Based on this "formula," the Jays optimum line-up could look something like this:

Troy Glaus .363/.522/.885 (84 BB)

Now this is very basic, but it is fun to fool around with this sort of thing. What would your reaction be if you saw this line-up used by Mr. Gibbons?

Also from Studes' article:

In addition, The Book found that the #3 hitter has more plate appearances with two out and nobody on. So the run value of every hit (except the home run) is lower in the third position than in any other of the top five positions.

I'd think he accidently flipped Cat and Glaus. Otherwise, it's a very reasonable lineup. Like Mike, I doubt that Tango et al are blindly advocating "more walks in the 1 slot than in the 5". Cat isn't a player who recently had a good OBP driven by a flukish batting average, he's an established high-average hitter and can be expected to continue to put up good OBPs despite not walking a lot.

Yeah, I should have mentioned that; in Dave's (got it right this time) article he mentions that the quote he took from the book was a simplified version and that "The Book" goes into much greater detail.

Incidentally, another article posted today at THT is a book review by Dan Fox of Dayn Perry's new book and Henderson is mentioned in the review. Apparently Perry, in his book, explains that of Henderson's +2900 runs, only 270 can be attributed to his base stealing. I found that interesting...

Jordan and I forgot to mention Chad The Beer Guy in our respective Dunedin Diaries. He's easy to spot -- leads the crowd in "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" (and OK Blue Jays) and, at various points throughout the game, holds up a beer, says "Going once...going twice...sold!" and drains the entire can admist the applause of the crowd.

And I believe "The Dude" came from the fact that we needed a name for Hinske that would make people just say "Whoa...DUDE..." whenever he came up. So we went with the easy choice.

Last year all the jays games that weren't shown on sportsnet or tsn were shown on the Rogers preview channel with the visiting team's broadcast.

That would be Danny Hill who pitched at Dunedin at the end of last year. Hill was a third round choice in 2004 and has been in the bullpen ever since.

Rogers started up three news stations in the Maritimes on the FM band in the fall. Here's the list of the stations:

Saint John: 88.9
Moncton: 91.9
Halifax: 95.7

It's news and talk radio in the mornings and afternoons, but in the evenings it's all sports. Bob McCown gets an hour and the rest is the ESPN radio feed.

"If you can't catch a ball, catch a Bud!" a roving beer salesman in the stands boomed out to the crowd after the Jays had made their third error an inning later.

And Jamie Campbell will call the 122 games for Sportsnet. Sometimes you get lucky. TSN obviously didn't see this coming.

Every story has its spin and this one slightly slights the Jays for its two young middle infielders, suggesting that they define the team's identity and fortunes this year. Not that the young duo spells doom and gloom for the year but the message seems clear that they are holding the team back.

Then there's this gem from our GM, JP: "The thing about it is, when you play young kids," Ricciardi said, "you have to play young kids."

What on earth is he talking about?

Jays / Canada boxscore: http://toronto.bluejays.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/article.jsp?ymd=20060303&content_id=1332288&vkey=spt2006gamer&fext=.jsp&c_id=tor

What on earth is he talking about?"

I was watching the LA / Atlanta spring training game on Sportsnet today, and the commentators were talking about Atlanta's use of Brian Jordan and Raul Mondesi last year. They claimed that the whole point of using those two players was so that Francoeur, Langerhans, etc would have to win jobs, instead of being given the job and the pressures of that from day one.

I think what JP is trying to say is that the Jays have given 2nd and short to Hill and Adams, and if they bomb, the Jays have no Bordick / Gomez style backup plan. By fully committing to play young kids, there is no plan B. The pressure is squarely on Hill and Adams to produce, because the only people behind them are John McDonald and Sergio Santos.

What I took it to mean was that there are risks and rewards in playing young players. There are potentially huge rewards (good performance, low cost) for playing the kids but in order to have a chance at the rewards you have to risk the kids flopping. "Damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of thing.

Jerry Howarth mentioned good ol' Aquilino's slider was filthy -- do you know if that was that all he had in the tank, or did he get some other nice pitches over the plate as well?