Baseball Flotsam and Jetsam

Miscellaneous baseball thoughts and observations.

I thought today we'd start off with a little visual comparison. Yesterday I mentioned Nate Colbert who happens to be the all-time leader in HR for the Padres. Chris in the comments mentioned that according to his 1974 baseball card Colbert was not a handsome man. I was curious and did a GIS search and found this baseball card for Nate Colbert. My immediate thought was that Colbert looked just like the guy from the Red Stripe commercials. You be the judge.


Boo Chris Young pitching like Cy Young in a 6-1 victory over the Red Sox! Hooray beer! Boo Julio Lugo having the lowest batting average in all of baseball! Hooray beer! Boo 19 players having a slugging percentage higher than what Julio Lugo has for an OPS! Hooray beer!

The Blue Jays can make it back to .500 with a win today. In a way - making it to .500 could be the worst thing that could happen to Toronto. I don't think the Blue Jays have a chance at the post-season this year because they won't catch the Red Sox (11 games back) and they won't win the Wildcard (7 back). However, having a winning record will make it tough for the Toronto front office to waive the white flag and make some deals that will make the team better in the future. Troy Glaus could bring some pretty good prospects and he'd probably would waive his no-trade clause to go to either the Angels or Dodgers but if the team still has even a glimmer of hope then he'll probably end up staying in Toronto... I know that all the "official" reports say that Troy Glaus is not on the trading block and holding on to Glaus makes excellent sense because it is very difficult to find a third baseman who can hit 35 HR and have a great glove. However, the Blue Jays are not a franchise that can afford a lot of dead money on the payroll. BJ Ryan, Frank Thomas and AJ Burnett are all just one more injury away from being potential dead money contracts and with Glaus' knees - he's a danger as well... Does Bartolo Colon really have a 6.17 ERA? Wow - that's no way to pitch in your contract year.... Alex Rodriguez is on pace for 63 HR which while not approaching Barry Bonds record of 73 HR in 2001 would still be good enough to set the all-time single season HR record in the American League... Josh Beckett is pretty good with the bat and if he gets a couple of hits today then it is possible that he could sport a better batting average, OBP and slugging percentage than Julio Lugo by the time the day is over... I'm really trying to give Julio Lugo the benefit of the doubt and I want to like him but he's making it difficult...