Vernon Wells: .322 with 13 homers at home, .209 with 6 homers away.
That said, the home/road split’s probably a fluke. The overall Blue Jays love of hitting homers is simply the organization’s coaching philosophy on hitting, which comes from Cito Gaston on down and amounts to “Wait for a specific pitch and try to hit a home run.” It results in many homers, but few baserunners.
What a fun weekend! The Indians played 4 against the Tigers (one was a make-up afternoon game) and we swept!
Today’s starting pitcher for the Tribe was a one-off tryout of some minor leaguer and he looked great. He got some good defensive support and also lots of good offense.
Our Stupid Oaf Jhonny Peralta got an inside-the-park 3-run homer when the Tigers’ outfielder fell through the bullpen door while trying to catch a long one. Peralta was just coming back from a few days rest after the flu - he’s probably still trying to catch his breath.
Rayburn (said outfielder) made a fantastic climbing-up-the-wall catch later on, tho.
So now we’re 4-0 after the break, which is really fun. Unfortunately the Tigers are just awful away from home (something like 16-24?) so it’s not that big of a deal, but I’m super excited to see Cabrera and Choo come back soon and see what kind of new spark we get. Cabrera started in Akron the other night so it’s only a matter of time…
Ok, you may return to your discussion about Baseball That Matters now 
Anyone else expecting Detroit to substitute in an aging-but-graceful rookie, who has patiently waited his turn for a chance in the bigs, and subsequently hits the ball so hard in his first at bat that he knocks the cover off the ball?
I expect Selig to make a ruling on his non-standard bat any day now as well.
Wow, with that losing streak and the White Sox losing 3 straight, the Twins are right there again only 1½ back.
Any signs of life the Royals were showing seems to have ended again with 6 straight losses now.
I see St. Louis has 1st place in the NL Central on a 5 game winning streak.
Rangers take the series over Boston. Great steal of home plate and some seriously aggressive base running. Hopefully they’re back in the groove now.
For the first time in at least 14 months the Mets have a full healthy lineup tonight.
Yeah. The remaining schedule favors the Reds (and we’re only a half game back right now) in terms of how many better than .500 teams they both play going forward, but I can realistically see both teams making the playoffs the way the other divisions are rounding out, along with the difficulties of their schedules.
The Dodgers are melting down and their schedule is brutal the rest of the year.
Also the Dodgers are showing signs of Torre’s fatal flaw, he tends to mishandle bullpens.
Yeah, and that whole divorce thing is likely to prevent them from adding starting pitching, which they really need.
And the Padres are unbelievable. What are they, like 18 games over .500 now? Yeep!
Good point, they are the biggest surprise to me this year. I never expected them to be this good or good at all.
The Reds and Rangers are a nice surprises but no where near as big.
It will be interesting to see what happens to the Padres pitching the rest of the year. Nobody expected them to be this good, or any good at all, and when you look at the roster it isn’t that hard to figure out why; it’s Adrian Gonzalez and a bunch of guys who have never done anything (well, and Eckstein). Based on the numbers they’re a below-average offense and a waaayyy better than average pitching staff in a pitcher’s park, except the way they’ve been doing it is with good but not very good starting pitching – Latos was the only standout and now he’s hurt – and insane bullpen performance. Who could have looked at this team and predicted they’d win all their games because the bullpen wouldn’t give up any runs?
You’d think a team that had allowed 70 runs below the league average would get a lot of innings from the starting 5, but they don’t. They actually have the 5th most bullpen innings in the league. Yet they only have one reliever who has thrown more than 10 innings and has an ERA above 3.00. And it doesn’t appear to be that they’re getting lucky, either, they’ve actually all been that good.
It seems to me, even though I don’t have any way to prove it, that a team like that will have a lot harder time winning at the end of the year and into the postseason than a team that has frontline starters and scores a few runs, because seriously what are the odds that nobody in that bullpen slows down or gets figured out? Gregerson in particular has already been getting banged around a little bit lately. I wonder if the strain is going to begin to show, especially if they don’t score runs.
Latos isn’t hurt. He has keep youngster’s innings downitis
Ah yes, the Dusty Baker disease.
Well, on the DL, at any rate.
What, no one else wants to get on board with my Bump Bailey/Roy Hobbs reference?
Tigers and Rangers in a long game tonight. Neither the Tigers nor the Rangers have a day off this week, so going at least 14 innings tonight probably wasn’t what they wanted.
With a mixture of sympathy and schadefreude, I see that now it seems to be the Reds’ turn to be singing the Scott Rolen Ain’t What He Used To Be Blues.
Yeah, originally it was reported that he was suffering from the flu…now its the flu and a right hamstring strain. He’s apparently trying to keep himself off the DL.
Oh, and in other St Louis castoff news, the Reds are giving Isringhausen a looksee…
I watched most of the Nats v Reds game last night, and its amazing the difference between the two clubs. The Nats are almost comically bad on defense, just like the Reds used to be when they were constantly battling the Pirates for last place.
Sudden and strong rumblings that a Phillies trade is imminent. Presuming it’s one for a big-name starting pitcher… wow, how exciting! They are definitely going to get the very best starting pitcher available and it is not at all true that they could have already had the best starting pitcher who was available because they already traded for him last year and had him under contract! This isn’t a clusterfuck at all! Starting pitching is important!
And now, when they trade for Oswalt or whoever (guessing Oswalt), everyone will know they have to trade Werth, a fantastic trade chip, for 70 cents on the dollar to make up the salary to themselves… which is what they did with Lee a few months ago to put themselves in this situation. And Werth’ll go to a contender and make a huge difference.
Man.
Quite a game between the Dodgers and the Giants this evening. The Giants won it in the ninth after the Dodgers were forced to make an unwanted pitching change.
Don Mattingly was managing the Dodgers after Joe Torre got ejected. Mattingly came out to talk to closer Broxton with the bases loaded in the ninth, and after they talked he turned to go back to the dugout. After a few steps, he turned back to the mound and went to say something else to Broxton. The Giants complained, and the umpires ruled that Mattingly’s actions constituted a second trip to the mound, which by rule meant that Broxton had to be taken out of the game.
George Sherrill came in and promptly gave up a go-ahead double.