The Nationals’ Stephen Strasburg is retuning to the IL. He came through his 1st start apparently healthy last Thursday, although not with great results, then experienced discomfort in a weekend bullpen session. No diagnosis yet, but the spendthrift Nationals are springing for a MRI.

I am in the Dome to see the first-place Astros play the ... second-place! Rangers. 100 F outside and nice & cool in here.

Do they suspend the game if the air conditioning fails?

The Dodgers Steve Sax lost his son, John, in a military plane crash in Ca. Along with 4 other service members. Condolences to Steve and his family as they deal with this tragedy

I will remove a news note and second #4.

After both pitchers complete their warmups for Braves @ Nationals . . . out comes the tarp. Forecast seems to indicate showers mostly north of DC, but rain is visible on the telecast, so at least a short delay for now.

Welcome to Canada, where we insist that you show proof of vaccination against covid to enter the country (or exit your house, it feels like, in some places,) and that you still wear a mask when using federally regulated transportation such as a plane or a train.

So in advance of their four game series in Toronto, Baltimore has placed LHP Keegan Akin, RF Anthony Santander on the restricted list for being unvaccinated. In turn the Orioles have called up RHP Rico Garcia, CF Kyle Stowers.

The Tigers' lineup today features 4 players with 0 HRs. These aren't mostly kids just up or backup MI. Meadows 0 in 135 PA, Grossman 173 PA and Barnhart 129 PA. (Kody Clemens is the 4th but just 18 PA.)

Naturally Willi Castro leads off with his 2nd HR of the year (136 PA). Blame the White Sox broadcasters for the jinx.

Over the course of the year how much advantage do you suppose the Blue Jays have accrued by skimming a couple names from each visiting team's 25 man roster? So far I don't recall much star power on the lists each week, but it's got to matter a little over time. For example Max Kepler and Caleb Theilbar aren't awesome, but the Twins had to replace them with someone and they were already pretty deep into St Paul's roster because of the other injuries they'd been dealing with.

The Nationals’ Stephen Strasburg is returning to the IL.

I don't want to be "that guy" who jumps to conclusions off a small sample size but - I'm starting to wonder if Strasburg is a little injury prone.

;)

My internet went missing for a few minutes so I don't know why but Sox pitcher Lance Lynn is annoyed about something and letting a CWS coach know about it. I notice the Tigers have taken the lead 3-2.

[9] Answering the question as a baseball fan (not as a Canadian or a Jays fan) it's gotta be worth 2-3 wins so far to the Jays?
At the conclusion of every away/Canada series, virtually every player has been returned to the minors, and the unvaccinated players have been put back on the major league roster. Sometimes the call-ups were good contributors (ie Jharel Cotton of the Twins, I thought he was real good) but mostly they've had their cup of coffee, and hopefully some good pancakes with maple syrup, and maybe a decent bottle of beer, before being sent back down to AAA.

Added: That indicates to me that the call-ups were inferior players. Boston, specifically, had to shuffle their team for their trip, and Seattle did not officially put last year's Cy Young winner Robbie Ray on the restricted list, but they did shuffle their rotation and pitch him on short rest to avoid bringing him and being denied at the border.

#9 ... might be an interesting natural experiment on chaining effects. It's just for 81 games and, as you noted, doesn't seem to be star players. Still, their opponents could be missing players worth about 2 WAR over a full season so that could be 1 win. But it's just 2-4 days and the visitors can plug in the usual backup, not the replacement-level guy, which won't hurt much in that small of a sample. So figure a 2-WAR player is replaced by a 1-WAR player for 81 games, so a half-game. Bullpen guys are pretty easy to manage around so that probably doesn't matter; the opponents can set up their rotation to minimize any impacts.

H/R record and splits might be another indicator. The Jays do have the #2 home WP in the AL so far at 643 (Yanks at 788 -- crikey!). They also have the 3rd-best overall record so that's hardly definitive. They are a half-game ahead of the Rays which might annoy the Rays but likely won't make a difference as neither is catching the Yanks but both are an excellent bet for the WC spots.

Jake Burger with what appears to be the rare HBP on a swinging strike. Hit his hand, rolled fair, seems like he gets to keep hitting.

2-3 wins in 28 games is too high of an estimate. Even if you get to skip a Robbie Ray start, he's been worth about 1 WAR every 12.5 starts for his career.** If in all 28 games the visitors were replacing Ray with a AAA guy, then maybe we'd be talking 2-3 wins but that's not happening. And as it turned out, Seattle got 18.1 IP and just 7 R out of their SPs in that 3-game set, using 3 rotation regulars. Maybe moving Ray up a day hurt the Ms in the pre-Toronto game but it doesn't seem to have been a big help to the Jays.

And of course even a 6-win position player is producing about 1 win per 25 gamees. The visitors are usually dropping 2-4 guys but they aren't all superstars, most of them are probably not missed at all. Even when somebody like Trout gets hurt, the direct impact on other teams will be pretty trivial. The Angels might well have won 7 fewer games last year due to Trout's injury but those 7 wins were spread across about 120 games and maybe as many as 17-18 opponents.

** obviously much more than that last year but replacement level so far this year ... even last year was about 1 win per 5 starts.

On the players being returned to the minors ... the teams don't have a lot of choice in that matter as the restricted players are returned to the 26-man rosters once the series ends. Either those guys go out or somebody else does. Obviously a seris in Toronto could always coincide with a roster move the visitors were going to make anyway and the second move then gets delayed until after Toronto -- player A is unvaxxed, player B is coming off the IL in time for the Jays, player C would have been sent down when Player B was added but gets to stick around for a few more days now.

As another example, the White Sox dropped Kendall Graveman and Dylan Cease. Cease started the game before on 4 days (but not 4 games) rest -- he may or may not have started anyway, the Sox had a day off between the two series, so start him on 4 or 6 days rest. Graveman is the main setup guy and has been excellent this year with 0.8 WAR in 1/3 of a season ... but missing 1/54 of the season isn't a big deal. Graveman might have pitched in any of the 3 games but the Sox were trailing entering bottom 8 in all three games, Hendriks never appeared so it's unlikely Graveman would have made any difference.

I also see the Yanks were fully vaxxed so didn't lose anybody. The AL East teams would be the most disadvantaged but it's hard to see it making much difference other than whether the Jays finish 2nd, 3rd or 4th in the division (while still probably making a WC spot). Unfortunately I couldn't find a list of players who've skipped Toronto this year.

Finally unrelated to covid (I think), ESPN reports that Eduardo Rodriguez has told the Tigers he will be absent for "personal matters" and the Tigers have put him on the restricted list "until further notice." Apparently he's been on the IL but had a solid rehab outing recently. No hints as to what's up but the Tigers don't seem happy.

My answer to [9] is still plus 2 or 3 wins so far this season for the Jays.
Statistically the difference between AAA and MLB players in 28 games is only 1 or 2 games, based on WAR.
And that was my original answer. But I changed it because I wanted to see some responses.
I'm not smart enough, or dumb enough, to get into a battle with Walt Davis over WAR.
But based on daily observation, the Jays have won two, maybe three, games this year at home because of the vaccine mandates. I might be wrong, statistically, but I'm trying to be empirically honest.

[double]

The cardinals continue to try to prove that you only need 3 MLB quality starters to win 90 games. Tonight's entry, Zach Thompson, losing to Pirates 5-0. Packy Naughton will be coming soon.

#18 no worries. I'm not scary, I just keep talking until everybody else gives up. :-) But what makes you say that? That is I assume you're thinking of particular games or series so some examples would be cool.

Anyway, pretty impossible to answer if nobody's collected a list of who's missed games. If it is a lot of really good players then I'll rethink my guesstimate.

Still, in terms of playing time, the guys who miss the series are not usually being replaced by the scrubs who are brought up. If a starting OF misses the series, he's replaced by their current #4 OF, not the glove-only CF they brought up for three games. If that's over 3 months for the other team, that's a significant downgrade in their quality because the scrub ends up getting 200 PAs as the new 4th OF. But if the situation only exists for 3 days, then the scrub gets 0-1 PAs and maybe some defense/PR time. If he gets more than that, it's probably a legit prospect they want to take a look at.

Anyway, the Jays are 18-10 at home but also 17-14 on the road -- they're a good team. That looks like the 4th best road record in the AL, seems within random. Although they're 18-10 at home, their run differential is just +5 (on the road +29). If I counted correctly, they're 9-2 at home in 1-run games. That could be the absence of a Kendall Graveman or a key hitter having its maximum impact in 2-3 games or just standard good luck.

albies went down on an awkward swing vs the nats tonight, broken ankle so he will be gone for a few weeks.

That was interesting. Villar steals 2nd with 2 outs and Morel at the plate, count 3-2 now. C is about to crouch behind the plate and get on with things. But pulls his pitch-calling cheat sheet out of his back pocket, immediately calls time and heads out to the mound. He shows the sheet to Darvish who, if anything, seemed to already know what it said. Back behind the plate, strike 3 to Morel on what I think was a slider.

Wonder what it says. Chases with 2 strikes? Doesn't chase? Hey, the next batter is the Cubs' best hitter, don't walk this guy?

The cardinals continue to try to prove that you only need 3 MLB quality starters to win 90 games. Tonight's entry, Zach Thompson, losing to Pirates 5-0.

well when you’ve got yadier Molina and Albert Pujols to close out games, you don’t need a lot of quality starts…

Cards win 7-5 on a big inning and a couple of add-ons. Fun!