• Halladay wasn't at his very sharpest. They were hitting ground balls off him, as per usual, but they were a little harder than when he is at his absolute best. When a pitcher can dominate when he's not even at the top of his game, you're looking at something very special. How good it is to see Doc back in form.
• One of the most exciting things about this year's offense, and one that hasn't been commented on much, is that there are no holes in the lineup. (Assuming, of course, that Rios and Johnson continue doing something close to what they were doing last night.) Hill, batting in the 8 slot, didn't get a hit, but he looked like he had some life in his bat. Adams, in the 9 slot, was patient and effective at the plate. And Bengie made a contribution here and there. :-)
• Hill will be just fine at second. He won't make the otherworldly plays, but he's got good range. He'll make it look easier than it actually is, too, because he scoots over in front of the ball. There won't be many of those flashy dives or backhand plays, since he won't need to do that.
• It's been ages since a Jays pitcher totally dominated a hitter the way Ryan owned Morneau in the ninth. Duane Ward used to have that sort of dominance. There was approximately a 2% chance that Morneau was going to do anything useful.
  

Great summary.

Roy looked pretty good for this early except for the 2 hanging breaking ball's which went deep.

BJ looked like BJ.

Rios looked like what many of us think he will one day become on a consistent basis.

Benji still looks like a Molina and hit probably the longest homerun a Jays catcher has ever hit?

Overbay and Adams had a jitter..... Hill looked pretty cool at 2nd.

Wells will win a gold glove this year.

Glaus didn't look too bad at 3rd.

only 161 more games to go but I think April will give us a good idea of how far, or not, this team can go.

He'll make it look easier than it actually is, too, because he scoots over in front of the ball.

Hill's a great natural athlete and it shows in his side-to-side motion.  I wonder if he played basketball?  Basketball players usually practice that type of movement extensively.

you have to make an attempt towards second to be able to be tagged out

Rule 7.10(c) :

Any runner shall be called out, on appeal, when... (c) He overruns or overslides first base and fails to return to the base immediately, and he or the base is tagged;

and Rule 7.08(c):

Any runner is out when... (c) He is tagged, when the ball is alive, while off his base. EXCEPTION: A batter runner cannot be tagged out after overrunning or oversliding first base if he returns immediately to the base;

The "gray area" in the rules concerns the interpretation of "immediately".  Players and coaches normally employ the shorthand rule Pistol references; if you make the slightest attempt to run to second, you haven't returned "immediately" and you're liable to be tagged.  (This is how Pat Tabler explained it on the broadcast as well).

Of course, Adams didn't make a move towards second base (he turned that way, but only to observe where the ball went).  If this were a court case and I were representing the Twins, I'd be quite happy to claim that the ordinary meaning of "immediately" means that Adams' look to where the ball was meant that he did not "immediately" return, but thankfully baseball doesn't work like that... except that normally players are taught (where possible) to return by turning away from second (i.e. to his right, towards the stands/dugout) so no one can infer you're making an attempt for second.  But that's not required and umpires don't call it that way.

question about BJ -- my buddy at the game insists the gun had his fastball at a leisurely 89. first of all, can anyone confirm this? and second, does the guy not regularly throw around 95?

thanks,

cade.

I'm surprised no one mentioned that horrible call that robbed Hill of a base hit and robbed the Jays of a man on first and third with only 1 out.

That was a bang-bang play, not a horrible call.  When Hill's foot touched the bag, the ball was probably no more than 6-12 inches from the glove judging from the replay.  At a conservative estimate, foot hit bag and ball hit mitt about 0.007 seconds apart.  Can you make time discriminations like that 100% of the time?

A couple thoughts:

• Personally, I didn't feel as if the call on Hill was that bad. If anything, the Adams call made up for it. It's a stupid rule, but if the ump was a "letter of the law" type of ump, Adams would have been gone.
• Molina had a great game, but I think an underrated aspect of his game is the way he calls a game. The changeup to end the game on Morneau was genius (pumped up crowd, pumped up pitcher, Morneau on his front foot the first couple pitches), and if you look after the K, Ryan is pumped for the save, but he's also pumped about the last pitch call that Molina made. Morneau was definitely lookin either slider or fastball...
• Error or two notwithstanding, Overbay is going to save his fellow infielders from a lot of throwing errors. Great scoop in the 1st. 

I was under the impression that first base umpires make these call based on sounds since bang-bang plays happen too fast to be discerned by eye. 

Correct.  The safe/out call is always made initially by ear; the eye only serves to confirm that the ball was actually caught.

 That's why they're called 'bang-bang' plays.  Can you see a bang?  No.  You here them.  Since a foot hitting a bag and a ball hitting a glove make distinct sounds, I'm confident that I could make the right call almost every time.

Not when they're that close.  You ear doesn't have perfect temporal acuity; the sound is "smeared out" as your ear registeres it and it smears even more as it's interpreted by the brain.  I'd be dumbfounded if you could find me a human being whose hearing system was acute enough to make the right call on a bang-bang play with an 0.007 second time lag 100% of the time.  Such a person wouldn't merely be a medical marvel, I would think that they would literally have super-human hearing.

Of course, Cristian, you may well be superhuman and I just hadn't heard about it yet. :)

That doesn't account for the problem of sound travel; sound travels at about 1100 feet per second.  If we assume that a first baseman can stretch six feet from the bag (not unreasonable) to catch a throw, that means that the sound from the foot hitting the bag will arrive 0.006 seconds earlier than the ball hitting the mitt.  Since a throw from an infielder travelling 80 miles per hour travels nine inches in 0.006 seconds, the "smearing effect" of the time lag represented by the extra distance between the glove and the ump (instead of the bag and the ump) makes it impossible to tell with certainty which one hit first.

Next time on "Ask Dr. Science" we'll talk about the Coriolis Effect!  Don't miss it!

NFH, you don't have to re-watch the game unless you really want to.  Most of Ryan's pitches were shown on Sportsnet as between 83 and 89.  Only a couple topped 90, and even then were in the 90-93 range.  This surprised me as well until I recalled that Burnett was the one getting all the drool over his 100 mph fastball and no one really talked about Ryan in this vein, just that he had the deceptive lefty delivery.  And that he was 6"6 and 260 pounds, according to Jamie Campbell last night.  (But that poundage seems really huge, though.  Baseball Reference has him as 230).  My Dad was blown away by Ryan's presence, as was Morneau for the last out.  Other notes:

The Good
* Catching El Presidente on a pretty bad night.
* Bengie is on pace for 162 homers.  (NOTE: I really need to get HDTV, it looked definitely foul on a cathode ray tube until they made the call).
* Best of all: Rios! Rios! Rios!  (On pace for .600 AVG and 162 homers).  The Hinske contract looks even more annoying this morning.

The Bad
* V-Dub's hacking early in the count and whiffing at bad pitches is painful to watch.  I don't want to get used to it.
* Overbay and Adams are on target for 162 errors, although it really should be 324 for Overbay because it appeared that the throw was accurate.  Might be the non-HDTV again.
* On the other hand, a naked eye could have seen Hill was safe on the GIDP.  Tie goes to the runner, my ass.

The Ugly
* Barry, there's no crying in baseball.  And the syringes.  This is just getting brutal.  I even read in the Globe that Dan "Nice Toronto Boy" Shulman would rather go AWOL than call his run at the record(s).  Please, get injured and sit out the year.

JJ

P.S.  This is the last time I'll include "on pace for" and "on target for" in my comments. ;-)

Best of all: Rios! Rios! Rios!  (On pace for .600 AVG and 162 homers). 

Let's not get carried away with predicting 162 homers for Rios.  As we discussed in the Chat last night, the proper progression is

2004: 1 home run
2005: 10 home runs
2006: 100 home runs

leading, of course, to the logical conclusion that in 2007 he will hit 1000 home runs. Of course, as I pointed out then, it's not reasonable to think that a player could hit 1000 home runs in a season, however 840 home runs in a season is an achievable total for Rios (if he applies himself) 

Craig, I appreciate the optimism and enthusiasm, but I am pretty sure no player in the history of the sport even has 840 plate appearances in a season. So you're looking at about 675 Rios homers, max in 2007.

You're way out of your depth here, Doherty!  WAY out.

Record for PA in a season is, IIRC, about 790.  (And if you had a guy who homered every time up, you'd be insane not to bat him leadoff and play him in every game).  Could I be wrong, it the record more like 750?  If so, I will stand slightly corrected.

As we established, if you really did hit a home run every time up, you would take the 500 outs that the #1 hitters normally make and turn them into runs, generating extra plate appearances down the lineup.  A leadoff hitter would claim about 500/9 (56) of those extra plate appearances.  However, the team would lose some PA from home games since they'd almost never bat in the ninth or extra innings.  Call it 150 PA lost... meaning that it's closer to 40 extra PA.  So you could get to at least 830, and 840 wouldn't be unreasonable.

Lenny Dykstra had 773 PAs in 1993.  That might be the record.

Re: Ryan throwing 89mph.

Buck Martinez was interviewed subsequent to the free agent signing of BJ Ryan. As a Baltimore analyst last season he advised that Ryan is NOT a 90's mph pitcher. His delivery is the key as it is deceptive. It throws the hitters timing off.

I was under the impression that first base umpires make these call based on sounds since bang-bang plays happen too fast to be discerned by eye.  That's why they're called 'bang-bang' plays. 

The way I was taught for plays at first was to look at the bag and listen to the ball hitting the glove.  I'd watch the fielder get the ball and once I knew he was throwing to first I then focused on the base.  I didn't umpire beyond Babe Ruth (which is age 13-17 with major league rules) so that might not be the way they do it at higher levels (or possibly I was just taught wrong).  Next game watch the umpire at a close call at 1B - I believe you'll see him staring down at the bag (which also allows him to make sure the 1B is touching the base).

By the way, what ever happened to 'tie goes to the runner?'

There's no such thing.  The difference might be 1 millionth of a second, but one event happened before the other.  The way I do it is if you can't see that he's out he's safe.

Re: BJ Ryan's velocity

Interesting.  I could've sworn Ryan threw in the mid- to high-90s.  I guess it's the size and southern drawl that made me think he was a typical country fireballer.

After watching Schoeneweis run the ball up there in the low- to mid-90s (also a surprise), I thought something must've been wrong.  I mean, even from a couple hundred feet away, it was obvious Schoeneweis was throwing considerably harder.

Being a Jays fan, though, I guess this is good news.  If Ryan dominated in 2005 with the same quality stuff, I imagine he'll do the same thing this year.  It's just a little worrisome that the Jays spent so much money on a guy who, last night anyway, looked like a crafty lefty.  It's not what I expected, but maybe I'm just being a baseball snob.  I guess there's more than one way to get hitters out.

Great blog, by the way.  Intelligent, well-considered comments across the board.

"Look and listen".  Pistol is right now that I think about it; you don't go by sound alone but you have to use the sound.  I don't have the same level of umpire training that he does!  (Next year, I tell myself...)

I believe Ryan started warming up the second SS entered the game.

But my friend and I both had the same comment.  With 4 outs left and a one run lead, a lefty hitter at the plate, don't you want your $9m closer in there?  I guess it's good that SS got an appearance but as the games get more urgent I would hope they occasionally go to Ryan an out or two earlier in high leverage situations. 

Over the course of 162 games there will be more than enough innings to go around for all of the relievers.  The tightest situations should always belong to BJ though if possible.

RE: The look and listen / bang-bang plays at first.

Do you think this approach makes it more difficult for umps on those plays that do not involve a hard throw from across the infield, such as an underhand toss from second / pitcher?

After all, the audible sound of the ball hitting the glove is going to be significantly harder to pick up in that situation.

R Billie, I see your point, but I'd rather see shorter and more frequent Ryan appearances rather than longer and less frequent.  It's not a one-size-fits-all strategy; I just think the Jays as constructed will play a lot of close games (unlike, say, the Yankees and Red Sox).  Moreover, the Jays have a fine setup corps and there's no issue with trusting them in situations like last night.

Once you stretch B.J. out over more than an inning, you risk him being unavailable the next night and you definitely can't use him in three straight nights.  I'm not saying to only use him in ninth-inning save situations, mind you.  I'm just saying that one-inning outings should be the rule because one Ryan inning can be a valuable chip in a close game -- of which there will be many.