I was one of the guys more interested in finding out if that was Aaron Reynolds than if I could get Shin Choo's autograph.  You're not a celebrity on the Shin Choo scale Aaron, but a celebrity nonetheless.

We were right down at the corner there to yell at Marte when he did his interview and when Shin Choo came out, it was nuts.  The people who wanted to see him were pushy - it was like being squeezed in a human wall of flesh.  Amazing.     

Oh and Doc is right to be angry - with his offence, the umpires, Jeremy Accardo...everyone.  Poor guy.

Wow, that's an angry Doc.  Roy, I don't know what you did to piss off the Baseball Gods but there is something seriously weird afoot.  No luck, this boy.  No luck.

We were right down at the corner there to yell at Marte when he did his interview

Were you one of the guys shouting at Victor Martinez "Victor, why do you hate children?" when Martinez threw a ball to an adult at the end of an inning?

I was really surprised by the Shin-Soo Choo crowd -- they gathered and started calling for him at the end of the game.  At first I was glad, because I hadn't really picked up any great stuff of him during the game and it gave me an opportunity to get a nice picture of him, but then it got kind of weird and crazy.  It was like he was a Beatle or something.

Perhaps we'll see a Guam mob seeking autographs when Hattig gets into a game.

Not to turn this into an umpire discussion, but I found them to be perfectly correct all night.

Still, if I'm Doc I'm plenty pissed off right now. The Jays must be reading "How to make sure the best pitcher in baseball who plays on your team who is gunning for a Cy Young and only needs a few runs and he'll win but will lose it if you let Runelvys Hernandez, Julian Tavarez, and Jeremy Sowers make you, the second best offense in baseball, look like a group of bush league hitters for dummies".

Bottom Line: Ted Rogers makes it all feel better. Excellent picture!

Uhh yeah, that was us.  He kept faking tosses over towards some kids and then rolling the ball towards the dugout (well, in the 8th and 9th at least, when he was playing first).  In fairness to him, he hooked up a kid in the front row at the end of the game.

The Choo thing was absolutely bizarre.  We were just standing there and he's talking to this one woman and then all of the sudden it was a huge crush.  I can see why some athletes are leery of the public, particularly when they're with their families - I'm a relatively big guy and I was getting squeezed by the crowd - very shovey.

VBF, not to hijack NFH's thread but can you explain that one call on the ball hit to Overbay that looked like a fair ball and then the first base umpire called it dead?  We were mystified.

I myself cannot say for sure, but I was sitting with Alex Obal who ran to the television screens on the 500 concourse and he confirmed that the ball did go off Sizemore's foot judging from the instant replay.

One thing that really bugs me is the lack of replays on the JumboTron. Who cares if you show up the ump? Umpires are trained to deal with irate managers and players, they should be able to handle some boos from the crowd.

Sizemore's supposed foul ball was the one call I wasn't sure of. On the one replay I did get to see (from the side camera bay), it seemed very close, but it looked like it just grazed his front shin and somehow ricocheted sharply into fair territory.

I didn't realize it was the first-base ump was the one who called the play dead though. That's mighty interesting. Isn't a potential foul ball off the hitter's foot not his call, particularly when it's such a close, 50-50, who-knows call on which he'd want to defer to the home plate ump who's standing about 30 times closer to the action? That's one unusual foul ball if the first base ump was able to pick up the change in the ball's trajectory that occurred when it hit Sizemore and feel confident enough about it hitting him to make the call.

Roy wasn't mad at the call, he was demanding to be traded to a National League team so he could knock in a few runs and give himself a chance to get the W.

He's pitched well enough to have 20 wins. He's been a machine this year, every start he's made since June he's given the team every chance to come away with the win. The bullpen has let him down a few times, and he's suffered from a lack of run support more often than he should have.

Halladay is the most consistent starter in the AL. When he's at his best he's the best there is, and when he's at his worst he still gives the Jays a chance to win. Honestly, he's so good that he's in danger of being taken for granted...I can't overstate how valuable he is to the team or how much he improves the rest of the pitching staff just by being part of the rotation.

Cy.

I just counted. The pen has blown 6 of Halladay's games that he left the team with the lead. So, with a perfect pen, he'd be 22-5 right now, and if Rios hit a homerun for the right team one game, he could be, in a perfect world, 23-4. How weird are those 4 losses though - Florida (okay they're not bad), Tampa, Kansas City (4 hit CG), and AAA Boston.

Johan Santana has 1 blown lead. But every single no-decision he got, his team managed to win, and mostly come back from behind. (Technically I think 2 times he left runners on and the bullpen let in those runners, but meh, Pat Neshek is awesome). At best, Santana is 18-5.

Still, if I'm Doc I'm plenty pissed off right now. The Jays must be reading "How to make sure the best pitcher in baseball who plays on your team who is gunning for a Cy Young and only needs a few runs and he'll win but will lose it if you let Runelvys Hernandez, Julian Tavarez, and Jeremy Sowers make you, the second best offense in baseball, look like a group of bush league hitters for dummies".

If we measure offense the old fashioned way, by runs scored we find the following:

1) New York Yankees       776
2) Chicago White Sox       761
3) Cleveland Indians        746
4) Philadelphia Phillies    736
5) New York Mets             727
6) Texas Rangers              725
7) Atlanta Braves              721
8) Boston Red Sox             717
9) Toronto Blue Jays          697

An additional consideration that should be kept in mind is that Blue Jays built up a lot of their offensive stats in April when the Rogers Centre played like a band box.

What is becoming more and more clear with the passage of time is that the Blue Jays are remarkably inefficient at converting runners on base into runs.  At the start of the season it could easily be passed off as a statistical anomaly that would right itself over time, but their run-scoring efficiency just continues to get worse.  There are lots of things that can contribute to this - poor hitting with runners on base, lack of productive outs, and too many lost base runners via double plays, base running outs, and players caught stealing.  Not sure where the Jays currently rate in these categories but something is going wrong.  According to Baseball Prospectus the Jays should have scored 734 runs with their offensive stats, which is the 5th highest in both the AL and the majors.

What is becoming more and more clear with the passage of time is that the Blue Jays are remarkably inefficient at converting runners on base into runs.  At the start of the season it could easily be passed off as a statistical anomaly that would right itself over time, but their run-scoring efficiency just continues to get worse.

Last year, they were remarkably efficient at doing the same thing.  Don't read anything into it; it's well-established (going back to the 1980s) that this type of variation is basically random and that teams who underperform their runs created estimates will tend to score more runs the following year.