Weekend Whims and Notions

In lieu of actual thoughts and ideas, we offer up something somewhere in the neighbourhood. Be thankful. Gobble gobble.

Ricky Romero Will Hang In There
If there is one notion about the Jays that has continued to resonate with us in the time since the season concluded, it's just how much we're impressed with the way that Ricky Romero pitched down the stretch. Over his first two full seasons, Romero scuffled down the stretch as he wore down, posting ERAs over 5.00 in August and September of 2009 and over 4.00 in the same months of 2010. This season, he kept a tight 2.05 ERA in August and 3.32 in September to bring his season into dry dock with a 2.92 ERA for the full campaign.

(You can feel free to quibble now with your xFIPpery and what not. We don't particularly care. We're talking about the past, not projections. But have at it if it makes you happy.)

The numbers are one thing, but what we find impressive in retrospect is the manner in which Romero pulled those last two months together. It seemed as though he struggled with his stuff and with locating his off-speed pitched as he wore down through the seasons end...and yet he was still able to pitch (P-I-T-C-H!) himself out of bad counts and jams with guile and by pounding the zone.

It's one thing to be able to utilize an impressive arsenal to blow away hitters, but when this Jays team ends up playing October baseball, they'll need a pitcher at the front of their rotation who will be able to get outs when he's bagged and ground down from an endless season. Ricky Ro is going to be that sort of pitcher.

Sympathy for A-Rod
As we watched Alex Rodriguez leave the field to choruses of boos after a couple of high-leverage strikeouts, we felt more than a tinge of sympathy for the Yankees star. (Wait...Can we call him a "Yankees Star" if he's not a "True Yankee"? We forget how that works.)

Rodriguez is an easy punching bag because he has been so nakedly desirous of the mantle of the Most Important Player in Baseball. He seemingly works hard to be liked, in spite of the fact that he shouldn't care because, you know...he's a really good baseball player, and that should probably be enough for him and the braying hordes in the Bronx. Of course, his desire for stature is what led him to take the money that, ultimately, only the Yankees could pay, so maybe our sympathy should be tempered.

In that moment of pathos, there was a vaguely insane and overly sleep-deprived part of us that started to ponder what a change of scenery might mean to Rodriguez, and what he might look like in a Jays uniform as he closed in on Barry Bonds' all-time home run record. We realize it's a kooky notion, though we actually think A-Rod would find something resembling a warm-ish welcome in Toronto. Or at least something more than outright disdain.

Rodriguez would likely have to move from third base (supposing that the hot corner remains under the dominion of Brett Lawrie), though a move to first base and/or DH over the next six years wouldn't necessarily be the worst thing for his health. There's also a small matter of the six years and a whole lot of money ($128 million, give or take) that it would require to keep A-Rod fed and watered over that time, and the trade off of having the Yankees eat any of that would be giving up prime prospects to a divisional rival.

Maybe we just want to see Alex Rodriguez scamper into the sunset without the litany of brickbats tossed his way. One day, he'll be gone, and baseball fans will have spent so little time appreciating what a great ballplayer he truly was.

New Unis Here, New Unis There
As we wait with bated breath for the next iteration of the Jays' logo and uniforms to be unveiled, we noted with interest the confirmation of the new Miami Marlins logo this week. We hadn't paid much mind to the initial leaks of the logo last month, but now that it seems to be the real deal, count us in the minority who really likes it. Both the art deco font of the logo's "M" and the orange and blue exude Miami's own particular style, and we're looking forward to seeing how they can be executed through the full uniform itself.

An odd sidenote to this is that many of those who we've read mocking the unorthodox logo and it's lack of adherence to classic style are precisely the same people who hurl stats and lampoon those who are locked into an old perception of how the game should be played.

Why are new metrics good, but new looks bad?

Other Tired Memes
You know what is more annoying than the play-by-play and colour guys in the booth this postseason (and frankly, throughout the season)? Hearing bloggers and reading endless tweets about how terrible these guys are. Stop and relax. You don't need to agree with every word that comes out of their mouths over the span of four hours, nor do you need to pull apart every statement made therein. If you think you're smarter and better informed than the people broadcasting the games, so be it. But keep it to yourself, because it's tiresome to read all of the quibbles over every syllable that Ron Darling utters.

We're not saying that we always agree with what's said. But this is just another area where the hardcore baseball fans get whipped up into meaningless tizzies for the sake of their own aggrandizement. That's cute and all, but save your disdain for the dude next to you. He might be able to tune you out better than we.

Baseball books offer unending stacks of misery

It probably shouldn't come as any great surprise that Selena Roberts' A-Rod takedown has floundered and fallen off the sales charts, only weeks after its debut.

Last month, we had some time to kill at a Chapters megastore, and being the incorrigible baseball fan that we are, we couldn't help but saunter over to the sports section of the store to see what books we could add to our mounting pile of shamefully unread tomes. What we were met with was depressing enough to make us literally (and I mean literally) recoil and walk away.

The baseball section was a wall that was almost completely filled with books focused on steroids, fallen superstars, and fallen superstars who took steroids. It was more than a little depressing, and it really made us wonder if book publishers truly think that there is such a huge market for these exposés on performance enhancers and their users that they would focus on this one small aspect of the current state of the sport to the absolute exclusion of everything else.

It's not to say that we want to stick our head in the sand and pretend that PEDs are not present or that they are not relevant. But do we really want to spend any more of our time digging into the foibles of Alex Rodriguez or Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens or José Canseco or Kirk Radomski when we've heard and read so much about them and their disgraced brethern over the past five years that we couldn't possibly stomach anything more?

Some of the best sports writing of all time has been done on the sport of baseball. The game lends itself to poetic and thoughtful discussion, whether if it be on the history of the game, the changes in how we look at the game through statistical analysis, or the endless debates on the relative merits of players and in-game strategies.

That's not to say that you can't have interesting books that look at the impact of steroids and other performance enhancers: Will Carroll's The Juice still stands up as a must-read for anyone who wants to have an informed opinion on what these subastances do (and don't do), and what is their place in the whole baseball dialectic. But what distinguishes Carroll's book from many of the others is that it approaches the topic with a genuine sense of wonder and intellectual curiosity. Most of these other books seem start with the notion that steroids have ruined baseball, then set out to point fingers, assess blame and castigate the players, the game and, ultimately, the fans for being mindlessly complicit in the disintegration and demise of the grand old game.

On the contrary, we've found over the years is that baseball fans, by and large, are contemplative and intellectually curious people who like to dig deeper and learn more about the game. It strikes us that it would take a certain level of self-loathing to sit down and read volume after volume on how the sport that you're passionate about is a cesspool full of frauds.

And so, as we look forward to our summer reading, we plan on digging into our pile of unread books and reading a classic baseball book that truly captures the essence of all that is great in the game: Jim Bouton's Ball Four. We're looking forward to it.

Everybody sucks

When the word came out over the weekend that Alex Rodriguez had tested positive for something or other at some point in the recent past, our first thought was: "Grrrreaaat...here we go again."

Maybe we should care more about the sanctity of the game, and fair play, and the inviolability of the game's milestones and records. But at this point, we just don't give a shit.

If there is anything good that has come out of this week's events, it may be that A-Rod provides an exclamation mark onto the end of this era. Maybe now, we can just accept that it is impossible to look at the last 15 years of baseball and pluck out the inconvenient and unpalatable numbers of a few bad eggs, and just accept the fact that everybody was probably doing something.

People have been trying to separate the black-hatted bad guys from the noble and righteous good guys in all of this mess so that they can align themselves with the pure essence of the game. Our souls were all going to be cleansed in seven or eight years' time when Rodriguez (the personally flawed but professionally impeccable slugger) claimed the home run record from the dastardly Barry Bonds. What a relief that would have been.

Except that it was all a load of hooey anyways, and people need to just get over themselves.

We need to stop relying on multiple anonymous sources and ill-gotten grand jury testimony to root out the cheaters, because it will only prove to be an endless and futile proposition to try to separate the good guys from the bad.

(Wasn't there a time when four anonymous sources wasn't enough to forge ahead on a story? If you want to write a piece about how players took the easy way out and circumvented the virtuous path, wouldn't it be best if you yourself didn't circumvent the more difficult path of getting an on-the-record source?)

We need to stop discounting the achievements of hitters from this era, like Rafael Palmeiro, Sammy Sosa, and Mark McGwire, because there's really no way of distinguishing their achievements from those who got caught. It's become a fool's errand.

Knowing what we now know, is there anyone who feels as though they could take the information gleaned this week and make the claim that Carlos Delgado rightfully deserves the 2003 AL MVP award since we know that A-Rod took performance enhancers?

Not to imply anything...but we're not about to stake out that supposed moral high ground for ourselves.

Guess who's back?

It's perpetual Jays farmhand and alleged PES user Howie Clark, who was signed as a minor league free agent by the Jays according to Baseball America.

(And now, we pause so that future anonymous commenters can begin losing their shit over the fact that the Jays signed Howie Clark and not Manny Ramirez. Annnnnnnnd...there. That should do it.)

Clark may well have another opportunity to discern the difference between an Alex Rodriguez squeal and Johnny Mac calling him off an infield fly. Then again, if Howie sees action at the Major League level at any point this season, the Jays are going to have bigger problems than A-Rod's poor sportsmanship.

Welcome back, Howie! We barely knew you were gone!

A League of His Own - A-Rod Opts Out

A-Rod is bigger than Major League Baseball and certainly bigger than the World Series. That had to be his secondary message yesterday as he announced that he was opting out of his contract despite the MLB protocol that teams not make major announcements during the World series. But I guess he is not a team (yet).

Given his decision to leave a team that could absorb his contract and build a winning team, he will soon be back in the Texas scenario -- toiling at the bottom of the standings somewhere but collecting big cheques. At least Barry Bonds got into that scenario in part because he wanted to play in his hometown. For A-Rod, there seems to be nothing driving his career decisions apart from being the highest paid person in the world. To do the math, A-Rod has less character than Barry Bonds.

Joe Torre doesn't care for your video game monkeyshines

Yankees manager Joe Torre got his hernia in a snit this week, when a sixth inning jumbotron video game promotion degenerated into a festival of A-Rod-targeted beanballs.

"It's ridiculous," Torre said after the Yanks beat Toronto, 4-1. "Some of the videos they have period, it's all about violence. There are certain cities, one of our players gets knocked down and they start laughing and cheering. I don't understand it."

"To me, this game is about playing it and not about hurting somebody. To me, if you show it at a ballpark, you're telling the youngsters it's OK to do it and that's not a good message to send. I don't know if it's hockey - it's a little more of a violent game than ours - and I'm not sure if that's a carryover in what they do or how they promote.

"It certainly lacks good sense, I think."

Torre offered no comment on the Chili Pepper Races.

Truth be told, we'd like to see the promotions staff figure a way next year to include Alex Rodriguez in a jumbotron game of Leisure Suit Larry. That would really set Torre off. (Supposing, of course, that Rodriguez is any of Torre's concern next year...somehow, we don't imagine that he'll have the option of hitting A-Rod eighth anytime beyond this season.)

Joe Torre brushes back Jays' A-Rod video game (NY Daily News)

You don't suppose someone at the Star is insinuating something

On the weekend that our third baseman gets popped for PEDs, that's an awfully peculiar headline for the Star to drop.

We enjoyed that 9-2 loss a little too much

Matt Stairs would have given A-Rod a right good tunin', given half the chance. He's instantly become our pick to replace Gibby next year.

Of course, all that glaring from the third base dugout didn't do a lick of good on the scoreboard, as the Jays promptly went to sleep at the plate for the rest of the night. (Except for Frank Thomas, whose swing looks remarkably quicker over the past week.)

Throw a little more gas on that fire, Gas Can
We haven't seen the quotes printed yet, but in the post game interviews with Josh Towers, he called out Yankees first base coach Tony Pena as a "quitter" for his vaguely graceless exit from the Royals a few years back. Nice. Then again, Towers will also be looking at a graceless exit himself in a few weeks, if not days, given his five inning, five earned run outing tonight.

Rios is the Jays' biggest star, and he's about to cost them
We noted with interest that Clemens plunked Rios in the seventh, which we'll take as proof positive that other teams now consider him the biggest star on the Jays. (Okay, we admit that it's a little specious, but go with us here.) With today's signing of Eric Byrnes to a three-year, $30 million contract, the bar has been set for the deal that the Jays will need to cough up to keep Rios this offseason.

Hey A.J.! How's the arm?

That's what a drunken superfan yelled out at Jays' pitcher A.J. Burnett in the fifth inning of his rehab start for the Syracuse Chiefs in Ottawa versus the Lynx.

A.J., ever the yuckster, gave the heckler the thumbs up.

Burnett looked very good against a poor AAA lineup, giving up three hits and one run, while striking out seven in five innings in the Chiefs 5-4, 14 inning win. His curve ball was moving, and he seemed to have full velocity on the fastball.

Noticed this weekend
For one reason or another, Adam Lind stayed nailed to the bench all weekend. We haven't found his name on the minor league DL, although that info isn't always available. Lind hasn't played since July 29.

Meanwhile, with the Big Club
As we headed into the this week's Jays-Yankees series, our thoughts turned briefly to A-Rod and his "mine" or "ha!" tomfollies, perhaps because of Howie Clark's recent designation for assignment. We were wondering if it is way too late to throw at him, at least even just once? Wouldn't you know, Lil Litschy throws behind Rodriguez in the second inning of the Jays' 5-4 loss to the Evil Empire. Somehow, it all was way less than we would have hoped for.

An ongoing concern
Troy Glaus' season continues to spiral downward. Glaus's last homer was July 22 in Minny, and since then, the big guy has four hits (in 44 at bats). He also hasn't had multiple hits in a game since hitting two singles against Seattle.

We're too distraught to even comment

We don't know what was worse: Accardo having a Armando Benitez-like meltdown? Or seeing the expression on that stupid prat A-Rod's face as he came home with the winning run in the Yanks' 3-2 win.

Sharing our frustrations: Drunk Jays Fans, Out of Left Field, Fire Gibbons.

And moreover: Hum and Chuck.

And also: Blair takes down Gibby like a drunken uncle wrestling a six year-old.

Jays Wuss Out. Lose.

(AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

Despite the pre-game speculation, not even a hair was mussed on A-Rod's head by the mild mannered Jays. Instead, he helped the Yankees to crush the team with his 2-run shot in his second at bat off of a batting practice toss from Gas Can. Now, we think that it would have been stupid to throw at the guy. The best way to get back at him was to shut him down and beat his team. But apparently that was too much to ask of a team that seems afraid to win more than one game every two days. Weak.

1 hour, 50 minutes

That's how long it took Roy Halladay to beat Mark Buehrle 2-0 tonight for his 100th career win. Which means the good folks at Sportsnet Connected are freaking right now.

Halladay (7 IP, 7 Ks, 0 BBs) not only went to the mound tonight without his appendix, but he also traded in his rugged beard for a A.J. Burnett Signature Model Junior Goatee.

Doc also threw a cutter that Our Pal Sal Fasano helped fix, which begs the question: when Gregg Zaun comes back next week, do they send Fasano to Syracuse, or do they leave Jason Phillips at the curb?

Bonus Coverage: Yes Network - the State Broadcaster of the Evil Empire - has posted a postgame interview with A-Rod after last night's douchetacular display. They don't allow the videos to be embedded (EVIL!), but you can catch the Rodriguez in all his douchey glory right here.

Maybe he was preoccupied with thoughts of muscular, she-male types.

Jackass

The Jays were down 7-5 to the Yankees in the top of the ninth -- A-Rod at first and Matsui at third --two out. Posada lifted an infield fly between 3rd base and second as callup Howie Clark (3B) and SS John MacDonald eased towards the ball to make the easy play. But they didn't. The ball dropped between them. Why? As the replys clearly show and as the Jays' infielders will tell you, somebody (aka Alex Rodriguez) other than Clark or MacDonald yelled "Mine!" causing each player to think that the other was going to field the ball. How clever. Something that we want young kids to emulate. The equivalent of an office worker forging a letter to get a coworker fired. Of draining the brake fluid on an adversary's car. Troy Glaus put it best -- Not since I think 'Major League II,' the movie; I think that's the only time I've ever seen it on the field," Glaus said. "I've never heard of someone doing it and I've never seen anybody do it. That's not proper. That's not the right thing to do."

What did A-Rod have to say about it? "I could care less," Rodriguez said. "We're looking not to be swept. It really doesn't make a difference; we won. Those guys have their opinions, our guys have ours. I'm fine with that."

He's an "A-1" Jackass.

A-Rod Seeks Answers to Yankees' Woes At Brass Rail

That bastian of serious journalism, the NY Post reported today that Alex Rodriguez was spotted in Toronto hanging with a blonde who is not his wife. To add to the intrigue, the unnamed witness also saw the pair have dinner together and slip in to the infamous Brass Rail strip club on Yonge Street. Almost as wise a move as playing the bunt that was obviously going foul in last night's game.