I know we aren't facing him but we really should acknowledge the comeback of Johan Santana who has been a big contributor.  He's put up a WHIP of 1.16, a K/9 of 9.5 and has only allowed 3 HRs all season. All while coming back from an injury many pundits said was going to end his career. He's showing signs of going deeper into games and if the mets fall off he could be an interesting target at the trade deadline.  Huge contract, but its relatively short term.

Can help but shake my head when I look at Henderson's K rate (6.8%).  Talk about a fellow who *needs* to rely on the defense behind him!

Safe Prediction:  Omar starts in place of Gomes on Sunday.

Are people watching Alvarez on the mound before raising these concerns, or just looking at baseball reference? Right now there isn't a pitcher on the entire Jays staff I am more confident sending to the hill. I don't need to see the K-rate to be optimistic about his future, Alvarez is pretty much the definition of the next generation of a moneyball player. Thanks to the stats heads the value will now be found in people who defy projection and Alvarez is exhibit A. He's a guy that projections say won't be successful, but who just keeps performing.   

For those who do need to see the K-rate, I wouldn't worry. It won't be long before he will start to get those "Pedro" calls from the umps and his K-rate will rise simply from that. 

On a seperate note, has anyone noticed that Bautista's recovery has coincided PRECISELY with Adam Lind being moved out of the cleanup spot? The combination of a rededication to patience, and adequate protection is doing wonders for his season.

Perfectly aware of this and that is kind of the point. Some very successful pitchers have had long and successful careers despite having seasons that left them with what would otherwise be a below average strikeout rate for their careers. Alvarez is the third youngest pitcher in MLB and his K rate over these 8 games is the outlier in his professional career to date and yet it seems to be the only performance given any weight at the moment. In other words, there is a lot of hand wringing over the smallest of sample sizes.

In the Game Archive viewing of last night's game, Rajai Davis is following through his hitting stroke, with both hands on the bat, the entire swing.   This is something he discovered he wasn't doing this season.

Through forty games or one-quarter of the season, Adam Lind was found to be lacking and was moved down in the lineup and then to Las Vegas.   The necessity to give Yan Gomes full-time at bats may have him going back to Las Vegas when Lawrie returns.   Colby Rasmus is struggling so Rajai Davis will be getting playing time in Center, Left and Right.   A.A. has said on PTS (Thu) another roster move is likely.   Possibly, a 1B bat?

Some really crappy umpiring in the major leagues this year, and not just the garden variety lousy strike/ball calls. Today's 2nd base ump had one difficult call to make all afternoon, and couldn't even get himself into a decent enough position to make that call. That's absolutely shameful.

For more fun with umpires, check out yesterday's tackle tag in the Cubs-White Sox game. And a play at first in a recent Dogers-Rockies game.

Perhaps umpiring is extremely difficult to do well and this quality of umpiring is as good as humans are capable of. Or perhaps the quality can be higher and a few too many people are in jobs they don't deserve.

Arencibia and Davis went a combined 0 for 7 with 6 strikeouts today. Both players seem especially challenged against RHP and Farrell should remain cognizant of this.

I can understand Davis starting against LHP but even as poorly as Rasmus is going, it's not likely that Davis is suddenly going to become a competent hitter against RHP at this point in his career (I imagine Davis' start today was motivated both by Rasmus' slump and Davis' homeruns yesterday). To me, Davis looked today like the Davis that started last season on the heels of having hit a few spring training homeruns, like a player who had elected to cast himself as a slugger. In a Freudian slip, Buck Martinez actually referred to him as Eric Davis. If only.

Arencibia surely deserves to play fulltime, but against RHP I can't see him batting in the heart of the order. He simply does not have the discipline to lay off the breaking pitch low and away.

According to ESPN, Brandon Morrow's ERA now sits at 2.63. Having entered the game at 2.22, this seems a tad unusual.

Against the Rays, there was what I thought to be a questionable error charged to Lind that lead to 5 unearned runs. I had been halfway waiting for that call to eventually be reversed (understanding that such a thing can occur even days later), since it seemed more than reasonable to have scored the play a hit. But I also thought that the "price" of changing the call -- 5 earned runs -- might be enough of a deterrant to doing so.

ESPN's math has those 5 unearned runs as 5 earned runs. Has anyone heard of any official scoring change?

did hear Buck talk about the scoring change

Thanks. That's only fair. Morrow is pitching exceptionally well this year and his numbers don't require the charity of undeserved unearned runs.

Anyhow, one writer has noted how comparable Alvarez is, to date, with Nate Cornejo, which isn't a comparison a Jays fan wants to see.

At what point is Sean Foreman going to have to factor into his OPS+ formulation an adjustment for the disparity in league quality? I ask this in all seriousness.

Notwithstanding that the last two World Seriies have been won by NL teams, you can't help but feel that there is such a quality imbalance between the leagues that any player -- pitcher or hitter -- going from the NL to the AL is going to see a decline in his performance, and any player moving in the opposite direction will see an improvement. I'm sure people can cite counter-examples, and I do concede that my opinion is largely subjective.

The NBA has been talent-heavy in the west for a long time. The AL seems even more talent-heavy than that.

Not particularly, I don't think. Cornejo is about 6'6 with a shaved head. (He may have alopecia. I'm not sure.) It's a distinct look, so it wasn't too hard to put to 2 and 2 together when you see a big guy like that hanging around right near a downtown hotel.

why is it that El Presidente's low strikeout numbers can't be held up as an example of a great pitching career with low strikeouts (in defense of the Henderson Alvarez model)?

I look at it this way and forgive the generalities employed to make my argument. I'm just talking broad strokes here.

If Dennis Martinez or Tommy John or whoever, back in the day, was striking out just 4 per 9 IP, there were plenty of balls in play. But many of those were not produced by hitters swinging from the heels, as they now do. So the price of "pitching to contact" was less severe.

The culture now is that almost everyone is swinging as hard as they can almost all the time. So K rates are through the roof. If you are not striking these players out -- and they are more than happy to give you the opportunity to strike them out -- you are letting them make contact with their tremendous swings (in Alvarez's case, an extra 4 times per 27 outs). This approach can succeed if you can do like Chien-Ming Wang used to do, limits walks and ridiculously limit homeruns, stranding a high percentage of your baserunners.

Now, Alvarez's success has largely been due to a very high GB/FB ratio (despite which his HR/9 rate is not great), a low LD rate, a low BABIP, a high GIDP rate and a high LOB rate.

And this is where there appear to be, generally speaking, two schools of thought. There are those who argue that he has skills that natually result in a low BABIP, that he has the ability to induce weak contact. And there are those who argue that he doesn't, that contact is contact. The former camp says that we may be looking at a new type of pitcher who succeeds in a different way. The latter camp says that his success -- pitching in this particular way -- is not sustainable.

Above and beyond the aforementioned division of opinions, is the long term view of Alvarez' career. I don't think that too many are arguing that the profile he has thus far exhibited (with respect to his peripherals) will be his profile in perpetuity, and therefore that his demise is imminent (the premise being that this profile has not historically proven to be sutainable). I would think that most see a very young pitcher with a broad range of skills and with the tools required to reshape the profile of his peripherals to one that augurs better for the long term.

Why is it that you attribute the higher K rates to hitters swinging from their heels, and not to pitchers getting bigger, stronger, and throwing harder than they ever have?

You're right that there are probably two factors at play here: a go-for-broke hitting philosphy AND a likely (more pronounced) bias towards hard-throwing pitchers. And to the latter point, maybe we can blame technology. Pitch speeds are available on TV, at the game, and in databases like never before and are a part of the conversation like never before. When I was growing up, you'd hear the odd gem like "J.R. RIchard was once clocked at a 100 MPH". But there was never a sense of how hard, exactly, pitchers were throwing. A consequence of the digital revolution is arguably an increase in TTO players, who are interesting from an analytical perspective if not always from a game-watching perspective.

I would still argue that the go-for-broke hitting philosophy is the greater contributor to the escalation in K rates. Did we see Michael Bourn/Austin Jackson types in days gone by? Hitters with ridiculous K/HR ratios would not have been culturally acceptable as they are now. Jackson has a higher career K rate than even Dave Kingman.

And one more point on Alvarez: while he profiles as a soft tosser, he is one of the hardest throwers on the team. That alone separates him from the one-and-dones that Magpie recently cited (Dave Fleming and his ilk) and suggests that if a change in pitching style is required, because a 2.4 K/9 turns out to be not terribly sustainable, the raw material is there to make that change. The Dave Flemings of the world had no plan B.

the annoying Tampa Bay yeller seems to be back

He is someone pathologically in need of attention, isn't he? I found him far more pathetic and annoying than funny and clever (imagine owning season tickets beside his!). It was a pleasant several years that he'd been away, presumably fighting his legal battles. Just google "Happy Heckler" to learn this guy's story. He's actually from Toronto.

Not only does the mute button provide relief from that iron-lunged annoyance, but a pleasant respite from Buck and Pat as well.

I wish I had thought of the mute button when they started talking about Moneyball. Well, what they thought Moneyball was about. Why bother reading a book when you can just make stuff up?

I wish I had thought of the mute button when they started talking about Moneyball. Well, what they thought Moneyball was about. Why bother reading a book when you can just make stuff up?

That's precisely when I turned the volume down to 1.  The Blue Jays are taking first pitch strikes because of Moneyball.

The Jays have started a stretch of their schedule where they could potentially have 31 consecutive games against teams .500 or better at the time they play them.  The only team in that stretch currently under .500 is the Phillies, and they're only a game down. 

Rays-Yankees-Mets-Rays-Rangers-Orioles-Redsox-Whitesox-Braves-Nationals-Phillies.

Been there once, gorgous park. As far as good goes the park is known for their Garlic Fries so give them a try and I'd also suggest a quick 15 minute google search for any notes or quirks of the park that may peak your interest to check out.

Longoria, Jennings, Niemann, and Farnsworth, though, are all legit injuries.

Keppinger plays an important role as a platoon player and is missed. His OPS vs LHB this year is 991 and for his career it's 860. On a team with Joyce, Scott and Pena, he's a nice RH counter balance.

Oh, and Tampa Bay can go away now. Malum quo communius eo peius I say to this confounding conglomerate of auspicious baseball talent. At the risk of having to endure another 17 years of this, I am beginning to suspect Maddon of making his own Faustian deal everytime I see some replacement level hack impersonate the Babe against the Jays.

I am beginning to suspect Maddon of making his own Faustian deal everytime I see some replacement level hack impersonate the Babe against the Jays

I think Maddon's deals with devil are focused on ensuring bullpen success. How many relievers can this man rescue from the scrap heap? His offense, these days, looks like 9 guys named Mike McCoy rather than anything Babian in nature.