Jays: NL rules, not so Fabio

Roy Halladay's pitching line last night in Atlanta was pure pro-DH dynamite.

7 IP, 5 H, 0 ER, 0 R, 1 BB, 6 SO, 95 pitches, 63 for strikes

You know the rest: Halladay came out for a pinch-hitter with a runner on second and two out in the top of the eighth inning. The Atlanta Braves scored off lefty reliever Jesse Carlson in the home half for a 1-0 win on the first night of interleague play.

There isn't a manager alive who doesn't pinch-hit when the game is tied in the eighth inning. That is precisely the point. The self-described purists say they love all the strategy that goes on in the National League. It's not strategy when the decision is automatic. Praising the strategy in the NL is like praising an NFL coach who opts for a 99.9% automatic extra-point kick instead of going for a two-point conversation in the first quarter.

What happened last night also puts the lie to one of the big sells with interleague play. Major League Baseball, back when this contagion was introduced in the late 1990s, said it would help fans to gain an appreciation of the stars in the other league. Well, Roy Halladay, baseball's best right-handed pitcher, was removed through no fault of his own after facing only 26 batters and throwing just 95 pitches. They didn't get the full measure of the Good Doctor.

One objection here is that most of the people who were at the game barely noticed. Fans in Atlanta went home happy because their Braves won. That's fine and dandy like sour candy, but not addressing something just because most people wouldn't notice either way is kind of dumb. Why try to do anything better, in that case?

Maybe this was more irritating to a Jays fan since they lost the game. However, they could have won while removing a starting pitcher while he was still fresh, which is also wrongheaded on a certain level.

The National League dinosaurs have their conceits. Their league is the aggressive, get-after-'em brand of baseball. The average AL team this season has actually stolen more bases than the average NL team (31-25). It would be neat to know if that is a reflection of being able to have nine hitters in the lineup who have all learned to hit and run the bases (relatively speaking) instead of eight (two big reasons are the two most steal-happy teams, the L.A. Angels and Tampa Bay Rays, are in the AL, while the most station-to-station team going, Milwaukee, is a NL team).

Then there's the great double switch. Far be it to point out that it can often mean taking out either the leadoff or No. 2 hitter and at least ostensibly, that can mean losing a player who is good enough to hit higher in the lineup than all the other starters.

As previously noted, National League teams don't have a problem with their minor-league affiliates using a DH (the pitcher only bats in games between two NL-affiliated teams) in order to get their farmhands more at-bats. They don't mind using a DH in spring training games to get someone more chances to fine-tune his swing.

More strategic thinking goes on in the AL. The manager has to decide to change pitchers based on effectiveness, not when the No. 9 spot is due up in the order. Weighing the benefits of pinch-hitting one position player for another, or whether to pinch-run for the catcher and run the risk of an injury to the other catcher, that actually involves some thinking.

The NL rules are as dishonest as The Sporting News headline which says Atlanta's pitcher, Kenshin Kawakami was able to "outduel" Halladay. Kawakami was full value for the effort with eight shutout innings, but he would have come out for a pinch-hitter earlier if Halladay hadn't been so darned effective, or if the Braves hadn't had last bat.

At the heart of the matter is that the way baseball has evolved over time has gone against pitchers being able to swing the bat competently. The Blue Jays pay Halladay a pretty handsome salary to pitch. He still had another inning, maybe two in him last night, and he was denied that because one league, for whatever reason, doesn't half to play be late 20th/21st century baseball rules.

Point being, things change, people accept them, get used to them and move on. There is something disquieting about sports fans who can't accept the designated hitter almost 40 years after it was adopted.

(As sidebar, one idea that has been floated out for interleague play is to use the visiting team's rules. Let the fans see a different style of game. That's not a half-bad idea.

Speaking from self-interest, that would mean Matt Stairs would not get to start at DH when the Philadelphia Phillies come to Toronto for an interleague series in June. Nuts to that.)

The Vegas shuttle

The moves the Blue Jays made over the 48 hours reflect how they have a pretty sharp front office and less-than-swift ownership.

It is a wise move to ship out pitchers Brett Cecil and Bobby Ray, God's gift of sunshine Travis Snider and bring up Casey Janssen (who starts tonight vs. Atlanta), a rehabbed Ricky Romero and utilityman Inglett, who's good at being average at a lot of things. A key bit of understanding is that (unnecessarily) expanded pitching staffs lead teams to run a constant shuttle between the major-league team and Triple-A to effectively create what Bud Selig would never a allow: A 28- or 29-man roster instead of 25. Of course, that would be a lot easier for the Jays if their top farm club wasn't 3,597 kilometres away in Las Vegas.

Fabio Castro (pictured), as most diehard farm system-studying diehards know, had a 24-inning scoreless streak in Las Vegas. Castro, who was an Ottawa Lynx in 2007, is a curiosity since he's only 5-foot-7 (if that) and he's also on his fourth organization while still only being 24 years old. He might be good lefty-reliever timbre if Jesse Carlson falters.

MLB Trade Rumors figures Travis Snider might stay down in Triple-A until after the all-star break in July. It has to do with keeping him from becoming eligible for arbitration and free agency, all that fun stuff.

Drunk Jays Fans also laid waste to any notion of an attitude problem:

"(Assistant GM Alex) Anthopoulos also gave Snider credit, when the delightful Mike Toth threw down some hockeyish bullshit and asked if Snider's request to Cito to stop giving him so much information in-game suggested that maybe there was a problem with 'coachability,' saying that he did it in a very respectful manner, and that they thought it was a positive that Snider wasn't intimidated to go into the manager’s office."

Getting back to the point, Rogers should have tried a little harder to get a Triple-A team located in the Eastern time zone. It is tempting to point out there is a 10,332-seat ballpark located a 4½-hour drive away in Ottawa that was built for Triple-A and is less than 20 years old. That ship has sailed, though, since the International League just doesn't want teams to have to come to Canada in April and May.

It's convenient to point out the closest Triple-A team to Toronto, the Buffalo Bisons, are dead last so far in their first season as the affiliate of the New York Mets. (The Jays' farm club in Las Vegas is 10 games below .500, but that's neither here nor there.)

Zen Dayley: Ex-Lynx catches on with Bucs

It's great how someone else's good news can cause you to perk up: Case in point, Jason Jaramillo, the last starting catcher for the Ottawa Lynx, had a happy homecoming last night with the Pittsburgh Pirates.

" 'This is an amazing dream come true,' said the 26-year-old Jaramillo, a Franksville native who becomes the first position player from Racine County to start for a major league team since Case graduate Duane Kuiper started 18 games at second base for the 1984 San Francisco Giants. 'All the blood, sweat and tears, I guess they say, about battling and working hard to achieve your dream is coming true.' "

Jaramillo, 26, is starting for the Pirates and his manager for the Lynx, John Russell, and doing a bang-up job in Ryan Doumit's absence. The job is his to lose until Doumit's projected return around the all-star break and the Pirates are 11-8, with a NL-best 3.36 ERA under Russell and former Expos pitching coach Joe Kerrigan.

Jaramillo is mostly backup-catcher timbre, the catch-and-throw guy who can hold on to a major-league job just for a receiving skills and occasionally. It's mostly beside the point whether he and the Pirates can sustain such a start. It's just nice, for lack of a more original word, to see him get a chance to play every day. He represented the late and lamented Lynx in the Triple-A All-Star Game in 2007. The offensive numbers (he had the exact same on-base-plus-slugging, .711, in both '07 and '08) were depressed somewhat by pitchers' parks in both Ottawa and Allentown, Pa., so the change of scenery helped. It's a pleasant surprise, to say the least.

"And from a defensive standpoint — and defense is Jaramillo's forte — he has yet to commit an error and has thrown out two baserunners, one of which was a SportsCenter highlight.

"So delighted is Pirates manager John Russell, who managed Jaramillo with the Class AAA Ottawa Lynx in 2007, that he only could think of one complaint.

" 'The only knock I have on him is he's from Oklahoma State,” joked Russell, who was a catcher for arch-rival Oklahoma from 1979-82.

"Jaramillo has been no laughing matter. Wearing the No. 35 three-time All-Star catcher Manny Sanguillen wore for the Pirates from 1967-80, Jaramillo has filled a huge hole in Doumit's absence.

" 'I knew he was a good player when he was with the Phillies,' Russell said. 'He was a top prospect and they kind of rushed him through the system a little bit. But he struck me as a very good defensive catcher and he really became a student of the game with switch-hitting. He showed flashes of potential with his batting, as well, so he has a lot of tools.

" 'He made the team because of his defensive abilities, but some of his offensive skills are starting to show up.' "

(Link via Rattler Radio, which has regular updates on B.C. baseball phenom Brett Lawrie, who's playing for a Milwaukee Brewers' Single-A team.

Related:
Jaramillo reaches MLB's top floor (Peter Jackel, Racine Journal-Times)

Batter up: Pittsburgh Pirates

It's almost baseball season, that mystical, wonderful time of year where you commit to a team who you know fully well won't win. This season, in honour of an popular Internet meme, we'll present 25 things about each team, starting with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Any wagering or fantasy baseball advice is for recreational use only.

1. You know the scene in the second Naked Gun movie where Frank Drebin goes to a dive bar to drown his sorrows and there are pictures of the Hindenburg disaster and Michael Dukasis on the walls? That's pretty much how one imagines the Pirates clubhouse.
   
   They will have Eric Hinske and the thoroughly decent Adam LaRoche supplying their left-handed power, so, uh, yeah, that ought to help them avoid a record 17th losing season in a row.
   
   
2. MLB.com's Pirates beat writer is Jenifer Langosh. She has one N and about 100 Ls to cover this season.
   
   
3. Betting on baseball is only worthwhile if you can make the Obscure Bets window like picking Craig Monroe to be the Pirates' all-star representative. He hit 28 homers for the Detroit Tigers three years ago; he's a heartbeat away from getting hot for half a season before crashing down to earth.
   
   
4. It's been Deadspinned, but yes, the Pirates lost to a junior college team on Thursday, 6-4 to the Manatee Community College Lancers. Manatee no-hit them over the final four innings, which just goes to show baseball is the greatest game of all.
   
   
5. This comes during a spring when outfield prospect Jose Tabata's spouse charged with baby-napping. With the Pirates, it never rains, but it pours.
   
   
6. Everyone's looking for the next Rays, and FanGraphs was somewhat complimentary to the Pirates owner Robert Nutting and GM Neal Huntington, who used to be in Cleveland, a successful mid-market team. They're the team. The players are just equipment. At the same time, there's a lot of reno work before the Pirates can contend in 2012 or '13.
   
   The Pirates' Double-A team will have about a third of its games broadcast on Pittsburgh radio. It's in line with selling hope.
   
   
7. Their year-by-year win totals since 2005 have been 67, 67, 68 and 67. It's no surprise that the boys in Vegas have the over/under at 67½ . The Beep has them pegged for 64.
   
   
8. What passes for the audacity of hope comes in the form of third baseman Pedro Alvarez, who has "scary" power according to Peter Gammons' many informed sources.


9. Their last three managers also skipped the late and lamented Ottawa Lynx. Second-year man John Russell replaced Jim Tracy (2006-07), while Pete Mackanin managed the final 26 games of the 2005 season.
   
   
10. Jason Jaramillo made the Pirates as a backup catcher. He had the best at-bat music of any the 2007 Ottawa Lynx, but it was easier to remember since he was actually there all season.
    
    
11. A Google News search for "Pittsburgh Pirates" turns up a scathing review of Major League Baseball 2K9 video franchise. Get MLB 09: The Show instead, if you're into that sort of thing.
    
    
12. Jose Tabata actually got the image of his idol, the sainted Roberto Clemente, tattooed on his chest before he was traded to the Pirates last season.
    
    
13. No word of a lie: Pittsburgh TV station WTAE's website has links for news about NFL's Steelers and the NHL's Penguins, but none for the baseball team.
    
    
14. There are actual things written about an actual baseball team: "Ross Ohlendorf won the No. 4 spot after a solid spring, though he has not yet had success at the big league level." In other words, he is perfectly qualified.
    
    
15. Ohlendorf and No. 5 starter Jeff Karstens used to play in Scranton, which is good jumping-off point for noting that The Office really went downhill this season.
    
    
16. Nate McLouth, rest assured, will probably be the centrefielder on the all-time Random Gold Glovers team. He's not long for the position, since the Pirates' closest to major-league prospect, 22-year-old Andrew McCutchen, plays centre.
    
    
17. Keith Law believes the Pirates' previous regime rushed McCutchen through the minors.
    
    
18. Gift Ngoepe is an easy name to keep on file; he has a legit shot at becoming the first black South African to play in the majors. Ngoepe had a rare two-triple game against Mexico during the World Baseball Classic; he's a switch-hitting shortstop with some wheels.
    
    
19. The franchise has not lost a World Series since 1927. Let's see the Red Sox or Yankees make that claim.
    
    
20. What's the ripple of evil if it doesn't turn around in the 'Burgh? Well, Hollywood is running out of the popular 1960s and '70s movies and TV shows that can be turned into remakes. The Pirates better start winning before there's a bastardized Major League remake set at PNC Park, with the fat kid from Two And A Half Men playing Ricky Vaughn Jr.
    
    Or not. This last paragraph was just a send-up of early Bill Simmons.
    
    
21. Clemente's old number probably should be retired throughout all baseball, just like Jackie Robinson's No. 42. He meant that much to Latinos.
    
    
22. The Pittsburgh preview is good a time as any to mention that it's odd how Bert Blyleven, who was on the '79 Pirates, doesn't have the same reputation as a post-season performer as, say, Jack Morris.
    
    Blyleven was 5-1 with a 2.47 ERA and 1.077 WHIP in the playoffs, compared to Morris (7-4, 3.80, 1.245).
    
    Someone who isn't old enough to remember (guilty as charged) might not even have heard about Blyleven throwing four shutout innings on two days' rest to keep the Pirates alive in the '79 Series. He started Game 2, then came on in relief in Game 5 with the Baltimore Orioles ahead 1-0 after five. He shut the door, the Pirates won 7-1 and went on to take Games 6 and 7 to win the whole megillah.
    
    Blyleven also beat Morris in their one head-to-head showdown in the 1987 American League playoffs, but speaking as a Blue Jays fan, any memory of that's season playoffs has been totally suppressed.
    
    
23. Pittsburgh-based author Michael Chabon will totally sue anyone who prints up posters proclaiming Eric Hinske, Andy LaRoche and Craig Monroe as the "Wonder Boys." The situation will probably not crop up this season.
    
    
24. There have been low points before. The Pirates at one point in the 1950s lost 317 games in three seasons. It would have been more, but the schedule was only 154 games then.
    
    
25. Outfielder Nyjer Morgan's Baseball Prospectus 2009 entry says, "To his credit, he is beginning to understand his limitations." The Blue Jays should be doing everything in their power to trade for fourth outfielder who is actually a former hockey player, since that's supposedly what it takes to win ballgames.

Batter up: Cleveland Indians

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

1. Centrefielder Grady Sizemore once missed the start of the game after he caught a glimpse of himself in a reflective surface and was unable to look away. Slap a sawbuck down on Sizemore being AL MVP, Chief (or not). All he would have to do is put up something close to his 2008 numbers, except do it on a division winner so the right people notice.
   
   
2. The wormballer, Fausto Carmona, will probably bounce back. Righty Anthony Reyes, now that he's out St. Louis' bad books, might be able to turn his career around and give Cleveland a solid third or fourth starter.
   
   
3. Eric Wedge is one of MLB's youngest managers and one of its most old-school. His teams don't steal a lot of bases (the Mets' Jose Reyes had more base swipes than the entire Cleveland team, 78-77) and his starters go deep into games.
   
   
4. Cleveland's bullpen ERAs, from 2005 to '08, have been 2.80, 4.73, 3.92 and 5.07. They will either return to compentency, or try to shoot for a 6-something figure this season. Rafael Betancourt and Rafael Perez typically handle those seventh and eighth-inning situations.
   
   
5. The team on the field Opening Day, give or take super-prospect Matt LaPorta, is probably the one they'll have all season. The estimable Terry Pluto reported, "I sense ticket sales have not been brisk -- although Opening Day is a sellout. I doubt there will be much money available in the budget for a midseason pickup of a player who has a hefty contract.
   
   
6. Ohio is suffering its worst job losses in three generations. What happens if LeBron James leads the Cleveland Cavaliers on a long playoff run and then the Indians make the MLB post-season? You could see a lot of empty seats.
   
   
7. Cy Young Award-winning left-hander Cliff Lee finished spring training with a 12.46 ERA. C'est la vie for a flyball pitcher. Maybe it was the dry, dusty Arizona air (or not). His fake baseball ERA last spring was 5.68 and he turned out OK.
   


8. The AL Central winner will likely face the wild-card team in the Division Series. Consider yourself warned if Carl Pavano's surgically repaired wing holds up the entire season and the Yankees end up making the playoffs, because you'll hear all about that storyline.
   
   
9. Kerry Wood is now the closer. What are the odds of seeing him pitch in a World Series against his old Cubbies team?
   
   
10. Eric Wedge can win bar bets and impress his grandchildren by telling them he was one the home run leader on a team which had Jeff Bagwell. Yes, it only took five homers to lead the 1990 New Britain Red Sox.
    
    
11. Travis Hafner is probably not going to hit again like he did in 2007, let alone '06. He's a buyout waiting to happen.
    
    
12. Asdrubal Cabrera (yes, it was naive to think once that the Jays could somehow trade for him) and Jhonny Peralta are a not half-bad middle-infield combo at second base and shortstop. Both of them will probably rotate one spot to the right before long.
    
    
13. Fielding was not the Clevelanders' strongest suit last season, which might explain why they crashed to an 81-81 record. Sizemore won a Gold Glove more as a consolation prize than anything else.
    
    
14. One drama for the Indians is that Lee's personal catcher, Kelly Shoppach, presents a pretty good sell-high proposition. He's better than most teams' starter, but probably won't produce an .865 on-base-plus slugging again. Having two co-No. 1 catchers, the other being Victor Martinez (who moonlights at first base and DH), means Cleveland could jettison one of them and become a better team, at least on paper.
    
    
15. Cleveland has gone 45 years without a major pro sports championship (the nearby Ohio State football team doesn't count, since they're, technically amateur and their sport doesn't have a real championship). This fact gets run into the ground any time a Cleveland team is in the hunt for anything, so thankfully you only have to hear it in May with the Cavs and October with the Indians.
    
    
16. Corner outfield used to be a Cleveland strength since the days when they had Albert Belle and Manny Ramirez in the same outfield. They were so deep in the late '90s that they let Brian Giles go for very little.
    
    Wedge is a master of, well, wedging three or four players into the right and left-field jobs. Shin-Soo Choo probably offers the most after OPS-ing .946 last-season.
    
    
17. Josh Barfield (son of Jesse) has gone from being a potential 20-homer-a-year second baseman to being kept on the team as the "designated runner." Thing is, he's not that great a base stealer.
    
    
18. Sizemore's 33 homers and 38 steals last seson made him Cleveland's second-ever 30-30 man after Joe Carter in the '80s. Sizemore also actually knows how to draw a walk, too.
    
    
19. The power hitter positions are all pretty malleable over the next two seasons, save for Travis Hafner being owed $52 million through 2012. The Indians have a lot of good hitters coming through their system.
    
    
20. Their Double-A team in Akron might be more worth watching than the major-league club on some nights. Four genuine hitting prospects, lefty DH Beau Mills (former Expo Brad Mills' son), lefty outfielder Nick Weglarz, oversized shortstop Carlos Rivero and switch-hitting catcher Carlos Santana (chuckle once at the name and get it out of your system) will all be opening the season there.
    
    
21. Nick Weglarz is red-haired, left-handed and Canadian, which automatically makes him pretty awesome. The big takeaway from his '08 season is he cut his strikeout rate from one whiff every 4.1 times at bat to one per 5.8. The power numbers are not yet there (20 doubles, 10 dingy-dongs), so keep an eye on that at Double-A Akron.
    
    
22. Weglarz' extended family lost out a bit when the Indians moved their Triple-A affilation from Buffalo to Columbus, since he's from Stevensville, Ont., just across the border. The upshot is the Tribe's top two farm clubs are both in Ohio, so it's not too far a drive.
    
    
23. Utilityman Jamey Carroll had his No. 3 jersey retired by the Ottawa Lynx. His highest batting average in three part seasons with the late and lamented Triple-A team was .280, but his hustle forever endeared him to the now forlorn faithful (who have not given up fighting to bring pro ball back to the city in 2010).
    
    
24. Family Ties did a send-up of the Indians' poor attendance long before the Major League movies. In one episode, Jennifer Keaton called the Municipal Stadium box office to ask, "Do you have two tickets for tonight's game? (Long pause) You have 35,000?"
    
    Incidentally, everyone knows Michael Gross, who played the dad on that series, appears in How I Met Your Mother as the father of Ted Mosby, who's from Ohio and who is an Indians fan.
    
    Similarly, the guy who played Dauber on Coach, which was set in Minnesota, plays the factor of the Jason Segel character, Marshall Eriksen, who's from St. Cloud, Minnesota. That attention to detail is legendary.
    
    
25. It's a real shame some of Bob Uecker's best film work was wasted in Major League II.

    Back goes Cerrano. He's gonna need a rocket up his ass to catch this one. That one's out here. That looked like like the'terminator,' only slower. Maybe it was his 'out-of-stater.' Maybe it was the hibernator. That baby is definitely goin' away for the winter. Whatever, for Vaughn, it could be 'see ya later,' he's probably going to become a spectator.

    
    
    

Batter up: Oakland Athletics

It's that mystical, wonderful time of year where you commit to a team which you know fully well won't win. This season, in honour of an popular Internet meme, we'll present 25 things about each team. Any wagering or fantasy baseball advice is for recreational use only. At bat: The Oakland Athletics.

1. The state of the franchise, in haiku: "All dressed up / no place to go / that is the Oakland Athletics."
   
   A's owner Lew Wolff has trashed the stadium in Oakland, but greater minds have noted there aren't many U.S. cities who are about to take on a Major League Baseball franchise. Their average attendance could drop below 20,000, which would get the franchise forcibly relocated if it was located in Canada.
   
   In other words, the A's are stuck. One modest bit of ass-talking: Repatriate them to Philadelphia, so the Jays can change divisions.
2. The sight of Matt Holliday (pictured) in an A's uniform stirs up nostalgic feelings for the days when only a few statheads knew about park effects. Holliday is going from Colorado (great hitter's park) to Oakland (terrible hitter's park). He has a career OPS of .803 on the road, which is much better than the .747 the A's leftfielders put up in 2008, but that's not saying much.
3. Oakland is projected to contend for the division title in the weak AL West, but there are a lot of ifs to contemplate, namely their starting pitching and whether they bounce-back from an abysmal 2008 hitting performance.
4. You know the old joke: The A's have Jason Giambi, Eric Chavez and Nomar Garciaparra, giving them the makings of an all-star lineup. But what year?
5. The A's have three future starting pitchers among the game's Top 25 prospects: Lefty Brett Anderson, righty Trevor Cahill and last but not least, the 17-year-old Dominican dandy, Michael Inoa, who was given a $4.25-million US signing bonus. Inoa might be the first player inducted into the Hall of Fame before he throws a major-league pitch, he's that good.
   
6. The A's middle-infield combo, Mark Ellis and Orlando Cabrera, only played together for the first time on March 25. Third baseman Chavez has been hampered by injuries all through spring training, plus Giambi might have to play some first base in order to get SWOP (sligger without a position) Jack Cust into the lineup as the DH.
   
7. Slap a sawbuck down on Giambi hitting more home runs than Holliday.
   
   
8. The 2009 A's starting rotation has garden-variety written all over it, unless one believes Justin Duscherer is going to put up a 2.54 ERA (the same as AL leader Cliff Lee) again. Left-hander Dana Eveland is the only holdover who made more than 25 starts this season, and he's just serviceable starter.
9. Sean Gallagher, the 23-year-old righty whom the A's got when they traded Rich Harden to the Cubs, is being played up as the breakout performer. He put up great minor-league numbers.
   
10. Catcher Kurt Suzuki batted 588 times last season, way too much for a catcher who's as active as he behind the plate, but can actually contribute something offensively. Tony Peña, at around the same age, had a similar workload with the Pittsburgh Pirates in the mid-'80s, and look what happened:
    

    1983: 580 PA, 4.8 runs created/game
    1984: 592 PA, 5.0 RC/G
    1985: 587 PA, 3.1 RC/G

    Peña had a bounce-back season in 1986, but was never very productive as a hitter again (although he lasted until he was 40 because he handled pitchers so damn well).
11. A's reliever Brad Ziegler has articulated why American ballplayers shun the World Baseball Classic. He was with Team USA for three weeks and pitched only 3 1/3 innings, not nearly enough work to get ready for the season. That's understandable; the American sportswriters being A-holes about the whole process is not.
    
12. Co-closer Joey Devine's listed height and weight (6-foot-1, 225 lbs.) and the fact he started in the Atlanta Braves organization immediately brings to mind Kenny Powers from East Bound & Down, but it's a glib comparison.
    
    Devine had a 0.59 ERA and 0.83 WHIP in 45 1/3 innings with the A's last season.
    
    Former closer Huston Street was flipped to Colorado in the Holliday trade. That might say something about Street's expendability.
13. The A's ageless wonder is 40-year-old reliever Russ Springer. Jim Rice, who just got elected to the Hall of Fame on his 15th and final try, was was still playing when Springer signed his first pro contract.
14. Stupid jokes suitable for the fishwrap, but not for this august forum: The A's have become a low-scoring team because GM Billy Beane, who's such a big soccer fan.
    
    Seriously, it's awesome to see Beane joining the movement of people who believe the two often diametrically-opposed summer games.
    
15. Whenever you see Bobby Crosby's name, do you think of Sidney Crosby? One can only feel sorry for Americans who do not follow the NHL, since they don't get to experience this phenomenon.
    
    Crosby is now the A's fifth infielder after being bumped from shortstop.
16. Not to make light of it, but Cust (.231/.375/.476, 33 homers last season) played in Ottawa in 2003-04, when the Lynx were at the beginning of their Long Goodbye. He's now with a major league franchise which would like to move but probably cannot. The bottom line is he's getting 500 at-bats.
    
    It's great to think like a ballplayer, sometimes.
    
17. First baseman Daric Barton (.226/.327/.348 in 446 times at bat) was really, really bad last season. He'll probably put up better numbers this season -- in the Pacific Coast League.
    
18. Frank Thomas' retirement raised barely a ripple. He is among a lot of still useful players who are out of work.
19. Lefty reliever Jerry Blevins has a name made for a post-playing career in broadcasting. He should try to cash in on that some day, but not too soon.
    
20. Along with wondering what Christ would have charged for bookshelves, our mind wonders if A's infielder Cliff Pennington (who's probably going to be a regular at various times this season) is any relation to the Cliff Pennington who played minor-league hockey in the 1960s. The other Pennington was on the last Kingston Frontenacs team to win a championship, so he would be about grandfather age.
    
21. The A's no longer have a Canadian on their major-league roster with the Harden trade, but their director of baseball operations, Farhan Zaidi, was born in this country. He's a PhD from Berkeley, which eithers take away or adds to the humour of that Seinfeld when an out-of-work George musts he could do "something in sports ... you know, like the general manager of a baseball team."
22. Centrefielder Ryan Sweeney is that ultimate look-the-part guy. He looks like a centrefielder and leadoff hitter. He's a bit of a seat-filler for the A's, but he's not going to end up collecting a Tony Award for Scarsdale Surprise.
    
23. Christopher Carter is a name to keep on mental file. Carter, the other player in the Dan Haren deal (along with Brett Anderson and outfielder Aaron Cunningham) produced an Isolated Power figure of .310 in High Single-A ball last season. That's crazy, even for the high-scoring California League.
    
    (Isolated Power is slugging percentage minus batting average. Anything above .250 is pretty serious.)
    
24. Finding out what Nomar Garciaparra has been up to is like trying to find the current whereabouts of Matchbox 20. He's on the A's now? Rob Thomas' band actually released an album in late 2007? Good for them.
    
25. Admit it. If you were a Jays fan of a certain age, it hard to really hate those 1988-92 Oakland teams, as arrogant as they came off. They have such nice uniforms, and knowing it's jade-green doesn't make you less of a man.
    

Batter up: St. Louis Cardinals

It's that mystical, wonderful time of year where you commit to a team which you know fully well won't win. This season, in honour of an popular Internet meme, we'll present 25 things about each team. Any wagering or fantasy baseball advice is for recreational use only. At bat: The St. Louis Cardinals.

1. They were supposed to crater last season, weren't they? The Cardinals are forecast for an 81-81 record. This puts them one or two major injuries away from their first losing season since 1995.
   
2. Cardinals slugger Albert Pujols, the best player in baseball, is nearing LeBron James levels of sick-making ubiquity. That Sports Illustrated cover story was very well-written mental bombast. Every generation of fans needs a beacon of hope, the too-good-to-be-true player, so here's hoping St. Albert of San Pedro de Macoris is the one. The higher you climb, the more you expose, you know.
   
3. The Cardinals organization will be left a little red-faced in July when a national audience gets its first look at "Lake DeWitt," the two city block-sized hole in downtown St. Lou. Team president Bill DeWitt III had the brainstorm to build a huge ballpark village in the city's downtown next to the new Busch Stadium. At this writing, all they have is a softball field and a parking lot.
4. Seeing the words "second baseman Skip Schumaker" together was weird at first, but like Mitch Kramer's older sister seeing her little brother at the same parties, you're just going to have to get used to it. Finding a good second baseman can be tougher than finding a decent local marmalade, never mind taking a surplus outfielder and putting him there.
5. The Cardinals second-base situation might be a microcosm of something larger going on with the franchise -- or not. They had a good setup last season with Adam Kennedy and Aaron Miles, then released Kennedy with a year left on his contract and nontendered Miles rather than pay him $1.6 million. It sounds like cost-cutting.
   
6. Speaking of which, it might be a stunner to see a club which has won two pennants and one World Series ranked as MLB's 21st-best organization (cripes, that's one below the team which employs J.P. Ricciardi!).
   
   St. Louis, in Dave Cameron's considered view, "... needs to be maximizing their World Series chances while Pujols is around, and for not being aggressive enough to do so, they’ve ended up in a spot where they are neither a top team now nor in the future."
7. Chris Carpenter's spring training starts have been scrutinized closer than a State of the Union speech, which figures since he's barely pitched since helping the Cardinals win the World Series in 2006. The ex-Jay, who won a Cy Young Award in 2004, one year after Roy Halladay, hasn't allowed an earned run yet in Grapefruit League. He struck out six with no walks over five innings on Monday. Granted, it was fake baseball, against the Washington Nationals.


8. The rotation might be "Carp, Wain and three days of rain," and that's only if Carpenter is healthy. Carpenter and Adam Wainwright are a decent front end of the starting rotation. The back end is Kyle Lohse (third starter who's really a No. 4), Joel Pineiro (fourth starter who's really a No. 5) and pitching coach Dave Duncan's pet project, Todd Wellemeyer, who is probably going to have a big-time evenout this season (his opponents' batting average on balls in play was .270 last season, tough to sustain).
   
   Wellemeyer is Twittering. He's only had two updates so far and he already has four times as many followers are our Twitter.
   
9. Manager Tony La Russa is actually blaspheming himself by talking about having the pitcher bat, wait for it, ninth, like on every other National League team except St. Louis, where Pitchers Hit Eighth.
10. Shortstop Khalil Greene was 13 fielding runs below average last season in San Diego. The departed César Izturis was plus-8, so it's probably a good thing that the Cardinals have a fly-ball pitching staff. Greene is at least out of that Death Valley park in San Diego.
11. Third baseman Troy Glaus is coming off shoulder surgery (bad thing), but he's in his contract year (good thing). The former Jay won't be back until May at the earliest, and one does wonder how long a 6-foot-5, 240-lb. player can hold up playing a position other than third base.
12. Hitting the pitcher eighth did make sense when the Cardinals had Izturis, who's now with Baltimore. One of their starters, righty Braden Looper, had a higher OPS (.651) than his team's everyday shortstop (.628).
13. Centrefielder of the not too distant future Colby Rasmus is ranked as the game's eighth-best prospect by Baseball Prospectus. Last season, he was third. Just saying.
14. Keep an eye on what kind of plus power Rick Ankiel produces early in the season. Ankiel is trying to "cut down on overswinging" and become a better two-strike hitter after hitting .157 in such situations last season (the major league average is about .185, so he has plenty of company).
    
    Rick Ankiel is apparently awesome in MLB 09: The Show, which is a pretty addictive video game.
    
    
    
    
15. One of the best pieces in The Best Sportswriting of Pat Jordan is a profile on Ankiel, right not long after his infamous meltdown as a pitcher.
16. The best job in baseball is "closer of the future." Everyone just assumes if you can throw 95 mph, mix in a wicked slider, and have a snarly mien, then you're going to be good. The Cardinals have not named a closer, which only increases speculation about Jason Motte, who had 110 strikeouts in 66 2/3 innings in Triple-A last season.
17. The Cardinals have only two lefty relievers in camp, Dennys Reyes and Trever Miller. That means La Russa won't be able to use six pitchers to get the last six outs as often as he would like.
    
18. Right-hander Clayton Mortenson attended Gonzaga, played in Memphis last season, was born nine days after Villanova won the Final Four in 1985, and he plays for the Cardinals, who have the same nickname as Louisville. One wonders what his NCAA Tournament bracket looked like.
    
19. Former Ottawa Lynx Joe Thurston, now with the Cards, has a shot at making an Opening Day roster for the first time in his careery. Thurston raked for Pawtucket last season (.316/.367/.456), and he can play six positions, which probably endears him to La Russa.
    
    Thurston turned 29 last Sept. 29, so this is supposed to be his lucky year.
20. You can count on some Toronto media numbnuts evoking the base stealing-happy 1980s Cardinals at least once a summer, especially when the Blue Jays are having trouble scoring runs. It's funny how they never remember 1983, '86 or '88, when the Cards led the league in stolen bases, and finished with losing records.
    
21. The St. Louis hitting coach is Hal McRae. How can one of the sport's first full-time designated hitters in good conscience work for a team in a league which refuses to play by modern baseball rules? Just kidding, but not really. McRae got only one official at-bat when the Royals beat the Cardinals in 1985 World Series, the last one which did not use a DH.
    
22. The greatest Stan Musial statistic, as related by the late, great Don Chevrier on a CTV Blue Jays telecast back around 1986: Stan The Man hit 475 homers and never cracked a bat.
    
    A friend once wondered if there were any shenanigans involved in Musial finishing his career with 3,630 hits, 1,815 at home, 1,815 on the road. Well, the Cardinals pinch-ran for him in the sixth inning of his last game, and it went to extra innings, so yes.
23. Sometimes in the journalism business, you root for players to do well because you're thinking of the headlines. In that regard, you should hope St. Louis farmhand Nicholas Additon ("Nice Additon to Cardinals staff") makes the majors. It's just begging to be misspelled.
    
24. Where have you gone, Preston Wilson? Three seasons ago, one of the most obscure RBI champions of all time (yes, Preston Wilson won a RBI title, so you know it's useless stat) helped the Cardinals win the World Series. He is is now playing for the Atlantic League's Long Island Ducks. That could not have anything to do with the fact his stepdad, Mookie Wilson, played with Ducks manager, Gary Carter. (Have the jokes about the Kid managing the Jays some day got old yet?)
25. In the final summation, two of the Cardinals' three big hitters (Glaus and Pujols) and two best starting pitchers have injury issues, they're trying a new middle-infield combo and their bullpen had a 4.20 ERA last season. Their division is bad, though, so that might save them this summer, at least a bit.
    

Batter up: World Baseball Classic, Pool D

The 2009 World Baseball Classic officially began in the wee hours of Thursday morning. Most teams, including these ones, get started on the weekend.

Next up: a preview of Pool D (San Juan): Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Panama, and the Netherlands. This pool was much the same in 2006, except with Cuba instead of the D.R. This time around, none of these teams will face Cuba until the semifinal.

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

• Opener: Saturday, March 7 vs. the Netherlands (11 a.m., all times Eastern)
• WBC 2006: 4th overall: 5-1 in group play, lost to Cuba 3-1 in semifinal.
• Players to watch: SS Jose Reyes (Mets), DH David Ortiz (Red Sox), RHP Edinson Volquez (Reds), 2B Robinson Cano (Yankees), SS Miguel Tejada (Astros), SP Pedro Martinez
  
• Who's missing: Adrian Beltre and some guy named Rodriguez.
  
• Pitching: Jose Arredondo, Juan Cruz, Damaso Marte, and Rafael Perez are varying degrees of dangerous out of the bullpen: Perez has had more strikeouts than innings in every major-league season. And with Volquez and Johnny Cueto, the Dominicans are probably No. 1 in "2008 pitcher performance minus 2007 pitcher performance." But they also have Pedro in camp, who considers himself "the old goat in this group."
  
• Hitting: Without Beltre or A-Rod, it's not as scary as it was a week ago. But it's still better than most in this tournament. Willy Aybar can fill in at third in their absence.
  
• Fielding: First base and outfield is a little less packed than second, third, and short (Cano, Reyes, Tejada, Hanley Ramirez can play too). Willy Tavares is probably in CF by default. Nelson Cruz can handle RF, but Jose Guillen and Moises Alou have never been great so Jose Bautista might show up in one of the corners by default.
  
• Predicted Round 1 finish: First place.
  
• Tournament potential: They're good enough to make the final four. They'll have to beat two of these teams (easy enough) then probably two more of Puerto Rico/USA/Venezuela. Their pitching may not carry them all the way to the final, though.
  

PUERTO RICO

• Opener: Saturday, March 7 vs. Panama (5 p.m.)
• WBC 2006: 5th overall: 4-2 in group play and did not make semifinals. They beat Cuba 12-2, but lost to them 4-3 in the second round.
  
• Players to watch: RHP Javier Vazquez (Braves), C Geovany Soto (Cubs), OF Alex Rios (Blue Jays), 1B Carlos Delgado (Mets), OF Carlos Beltran (Mets), other Mets named Carlos
• Who's missing: Not too many pitchers available. Only 17 Puerto Rican pitchers have made their major-league debut in the last 10 years. A big loss is Mike Lowell, third baseman, .279/.343/.467 lifetime hitter, and one of the best guys in baseball, who is recovering from hip surgery. He really wanted to play.
  
• Pitching: Behind Vazquez, it's kind of thin: Javier Lopez and Pedro Feliciano can contribute out of the bullpen, but with Ian Snell and Jonathan Sanchez 2-3 in the rotation, they'll need relievers more often than is convenient.
  
• Hitting: Soto was the 2008 NL Rookie of the Year and the starting catcher in the All-Star Game. Delgado is Delgado. Beltran and Rios add power. Mike Aviles came out of nowhere to hit .325/.354/.480 for the Royals last year and Felipe Lopez is also a decent hitter. They have legit major-leaguers at basically every spot, 1 through 9, and four of them need to be handled with care.
  
• Fielding: If Soto falters, then Yadier Molina, the best fielder among the Flying Molina Brothers, is solid behind the plate. Ivan Rodriguez is on the roster as well, although Soto is probably a better option to start. Lopez used to play shortstop but wasn't good, and Alex Cora should play there over Aviles. (Bernie Williams is apparently on the roster and should be kept away from an outfielder's glove.)
  
• Predicted Round 1 finish: Second-place behind the Dominicans, or first if they send Vazquez against them.
• Tournament potential: Maybe the semifinals if their pitching holds up. They can certainly ride their bats to Round 2.
  

PANAMA

• Opener: Saturday, March 7 vs. Puerto Rico (5 p.m.)
  
• WBC 2006: One of four teams to lose all three games, although they kept Puerto Rico within one and took Cuba to eleven innings. They were also memorably no-hit by 18-year-old Shairon Martis of the Netherlands in their final game.
• Player to watch: OF Carlos Lee (Astros)
  
• Who's missing: Mariano Rivera, possibly the best pitcher ever (you can make the argument)
  
• Pitching: Manuel Corpas is probably the best pitcher, but he rarely goes more than two innings. After him it's Manny Acosta, another reliever, and Bruce Chen, who could start but shouldn't. There are a remarkable number of A-ball players on this roster.
  
• Hitting: Carlos Lee and, um, Carlos Lee. Carlos Ruiz also has major-league experience. The president of Panama convinced him that they needed a catcher, but with a career OPS+ of 77, Ruiz won't cause opposing pitchers to pace nervously and talk to themselves (any more than they already do).
  
• Fielding: No clue. Lee's not great, that's all I can tell you.
  
• Predicted Round 1 finish: Third
  
• Tournament potential: They'd have to upset and/or kidnap somebody to get into Round 2.
  

NETHERLANDS

• Opener: Saturday, March 7 vs. Dominican Republic (11 a.m.)
  
• WBC 2006: Their only win was the aforementioned no-hitter over Panama.
  
• Players to watch: Sidney Ponson, I guess. Shairon Martis isn't listed on the roster this year. Randall Simon hasn't played in North America for a while but will forever be known for this:
  
  You know Letterman would be all over this, too.
  
• Who's missing: Martis, Jair Jurrjens, and Andruw Jones.
  
• Pitching: Sidney Ponson, I guess. Rick VandenHurk is #2 on a weak staff. Rick VandenHurk's career ERA is 7.
  
• Hitting: Former Ottawa Lynx outfielder Gene Kingsale is there, but don't get too excited.
• Fielding: I hope Sharlon Schoop gets a lot of playing time behind the plate, because his name is Sharlon Schoop.
  
• Predicted Round 1 finish: Fourth
• Tournament potential: Guess.
  

Zen Dayley: Just in case the Jays trade Vernon

The dread word "financial constraints" appears in this Jon Heyman item about the Blue Jays trading Vernon Wells, the $126-million-dollar man.

It goes against the ass-talker code to add to the echo chamber by commenting on trade possibilities, but what the hell. This seems logical if you believe that Rogers Communications wants to make the Jays more attractive to a potential buyer by shedding payroll (hey, we're the San Diego Padres without close proximity to the beach!). The Jays should have an Adam Lind-Alex Rios-Travis Snider outfield by 2010 and there's plenty of options for the first bash and designated hitter positions.

The big question is how much Wells is going to hit. He OPS'd a very serious .932 after the All-Star break last season, albeit in limited time (189 plate appearances). His biggest comparable, as a 29-year-old player, though, is Reggie Smith, a star in the 1970s who was an absolutely devasting hitter in the era in some exceptional circumstances (Dodger Stadium, mostly).

Defensively, he struggled in centrefield, while Rios, at least by one measure, played the position superbly when circumstances dictated he move over from right. (Disclaimer: One seamhead friend of mine claims he'll never trust any defensive statistic, old school or new school, and he has a point.)

There's not much smoke yet. It goes without saying the Jays only have one untouchable. His name is Roy Halladay. No doubt there's a sizable chunk of Toronto sports fans who are down on Wells, who had a bad season in 2007 and then flew below the radar in 2008 since he was out for two months. He's not a superstar and his contract is a millstone. It would be difficult to move him, but some team.

This that and the other

• Poz did his homework and came up with some fascinating stuff about walk rates. It's required reading for the baseball flat-earthers.
• The New York Times classifies Tim Raines among one of the "statistical causes célèbre" among seamheads. It's a point well-taken, since they're arguing for letting Hall of Fame voters have another stab at considering Bobby Grich, Dwight Evans, Ted Simmons and Lou Whitaker, among others, now that the tools for evaluating them have gained wider acceptance.
• So much for the Jays bringing in Daniel Cabrera (a former Ottawa Lynx). The right-hander signed with the Nationals.
• Gut feeling: Manny Ramirez is going to end up with the Yankees. It cannot not happen.

Related:
Blue Jays fielding inquiries about Wells (Jon Heyman, SI.com)

Ex-Lynx: Wathan climbs the ladder (and the Rapids have a GM!)

It's nice to drop in on the Ottawa baseball diaspora: Dusty Wathan, who was popular with fans with the 2007 Lynx, is moving up in the minor-league managerial ranks. He'll be managing the Lakewood BlueClaws, the Philadelphia Phillies' Single-A team, next season.

Another '07 Lynx, second baseman Joe Thurston, got picked up by the St. Louis Cardinals organization.

Speaking of the new team, Barry Robinson has been announced as the Rapids new general manager. There will be more news to come about that in the days ahead.

For the time being, let's just say it's good to have someone coming in as GM who's worked for the city of Ottawa for 30 years. The job seems to be more about the day-to-day business stuff at the Can-Am level.

Anyhow, Wathan was a rookie skipper last season with Williamsport in the short-season New York-Penn League, so this is a step up for the honorary Canadian (he married one). His colleagues in the Phillies' chain, of course, now include another catcher who was pretty popular when he played for an Ontario team, a gentleman by the name of Ernie Whitt.

"Ernie, Ernie" is going to be managing the Clearwater Threshers in the Florida State League, High-A Ball. Not to say anything extemporaneous, but one wishes them all the best.

Hopefully, it won't be too long before news starts filtering out about the lineup for Ottawa's second season in the Can-Am League.

Zen Dayley: Don't CC it happening

You can get a death sentence overturned on appeal, but you can't get an official scorer to change his mind.

Irony fans will appreciate this: The same week baseball got rid of one anachronism by introducing instant replay, another anachronism, the hometown official scorer, cost CC Sabathia a no-hitter in Pittsburgh on Sunday. 

There is no chance, none, that MLB will overturn Bob Webb's decision to award a hit on a play where the Brewers' big left-hander "bobbled" a "check-swing roller" from the Pirates' Andy LaRoche -- a "simple play, really," according to one of the game announcers. The official scorer's decision is pretty much written in stone, unless he decides to change it. This is probably one of those instances where Bob Webb will refuse to bow to any pressure, on some vague point of principle (or some such nonsense) and refuse to change a decision, especially because it would be popular. Never mind that it's clear as day that Sabathia threw a no-hitter in every other way, shape and form.

This isn't meant to suggest that the system of having an official scorer, usually a retired journalist, at the ballpark, needs to be changed, although the Brewers have a differing opinion. It's important to keep in mind that they occasionally make dodgy decisions that involved awarding a hit to a hometown batter on play that most people watching the game assumed would be ruled an error, because they know players want those precious points on their batting average. That's a shame.

The most diplomatic thing to say about the whole thing? CC Sabathia might be the best show going in the majors. He's now 9-0, 1.43 ERA for the Brewers.

Noteworthy

• This has not turned up on ShysterBall, so it's OK to add a tidbit that's more than a week old: One of MLB's partners in the trading card business, Donruss, is going to release cards that feature Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson, who of course are supposed to barred from appearing on any officially licensed product.
  
  Supposed to is the operative wording. Rose isn't allowed to manage or work for any team, but he was allowed to appear as a member of the All-Century team at the 1999 World Series (when it stood to benefit MLB financially, you know), although he's been barred from appearing at ceremonies held by his former teams. It would be petty to sandbag a baseball-card company, but stranger things have happened. Barry Bonds is already being written out of the official history of baseball and one suspects Roger Clemens will be too, soon enough. You should also note there's been scarcely few 10-year retrospectives thus far on the Matt McGuire and Sammy Souser home-run chase of 1998.
  
  (The anniversary of McGwire passing Roger Maris is one week from today. What's really amazing is that McGwire didn't nod off while waiting for slow-workin' Steve Trachsel to throw a pitch.)
   
• Former Lynx second baseman and by-all-accounts good guy Joe Thurston will end up as the third-leading hitter in the International League, finishing up at .316 after a 2-for-5 effort for Pawtucket today. He finished .0005 out of second.
  
  Minnesota Twins DH Randy Ruiz, who was in Ottawa for, oh, about two weeks last season (the Phillies signed him despite a sketchy past — two failed drug tests — will end up winning the IL batting title in absentia, since he had enough plate appearances before he was called up from Rochester.
• Cue the taunting: "You stink just slightly worse than we did." The Lehigh Valley IronPigs finished their inaugural season 55-89, a half-game worse than the Lynx did in their final season.

Damn, the Jays

• David Eckstein gave himself a nice send-off by contributing a couple hits to a Jays win at Yankee stadium, according to the unimpeachable Baseball Digest Daily, being shuffled off to the Arizona Diamondbacks.
  
  The Jays apparently determined that getting right-hander Chad Beck, whom they drafted out of high school in 2004, had a decent WHIP and home-run rate in the high Class-A California League, is worth jettisoning Eckstein, who did about as well as expected in Toronto.
  
  Eckstein's value to the NL West-leading Diamondbacks mostly stems from the hope he can cover up for former Jay Orlando Hudson's poor platoon split.
• Scott Rolen finally got back in the lineup and hit a home run in Sunday's win over the Yankees, proving Mike Wilner is occasionally prescient. (As an aside: Has it reached the point that Jays Talk callers are saying "backcatcher" just to set him off?)
• John Brattain has delivered his epitaph (it's like a cenotaph, but with words): "The Toronto Blue Jays had a pennant winning pitching staff, a playoff-calibre defense and an AA offense."
• Another Wilnerism: "I said if the Blue Jays had signed Barry Bonds back in April
• A new name, centrefielder Chris Demons, has popped up in Syracuse Chiefs boxscores lately (reading Triple-A boxscores is work-related, really it is). He's a 24-year-old who was never drafted, which means it's a triumph he's got to Triple-A this fast. Who knows, maybe he'll be good fourth-outfielder timbre for a National League team.

Snark break ... Thinking as Cleary as morning fog in St. John's

• Have you heard the latest Newfie joke? The province's largest newspaper picked the 10 greatest athletes in Newfoundland & Labrador history -- and the Detroit Red Wings' Dan Cleary didn't crack the top five.
  
  Cleary, of the Detroit Red Wings and Harbour Grace, N.L., did just become the first Newfoundlander to get his name engraved on the Stanley Cup, but that was like two months ago. The rockheads also didn't have a single female on the list, which is a bit impolitic. Suffice to say, the commenters on The Telegram's website have let 'em have it.
  
  It's times like this that make it clear what it is about Newfoundland that made it a spawning grounde for the original This Hour Has 22 Minutes Cast -- Mary Walsh, Cathy Jones, Greg Thomey and the curly-haired fella who wasn't as funny.
  
  It's also clear why they left the place.
• Phrase of the day: "Hot buttery garbage."
• Speaking of which, Matt Leinart, might go down as the first quarterback in the NFL history who was actually washed up when he was still in college.
  
  (At least Leinart, this half-decade's Cade McNown, never claimed he was abstinent and then started dating a Playboy playmate.)
• Michael Strahan cannot return to the New York Giants. Him on the Giants and Brett Favre on the Jets? The Meadowlands isn't built well-enough to contain that much self-satisfaction.
• Lastly, with the Democrats gathering in Denver, keep in mind that there's already someone in Colorado who can be a uniter:
  
  

Stuff you might have missed:

• One good read on this Monday morning: While Adrian Peterson gets ready for a second year of KATN for the Vikings, the best linebacker from his high school graduating class, Willie Williams, isn't even sure if he will be able to play for a Division 2 school in West Virginia.
• Former Lynx Andy Tracy figured in a win in his first major-league action since 2004 -- he drew a walk that set up the Philadelphia Phillies' tying run in the ninth inning. They won in 11. (It was against the Dodgers, whose hitting is so bad they need to take five balls just to get a walk.

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.

Zen Dayley: Requiem for Russ Adams; can't spell sob story without SOBs

Russ Adams is best known for not being something.

Let's think about what that says about us, rather than what it says about the first-round pick who was once the answer to the Jays' shortstop situation. Being a sports fan and cheering for a bunch of jocks employed by a multinational corporation, because it's your team, is an ultimate act of naive sentiment. It's odd how it's rare that any of that is saved for a bright hope who fell flat on his face.

(Maybe it's an offshoot of the self-loathing that builds up from having spent your waking hours worrying about the outcome of games you cannot control. To think I believed in Russ Adams?! He's dead to me.)

There's names for the exemplars of this phenomenon -- bust, flop, fizzle, dud, Ryan Leaf. It might be the worst ignominy to own in sports, on par with being a cheater. People will let an athlete off the hook for being an out-and-out rat bastard, but not for failing like Russ Adams has as a major-leaguer.

"I don't see playing baseball professionally, playing over two years in the majors, if someone thinks that's failing, I don't know what planet they live on. I'm not going to be sitting at home at 40 and think I'm a failure in life because I didn't play 20 years in the big leagues. That won't dictate my happiness." -- Syracuse Post-Standard

Hands up, everyone whose knee-jerk reaction was something along the lines, "Oh, go cry me a river." It might create the mental picture of Adams, barring some near-miraculous turnaround, spending the next 20 years dreaming of a parallel universe where he was the American League's answer to Chase Utley.

A lot of sports fans probably look it that way. It's not clear that the ballplayers actually do.

It's undeniable what springs to mind after seeing that quote from Adams, whose Triple-A rate stats in Syracuse this summer (.232/.322/.378) scream, "quintessential Quadruple-A player." This, of course, is from someone who as every Jays fan must know by now, was drafted ahead of Scott Kazmir, Nick Swisher and Joey Votto (not just a Toronto boy, but a paisano of J.P. Ricciardi).

It's actually straight of out of the novel North Dallas Forty. There's a scene where the antihero Phil Elliott (Nick Nolte played him in the movie) recalls commiserating with a player who had been traded, dumped by a team that had publicly proclaimed he would be brilliant:

"He seemed like the only survivor of a ten-car collison who was trying to explain how it happened. Several times during the course of our conversation he had stopped to stare off into his disastrous past, thinking of all those glories he had only tasted slightly."

There's a double-edge to that analogy. It could seem empathetic or just downright cruel. But it's c'est la vie for a human footnote.

For anyone who needs a refresher, the Jays advanced Adams quickly through the minors after he was drafted in 2002 (Matt Cain and Cole Hamels, both now top-flight starters in the NL, were also available when Ricciardi made the 14th overall selection).

In 2005, he put up a decent enough first season as a rookie shortstop. According to his Baseball-Reference.com page, his age-24 season compared pretty favourably with that of Orlando Cabrera, who's been an adequate, sometimes all-star shortstop for a decade.

He had the throwing yips in '06. You can't presume to know what's in a player's mind, but the stats make it look like he was taking his defensive problems up to bat with him. The Jays eventually had to send him to Syracuse to learn how to play second base, which was a give-up play.

Inside of two years, the Shortstop of the Future has become one of among the couple hundred Triple-A veterans -- roster flotsam who move about the minors, their names known only to the most hardcore baseball fans. They're valued by MLB organizations for what might be called their overdeveloped flexibility. Most of them, almost as a survival skill, have learned to play several positions (good for when the big club is shuffling players around). They've been around long enough that they don't need to be babysat by their manager. They're also fully comfortable with the hard reality that they can traded, demoted, promoted, or released at any time.

Who knows why it didn't work out for Adams. One historical note is that left-handed hitting shortstops are a rarity. (Stephen Drew of the Arizona Diamondbacks is the only everyday SS in the majors who bats lefty.)

The thing is, though, is that most fans don't fully appreciate that it does take exceptional skill, the kind not found in 99% of the population, to even be a career minor leaguer. People also don't get, or don't care, that's it debatable whether failing as an everyday shortstop actually hurt Russ Adams as a person. He got far enough to get all his illusions about playing baseball shattered, but a lot of men never will.

Some day in the not too distant future, the Jays will probably waive him. Drunk Jays Fans and the like will write a blog post for shits and giggles. Maybe someone will do up a Top 10 list of Toronto sports busts, slotting Adams in with Rafael Araujo and Ricky Williams, but Russ Adams will just go on living his life. The wicked burn won't be on him.

Errata

• So Joba Chamberlain goes on the disabled list on the same day that Jeff Karstens, the young pitcher whom the Yankees just traded to the Pirates, took a perfect game into the eighth inning. Yankees haters are travelling around in go-carts powered by their own sense of self-satisfaction, just like Ed Begley Jr.
• Padres rightfielder Brian Giles has reportedly been claimed on waivers. Please make note of which playoff contenders need some help in rightfield.
• Meantime, fellow Epic Carnival-ites Nick Underhill and Bill Baer had a little point-counterpoint over whether or not the L.A. Angels closer, Francisco Rodriguez, should be the front-runner for American League MVP because he's on pace to set a record for saves.
  
  Not gonna take sides, but relievers shouldn't be eligible for the MVP -- they already have the Cy Young Award.
• Forty-six years ago today, 46-year-old Satchel Paige won a 1-0 game in 12 innings.

Damn, the Jays

• Shaun Marcum was awesome last night.
• The uber-prospect, Travis Snider, is going to get called up to Triple-A. J.P. Ricciardi said that would happen during his weekly fireside chat on the FAN 590. It's a fireside chant because the GM's pants are usually on fire by the end, for some reason.
  
  J.P. also said that "Cito Gaston will definitely be the manager next year."
• Brett Cecil had a mixed result in his first start since being called up to Syracuse: Two runs (both earned) on six hits over five innings, with three walks and seven strikeouts. It was enough for him to get the win.
  
  (Danny Sandoval, last season's Ottawa Lynx shortstop, was 5-for-5.)
• Drunk Jays Fans has already fired a preemptive strike against "all these people are jumping on the Rays' bandwagon just because they've played their first four months of good baseball in franchise history." It seemed to be tongue-in-cheek. The operative word is seemed.
• The article on MLB.com states "a competition (is) brewing atop the Blue Jays' rotation" almost likes an act of mawebolence aimed at the anti-A.J. Burnett types, stat geeks and the I Heart Halladay folk and combos thereof.
  
  Well, congratulations, because using the pitchers' matching win totals as a premise for an article worked. Pay no attention to any differences in their respective ERAs (Burnett, 4.57; Roy Halladay, 2.77), baserunners allowed per inning (1.437 to 1.021) or run support (4.65 for A.J., 3.91 for Roy). it worked. There's actually a small grain of truth to comparisons of between Burnett and that are based on the premise they each have 13 wins.
  
  A quick check at FanGraphs.com does show the pair is only a half-run apart in fielding-independent pitching (basically, what a pitcher's ERA would be with an absolutely average group of fielders behind him). Halladay's FIP is 3.00. Burnett's is 3.50 -- suggesting there's more than anecdotal evidence that his teammates have let him down.
  
  Of course, that's A.J. Burnett's just desserts for being just good enough to make you scream.