Sheesh, you would think they would show some emotion for a near no-hitter, but nothing. Absolutely no reaction. I don't have much to add because LL and USSM covered every aspect of Morrow's performance and did so 10 times better than I could've.

A few quick facts on Halladay:

Do you know when the last time Halladay walked more hitters than he induced stringing strikes? July 12th, 2007 at Boston. Since that game he's started 43 games with 13 complete games. 

Halladay has eight complete games this season, that's more than every team in baseball except Cleveland and Milwaukee. Call it the CC Sabathia effect. Average pitches per inning: 14.44, Sabathia: 15.08.

Halladay's salary this season is 10 million, Barry Zito is making nearly five million more and Carlos Silva is only making three million less. Not only is Halladay really, really good, but he's underpaid and will only make about 30 million over the next two seasons.

That's the word that comes up when people say that Edwin Jackson is better than Andrew Sonnanstine. It's the word thrown out there without any backing, other than a thought that Jackson is probably close to an approximate measure of his talent more consecutive times out than Sonnanstine. Here's the problem; if you're using that term to say Edwin is better, you should probably research whether Edwin's performances are consistent or not before stating it.

As you all know I like judging pitchers by their innings thrown, strikeouts, walks, homeruns, groundballs, liners, swinging strikes, and strike percentage. Pitch usage is also important, but for this piece's sake less important. What is the time frame for consistency? Over this season Sonnanstine's numbers are better in every meaningful regard, isn't that more important than a five or ten game stretch in the middle of season? Baseball is a game of streaks and slumps, starting pitchers are not immune to trends despite playing once every five days, in fact, they may be more prone to it. One disastrous start can ruin the numbers that the media and casual fans will look at (ERA).

Pitchers like James Shields and the great Roy Halladay are extremely consistent because they have the meaningful core components down. Do you know when the last time Halladay walked more hitters than he induced stringing strikes? July 12th, 2007 at Boston. Since that game he's started 43 games with 13 complete games. That's consistent. Shields hasn't been knocked out before going five since he tried knocking Coco Crisp out and only four times in his career.

Of course pitchers like Sidney Ponson are also consistent, consistently bad. Which raises the obvious point: consistency means nothing compared to the overall quality. If Sonnanstine has been the better pitcher over 28 starts, and he has, why would we put him in the bullpen for the playoffs based on a small sample size? On average Sonny goes more innings, strikes more out, walks less, gets more groundballs, and is shockingly only gets a tad less strikes swinging (Jackson has 7.19, Sonny has 6.79).

Make no mistake that we're talking about solely heading forward this season, you can argue Sonnanstine's ceiling is what we're seeing, and that's possible, although that's not necessarily a bad thing whether he ends up in the bullpen or another team. Edwin has an extremely high ceiling, and the "ifs" have existed since 2003. At some point Edwin's potential needs to show otherwise his arbitration status is going to leave the Rays likely paying more than one million dollars for a pitcher who isn't a million dollars better than the other available talent.

This season Sonnanstine has the best chance to give the Rays good starts because he has the best core talents. To win this season we need to make the right choice for the fourth starter in the playoffs, and that choice is undoubtedly Andrew Sonnanstine.

As I said yesterday, we're wrapping the Champs of the Past series up today with the White Sox and Cardinals.

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When ESPN or others talk about the Mets the food chain of players mentioned is something like this:

David Wright --> Johan Santana --> Pedro Martinez --> Jose Reyes --> Billy Wagner --> Carlos Delgado --> Carlos Beltran

There's something inherently wrong with that order most notably Carlos Beltran's placement (although you could argue that Delgado and the MVP talk is beyond silly.) No Beltran's numbers aren't quite what they were last year yet league wide the power numbers are down. His on-base percentage is up to .369, topped only by 2003 and 2006 during his 11 seasons career. Beltran is walking more and striking out less than career averages and his 20.6% liners is higher than any other season since he was a Royal.

Last season Beltran's O-Swing% shot up to 25.73, his career average is 19.41, it seems as if he became more aggressive to combat the nearly 50% of balls seen being within the strike zone. If you recall we saw this same streak with Kevin Youkilis a week ago which was theorized as a reason his power numbers are up.

Defensively Beltran is still stellar, around 17 plays above the average centerfielder - or 14 runs. Combine that with the 24 runs above position offensively and Beltran is worth roughly 38 runs, or about the difference offensively between Alex Rodriguez and an average third baseman this season.

Joe Posnanski always talks about how you could feel that Beltran SHOULD be better because he looks so amazingly effortless, and I think some of that is still residual in New York. I've watched a handful of Mets games this season - Beltran is one of my favorite players to watch play - and he makes so many plays that 90% of outfielders can't make and you really do expect him to catch just about anything.

The media and fans should love him because of his talent, yet for some reason he gets buried on the Mets.

I had a conversation with a reader last night about Jason Hammel. Essentially he said the Rays needed to upgrade that mop-up role in case of an emergency. He went on to ask who would come in if a starter in the playoffs couldn't get out of the third which lead to an argument on whether that was even a relevant scenario.

Yes, it's possible a pitcher gets bombed in the playoffs but I went through the gamelogs to find the incidents where a Rays pitcher went less than four innings. It's happened six times all season. Here's the thing about Hammel, no he is not good, but currently he is used in situations less tense than every other reliever on the roster except Juan Salas. Hammel pitches once a week and the game is usually out of reach one way or the other. Yes last night was nasty and memorable because he gave up a load of runs but should come as no surprise to people who have paid attention to his non-ERA numbers, after all both his FIP and tRA are over 5.

So our mop-up reliever is the worst pitcher on staff and we're supposed to be upset about this? Yes David Price and almost all of Durham's rotation would be better, but Hammel's role is less than vital on this team and it's likely he won't be on the post-season roster to begin with.

Two notes:
1. The Champs of the Past series will conclude tomorrow, I will be combining both the 2005 White Sox and 2006 Cardinals in the interest of moving onto something far more relevant and interesting.
2. I'm sure you've noticed by now, but I would like to formally welcome Sky Kalkman (otherwise known as Skyking162) to the BtB staff. We've wanted him here for quite a while and he finally gave in.

This is going to be a bit unorganized but I have a few points to through out on Kazmir.

Six Innings

When you consider he had a 20+ pitch first and he ended his night five innings later with 98 total. After back-to-back sub-five inning starts to begin August Kazmir has went 5, 6, 6, 5.1, and now 6 in his last five starts.

Five walks/57% strikes

Kazmir's control was iffy tonight, look at the throw to Nady early on for proof. I'm not too happy about either measure, but with one hit countering the excess amount of free passes he didn't get burned. Which brings up...

One hit/11 strikes swinging

Encouraging.

Six groundballs/Five flyballs

Encouraging, although I would love to see just a few more of those flyballs turn into groundballs.

Seven strikeouts

Encouraging.

80% Fastballs

Dioner Navarro lied when he said Kazmir used all of his pitches. What he meant to say was Kaz used all one pitch. It worked tonight, but I still would like to see him mix his change and slider back into rotation more.