not knowing how "to pitch to the scoreboard and to the count."

"Pitchers today should be less cautious early on, and try to throw as many strikes as possible to avoid long counts and keep hitters from seeing and deciphering too many pitches. When it's tied in the seventh, and the pitcher has not been more economical and the pitch count stands at 108, managers are forced to take him out. However, if it's the sixth inning and he's only thrown 75, he's got enough to finish the game."

That seems to sum up Halladay in a big bloody nutshell. He needed just 56 pitches (only 16 for balls) while facing the minimum 18 Yankees batters across the first six innings.

To build off Kaat's point, he had more than enough to cruise home across the final three against the Yankees, who extended him to a 24-pitch seventh when they got their only run. There really wasn't even much trepidation when Johnny Damon got a one-out double in the seventh inning with the 3-4-5 hitters coming up and the score only 3-0, since you had to figure Halladay would give the Yankees enough rope to get one runner in, but no more. That might be saying more about how the Yankees can't push a train up a dirt road these days, even with a $200-million payroll, but that's their problem. Honestly, Kaat's piece and Halladay's piece of work speak better to the seamheaded lament about pitchers being unable to go the full nine:

"I wanted to try to knock out every hitter in three or less pitches and/or try to make him get hits on all of them. The great Sandy Koufax, a good friend of mine, said he was the most successful pitcher because he tried to get hitters to hit the ball, not miss the ball. Let's face it; the best hitters get three hits out of 10 at-bats. I remember times when I used to tell the catcher to call just fastball after fastball, and get as many out as possible in the early innings. Then when it came down to the last few innings, I could use my other weapons more effectively. Curveballs, sliders, and everything else I had in my arsenal. That was when it really counted.

"... Pitching is tougher these days. With smaller stadiums, a smaller strike zone, a tighter wound ball, and lighter, laminated, harder bats, there is little opportunity to keep hitters from diving into the ball without a fight, a warning or an ejection. And hitters are bigger and stronger than ever. Watch some of the World Series highlights on the MLB Network and check out the size difference in the players then and now. But, even with that said, sooner or later you have to throw it over the plate.

"There's plenty of data out there to support throwing aggressively early on. If the hitter is behind in the count 0-1, 1-2, 0-2, he likely hits under .200. If it's 1-0, 2-0, 3-1, he's usually over .300. Today's pitchers need to challenge hitters early in the game and trust their stuff and maybe they'll pop a few up or hit them at one of the fielders. Only then will the pitcher be around to enjoy the thrill of trying to get hitters out with the game on the line in the eighth or ninth — and, as an added bonus, teams won't have to carry 12 pitchers on a staff and use four or five pitchers a game."

Obviously, with that approach, there are times when a pitcher's best stuff gets hit and he's going to lose. The point is, though, perfection is the enemy of good, and as a fan you can sort of see that in Halladay. He made the Yankees look ineffectual in something that was far from the best-pitched game of his career or in the majors this season (his game score was 78, so it wasn't even in his top 10). The upshot is the Blue Jays are pretty much automatic when Halladay is throwing against the Yankees (12-2 dating back to the start of the 2005 season). He is going to lose sometimes, since like Kaat says, major league hitters will eventually hit the ball where a fielder can't get to it.

Plus, yeah, it was schadenfrelicious that he obliterated the Yankees while starting opposite A.J. Burnett, on a day when the Yankees' old aura took another beating. Between one of their executives defending the "caste system" at the new Yankee Stadium and ex-Yankee Roger Clemens continuing to run his mouth when he and fellow vainboy Brett Favre would better serve humanity by signing on to herd sheep together in Wyoming, Halladay's gem was just a cherry on the sundae.

(For those of you who missed it, Lonn Trost, a Yankees executive, defended the team's practice of keeping fans with lower-priced tickets, relatively speaking, from going down near the field during pregame workouts.

"On the issue of allowing regular fans and kids to watch batting practice from the field level, here is what Trost had to say: 'If you purchased a suite, do you want people in your suite? If you purchased a house, do you want people in your house?'

"Wow. That’s pretty much all the evidence you need about the caste system at the new Stadium. There is a Stadium for the wealthy and there is a Stadium for everybody else.

"You know what is really sad about the whole thing? None of those people even watch BP. The entire area is largely empty before the game."

Far be it to point out Yankees fans are more than welcome to go down during pregame workouts at Rogers Centre should they want to get a good look at a first-place ballclub. Who knows how much longer Jays fans will get to say that, eh?

Incidentally, according to baseball-reference.com, here are Roy Halladay's top 5 performances, by game score:

• 93 — May 29, 2005 vs. Minnesota: Went the route on a two-hitter with no walks, getting 10 strikeouts against nine different Twins hitters.
  
  
• 91 — Oct. 5, 2001 vs. Cleveland: A two-hit, no-walk shutout over a playoff-bound Clevelandteam that took all of one hour, 57 minutes. Cleveland played most of its regulars that day except for future 500-home run man Jim Thome. That might make Thome the first player to come down with what the FAN 590's Mike Wilner has termed the "RH32 flu."
  
  
• 90 — July 11, 2008 vs. the Yankees: A two-hit shutout with one walk and eight strikeouts, coming right before the. Jeter and Alex Rodriguez had the only hits.
  
  
• 90, Sept. 6, 2003 vs. Detroit: This probably needs an asterisk since it was against a Tigers team which would have had trouble winning the Governors' Cup that season (if you get that joke, you're an incurable Seamhead or a very good Googler). Halladay pitched a three-hit shutout to win 1-0 in 10 innings, with 21 ground-ball outs. It came just five days after he pitched a four-hitter to beat the pennant-winning Yankees.
  
  
• 89 — April 29, 2005 at New York: A three-hit shutout to beat Randy Johnson and the Yankees. Both struck out nine on a Friday night in the Bronx, but Halladay was doing it vs. Jeter, Rodriguez, Gary Sheffield, Jason Giambi and Bernie Williams, whereas the Big Unit was blowing third strikes by Frank Menechino, Reed Johnson, Eric Hinske and John McDonald before he became McGlovin. You get the idea. To be fair, Hinske did hit the game-winning two-run homer.

(Much obliged to Jason Rosenberg at It Is About The Money, Stupid for the Yankees links.)

Fewer, but better Jays fans; or, you're missing some pretty good games

It's glib to say only in Toronto could the baseball team have the best record in the American League and still see sliding attendance.

The Toronto Star's gamer noted the Jays' crowd (15,295) on Monday vs. Cleveland was 5,000 off their average attendance. Another report suggested last season's average of 29,627 was inflated by "ticket giveaways to businesses." One point is that raw attendance totals really reflect when people who don't care decide to temporarily take interest. When it comes to baseball, that's just not happening on the fifth of May.

For what it's worth, attendance is down almost 14 per cent if you control for one big variable, visits by the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees. Today's game vs. the Clevelands, where lithe lefty Brett Cecil threw six solid innings in his major league debut, was the Jays' 15th home date. How does the attendance so far this season compare with the first 15 home games last season against non-Evil Empire teams:

2008: 347,583 (23,172 avg.)
2009: 300,217 (20,014 avg.)

There are probably as many explanations as there are empty seats. Most of you probably don't need it pointed out that it is off-base to base everything on raw attendance figures, just as TV ratings are an outdated tracking method.

It doesn't tell the whole story when it comes to reflecting a team's fanbase. The Jays have good fans and, although this is preaching to the choir, a very knowledgeable following. (This obviously does not include the douche who, after catching the ball that Cleveland phenom Matt LaPorta hit for his first major-league homer on Monday, thought he'd be all cool and throw the ball on to the field. He could have shaken down LaPorta for all sorts of schwag with good resale value.)

Point being, 30,000 people at Rogers Centre these days are often more animated than 50,000-plus were during the era of "Winfield Wants Noise!", the Jays' 1989-93 salad days. Kinger did an interview with The FAN 590's Mike Wilner two weeks ago. Asked if the packed house for the U.S.-Canada game at the World Baseball Classic in March reminded him of the old days, Wilner said it didn't, because the crowd was actually noisy and into the game.

"It used to be packed every day, but until you got to the playoffs or to the games when you'd clinch the division, they would sit on their hands. That's what Toronto crowds do. They're kind of averse to cheering and yelling. They need to be led by the scoreboard or at least back then they did. This was way more ... everyone who watched, everyone listened, is going to remember, we can do it. We just need some games that really, really matter."

That pretty much nails it. Obviously, it would be more reassuring the announced attendance was 32,005 today instead of 22,005 for today's 10-6 win over Cleveland. Honestly, it's reductive to just go by how many people are at the park, especially if they have to watch baseball indoors.

Major League Baseball, as a business, seems to get it pretty well when it comes to understanding how the economic model has shifted for its product. It's a mainstream sport, but it serves niches very well (fantasy baseball, statheads, et al.). In a fragmented market and 81 home dates, you just can't expect sold-out stadiums, unless you have a new park or play in a market like Boston, Chicago or New York. Anyone who frames it otherwise is whistling past the graveyard, or is nostalgic for an era that only gets better in their imagination as time goes by.

OOLF Hot Audio: Mike Wilner

This should've been up here a week ago, but technical craziness (Blogger is still refusing to load the posting page properly for me, and archive.org was being silly) and me recently catching the flu conspired against it.

Either way, last week we were pleased to present the third man in the booth on Blue Jays radio broadcasts and the host of JaysTalk, Mike Wilner, on Kingston's most listened-to hourlong sports talk program. Actually his second appearance on the program, and no, I don't know why he's willing to come by my completely irrelevant show but I sure as heck appreciate it.

Here's the latest edition, with discussions of his experience at the WBC, the Jays this year, and so on and so forth:



Took the week off this week for flu reasons, but if all goes well next week we'll be joined by former Jays assistant GM Bart Given, and that interview will be thrown up here afterwards too. But to hear it live, tune into www.cfrc.ca at 4pm on Friday.

Our kind of team, Ernie

Mike Wilner posted Canada's presumptive lineup for its World Baseball Classic opener late last night, or at least the first six hitters:

1. Chris Barnwell, shortstop: Triple-A veteran on-based .364 in the PCL with the Albuquerque Isotopes last season.
   
2. Russ Martin, catcher: He walked 90 times last season with the L.A. Dodgers, so he's a natural fit here. He could probably lead off, but putting the catcher there is too radical.
   
3. Joey Votto, DH: Probably the best spot to put someone who will be the best Canadian corner infielder/outfielder eventually.
   
4. Justin Morneau, first base: Lots of RBI opportunities, no more need be said.
   
5. Jason Bay, centrefield: Breaks up the lefty bats and presuming you believe in lineup protection, protects Morneau.
   
6. Matt Stairs, rightfield: Wilner said DH, but that is Votto's spot.

The bottom third would be the Kansas City Royals' Mark Teahen at third base, longtime quadruple-A player Peter Orr at second base and Cleveland Indians prospect Nick Weglarz in left field. Weglarz was No. 58 in Baseball America's top 100 prospects.

Remember, Canada's exhibition game against the Blue Jays is scheduled to be aired on Sportsnet today at 1 p.m.

Related:
Corey Koskie thrilled to take field with Canadian team at WBC (Shi Davidi, The Canadian Press)

Canadian who likes baseball actually allowed to commentate baseball

And the world, remarkably has not spun off its axis.

The FAN 590's Mike Wilner, who's something of a folk hero in these parts, let it be known that he will have the call of Canada's first-round World Baseball Classic games next weekend. He'll partner up with ex-Jay Paul Spoljaric, who'll handle the colour.

"It’s my pleasure to announce the broadcast crew for the Fan Radio Network’s coverage! I’ll be doing the play-by-play, and former Blue Jay and Team Canada member Paul Spoljaric will be providing the colour commentary.

I can’t tell you how thrilled and excited I am to be given this opportunity, and I couldn’t be more thankful to Nelson Millman for having the faith in me to give me this chance, and to Doug Farraway for being strongly in my corner."

It's a bit of crack in the glass ceiling. No disrespect to any of the play-by-play voices who have handled the Blue Jays since the days of Dan Shulman, but it's always seemed like the only way to get a shot was to be a hockey guy who was slumming or be a studio host who would learn on the job (Rob Faulds and the guy whose name should always be typed in bolditalics as a send-up of his faux folksiness).

It's not a huge deal, but Wilner has been on the Jays beat since his days as a U of T student in the early '90s, and it's always nice to see an assignment handed out on the basis of who's passionate about the sport. It doesn't happen every day in the media.

Snark break ...

Roberto Alomar has a girlfriend, named Maripily Rivera. You can all relax now, shame on you for being uncomfortable. How about that Bears game last week? Helluva game, helluva game. Bears got a good team this year.

Don't worry. If you're looking out the window and a falling figure goes shooting past, it's probably just the Montreal Canadiens.

Aussie basketball legend Shane Heal is playing his final pro game Saturday. It means nothing, other than a chance to recall Zander Hollander's summation of Heal's one full season in the NBA, where he shot 26.8%: "Maybe the ball rotates differently in his hemisphere."

You are not alone in thinking the Globe & Mail and TSN are word-flogging the Olympics so badly that everyone will have five-ring fatigue before they even light the flame. Two columns in the same day from Stephen Brunt is more obvious than a three-dollar bill. (Granted, two Brunt columns are better than 200 from a lot of writers.)

Mike Wilner, Sun Media's Steve Simmons, in a brawl to settle it all. It has happen. Wilner noted last night that Simmons' suggession "that a distinction has to be made between (Alex) Rodriguez and (Barry) Bonds because Bonds 'abused' steroids, but Rodriguez only 'used' steroids ... might just be the most ridiculous thing that I have ever read."

And they say newspapers don't know their readers anymore. The Hamilton Spectator notes the Hammer's $94-million contribution to a stadium for the 2015 Pan-Am Games could buy "195 Tim Hortons franchises or 43,300,000 medium coffee and donut combinations."

It is ridiculous when college basketball coaches don't trust a player to stay on the court despite foul trouble.

More great moments in fantasy sports: Manu Ginobili scored 32 points against the Raptors, but missed the game-winning shot with 10 seconds left. The beauty of being a Canadian playing fantasy hoops is you can blame your team's record, if need be, on the TSN2 controversy. Granted, it hasn't hurt the other 11 owners in the Rockhard Fantasy League.

Last but not least: Try to get, "How was your time with the Unabomber?" into conversation at some point today.



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

• Toronto-area hoops hotshot Cory Joseph (Devoe's brother), who's playing high school ball down in Nevada, scored 20 points last night. He had a better night than fellow Canadian up-and-comer Tristan Thompson, who's been thrown off his New Jersey high school team.
  
• The Score has cancelled The Score In The Morning, the show that was co-hosted by good Kingston lad Adnan Virk and Nikki Reyes.
• Down Goes Brown has some random early 1990s Leafs playoff memories. Guy Hebert would be the goalie for the Pierre Garcon All-Stars (pro athletes with French names who aren't French-Canadian).

Raines '09 — That's the kind of day it's been

Rob Neyer has a post up saying "all hope should not be lost" with respect to Tim Raines' Baseball Hall of Fame chances.

Block-quoting from it almost doesn't do it justice and neither does excerpting anything from Joe Posnanski's post, other than what he said about Tim Raines getting only 22.6%. It would be nice to be as sanguine as FanGraphs ("I can no longer get emotionally invested in it. The process is too broken, the voters too uninformed"). There is so much so much Neyer hits on, especially the cold, hard truth of how Raines and Andre Dawson's careers were marked and marred by the labour wars of their era. His contention is without collusion, Raines might have been National League MVP in 1987, and people would have regarded his career differently. What the hell. One blockquote:

".... Raines reached base more times in his career than Tony Gwynn, and that's true: 3,977 times for Raines, 3,955 for Gwynn. Did you know Raines reached base 503 more times than Dawson? That Raines is 41st on the all-time list and Dawson is 96th?

"You might have read somewhere that Dawson finished his career with a .323 on-base percentage — exceptionally low for a 1980s outfielder/Hall of Fame candidate — and that's true, too. Did you know Dawson's .482 career slugging percentage isn't anything special, either? Did you know Dawson's 119 career OPS-plus (OPS adjusted for league and home field) is worse than Raines' 123? Did you know on-base percentage should be weighted more heavily than slugging percentage? Did you know that for all the talk about Dawson's impressive combination of power and speed, Raines stole nearly 500 more bases?"

OK, a little more. You can read between lines and understand how frustrating this day has been. Take it away, Mike Wilner:

"My formative years as a baseball fan were from about 1979-1985, and I don’t remember thinking that (Jim) Rice was an incredibly scary guy. That’s one smell test that fails, but the truth is in the performance.

"You know how you think Scott Rolen was a major disappointment offensively this season and is pretty much done as a good hitter (see how well I know my readers)? Scott Rolen's 2008 was Jim Rice's CAREER away from Fenway Park. Rolen hit .262/.349/.431 this year, for a .780 OPS. Rice hit .277/.330/.459 on the road for his career, for a .789 OPS."

Poz was a little more circumspect about the future prospects for Raines:

"My biggest disappointment in the voting this year is that Tim Raines actually went BACKWARD. I can't for the life of me figure this out. Maybe it's because Rickey Henderson was on the ballot and a few people felt like they could only vote for one great leadoff hitter at a time. I don’t know. Raines was a great player on so many different levels. I hope that he starts to gain some Hall of Fame traction next year."

People want to remember Jim Rice as the mostfearedhitterofhisgeneration. (More than Mike Schmidt and his 548 home runs? More than George Brett, who once hit .390 -- .390 with power -- over an entire season!) As for dominance over a 10-year period, Raines scored the most runs in the National League from 1981-90.

It just goes on. The voters want to remember Tony Gwynn as this incredible hitter, they want to remember Dawson as an exemplar of class and dignity. They want to trim the facts to fit their opinions, like most people.

Fair enough. It's fine if you want to have your memories. It's far better to do some homework and make sure.

Related:
Shifting the Hall argument (Rob Neyer, ESPN.com)

Zen Dayley: Tampa Bay was never reeeeeling, really; Rays defeat Red Sox, clichés

For probably not the last time, momentum in baseball is the next day's starting pitcher.

There's been some spur here to write a rant about how there should be a moratorium on TV talking heads saying that any team who's lost their last few games is reeeeeling. It's become the insta-cliché of the last couple years, a bit of faux-authoritative, dollar-store psychology used by people who want to pass themselves off like they have been there and know what it's like to be a pro athlete. It's an industry thing. If you have't been there, you should always be Lloyd Dobler in Say Anything: "I know that I don't know." Hey, it worked on the young Ione Skye.

The Rays, as you know, lost Games 5 and 6 before winning the real World Series American League pennant last night behind Matt Garza's two-hit pitching over seven-plus innings and phenom David Price phenomenating to get the final four outs. A truth is Tampa Bay had a much firmer grip on this series than the Cleveland Indians did before blowing a 3-1 lead to Boston in 2007. One can a hazard a guess that a common hallmark of instances when teams have come back from a two-game deficit to win a best-of-7 series is the first few games flattered the other guys. That did not happen here. Tampa Bay was better through the first four games and the first 6½ innings of Game 5, when the Red Sox made that epic eight-run comeback. They had an evenout over 12 innings of baseball, but were good enough to get through it, thanks to Garza showing his worth as a big-game pitcher and Price nailing it down at the end,

Miked Up offered a pretty good window into some of his colleagues who had the mindset. That's not a media-bash; a lot of people no doubt felt that way after the Rays blew it in Game 5 and somnabulated through Saturday's Game 6.

For the Series, the first knee-jerk thought is that the Rays have a huge advantage in starting pitching. The Phillies starters beyond Cole Hamels aren't much to look at and their home stadium is a launching pad.

At times like this, it's good to be reminded of the thin threads the larger glories hang off. Rany Jazayerli pointed out that Price became a Ray by virtue of the Kansas City Royals winning on the final day of 2006 season, giving Tampa Bay the No. 1 overall pick the following season. Ouch.

Anyway, getting back to the main point, there is some momentum in baseball. It's just more subtle.

Related:

• It looks iffy that Canada's own Matt Stairs will DH for the Phillies in either of the first two games at Tropicana Field. The Rays, going by the way they set up their rotation in the ALCS, would start lefty Scott Kazmir on five days' rest in Game 1. Stairs can't hit lefties. He has also hit .213/.303/.331 in 155 career plate appearances in Tampa Bay, not a great omen. It's more likely that their best pinch-hitter, Greg Dobbs, would be the DH.
  
• Rogers Sportsnet, in the future, should consider having Mike Wilner in the studio for its playoff coverage instead of the man who gives new meaning to square peg, jamiecampbell. Goodness knows that he's earnest as heck, shucks, he really tries his darnedest. This probably needs a bit of context, but during the wrapup the last night, he had this stilted moment:

  "Evanka, Jim, how does this sound: The Tampa Bay Rays are in the World Series: Are you kidding me?"

  Campbell (or as a journo friend calls him, Captain Obvious) set it up like he had a clever and original line -- only to rip off one of Chuck Swirsky's catchphrases. This really happened.
• The latest on the Seamheads Historical Sim League (name that will seem clever at first but will seem less funny the more you hear to be named later) is that the teams will be grouped by their start date. The Jays will be in a division with the Seattle Mariners, the Rockies/Diamondbacks (Diamond Rox?) and Rays/Marlins (Raelians?). That bodes well for their chances, or it would if their GM was not an idiot.

He's like Yoda, only obsessed with on-base percentage

This post will become a full-bodied Zen Dayley, but first off: Mike Wilner wrote that on this, the final day of the season, "all that’s left is for ... (Vernon) Wells to try to take Jeremy Guthrie deep twice to have the Jays avid the ignominy of going through a full season without having a single player hit 20 homers."

Well, what do you know: Wells homered off the Orioles' Guthrie in the first inning, and homered again in the fifth to become the only Jay to hit 20 moon shots this season. It didn't happen quite the way Wilner called it, since the second homer was off Alfredo Simon, who's neither as good nor memorable as Alfredo Griffin or Simon & Garfunkel.

With fans and TV friends like these, there's no happy medium

Travis Snider's splendid home debut betrayed everything all that is soulless and wrong about the Rogers Blue Jays, their main TV carrier and Toronto's alleged sports fans.

It was twofold. Sportsnet, as Drunk Jays Fans pointed out, was doing an interview with an ex-Leafs hockey player and thus ignored the super-prospect's first at-bat. Secondly, the lack of a warm welcome when Snider came up was described as "shameful." (Miked Up.)

For a diehard fan, there's only so much you shrug off before you want to get your Billy Jack on: It's only a silly baseball team which hasn't been in the playoffs since I was in Grade 11, and I want you to know, that I try. When well-meaning family members and friends say that "it's only baseball" and tell me that I'm supposed to control my violent temper, and be passive and nonviolent, I try. I really try. Though when I see Travis Snider ... who is so special to us we (ought to) call him 'God's gift of sunshine' ... and I think of the number of years that he's going to have to carry in his memory ... the savagery of this idiotic moment of yours... I just go BERSERK!

No one's asking for the kind of saturation coverage TSN gives to hockey players who roughly the same age as the 20-year-old Snider. However, when the best homegrown hitting prospect the Jays have developed in relevant memory comes up to bat in his home stadium for the first time, pretty please with sugar on top and you can make this a Christmas and birthday present, focus on his at-bat. Don't talk over the play by doing an interview with ex-Leafs goalie Curtis Joseph, which is what happened.

Granted, the broadcasters might not have even noticed Snider was up to bat. As Mike Wilner pointed out on the radio and on his blog, he got roughly, oh, three-one thousandths of the reaction elicited when the "gameday crew" at the world's largest Rogers Video store brings out the T-shirt shooter. It was pathetic.

Perhaps the ignorance and indifference is no surprise, when you consider how little evident fanfare the Rogers-owned network dedicated to the up-and-coming star of the Rogers-owned baseball team.

As someone whom, admittedly, can zone out on baseball for hours on end, it's hard to get wrapped around what is so hard to understand. What are sports consumers in the Centre of the Universe apparently incapable of seeing with their own eyes?

Any 20-year-old who smokes a line-drive single off a 3-and-2 slider from Joe Nathan, Minnesota's lights-out closer, with two out in the ninth inning when it's his first week in the majors pretty much has the baseball world by the tail. Typically, in that situation, most hitters expect a fastball, and if they get anything else, they need a miracle in a worse way than Ricky did in that Trailer Park Boys episode when he couldn't smoke or swear in a courtroom. Experienced major-league hitters, including a few on the Jays, will swing and miss or produce a weak groundball out if Joe Nathan throws them a slider in that two-strike situation. (Not that anyone is naming names, Vernon Wells.)

That's what makes the indifference so galling, as Wilner articulated on air:

I have to say, (I'm) very disappointed in the crowd of 21 and a half thousand people that when Travis Snider came to the plate for his major-league at-bat at home -- nothing. Quiet, polite applause, no different than the applause for Lyle Overbay or Marco Scutaro ... you know what? And I mentioned to somebody before off the air and they said, 'That's what you get in this city. People just don't understand.' And I try my best not to give in to the people who say Toronto's not a baseball-savvy town and the fans don't understand baseball and you know, whatever. But that showed me something. And that was just terrible -- terrible! Everyone who was at the ballpark tonight should be ashamed of themselves for not giving Travis Snider a better welcome to the big leagues."

I can see where it's possible Wilner laid it on a bit thick. It was the Wednesday after Labour Day. The tourist crowd who make a point to come see a game or two each season are gone. Everyone there was probably on freebie tickets.

The newspaper reporters got it right and made Snider the focus of their game stories (although saying that Snider and John McDonald are in any kind of "similar situation" as hitters is more than a stretch. The only similarity between Snider and the .540-OPSin' McGlovin as hitters as that they each use a bat).

Ultimately, though, this is what you get in a market where how baseball is presented and absorbed is affected by Rogers' uninterested ownership (hat tip to Dan Rowe). When you have big corporations that don't care about the stuff they own, is it really any shocker people don't show any love to God's Gift of Sunshine?

Anywho, it's dumbfounding that Sportsnet couldn't save the softball questions for CuJo for the next half-inning. Meantime, for fans, start getting to know Travis Snider, AKA God's Gift of Sunshine. Not next summer, after he does a six-week or so turn at Syracuse Buffalo just to fine-tune his swing and cut down on his strikeouts, but now.

Going to a Jays game and not clueing in about Travis Snider is like going to a hockey game and not knowing it's played on ice. Sorry for the rant, but someone had to say it.

Zen Dayley: What if you boycotted the media and no one noticed

The way word has got around about A.J. Burnett's boycott of the FAN 590 -- the Rogers-owned flagship of the Rogers Blue Jays -- is kind of curious.

It sort of points up one major misgiving some Jays followers have with the mostly awesome Mike Wilner. Stoicism is something he hasn't learned -- and maybe that's not a bad thing, since too many sports media types accept shabby or careless treatment. Inquiring minds had a right to know that Burnett wasn't talking to anyone from the radio station. Still, why even bring it up on-air when no one has asked about it? It just veered a little too close to airing dirty laundry. Granted, everyone in a vocation that has its share of easily bruised egos will do it eventually. (Present company very included.)

(As for Shannon Stewart's release, don't waste your beatiful mind, or try to play expert after-the-fact and say they should have kept Reed Johnson. You're arguing over very, very little.)

The other odd part is that no one else seems to think it's a big deal. No one's speculating that this is a sign that it's slim-and-none Burnett won't become a free agent after this season.

Stewart vs. Johnson: Baseball Prospectus 2008 projected Stewart to hit .271/.328/.374 this season in Oakland, where fly balls go to get damp and where foul balls that go out of play in any other park become outs. Johnson, who as you know was cut and is now on the National League-leading Chicago Cubs, was projected to hit .261/.322/.385 in a better hitter's park in Toronto. That's five points of OPS, with about a 10- or 20-point margin for error due to the park factors. Basically, it's nothing.

There's no difference between the two. Stewart is older and more injury-prone, but neither he nor Reeder rated 500 at-bats. That doesn't really, matter, though. The Jays have Adam Lind to play left field, who's matured very well this season. Travis Snider has jumped two levels in the minors this season and there will need to be a corner-outfield slot open for him at some point by early 2010 at the latest.

The only argument is that the Jays shouldn't have assumed everything was going to be OK with Vernon Wells, coming off shoulder surgery. Johnson might have been able stanch the bleeding defensively in the outfield a little bit better than Brevin Milkerson. Point being though, it does little good to second-guess, even if this is the third big J.P. Ricciardi move that's turned out not so well (Scott Rolen's on the disabled list and the Jays are living with McGlovin at shortstop instead of David Eckstein).

Zen Dayley: Cuban would be in the Bonds market

The longer Barry Bonds remains in left-handed slugger's limbo (it's not bad, but it's not great), the more it increases a fan's desire to Mark Cuban win the Chicago Cubs sweepstakes.

Cuban is anteing up $1.3 billion for the Cubbies. As you probably know, he will face a major challenge trying to get the required three-quarters approval from 23 of 29 MLB owners.

The Cubs also have Alfonso Soriano in left field, but this is not really about Bonds playing for Chicago. It's not even about the 44-year-old home-run king getting a chance to succeed or fail on his own merits, even though every other Hall of Fame player, was given that courtesy, and not just the nice guys. (Bonds says he's in fighting trim.)

The point is that Bonds, or any other player with a nasty reputation, are anathema to members-in-good-standing clubs such as the Houston Astros and your Toronto Blue Jays. They don't want the drama, the whiff of controversy -- or the end to their lack of left-handed power at the DH/corner outfield spots. Granted, you know what you're getting with Brad Wilkerson. In the Jays' case, that's a .221 average and 13 homers from the DH spot.

For Bonds -- and maybe Milton Bradley, almost need by an Al Davis type. Cuban comes closer to that than anyone else who currently owns a major professional team.

Perhaps Cuban would play by the house rules if he landed the Cubbies. He's mellowed out over time with the Dallas Mavericks in the NBA; he says only been fined once by the league in the past five years. He and Sam Zell, who wants to unload the Cubs, could sue to get him into the owners' ranks. Eamonn Brennan wrote last week, "Major League Baseball likes its old-boy owners, its old money, its quiet yes-men, and it doesn't like to have its quaint club disrupted by those of ill-repute. Mark Cuban's antics do not endear him to Major League Baseball. After all, when was the last time you saw an MLB owner take pregame press questions on his treadmill?"

That's a big matzo ball hanging out there. But would Cuban sign a Bonds type, or maybe in a few seasons, an aging but still productive Manny Ramirez? It stands to reason that he would be more likely to do so than some teams. There are a few which, to quote Houston columnist Richard Justice, "have a reputation for wanting guys that look and sound alike." (Justice also sticks the dagger by pointing out that if personality is an issue, well, the Astros have employed Jeff Kent and Roger Clemens.)

Point being, he wouldn't freeze out a controversial player, because in his words, to "make good money is a win for everyone." The NFL realizes this -- it's show business. Cuban would be too late to the game for Bonds, but not too late to shake up baseball. A byproduct might be that it would help a few players who have been smeared with the bad-apple brush.

Errata

• Speaking of which, FanGraphs has a look at what kind of offers the Rangers' league-leading slugger Milton Bradley is going to elicit in the off-season. As is always the case with Bradley, it's fraught with something. He can hit, no question, but no one's likely to guarantee him more than two seasons.
  
  The U.S. economic slowdown probably won't play a part in what kind of offers Bradley does or doesn't receive. Baseball's coffers are still flush; any change in the player market won't come until after the 2009 season.
• Ken Griffey Jr.'s return to centrefield is working about as well as expected. It's time for the White Sox to break out the nerve tonic.
• Phillippe Aumont had a decent outing in his first game with the Mariners' Class-A team since coming off the disabled list. He went three innings, giving up one run on three hits with two walks, one strikeout and a wild pitch. One positive sign: Five of the nine outs he got came on ground balls.
• In other 2007 first-round draft pick news ... the Rays promoted phenom left-hander David Price to Triple-A. The over/under on how long it is before he's called up to the majors is three starts.
• One takeaway from Yahoo Sports' Tim Brown's column on Skimgate is that MLB would have to re-open the collective agreement in order to have a universal entry draft (which even the stodgy NHL has. King Kaufman also noted that this means that Gary Sheffield had a point when he attributed the diminishing number of black players in baseball to the belief that Latinos "are easier to control."

Damn, the Jays

• No disrespect, but if Paul Beeston and Pat Gillick are coming back to the Jays, how come it's on the website of an out-of-town newspaper?
• It would only be fair if the Jays rack Cy Young candidate Cliff Lee pretty well on Sunday after abandoning Roy Halladay on Saturday.
• Great stat from John Brattain: The Jays have scored four runs or less in a game times since Opening Day 2007. That's almost an entire season's worth of never having a big night with the bats.
• Mike Wilner is calling out Alex Rios for being lackadaisacal yesterday: "one hopes that with the new regime in place, they’ll be able to get a stern message across to Rios about his at-the-very-least occasional lack of effort, but for now their hands are tied. It’s not like they could put Joe Inglett or Brad Wilkerson out in centrefield tomorrow with Cliff Lee on the mound, nor should they."
• Please read The Tao of Stieb's takedown of those who would make a big show out of pronouncing the Jays dead and buried (they are, but that's not the point).
  
  There are going to be times during the season when, for sanity's sake, it's best to give the Jays a pass for a week or so.
  
  There's an odd phenomena, though, when you cheer for an also-ran team -- you find yourself drifting back in during August and September. It stems from the feeling that the season is almost done and it won't be that long until you're staring at five long months of fall and winter before spring training opens down in Dunedin. The beauty of baseball, of course, is that your team can still be interesting to follow when they're not in the hunt. The same can't be said of NFL, NHL and NBA.

Les Rapidz

• On his vacation, good friend Carl Kiiffner caught up with former Lynx owner Ray Pecor and GM Kyle Bostwick, who are no worse for wear with the Vermont Lake Monsters of the NY-Penn League. (Carl's headline is very self-explanatory, let's just leave it at that.)
• No one needed any reminder of what Ottawa baseball fans lost with Ed Nottle's ouster. Channeling Stephen Colbert: Thanks a lot, Nashua Telegraph.

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

Jays are better with ripostes than with RISP

Jays GM J.P. Ricciardi, much as some people can't stand his act, does have a quick wit sometimes.

A caller from the East Coast was joshing Ricciardi during the FAN 590 post-game show tonight about Matt Stairs of Fredericton, New Brunswick, not playing. Ricciardi shot back, "'Send some of that Schooner Beer down here, we'll play him more."

The Godcciardi haters who know their East Coast beers might point out that any GM worth his BlackBerry would have at least demanded some Clancy's Amber Ale.

The caller then offered up the kind of well-reasoned suggestion JaysTalk are renowned for -- "B.J. Ryan is useless, try Matt Stairs pitching." Ricciardi retorted, "We'll play him at all nine positions tomorrow, bye now."

Ricciardi might be a dick, but if the Jays were 54-37 instead of 44-47, people wouldn't care one way or another.

(For you Ontario readers, voting has begun for the Golden Tap Awards. Go Steam Whistle!)

Zen Dayley: Interleague play should be history

A.J. Burnett, living up to his rep as a .500 pitcher, does his best to blow it for the Jays, who beat the Braves 1-0 despite his 11 strikeouts in seven innings.

There's a huge element of "don't waste your bandwidth" to any anti-interleague play screed.

There are literally powerful forces -- the manufacturers of the approximately 373 erectile dysfunction drugs advertised weekly on the Fox Saturday Game of the Week -- who believe interleague is Good for Business. There's no convincing Bud Selig, et al., otherwise. That means you'll be subject to more wallowing in nostalgia about long-ago World Series matchups -- as if they have any revelance to the current season.*

The bottom line is it's tiresome to see a gimmick play hell with whatever integrity the playoff races might accidentally have in the age of $200-million payrolls and playing each divisional opponent 18 times each season. Ask the L.A. Angels about how they love having their players forced into roles they're uncomfortable with when they play at a National League park. The Angels pinch-hitters were 0-for-11 in those games. Please keep that in mind if L.A. ends up missing the playoffs by one game.

The stupidity of it all is in persisting with a tradition that's been laid to rest in almost every other precinct. As any Ottawa Lynx diehard remembers, pitchers only bat in the minor leagues when two NL-affiliated teams are playing each other. If a Jays farm team meets a Braves farm team, the DH is used. Why should it be any different in the majors?

(Digression: The rule should be the same in each league, but perhaps the DH should be de-emphasized. Being physically capable of holding down a defensive position should be a prereq for being an everyday player. The concept of the "floating DH" -- someone who can enter at any time, but can't come up again until another eight batters have had their turn, is really appealing. Another halfway crackers idea: Pitchers have to hit and the DH takes the spot of the worst position player in the lineup. John McDonald would be a Hall of Famer if he could play every day and not have to bat, which is the only way he could play every day.)

There's probably evidence that the National League is weaker for insisting that pitchers have to bat. The Minnesota Twins, who are below .500 against AL teams, are flirting with contention by virtue of going 14-4 in interleague. (The Twinkies are also 7-2 against the K.C. Royals, whose record looks better than it is since they also cleaned up in interleague. Don't ask why the Jays struggle with it seemingly every year. That said, the Twins being fifth in the league in runs scored is awesome.)

Having to watch 18 of the suckers, as a fan of a team with no geographical rival, is also tedious. The AL should go back to the old balanced schedule and have teams play six interleague games -- during the second week in April. Then we'll see how popular it is.

What else ...

• It's reasonable to wonder if the Detroit Tigers are going to make a run in the second half (at 41-40, they're above .500 for the first time this season). The short answer is no, not with their pitching.
• There's a report that the A's are betting a $4.25-million signing bonus on a Dominican dandy, 16-year-old right-handed pitcher Michael Inoa.
  
  A Jays fan can't even dream of the Rogers Communications cheapskates ever authorizing that kind of investment in young talent. How come no one with a bigger platform points out that the Jays don't win because, under Godcciardi, they've persisted with the most cynical corporate approach -- make sure the casual fans see you spending money, instead of spending it wisely where no one's looking..
  
  That's how you end up with a .500 team that starts David Eckstein as the DH and has only two of Baseball America's top 100 prospects (although it's getting better). It doesn't have to be that way -- just look at the Tampa Bay Rays.
• Tracking Phillippe Aumont's progress has taken the focus away from Michael Saunders, the other hotshot Canadian in the Seattle Mariners system. Sorry about the procrastination -- he's been doing well as a 21-year-old centrefielder just called up to Triple-A.
• Revising Jackie Robinson's Hall of Fame plaque was a well-meant gesture, but Sports on My Mind says real progress would also mean revising Kenesaw Mountain Landis' plaque -- or removing it altogether.

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

The change it had to come, we knew it all along

It's almost as if the Blue Jays have morphed into the Leafs -- reaching back into the past, the one place where it can't get any worse.

There's a strong whiff of cynicism behind this Flashback Friday -- Cito Gaston and Gene Tenace are in as interim manager and bench coach (so is Nick Levya!); John Gibbons out, with coaches Gary Denbo, Marty Pevey and Ernie Whitt are following him out the door.

This has the sickly scent of Paul Godfrey — focusing more on the optics than whether it actually makes sense. Also, the next Flashback Friday game will be a managerial matchup of Gaston vs. the Atlanta Braves' Bobby Cox.

Granted, Gibbons had to go, since any change would do a 35-39 team good. The question becomes what this heralds, ideally beginning with J.P. Ricciardi probably getting the bum's rush after this season and assistant GM Tony LaCava taking the reins of an organization that would actually be serious about scouting and player development. But it's more likely this is just a bit of a facelift, a cosmetic change, something Godfrey would know all too well about.

It just so happens that Jayson Stark of ESPN.com has a handy-dandy list of up-and-coming manager and GM candidates. Personal preferences among the managerial candidates include Brad Mills from the Red Sox (although he', former Cleveland coach Joel Skinner and one-time Ottawa Lynx manager Pete Mackanin, who didn't really get much of a chance with the Reds. Among the GMs, staying in-house for LaCava doesn't seem so bad, especially since the Jays' farm system is improving.

(Update: Rob Neyer was on The FAN 590 around 2:45 Eastern and suggested that it's likely Ricciardi returns in 2009. That doesn't fill one with confidence.)