Monday Morning Media Mashup: Rare Events Edition

It's been a great weekend for baseball, considering the number of truly rare events that happened. First, on Friday, your Toronto Blue Jays turned their first triple play since 1979, during a game that I missed no less. Then the day after, the Red Sox took a 9-1 lead through the 6th but coughed up two consecutive seven run innings leading to a 15-9 loss to the Yankees. Several hours after that Phil Humber of the White Sox threw the 21st perfect game in MLB history. Then Frank Francisco and Jon Rauch combined to cough up a lead in the 9th (ok that is somewhat less rare). Later on that day, Roy Halladay walked three consecutive batters for the first time in his career. And on Sunday, Brett Lawrie stole home on a double steal attempt that fooled the Royals.

Wow--what a weekend. Here are some Monday Morning links to go with your coffee to help you get over your hangover from the baseball high from the weekend. It is somewhat abbreviated since I am also getting over that hangover.

Blue Jays Related

Sergio Santos Injury: Blue Jays Closer Hits DL - Baseball Nation
So Santos felt the problem during his appearance in Kansas City on Friday, so really can't blame Kenny Williams for shipping the Jays another damaged pitcher.

Blue Jay new generation does lunch with Royals legend - Toronto Star
Matchmaker Buck Martinez set Brett Lawrie and J.P. Arencibia up on a lunch date with George Brett. It must have been awesome for J.P. to have lunch with two hall-of-famers.... as a future hall-of-famer himself of course.

TV viewers give rebuilding Jays a chance - The Globe and Mail
"Through mid-April, Sportsnet’s Jays audience was up by 54 per cent over the previous year. Opening day’s TV audience shattered Sportsnet’s previous record by 36 per cent." To toot our own horn (we're flexible enough), Bluebird Banter visits are projected to be up 65% over the previous April. Thanks for continuing to show up!

Gomes eager to carry banner for Brazil - Las Vegas Review-Journal

Spring Training fan favourite Yan Gomes is ready to be the first to represent the 200 million Brazilians in the Major Leagues.

The Fan590's Brett Lawrie interviews Jays catcher J.P. Arencibia

2 on, Nobody out. Line Drive - Baseball is Magic
Greg Wisniewski on the triple play from Friday's game.

Jays should quit whining - Toronto Sun
From the man that brought you this article in the off season.

Around The League

Perfection, and its polar opposite - High Heat Stats
John Autin writes about the crazy Yankees-Red Sox game as well as Phil Humber's perfect game.

DOA: Driven-in Over Average - High Heat Stats

Britelcom proposed a new stat to evaluate a hitter's success at driving in runs without some of the inherent biases of RBI: drive-in over average (DOA). Basically it looks compares how many runs a hitter has driven in at each of the seven on-base situations with the average number of runs driven in in that situation for all Major Leaguers in a particular year, and the difference would be the player's DOA.

High Heat Stats: DOA - Statistical Meanderings
Chad Evely took 3 hours and 42 minutes from the time DOA was first introduced on High Heat Stats to compile DOA numbers on every single batter for 2011 (wow). He is now running data for all batters since 1956 (wowowow). Matt Kemp leads the list with a 47 DOA, while Jose Bautista is 14th with 32.

A few more links after the jump.

Roy Halladay walks three straight for first time in 10,000-plus career batters - Big League Stew
Roy Halladay is a precision robot designed to periodically appear to be human.

Bard will go to bullpen . . . and stay in rotation - CBSSports
Last night's Yankees-Red Sox game was rained out, so Daniel Bard will be skipped this turn of the rotation, but Bobby Valentine says he will be available in the bullpen.

Chris Perez fined for tweet about Royals - KansasCity.com
MLB fines Indians closer Chris Perez $750 for tweeting a message to the Royals that said "P.S. You hit us, we hit you. Period." Chris Perez makes $4.5 million, so to scale it down to someone who makes $60,000, it would be like getting fined $10.

Game Recaps

Here are the game recaps from yesterday's win: Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, National Post, Kansas City Star, BlueJays.com, Miked Up, Fan590 (audio), Sportsnet (video-does not contain the Lawrie steal of home for some reason).

And hey! Our Fan Confidence Poll is back up to 77% from 73% last week! Keep on voting folks!