A Jay a Day: Free John McDonald (sort of)

John McDonald is actually starting a game today.

The non-use of McDonald is an entry point for discussing one of the more enigmatic aspects of how Blue Jays manage their 25-man roster. It's a bit dated, but Marc Hulet pointed out recently at FanGraphs that Cito seems to be playing a game of burnout with his regulars. Four Jays have started at least 78 of the team's 83 games. Marco Scutaro, who has been awesome at shortstop, has started every game (and yes, finding a picture from 2007 of McDonald and Scutaro together was deliberate). If you use 78 starts as the threshold, the Red Sox, Rays and AL Central-leading Detroit Tigers have each used two regulars that often. The Yankees have only one, second baseman Robinson Cano.

Hulet's point bears reiterating since it helps fill in the picture with the Jays, who are 15-27 since May 19 and will be at .500 for the first time all season if they lose vs. the Yankees today. The perfect storm of arm ailments, the equivalent of an entire starting rotation on the disabled list, has been a huge culprit, but Hulet raised a good point about the over-use of five players.

"As of June 20, the Jays club had played 78 games (41-37). Five regulars had played 76 games or more: Aaron Hill, Marco Scutaro, Adam Lind, Vernon Wells, and Alex Rios. Two of those players (Rios and Wells) have been terrible this season and were also left in the No. 3 and 4 holes in the lineup until mid-June.

"Two other players are obviously being over-worked by the manager. Hill appeared in just 55 games last year due to a concussion. Despite the time off, the manager has failed to ease the second baseman back into regular play. Scutaro, the club’s undisputed spark plug in the first two months, had never really been a full-time player until last year when he appeared in 145 games. At 33, he’s no spring chicken.

"... As a side note, I’d also like to point out the disappointing use of veteran back-up infielder John McDonald. The fifth-year Jay has been used in just 28 games this season with just 26 at-bats. That is the most embarrassing use of any player in the Majors this season ... That, ladies and gentlemen, is not the way to use you bench ... Or treat your veteran players. You know, the ones you’d have to turn to if your starting shortstop or second baseman suddenly got hurt."

Obviously, no right-thinking fan wishes Hill or Scutaro ill just so he can say, "Told you so." Hill, the all-star second baseman, has emerged as the Jays' best all-around player. Scutaro, by the numbers, has been the best-fielding shortstop in the American League. The fact remains is that, after leading off and playing short every game and batting a league-high 395 times (this is someone who's only had 500 plate appearances once in his career, and that was last season), Scutaro has dropped off with the stick.

April & May: .305/.408/.457
Since June 1: .244/.336/.350

The rub is John McDonald is still on the team, two seasons after a lot of bandwidth was burned up debating whether his combination of web gem-worthy fielding and hide-your-eyes hitting made him an acceptable as a No. 1 shortstop. It's not about whether he should get more starts at the expense of Hill and Scutaro. The point is that the Jays should have somebody who can spell off their starting middle infielders.

Today marks only the fourth start all season for McGlovin, three at second base and one at third (oddly enough, he had a rare two-hit game that day, both singles, in a 10-0 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies). The way McDonald has been utilized is tantamount to wasting the 25th spot on the roster.

The onus is not necessarily on Cito Gaston as the field manager. It could be that the front office has not stocked the team with viable options to spell off Hill, Scutaro, Rios and Wells (Jose Bautista has been a decent find, but he can only play the corner positions). Point being, overplaying the regulars too much tempts fate.

The Jays ought to make a decision on McDonald, who is in the back half of a two-year contract, before the end of the season. Give him his freedom to find another organization where he might actually get to start a game more than once a month.

(For point of comparison, Gaston does not like to use his bench much, but it was nothing like this back in the glory days. On the 1992 team, Devon White was the heaviest-used regular, starting 151 games in centrefield, while Roberto Alomar started 149. The following season, Alomar, Ed Sprague and Joe Carter, who shuffled between the corner outfield spots, each started at least 150 games.

The '93 World Series-winning Jays used the 25th spot on a Rule 5 draft pick named Willie Canate, who got 47 at-bats all season, got caught in a rundown during his only appearance in the World Series and never appeared in the majors again. They had nothing on the 1985 team, which carried two Rule 5 picks, Manuel Lee and Lou Thornton, meaning it played the whole season with 23 guys. That was obviously before Tony La Russa invented the 12-man pitching staff.)

Zen Dayley: Manny is taking it easy for all us sinners

The Daily Breeze in southern California is the one whistling through John Klima's ears.

Manny Ramirez is the worst baseball player I have ever seen.

I am not kidding. (Ed.'s notes -- who said you were?)
A ticket-selling novelty slogan is a great excuse for a player you do not want to settle your fate with his legs, arm, glove or mind. (L.A. should go get McGlovin, then -- for Manny, straight up.)

In other words, this guy is a liability anytime he doesn't have the bat in his hands. (Thank god there is no such thing as "anytime.")

One can only assume that Klima is begging to get FJM'd. Far be it to joke that he's got an old head injury that means he not only has to go around wearing one of hockey namesake's old Jofa buckets for his own protection (see photo, right), but occasionally writes the odd column that should be sponsored by Nutella. That could really the only other explanation for why an intelligent man would spread such a brilliant bit of misinformation, possibly tinged by xenophobia.*

A slugging corner outfielder's worth is about 80-90 per cent concentrated in what he does "anytime" he has a bat in his hands. That's the biggest takeaway from today's rant.

It's high time people who get this stood up, Obama-style, "Enough is enough." For far too long, there have been media types who have got away with spreading a completely false idea of how a baseball player, especially a slugging corner outfielder, earns his keep. It's about whether he gets on base and can consistently hit for extra bases, which are far and away the two most important qualities which are tied to winning.

Manny Ramírez is a phenomenal baseball player for what he does and doesn't do. All of the hit-run-throw, fetishing-of-fundamentals that Mr. Klima and many others are guilty doing is the equivalent of the restrooms at the Louvre. Would someone judge the Louvre by the cleanliness and comfort of its restrooms?

That might be a bad rhetorical question. Some sports journalists and sports fans actually would judge the Louvre by its washrooms. It would be true testament to their tendency toward bullet-counting and beside-the-pointitis.

No one is denying that Manny Ramírez's act sets many people's jaws to "grind." It just doesn't matter that much when he's hitting. As a fan, one doesn't have to deal with him personally on an everyday basis. He's probably not going to move into your neighbourhood, and if he did, you would be asking for his autograph.

Managers and coaches who have been in baseball their whole lives have seen all manner of aberrant athlete behaviour. It's their job to keep it from driving a wedge through the ballclub. His teammates, let's be honest, have a lot more to worry about than their left fielder being a full-blown bozo. That bozo, by the way, is hitting a loaded .396 since he came over from the Red Sox (getting on base at a .488 clip and slugging. 796).

Klima should get credit for writing a column, "I've never seen a player of Ramirez's level, experience and salary play the game so poorly and with such disregard for obvious basics, as if the ordinary rules do not apply to him because he can hit" at this point.

Since Aug. 30, Manny has had seven homers, 17 RBI, 10 runs scored, slugged 1.000 and had a .489 on-base percentage. The Dodgers have won 10 of Ramirez's last 11 games to move 3 1/2 clear of Arizona in the sinkhole which is called the NL West division. How that's for "obvious basics?" Scoring or driving in 20 runs in 11 games is as serious as a heart attack.

Point being, you might not care personally for Ramírez, much the same way you don't like teenagers who seem hard-pressed to find a pair of pants which actually cover their entire bum. However, you're not going to change such behaviour.

There's a good personal rule is that if you claim to love baseball so much, or claim to have once loved it back when, as per Klima, it "was considered a throwing and running game," whenever the hell that was (1892?).

Be it resolved that if one loves sports so much, you have to put up with the crazy bastards who get away with being crazy bastards because if their ability to perform a socially needless act. What is it to John Klima, or the 70,000 readers of his suburban daily, that Manny Ramírez is not fully engaged with the cosmos all of the time?

If anything, be grateful that Manny Ramírez is out there, taking it easy in left field for all us sinners. In his second Historical Baseball Abstract, Bill James wrote in his comment on Rabbit Maranville, an old-timey ballplayer who was similarly uninhibited (and is in this thing called the Baseball Hall of Fame. Maranville, wrote James, "made a mockery of the game, and he was so good that he got by with it. You and I will never see the like of him."

It turns out that we are -- and James and Ramírez each had something to do with the Boston Red Sox winning the World Series in 2004 and '07. So lighten up, and be glad we have this clown who keeps us entertained and is good enough that people tolerate his act, at least until his bat slows down.

Klima and the choir he's preaching to -- and it's a very small choir -- might not like this. Since they played Little League, they have had their idea of What Should Be in baseball instead of What Is, "a watered-down version of what the game was designed to be."

Baseball is not a "throwing-and-running game." It has not been since Manny's old team took their ace left-handed pitcher, a guy by the last name of Ruth, and stuck him in the outfield in 1919.

Sorry for getting up on a Seamhead soapbox, when there's political strife at home and abroad. It's just impossible to sit idly by when professional writers and commentators who have little idea of how to figure out a ballplayer's worth, or do know and don't care while they focus on the unimportant and trivial and go for the lowest common denominator. It's small wonder that a brother-in-baseball-geekhood yesterday described newspapers as a "race to the bottom."

Point being, John Klima should take his cue from a cult movie that was filmed in his corner of the world. Manny is a little lax on the fundamentals, but he hits ropes almost every night? The dude abides.

(Digression: Let's not even go into the fact a guy at a paper in white-bread Torrance, California, rips a Latino outfielder, then near the end of the column where he says, "Corporate America loves baseball. America loves basketball and football." For pity's sake, and I'm saying this as a Canadian, can we not have an end to people inferring who's a real American and who's not, and what real Americans like? It's completely unbecoming and completely unanswerable in a country of 300 million.

Oh, and what league has a more cozy relationship with Corporate America than the NFL? No one's sleeping on the couch in that relationship.)

Dining out on McDonald's moniker (take that, Tother)

Bless you, Cox Bloc -- being the coiner of a colourful nickname for a slick-fielding shortstop might not seem like much of a claim to fame. You take whatever you can get in this life, however:.

Mike Toth's most recent column laments the lack of colourful nicknames in the modern baseball world ... Sure, there are no Wahoos and Catfishes anymore, but Toth is apparently unaware of the brilliant McGlovin, bestowed upon the Blue Jays' Human Highlight Reel (with the glove, not the bat, of course) by Neate Sager."

It figures that acclaim for the splendid sobriquet that was coined in 2007 wouldn't come until near the tailend of an '08 season where McGlovin has been reduced to mostly to pinch-running.

Also, this is a reminder that everyone should go to the Baseball Hall of Fame website and vote for the late, great Tom Cheek for the 2009 Ford C. Frick Award.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zen Dayley: 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zen Dayley: To mould a new reality, closer to the heart

Observing the sleep-on-it rule seems to be the best way to avoid saying, "The Jays will go as far as John Gibbons will take them." Talk about one cruel evenout, losing four straight... but Vernon Wells is back, Roy Halladay throws on Sunday and then the lousy Mariners come to town.

• Discuss among yourselves: A.J. Burnett is a straw man for everyone in Toronto who craps on the Blue Jays to avoid having to say what they really think about the Leafs.
  
  Burnett -- who tipped his cap to booing fans after getting jocked today -- and Roy Halladay have each made 13 starts this season. Burnett's given up four or more earned runs four times; Halladay's given up four or more earned runs five times. His little gesture -- which might have sent the message, relax people, it's only a game -- had a point.
  
• Jeff Blair noted that draft day is when Rogers Communications' uninterested ownership shines through: "Time for the Blue Jays to get with the flow and go over slot like everybody else."
  
  Over slot is Seamhead-speak for paying a high draft choice more than MLB's suggested signing boni, which tend to fall on te 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. Damn whatever the knee-jerkers say about giving $2.5 million to a high school shortstop or a college left-handed starter.
  
  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. Granted, that's what you would expect in Toronto, where sports franchises set out to win press conferences, not championships.
  
  There's nothing miraculous about why the Tampa Bay Rays are so good all of a sudden. They shelled out for to find players at the grass-roots, and now they're (knock on wood) headed to the playoffs.
  
• This never happens if George Steinbrenner was still alive ... 6-6 tie in the seventh iinning, bases drunk with Kansas City Royals ... Joe Girardi opted to leave Andy Pettitte to pitch to José Guillén. Never mind that Guillén had a .952 OPS this season vs. lefties, compared to .648 vs. righties, the first swollen considerably by a homer off Pettitte, who had thrown more than 100 pitches.
  
  Boom, grand slam. Back in the day, King George would have fired the manager before the plate umpire fished a new ball out of his pocket.
  
  (The Yankees, won 12-11, but when you have to score 12 runs to win, to quote Dave Smart, "You've lost already.")


• It's cold comfort to know that Jays GM J.P. Ricciardi at least has good taste when it comes to unrequited crushes.
  
  Tim Lincecum, whom the Jays were trying to get in the winter, is vying to be in the all-time, top 5 for pitchers who had the best years pitching for terrible teams. He has a 2.15 ERA, twice as good as the 4.68 for the rest of the San Francisco Giants staff. The Giants are 10-3 in his starts and 16-32 the rest of the time.
  
  No one's ever going to touch Steve Carlton's 1972 season, going 27-10, 1.97 for a last-place team. (He started in 29 of the Phillies' 59 wins.)
  
• Geddy Lee from Rush is the closest thing the Jays have to a celebrity fan, which makes it less of a surprise that he would be a benefactor for the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. Lee donated more than 200 balls autographed by Negro Leaguers, many of whom are long dead, to the museum.
  
• Washington Redskins tight end Chris Cooley is apparently a Jays fan.

Yes, losing two straight to the Baltimore Orioles is especially teeth-gnashing. The Red Sox and Yankees have money and brains. The Rays have brains. The Orioles organization is patchwork quilt that has neither.

NO REASON TO GET YOUR SOX SOAKED

The daily baseball post ... Jays in the sandwich game vs. the Texas Rangers ...

• The past two Tigers-White Sox games have aided the argument for baseball playing fewer games with more scheduled off-days.
  
  It never ceases to amaze that baseball forces teams to play in April when the weather can reduce the game to a farce and put players at physical risk. It's not right for a game that requires such hand-eye co-ordination and precision.
  
  Friday, Dontrelle Willis hyper-extended his right knee when he slipped pitching on a rain-soaked mound. Now he's on the disabled list.
  
  The conditions were fit for neither beast nor ballplayer again today, which played a part in Justin Verlander losing his grip on a pitch and plunking Orlando Cabrera in the back of the head during the eighth inning. (Cabrera wasn't injured, but people walk away from car crashes, too.)
  
  Seriously, why not cut back to 140-145 games and start two weeks later? There would be more open dates to reschedule rained-out games.
  
  The Tigers, now 2-10, could certainly have used a later start.
• Cox Bloc referred to Jays shortstop John McDonald as "Johnny McGlovin" a couple weeks ago. Did they not see the movie? It's one name -- like Seal.
  
  (Sorry, someone is protective of his pop-culture reference.)
• Toronto Sun baseball writer Bob Elliott has joined the blogosphere. Elliott's Top Canadians Eligible For '08 MLB Draft (canadiandraft08.blogspot.com) picks up from the site he used have at SLAM! Sports.
  
  Elliott is also planning to launch canadianbaseballnetwork.com within a few weeks. No other sports journalist with Elliott's profile spends as much time tracking the up-and-coming Canadian baseball talent. Without him, we wouldn't know that the Jays are high on an infielder, Carter Bell, who is the namesake of two former Jays all-stars. With that name, how could they not be interested in him?
• Stephen Brunt hit it out of the park with his Saturday column on Jose Canseco's Vindicated:
  
  

  "In all of the denials, the scapegoating, the lying, the hypocrisy, the phony Hall of Fame moralizing and the political opportunism, baseball made a 'certifiable nutcase' credible, raised his stock and cast him as an honest whistle-blower — which is quite the feat."

  Canseco is a grotesque, but in a morality play, it's often a grotesque who is responsible for exposing a society's ills and hypocrisies.
• A figure of interest from the Simcoe Reformer days, right-handed pitcher John Axford, got his first win of the season on Friday for Brevard County, the Brewers' Florida State League team (high class-A). Axford struck out six over four-plus innings, although he walked four and had a couple wild pitches.
• Here's the article where ex-Jays third baseman Ed Sprague admitted using andro during his playing career. There go his Hall of Fame chances (hey, wait a second).

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

JAYS: BARRY BONDS LACKS SCRAPPY GRIT, HOWEVER

Your nightly Jays post ... the stars were aligned for A.J. Burnett, that crusty Capricorn and wow, players actually having patient at-bats. That ought last for a couple weeks.

• Barry Bonds as a Blue Jay ... the seed was planted tonight on Mike Wilner's FAN 590 blog during the Jays' 5-2 win over the Yankees. Wilner was addressing Reed Johnson's release (let it go, people) and slipped it in, almost in passing.
  
  

  "I can only assume that extra $2.6 million or so (saved) will go towards signing Barry Bonds."

  Greater stories have begun with less. Wilner affirmed he was "totally serious" about the Jays going after Bonds to play left field. It could get them out from under having to pick up Frank Thomas' contract next season, which kicks in if he gets 376 plate appearances.
  
  Wilner clarified on the air that "the average Joe on the street" would not go for this. Still, paraphrasing Jon Stewart, the soccer ball has been lobbed up for the media to swarm after.
• The Tao revisited the timeless "Mike Mussina: Crybaby Stugots or Utter Wanker?" debate.
• Tonight you saw that John Gibbons does have a gift for falling out of trees and landing on his feet. Brian Tallet working two innings?
• John McDonald was not put in for defence in the ninth inning. David Eckstein's made the last out in the top half, so McDonald wouldn't even have batted until maybe the 12th inning if the Yankees rallied.

(Bugs & Cranks, The Drunks and The Tao do this much, much better.)

UP AT 6: WHERE THERE'S A WILLIAMS...

As you were making reservations for Mike's Cereal Shack...

• The jury is out on the Houston Texans' Santa pyjamas, but yeah, Mario Williams (3 1/2 sacks last night in what's becoming a Pro Bowl season) with the No. 1 pick in 2006 might not have been such a bad idea.
  
  Who didn't rip the Texans for not taking Reggie Bush or hometown hero Vince Young back in 2006? They were offensive stars, after all. Williams was just a pass rusher.
• Mike (Awesome) Wilner has a good argument that whatever the Jays gained offensively signing David Eckstein and relegating John McDonald to backup status, they'll give back on defence. Last summer's McGlovin Love-In was a bit much, but at least Wilner backs it up with numbers. He doesn't touch on the fact McGlovin played behind a ground-ball pitching staff on a team that plays home games on an artificial surface.
  
  Eckstein hit .309 with a Secondary Average of .150 last season; McDonald hit .251 with a SA of .131. Defence might close the gap somewhat, if not all the way.
  
  (Whoever this David Alter character that Wilner lets post to his blog is, apparently his profs at Western forgot to teach him basic grammar. Who doesn't know that period goes inside the quotation mark?)
• It figures the Calgary Flames would play 1980s-vintage 9-6 hockey the same week this video was making the rounds:
  


Sometimes, words just fail.

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

IRONICALLY, IN ALL HIS YEARS WITH THE BOSOX, CLEMENS NEVER VISITED SALEM

Oh, it's a plate of mixed blessings today:

The Good: As anyone who was in a Mitchell Report pool over the past couple days knows (the gang from Epic Carnival were drafting names yesterday), Roger Clemens was one of the leading ah-ha, I-knew-its out there.

OK, fair is fair. Clemens is a two-faced, multiple-retiring megalomaniac spotlight hog, even more unlikable than Barry Bonds. He's still entitled to due process and a full airing of what really happened. Most of know are already anticipating that the Mitchell Report is going to be a ham-and-B.S. sandwich, hold the ham. Or as Deadspin put it: "We repeat: The only real purpose of this report is for everyone to scream 'Gotcha!' for the poor souls unable to avoid its pages. So we might as well all play along."

The Not Bad, Not Good Either: The Jays signed David Eckstein to be their new mascot shortstop. OK, so this means not having to get weaned off mocking Eckstein for his small stature and the word-fellatio many American announcers, especially FOX's Joe Buck and Tim McCarver, perform whenever they broadcast one of his games.

In the big picture, the Jays have a shortstop who is a real offensive player. Now that's he in Canada, Eck could even have "real boy" surgery, so long as no one tells him that it might include the use of stem cells. He's one of those guys who's against, what's that called, scientific and medical advancements that benefit the whole of humanity.

Meantime, since FOX never has the Jays on a national broadcast, the word-fellatin' is pretty much over. He'll be in Canada, out of sight, out of mind. And McGlovin is still around to play late-inning defence.

JAYS GET AN EFFIN' A FOR UNI SWITCH

Instant verdict on the new Jays uniforms:

The road jersey (new block lettering, instead of Toronto written in this script): Like the re-signing of John McDonald, this is a halfway measure. The new kit the Jays adopted in 2004 was Paul Godfrey's attempt to put his stamp on the team and fans pretty much rejected it the road version. You didn't see many of the grey jerseys at games.

This is better... one quibble is that the new lettering looks way too much like that of the Washington Nationals, which is a classic bit of Toronto-centric thinking from a team that should be trying to bring in the abandoned Expos fans. It's a bit derivative.

It looks like it was decided upon by a 6-3 vote in the Jays marketing department. Such is life for a newish franchise. At least the lettering and numerals actually make use of the colour blue.

The powder blue alternate jersey: Effin' A. The Jays actually went their own way on something for a change. It couldn't have anything to do with the fact that a lot of the fanbase is old enough to be nostalgic for an era it's not quite old enough to remember.

(Incidentally, judging by his mental arithmetic skills, never ask Sportsnet Connected's Brad Fay to give you change for a 20. He noted just now that the Jays last wore the powder blues when most of their current players in high school.

For the record, when the Jays last wore them in 1988, A.J. Burnett and Roy Halladay were 11 years old and Vernon Wells was 10. Alex Rios was seven and Jesse Litsch was all of three. Not even in the Florida school system are three-year-olds allowed to attend high school.

The Tao of Stieb has more.

JAYS MAKE THEIR MARCO

Now there's some synergy that would make any corporate drone proud: Blue Jays GM J.P. Ricciardi announced a trade for infielder Marco Scutaro while the Raptors were having Italian Day.

Scutaro, who of course drove had six RBI in Oakland's first-round playoff win over Minnesota in 2006, in is a better hitter over McGlovin and he can kind of play shortstop. It's great for Ricciardi, who probably doesn't mind having a modestly talented paisan around, someone that he can live vicariously through. Scutaro could either become a folk hero or by mid-season he'll be viewed as the poor man's Frank Menechino.

(By the way, T.K., this is written with total awareness that Scutaro was born in Venezuela and played for that country internationally, but his father is Italian.)

Sadly, it was c'est la vie in the weekend of Toronto sports...

• The Raptors lost wearing their Italian flag jerseys;
• Chuck Swirsky punctuated a breakaway dunk by Carlos Delfino by exclaiming, "Touchdown Toronto!" ... Alas, even if the Argos had been credited with an extra touchdown, they still would have lost the playoff game to Winnipeg;
• The Leafs scored a rare win over the Senators on Saturday night, so naturally, the Marlies lost for the first time in regulation all season. Fortunately, no one in Toronto actually noticed.

SILLY RICCIARDI...

Thanks to Maldonado Over Everything for voicing what every Jays fan was thinking after hearing about the Tigers flipping a couple minor-leaguers to the Braves for veteran shortstop Edgar Renteria.

Not everyone has a mancrush on McGlovin.

MLB PLAYOFFS: ROCKIES WIN, WEDGE ISSUE FOR CLEVELAND

Rockies win NLCS: There's officially no more homespun cliches, extemporanous remarks or shallow, fairly accurate observations to make about your National League champion Colorado Rockies.

About all that's left to point out is that North Delta, B.C.'s Jeff Francis getting to start Game 1 of the World Series on Oct. 24 -- on 11 days' rest to boot -- might be some karmic rebate for what happened to another British Columbia sports star, Steve Nash, in the NBA playoffs last spring. Nash and the Phoenix Suns were hosed out of their rightful spot in the NBA Finals, where they would have had their way against a team from Cleveland. Now the Rockies are headed to the big show, possibly against a team from, wait for it, Cleveland.

Fun fact: The Diamondbacks wore a different jersey in each game -- white, black, red and grey. That's why they lost, seriously. Incidentally, J.D. Drew's brother, Stephen Drew, the Arizona shortstop, made the penultimate out by popping out on a 3-0 pitch. Gagging just runs in the family.

Incidentally, minor goof on Sportsnet's part: Canada's home for the baseball playoffs cut away from the TBS broadcast before the series MVP was announced. Then the late-night edition of Connected didn't mention it either. (It was Matt Holliday, of course.)

Cleveland leads ALCS 2-1: A big piece of the puzzle for the Indians through three games is that their 7-8-9 hitters are outhitting their Red Sox counterparts.

Forty-year-old Kenny Lofton, who's hit in the 7-hole in all but one of the Indians' post-season games, smacked the two-run homer off Red Sox righty Daisuke Matsuzaka in the second inning that provided the margin of victory in a 4-2 win, of course. Lofton's big hit pointed out one major difference between the teams' lineups. The Indians' bottom third has an .805 OPS through seven post-season games, compared to Boston's sickly, sub-John McDonald .548 in the post-season.

Cleveland manager Eric Wedge has got something out of each of six players who have started a game in the 7, 8, or 9 spot, including Lofton, Casey Blake (who hit second for much of the season) Franklin Gutierrez, Trot Nixon and backup catcher Kelly Shoppach. Even weak-hitting Jason Michaels has a double in his only at-bat of the playoffs. (Oddly enough, the one game where Lofton was moved into the 6-hole, he went 0-for-5.)

While Wedge has been constantly tinkering, the Red Sox have stuck with the same trio in each game: Jason Varitek (who homered tonight but is 2-for-14 in the ALCS), Coco Crisp and Julio Lugo. All three are probably too important on defence to be benched, and lord knows the first six hitters in Boston's lineup can smack the ball around (except for J.D. Drew). However, it seems like their Achilles heel has been laid bare by a team that has good pitching, or can match the numbers put up by Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz, et al.; the Indians qualify on both counts. Now their bottom third has given them a Wedge issue, so to speak.

It's not terribly sexy stuff, but it does seem to be an overlooked factor. During Detroit's run through the American League playoffs last fall, the Tigers' 7-8-9 hitters had a .796 OPS in their team's eight-game march to the pennant. Their opponents, the Yankees and Oakland A's, mustered a combined .426. Maybe this should be discussed more often.

Keep this in mind: Dice-K would start Game 7 for Boston if the series go that far; Yahoo! Sports' Dan Wetzel has more on this.

MLB PLAYOFFS: ROCKIES A WIN AWAY

Rockies lead NLCS 3-0: There is no stopping Colorado, outside of a matchup with a genuine, bona fide American League club.

Nine two-out RBI across three games. Five infield hits. The Game 4 starter, Franklin Morales, could come out pitching right-handed (he's a lefty) and they would still probably win.

(Mental image that materialized after the Diamondbacks hit into a double play for the third straight inning: Recently sacked Jays hitting coach Mickey Brantley in a Bennigan's somewhere yelling at the TV mounted over the bar, "You have the right idea, Arizona. Keep swinging and putting the ball in play, they'll drop in eventually.")

There will be a Top 5 of most boring LCSes across the years. This one might be right up there.

Yorvit Torrealba (3-for-11, four RBI) or Brad Hawpe (4-for-9, three RBI) for series MVP?

Saturday -- Cleveland ties ALCS 1-1: The Indians are playing the Red Sox in the playoffs, Trot Nixon is a major factor and teams are taking close to five hours to win by games that are decided by football scores, 10-3, now 13-6. You know what that means?

It's officially the late 1990s again. Watch out for a Lou Bega comeback. No one wants that. A game that actually ends before midnight would be a welcome sign that our eardrums won't be soon be assaulted by Mambo No. 6.

Nixon coming back to bite the Bosox is long-overdue karmic retribution for another part-time outfielder, Bernie Carbo, being sold to Cleveland for 15 thousand pieces of silver in 1978. Yes, the Sox blew it that year, but some acts have to paid for long into the future. As for Éric Gagné getting the snowball rolling on the Indians' seven-run 11th inning, what's French for schadenfreude?

Fun fact: Tom Mastny, who got the win for Cleveland, was acquired from the Jays in exchange for John McDonald. That was his first stint with the Jays when he was just John McDonald, not McGlovin.

ACTUAL PREPARATION IN THE JAYS' DEN

Yes, it's a welcome sign the Jays went out and got Gary Denbo out of the Yankees organization as a hitting instructor. After taking a moment to clue in and realize it wasn't Fennis Dembo -- who totally kicked ass on the '88-89 Pistons in the Tandy version of the Lakers vs. Celtics and the NBA Playoffs computer game -- it was pretty exciting.

Denbo even ays he believes he can make John McDonald and his .612 on-base-plus-slugging one of the "elite guys." So clearly, he is kind of crazy, which is good, since kind of crazy and good pitching is all the Jays have playing in a division with the Evil Empires.

It should mean an end to tidy two-hour, 35-minute games. Jays hitters are going to be taught novel concepts like "laying off bad pitches" and "working counts" instead of Mickey Brantley's "if it feels good, do it" approach.

It was kind of defeatist to be arrogant toward the Yankees for their deliberate draggassery. They made an art form of making the eight minutes of actual action stretch out to close to four hours, but they were at least in the playoffs, too.

JAYS-ORIOLES: A FINE WHINE TO GO WITH A MICKEY AT THIS PITY PARTY

Wednesday -- Orioles 8, Jays 5: Our only demand was that the Jays would be able to hold a lead and keep the game relatively interesting only until the season premiere of The Office came on at 9 Eastern, and they did so. Chalk this up as a moral victory.

Tuesday -- Jays 8, Orioles 5: Jays fans and on-his-way-out hitting coach Mickey Brantley will always have this endless summer of 2007.

We will always be wistful about long, sultry nights of seeing runners left on base all night long, Roy Halladay throwing complete-game losses due to a total lack of run support and Aaron Hill and Vernon Wells flexing their warning-track-power muscles. Then there's Brantley's woe-is-me whine in Tuesday's National Post, "All the guys that stayed healthy this year had pretty good years."

Yeah, that would be Matt Stairs. One guy.

Alex Rios has the same park-adjusted OPS (118) that he had in 2006. Hill's walk-to-strikeout ratio has gone from being close to 1:1 to 1:2.5 (40 walks, 102 whiffs) this season, oh, but hey, he's going to break Roberto Alomar's club record for homers by a second baseman.

Then there was this on Chuck Swirsky's Fan 590 show (good catch by Drunk Jays Fans): "I went from having the best year in the history of the Toronto Blue Jays last year, to this year, with all sorts of injuries -- whether they're excuses or reasons."

Too funny. Brantley played four seasons in the American League, 1986 to '89, and the Jays were respectively second, third, fourth and third in runs scored in those seasons. Last season, in "the best year in the history of the Toronto Blue Jays," they were seventh. They weren't even that good last year.

Seriously, it's anticlimactic to read that Brantley is outta here. He hasn't been mentioned here since July 29, almost two months ago. The topic of his employment had been exhausted since it was so freaking obvious that he was a goner at the end of this season.

The game was over (despite Russ Adams' best efforts) after the Jays' eight-run first inning against their ex-mate Victor Zambrano. The Jays had so many runners circling the bases that Brantley probably said, "Ah, I'm getting dizzy. I'm gonna go back inside and take a nap." The only drama was how many names TSN's fill-in announcer Gord Miller would get wrong and how many times he would refer to his BFF, Sidney Crosby.

(Answer: He called Ramón Hernández "Ramón Martínez" and managed not to talk about Crosby. On the whole, Gordo didn't do a half-bad job.)

Monday -- Jays 11, O's 5: Two doubles and a single in four times at bat helped McGlovin push his OPS over the mythical .600 barrier. Man, he was a bargain at $2 million per year!

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

SAWX-JAYS: THE GREAT GAGNE GAG, IN BOTH SENSES OF THE WORD

Wednesday -- Jays 6, Sawx 1: Nice job, boys — now lay down for the Yankees this weekend just to twist the knife on the Massholes (not just the ones residing in New England) a little more.

Boston using Jonathan Papelbon to keep it a one-run game and Russ Freakin' Adams belting a grand slam? Too perfect. It was half-shocking that Jamie Campbell didn't fall out of the broadcast booth, he was so excited.

Now the Sawx lead is 1 1/2 games over the Yankees, who by the way, will pay setup man Luis Vizcaino about half as much this season as the Boston is shelling out for two months of Éric Gagné.


Tuesday -- Jays 4, Sawx 3: Remember who said it first that it was only proper to pity the Red Sox for feeling it was necessary to guarantee Gagné $3.5 million in bonuses as a rental player.

The Jays are going nowhere, but the joke on the Massholes is worth it after Gagné channeled Calvin Schiraldi for about five hitters and gift-wrapped a win for the Jays. Clay Buchholz could have done that for a much lower salary.

Monday -- Jays 6, Sawx 2: With three homers, Frank Thomas passed Mel Ott (pictured) on the career list, but first things first.

The debate over John Gibbons returning as manager is at a stalemate. Some people (wrongly) believe "oh, he's not that bad" and the rest of us are resigned to the gut feeling that he's J.P. Ricciardi's man.

There is an argument for keeping Gibbons that holds that since Vernon Wells, Roy Halladay, John McDonald, et al., re-signed without testing the free-agent market it's worth keeping him since players like the relaxed tone in the clubhouse. Fair enough, but one person's relaxed atmosphere is another's let-it-all-go-to-hell. (With Halladay, it's hard to buy that his re-signing was really about working under Gibbons; see below.*)

Judging by the Jays' long streaks over the past three years, it might be more the latter. This will be the third year in a row the club fails to have a win streak that lasts longer than the season's worst losing skid.

No, the Jays aren't the only team one can say that about. They are in a Hard Luck Five of American League clubs, but the other four are Baltimore, Kansas City, Seattle and Tampa Bay. Here's each team's winning percentage since the start of the '05 season:

Toronto: .510
Seattle: .472
Baltimore: .440
Tampa Bay: .403
Kansas City: .385

Granted, this is all provisional, there's luck involved and the American League is so competitive that 10-game win streaks don't just happen -- there hasn't even been one in the league this season. Still, as anyone who's passed Cliches 101 knows, you make your own luck. What does it say that the Jays have been as chronically unable to get on a big roll -- or avoid a protacted slide -- as teams that aren't within a couple postal codes of being in their neighbourhood (in terms of payroll or winning percentage) across the past three seasons?

By the way, each of those regal clubs have changed its manager at least once since Gibbons was put in charge of the Jays. It's not as simple as saying, "OK, let's turf Gibbons since that's what Peter Angelos would do," but it does bring it home. There is a standard expectation that a manager will create a setting that leads to a team having a hot spell once in a while and being able to nip the cold spells in the bud. With the Jays, that hasn't happened.

* (Obviously, this doesn't apply to Doc. He's a competition junkie and that type of athlete can play for almost any coach or manager... nothing can get in the way of competing.)

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

JAYS-YANKEES: LOVE-IN FOR McGLOVIN A GIVE-UP PLAY; YANKEES GRIEF PORN

Thursday -- Jays 2, Yankees 1: Too low-scoring, this win... throw it back. Scott Downs finally got a chance to throw in the ninth inning and did you see what happened? He got three outs!

Wednesday -- Yankees 4, Jays 1: No peace to be had tonight -- the game was over in the first inning after the Yankees cashed in a pair of two-out walks, and Mike Wilner wasn't on hand to edify us due to being off for Rosh Hashanah.

J.P. Ricciardi was on the FAN 590 post-game show and said John Gibbons will be the manager next season. Obviously, he's not going to come right out and say a change in the works, but the topper was Roger Lajoie (a poor fill-in) saying that was great and that Gibby "has a lot of fans. They're just not the ones who are calling in every night."

Oh, the classic silent majority argument. Sure. If there really is anyone who has this mythical good argument for why Gibbons should manage the Jays next season, nut up and call in. The call screeners will wave you right in.

Troy Glaus has been shut down. Speaking of which, read the Yahoo Sports! exclusive about baseball's apparent reluctance to cooperate with a steroids investigation. Of course, baseball can't act quite as unilaterally as the NFL; that's the reality of having a real union to protect the players' basic rights.

Tuesday -- Yankees 9, Jays... ah, to hell with it: Good thing Mike Mussina pitches the second game of this series for New York... he would have complained that the pre-game 9/11 anniversary grief porn-fest threw him out of his rhythm.

The less said about tonight the better. Did anyone notice the final total for the Yankees was nine runs on 11 hits. 9-11, get it? It's almost shocking that didn't cause the TV announcer who shall remain generic as a public service to cry on air, the way he was going on about the anniversary all night long (granted, in a blowout, the conversation can stray).

Whatever happened to giving people the dignity to deal with grief in private? It's offensive to keep pushing this down everyone's throat and it trivializes what thousands of people as individuals went through to hold some first-ball ceremony. All it does is stir up anger. The way it's remembered here is that in the fall of 2001, there was a lot of soul-searching and looking inward.

Maybe our lives were trivial, trite and meaningless and something should be done about it (this is written with a full awareness that it's ironic to point this out on a blog about sports). Yet all our corporate and political leaders could do was mouth focus-grouped platitudes, stoke our worst fears and say, "Go shopping."

Nothing changed... our lives became even more trivial. What was on TV at the same time, on a channel owned by the same media giant whose sports channel was showing the Jays and Yanks? The season finale of Canadian Idol. No irony there.

Wednesday, 7 -- Yankees righty Mussina (8-10, 5.51, 1.50 WHIP) vs. Dustin McGowan (10-8, 3.90, 1.21 WHIP): Mussina hasn't gone past the sixth inning in a month, so he should breeze through seven solid no problem.

THE LOVE-IN FOR McGLOVIN

The best reaction to the news the Jays gave shortstop John McDonald and his alleged bat a two-year, $3.8-million contract is to accept it with conditions.

Giving nearly $2 million per year to McGlovin' is settling, pure and simple. What team gives a 32-year-old who's roster flotsam and can't hit for sour apples a multi-year deal because he works hard? Did John Ferguson Jr. win first prize in the Rogers Run The Jays For A Day contest and show up on Tuesday to collect it?

Sorry not to buy in to the feel-good story of the season. If I wanted heartwarming stories, I'd watch the Slice Channel. There's tons of similar players in Triple-A who tug at the heartstrings since they are very good at baseball, just not good enough. Instead of love-in for McGlovin, it should be a like-in.

Anyway, first condition: The Jays explain why they are giving up so easily in the search for middle infield help. The market is thin, but why not deal from strength (pitching) for a prospect (Astrubal Cabrera) or someone who needs a change of scenery (Josh Barfield)? Is there that much fear of putting Aaron Hill at shortstop? Is McDonald really $1.4 million better than Ray Olmedo?

(The Dodgers' Rafael Furcal is not necessarily an answer... he's having a lousy year and his home/road splits suggest he's hardly an antidote for a team that can't win on the road.)

Second condition: Admit the timing is a bit curious, coming hours before the first home game since the Troy Glaus performance-enchancers bombshell hit the news. (Glaus might not play tonight, though.)

Third condition: Demanding better than league-average production in 2008 from 6 of the other 8 slots in the lineup instead of the current 1 out of 8.

Last condition: McGlovin has to catch a fly ball in his cap.

Hopefully, this is just a tempest in a retro blue-and-white Jays cap. It's 2% of the team payroll, but it also reeks of being a give-up play. Fortune favours the bold, J.P.