Standing to the side of the Mike Wilner controversy

Three of the more absurd aspects of FAN 590's Mike Wilner receiving an "unscheduled vacation" (National Post) for the Blue Jays' biggest series of the season against the Yankees:

1. The Manager, in accordance with Tao of Stieb editorial policy, either not remembering or exercising/feigning selective amnesia.
   
   He tried to get away with not knowing which relievers he had used prior to Kevin Gregg's ninth-inning meltdown on Wednesday: "I think (Shawn) Camp finished the inning, didn’t he?"
   
   Wilner pointed out Scott Downs had come in to retire Reid Brignac to end the Tampa Bay Rays eighth. Downs was thus unavailable when Gregg walked the universe in the ninth and the Jays lost 7-6.
   
   Call this a value judgment, but sportspeople usually have good recall.
   
   Put it this way: Hockey Night in Canada's Mike Milbury was a failure as a NHL general manager. Yet, when Milbury was playing for the Boston Bruins in the 1970s, he said he could describe in detail every goal the Bruins allowed that season. Honestly, Cito Gaston couldn't remember which pitcher he used in a game the previous evening?
   
   (As an epilogue, the Jays went 3-3 on their homestand against the Rays and Yankees. The thread in all three losses was they had a lead entering the late innings.)
   
   
2. William Houston positing there is such a creature as "a radio executive with backbone."
   
   That deserves the Stinsonian "please." In fairness to Houston and others who pointed it out, this likely plays out differently if Nelson Millman was still FAN 590's program director instead of Don Kollins.
   
   The rub is professional teams have rode herd on their quote, unquote radio partners for a dog's years. It's the spoken-word medium where there's still an expectation of independent sports commentary, largely by default.
   
   The TV side is often left alone. People forget what was said by the next commercial break (or at least did prior to viral video). People have come to terms with team-employed TV voices overemphasizing the positive. Cheerleader isn't even an insult anymore.
   
   The rule of thumb with the written word always was anything negative in the newspaper had a short shelf life. The way it translates to today is no one can read, let alone bookmark, everything written on the Internet. That leaves radio is in no-person's land.
   
   (P.S. to the Toronto Sun: the Spanish word for testicles is spelled cojones.)
   
   
3. Wilner being almost as much of a Teflon man in Toronto on par with yesterday's men, Cito Gaston and Jays president Paul Beeston.
   
   It's not a shock the reaction is nearly 100 per cent pro-Wilner. Tyler King did a definitive takedown times two of that during 2008's Tothilnergate.
   
   Jeff Blair did tweet Wilner's line of questioning was better suited to a one-on-one situation, where The Manager would be less likely to get defensive. Wilner's ensuing blog posting was the real smoking gun.
   
   For the behind-the-curvers and/or control freaks at Rogers Media, saying, "I don’t need to be belittled by the skipper in front of the entire assemblage when I’m asking legitimate, rational questions about a situation that he brought up earlier in a conversation," might come off like airing dirty laundry in public.
   
   Wilner's wordage, belittled, doesn't sit well. Belittled is a victim's word, and like what was said about NFL owner Al Davis in the Straight Outta L.A. 30-for-30 documentary, if you play the victim long enough, you'll become a victim.
   
   In a sports journalism context, it hints at hell having no fury like a sports nerd scorned (we can smell our own). Being condescended to by a coach or manager is the What Is, slings and arrows of the outrageous fortune of getting paid to take a world of games so seriously.
   
   The give-and-take between jocks and journos and is a clash of multiple intelligences that can never be decided. The athletes' intelligence -- the very term dumb jock should rate a smack in the head -- is focused on surviving and thriving in their sport. Their minds are hyper-disciplined, from necessity.
   
   It is like what David Foster Wallace said, they have to accept living in a child's world. Peter Gent had a great line in North Dallas Forty: "Football players aren't people who leave home and try to play football. They are football players, who come home and try to play people."
   
   A journalist can have a more encyclopedic knowledge of Super Bowl and World Series winners, more formal education and a greater ease with using $50 words in casual conversation. Most of us could not abide the trade-off Gent and Wallace outlined.
   
   That has to be considered when you are on the jocks' turf. As a sports mediaite, you have to like it and lump it by definition. We're there since we fell in thrall with sports, but couldn't play them.
   
   No doubt Wilner's blog posting cheesed off old media types more than those who have grown up digital. He could claim he's there to inform and entertain, so people should know that someone who critiques Cito clashed with Cito. He didn't even play it up, putting it well down in his posting.
   
   It fit with how a Maple Leafs blog (it might have been Pension Plan Puppets) once admonished beat reporters who kvetch about being inconvenienced on the job or feeling insulted by a source. The audience only cares about what comes out of journalism, not what goes into journalism.
   
   Saying Gaston could not recall if Scott Downs was available and offered a weak "you need to look at some stats" defence, then pointing out said stats or lack thereof, would have sufficed. Or he could have set up a FakeCitoGaston Twitter.
   
   It would have affirmed that what happened was an instance of Classic Cito, painting his team into a corner and setting it up for failure while the media put it on the player(s).
   
   Framing it in personal terms did cross a line, just not necessarily one that warranted Wilner having his wrist slapped or worse. He got a raw deal from his Rogers overlords. Please do not overlook that he flew a little too close to the sun on the wings of Seamheaditude. Belittled? It comes with the territory.
   
   (Also, there is total awareness of the irony this post might prevent this writer ever appearing on a Rogers-owned radio station, so don't bother pointing it out.)

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.

A Jay a Day: Chad 'Stephen' Jenkins, the difference is pitchability

Hopefully for Chad Jenkins, it's not a bad omen that MLB.com's draft tracker displayed his name incorrectly for several minutes.

The Blue Jays seem to have said "yes" to the several-million-dollar question about going over slot to sign a draft choice; baseball nerds everywhere, rejoice! There was interest in that than who they were actually going to draft. Jenkins, a Roy Halladay-idolizing right-hander from obscure Kennesaw (Ga.) State, was described as a "a cheap option who could rise quickly to the major leagues." However, they used the compensatory pick they got when A.J. Burnett flew the coop to take a Canadian left-handed pitcher, James Paxton.

Paxton's agent is Scott Boras, so yippie-ki-yay, it looks like they're finally going over slot, finally. Expect that A.J. Burnett angle to become a big part of Paxton's backstory.

Anyway, this is about the slotting thingamajig. Former Jays assistant GM Bart Given wrote Monday night at sportsnet.ca wrote that the Jays pretty much had to do it this time around, if not in the first roundt: "After a while, what's the point of playing the game with one hand tied behind you back?"

For the time being, this looks like a win-win. Leave aside that it is is lily-gilding to say Jenkins was seen as a potential 10th overall pick. The Washington Nationals were seemed mostly interested in using that pick on someone who would "agree to a pre-draft slot deal." Meantime, Paxton, who can touch 98 mph and who played for the University of Kentucky with Ottawa native Chris Bisson, the Wildcats' second baseman, ended up falling to the Jays at 37th overall.

There was some more CanCon. The Jays' second-rounder is another Canadian lefty, Jake Eliopoulos from Walkerton, Ontario. (A pitcher from Walkerton? It must be something in the water. What, too soon?) Hell, if you want to localize even farther, the third-rounder, high school righty Jake Barrett, played for Team USA when it won the silver medal at the world junior championship in Edmonton last summer. Barrett, who was on the cover of ESPN Rise, is apparently supposed to be going to Arizona State.

Anyway, ours is not to say how those four pitchers will develop for the Jays. It would be a minor miracle if two of them have a substantial major-league career. Jenkins, for one, is a very intelligent pitcher, with a three-pitch mix. Oddly enough, if you poke around on Google, "three-pitch mix" comes up a fair bit with Barrett and Eliopoulos. They all have pitchability.

In a sense, it seems like the Jays worked around the broken draft system. As Given explained:

"The MLB draft is broken; the lack of enforceable slotting allows the best players to set a bonus price so high, they essentially place themselves with the teams employing the largest budgets. Not surprisingly these teams have commonly been the Red Sox and Yankees, although the Tigers and a couple of others have joined the superpowers in recent years.

"Toronto's organizational policy of not going over slot has effectively reduced the number of players available for director Jon Lalonde's scouting department to draft. If an amateur player's representative set a high price tag, the Blue Jays have placed him on the 'unsignable due to price' board. In recent years, this board has increased in size to contain hundreds of names.

"In a way, it's been commendable that Toronto has been the only team to play by the rules in recent years. But after a while, what's the point of playing the game with one hand tied behind your back?"

That dynamic came into play with Mike Trout, a high school outfielder from New Jersey who is seen as a five-tool player and who was available. Trout, who is said to be demanding a $2.5-million US signing bonus, went appropriately enough 25th overall to the L.A. Angels (by the way, Bud Selig's pronunciation of "Los Angeles Angels" has to be heard to be believed).

Trout, at least according to MLB Network (like the The Tao of Stieb says, can we get this in Canada, please?), provided the feel-good moment of the first round since he was in the TV studio in Secaucus, N.J. However, it's really kind of twisted. You have a plaer who's elated to be taken 25th instead of 17th since the Angels have a bigger budget than clubs which were drafting earlier. Only in Bud Selig's world could that be treated as positive news.

Anyway, it's nice to see one's favourite team in any sport come around. Imagine the fallout if an owner came out and said he would pay his players the lowest salaries in the major leagues. It would be bloody scandalous. The refusal to go over slot is on a smaller scale. It does not get much attention outside of Seamheads. There's enough trouble in Canada getting people to understand that draft choices cannot be traded in baseball. However, people have to understand, it's not about the payroll with the Jays. It's about what they put into player development at the front end, going over slot in the amateur draft and international scouting. They weren't doing that for several years. There's a little glimmer of promise, although it looked shaky there when Chad Jenkins' name was called tonight. It's probably too naive by half to hope playing the Canada card would help in negotiations with Paxton, but one can always dream.

Jenkins seems like he could be a good buy-low. Two writers at Baseball America who did a mock draft saw him ending up with the Jays:

"We have other options for power lefties in this draft though. Two, Andy Oliver and Canada native James Paxton, are attractive at 20 but also have Scott Boras Corp. advising them. ... In the end, Kennesaw State righthander Chad Jenkins is too attractive. Yes, there are college closers we could convert (and we've had success doing it), but why do that when Jenkins is on the board? He has stuff, he has pitchability and he has relatively low mileage on his arm because the Owls were never postseason-eligible while Jenkins was in college. Make it so." (Emphasis mine.)

For those wondering, Kurtenblog did a riff on "pitchability" right before the 2007 World Series.

Mike Wilner said on Jays Talk tonight that Jenkins expected ETA in the majors would be late 2011. Coming from an off-the-beaten-path school such as Kennesaw State, which plays in something called the Atlantic Sun conference, isn't a mark against him. He didn't put a lot of extra miles on his 21-year-old arm by pitching in the post-season, when college coaches run up ginormous pitch counts.

Plus, you have to like that Jenkins described being scouted as "hot and heavy." He must be a Seinfeld fan.

Bottom line, the Jays took three youngsters with pitch, wait for it, ability.

Besides, it was another part of a good sports night. We're getting a Game 7 in the Stanley Cup final. The Orlando Magic ensured the NBA Finals will not be a sweep for Kobe Bryant and the L.A. Lakers. Meantime, at Fenway Park, the Boston Red Sox lit A.J. Burnett up like the Coconut Grove fire in a 7-0 rout.

(Incidentally, someone in the Tampa Bay Rays front office obviously was a big fan of The Band, judging by the given name of their first-rounder, LeVon Washington.)

Mornings with Mr. Canoehead...

Like raisins off an Oldsmobile, people ...

Alex Rodriguez dating actress Kate Hudson. The Almost Famous actress is just like the Yankees: She hasn't been part of a winner since 2000.

TSN being small-town cheap by hyping TSN2's coverage of the Blue Jays-Red Sox series, and then turning on the TV at 7 p.m. to find out it was the NESN broadcast, the same as a Rogers Cable customer gets when you have to watch a game on the Extra Innings feed.

Quoth The Tao of Stieb: "All of this scrapping over carriage on the Rogers cable system, and the CTVgm folks can't even see to it that a Canadian crew is employed to broadcast the game? How was this different than Rogers just giving the free MLB Extra Innings Preview? (Our guess is that TSN2 didn't have an HD production truck at its disposal, given TSN's hockey duties, so they decided to take the easier simulcasting route.)

"... We were actually happy to watch the NESN broadcast, which probably has the best production quality of any local MLB broadcast. However, spending close to three hours listening to Dennis Eckersley's ridiculous meanderings just about drove us batty. Really, can we have another five minute discussion of 'sneaky cheese?' " Not to make a mountain out of a molehill, but what really pointed out how shortsighted the decision was that the Red Sox had two Canadians (Jason Bay in left field and George Kottaras, who is Tim Wakefield's personal catcher). People might have appreciated that being pointed out, but it didn't matter to American announcers.

Trying to figure out the whereabouts of Brian Campbell on the Detroit Red Wings' overtime goal in the Stanley Cup playoffs last night. It's all part of the great plan, the Red Wings making good on any number of gutless "Detroit in six" form picks.

Alex Rios getting thrown out stealing last night with a knuckleball pitcher on the mound.

NBC's announced fall lineup not including Friday Night Lights, which won't air on the network until summer 2010. Summer is not for football, unless it's three downs.

TSN pulls power play with Rogers Jays?

This has a holy flurking schnit quality about it: Rogers customers won't able to watch the Rogers-owned baseball team play in the Rogers-owned ballpark against an archrival:

"Blue Jays coverage on TSN2 gets underway on Tuesday, May 19 with the Jays
taking on the Boston Red Sox in a key three-game series. TSN2 is readily available in the GTA in both Standard Definition and High Definition on Bell TV (Channel 401, 851 HD), Shaw Direct (Channel 401, 269 HD), and Cogeco Cable (Channel 156, 729 HD)."

None of you need any reminder what cable provider is still not carrying TSN2, especially if you're also a Raptors fan, or that Red Sox-Jays games tend to attract the highest ratings. This is bad news to go along with the injuries to pitchers Ricky Romero and B.J. Ryan.

The FAN 590's Bob McCown, at this very moment, is going high dudgeon about "what maroon brokered this deal?" It is possible this forces Rogers to come to terms about carrying the spin-off network, which launched in August. Or they could go el cheapo. Someone who knows can field this one: Would Rogers be able to air the visiting team's broadcast, particularly NESN in the case of that April 19-21 series vs. the Red Sox, on its four regional channels? It would be an easy way out, but given that they often stick the other team's broadcast of games which aren't being carried by Sportsnet or TSN on that Channel 399, don't put it past them.

The point is it is a blatantly anti-fan decision to stick games on a digital channel which is still unavailable to a wide swath of consumers, if it comes to that point. (Chris Zelkovich at the Toronto Star is saying it will get resolved, finally). However, let's stay on the up-and-up and presume the principals here must know this. Let's believe, in the heart of hearts, that reasonable people can always come to a reasonable solution. Times are tight in the Canadian broadcast industry, so you're going to see this pitched battles for customers, but this is going too far. It lasted through the entire Raptors season, but it might be different with the Jays, whose following is more national, more Boomer.

Really, only in Canada could you see this happen, Rogers owning the team and the ballpark, but being party to its fans not being able to watch. It is awfully curious that a Red Sox series was earmarked for TSN2 (TSN would still have hockey commitments in mid-May). TSN does not mess around and as Ottawa Senators fans can relate, the games won't be on the MLB Extra Innings package (just as local broadcasts aren't put on NHL Centre Ice).

The only other games scheduled for that channel are two Sunday afternoon games in September, presumably when there is an a priori commitment to the CFL. It should be pointed out Edmonton Eskimos fans raised a stink over this last fall and got a game aired when it wasn't going to available in Edmonton. Hopefully Jays fans can mobilize over at The Tao of Stieb and Drunk Jays Fans and elsewhere and do the same.

All's Wells if it evokes an obscure, dated reference

The Tao of Stieb seemed put off by the discovery of a YouTube channel called ActionSeat, which seems to consist of two very blond young women asking allegedly off-beat questions to major leaguers.

One person's off-beat is one person's inane, but it seemed worth a toss. Every other Blue Jays blog is getting mileage out of the clip of the Jays' Vernon Wells deadpanning that teammate Aaron Hill is "racist." One of The Tao's commenters claims one of the interviewers, so-called, is a server in those primo In The Action seats behind home plate at Rogers Centre, which could get, uh, interesting if reporters choose to follow up instead of seeing it as benign.



Really, it's pretty benign. With the wrong kind of mind, one could even argue the one young woman saying to Houston's Michael Bourn, "I don't get baseball," is an homage — a modern re-imagining — of Bob Newhart's classic routine.



Every Seamhead has been there once, asked to explain baseball.

"You got a pitcher and a catcher. They throw this ball back and forth. That's all there is to it?

"All right. A guy from the other side stands between them. With a bat. I see. And he just watches them?

"Oh, I see. He swings at it?

"He may or he may not swing at it. Depending on what?

" ' If it looked like it were a ball.' Uh, what's a ball, Mr. Doubleday?"

"You've got this plate. Uh-huh."

Related:
Apparently, Aaron Hill doesn't like black people (The Tao of Stieb)

Batter up: Toronto Blue Jays

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 that are tangentially about each team. At bat: The Toronto Blue Jays.

1. Harry Leroy Halladay reduces journalism's Old Gray Lady to using normal-people language: "Halladay is just really good at everything."
   
   Now, please, don't trade Doc to the Yankees, but do realize that trading him this season would be wise, since he's in the second-last year of his contract and it saves a new GM having to do next season, should there be a change.
   
   Seriously, a Sunday New York Times feature called Roy Halladay "the best pitcher in baseball."
   

   "The movement on Halladay's pitches can be seen in numbers compiled by the Inside Edge scouting service. Batters swung and missed at only 15 percent of his strikes, about the major league average. But they made solid contact only 7 percent of the time, one of the better rates in the league — the pitches looked good, but they flitted from the bat barrel at the last second."
   

2. Only in Ontario: The Jays have been barred from selling beer at two early-season games, including the day-after-the-home-opener contest when there's not going to be anyone there. How are people going to wash down those $1 hot dogs?
   
   
3. The unofficial theme for this season: "This is what you wanted."
   
   The Jays actually are positioning themselves to try to build an organization instead of signing free agents to squeeze out another 83-79 season. Embrace it. This season is a write-off, but it will serve a purpose, getting back to inconspicuous consumption. It's what helped make the Tampa Bay Rays great.
   
   
4. Travis Snider, God's Gift of Sunshine, is Newsday scribe Ken Davidoff's pick for American League Rookie of the Year. The Globe & Mail's Jeff Blair noted that Snider squares up to the ball better than any young hitter he's watched since Vlady Guerrero, no faint praise.
   
   
5. Would it have really made sense to get tied down to a couple free-agent pitchers and have a surfeit of arms when Shaun Marcum and Dustin McGowan return from their injuries? David Purcey rates a shot at a full season in the bigs.
   
   
6. Left-hander Ricky Romero is in the rotation partially since the Jays can't afford to admit he was a mistake (never, ever, draft based on the current roster).
   
   
7. The relievers had a league-best 2.94 ERA last season. B.J. Ryan seems to have a dead arm. As for the rest of the group (Jesse Carlson, possible fill-in closer Scott Downs, Brandon League, Casey Janssen when he's healthy), they could be decent, emphasis on could be. The Baseball Prospectus 2009 says, "While it's great when a bunch of your marginal relief arms come through with a strong season, it's a bad sign for the following year, because they're likely to regress."
   
   
8. It's Alex Rios' and Vernon Wells' misfortune to play in a city (and it's like this everywhere) where there's no buffer zone between a marginal athlete scrapping by and a transcendent superstar. They're both complementary types of players, no more, and Wells didn't pay himself $126 million over seven years.
   
   
9. The marriage of convenience with Triple-A Las Vegas is off to a roaring start:

   "The Dodgers are one of baseball’s most famous franchises. Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Sandy Koufax, Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese, Don Drysdale, Billy Grabarkewitz ... OK, not Billy Grabarkewitz (although he did make the 1970 All-Star team). But the list goes on and on.
   
   "The Blue Jays, on the other hand, are almost recognizable in Toronto. At least when hockey season ends. I mean, you can’t put Rance Mulliniks or Garth Iorg on a bobblehead doll, can you?
   
   " 'They haven't even retired anybody’s number,' sniffed a member of the 51s' extended family."

   The Jays honour numbers. The greatest coach who ever lived, John Wooden, didn't retire numbers when he was coaching UCLA. "What about all the other players who wore it?" he reasoned. That seemed to have worked out pretty well for everyone.
   
   The 51's will hold Blue Jays Tuesdays where O Canada will be played and discounted Canadian beer will be sold. Oh, and can they have the play-by-play guy drop the u in out?
   


10. What's more par for the course? Finding out that one of Toronto's most respected baseball writers once passed on watching the deciding game of the World Series to go to a Madonna concert, or finding out that in 1993, the Montreal Gazette didn't send Jeff Blair to a World Series being played in Philadephia and Toronto? (People in Montreal acting provincially? That's never happened.)
    
    It's all in good fun, Blairsy. You did what you had to do.
    
    
11. Former No. 1 overall pick Matt Bush was released two days before the release of the movie Adventureland, which includes a character who goes around punching people in the crotch for no reason. The actor who plays the character is also named Matt Bush. Crazy.
    
    Seriously, one hopes Matt Bush gets help.
    
    
12. The Tao of Stieb already has the post of the year, about Sportsnet analyst Rance Mulliniks getting kicked out of a game while coaching a college team:

    "Rance always struck us as a mild-mannered pacifist. Or maybe it only seems that way because he is being lulled to sleep by Jamie Campbell all season long."

13. On TSN just now, manager Cito Gaston just said, "We really don't have a No. 2 hitter." Second baseman Aaron Hill is going to be tried there to start the season.
    
    
14. Veteran Sun Media baseball writer Bob Elliott, who was on CFRC 101.9 with Kinger on Friday afternoon, related that a fellow journo on the Jays beat had claimed Marco Scutaro was the best shortstop the Jays have ever had.
    
    Tony Fernandez only won four Gold Gloves and hit .300 or higher four times for the Jays.
    
    
15. Brett Cecil is not the Anglo version of Gustavo Chacin.
    
    
16. It's just a gut feeling, but former second baseman Robbie Alomar is probably not going to be a first-ballot Hall of Famer. This came on before that tabloid poop storm, by the way.
    
    
17. The Facebook group Brad Mills Will Pitch In The Bigs has only 76 members, but left-hander Brad Mills will pitch in the bigs, maybe in September. Please don't click to see who's the first person who comes up when you click to see who they are. Please don't.


18. Nicknaming backup shortstop John McDonald "McGlovin" never caught on. This pains me.
    
    
19. Catcher of the future Jonathan Paul "Good J.P." Arencibia will be up in September, when his free-agency clock will be turned off.
    
    
20. Pete Toms figures there is an ownership crisis in Toronto. Check out the piece he wrote in February for the Biz of Baseball.
    
    
21. The Jays' Las Vegas AAA team plays in a stadium which had a park factor of 109, very hitter-friendly. Try not to get too excited if Russ Adams is suddenly among the Pacific Coast League leaders in home runs. The park there also lacks batting cages. What do the players do, head down to Funland and feed quarters into the pitching machines?
    
    
22. Please stop mentioning that Jesse Litsch was a batboy for the then-Devil Rays like you're the first one to say it. This means you, Baseball Daily Digest.
    
    
23. The best advice for anyone who got on the Jays bandwagon in the halcyon days of '92-93 is to either like it and lump it, or shut your cake hole and realize no one cares which team you support. It's better to do that than pull an Adam Owen and write something embarrassing that you deserve to get asked about at every job interview you go to for the rest of your life:

    "Leaving the team you grew up with behind is more like falling out of love than anything else. Sometimes the breakup is messy, and sometimes it takes years to fully get over your first love. You feel guilty watching other teams or wearing other hats. You check the sports page regularly with both a sigh and a jealous groan, and you feel awful. It’s worse than falling out of love, though. You will never have another first, and you’ll never get over that moment; your hand in your dad’s, walking through the tunnel and seeing the green field or the white ice or the brown hardwood, hearing the growing roar rise exponentially as the walls around you abruptly end and the bright lights blind you and cover you in the purest of light. It’s like fucking, and you never forget the first time. It’s the closest thing you’ll ever come to losing your virginity before ten."

24. Anything you hear about two members of this site having a 20-dollar bet on whether the Blue Jays or Orioles finish last in the division is filthy, scurrilous lie.
    
    It's a 25-dollar bet. Get your facts straight.
    
25. If this isn't beautiful in a lame way, I will fight you:
    
    
    
    

Batter up: San Francisco Giants

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 San Francisco Giants.

1. There's a rationale to borrowing a pic of third baseman Pablo Sandoval to polish the turd dress up this preview. Cy Young Award Tim Lincecum is everyone else's first point of reference with Los Gigantes, so it's only natural to go the other way.
   
   Sandoval, a 22-year-old hittin' machine, could be good for 40 doubles and 20 homers in his first full season. Expect some of the day-to-day focus to be on his fielding. He's basically a DH on a National League team.
   
   
2. You owe it to yourself to read the Driveline Mechanics deconstruction of Lincecum and the Tom Verducci Sports Illustrated cover story. Both capture what LinCyYoung is all about; one just hopes that his unique pitching motion doesn't put too much torque on his right elbow.
   
   
3. It is factual yet intellectually dishonest to refer to the Giants having three former Cy Young winners. Randy Johnson is 45 years old. Barry Zito posted a 5.15 ERA last season and handed out free passes like he was running the theme park in Adventureland.
   
   
4. Something which can't be ignored before you try to look all smart by taking the Giants to win the NL West: Their 72-90 record was built on winning 13-of-18 games vs. San Diego, including a 7-0 mark in one-run games vs. the Padres. Some kind of evenout is probably coming.
   
   
5. Manager Bruce Bochy is probably going to wear the sack after this season if the Giants don't play at least .500 ball. The Giants are a combined 143-181 the past two seasons. It's not Bochy's fault, but someone usually ends up having to pay.
   
   
6. The Tao of Stieb has vowed to eat a pound of raw bacon if centrefielder Aaron Rowand ever has a 20-homer season during his San Fran tenure. He only hit 13 last year, so The Tao's arteries are safe.
   
   
7. The future Giants starting rotation includes right-hander Matt Cain and 19-year-old lefty Madison Bumgarner as the Nos. 2 and 3 starters. Bumgarner impressed Keith Law when he watched him the other day, although some say his fastball is "so trackable." Another assessment is that Bumgarner, "basically got signed only one pitch." (Jonathan Mayo, MLB.com.)


8. Left-hander Jonathan Sánchez, the No. 5 starter, averaged almost a strikeout per inning last season (157 in 158 frames) and almost no one noticed (guilty as charged).
   
   
9. Another bright young hope is the 2008 first-rounder, catcher Buster Posey, who grades out well in Great Baseball Name quotient. The Giants have had only one catcher selected for the All-Star Game in the past 35 years, so you can imagine there's some breathless anticipation over Posey's ETA in the majors.
   
   
10. The best guess at what happened to Zito is that word got around that he was toast if hitters could avoid laying off his famous curveball. His fastball topped out at 89 miles per hour last season, not enough to put fear into hitters. If the velocity comes back, the Giants might have something (or, not).
    
    
11. Cain gets bonus points for telling reporters who were recently scrumming Lincecum, "Man, you guys are fishing. Those are the lamest questions I've ever heard." He was obviously just trying to save the newspaper industry.
    
    
12. There is no truth that San Francisco bars are going to tie drink price to second baseman Emmanuel Burriss' slugging percentage (.329 last season).
    
    
13. Is Bengie Molina that slow or were the hitters coming up behind him that bad? It's a little from column A, a little from column B. The catcher hit cleanup last season and scored only 46 runs all season. To his credit, he cut his passed balls from 16 in 2007 to just five, but he might have had a little to do with Lincecum's league-high 17 wild pitches.
    
    
14. It's not every day you see a blog post listing a prospective Giants lineup which has Fred Lewis as the cleanup hitter and prediction that San Francisco will win the NL West, without even a hint of irony.
    
    
15. Brian Wilson had 41 saves last season. It pays to be the closer for an anemic hitting team.
    
    
16. Lefty Jeremy Affeldt should improve their middle-relief situation — or not.
    
    
17. Is it mean to wonder if Rich Aurilia ever gets asked if he's the father or uncle of the Rich Aurilia who played shortstop for the Giants earlier this century?
    
    
18. Flipping catcher Ronny Paulino to the Marlins for a low minor leaguer, pitcher Hector Correa, just seemed strange. Correa is a 21-year-old who hasn't got past Single-A, so he's not a big prize.
    
    
19. Seventy-three per cent of respondents to a San Jose Mercury News poll, for what it is worth, believe the neighbouring Oakland Athletics should pursue a stadium deal in that city. The Giants, of course, can pull a MLSE to keep a team from invading their turf.
    
    It's not about the Giants, but reading Stephen Kaus' piece, Athletics Owner Wants Baseball in Oakland to Fail, sounds like the columns which should have been written in Montréal when Jeffrey Loria was killing off the Expos.

    "The TVs are few and far between and you cannot see the field while you wait. Combined with the indifferent "service" from the food servers, you can stand in line for two claustrophobic innings and not see a pitch or even hear a broadcast.

    "And the food is awful, particularly in comparison to the offerings at AT&T Park across the Bay. It is embarrassing to bring a Giants fan to a game. The staple is doughy hot dogs wrapped in tin foil. There are some specialty foods, but they taste like rubber. The only bright spot is some decent beer"

20. Shortstop Edgar Renteria's numbers absolutely nosedived during his one season in Detroit and when that happens, it usually means a one-way ticket to San Francisco. The Giants put every team to shame with their sign-anyone-who-was-good-once policy.
    
    
21. Renteria is still only 33 and has 2,070 career hits, but his dismal year in Detroit probably muted any talk of him getting to 3,000.
    
    
22. Righty-hitting first baseman Angel Villalona bears watching; he's likely to start in high Single-A ball even though he won't be 19 years old until August.
    
    
23. The Giants' Triple-A team, the Fresno Grizzlies, might have to re-jig their June 6 promotion, As Seen On TV night, in light of recent events:
    

    What do the Snuggie, the Clapper, the Chia Pet, and the ShamWow all have in common? They're all staples of the 'As Seen on TV' phenomenon known as the infomercial. "As Seen On TV" Night on Saturday, June 6th will honor all the products that seem appealing, at least when someone tries to sell them to you at 3 a.m. on a Saturday. The first 2,500 fans into the ballpark will receive their very own Grizzlies Shammy Cloth.
    

24. It has next to nothing to do with the Giants, but you have to read this L.A. Times article about how a group of friends have rallied around a man named Pat Chawki, a high school teammate of the late Giants closer, Rod Beck. Chawki has "a rare disorder that renders him fully cognitive, but unable to move or speak."
    
    Chawki's old friends (including Beck's widow, Stacie), actually thought he had died — even announced it during their 20th high-school reunion.
    
    
25. Barry Bonds will never spend day in jail.

Snark break ...

(Please omit flowers for the Montreal Impact. Canadian soccer teams always being the scrappy underdog is so little for the mind ... but they came so close.)

There is a method to the madness of the CFL legalizing the Wildcat formation: Based on last season, the Argos should have the quarterback handling the ball as little as possible.

It's good to see the single point we know and love will be spared. It might be universally regarded as an award for failure, but that's Canada at its essence. Thank your lucky stars for that, eh, John Tory?

Say whatever you want about Terrell Owens, but four quarterbacks have thrown 30 touchdown passes in a season with him, and only one of them ever did it without him, Hall of Famer Steve Young. Granted, it's better for ESPN when the Dallas Cowboys are stupid. (Fist bump: Pacifist Viking.)

Ontario Hockey League commissioner David Branch said this week the recession is having "no significant impact on the league." For instance, the Kingston Frontenacs will sell as many playoff tickets as they did last season.

That's not a cheap shot when you consider that the Frontenacs tried to blame their attendance on the recession, despite the fact most season tickets were paid in full before the Dow took a dump.

Thank you, Cox Bloc: We want Sean Avery. We need Sean Avery.

Lastly, one for The Tao of Stieb: It's a sad commentary on the state of Canadian literacy that so many have heard Prime Time Sports regular James Deacon on the radio, but never read one of his columns.

This post is worth nothing, but this is worth noting

• The MLB Network is getting rave reviews, which perfectly explains why it could never get carriage in Canada.
  
• Twitter is bad, very bad. Go tweet that to all of your followers.
• Ottawa native Chris Bisson, a sophomore shortstop at the University of Kentucky, is on the Canadian Baseball Network's 2010 draft list.
• The economy is bad, Ken Griffey is back in Seattle, it's pretty much like the early '90s, so perfect time for all four Seinfeld actors to reunite.
  
  (In the old days, this would have inspired a Top 5, but turns out ESPN.com did the best Seinfeld sports moments almost five years ago.

Zen Dayley: The '09 Blue Jays; this is what you wanted

Fist-bump to The Ack at The Tao of Stieb for this pick-up, from a spring training feature on the Jay's youngins. They might actually go over slot for top-end prospects:

"The Blue Jays, under interim CEO Paul Beeston, intend to become even more aggressive in that regard by employing a new willingness to pay signing bonuses above Major League Baseball recommendations. That was a big no-no under old president Paul Godfrey and the shift in philosophy may help (GM J.P.) Ricciardi secure more high-end talent.

" 'That's definitely going to be an area we look at differently," said Ricciardi. "The gloves are off." — Shi Davidi

It would be welcome news and it would represent a welcome break from what has prevailed during Rogers' uninterested ownership. This scrap of news is in keeping with a feeling toward the Jays' '09 season and the accompanying cynicism, which boils down to five words: "This is what you wanted."

(Digression: Jeff Blair's latest, in a sentence: Lyle Overbay and Scott Rolen out, Orlando Cabrera in, maybe.)

The vox populi of Toronto sports fans can be a huge bunch of knee-jerkers who expect everything and make no effort to understand anything, which means they have no functioning memory. Perhaps it's like that in other places too; one big problem is Toronto tries to act like it's New York when it comes to sports, when it's really a snowy Atlanta, a regional hub which by sheer size and affluence, rates a team in every major sports league (except the NFL).

The common refrain with the Rogers Jays over the past few winters was that they were throwing too much at free agents (A.J. Burnett and B.J. Ryan in '05-06, Frank Thomas in '06-07, David Eckstein in '07-08). At least two of those four were spot-on. This winter, everyone whined when, alone among the 30 MLB teams, they didn't sign a Type A free agent. It is human nature to carp, but at least be consistent in your kvetching, eh. A middle-class team such as the Jays has to focus on bringing guys up through their minor-league system, instead of going for the quick fix:

"Over slot is Seamhead-speak for paying a high draft choice more than MLB's suggested signing boni, which tend to fall on the low side. More teams are realizing that lavishing a big bonus on a top-end prospect is cheap at twice the price, since there are ceilings on young players' salaries.

... Rogers' corporate cynicism dictates that you raise the major league club's payroll just high enough to defeat any charges of not wanting to win. 'But the payroll is $100-million!' Add anyone who was pretty good back in 2003 and whom casual fans know from years of sports highlights and their fantasy league, and stir." — June 7, 2008

It does stand to be a long baseball season in Toronto. No one wants to hear that if the Jays end up losing 90 games (which they probably won't thanks to pitching and defence) it would be only their third 90-loss in 25 years (counting 88 losses in a 144-game season in '95). They probably are a near-mortal lock to lose 90, but at least they're not the frickin' Kansas City Royals or something.

However, shifting to bringing along homegrown talent, although it will take years and a complete overhaul of the scouting system which Rogers gutted in the early 2000s, is what people might have wanted, deep-down. They might not be willing to admit it just yet, but hey, sometimes it takes time to come around.

The draft in June (where the Jays pick 20th overall) will be more proof of whether there has been a change of heart in the Jays' headquarters. It is always an easy out to say you're rebuilding and or shifting your focus to player development when you have little else going for you this season, but it's one of the first bits of good news to come out of Dunedin, failing a switch to another division.

Seamheadedness: Even in a sim league, Poz has more talent

Nerd alert: You might remember that this proprietor of this site is the owner of the all-time Toronto Blue Jays team — the ATJs — in the Seamheads.com Historical Baseball Sim League. If no one objects, there will be some periodic updates.

Competing in the AL East is a cakewalk compared to facing teams that can draw from a history that goes back decades.

It was back to reality for the ATJs in their home opener, as they slipped to 2-2 after an 8-3 thumping in their home opener against Joe Posnanski's loaded Cleveland Indians. The 50,437 on hand at Rogers Centre expressed their displeasure through public intoxication and property damage and the Toronto sportwriters are already writing this team off.

For heaven's sake, it's four games in. In the words of Paul Maurice, "Go home. Drink some tea." Poz's Tribe has a top of the order of Napoleon Lajoie, Tris Speaker and Shoeless Joe Jackson. The ATJs have a third-base platoon which includes Rance Mulliniks. Let's have some perspective, shall we? Lajoie, the Grey Eagle and Shoeless Joe went 10-for-14, helping give ATJs starter Dave Stieb got an even rougher ride than he did from Cy Young Award voters in the mid-1980s, giving up six runs over an inning and a third.

The opening series in Seattle went a little better. Not unlike the real-life Jays, they took the first two of a series but couldn't get the sweep, as the all-time Mariners (ATMs) touched up Jimmy Key and Duane Ward in an 8-4 romp.

However, Roger Clemens — hey, a team which has only been around 32 seasons doesn't have the luxury of being selective — and Harry Leroy Halladay, were a more dangerous combination than Jack Daniels and I.W. Harper. Dumb and Doctor, as some wags have dubbed them, each held Seattle to a single, solitary run.

Doc pitched a complete-game, 8-1 win and even contributed a RBI single to open the floodgates (there's no DH in this league). George Bell, thanks to some fine table-setting by Roberto Alomar (.500 OBP with six steals in the first four games) and others, had five RBI with a double and a home run.

Clemens went eight strong, striking out 12, in the 3-1 win on Opening Day. He finished off striking out his last three hitters, Jay Buhner, Ichiro Suzuki and Edgar Martinez in home half of the eighth. The bluebirds responded with two in the ninth, working a double steal for the go-ahead run after Ernie Whitt worked a leadoff walk off shaky reliever Mike Schooler and Alex Rios went to third on Mulliniks' pinch-hit single. Rance's younger self took off for second and Rios scored when the throw sailed into centrefield, since Seattle shortstop Alex Rodriguez had failed to cover the bag after becoming transfixed by his own picture on the Safeco Field video screen.

The D-Rox (the Diamondbacks and Rockies) are off to a 4-0 start to take the early lead in the Expansion Three division, which includes the ATJs, Seattle and Florida/Tampa Bay Marlins/Rays.

Alomar has been on base 10 of his first 20 times up to pace the offence. The media has also questioned the choice to go with Lloyd Moseby as the Opening Day centrefielder and the Shaker, installed in the leadoff spot, is off to a 3-for-18 start. He seemed like a good compromise between no offence, all defence Devon White and some offence, some defence Vernon Wells. Moseby just needs a month to prove himself, gosh darnit.

Zen Dayley: Home plate, for the hardcore

Note the time and place: Rogers Communications saying it will do something for baseball fans. (Why the cynicism?)

"If a deal can be reached, Rogers Media would introduce the Canadian version of MLB Network, which launched last week in the United States to enthusiastic reviews.

"Rogers would take programming from MLB Network, add Canadian content, and make the channel, titled Baseball TV, available to distributors."
– William Houston, globesports.com

The Tao of Stieb notes that a Canadian spin-off would be "licenced to air 10% live baseball games, which would work out to about five live games per week." In the States, MLB Network is only carrying about 26 live games this season.

That would be a huge bonus, barring the possibility of a new Rogers Media channel being a pawn in another spitting match between media conglomerates, like with TSN2.

Baseball fans are underserved by the traditional media outlets in Canada. MLB Network has had some mixed reviews among the hardcore Seamheads. Again, one would need to watch MLB Network in order to comment upon it efficacy. Reairing vintage games and Ken Burns' Baseball documentary and having ex-jocks and talking heads banter in a some studio is pretty thin gruel. They hired Bob Costas, instead of someone who's got something relevant to say about baseball in this century.

The alternatives, like an in-depth look at the park factors of the New York Mets' stadium, are so much better. At this point, MLB Trade Rumours probably rates its own show.

Can't there be a baseball show for the hardcore? Why subject people to a first-ballot inductee into the Smug Hall of Fame stuck in his own nostalgia trip instead of offering something new?

The bottom line is this is positive news, and thanks again to the The Tao for posting on this when it was not on many people's radars. Anyone who got the image of Jamie Campbell and Sam Cosentino going through their 1983 O-Pee-Chee cards -- look, Ryne Sandberg was listed as a third baseman! -- when they heard about Canadian content is forgiven. This is a positive.

Zen Dayley: Pat the Bat by the Bay

Pat Burrell, if he's left to be a designated hitter, is a decent pickup for the Tampa Bay Rays.

He is 32 years old and the classic player who might have a short shelf life, which is why two years, $16 million US is not a bad deal -- he won't be there long enough for him to block anyone in Tampa Bay's organization. Some of his biggest comparables saw their careers slide off a cliff when they reached that age. Regardless, the Rays got him primarily for those .279/.406/.545 slash stats vs. left-handed pitching. Left-handers proved their undoing in the World Series when they have to face the Cy Young and Cy Old, the Phillies' Cole Hamels and Jamie Moyer.

There is a whiff of a team overreacting to what happened to it in the post-season Tampa struggled to hit left-handers all season. This upgrades the DH spot for the Rays significantly.

MLB Network: Are we missing much?

In all honesty, at this point in the calendar you're grateful for any baseball chatter in Canada. Even the callers to MLB Home Plate on XM Radio who ask why Steve Garvey isn't in the Hall of Fame are tolerable.

ShysterBall has been on top of the MLB Network's debut. They have Hazel Mae, but their early offerings have veered have been heavy on the syrupy and the faux-intellectual dilettante nuisances -- yes, they employ Bob Costas. Slate had an awesome article in October that held out hope someone would at least try to bring informed baseball commentary to TV:

"... my show would take a cue from sites like Baseball Prospectus and Hardball Times and put crucial decisions in context. Consider BP's observation that the Angels-Red Sox series turned on three characteristically bold base-running decisions by the Angels that all turned out badly, which they used to illustrate the point that Mike Scioscia's managerial style has not kept up with the particular skills of his roster. Or their breakdown of the Phillies-Dodgers NLCS, which observed that the Phils' decision to bat Chase Utley and Ryan Howard in succession will allow Joe Torre to use his left-handed specialist, Joe Beimel, against both of them in key spots. It isn't as if this kind of analysis can't be put together on short notice — you just need analysts who aren't John Kruk."

It is doable. It is hard to believe that there aren't younger journalists who can both be telegenic and offer analysis -- they're used to being on camera and they know their way around Baseball-Reference.com. Sticking people with more of the jockocracy is repeating the NFL Network's folly.

This, that and the other

• Not to encourage a culture of attack, but please read The Tao's takedown of regular Prime Time Sports panelist James Deacon. No disrespect, but a man who is regularly on a nationally syndicated sports-talk radio program should know that major-league teams never trade a top-end starting pitcher, not to mention that you can't trade a draft choice in baseball.
  
• Bill James projecting Toronto native Joey Votto to have a 30-homer, 102-RBI season for the Cincinnati Reds.
• The Blue Jays' Travis Snider is pegged to put up 19 homers, 83 RBI with an .804 OPS this season. Those are serious numbers for a 21-year-old player.
• This is just idle speculation, but if the San Diego Padres are sold for $400 million US, does it give Rogers Communications a ballpark figure for what it might get for the Blue Jays?

Zen Dayley: Mr. Balsillie, would you like to buy a ballclub?

Talk about Stockholm Syndroming yourself.

The report this morning from the estimable Bob Elliott that Rogers Communications could sell the Toronto Blue Jays ought to raise fear, not squeals of joy.

" 'One and one might add up to 11 here, but you have to admit if you put everything together, the Toronto club looks to me like a team getting ready to be sold,' a former Blue Jays employee said.

"... 'It's like the different machinations we went through when Interbrew owned us,' another former employee said. 'Our spending was frozen, there were cutbacks and layoffs.' "

Please bear in mind that Elliott, going by the writing, leans a lot on scouts who got the ax when Rogers operated on the principle of scorched earth when it first owned the team in 2000, '01 and '02. Regardless, two words to stop any Jays fan for jumping for joy: Montreal Expos.

Losing Charles Bronfman as owner was an early nail in the Expos' coffin. The ownership was never stable again. Having Rogers' corporate muscle behind the Blue Jays, for good or ill, does ensure that they'll be a nice, mid-level team coping with its own limitations in the harsh face of being in the AL East with three superpowers, one with bucks, one with brains and one with both. (It's tolerable, most of the time. Anyone who needs her/his team to win in order to enjoy baseball and doesn't get the joke of having 8379 as your pin number on your bank card can go find another sport.)

This is just spitballing, but feel free to wonder what Rogers is getting out of owning the Jays at this point. Their corporate profile has grown by leaps and bounds since it bought the Jays in 2000. They're probably going to be identified with the team no matter what for some time into the future; it's getting to the point of diminishing returns, familiarity breeding contempt and such.

It might also be time to find bigger, four-down football-playing fish to fry. The Telecom That Ted Built is also going to sink quite a lot into its 24-hour news channel (as an aside, that should be a hoot -- CityTV can barely fill one hour).

There are people who, at the first sign of trouble, will predict that baseball isn't long for Toronto. A few truths here is that Canadians do not spend money on sports like Americans. The Jays have the entire country to themselves, but the everyone-hates-Toronto mindset tends to limit their appeal among casual fans outside the centre of the universe, unless they're deep into the post-season.

It's hard to imagine a day when there wouldn't be any Toronto Blue Jays. The reality is there are no good markets for expansion or relocation, so until such time as MLB allows three or four owners to have teams in New York City or Los Angeles, they're nothing to worry about -- except for the Jays being a 66-win team instead an 86-win team.

Cunning, that Bunning

Hilarious: Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Bunning, the U.S. Senator, helped kill the auto bailout and now he's showing up in Michigan to sign autographs Sunday. The World of Isaac has more.

Damn, the Jays

• The Tao is wondering why there's been little free-agent buzz about Adam Dunn (all he does is hit home runs) Maybe J.P. Ricciardi really was on to something with "you know he doesn't like baseball" phillipic last season.
• C'est la vie for Seattle sports fans: A profile on Travis Snider points out the Mariners passed on both him another player from the Evergreen State, Cy Young Award winner Tim Lincecum, in the 2006 draft. Snider is also in an "elite conditioning program" during this off-season, for anyone who's afraid about his weight.

Related:
Blue Jays for sale? Signs point to the possibility (Bob Elliott, Sun Media)

Zen Dayley: One more for the MLBTV chorus

Please check out the piece The Tao has penned on the possibility of the MLB Network being available to Canada.

One takeaway is that you-know-who, Rogers Communications, "already holds a license in Canada for an all-baseball-all-the-time diginet, but they haven't moved on it." Please hold off the Rogers-bashing -- please don't say that greatest oxymoron going in corporate Canada is "Rogers Communications" -- and say that one hopes that this gets picked up by the bigger media outlets and that Rogers does move on this in time for the network's Jan. 1, 2009 debut. As The Tao notes, Rogers recently made College Sports Television (CSTV) available to digital subscribers (those ratings to watch Pac-10 women's volleyball must be sky-high in Guelph and Kitchener).

The NFL Network, which as Bob McCown has harped on, is "unwatchable," is on basic digital packages. Soccer fans have GolTV and Setanta Sports. MLSE has its Leafs TV and Raptors NBA TV offerings. True, some of those channels are struggling, which might be why Rogers is reluctant to add carriage.

The hardcore Seamheads, a niche audience but a desired niche audience, are only right if they want to pay a little more to get something outside the traditional Jays-focused coverage, where people who believe Russ Adams would make a quality designated hitter are not only humoured but taken seriously.

So, just to add to the Seamhead echo chamber: "I want my MLBTV."

(Quick, photo of Matt Stairs coaching hockey or the latest about Madonna and A-Rod, what turns your crank more? There is no wrong answer, or right one.)

Let Ken Slate enjoy his turkey, dammit!

It's a bit of gas -- you have to understand, people who grow up outside Bath, Ontario maintain a very low amusement quotient -- to read Hindustan Times piece about R&D, the Pittsburgh Pirates' Indian pitching prospects Dinesh Patel and Rinku Singh.

Both have been signed by five-time World Series Champion club Pittsburgh Pirates for an undisclosed sum that may be in crores of rupees, their families indicated, and in doing so have sparked a remarkable interest in the hitherto unknown American sport of baseball in their backward, dusty Uttar Pradesh villages.

The biggest difference between sports writing in North America and South Asia is probably seeing "World Series Champion" and "Pittsburgh Pirates" in the same sentence. The article says Patel has inspired a "baseball mania" in his village, which one hopes makes the New Jersey sportswriter who slammed the signing as "outsourcing" choke on his turkey, just for a second.

The other amusing part is that Singh, back home, was considered a "loafer" for being a jock. A loafer? Does that not evoke John Kruk's famous, "I ain't an athlete, I'm a ballplayer" line?

Damn, the Jays

• Big League Stew's 101 things to be thankful for include Dan Shulman and The Tao of Stieb.


• Our sportsnet.ca columnist Scott Carson would obviously know this better than some ass-talker, but is Mike Mussina really "the least favourite human being" of Cito Gaston's? Time forgives, and Cito's supposed to be a class act ... but anyway, this deserved to have some soy sauce slathered over it:
  

  "So the debate now begins, whether or not 'The Moose' belongs among the greats of the game in the Hall of Fame. I say NO. His career win total only ranks him 33rd all-time and if Bert Blyleven with 287 wins and 3,701 strikeouts (fifth all-time) can't get in with his numbers then Mussina's doesn't quite cut it either. Plus, in my 16 seasons on the baseball beat, I never came across a more condescending athlete than Mussina. I witnessed him talking down to many sportswriters and broadcasters."

  Thank god "talking down" to people doesn't get one disqualified from other honours -- we'd have no Golden Globes or Academy Awards, or serious literary prizes. Carson's main blurbage was a piece on the Jays, that frankly, was seven kinds of crazy.
  
  Forget the fact that win totals are a poor barometer for a second. Mussina's 270 wins is fifth among pitchers whose have pitched in the era of 5-man rotations, after guys named Maddux, Clemens, Glavine and Johnson. He has the same .638 winning percentage as Jim Palmer, who wasn't exactly smiles and sunshine. Who said being nice was a prereq for a ballplayer, anyway?


• The Jays were involved in two of the five best pitching performances of last season. Remember Jesse Carlson's effort in that May game where A.J. Burnett lost it in relief?

Related:
From UP villages to US baseball fields (Anuraaq Singh, Hindustan Times)

Forget about your Sens, give the audience a grin

There is an upside to Jeffrey Simpson's takedown of the Ottawa Senators in this morning's Globe & Mail.

The Senators rate being ripped in Canada's National Newspaper. Do not push back against this, Sens fans. Do not do as some doofleberries did in the comments section, playing shoot-the-messenger over Mr. Simpson writing that the team's "collapse is the biggest untold story in Canadian hockey ... the culmination of a series of dubious or bad management decisions, not one of which caused the plunge but, taken together, rotted the team."

(Untold story? Mr. Simpson, you have evidently not read Jean-Pierre Allard's invaluable contributions to this site. Speaking as a fellow Queen's Journal alumnus, that hurts deeply, sir.)

This is your just desserts. Many of you in Hockey Country have kvetched for years that the Toronto media didn't give your precious team its due, even when it was going to the Stanley Cup final in 2007. It's taken 18 months and a slide to the middle of the Eastern Conference, but attention is often overdue in coming, c'est la vie.

Point being, try to see the good in the fact that The Globe believed the entire country needed to hear that the Senators, at the quarter-pole in the NHL schedule, are on pace for 74 points, which hasn't been good enough to make the playoffs since the days of the old Campbell Conference. Typically, a dismal hockey team's plight only gets national play if it is the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Senators are established enough to get blowback.

This is a positive, really, so don't lose the lesson. If life in Hockey Country seems jolly rotten, there's something you've forgotten, and that's to smile and laugh and dance and sing, like the way Leafs fans have been known to after the team wins a first-round playoff series. Leafs fans have read a bajillion bits of bombast all over the years, and really, it's slides off champagne off an Anaheim Duck's cheeks back in June 2007. It's called being bulletproof.

So please, let Mr. Simpson have his moment. There is no hay to be made trying to equivocate and wondering what is the difference between someone who's not normally on the hockey beat suggesting Pierre McGuire or Steve Yzerman as a possible Senators GM and the same suggestion coming from some ass-talker with a blog. Try not to get hung up on questions about whether Sens-carving is already dated, whether someone who is on a minor beat such as Canadian federal politics (face the facts, Jeff) should be trusted to write about hockey, since people actually care about hockey. Granted, going from Parliament Hill to Scotiabank Place is an easy switch, since the only thing that moves slower than the wheels of government is Jason Smith.

This is a glorious day, Sens fans. This is a chance to learn that as a hockey fan, you come from nothing, you go back to nothing, what have you lost? Nothing!

You wanted the rest of the Canada to care about your team's ups and downs almost as much as you wanted a Stanley Cup parade down Bank St. Well, you know what they say about being careful what you wish for ... everyone is now supposed to care. So it goes.

(And when is Jeff Simpson going to write that column about the Raptors? Thanks to The Tao of Stieb for the link. By the way, Coming Down The Pipe! has a good primer on Team Sweden for the World Junior Hockey Championship, which start one month from Wednesday. )

Related:
A capital collapse; With the Senators swooning, can major changes and a new GM such as Yzerman be far behind? (Jeffrey Simpson, The Globe & Mail)