Guerrero's "double" was an awfully generous call by the official scorer. 

Rios, sadly, is going to be reliable for a half dozen boners in the outfield every season. I don't know if it's lack of hustle, lack of focus or poor judgement. And I have no idea what the solution is, or even if there is one. Tough love may be the solution. Who's to say?

With the full understanding that perceptions from a fan's vantage point are potentially way off, it seems that Rios has trouble sustaining focus for the duration of an entire game.

I just noticed that 33 year-old reliever Dan Kolb has surfaced on Auburn's roster (Restricted Status).

I agree with most everything said here.

I was not advocating tough love for Rios, only claiming that I have no idea what would work on him, if anything. My general experience with people tells me that leopards don't often change their spots. Rios is who he is. It's likely that no amount of screaming or hugging will affect the frequency of his mental lapses.

As Lefty says, Lexi being Lexi. The team, and the fans, likely just have to live with it.

I concur with Mike's claim that Rios is a superior center fielder to Wells. When will the CF/RF flip-flop take place? My guess is that it will be no time soon. The reputations of center fielders take a long time to fade and the move to a corner outfield position (Griffey, Puckett) tends only to occur after it is long due. Further, Wells is being paid to be the team star, making a suggested move to RF potentially humiliating to him.

FInally, I am with Anders in the "I want to believe" category. If Rios never got any better than the 350/500 hitter he was for 1100 AB in 2006-07, that would be plenty fine with me. A return to that level from a 27-year old, if only just for the season's second half, seems a plausible hope, even given a return to a more normal line drive rate.

I am far more bullish on Rios than on Wells from whom I would now consider 350/450 to be a good season.

Here is the run differential distribution for the Jays' first 87 games. "+1, 12" means they outscored the opposition by 1 run 12 times.

+13, 1
+12, 1
+8, 2
+6, 5
+5, 1
+4, 2
+3, 11
+2, 6
+1, 12
-1, 21
-2, 7
-3, 5
-4, 7
-5, 2
-6, 1
-7, 2
-12, 1

The team's record is 41-46. Their RF/RA is 356/335 for 46 pythagorean wins.

If we ignore the 5 games in which the absolute run differential was 8 or more, the team's record is 37-45 and the RF/RA is 309/317 for 40 pythagorean wins in 82 games. This gets prorated to 42 wins in 87 games and is almost identical to the team's actual 41 wins.

So it looks like those 5 blowouts alone (four in the Jays' favour, one in their opponents' favour) are enough to throw off the team's Pythagorean record. In fact, if we let the +12 and the -12 cancel each other out, we can isolate three Jays' blowouts (+13, +8, +8) as being the perpetrators.

Now, whether one can use the "bad luck" argument to suggest that a team with better luck would more efficiently spread out their runs, I leave for someone else to argue. The bottom line is that 3 of 87 games this year serve as the basis for the team's Pythagorean/actual disparity.

While those runs don't matter they do say something about the quality of the team.  That scrub is the same guy you will face in the 14th inning, or in a 12-10 game.    In other words teams that keep the game at 9-0 instead of 9-6 have a fairly deep bullpen and this will show up in other games.   

Unless you want to argue the "scrub" isn't trying in the 9-0 game, but really the guy is probably earning the minumum and giving it everything every time out.

If we ignore the 5 games in which the absolute run differential was 8 or more

The whole point is that good teams win more blowouts then bad teams.  You have to be good to blow teams out.  Winning with blow-outs is THE positive indicater. 

The believers of the the pythagorean theory are arguing that the blowout wins are the true indicater of the quality of the team, while the 1 run losses were from luck.  

That's a great explanation Magpie.      The blue jays have been unlucky in so many ways since 2005.   

Every team has injury's but on top of things that can be expected on every team  (like Glaus' various ailments, BJ Ryan's Tommy John) there have been a number of flukey injuries as well. 

Haladay missing 20 starts with appendicitis and the Mench line drive,   Aaron Hill's concussion,  Overbay's broken wrist, which could still be effecting his power.   Rios' Staph infection.    If the luck went the other way, Haladay gets out of the way of the line drive, Haladay gets Appendicitis in January 2007, Rios doesn't miss a month in 2006,  the blue jays outperform their pythagaran a couple of years, we get some fluky late inning wins, and 2005 through 2008 we have four low 90 win seasons in a row, and a wild card somewhere in there.   

Nice  to see Rios bounce back from a tough game by going 3 for 5 and stealing 3 bases, including 3rd twice.

BJ Ryan, on the other hand, looked shakey: lead-off walk, a single and a double. It's a good thing Rolen hoovers up everything and started a rally killing double play.