Home-field advantage, as you may have noticed, is much more pronounced down Florida way. The Jays romped yesterday at Dunedin against a Reds lineup whose most potent hitter was Aaron Boone. Today in Winter Haven, the Indians posted five field goals against a Jays starting nine that had Tom Wilson batting cleanup (though the pitchers who got hammered were certainly familiar names). As you can tell, teams very rarely send their regulars out on the road during the spring -- the veterans have earned the right to avoid the bumpy bus rides up and down the Gulf Coast. Just another reason not to take ST wins and losses any more seriously than whether it's sunny or cloudy outside.

Doug Creek quite simply is a disaster against right handed hitting, even those such as the light hitting Coco Crisp.

In the past three years against lefties he's held them to a respectable .202/.319/.324 in 262 at bats...unfortunately the high walk rate nullifies much of the good done by the batting average being so low.

Righties are a different story...in 397 at bats they have hit .262/.393/.481 rate. Borbon was similarly disastrous against righties. Unless Creek is used as a *strict* one batter specialist...i.e. a lefty hitter or two for whom there is virtually no chance of pinch hitting...he's going to be hit hard regularly.

And even against lefties, there's a good chance that he'll walk the batter. I suppose you get what you pay for though and there's a small chance Creek could get hot and provide a strong 50 innings in 2003...Alan Embree's numbers were not overwhelming before 2002.