Sporting Madness

So, Friday's Scott Rolen trade upset me (and many other Jays ' bloggers ) considerably, as you probably already know if you follow me on Twitter . I already broke it down a bit in my Last Call post at The Rookies Friday night, but I figured it was worthy of some further analysis. Without further ado, let's get to it. First off, let's consider what the Jays lost. Rolen was hitting .320/.370/.461 in Toronto this year with an OPS+* of 122. Looking at Baseball Reference 's batting leaderboards for this season, that's the 30th-highest OPS+ in the entire AL and the second-highest on the Jays (behind only Adam Lind ). Even more impressive is when you compare Rolen's OPS+ to that of other third basemen; only Michael Young (137), Alex Rodriguez (135) and Evan Longoria (127) rank ahead of Rolen among third basemen ( Kevin Youkilis is also ahead of Rolen with an OPS+ of 145, but he's only played 29 games at third this year and has played 59 games at fi...

Today's loss to the Tampa Bay Rays (47-39) dropped the Toronto Blue Jays (43-44) below the .500 mark for the first time this season, which, sadly, is probably a more accurate reflection of this team's ability than their 22-12 start that gave them the best record in the American League [ Jerry Crasnick , ESPN.com ]. That early start was largely piled up against weaker opponents, and was also aided by some incredible performances from unlikely pitching stars. Since then, the Jays have fallen back to earth. This still isn't a bad team, though. The Jays aren't the best team in baseball by a long shot, but they are a bit unlucky and have a knack of losing close games by a run or two, as this most recent sweep by Tampa Bay has demonstrated; the Jays fell 3-1, 10-9 and 3-2 in a series of very winnable games that dramatically hurt their record and their playoff chances. Their Pythagorean win expectation (which suggests what a team's record should be based on runs scored an...

Update: Jeff Blair of the Globe and Mail sees things much the same way I do : that's some validation! That baseball injuries list I posted yesterday seems to have been ominous: news came out late yesterday that Blue Jays' third baseman Scott Rolen fractured his finger in a fielding drill. Perhaps it was bad karma, coming on the same day as the Jays finally decided to end the controversy in left field by cutting Reed Johnson. As the Globe 's Jeff Blair pointed out , this injury is a severe problem for the Jays and their strategy for the year. "And now it's all out of whack: the lineup, the defence (Rolen's range at third base was supposed to offset the net defensive loss of having David Eckstein start at shortstop over John McDonald) and the karma, for what that's worth," he wrote. "Bad day, indeed — and there's still six more to go before it begins counting." Dustin Parkes from the always-excellent Drunk Jays Fans has more on the wo...