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This week’s column is posted. Felix Hernandez is in the house. So is Kyle Farnsworth, a whole passel of wannabe closers, too many second basemen, and a look at what makes a save. You can read it at mlb.com, on the fantasy page.

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Baseball Prospectus just had a free week, where you got to taste the offerings if you aren’t a subscriber. This story by Joe Sheehan has a chart that shows standings for one-run games and regular games. His point seems to be, well, let him tell it: ” What follows are two sets of standings: record in one-run games, and record in other games. I think it’s illustrative of the point that the latter is more indicative of team quality than the former.

Record in one-run games is essentially the team version of player performance in whatever clutch situation (late-inning pressure situations, runners in scoring position, et al) you care to measure. It’s not predictive, and is generally unrelated to overall quality. Within a season, however, it is valuable and can be the difference between success and failure.”

If the archive is free, however, take a look at the standings. The Blue Jays are atop the AL East standings, if you take out their pitiful record in one-run games. And the Marlins are neck and neck with the Braves in games that aren’t determined by one run. It is a canard that a team’s record in one-run games is determined more by luck than anything else, but that doesn’t mean those records are completely determined by it’s luck. It’s just flashier to imply that they are.

Our problem is that we tend to take the limited knowledge we have about the game, based always on small samples, and try to extrapolate greater knowledge. The guys at BP hit this wall every day because their whole reason for being is to demonstrate that the oundation of baseball is scientifc (or at least mathmatically consistent). But while this approach helps illuminate all sorts of bad thinking about the game, as Bill James demonstrated a long time ago, almost every effort since to extend that realm further based on the science of baseball statistics falls flat, because in reality the margins are so wide that at any given moment anything can happen.

It seems the game is a lot like poker. Skill matters, for sure, but the really interesting thing is trying to figure out how much it can encroach on the dominion of luck. Which is why the game is so darned fun to follow, and why Sheehan shouldn’t waste his time explaining what made him write off the Astros and A’s back in May. The answer? Showbiz, baby. He’s providing it, his readers are buying it.

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Will Carroll has a story today outlining what is actually known about the Rafael Palmeiro suspension. It’s good stuff, as usual, mostly because Will writes clearly and for the most part limits what he says to what is known. All else he labels clearly as conjecture.

The key issue here is whether Palmeiro could have tested positive to drugs other than steroids. The secrecy of the whole process forces us to assume the worst, and heck, maybe we should. I don’t know.

I would have said before this that Palmeiro was a very dubious Hall of Famer. Now, oddly, this diamond in the rough is getting more famous for being the first big fish to test positive (and to point his finger at Congress). On the latter point I have a feeling we haven’t heard the last word, and the penalties for perjury in front of Congress are severe.

It could get much more ugly before it’s over.

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ESPN.com: David Dellucci

Is anybody else noticing that ESPN player pages no longer have the actual stats? First they take away Neyer, then Gammons, but now the actual numbers from the player cards?

I find it hard to believe that this is going to work for them. Let me know if you’re paying ESPN for their columnists. I’m trying to figure out why.

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ESPN.com: Eric Young

When Jermaine Dye went down yesterday with spider bites it sounded familiar. A little Googling led me Eric Young, who missed much of a week (6 days) in June 2004 after a couple of spider bites on his knee got infected. It looks like Dye’s infection was worse, but it’s impossible to say if his rehab will be similar or not.

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Yahoo! Sports – MLB – Red Sox White Sox Box Score

The results weren’t perfect last night, but if Curt Schilling is going to regularly “close” games in the eighth or seventh, he’s going to transform the way bullpens work. And he’s going to make up in a hurry a lot of the value his owners lost when he got hurt.

It should also mean that he won’t be able to pitch on consecutive days, which should mean saves for other Red Sox bullpen members.

Also, I see in the notes that Buehrle was the sixth straight lefty the Red Sox have faced, the first time that’s happened since 1914. Their record in those games against their biggest weakness: 3-3.