Probabilities are fascinating, aren't they? It really doesn't take much math for the seemingly plausible idea of a 3-game sweep to ultimately sound unlikely.

And it's the nature of probabilities that leads to Warren Buffet confidently offering up $1B for a perfect bracket. When math is applied, the seemingly highly unlikely (a perfect bracket) is reduced to rubble and is actually a near impossibility.

No arguing that. That's the bloody human condition. Ask any Leaf fan (I am not one).

Zaun is intransigent on the subject. Lind should be in the lineup every day. There is no basis for his hard-headedness on the subject, yet he is unrelenting.

• Reyes would be hurt yet again
• Janssen would be hurt too
• EE would hit no home runs
• McGowan and Morrow would be ineffective
• Lawrie, Rasmus, and the middle infielders wouldn't hit at all
• The first four games of the year would be at Tampa Bay
• The next three would be against the Yankees

...my glum off-season prediction would have been that the Jays would be 1-7 right now. Instead, they're 4-4. Perhaps I'm being far too dewy-eyed optimistic about this, but I think they're doing rather well. (It's far better than being swept at home by the Milwaukee Brewers, as has happened to the Red Sox.) It's fairly obvious what has gone well:

• Melky. I think what is happening is that the "book" on him is out of date - he's healthy now, so he's crushing pitches that used to be his weakness.
• Jose is back in all his glory.
• The bullpen has been awesome. Okay, Santos has been like a high-wire artist working in a wind without a net, but he's made it to the other side so far.
• The infield defense has been great. Diaz and Goins can't hit, but they can field. Buehrle, in particular, is grateful for this.

The weak spot is about what we expected it would be: the starting pitching looks shaky. I fear that it will do the team in eventually, if not sooner. But at least the Jays don't horribly suck, which was my fear. We might be able to have hope until at least Victoria Day. Play ball!

The Rays scored a total of 16 runs in their two wins that series. Unless you think the Blue Jays' offence should average 10 runs per game, the cold offence wasn't the only issue.

Also, a person could easily argue that the Blue Jays were lucky to be 2-2 as the Rays weren't able to do anything against Hutchison and Buehrle. It works both ways. You're being very selective in what you attribute to "luck."

I don't know why Zaun believes that it's just a matter of time for Lind, if only he just gets enough playing time against LHP. Many LHBs in history never learned to hit LHP. This is not unprecedented.

And Rasmus is the team's best center fielder. He's not in the lineup just for his bat like Lind is.

Since leaving Toronto late last year, he has logged 205 PAs with KC and the Cubs. His line: 324/400/387, 21-2 SB.

On a related note, with Infante out, KC is now playing a man at 2B who has never before played the position.

My point was that managers like Maddon are constantly glamorized in these parts for their ability to avoid dogma and approach the game in different ways. The moment that Gibbons does something similar he is castigated for it. Whether in the end it was the correct move is certainly debatable, what I like is that Gibbons appears to be trying to exploit even small advantages that he perceives are available this season. The CYA move would have been to sit the lefties sighting fluky sample sizes and regression to the mean...

An honest question to finish, how strong is the correlation between MiLB and MLB platoon splits for pitchers?

Oberholtzer pitch values (runs above average - career) : FB 0.2, CB 0.0, CH 4.1

Not me. I believe he's better than he showed in Toronto, but ultimately, probably not very good at all. At least not deserving to be a starter.

If that were the case, the supposition being that Gibbons was trying to find a way to get Lind into the game, then I would whole-heartedly agree. The fact that Lind has hardly played at all against LHP to start the season seems to suggest otherwise.

At the macro level, Lind facing LHP is bad in almost every conceivable way. At the micro level, if the team believes there is an advantage that might be exploited I am willing to extend them that short length of rope.

The sound of one hand clapping?

That's an ERA of 5.14, not 4.00, because two games we[re] shutouts.

So shutouts don't count? 2 shutouts in 9 games, but ignoring those, the pitching hasn't been as good. What the heck are you talking about? Why throw out the shutouts, against division rivals no less? Why don't good pitching results count, after 9 freaking games, when looking at the pitching results?

I'm going to do the opposite. First game doesn't count, neither does game #4. Now the Jays have given up only 20 ER in 7 games, ERA of 2.86. Best pitching in the league?

China fan, I had the exact same thoughts as you did while reading Griffin's hack job. I was also perplexed by his insinuation that because Dickey's an old knuckleballer with late-career success and unconvential mechanics, that he is lacking in leadership skills. This to me seems completely off-base.

And as you say, at the end of the piece, he undermines all of his arguments by basically stating that the Jays are making the right decision by starting him Friday.

Assuming that the Dickey effect does exist (as I recall, there was some evidence of it but it wasn't conclusive), there are a couple possibilities that I can think of:

• The benefit of getting an extra start or two out of Dickey outweighs the benefit of the Dickey effect.
• It's inevitable that Dickey's scheduled turn in the rotation will fall on the final game of a series at some point, so there are going to be times when it's impossible to get the benefit of the Dickey effect. Juggling the rotation and sacrificing the Dickey effect now may result in gaining the advantage of it in a later series when they would not have been able to had the rotation not been juggled. It probably evens out.

I did it with the Blue Jays back in 2000-01. I was fed up with Gord Ash's short-sightedness and wound up becoming a bit of an Athletics fan because of that team's embrace of what would later become known as Moneyball. I came back to the Blue Jays in 2002 after J.P. Ricciardi was hired, but I ignored the team for much of 2005 because of the poor way they handled Carlos Delgado's exit. While I've been annoyed with the Blue Jays of late, I'm not close to hopping off the bandwagon at this point.