Should we be at all worried that Burnett's oft-injured arm will be working today in flurries and 6 degrees celcius, that will feel 0 degrees?  Or am I concerned for nothing?

Should we be at all worried that Burnett's oft-injured arm will be working today in flurries and 6 degrees celcius, that will feel 0 degrees?  Or am I concerned for nothing?

I'm worried. But then again I always worry about injury when Burnett is pitching.

Should we be at all worried that Burnett's oft-injured arm will be working today in flurries and 6 degrees celcius, that will feel 0 degrees?  Or am I concerned for nothing?

Well for what it's worth, the last time AJ pitched in colder, wetter environments, it was in Cleveland in late August last year. I was at the game and it seemed he was having trouble control his breaking balls the whole game. In fact, he seemed to locate his control seemed to come back when the rain had subsided.

In terms of this Globe/Jays/Commercial publicity, it seems completely ridiculous, as many have said. And while we as hardcore fans have to understand that we're not exactly the market the Jays are targeting towards (even thugh these adsa re running on sports channels), one has to ask what a pillow fight has to do with baseball. It's a very broken connection. But in any event, the commercial is harmless. The good news is that this ad will generate a little bit of buzz and when people are watching TV tonight, they will watch the ad, realize its harmlessness, and remember it. This will be a good thing.

Around the majors, today's starting pitchers include:

• Doug Davis
• Ted Lilly
• Miguel Batista
• Woody Williams

You could do worse than that for a rotation. It's Ex-Jays day in MLB!

Opening day jitters combined with cold, windy weather probably brought about the terrible state of affairs that was Burnett's performance today. But I could help but wonder why Burnett didn't have long sleeves on considering that the temperature reached 2 degrees. It could have helped, no?

Gibby and J.P have to take better care of their pitchers when the weather is very cold as it was today.

Mike D and I were watching the ninth and having coffee, VBF, and the same thing occurred to me, but Smith is a lefthanded hitter too and as Mike pointed out to me, he did just get a hit (really a single and a two-base error, not a triple, though).  I think holding Stairs back for a better matchup is defensible.  Not sure if I agree with hitting Johnson against Jones after that, though.  I'd have figured you'd do one or the other - PH Stairs for Smith and replace with McDonald, or PH Stairs for Johnson to get the platoon advantage.

I guess Reed is a platoon player no more.

Reed is great at laying bats on cut fastballs and the like on the outside part of the plate and serving them into right field.  It just so happened the Jones got two of them in great spots and made it difficult for Reed.  Koudos to Jones - better luck next time.

I'm not going to hold anything against Burnett or Marcum based on their performances today.  Now, I'm not a pitcher and I've only ever thrown heaters and curves playing "park-ball" with tennis balls, but from what I've heard, it's pretty tough to command your pitches, particularly breaking pitches, in very cold weather. 

In his 58 losses:

2 CG
5.2 IP/start
6.48 ERA
1.6 K/BB

Roy Halladay

Josh Beckett

In his 45 losses: 

O CG
5 IP/start
7.65 ERA
2.1 K/BB

Okay, that was a bit of a crazy one.  And I have a feeling there are going to be a lot of ones like that this season.  I didn't see any of Burnett's pitching (I watched from the 5th on) but judging from the box score and the reports, it was a command thing.  Burnett is a touch/ feel guy and the cold might have effected that.  Walks and bloop singles, oy. And his whole .500 pitcher stigma might be between his ears.  He has said that he doesn't need Roy's "The Mental ABC's of Pitching" but maybe Roy should hit him with it. Hard. Until AJ submits and reads it. 

And, I'm sorry, but Frank Thomas' commercial is FUNNY!  The kid gets up at the end.  And it's a light mood.  Lyle's feature him whipping a bouquet of flowers at a woman.  Is that going to be pulled too?  Roy's commercial last year was kinda mean to the kids too.  Some of those kids' could've been allergic, Doc!!!  Peyton Manning's United Way SNL thing was funny too.  Love the pro-athlete's being mean to the kids!

Couple of outstanding points from jeff mcl and actionjackson... Jeff touched on the fact that A.J. is a very consistent pitcher.  I've done other analyses of him that have found this to be the case.  You'd think that a "free spirit" like A.J. (that's what we called guys like him in the old days) would tend more to inconsistency, but that's not backed up by his record.

Ac-jack mentioned Frasor's spectacular inning to bail out Mr. Guidance Systems (wow, I already can't stand Zambrano... he's my new Edgardo Alfonzo) and that shouldn't go without mentioning.  His work on Granderson for the third out was particularly fine.

Craig B,

I'm with you on Zambrano.  A guy with a career 5.03 BB/9 rate is not somebody I want to see coming out of the bullpen, especially if it's in a tight game with runners on.  It's not like he's Mike Gonzalez and makes up for it with a tonne of K's either.  Zambrano's career K/9 rate is 6.76.  He MIGHT have some value as a back-end starter, but he's going to make me pull out all of my hair as long as he's in the pen, I just know it.

• One year of major league service is defined as 172 days of service, but a major league season actually runs around 183 days. This means that a team that wishes to hold a player in the minors long enough to push his free agency date back by one season must wait at least eleven days (and probably about two weeks, just to be safe) before recalling him.
• The cutoff for "super-two" status..... is usually somewhere between 2.130 and 2.135; to the best of my knowledge, it's never been below 2.120, so a player recalled after June 5th or so is in the clear.