Marcum's line for 5 starts: 24IP, 3 HRs, 10 walks, 17 strikeouts, 3.75 ERA.  There have been 2 Yankee starts (one with a very early hook), 1 Oakland, 1 Texas and 1 Baltimore. He's been a bit lucky with the ERA while starting.  As a former shortstop, he helps himself with the glove too, as he did last night.

A fair projection for him at the start of the season was that he could give you 170 innings of league average pitching.  Personally, I think that he can do a little better than that, and do it with consistency. 

I also noted Marcum's fielding ability.  He is quite nimble out there.

Bringing SS into that situation makes me cringe each time.  I did not think Shaun's stuff was gone, he had another out in him.

Schoeneweis has not pitched as poorly as his ERA would indicate. He has been quite unlucky, but the deterioration in his strikeout rate while facing a diet of mostly lefties is partly to blame.  Two outs, bottom of the seventh, runner on second, with a 1 run lead is a high-leverage situation.  The ideal use of resources would, of course, be to bring in Ryan there for four batters, and then have someone else end the game.  Failing that revolution in thinking, I would have been happier to see Scott Downs come on than Schoeneweis.  Downs had not pitched since Saturday's 3.1 innings (39 pitches).

[re Marcum] A fair projection for him at the start of the season was that he could give you 170 innings of league average pitching.

From your mouth to God's ear, Mike. There is plenty of room on this roster for league average pitching at $300K. Let's do the Costco thing and get a whole bunch of 'em all cellophaned together.

I think it's safe to say the SS Loogy will be leaving the Toronto harbour this off-season. Whether he's worth $2M a year pitching well, in an oh so minimal Loogy capacity, is debatable. This version of Schoeneweis the team certainly doesn't need at any price. May as well just futz around with Downs and Taller for minimal cost.

And what of the good Cabrera only rearing his head against the Jays? Gotta trade for him if he's going to continue killing them like that. It will be interesting to see if Mazzone can get Cabrera locked in for the balance of the season. There's a lot of talent there to be harnessed.

I was at last night's game. The game-tying grounder off Schoeneweis wasn't hit all that hard - it was a medium-speed grounder that happened to go right up the middle. After that, he wasn't so good.

As for Speier and his injury - I've never been a pitcher, but I would guess that almost everybody is pitching with a certain amount of "normal" pain at this point in the season. It's just a question of whether it's anything serious and whether the pitcher is still effective.

Did anyone hear what happened to Rosario? He left the game in the middle of the eighth, and McGowan was given as much time as he needed to warm up, so it was some sort of injury. But I haven't seen any reports on it.

Dave Till, Roasrio left with what is being called a back injury.

I was just looking at the Jays lineup for today against Eric Bedard, and remembered a conversation around here when Bengie Molina signed, saying how he wouldn't keep raking left-handed pitching. Well, taking a look at his stats, Molina should never, EVER, be on the bench when a lefty is on the mound. He is hitting .340/.369/.519 with 5 HR and only 7 K's in 106 AB. Compare that to his righty splits of .237/.280/.349.

http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/mlb/stats/mlb_individual_player_splits.jsp?playerID=134260&statType=1

This is Molina's 2nd consecutive year with those wild platoon splits. I don't think he has missed a single game against LHP this year.

I just want to point an interesting article on pinch hitting by Andy Dolphin on the BP website at http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=5404. Of particluar interest for Jay fans is that, of all the managers from 2000 to 2005 who brought in a pinch hitter in a close game, John Gibbons is by far the luckiest manager when it comes to the actual results over the expected results. His pinch hitters have a .128 wOBA (adjusted on base percentage) greater than the players they replaced as compared to a greater expected wOBA of .016. To put this in perspective, the next luckiest manager is Mike Sciosia, whose pinch hitters have an actual wOBA of .082 where the expected results would have netted .23 wOBA.

Another interesting note is that former Jays manager Buck Martinez came out with the worst in expected increase of wOBA at -.006 but his actual results netted a positive increase of .019.

Any ideas on why Jay pinch hitters so out perform their expected results other pure dumb luck? I note that the expected results factor in platoon splits. Could it be the Jays frequent use of position platoons keeps the pinch hitters more "in the game"? Or could it do with frequency, which would argue against one of the conclusions of the article, since Gibbons pinch hits more often than any manager outside of Tom Kelly?

As for Speier and his injury - I've never been a pitcher, but I would guess that almost everybody is pitching with a certain amount of "normal" pain at this point in the season. It's just a question of whether it's anything serious and whether the pitcher is still effective.

Exactly.  The Sun reports today that Speier has been feeling some tightness in his forearm for the last 6 appearances.  It wasn't too bad the 1st 3, but it is getting worse.  He says it is similar to something he had a few years ago, which kept him out 3-4 weeks.

During the course of a season, most pitchers will experience some degree of discomfort.   You don't want a pitcher asking out of the lineup every time he feels something isn't absolutely perfect, but obviously, if it's having a significant impact on his performance, you want to know.   It can be a difficult call as to when a pitcher needs to rest a few days, when he needs to be DL'd, and when he can just pitch through something.  Not an exact science.

Marcum's performance is encouraging.  It will be interesting to see who among the horde of young pitchers makes the team next year, and, more importantly, who can take the step forward to being high quality pitchers.  There are a dozen or more candidates, so there is no shortage of quantity, but let's hope we get enough quality to build a better pitching staff than we've seen this year.  Obviously, better health would be nice, too.  In March, the team looked to have a pretty good 12-man staff.  Of those 12, 6 have missed significant portions of the season due to injury or ineffectiveness (Burnett, Chacin, Towers, Walker, Chulk, Frasor) another has an ERA of almost 7 (SS) and now Speier is out.  Virtually impossible to overcome that magnitude of trouble.  

 

Off topic, but MLB.com has a new thing to vote on, this time it's greatest player in team history. Now, we've had this discussion here plenty, but guess who didn't make the list of 5 players? As I recall, he leads the team in almost every career offensive category. The five candidates presented are reasonable enough, but c'mon, clearly Delgado was much better than Hentgen right?

As for the other ex-Canadian franchise, Dawson, Raines, Guerrero, these are players who did not make the list. Brian Schneider, Livan Hernandez, Jose Vidro...they did. And no, it's not a Washington only list, Carter and Staub are on it.

Most other teams look OK at a glance, although Todd Stottlemyre is on the Arizona list for some reason, and Juan Gonzalez is nowhere to be found on the Texas list, and neither is Palmeiro. Steroid-enhanced players...never happened. Sosa doesn't make it either, although that one's more debatable, as the Cubs have had a lot more great players.

Off topic, but MLB.com has a new thing to vote on, this time it's greatest player in team history. Now, we've had this discussion here plenty, but guess who didn't make the list of 5 players? As I recall, he leads the team in almost every career offensive category. The five candidates presented are reasonable enough, but c'mon, clearly Delgado was much better than Hentgen right?

Career values for the relevant Jays:

Alomar 961,  Fernandez  737,  Carter 693 (but then there was that HR),  Stieb 663,  Hentgen 466.

some others:

Olerud  852,  Delgado  844,  Moseby 619,  Bell  604,  Barfield  592, Key  530,  Henke 427,   and Clancy 420.

Interesting to note that Mariano Rivera, the greatest pitcher ever, couldn't even make his team's top five.

Maybe a dumb question Ken, but what are those numbers you are using? And do you have them for Toronto only?

I just went and voted. And here's my burning question ....

True or False? The fifth-best player listed for every other team would be the best player on the Tampa Bay list.

With only a couple of possible exceptions, I think that's the case!

Brian Schneider on a mlb.com list of top 5 Expos and Tim Raines and Andre Dawson not there?  Good joke.  They are joking, aren't they? 

I think they had a couple monkeys come up with the Expos/Nats list.  Tim Wallach was a way better Expo than Schnieder. 

Brian Schneider being on the Mon-Was list makes one tempted to vote in bulk for him just to make it painfully obvious how dumb this thing is.  Sadly, MLB would see it as saying that Brian Schneider was a 'fan favorite' and deserved to be there.  

Mick: That depends..

Would you rather have The Crime Dog or Wade Boggs... actually, which one do you consider the best, since both these guys are showin up on the Devil Rays. I would consider the following guys to be less desirable, but I'm just a youngen'.

Mike Sweeny? (Prolly the Royals worst outta the 5)
Jim Abbott or Tim Salmon?
Jay Buhner?
Is Teixeria really established enough?

That's just the american league...

I think they had a couple monkeys come up with the Expos/Nats list.

That's not a nice thing to say about monkeys.

New trivia contest: using whatever metric you choose, including none at all (if, say, you had an affinity for nicknames like CoCo or Boots), name all Expos/Nats who should be on the list before Brian Schneider.

I'll throw in a couple of easy ones, Steve Rogers and Jeff Reardon.

Does Pedro count? Walker? Wetteland?

That one's easy.......YOUPPII!!!!

According to BBRef's MON/WAS leaders page, Schneider is not in the Top 10 in any career OR single season leader list in franchise history. So I am a bit mystified at his inclusion.

Quick off-topic question: what was the Blue Jays 2005 payroll, and does anyone know a good website that keeps track of salaries?

The one you want is Cot's Baseball Contracts.

JASON FRASOR HAS BEEN FREED!

Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun
Here comes the sun
And I say, it's about damned time