I don't foresee another QO in his immediate future. Houston may well elect to pursue him as a FA, though, since they're not exactly teeming with quality outfielders. Gomez has gone from bad to worse. Marisnick is just moored at worse. And Colby seems to like life -- clap, clap, clap, clap -- deep in the heart of Texas. You know, clear eyes, full hearts. That sort of thing. And deep fried chicken and country music and pickup trucks and open carry.

His slash line against RHP: 264/295/389.

Why Gibbons can't just bat him 9th every night and be done with it eludes me.

Of course, there was one other option, sending Dickey back out for the eighth inning. It actually would have been understandable given the state of the bullpen. Instead he determined Barnes was his best option and was rewarded for his faith. A good decision by "One run John".

Not saying I agree with shutting Sanchez down, but there is method to the madness.

I would attribute that more to Gibbons than Walker, hypobole. Gibbons didn't get nearly enough recognition for the health of the Jays staff last season, and it's happening again this year.

I give Gibbons a fair share of credit. I remember when the Jays' pitching staff used to suffer one injury after another. Is Gibbons or Walker better at handling the number of times that pitchers warm up than their predecessors were?

I also wonder whether the Jays' improved pitcher health is because they now do not hesitate to call up a pitcher or two from Buffalo when their major-league arms are tired. So Toronto's fatigue problem then becomes Buffalo's fatigue problem.

Unless the Bisons are calling up somebody from New Hampshire when they have a pitching shortage, I suspect that what happens is that the back end of the Bisons bullpen is forced to work itself into exhaustion. But these guys aren't likely to ever help the big team anyway, so nobody really cares. Baseball can be a tough game.

I know that one counter-example doesn't disprove your hypothesis, but they used to say the same thing about Mark Prior.

Year   IP   Pitches  IP-rank Pitches-rank)
1988  249    3440     12th      23rd
1989  238.1  3336     16th      24th
1990  237    3204      5th      17th
1991  263    3687      2nd      10th
1992  268    3741      1st      11th

1993  267    3483     1st       17th
1994  202    2626     1st       13th
1995  209.2  2488     6th       60th
1996  245    2778     5th       53rd
1997  232.2  2634    14th       63rd
1998  251    3281     4th       44th
1999  219.1  3042    14th       63rd
2000  249.1  3241     2nd       38th
2001  233    2980     7th       61st
2002  199.1  2678    44th       85th
2003  218.1  2935    12th       70th

2004  212.2  2924    20th       68th
2005  225    3099    13th       49th
2006  210    2800    31st       76th
2007  198    2703    44th       76th
2008  194    2568    44th       91st

That was the meme, at least. I wonder if the citing of "inverted W" as being a likely source of problems only surfaced after Prior's woes. I cannot recall the chronology of all this. I do recall the talk at the time being that if Prior could get injured pitching, then no one was safe.

That would be a strange place to lock something.

Upton wins in 2 of those scenarios and gets to play again tonight.

And hey, who's that batting 8th?

After a generation of plastic, cookie cutter parks, there was a movement to unique, old style, grass-covered, genuine parks with personality. Camden may have been the start of that. For the most part, that movement has gone well. Sometimes, though, the personality part goes overboard to the detriment of the game on the field. Houston has recognized this with plans to do away with Tal's Hill.

Clearly Lucroy knew something and didn't want to be held responsible for his would-be new pitching staff's demise.

The mute button was my friend last night. I saw the batters slipping so assumed the ground was too soft. Too hard makes sense as well, I guess. Neither soft nor hard are in the Goldilocks zone.

It is certainly easier to throw 100 pitches over 7 innings than 100 pitches over 4 innings because of the additional rest breaks.

You might be right, but I wonder whether having to work at peak performance over longer periods of time would be harder on the arm than doing the same amount of work in a short time. I seem to recall reading this somewhere (a fat lot of help I'm being here :-)).

The most extreme case of this is rain delays: most teams will bring in a new pitcher after a long delay, as the old pitcher's arm would have had time to cool down completely.