A Round Tripper Through Toronto's Mediaville

After last night's victory, there are a bunch of feel good game summaries with headlines like All's Well That Ends Wells, because that never gets tired.

Over at the Toronto Sun, Mike Rutsey writes about Reed Johnson's recent lack of playing time with a significantly different spin from a similarly themed Dick Griffin article that appeared in the Toronto Star last month.

Speaking of Dick, he was up to his old tricks again yesterday in his weekly mailbag. Despite getting a passing grade from some of his more ardent detractors, I'm going to have to take issue with a few . . . um, issues.

First of all, I'm guessing the Rod Barajas flip flop before the season began had a lot more to do with the MLBPA stepping in than it did with the Jays organization's negligence in welcoming him to the team. Barajas contract with the Jays was for less money than he was making as a backup with Texas. The story I heard was that after the contract was signed, the MLBPA pressured him to renegotiate. When Ricciardi refused, Barajas hired a new agent and signed with Philadelphia for one year.

After misrepresenting this story, Dick goes on to make his largest jump in logic of the season by indirectly accusing Frank Thomas, Troy Glaus and Vernon Wells of using steroids.

The fact is that due to the recent crackdown on steroids, the average major league clubhouse this year has lost more cumulative slugging body-weight than a Jenny Craig program featuring Kirstie Alley, Oprah, Gord Stellick and Star Jones.

The Jays and many others still think this is the late '90s and their big boppers are merely in a slump. But it's over. Unfortunately for the Jays, their sluggers like Frank Thomas, Troy Glaus and Vernon Wells are signed at least through 2009 and are untradeable unless the Jays eat salary.

Is he honestly relating the Jays sluggers' lack of production this year to MLB's crackdown on steroids? Unbelieveable!

The National Post's baseball blog High Cheese has a quick little piece informing us that the starting rotation is set for the rest of the season. Jeremy Sandler subtly suggests in it that the Jays starters are being overworked.

In other major media networks' blogs, Robert McLeod writes about Brad Arnsberg's involvement in a Yankees tribute to balls.