I just received two letters from Braves fans that are upset that they can't see as many games and can't hear Skip and Pete. The first is from Sally Moss:

I've been watching the Braves on TBS and kept wondering why nobody said anything about Skip and Pete. I didn't know where they were. I finally logged onto your site and there it was. I'm furious. TBS is nothing without Skip Carey and Pete. I switched to the Braves because of Skip and his wit. Upon finding out, I added the MLB pkg. so I could hear Skip and find I'm blacked out. I live in central Idaho, yet I'm blacked out of a game between Houston and Atlanta. Go figure.

I found the game, however, on another station so I have to go. Thanks for keeping us informed. Summer isn't going to be the same for me this year.

Even more upset is Mavis Merrill:

I don't know just how to tell TBS how I feel so I'll tell you! I miss Pete and Skip. The announcers are a big part of the reason I follow the Braves and have for more than 10 years now. I was a Boston Brave fan as a kid but lost touch until 1990 when I started watching cable. Remember the Braves' players then? Most of them seemed like people I would like to know personally. And the announcers were the ones that let me know them. They were educating, amusing and informing me all at once.
The other thing is the number of games TBS is putting on. What is a Braves fan supposed to do in Phoenix, AZ? I don't get Sports South and I resent the fact that I get to see less games.
I am a 65 year old grandma who treasures her baseball that John Smoltz tossed over the bullpen fence at the end of the first game of the play-offs right into my grandson's hands for me, my autograph from Leo Mazzone the same grandson got for me at a restaurant, my two baseball cards (Andruw Jones and Smoltz) and I hate it when I can't see games. If TBS is the Braves station then they should broadcast the games!
And I want Pete and Skip back!

TBS has made a huge mistake. A day doesn't go by where I don't see a couple of queries by people searching for Skip Carey information. If anyone from TBS is reading this, your move to MLB on TBS has angered your loyal fans. You would think people from Atlanta would not make the "New Coke" error.

After getting off to a great start, the Royals Mike MacDougal has now blown two saves in a row. He hit two batters and threw a wild pitch tonight. And he threw away some great pitching out of jams in the eariler innings.

The bottom of the Angels order had a big night in Anaheim's 6-2 win over Cleveland. Fullmer, Bengie Molina and Eric Owens each had two hits, and the three combined for five rbi.

It looks like Randy Johnson's knee did not heal in the time on the DL. He'll undergo arthroscopic surgery to have the knee repaired. Mark Grace had the quote of the night:

"Really?'' Arizona first baseman Mark Grace said about the news. "That's really bad."

Not much seems to be going right for the DBacks this year.

Well, sort of:

Colorado Rockies pitcher Todd Jones apologized to the organization and his teammates Wednesday for his recent anti-gay remarks, but he didn't back off what he said.

"I think my only mistake was that I made my views public," said Jones, who was teary-eyed at times during his brief statement. "And for that, I apologize to the Rockies and I apologize to my teammates for putting them through this."

No, his mistake is being closed minded.

Through 2 1/2 innings tonight, the Cardinals lead the Mets 7-0. They've outscored the Mets 20-3 between last night and today. Pedro Astacio has been hammered tonight, and you can't blame errors for this. All 7 runs are earned. He even gave up a double to opposing pitcher Woody Williams. The Mets had been outscored 26-7 in their three previous games (all losses). It's just getting worse.

The Mets are one of those teams that seem to be less than the sum of their parts. After all, they have some pretty good players on this team. Alomar, Floyd and Piazza should be good for some offense. Wigginton has been a pleaseant surprise (Howe finally moved him up in the order). Leiter and Glavine and Benetiz are successful pitchers. Yet, they don't win. I think a big part of it the bad players on the team are so bad, they cancel out the good players. And that has to have a negative effect on the rest of the team. Until the Mets start dumping the likes of Timo Perez, Roger Cedeno and Rey Sanchez, this team will continue to wallow near the bottom of the NL East.

Down 2-1, the Red Sox loaded the bases with one out in both the sixth and the seventh innings. In each case, the Royals pitched out of the jams; two Ks in the 6th, and force out and a pop out in the 7th. That's 0 for 4 with the bases loaded and no runs scored for the Red Sox.

Just looking at the Texas-Toronto box score. Through 6 innings tonight, the top of the Texas order has the following stats:

Batter	OBA	Slug
Everett	.409	.756
Blalock	.440	.639
A. Rodriguez	.443	.676

Looks more like the heart of the order than the top. Palmeiro and Gonzalez should have a ton of RBI this year.

Jarrod Washburn has pitched six innings without a strikeout. He's only given up three hits and has a shutout going. Starters who have gone six innings or more without striking out a batter have a 3-1 record this year with four no-decisions.

It's taking me longer than I thought to get some pictures up, and I'd rather blog about games. But here is one to start you off:

Yawkey way is now a plaza, and you need your ticket to get in. These two performers on stilts were playing with the little children.

I just updated this post. There was a typo in the original press release.

Update: I called the Rockies and left a message with Jay Alves, their PR director. My question to him was, "Does this mean that the Rockies management would welcome an openly gay player on the team?" I was very impressed that Jay returned my call. He said that the Rockies disagreed with Todd Jones, but would not go beyond the press release.

There is more discussion about this issue at The Cub Reporter and Bronx Banter.

Baltimore at Detroit. Nate Cornejo is the best starter the Tigers have. His great strenght is that he doesn't walk many (6 in 20 1/3 innings). He's trying to become the first Tiger pitcher this year to win two games.

The Orioles have a very good Beane Count, due to their pitches not giving up many HR or walks. Since the Tigers offense is 14th and 12th in those categories respectively, the Orioles may improve that more.

I had a great time at the game last night. My wife and daughter saw me in the stands on TV, had a great view of Wakefield's knuckler, and Chris George looks like he's 14 years old. :-) I'll write a complete summary with picture tonight after work.

One thing, however; having been to a minor league and major league game within a few days, there is no comparison. AA and ML baseball are worlds apart. Minor league games can be fun, but seeing the two types of teams so close together made me appreciate just how good major league ballplayers perform.

A number of readers have pointed out to me that the Rockies press release regarding Todd Jones' remarks against gay ballplayers on the team did not explicitly state sexual orientation when listing things against which the organization does not discriminate. Yes, I did realize that but,

1. They do list "sex."


2. Given the context, it's pretty clear they are making the point that they disagree with Jones on this issue.

I'm willing to give the Rockies the benefit of the doubt on this one for the moment. However, I'm going to keep my eye out for a clearer statement on the issue.

Update: Christian Ruzich writes to tell me that a cut and paste error was made in the Rockies press release. The second paragraph now reads:

"As an organization and as a part of this community, we are committed to providing an environment for our employees and fans that is free of discrimination and prejudice regardless of race, color, sex, religion, sexual orientation, national orientation, age, disability, or status as a veteran" said Keli McGregor, Rockies team president.

So they weren't being weasels.

Since I'm going to see the Royals on the road twice this week, I thought I'd take a close look at the team. One way to get a good handle on a team is to look at their road statistics.

Royals 2003	Home	Road
Record	10-0	7-5
ERA	2.25	4.57
Runs/Game	5.1	5.67
HR Hit	9	20
HR Allowed	4	12

It looks to me that the Royals are a little better than 500 on the road, bases on their runs per game and ERA. But a the moment, their pitcher and hitters seem to have a great homefield advantage. So right now, the Royals are probably not as good as their overall record, but if they can maintain a large homefield advantage, they'll do very well this year. If you can play .500 on the road and 20 games over at home, you'll have a good shot at the playoffs.

ESPN finally picks up on this story.

The biggest fall has been in Cleveland, where that amazing Jacobs Field sellout streak is a distant memory. The Indians are down 30.7 percent this season, just ahead of the Milwaukee Brewers, where attendance is down 30.5 percent in Miller Park's third year.

Leanne and Marc Schneider brought their three children to a Braves game last week. Andrew, 12, Hayley, 9, and Justin, 5, thoroughly enjoyed themselves, but their parents can't afford many of these outings.

"It's expensive," Leanne Schneider said, her kids munching on hot dogs and snacks. "You bring a family and it costs $40 to feed them. More like $50. It's at least $10 apiece for a hot dog.

"We come at least once a year. If it were less expensive, we would come more often. The kids love it. It's a real treat."

So far, my experience trying to get tickets confirms this. I was able to get field boxes for tonight's Red Sox game, and I've also got great seats for Saturday's game at Camden Yards. Has baseball finally priced itself out of most fans? My Red Sox ticket cost $77.00. My wife compared it to the price of Broadway play.

The good thing is that lower attendance will likely be the catalyst to bring prices down.

Update: William Kelly has a different take on ticket prices, and thinks a Braves game can be a great bargain.

The Mariners at the Yankees offers a good pitching matchup between first place teams with Meche going against Clemens. Both pitchers have good control and are striking out a ton of batters. Meche, however, has given up five home runs already this year, while Clemens has given up only 1. With the Yankees power, Meche could be in trouble. And Mariano Rivera returns to save the day.

Another good pitching matchup is in Milwaukee, where Javier Vazquez leads the Expos into town against Matt Kinney. Kinney is striking out more than 9 per 9 IP, and Vazquez has 46 Ks in 32 2/3 innings.

And to continue the K night, Kerry Wood leads the Cubs into San Francisco in another battle of first place teams. He faces his polar opposite in Kirk Rueter, however, as Rueter has only 3 K in 29 IP, last in K per 9 in the NL.

I just bought a ticket to tonight's KC-Red Sox game. I'll be in box 43, row D if any of you are there and want to say hello. From talking to the ticket agent, good seats are available!

I just recieved the New Yorker in the mail, and there's a baseball cover this week. Looks to me like an Animee rendering of a ballplayer. The title of the cover is "The New Left Fielder."

When I first got the New Yorker, the magazine would come in a plain, brown wrapper. This way, if you liked the cover, you could cut it out and frame it. Now they put the address sticker on the cover, which ruins it as art, and you have to go buy one from a store if you want to save the cover.

You can see a small picture of the cover on the New Yorker website.

I received an interesting E-mail from Darren Viola today.

Hey David.. Maybe you can come across the Todd Jones article (being somewhat of a loose cannon, I can only imagine what Jones wrote about ) that the Rockies have seemingly squashed in the Denver Post. I was trying to post it over here at Baseball Primer.

Here is the Rockie Press Release retraction.

http://colorado.rockies.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/col/news/col_press_release.jsp?ymd=20030428&content_id=294326&vkey=pr_col&fext=.jsp

Here's what the press release says:

The unfortunate comments made by pitcher Todd Jones and published in today's Denver Post in no way reflect the views, opinions, or attitudes of the Colorado Rockies Baseball Club.
"As an organization and as a part of this community, we are committed to providing an environment for our employees and fans that is free of discrimination and prejudice regardless of race, color, sex, religion, national orientation, age, disability, or status as a veteran" said Keli McGregor, Rockies team president.

The Colorado Rockies Baseball Club is an Equal Opportunity Employer and is committed to providing a work environment that is free from unlawful discrimination.

So what did Todd Jones say? I looked at the Denver Post sports page, and like Mr. Viola, couldn't find an article. So I did a search of Google News with the query "Todd Jones Denver Post" and found an article in the theater section titled "Broadway portrayal of homosexual ballplayer runs counter to reality".

In the few first seconds of the most controversial new play on Broadway, a young, handsome and cocky major-league baseball superstar casually and unashamedly mentions to the media and his teammates that he is gay. His talents are so god-like, his life to date so charmed and insulated from hatred, it never occurs to him to care what anyone else might think about that.

Todd Jones was asked to comment:

Colorado Rockies pitcher Todd Jones, a 6-foot, 3-inch pitcher from Marietta, Ga., said an openly gay player would create a hostile locker-room environment, and that opposing pitchers would likely throw intentionally at his head.

"I wouldn't want a gay guy being around me," Jones said. "It's got nothing to do with me being scared. That's the problem: All these people say he's got all these rights. Yeah, he's got rights or whatever, but he shouldn't walk around proud. It's like he's rubbing it in our face. 'See me, hear me roar.' We're not trying to be close-minded, but then again, why be confrontational when you don't really have to be?"

That kind of attitude "speaks volumes about America," said actor Daniel Sunjata, a Jeter lookalike who plays Lemming in "Take Me Out." "Sports are the last bastion of sanctioned homophobia in this country. The fact that something like sexual preference can so adversely affect your career and your income is depressing. If I were a pro baseball player, and I was gay, I might not come out, either, for those exact reasons."

It's good to see the Rockies disagreeing with this comment. I wonder if this means the Rockies management would welcome an openly gay ballplayer? If so, that's a big step forward in management's thinking. Maybe the Rockies will be the Brooklyn Dodgers of the aughties.

Update: There was a typo in the press release, and sexual orientation should have been included. The link to the press release brings you to the corrected version, and this post also prints the corrected paragraph.

Justin Wayne has a heavy burden tonight. After yesterday's 20 inning marathon, Wayne has to go deep into the game to give the Marlins bullpen a rest. So far, however, he's averaging 20 pitches an inning, and he's not throwing a high percentage of strikes. At this rate, they may have to pull him in the 6th.

Craig Damon writes with this interesting observation:

Just a quick observation. Grady Little needs to not pitch Chad Fox following Pedro. Its not the Chad Fox is bad, his stuff just looks too hittable when batters have been trying to adjust to Pedro all day. Consider the following appearances:

                  G  IP  ER  W+H    WH/9    ERA
after Pedro       5  4    4   11    2.75   9.00
not after         5  5.1  0    7    1.31   0.00

More evidence? Fox's only good appearance in a game started by Pedro was the game that wasn't really Pedro. When Pedro had bad stuff (his 10 run game), Fox pitched a perfect inning. His next best outing was 4 base runners in 1 2/3 innings. McNamara never figured out that Calvin Schiraldi could not pitch after Clemens. He was perfect in save opportunities (until the W.S.) following other starters, but blew over half his save opportunities following Clemens. Both learned the same pitches from the same college coach and were about the same size. Schiraldi had good stuff, but looked too much like a tired Clemens. Hopefully Grady Little (or the Red Sox brain trust) will figure this one out real soon.

Yes, if you were going to replace Clemens with someone who pitched like Clemens, you'd want someone who throws even faster. It's an interesting theory, and I wonder what other people think of it?

Jon Weisman doesn't use permalinks in his blog, Dodger Thoughts, but go there and scroll to the post titled Sign Waves. He has an excellent observation:

It seems to me that you've truly turned the corner when you're no longer looking for a sign that you've turned the corner. After all, are the Yankees or Giants looking for signs? No. The Royals are probably looking for signs that they're a fluke, although none have really come ... yet.

The Cub Reporter has a couple of post on Mark Bellhorn and what the Cubs should do about his poor hitting.

Duck Snorts has a good review of the Padres series with the Reds.

Aaron Gleeman is upset that A.J. Burnett may be out for the season. And it seems he predicted it a year ago. (The permalink doesn't work, so scroll down to the post titled Okay, now I'm pissed.

Mike's Baseball Rants was at the no-hitter yesterday. I'm jealous. I've always wanted to see a no-hitter live. :(

Jay Jaffee at Futility Infielder has an excellent post on pitch counts.

Well, there are only two today, and they are both late starts. The best is the Phillies at the Dodgers. Both teams have played 25 games, but the Phillies have scored almost 50 more runs (that's 2 more per game) than the Dodgers. Why? Neither team has hit many HR. The Dodgers are last in the league with 15, but the Phillies have only 17. The Phillies have 16 more hits, but they have 34 more walks, and that gives them a 40 point advanatage in OBA. On top of that, the Dodgers have hit poorly with runners in scoring position (.238), while the Phillies have hit very well (.294). Meanwhile, both teams are pitching very well, with the Dodgers 2nd in ERA in the NL, and the Phillies 4th.

In the other game, the DBacks return home after their double header sweep of the Mets to host the Marlins. The Marlins are really running wild. They have stolen 43 bases this year; the next closest team, the Giants, have 16! And not only are they running a lot, they are running well. The are sucessful over 78% of the time, well over the break even point of 67%. Meanwhile, no one is running on the Marlins, with only 11 attempts against them this year. Watch the running game tonight!

I received two interesting links to stories in this morning's mail. Aaron sent me a link to a Juan Williams interview of Walter Iooss Jr. Iooss has a new book out that is a collection of his baseball photographs over the years. The interview is nearly 30 minutes, so be prepared to spend some time with this piece.

Jan from Wellesley sends me this link to a NY Post article reviewing Moneyball, the Art of Winning an Unfair Game.

As depicted in "Moneyball," the A's would not have been all that different if managed by a cardboard cutout of Howe. Unlike other GMs, Beane dictated (among other things) lineups, bullpen usage and strategy - specifically no steals or sacrifices. Howe would confirm with players who stole on their own that it was indeed their decision, so Beane would be furious with them and not him. Most unflattering of all was that Beane even ordered where and how Howe stood in the dugout - on the top step with his chin raised to project leadership to his players below, though Howe preferred to sit on the bench.

When asked about that and other matters in "Moneyball" Howe said, "I'm not going to comment on anything said in the book."

And if that's not bad enough:

In "Moneyball," besides the Howe issue, Phillips is depicted as a stooge for Beane during the June draft and July trading deadline. It should be noted most other baseball officials, including all the scouts in the A's organization, come off poorly, too.

"Books like this never seem to be good ideas," Phillips said. "Winning is a complete and total team effort and most people recognize that."

That was a dig at Beane's ego. Still, Beane wins. Phillips and Howe preside over a complete and total team effort in losing, an 11-14 mess that the Shea fans rightly despise. With a $120 million payroll, Phillips has produced a roster on which - for now - Tony Clark is remarkably the best player. Howe - for now - has fixed none of the offensive, defensive and attitude issues that supposedly got Bobby Valentine fired.

Things are so bad at Shea that you can throw the book at them.

A-Rod earned some of his $25 million dollar salary today. He was five-for-five with two doubles and six RBI. Alex had been only 3 for 18 with runners in scoring position; he was 3 for 3 today.

John Lackey just gave up his 7th HR of the year, a 2-run shot by Manny Ramirez. Lackey gave up 10 in 108 1/3 innings last year.

I guess all Randy Johnson needed was a little rest. He pitched 6 innings in the night-cap of the DBacks-Mets doube header, and managed to strike out 12. He did, however, give up 9 hits. But all-in-all, a very positive start for the Big Unit.

Mets struck out 27 times in the two games.

Esteban Loaiza is now 5-0. And this isn't luck, he's been pitching great. Like Mark Redman, Loaiza has suddenly figured out how to strike out batters. He struck out eight today in seven innings, giving him 35 K in 36 IP (his career K per 9 is 5.5). He has a 1.25 ERA, and the opposition is hitting .151 against him. This may turn out to be one of the great minor league signings of all time.

The performance of the pitching staffs in the Royals-Blue Jays game makes for a good contrast. Hernandez pitched another fine game for the Royals, and left with an 8-2 lead. Pete Walker, the Toronto starter gave up eight earned runs and didn't make it out of the 4th. But the Toronto bullpen held the Royals in check the rest of the way, giving up only 1 run in 5 2/3 innings. Meanwhile, the Royals pen was unable to get the six outs needed for the win. Instead, they gave up eight runs in 1 2/3 innings (9 hits, 2 BB). The previously invincible Mike MacDougal blew his first save of the year. Of course, with KC's run of luck, something like this was bound to happen. Hernandez only threw 95 pitches; maybe next time Pena will leave him in longer.

This was the 40th no hitter where the game went at least 9 innings. The last was on 6/25/1999 by Jose Jimenez of the Cardinals, beating Randy Johnson.

Millwood gets Grissom to fly out to Ledee! A no-hitter for Kevin Millwood. Three walks, 10 K, 108 pitches. There's a pickup the Phillies Phans really love now.

Ray Durham, after being down 1-2, draws a walk. Millwood is overthrowing as he faces Grissom.

He needs 1 strike for the no-hitter.

Sidney Ponson did everything right today. He pitched into the 7th, threw 71 of his 99 pitches for strikes, struck out 7 and walked only 1. He got the win in the Orioles 7-4 beating of Tampa Bay.

The Giants went 1-2-3 in the 8th inning. Millwood needs three more outs for a no-hitter.

Kevin Millwood's pitching a fantastic game this afternoon. He's not allowed a hit through seven innings. He's walked two and struck out 10. And he's averaging only 12 pitches an inning!

He's had to pitch this well, also. The only offense from the Phillies has been Ricky Ledee, who hit a solo shot in the first to generate the only run of the game so far.

The other night when I was at the Norwich Navigators game, my friend Jim Storer and I had a rare disagreement about Ken Griffey Jr. and the Hall of Fame. Jim believes that Griffey has already done enough in his career that he's going in no matter what. I'm of the opinion that while he's had a great career, he's only had half a career, and that's not enough to get him in the hall. We sat there thinking of Hall of Famers, and couldn't come up with a hitter who sank so quickly after age 30. (We restricted ourselves to hitters elected by the baseball writers.)

Anyway, I've always found depending on memory to be a dangerous thing, so I've done the research. This page contains a table of what the 65 Hall of Fame hitters elected by the writers did from age 31 on (seasonal age). Griffey's last good year was at age 30, so this should give us an idea who has had a short career. It's ranked by game in ascending order, so the short 30's careers will be at the top.

Looking at this list, I'm now more inclined to agree with Jim. Kiner was elected after only playing two seasons after the age of 30. And Hank Greenberg also retired early, after being traded to a poor Pittsburgh team (where he mentored Kiner for a year). However, I have heard arguments against Kiner being in the Hall, and part of Greenberg's career was lost to WWII. If Griffey never played another game of ML baseball, or if he played poorly for another five years, I would be hesitant to vote him into the hall. But it does look like he'll make it.

Randy Johnson is scheduled to return to the DBacks lineup in the 2nd game of a double header today at Shea Stadium. Johnson's had a rough year so far and carries an 8.31 ERA into the game.

In Anaheim, Pedro Martinez goes against John Lackey on national TV. The Red Sox, despite a great start, the Red Sox find themselves five games behind the Yankees.

The KC juggernaut tries to continue in Toronto, as the nearly unhittable Runelvys Hernandez brings his 1.10 ERA to town. He'll be trying to join Mike Mussina as the only 5-0 pitchers in the majors.

And finally, Detroit trys for its first two-game winning streak of the season in Seattle. It's Bernero vs. Garcia, and I think the odds favor Freddy.

Each starter in the Orioles-Devil Rays game has a hit. In fact, eight of them have multiple hits. Starting the bottom of the eighth, there have been twenty eight hits so far! Rick Helling gave up 11 in 3 2/3 innings. Parris wasn't much better, giving up eight hits in 4 innings. With a three run lead, can the DRays get the three outs they need for the win?

The Yankees and Rangers are tied at 4 after 2 innings. Seven of the eight runs have scored on home runs. Coming into today, these two teams were 1-2 in the percentage of runs scored on HR:

Team	Runs	Runs on HR	Pct.
Rangers	105	60	57.1
Yankees	156	78	50.0
Reds	100	48	48.0
Brewers	99	42	42.4

Shawn Chacon won his fourth game of the season today, and continues to pitch impressively, even at Coors. I've joked in the past that any Rockies starter who can put up an ERA under 4.00 for a season should automatically get the Cy Young Award. Well, Chacon currently has an ERA of 1.04, and he's started four of his five games in Denver! A great start for the young hurler.

In general, teams that leave a lot of men on base are teams that have good offenses. In order to leave men on base, you have to be able to get men on base, and that usually means you are scoring runs.

But the Reds today were ridiculous. They left 18 men on base. That's the highest in the NL this year (TB left 21 on base on April 1st). They were 1 for 15 with men in scoring position! That shouldn't be surprising, since they came into today with a .201 BA with men in scoring position, tied with Arizona for lowest in the majors. Despite all this, they scored 7 runs and won the game! The scored two on a HR with a man on first, two on fielder's choices, and two on bases loaded walks, including the run that won the game. Get men on, and you will score.

John Halama just gave up his first hit of the game in the 7th. The Indians had scored a run in the 3rd on a HBP, sac, groundout and error. Halama is already at 100 pitches, so we'll see how long he stays in the game with a 3-1 lead.

A successful debut for Claudio Vargas today for the Montreal Expos. Vargas pitched 6 innings, and only allowed 2 hits in 20 AB against him. He was a little wild, but walked four and struck out seven. He's another good addition to the team with the best ERA in the majors.

Mike MacDougal picked up his 10th save in 10 opportunities today. He has real interesting stats. In 12 innings, he's only give up 5 hits (for a .139 opposition BA), but has walked 9. But when he gets in a jam he gets really tough. He's only allowed 1 hit in 11 AB and 2 walks with men in scoring position. Ten saves a month is more than enough to break Bobby Thigpen's record of 57.

Update: From 1974 on, the most saves in March/April is 13 by Sasaki in 2001.

A friend of mine, Debbi Wrobleski, who works for WWZN in Boston asked me recently if I knew what Ted Williams hit vs. LHP. I didn't, and I couldn't find anything on the internet. I then asked Don Zminda of STATS, who asked Dave Smith of Retrosheet. Dave was kind enough to send me the following research.

Ted Williams Left-Right splits, based on incomplete data.
Report prepared April 26, 2003 by David W. Smith from
Retrosheet data

Category   AB    H  2B 3B  HR  RBI   BB  SO   BA  OBA   SA
Total    4005 1339 261 27 259  895 1048 383 .334 .473 .607
vs left   928  276  58  3  33  174  193 127 .297 .422 .473
vs right 3077 1063 203 24 226  721  855 256 .345 .488 .647

Career   7706 2654 525 71 521 1839 2019 709 .344 .482 .634

The games not included are mostly from the early part of
his career. For example, there is no information here
from 1939 or 1941. Comparison to his career totals shows
that in the games not included his performance was better
in virtually all categories.

Nonetheless, it appears that Ted had a definitely reduced
output against left-handers and it seems unlikely that the
missing games would make up this difference.

Doug Purdie writes in response to this post:

Giants' announcers Mike Krukow, Duane Kuiper and John Miller report that Toreallba's defense is better than Santiago's. I haven't seen him behind the plate enough to make my own judgement, but if their report is true defense doesn't explain why Giants' pitchers' ERA is higher when Yorvit is behind the plate. The announcing team also report that Giants' pitchers like Santiago better because he knows the hitters better and therefore calls a better game. Makes sense to me.

Thanks, Doug!

My good friend Jim Storer took me to the Norwich Navigators double header against the Binghamton Mets last night. Here's a few pictures from the game.

Here's Phoebe, now three months old. :-)

I'm off to Norwich, Connecticut to see the Navigators host the Binghamton Mets. Norwich is now the Giants AA affiliate. Enjoy the ML games tonight!

Update: Fixed typo in Binghamton.

Today's pick is San Francisco at Philadelphia. The game pits two of the top power hitters against each other, Bonds and Thome. Vincente Padilla has shown tremendous control this year, striking out 24 and walking only 3. Should be fun.

Tom Holmer writes:

I have been following with interest the various blogs and the conversations regarding pitch counts. Personally, I think that reliance on pitch counts are more a method of laziness, than they are concerned with a performers endurance.

Take the controversy over Mark Prior's pitch counts. Now here you have a man who delivers the ball effortlessly. He relies mainly on his fast ball and has an incredibly consistent release point. I contend that Mark Prior's reliance on fastballs, along with his delivery puts less stress on his arm in 130 pitches than a pitcher who relies on a splitter for his out pitch, does in 80.

Most of the people who are concerned about Prior's pitch count often cite his team mate Kerry Wood and his arm problems. I had the good fortune of videotaping Kerry's 20 strikeout performance against the Astros and I can tell you with utmost sincerity, that the kid was destined for arm surgery. His release point was all over the map and it was the "slurve" that was doing him in. Even after his surgery, Kid K still has release problems and he will probably incur more arm injuries if you do not keep his pitch count down (he should pitch around 95 pitches per game).

Bottom line, if your pitcher has good mechanics and relies on his fastball, it is safe to go with your gut when you pull him...otherwise, you may find some value in pitch counts, although a manager could just as easily monitor velocity and placement to get a good handle on the arm stress of a pitcher.

It's very similar to the relief pitcher strategy. Give everyone roles, use them in those roles, and the press won't blame the manager if things go wrong. But try using relievers creatively, and everyone blows up at you.

Same here. Yes, there should be limits, but they should be flexible based on age, mechanics, etc. However, I'd much rather have managers err on the side of too few pitches, especially with young arms.

Edward Cossette of Bambino's Curse has his thoughts here, including a link to a story about the Red Sox on the Jimmy Kimmel show last night. Also, Scott Brodeur uses the former post as a jumping off point for his blog beat today. There's a Red Sox forum there where you can join the discussion.

I don't know quite what to make of the tension between the Red Sox and the news media. The Sox are off to a good start; in most years, they would be leading the division. (Their .636 winning percentage would be in the lead or tied for the lead in 3 of the 6 divisions in baseball.) The Boston press has always been negative (maybe they thought it would change with the death of Mr. Negativity, Will McDonough). Why do the Red Sox get upset over these things? When you treat the reporters badly, they go into overdrive and write devestating articles like this from Tony Massarotti of the Boston Herald.

Growing more distracted and distrustful than ever before, the Red Sox called a team meeting prior to yesterday's game at The Ballpark in Arlington. During that session, the Sox decided they would heretofore engage reporters only on the topic of baseball.

Given those parameters, here is our first baseball question:

Why, fellas, did you go out and play the game today as if you had your heads rammed up your butts?

Baseball is a reasonably simple game, after all, at least if it is played properly. But that didn't stop the Red Sox from pitching as if they were blindfolded, throwing the ball to a phantom fielder and overthrowing cutoff men as if the latter were a third world government. The final score: Texas 16, Red Sox 5. And it wasn't nearly that close.

From purely a baseball perspective, the Sox embarrassed themselves. From purely a baseball perspective, they had a series of fundamental breakdowns. From purely a baseball perspective, they lost 2-of-3 to a one-dimensional Texas team with which they should have been able to clean their spikes.

I think it's time for the Red Sox to hire media trainers. I think this woman would be a good choice.

Update: I was not aware of the Timlin bumper sticker incident before I wrote this post.

It's the 50th anniversary of the publication of Watson and Crick's structure for DNA. The Nature communication linked to in the previous sentence is the essense of simplicity. I hope you'll take a few minutes to read it. Also, if you're looking for an interesting read, pick up a copy of The Double Helix by James Watson. It's a fascinating story of how these two men solved one of the most important mysteries of science.

Andy Pettitte has had a very tough outing so far tonight. He's not throwing strikes. He's in the middle of the 2nd, and he's thrown 45 pitches, only 24 for strikes. The Angels are getting ahead in the count, and waiting for a fat pitch. They've hit two HR so far, and lead the game 4-0. The Yankees starters win streak could end tonight, but a four run lead isn't that much for the Yankees to overcome.

Jesus Colome is pitching in the 7th for the Devil Rays. When are they going to make him a closer so the announcers can say, "Jesus saves!" :-)

Al Bethke reminds me that the last time he pitched, Ryan Drese threw 137 pitches, the most in the majors this year. I was concerned about that pitch count this early in the season. Drese got rocked today, only lasting two innings, giving up five hits and four walks.

Wade Miller did not have his control tonight. He only lasted three innings, walking 4, hitting a batter and throwing two wild pitches. Miller had much better control the last two years, and the difference is showing in his ERA. (3.40 in 2001, 3.28 in 2002, 5.47 in 2003).

Byung-Hyun Kim and Javier Vazquez are locked in a fierce pitcher's duel tonight in Montreal. Vazquez has held the DBacks scoreless through 7, but he's thrown 122 pitches and that may be it for him. Kim is pitching in the 7th, and hasn't allowed a run either. Kim has only given up three hits, and has thrown only 79 pitches.

Update: Vlad the Impaler homers off Kim in the 7th to give the Expos a 1-0 lead.

Mark Redman has his strikeout pitches working this year. He has 5 strikeouts through five innings tonight, and 27 in 28 2/3 innings on the season. For his career, he's K'd 5.86 per 9. If this represents a new level of performance for Redman, I'd expect a big improvement in his ERA also.

I've never been a big fan of Jimmy Rollins as a leadoff hitter. He has a career OBA of .320, and his OBA went down the last two seasons. But he's getting the job done this year. After a 3 for 5 day today, Rollins has a .387 OBA. He has 18 runs scored in 22 games, and if he keeps getting on, he'll score 100 runs (and probably many more) for the first time in his career.

Cesar Izturis just made a great play deep in the hole to get Jose Guillen at first. It's the type of play you back on as saving a no-hitter. And Kevin Brown is perfect through four.

Mark Mulder put on a clinic today on how the A's like their hurlers to pitch. A complete game using 96 pitches, 3 hits, 1 BB, 5K. The Tigers have now been shut out 5 times this year, which leads the majors.

The game took 2 hours, 6 minutes, making it the 2nd fastest game of the day so far. The Twins at KC took 2:02.

Shawn Bernard sent me this link to an article by Jack McDowell complaining about managers being too inflexible with pitch counts:

The baseball world seems obsessed with pitch counts these days. I admire the concern and work that goes into minimizing injury, but don't be fooled. Pitch counts will never be a valid measure of potential injury.

When is 100 pitches really 100 pitches? Let's use one example. Pitcher A will throw against pitcher B in today's game. Pitcher A throws 50 warm-up pitches prior to the game, while pitcher B throws 70. Do those count? Not the last time I checked! That's a 20-pitch difference that is never taken into account.

Well, do those count? I don't know. It looks to me that when pitchers are warming up, they are not throwing the same way they throw during the game. They look more relaxed, and they look like they are not throwing as hard. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'd love to hear what other people think about this article.

Brad Radke pitched a very good game today. An eight inning complete game loss, in which he allowed 4 hits and 2 runs. He threw 95 pitches, 68 for strikes. Radke should win that game. His offense let him down. The Twins had 7 hits and 2 walks, but all the hits were singles. And they were only 1 for 6 with runners in scoring position.

The Royals now have a 5.0 game lead on the division. Only the Giants at 5.5 have a bigger lead.

Looks like there's a real old-fashioned slugfest happening in Texas today. The Rangers lead the Red Sox 6-4 in the third. Carl Everett made up for his eariler error by driving in three with a bases loaded double to give Texas the lead again.

Damian Moss went to 4-0 today with a 3-1 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates. Moss now has a 2.35 ERA. He gave up 5 hits and 3 walks in 7 innings, but the Pirates could not deliver with men in scoring position, going 1 for 8. Barry Bonds returned to the lineup and had an RBI single and an intentional walk.

It seems somehow appropriate that Boston's first run today comes as a result of a Carl Everett error.

I'm just wondering who Yorvit Torrealba is. Although 0 for 2 today, in his brief major league career he has very good hitting stats for a catcher. The team ERA is higher than when Santiago catches, so his defense might not be up to snuff. But both his offense and defense are based on small samples. He's been a great backup for Santiago, and also is someone who can pinch-hit.

Update: Michael Bakunin sends this link of a post he made to a Giants newsgroup on Yorvit.

Steve Bonner writes:

David, I've been reading a few of the Yankees blogs that are linked to via Baseball Musings. Quite a few writers are saying that Yankee fans should be worried because a) The Yankees bullpen is quite sketchy, and
b) the defense is woeful.

I checked the defenseive stats for the Yankees through last nights action and noticed that almost half of their errors this season have come from Almonte. 2B, 1B and CF are all error free as is C.

I know that I was terribly disappointed by the Yankees defens in the series against Anaheim last year but it looks to me as if things have gotten better. Giambi hasn't magically discovered new range and Bernie's arm probably isn't any better. But I don't think the Yankees are as sloppy on defense as they were last year.

My question is, does the Yankees defense look better to you this year or is it just too early to tell?

Good question, Steve. The defensive stat I like best is DER, that measures how often a ball put into play against a defense is turned into an out. I commented on how the Yankees have a poor DER a few days ago. At that time, it was .647. They have since brought it up to .665, so their defense has been better lately. But that still isn't that good. So yes, the Yankees defense can hurt them down the road. But there are two mitigating circumstances:

1. The Yankee pitchers are striking out more batters than last year (7.7 vs 7.0 per 9 IP), and that means the defense has to make fewer plays.


2. The Yankee batters are striking out less, which means they are putting more balls in play so the opposition has to make more plays. And it means the Yankees will get more hits.

Yes, the defense and bullpen is weak. But the offense and starting pitching is so strong, those weaknesses are easily covered up. Sure, they can hurt them in the post-season; in a short series weaknesses can be easily magnified. But I would expect the Yankees to address the bullpen if it continues to be an issue, and I think the offense is good enough (especially if Jeter returns and Giambi starts to hit) to cover the weak defense.

There was a front page story in the Wall Street Journal yesterday on Dave Smith of Retrosheet. (You may need a subscription to read the story.) I believe ML data is now good back to 1974. This is an incredibly valuable resource. If you have any old score sheets, or if your father or grandfather left you any, you should get Dave Smith some copies.

I like the Giants-Pirates again today. You have the 3-0 Damian Moss trying to join Jeff Suppan at 4-0 vs. Kris Benson, whose 1.98 ERA is 7th in the NL. On the downside for the Pirates, it looks like Brian Giles will be out for a while.

The Tigers beat the A's last night, in what should be a confidence builder for the team. The beat the current Cy Young winner, Barry Zito, with the youngest player (and former A) Jeremy Bonderman. Bonderman retired 17 in a row at one point. He threw strikes, did not walk a batter, and only allowed 3 hits. And the Tiger offense managed 7 hits and 4 walks. All in all, a game the Tigers needed.

Every starter in the Marlins lineup has at least one hit tonight. But they have no walks. It's 4-4 in the bottom of the ninth.

After five in Texas, it's 1-0 Rangers. Christenson led off the bottom of the first with a HR, and that's been it. Red Sox have three doubles, but haven't been able to bring those runners around.

Greg Maddux pitched 7 shutout innings tonight. Maddux gave up 3 hits, walked none, but only struck out 1. Maddux, for his career has K'd 6.3 per 9. He also threw 54 of 76 pitches for strikes.

Update: The Braves pen did a good job of trying to blow this game. Darren Holmes came in with a four-run lead in the ninth and gave up a walk and a HR. Smoltz then came into a save situation, got runners on 2nd and 3rd with two outs, and got a fly ball to Andruw Jones to end the game. Braves win. Cardinals fall below .500.

Chris Reitsma is pitching a dandy game tonight. He's given up four hits, and only had one situation with a Dodger in scoring position. This is the 3rd game since the big Reds shakeup, and the last two have been excellent starts.

Barry Bonds is out of the lineup for the 2nd night with a stiff neck. He's also going through a tough time with his father in serious condition after having a brain tumor removed.

Meanwhile, the Pirates are shutting down the Giants. SF has only scored 2 runs in 13 innings against the Bucs so far.

Jenkins is on a roll. He's 2 for 2 with a run and an rbi. Over his last 6 games (including the 2 for 2), he's batting .409 with 7 RBI and 6 runs scored.

The Phillies had five hits and a walk in the first to bat around and score five runs off Jason Jennings. Three doubles helped bring most of the baserunners around to score.

Update: I originally had Jason Johnson pitching for the Rockies. He pitched for the Orioles, and pitched well.

Bartolo Colon finally gave up a HR tonight. Coming into tonight, only Pedro Martinez had thrown more innings in the AL without giving up a HR. Jeff Conine took him deep to give the Orioles a 3-0 lead.

Don't throw a hanging curve to Chad Moeller. He hit his third HR of the season tonight. That's a new career high for him. He has improved his slugging percentage in each of his seasons: .273 in 2000, .321 in 2001, .467 in 2002, and .509 coming into tonight.

I'm watching the Cardinals-Braves game, and it looks like there are few fans there. It doesn't look like it's cold; I don't see a lot of coats in the stands. You have a great pitching matchup. These are two good teams. Where are the fans? They just missed back-to-back HR off Morris!

Attendance is down about 6% this year. Through the same number of days last year, MLB was averaging 26,915 fans per date. This year, it's down to 25,487. It seems to me that the media exaggeration of the players/owners troubles during contract negotiations last year is still turning off fans.

What is it about Wrigley Field? Adam Eaton and Kerry Wood have combined for 21 K through the top of the 7th. Even without this game, Wrigley Field has the highest average K per 9 in the majors this year, 9.05. Skydome is the next closest park at 8.16. In case you were wondering, the place you are least likely to see a K is Edison Field, averaging 4.85 K per 9.

Update: I just want to clarify this post. When I say K per 9, I mean strikeouts per 27 outs. So the total average strikeouts in a game at a park would be double the number I list above. By the way, the game just ended. 27 K total.

The Padres are on a six game losing streak, but are off to a 1-0 lead today. In looking at the Padres lineup in the boxscore, no player in the starting lineup combines both the ability to get on base and the ability to hit for power. Their leadoff hitter, Ramon Vazquez comes closest, but his slugging percentage is less than his OBA! Over their last six games, the Padres have averaged 2.5 runs per game. Klesko and White should hit better than this. But right now, the Padres are starting to look like the Tigers.

If any of you missed my interview on Baseball Prospectus radio, I now have a digital copy here.

St. Louis at Atlanta matches old and new pitching greats, Greg Maddux vs. Matt Morris. In ten years, we may be talking about Morris with the same respect as we do Maddux. Greg is having a rough year, and those 26 wins he needs to get to 300 are looking less likely with each start. The torch is being passed to the next generation, and Morris is near the head of the class.

Matt Bass thinks I shouldn't be concentrating on Jim Thome's HR numbers, He writes:

I think focusing on Thome misses the bigger picture.

The Phillies as a team have only hit 11 homers, and the Phillies as a pitching staff have only given up 14 homers. That 25 HR+HR allowed is lowest in the majors.

Last year, the Phils were T-14 in HRs and 10th in HR allowed. This year its 29 and T-3.

If I had to guess, I'd say that a combination of cold weather, pitchers parks, the wind blowing in, and luck is suppressing home runs in all Phillies games for all players on both teams.

This should not be seen as just a Thome problem (his 2 homers ties for the team lead!), and it may not actually be a "problem" at all.

Thanks for pointing this out, Matt!

David Cone pitched two poor innings tonight and left the game with a sore hip. He took the loss and now has a 6.75 ERA. According to this article, he could be out of a job when Astacio returns. It was a nice try, but I think this comeback was too late.

Despite not allowing an earned run tonight, Pedro was not that impressive. He walked six in a game for the first time since Sept. of 1998! That's 13 he's walked in the last 3 games. He got lucky that he got away with this lack of control against a good offensive team like Texas. Something is off with Pedro.

What a horrible loss for the Reds tonight. With their starting staff in tatters, Paul Wilson throws a great game. He went 7 2/3, walked 1 and struck out 8. He threw 79 of 108 pitches for strikes. He only allowed 2 runs. But the Dodgers shut down the Reds offense tonight, with five pitchers combining for a 6 hitter (with 4 walks). The Reds did have opportunities, but were 1 for 9 with runners in scoring position. In their current situation, a 2-1 loss is a heartbreaker.

Jim Thome started hot, but has been in a slump lately. Over his last 7 games, Thome is 4 for 24, a .167 BA. He only has 2 HR in April, both in the same game. Last year he only hit .210 in April, but had 7 HR. He's hit better than that so far this April, but the power is not there.

Watching the Yankee game, I just saw something unusual. Nick Johnson on first, 1 out, Johnson tries to steal and almost gets picked off. Johnson is not a good basestealer. A couple of pitches later, Johnson does take off, and Giambi takes the ball the opposite way for a hit and run single. Not the two players I would expect to execute that play.

A nice win by the Pirates tonight. Despite four doubles, the Giants were only 1 for 12 with runners in scoring position. Meanwhile, as this post pointed out, the Giants pitchers gave up a bunch of singles, but only 1 extra base hit. The Pirates bunched the hits, however, and got five runs out of it.

Runelvys Hernandez continues to impress. Not the prettiest start tonight (he's walked 6), but only one run allowed through 5 innings. Hernandez's ERA is now 1.16. He's thrown 90 pitches already, so I don't know how long he'll last.

This is an important series for KC. The Twins are one of the favorites in the Central, and beating them will give KC a big boost.

Tomo Ohka is having an excellent season throwing strikes. Comming into tonight, he's thrown 66.4% of his pitches for strikes. The NL average is 61.4. He has a shutout through five innings tonight, and has thrown 41 of 60 pitches for strikes.

The Brewers offense is a bit better this year; 4.2 runs/game vs. 3.9 runs per game last year. One reason is that they now have 1/2 an offense. The 1-2-3-4 hitters are doing what they are supposed to be doing, getting on base and hitting for power. By grouping their best hitters together at the top, the Brewers can get the most runs from their talent. Tonight, for example, the 1-2 hitters have each scored a run, and the 3-4 hitters have each driven in a run.

Who would have thought that Travis Lee would make such a difference to a club. He last played on April 13th.

DRays	Through 4/13	4/14 Through 4/21
Record	5-7	1-6
Batting Average	.295	.228
Runs per Game	5.3	3.6

The first three hitters in the Chicago White Sox lineup tonight all have OBA's over .400. The leadoff hitter this year has be D'Angelo Jimenez. He's kicked around the majors for a few years, but someone in the White Sox organization saw his potential as a leadoff man and put him in the top slot. He's responded great so far, with a .452 OBA, and 12 extra base hits to put his slugging percentage at .662.

Only Baseball Matters prints a letter from Steve Shelby:

John, I have been trying to make sense of what you wrote today about the number of hits and walks the Giants have allowed. The Giants rank 20th in WHIP. However, I can't figure out why they have not allowed more runs. I thought that maybe the Giants are allowing a low slugging rate. But, no, that's not it. I thought that maybe they are allowing a low batting average with RISP. Again, no, it's higher than their overall BA allowed.

Steve is looking in the right places, but I think he misinterprets the slugging number. Slugging can be thought of as the minimum average distance a runner is moved by a batter in an AB. But slugging has two components; part of it is batting average, and part of it is extra bases per AB, also known as isolated power. You can see this by looking at the formulas for slugging. The definition is:

(Singles + 2*Doubles + 3*Triples + 4*HR)/AB

But the efficient way to calculate the quantity is:

(Hits+Doubles+2*Triples+3*HR)/AB

OR

Hits/AB + ExtraBases/AB

So you can have a high slugging percentage by having a high batting average, or getting a lot of extra bases on your hits.

And it really does matter. I made the statement above that slugging percentage is as the minimum average distance a runner is moved by a batter in an AB. But the longer your hit, the more likely a batter is to move a long way. So a slugging percentage of .450 that is based on a .350 BA isn't as effective in moving runners as a .450 slugging percentage that's based on a .250 BA. In other words, it's real tough to drive in a runner from first with a single.

That's what's happening with the Giants opponents. Their slugging percentage allowed looks high, but they are allowing a high BA, or more precisely, a lot of singles. The Giants are 6th in the NL in singles allowed, but 12th in the NL in extra-bases allowed. Yes, they are getting hit, but they are not getting hit hard.

It looks like the Yankees are not going to threaten the record for most runs scored in the first 20 games of a season. They currently have 134. The record from 1901 to 2002 is:

Team	Runs Scored, First 20 Games
Detroit Tigers 1993	158
NY Giants 1930	154
St. Louis Cardinals 2000	151
Colorado Rockies 1997	150
Chicago White Sox 2000	149

However, the Yankees are very close to their record for most runs scored in the team's first 20 games:

Team	Runs Scored, First 20 Games
New York Yankees 1951	136
New York Yankees 1932	136
New York Yankees 1936	134
New York Yankees 1939	133
New York Yankees 1934	132

I finally remembered to put in a link to Pinstripe News, a blog about the comings and goings of the Yankees.

Alex Belth has an extensive and interesting interview with Buster Olney of the NY Times. Lots of good stuff, including what really happened in the Roberto Alomar spitting incident. The permalink doesn't work, so you'll have to scroll down.

Update: The permalink now works. Click here to go straight to the interview.

I hate to keep harping on how bad the Tigers offense is performing, but I was just looking at the list of teams sorted by runs scored and this caught my eye:

Team, 2003	Runs Scored
Tigers	34
Diamondbacks	68
Mets	69

They've scored half as many runs as the 2nd lowest scoring team in the league. And exactly 100 less than the major league leaders, the NY Yankees.

This one is real easy. Yankees at Anaheim. Edison Field (aka, the Big A) is sold out for the series. Thunderstix. Rally monkeys. Putting the ball in play vs. putting it out of the park. K-Rod. The Yankees starting pitching. Torre and Steinbrenner. A new Angels owner in the wings. Put on the coffee and stay up late for this series.

Also on tap is Boston at Texas. I was listening to the Yankee game on the radio in the car yesterday, and the announcers kept saying things like this is historic, but we're to close to it to realize it. That's a little over the top. Yes, the Yankees are on a roll, but if you go back 19 years, the Detroit Tigers got off to an even better start. They were 17-2 that year, and through games of 4/28, had opened a 5 1/2 game lead on the division. Despite this great start by the Yankees, the Red Sox are right there with them, only three games back. And, over the next few weeks, the sechedule favors the Red Sox. It's Pedro against Park, as two former Dodgers are trying to overcome bad starts this year.

Over in the NL, Barry Bonds returns to face his old team, the Pirates. The Giants continue to be the gold standard in the NL, and the Bucs are still struggling without Giles. Jesse Foppert gets his first start for the Giants, while Jeff Suppan brings a 3-0 record and a 1.40 ERA (3rd in the NL) to the mound for Pittsburgh.

A little over a week ago I mentioned that games were faster despite higher scoring. It's still true:

Nine Inning Games	2002	2003
Games	255	256
Average Time	2:56	2:48
Games	9.4	9.7

I have to assume that the speed ups that Alderson was going to implement are working. All I know is that I keep tuning in at the three hour mark to catch the end of games, and they are usually over.

Paul at PR9000.net uncovers a scandal involving Cubs tickets, the Chicago Tribune and ticket agents.

But trying to get tickets to Wrigley is impossible. You have to get in line in February, or know someone who has good tickets, or have a fiancee whose company bought her season tickets two years in a row. Very few people wake up one bright, sunny summer morning, think "I want to see the Cubs today" and just waltz down to the box office at Clark & Addison. It doesn't work that way.

In many cases, you have to use scalpers ticket agents, such as Wrigley Field Premium Ticket Services, right across the street from Wrigley. I've done this a few times myself, and always felt dirty about it. Now, I know why: the Cubs secretly send loads of their best tickets to the agents -- at least one of which is owned by the Cubs themselves!

I'm a free market guy. So in theory I don't find anything wrong with this. What I do object to, however, is that the Cubs aren't up front about it. It strikes me as a way of hiding money so that the Cubs don't look as profitable as they really are. And that's sleezy.

But the idea of clubs selling tickets for different prices depending on the game, that's an idea I don't mind at all. The point of running a ball club is to put as many fannies into the seats as you can (and get as many eyes and ears tuned to TV and radio). So before the season starts, clubs set ticket prices and sell as many seats as they can before anything happens. Some clubs, like the Red Sox, sell the great majority of their tickets before the season starts. But this makes Red Sox tickets a scare, and therefore potentially valuable asset. So let's say you bought four tickets for a late September game against the Yankees, and you bought them in January. Now, it's game day, and Pedro is facing Clemens, and the teams are tied in the standings. How much are those tickets worth? Five times what you paid? Ten times what you paid? It might be enough that you decide you'd rather have the money. You made a good investment that paid off.

Well, why can't teams do this? What's would be wrong with the Red Sox holding back 1000 good seats for every game, and setting the price based on the popularity of the game? People could show up at 9 AM, put in bids on tickets (or they could also bid over the internet). At 11:30, when the park opens, you show back up and find out if you have a high bid. This is essentially what the Cubs are doing by going through an agent. The agent wants to move his tickets, so he or she is going to set the price based on demand, just like a scalper does. For a team that sells out most of it's games, it a great way to generate extra revenue, and as long as it's above board, I don't see anything wrong with it.

Joel Sherman, in the NY Post, has a good summary of what happened. It seems Joe Torre draws the line at his integrity. Good for him. It also seems that pitching coach Billy Connors has a lot of pull in the organization, and some people don't agree with that. It will be interesting to see if Torre eventually tells Steinbrenner me or Connors. Torre doesn't need this job. He does it because he enjoys it. And Torre leaving over this would be a very bad PR move for the Yankees.

As for the team, I think the 15-1 victory today shows how little it will affect the players. If anything, they are probably more behind Torre now than they have ever been. Torre is so successful because he manages people extremely well, and his credibility is part of that. He'll fix things with Contreras. The question is, will Steinbrenner fix things with Torre?

I think he will. George will come out and claim some form of miscommunication, blame himself, and apologize to Torre. I think Steinbrenner realizes how valuable Torre is, and will make an effort to fix this. He won't change what really happened, but it will save enough face to make all happy.

I was away visiting family. I'll be blogging later tonight once I get settled in. Meanwhile, this is exciting. It looks like Rickey Henderson will be playing in the Atlantic League. That' means he'll be visiting my old home town, Bridgeport, CT. Can't wait to see him there!

Salomon Torres hit Sammy Sosa in the helmet today. The picture on this page is amazing. You clearly see the ball rebounding and the helmet shattering. Sosa appears to be fine. Thank goodness for helmets.

Blogging will be light the rest of the day. Enjoy your holiday!

Theo Epstein is not gloating about the recent success of the Red Sox relief pitchers:

``The perception is that things have stabilized, but I don't buy into that because we don't make snapshot evaluations,'' general manager Theo Epstein said late yesterday at Fenway Park, where the Sox posted a 7-2 win over the Toronto Blue Jays. ``We know we have a good club, but we don't get caught up in too much during a six-game winning streak. We'll get ourselves in trouble if we make evaluations on a snapshot basis.

``It was just a matter of time. It was inevitable,'' continued Epstein, referring to the efficiency with which his team now seems to be operating. ``We haven't given up a run in the bullpen for the last four or five days, but that's not going to keep up, either.

``Things will even out.''

Indeed they will, but right now, the Red Sox are doing a lot right. The next few weeks will be an interesting time in the schedule, however. Starting Tuesday, and up until they meet the Red Sox on May 19th, the Yankees will play the four AL West teams. Meanwhile, the Red Sox, while not an easy schedule, face Texas, Anaheim, KC, Minnesota and Cleveland. It's an opportunity for the Red Sox to take advantage of the schedule to gain ground before they host New York for the first time.

Yesterday, I thought someone was going to lose his Reds job. It could have been close. The Reds made four moves after yesterday's games, according to John Fay of the Cincinnati Enquirer. My favorite quote is from Jimmy Anderson:

"I think it's (expletive) ridiculous," said Anderson, who started and lost the second game Saturday. "Four starts, I gave up three runs in two of them, and they tell me I'm not doing my job."

Of course, Anderson fails to mention that if you put those runs in context , it adds up to an 8.27 ERA.

Glenn Dickey of the SF Chronicle lays out what he thinks needs to be done by both the Giants and A's to make an all San Franciso Bay series possible. He believes the Giants great start will let them develop their rookie pitchers:

This year, the Giants still have good depth among their starters and in the bullpen -- even without Robb Nen -- and they also have two rookie pitchers at the bottom of their rotation, Kurt Ainsworth and Jesse Foppert, who are potentially the kind of dominating pitchers they'll need in the postseason. If just one of them emerges, it will give the Giants a tremendous boost.

Because of the gap they've opened up in the NL West, the Giants should be able to start Ainsworth and Foppert on a regular basis for the rest of the season, to find out how good they can be. Both of these young men seem very poised, so their development may be accelerated.

A big cushion does give you a lot of flexibility.

The authors of Elephants in Oakland were at the game yesterday in right field and saw the whole Everett incident happen. The description is supposed to be here. But if that doesn't work, go to the main page and scroll down to the post titled "Trouble." And while you are at it, read the next post criticizing ESPN's coverage of the incident.

With the double header sweep today, the Reds are firmly ensconsed in last place in the Central and last in the wild card race. One thing that Red fans can root for, however, is the developing HR race between Kearns and Dunn. They entered today tied for 2nd in the NL with 6, and Kearns hit two to take the NL lead. If Griffey had stayed healthy, this would be a very scary offense. But unless they can correct the problems with their starters, it won't matter how many sluggers they have on the team.

From the boxscore, there was nothing very encouraging about Mike Hampton's start tonight. He went five innings and threw 86 pitches, but gave up 4 runs. Worse, his control was not good, walking four and only striking out one.

Meanwhile Vincente Padilla put on a clinic. His complete game shutout was accomplished with 107 pitches, 82 of them for strikes! He only gave up four hits, all singles while walking no one. He's now made four solid starts, and won three of them.

It seems that a fan threw a cell phone at Everett that hit Carl in the head. My apologies for putting the previous post in the Baseball Jerk category.

Many years ago I picked up a book that was a collection of short stories from Spitball Magazine. Of course, I can't find the book right now. But one of the stories was set in the future, and was about the last World Series. Fans had become so violent that no fans were allowed at games. They just broadcast the series on TV. They told how over the years fans had to be increasingly separated from players. Large plexiglass barriers were installed between the seats and and field. All in all, a pretty depressing story.

Now, I don't think that will happen because baseball knows that violent fans alienate not only players, but familes who go to games. That's why in most parks, fans can be removed just for spouting obsenities. I hope the apocolyptic vision of the above story never comes true, but baseball needs to tighten security right now to help prevent that story from coming true.

Even though he didn't get the win in the Astros-Brewers game, Mike DeJean deserves part of the W. He threw 3 strong innings using only 32 pitches, 22 of them for strikes. John Foster then came in and pitched 2 shutout innings to pick up the win.

Curt Schilling had an emergency appendectomy today. Looks like they caught it before it burst. He's only expected to miss one start.

One of the great things I've seen in my lifetime is surgery become less invasive. Thirty years ago they would have opened up his abdomen to remove the appendix. Today, they make four little holes, and in a few days you're back on your feet in no time. Let's all hope Schilling has a quick recovery.

Armando Benitez of the Mets blew his fourth save of the year today. That's as many as he had all of last year. His career high was 6 in 1999. He's striking out people; he as 12 in 10 1/3 innings. But when he's not getting the K, he's getting hit. Opponents have a .362 BA against him this year. For his career, that number is a paltry .188.

Nelson Cruz only went five innings today. He did give up two HR to account for the three runs off of him. His control was very good today, throwing 43 of 61 pitches for strikes. At the moment, I don't know why he came out of the game. He batted in the bottom of the fifth, but they did not come out to start the sixth. I wonder if he was hurt?

The Cincinnati Reds, after a second poor outing by Ryan Dempster, now have the highest ERA by starters in the majors, 7.83. That's getting very close to an earned run per inning. Paul Wilson, with a 3.86 ERA is the only one who's come close to pitching well, but his hits, HR and BB allowed don't impress me much. All other starters have an ERA over 6.00. Cincinnati starters are 1 1/2 runs worse than the Texas starters! I don't know who decided on this rotation, but I suspect their job is in jeopardy.

Sometimes you just need to change locations. Raul Ibanez was not making it with the Mariners, and they let him go after the 2000 season. KC signed him, and I bet they're glad they did. Look at the difference in his career since joining the Royals (stats through today's game):

Ibanez	Seattle	Kansas City
Batting Average	.241	.293
On-Base Average	.295	.353
Slugging Average	.383	.529

It could just be that he needed to play everyday, and the Royals gave him that opportunity.

The Cleveland Indians repeated their four error performance of opening day against the White Sox this afternoon. The errors led to seven unearned runs. The Indians had only one 4-error game all last year.

Seems Carl Everett in the last defensive half inning for the Rangers threw something into the stands and hit a fan. It's not clear if it was an accident, or if someone had thrown something at him. The umps called him over and talked to him, then leading off the next inning, he homers. It will be interesting to see what the game story is about this incident.

Last year, Rodrigo Lopez went 6-0 with a 2.57 ERA in July, and if it were not for Pedro Martinez, he would have been pitcher of the month. He hasn't been able to build on that month, however. He was 3-6 with a 4.94 ERA in August and Sept, and now is off to an 0-3 start with a 7.66 ERA. One difference is that last year batters hit .254 with runners in scoring position against him. This year they are 9 for 25 against him, .360.

Another good outing by the Red Sox bullpen today. Since Mendoza's 4 run performance on the 15th, Red Sox relievers have pitched 12 1/3 innings, given up 7 hits, 1 BB, struckout 9 and have an ERA of 0.00. That's five different pitchers with 9 appearances. Looks like the pen is starting to shape up.

Mike Hampton makes his Braves debut today against division rival Philadelphia. Things have been looking up for the Braves lately as they have won five in a row to climb to 2nd place in the NL East, and a strong showing by Hampton would solidify their gains.

Nelson Cruz goes for his fourth win as the Padres visit Colorado. The reliever turned starter bucking a trend, having his ERA go down since joining the Rockies. Bill James says you need sinker ball pitchers to get batters to hit the ball on the ground in Coors. So far, Cruz's GB/FB ratio is 2.38. He's 1/3 of an inning short of qualifying right now, but that ration would be fourth highest in the NL.

I wanted to thank everyone who has come by to read this month. April is a little over half-way done, and it's already Baseball Musings best month ever.

With another six runs so far tonight, the Cardinals continue to lead the majors in runs per game. They're scoring more than the Red Sox or Yankees without a DH. They've had 10 hits tonight, six for extra bases. Their team slugging percentage is over .500. This may turn out to be their best offensive team since 1930.

Bartolo Colon pitched a complete game win tonight. His line consisted of 3's and squares of 3. 9 IP, 9 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 3 BB, 3K. The White Sox become the 4th AL team to reach 10 wins.

Anything can happen in 100 AB. So normally, I would not be worried about Craig Biggio's slow start. He's 0-4 in the 7th, and he's lowered his batting average to .222. What's more worrying to me, though is, that he only has one walk. Biggio has been a very good hitter, and usually drew over 60 walks in a season. Most batters, as they lose their ability to get around on the ball, become more selective and draw more walks before pitchers realize they can't hit anymore. Maybe pitchers have realized this with Biggio. He's 37, and that's not an unusual age for this kind of decline.

Despite the injuries to the pitching staff, despite another poor performance by Greg Maddux, despite Chipper Jones not playing up to snuff, the Braves with a victory over Philadelphia tonight are tied with the Phillies, 1/2 game behind the idle Expos. Some things never change.

After starting 0-13, Doug Mirabelli has found his stroke the last two days. He's five for eight, with 2 HR, 3 RBI and 4 runs scored. And just to note this is the third straight game in which the bullpen has not allowed a run.

The Pirates miss Brian Giles. They've now played 7 games without him, and have only scored 17 runs in those games. This Pirate team is improved over last year, but the injury to Giles shows just how sensitive the offense is to his presence. The team is 2-5 without their star.

Tony Batista was the big contributor to the Orioles 9-7 win over Tampa Bay tonight. He's off to a torrid start. He was 2 for 3 with a walk and a HR tonight, to raise his OBA to .431 and his slugging average to .625.

I'm looking at the Mets boxscore, and see Rey Sanchez batting 2nd. I don't understand this at all. With Rey Ordonez's surge of power, Sanchez is easily the worst offensive player in the game. Almost any other player in the lineup would be a better choice. When are they going to move Wigginton to the top of the lineup?

Rey Ordonez hit his third HR of the season tonight. That ties his career high set in 2001 with the Mets. Of his six other seasons, he had five total HR, no more than 1 in any of those years. At this rate, Rey will be batting 4th soon. :-)

An interesting matchup in the Yankees-Twins game. Defensive Efficiency measures the ability of a defense to turn a ball in play (other than HRs) into an out. The Twins lead the majors with a mark of .757 (or, 76% of balls put into play against them are turned into outs). The Yankees have the worst DER at .647. That means that for every 100 balls put into play against these two clubs, the Twins will get 11 more outs. That's almost four innings worth of outs. The Yankee pitchers make up for this somewhat by walking few batters and allowing few HR. But the Twins have a 3.22 ERA, and the Yankees a 3.35 ERA.

Of course, after this discourse, Soriano leads off with a HR!

Looks like it's Every Ball In Play night in Baltimore. A total of 14 pitches were thrown in the first inning as Zambrano and Johnson each got the side 1-2-3.

The Pirate announcers were touting Kris Benson's ML leading 0.89 ERA coming into the game, but the first four Cubs have reached to score a run, and now Choi is up with the bases loaded and no out.

Update: Choi doubled to drive in two. Still no outs.

The Cub Reporter has the numbers on the last three games. What's interesting is that they have scored this many in three games twice in the last six years, but it's been since 1961 that they've scored this many and won all three games against the same team!

Harvey Frommer has the story on the first game at Yankee Stadium, 80 years ago today.

Nothing really excites me today, but Detroit at KC might be fun. One of these days, the Tigers are going to explode for 10 runs in a game. Plus, the way the division is stacked right now, it's a good David and Goliath story.

Eric Gagne continues his near perfect season for the Dodgers. He picked up his fourth save in four tries last night. He's made eight appearances, pitched 10 innings and has allowed no runs. Opponents have reached base four times against him, twice on singles and twice on walks. Meanwhile, he's stuck out 14. Exactly what you want in a closer.

Kinney threw seven shutout innings for the Brewers tonight. What's more significant is that he only walked 1. In his career, he had averaged nearly 5 walks per nine innings. We'll see if this control lasts.

Baltimore-Cleveland is in the twelfth inning, and both bullpens are pitching well. Each has gone four innings so far without allowing a run.

Mo Vaughn had his 2nd four hit game since joining the Mets. Mo need a big game. He came into tonight batting .167, with four rbi. He raised his average to .244 and doubled his rbi totals.

Floyd, Piazza and Vaughn, the 3-4-5 hitters, have not shown much power yet. Piazza had a HR tonight, but none of them have high slugging averages. It's the wrong place to have a hole in your offense.

Coming into tonight, the Tigers were averaging 2.0 runs per game (26 runs in 13 games). They are being shut out through six innings. If that holds up, they will fall below 2 runs per game. Just how bad is that? The only team that was under 2.0 for a season was the 1884 Wilmington Quicksteps at 1.94. The scored 35 runs in 18 games. Since 1900, considering AL and NL teams, the lowest three scoring teams are:

Team	Runs/Game
1908 Cardinals	2.41
1909 Senators	2.44
1908 Dodgers	2.45

The Tigers should have a turn back the clock day and wear the uniforms of 100 years ago. That's how their offense is playing.

I notice Jung Bong is in pitching for the Braves. In one inning so far, no hits and two strikeouts. I'd be worried that people would get a lot of hits off him. :-)

Giles just drove in the go-ahead run with his fourth hit of the night, his second double to go with a HR and a single.

Earlier today, I said these were the games to watch. Pedro had a good outing, allowing 0 runs and only 2 hits in seven innings. He did walk 3 while only striking out 3, however, so he's not back to normal. But Sox fans will take that outing anytime. Offensively, Kevin Millar hit his fourth HR of the season to keep his win shares high. He's now slugging .755.

Curt Schilling does appear to be back to normal. Complete game, 10 K, 0 BB and a solo HR allowed. He was even very efficient, using only 102 pitches to record the win. He also got plenty of support as Carlos Baerga (I'm always amazed that he's still playing) hit two HR.

Update: Noah Pan pointed out an error I made in this entry. I had Pedro with 2 unearned runs, when he actually allowed 0 runs and 2 hits. I've made the correction.

Mike Lowell had three hits today in the Marlins 7-3 win over the Phillies. Mike, after a rough start with the Yankees and cancer surgery, is having a nice career. Sure, he's not Scott Rolen or Eric Chavez, but he had 22 win shares last year, and only 5 regular third basemen had more. He's a solid player, and it's nice to see him off to a good start, and having a good career after his illness.

The A's pitchers did not have an A's-like game today. They walked 9 batters! That's somewhat unusual for them. The did have a ten walk game last year, but they also had 14 games in which they did not issue a walk at all. So far this year, they have not gone a whole game without walking a batter. The Yankees, on the other hand, already have four game where none of their pitchers issued a walk.

The Reds really got pounded by the Cubs. They lost three out of four games, and in doing so allowed 52 and 40 runs in 33 IP. And 23 of the hits were for extra bases (9 of those today; 4 HR, 4 doubles, 1 triple). The team ERA went from a poor 5.64 to a horrible 6.62. The Reds have a pitching problem, and even getting Griffey back isn't going to give them enough offense to overcome this staff.

Ryan Drese threw 137 pitches today. That's the most thrown by a starting pitcher this year. That seems awfully high this early in the season. Drese is 27, so it's not like you're ruining a kid's arm, but so many pitchers have had bad outings after that many pitches that I'm wondering what Showalter was thinking. Just to see how far out it is, here's the distribution of number of pitches made by starters this year.

Chris George gave up four home runs today. He's the second pitcher to allow that many in a game this year; Ryan Jensen gave up four to the Brewers in Milwaukee on April 4th. Last year there were 30 such performances during the year, or about five a month.

With their 2 HR today, the Yankees have now outhomered their opponents 27-4. Just in case you were wondering, the team that outhomered their opponents by the largest margin was the 1927 Yankees, who had 116 more HR than their foes.

I'm starting to like Hee Seop Choi a lot. He's now played half as many games as he did last year, and he's more than doubled his walks and doubled his homers. A Cubs lineup with two Sammy Sosas is really dangerous.

It took sixteen games, but David Eckstein finally got his first extra-base hit, an HR leading off the game today against Texas. Eckstein is walking a lot, but he's not getting hits. He was batting .204, but with an OBA of .343 entering today. The OBA's okay, but Eckstein should be hitting better than that.

Pete Walker is throwing strikes today. Through two innings, he's only thrown 31 pitches, 23 for strikes. The Yankees have 1 hit and no walks.

My solicitation of comments on Brewers security brought in these replies. The first is from Mark:

As a life long Brewers fan, who has gone to countless games and worked on the grounds crew, at County Stadium, for a couple of summers, I think the security at Miller Park is much better than it was at County Stadium. If for no other reason than the way it is designed. It keeps people, other than the expensive seats, further away from the field. There also appears to be a greater presence of security. Although the comforts and security of Miller Park is nice it has taken away the blue collar, party atmosphere of County Stadium, yet another reason less people attend Brewers games. Miller Park has become just another mall-restaurant enterprise. People used to go to County Stadium to drink a little beer, socialize and watch a .500 ballclub. Now they go because they got the company tickets and parking pass for free.

I also believe,along with my wife that the only way women or anyone will start going to Brewers games is if they win. My wife enjoys baseball and goes to games to watch baseball with me, she goes to restaurants and bars and malls to do everything else with people who don't need other reasons to go to baseball games other than watching baseball.

But they have figured out another way to get fans to games without winning is too bring in celebrities to make movies, http://www.jsonline.com/onwisconsin/movies/apr03/134048.asp. I guess bring in Bernie Mac is easier and will make more money than fielding a good ballclub.

And Joe Duellman writes about security and the improved Brewers:

I've been to my fair share of Brewer games and I don't recall ever witnessing any sort of serious problems with security. An occasional drunken fan might get a bit rowdy now and then, but I seriously doubt anybody avoids going to Miller Park because of safety concerns.

As for the gimmicks trying to attract more females fans...well, can you blame them? The Brewers have been pretty bad for a long time and they need to do whatever they can to try to bring fans to the ballpark. Besides, what do they have to lose? I doubt anybody will decide not to go to a game because chair massages and floral tips are offered. The new front office is working really hard to get this team headed in the right direction and, so far, I think they're doing a great job. As ugly as that 15-2 loss was yesterday, I think it should be noted that the Brewers have shown a great deal of improvement since the season began (aside from yesterday's debacle). The Brew Crew is 5-5 in their last ten games and, at least in my opinion, haven't even been the worst team in the division so far. Thank you Cincinnati!

Thanks very much!

William Canby points out an error in this post:

"The Diamondbacks have not won a game started by Johnson or Schilling this year."

I keep reading and hearing this -- I think maybe Baseball Tonight started it. It isn't true:
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/boxscore?gameId=230401129 (April 1st.)

What I should have said is that neither Johnson nor Schilling has won a game that he has started. Thanks, William!

Baseball Primer has a post on the Brewers trying to attract women to their games. The are using gimmicks such as massages and floral arrangement demonstrations to bring in the female fans. As I read the article, it struck me as the wrong approach. Why not bring women in because baseball is fun to watch? A later on in the article, a female fan agreed:

But Lisa Olsen of Milwaukee said it "sounds kind of ridiculous."

Olsen, noting the 15-2 Brewers' loss Wednesday, said more women might attend the games if the Brewers won.

"This is pathetic," she said.

"I don't need makeup tips to bring me to a game."

I also wonder if women don't come to Brewers games because it's not safe. The recent problems in Chicago remind me that the old County Stadium had a reputation for fans and ballplayers getting into scuffles due to the lack of security. Any Brewers fans want to fill me in on how security is at the new ballpark?

Brent Mayne is leading the majors in OPS with a 1.318 mark. He has a .512 OBA and a .806 slugging percentage. His career OBA is .338 and his career slugging percentage is .359. He'll be thirty-five on Saturday, so I don't think he's made a breakthrough. It's a nice surprise, however, and he's certainly helped KC get off to a good start. Just don't expect it to last.

I wonder if this has anything to do with Bill James living there. :-)

The two games to keep your eye on today are Tampa Bay at Boston and Colorado at Arizona. Pedro Martinez is coming off the worst start of his career, and is also the only pitcher to issue a walk to Rey Ordonez this year. In a similar vein, Curt Schilling goes for the DBacks today. The Diamondbacks have not won a game started by Johnson or Schilling this year. The DBacks are 2nd to last in runs per game in the NL.

Update: William Canby points out an error in this post here.

You can see what the White did do to improve security here. Not everything I proposed, but a couple of things were there.

Brad Penny has thrown six shutout innngs tonight, but he's already up to 101 pitches. That makes it hard to finish a game, and when the score is 3-0 and you are turning it over to your bullpen against an offense like Philadelphia's, you have to wonder if you are going to get a decision out of the game.

Milton Bradley continues to impress. He's 1 for 3 tonight, now batting .397. His first two years in the major (as a part time player) he hit .221 and .223. Last year he raised that to .249, and now seems to have improved again. He turned 25 yesterday, so he's at the age where he is either going to prove he's a major leaguer or be out of baseball in a couple of years. If he keeps hitting like this, he'll be a toy spokesman in no time.

The Braves continue to slump offensively. Only 2 runs so far tonight. Luckily, the pitching has picked them up lately. Horacio Ramirez has thrown six shutout innings so far against the Expos.

Brandon Lyon just picked up the first save of his career. The Red Sox pen pitched the way they are supposed to; 3 pitchers, 2 1/3 innings, 1 hit, 0 runs. That performance allowed the Red Sox to come back in the eighth with 4 runs to win the game.

The Boston Red Sox pitching staff has some explaining to do. Rey Ordonez has one walk this year, issued by Pedro Martinez. Ordonez hit his 2nd HR of the year tonight, and both have come against the Red Sox. With a 1 for 2 so far tonight, he's 7 for 22 against the Sox this year.

This is the player who has the lowest OBA+Slugging of any active player. He never walks, seldom gets extra base hits, and yet the Red Sox have made him look like Cal Ripken. No excuse for that.

The Cubs so far are showing great power from their 3-4-5 hitters. Sosa has a .674 slugging pct, Alou .538 and Choi .621. All three, along with Miller homered today. Unlike the last couple of years, there's power in the lineup behind Sosa, so getting Sammy no longer gets you out of trouble.

The Cardinals have four HR so far today, including two by Scott Rolen. That gives them 21 on the season, tying the Giants for most in the NL. The Cards lead 10-1 in the 4th inning.

Craig Damon writes in response to this post:

Just a slight correction: At least when we used to have our season
tickets (88-94), Fenway hired the BC hockey team. They were even better
than football players if something really got started and they could
pin someone against the wall in nothing flat. But college hockey
players have also learned to control their temper in the midst of
violence.

I started going to Fenway regularly in 1984, and I remember them being football players, but hockey players make perfect sense, too.

I was waiting for this to happen.

Royals general manager Allard Baird told The Kansas City Star that the team will not play Wednesday night's game against Chicago unless he is satisfied that security at the stadium is improved.

The Royals must be assured "that things have been upgraded where we can feel comfortable to where we can take the field," Baird said. "Otherwise we won't take it. I'm worried about my manager, my staff and my players -- period. But I do feel for the families who came out to the game."

On Wednesday, Royals spokeswoman Chris Stathos said the team would report to the stadium and decide at game time whether to play.

I don't know if the Royals would forfeit the game in this situation. Often the home team forfeits if the fans cause trouble. KC is doing the right thing here.

In my opinion, the White Sox should take the following steps:

• Only one beer may be sold per person. If you want another, you have to get in line again. Fenway's had a two beer limit as long as I remember. One should be even more effective.


• A guard, or a Chicago Cop, should be at the end of every aisle that borders the field. It won't stop fans from jumping out of the front row, but the security can get after them faster.


• Force people to sit in their ticketed seats. Seems like a no brainer. Most people who can afford field level boxes aren't the types who will run out on the field.


• A heavy police presense outside the ballpark. This seems to work pretty well at Yankee Stadium.

The guards may be difficult to implement tonight, but the others should be easy.

Just thought you'd like to know that the pitcher with the most win shares (short form) is Runelvys Hernandez of the KC Royals with 4.0. Todd Helton leads all players with 4.5. Bernie Williams and Kevin Millar are tied for the AL lead with 4.2.

A fan attacked an umpire during the Royals-White Sox game last night. This is the same place where Royals coach Tom Gamboa was attacked last year.

Now the Royals' bullpen coach, Gamboa said he thought security was tighter for his team's return. He felt safe -- at least before the game.

"Oh yeah, the assistant to major league security was at the game tonight. He told me before the game that they had beefed up the security, but the fans will always outnumber the security force, so there is only so much they can do," Gamboa said.

Beefed up security. Is that like "Elite" Republican Guards? The Royals players took security into their own hands. Libertarians would be proud.

Several Royals players could be seen kicking and stomping the fan while he was pinned down. When the attacker was put into a police car, his head was wrapped with a white bandage, soaked with blood near the right temple.

Now, do you really want to be on the field with pissed off professional athletes? Ones with spiked shoes and holding wooden bats? These guys can hit a 95 MPH fastball, your head is a much easier target. Up until now, players tried to avoid contact with fans on the field, but I believe things changed last night.

When I was a regular at Fenway in the 1980's, they had a very good solution to security. They hired football players from the local colleges as bouncers. They were dressed in navy blue blazers and wore ties so they looked professional and authoritative. If someone was causing trouble in the stands, you could seek one of these men out and they would come talk to the offending person, and if needed escort them out of the park. If some fan ran onto the field, they would chase them down (and yes, they were good runners), tackle them, and lead them to the hoosegow. It was a win for everyone involved. The players had a summer job that gave them time to practice, they got to hang out at Fenway, and they worked cheap for the Red Sox. And the games were more enjoyable with them around. Someone should revive this practice.

I was going to write about the Giants great start, but I don't have time right now, so go read Only Baseball Matters.

It looks like Disney has found a buyer for the Anaheim Angels. Arturo Moreno will pay about $200 million for the team. I think it's a steal. If you want to own a professional baseball team, this is the time to buy. The Twins, Expos, Dodgers and probably even the Braves can be had for below market value. They are all interesting franchises that could be developed into cash cows when the economy picks up. Now, if I only had $100 million....

I like this article because it also discusses the failure of big media companies as baseball owners.

The Angels sale is more than a cash loss for the media giant, it is another acknowledgment that the late-1990s industry doctrine of "synergy," in which one company owns many pieces that theoretically combine to increase revenue and lower operating costs, has failed on a large scale.

Disney continues to seek a buyer for its Anaheim Mighty Ducks hockey team, said a source familiar with that process.

Disney had hoped the Angels and Ducks would be the marquee products for a planned ESPN West regional sports network, but that was thwarted when Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. launched the Fox Sports Regional networks in 1997 and outmaneuvered Disney for the broadcast rights to the Angels and Ducks.

More than one media giant paid top dollar to buy sports teams, hoping to use broadcast arms to drive gate and advertising revenue. Most of the companies have now realized that unless a company owns a major market team with a substantial cable broadcast deal -- like the New York Yankees -- the only money to be made by owning a sports team comes when it is sold.

That is what the media goliaths are trying to do.

AOL Time Warner Inc., the world's largest media company, is trying to unload its professional sports teams, all in Atlanta -- baseball's Braves, basketball's Hawks and hockey's Thrashers.

News Corp., which bought the Dodgers for the market-setting rate of $311 million in 1997, is looking for a buyer.

Analysts have called this the worst time in recent history to try to sell sports teams, which are saddled with high player salaries, and, in some leagues, dropping attendance and television ratings.

The worst time to sell is usually the best time to buy.

Randy Johnson has a swollen knee and will miss his next start.

The soreness is the product of wear and tear over Johnson's career, Lessard said.

"The undersurface of the kneecap has been worn down, for lack of a better term," Lessard said. "He had shaving done there in the past, so the lining is a little thinner than you or I have anyway. The fact that he really torques on it just irritates it. It's more of a repetitive thing vs. a one-time thing."

The goal is to prevent it from being an ongoing problem. "It's something we need to address now, rather than worry about it the whole year," Lessard said.

This is very interesting. It's not a sudden injury that can heal and Johnson will be okay. This is an injury that appears to be caused by Johnson pitching. My guess is that we now know how the Big Unit's career will end. Eventually, this knee will get so bad that he won't be able to land on that leg. At least now we have an explanation for his poor start this year.

Shane Reynolds debuted for the Braves tonight and gave them five shutout innings. Unfortunately for him, Tony Armas, Jr. pitched seven shutout innings. Braves finally won it in ten, 2-1. With the Braves staff as bad as it's been this year, this solid outing all around has to be taken as a huge positive for Braves fans.

The Marlins have a very impressive box score tonight. They have drawn six walks against the Phillies, whose staff has the 2nd lowest number of walks allowed in the NL. They also have 10 hits. That's 16 men earning their way on base. Yet they only have three runs. They haven't hit into a DP, nor have they been caught stealing. Looking at the play-by-play, in the three innings the Marlins scored a run, they got the leadoff man on. In the other innings, they got men on, but after outs, so there wasn't much of a chance to drive them around. Phillies win 4-3.

Burnitz had 3 hits tonight and drove in two runs with his 2nd HR of the year. The Mets didn't score much, but Glavine and the relievers held the Pirates to 1 for 9 with runners in scoring position. The Mets needed a win, and Glavine was the stopper.

Three starts, three wins, no earned runs in the last two. Twenty five K in twenty two innings. It's starting to look like last year was a fluke and not a sign of decline.

Ben Jacobs has a new blog, Universal Baseball Blog, Inc. Stop by and say hello.

Ramiro Mendoza had another bad outing in the Red Sox win tonight. 0 IP, 4 hits, 4 earned runs. His ERA is not 16.71. The Red Sox bullpen ERA has now risen to 6.90, worst in the majors.

The question now is, does a bullpen by committee cause the pitchers to be bad, or does the bullpen by committee not work if you have a lousy bullpen? If you have a bunch of pitchers who can't get outs, it doesn't matter if you have a closer or not. I don't see how suddenly naming Lyon as the closer would make the rest of the staff pitch better. It looks more and more like the Red Sox just did a poor job of gathering talent for their relief corps.

The Danny Graves as starter experiment continues to fail. Graves gave up a solo HR to Sammy Sosa, then the flood gates opened and the Cubs scored 4 more runs in the inning. Graves is still in there and the Cubs continue to get hits. Meanwhile, Shawn Estes still has not allowed a hit through 5, and continues to average 12 pitches per inning.

Estes is off to a great start today. Three innings, three K, no hits and only 36 pitches. He's already lowered his opposition batting average from .356 to .296.

The Minnesota Twins have a DER of .759. That's 20 points higher than any other team. That means the Twin get about 7 more innings of outs from 1000 balls in play than any other team. No wonder their pitchers have only allowed a .214 BA.

Here's a piece I wrote last year about using defensive efficiency, which helps explain the stat. It's from May 26th, 2002.

Someone once said that what made the NY Times a great newspaper is that you can follow a story in it. They just don't hit you once and forget it. In that vein, here's the latest on the Royals start, from long time Royals fan Rob Neyer.

Edward Cossette has the scoop on a future member of the Red Sox PR department. :-)

Update: Jim Caple has a slightly different take on this.

I have to go with the NY Mets at Pittsburgh for game of the day. The Mets just got swept by one poor (money wise) organization on the rise, and now they get to face another. The Pirates are tied for first in the NL Central, and only the DBacks at this point are making the Mets look good. Pirates are going through a stretch without their best player, Brian Giles. For the Mets, it's a chance to right themselves. For the Pirates, it's a chance to extend their winning against a struggling team.

Bruce Jenkins pens a nice piece detailing the contradictions that are Jeff Kent.

It all adds up to a pretty solid tirade, a man full of bitterness and not much gratitude. Kent, however, is not easily understood. Most players, media and executives find him a baffling combination of first-rate jerk and decidedly nice guy. (As the story goes, Kent encountered a Bay Area reporter two weeks ago and asked him to pass along greetings to a certain ex-teammate. That was big news to the teammate, who couldn't recall Kent saying hello during his six years as a Giant.)

The Giants got the best of the matchup last night, with Bonds hitting one into the bay.

The Baseball Crank has moved to his new home at www.baseballcrank.com. Adjust your bookmarks, and go see his MoveableType blog!

Orlando Palmeiro is doing a great job of replacing JD Drew for the Cardinals. He's batting at the top of the order and has a .500 OBA on the season. He also has a 3-run HR tonight and 4 RBI.

A good night for foregin imports in NY. Contreras pitches out of a 2 on, none out jam, and Matsui just hit a 3-run HR into the upper deck in right to give the Yankees a 9-6 lead.

Update: They just showed a closeup of Matsui on the bench with no hat on. I'm sorry, he looks like Moe. (Scroll down and play the song.)

The Cubs pitching staff came into tonight's game leading the majors with 9.6 K per 9 IP. That's almost 2 per 9 better than the 2nd place Yankees (7.87). No team in the modern era (1900 on) has had a K per 9 over 9.0. The 2001 Cubs set the record in 2001 with a mark of 8.42. Prior has 6 K though 6 innings tonight, but once again, errors have allowed 2 extra runs to score. It's 5-1 Reds in the 6th.

Hank Blalock is starting to fulfill the potential the Rangers thought he would show last year. He hit is fourth HR tonight, and all parts of his offensive game are great. Through his first two AB tonight, he's hitting for average (.381), getting on base in front of A-Rod (.422) and hitting for power (.690 slugging). That great swing is connecting.

Not a great night for pitchers keeping runners off base. Sturtze has walked 7 in 4.2 innings and is out of the game. Pettitte gave 0 walks, but 9 hits in 4.1 innings. Aquilino Lopez gave up hits to the first two Yankee batters he faced, including a 2-run HR to Modesi to tie the game at 6.

Javier "Scrabble" Vazquez K'd seven in six innings today. He leads the majors with 12.5 K per 9 IP (min 15 IP). That's a big leap over his career number of 7.6 per nine, and a big sign of improvement.

Michael Weddell of Detroit has done some research on early season winning streaks:

Regarding the Royals winning streak, I'd like to abandon the probability formulas and look at it a bit more subjectively. If anyone looks the probabilistic approach, they might read the Tigers article in the 1985 Bill James Baseball Abstract, which was probably the genesis of Bill James' thinking on this issue, reflected in the quote in your interview that started this discussion topic.

This isn't just any win streak, but one that starts the beginning of the season. If we restrict our inquiry to instances where teams began their seasons with long winning streaks, not just a winning streak beginning at any point in the season, then this is a rare event. The attachment lists teams since WWII that began the season winning 7 or more games -- the Royals are just the 15th team to do so. (I picked 7 as the cut off so that the median was a beginning of the season winning streak of 9, the same as the Royals just did.

Some observations from the data:

The Royals preceding year record of 62-100 (a winning percentage of .383) was by far the worst of any of the streaking teams. While all of the teams finished at .500 or better for the season that began with their winning streaks, the data doesn't really support that rosy a prediction considering where the Royals are starting from.

Of the prior 14 teams, 64% of the teams improved their winning percentage, 21% declined, and 14% remained essentially unchanged when comparing their winning percentage for the year to the prior year's winning percentage.

If we restrict our review to just teams that were coming off of a sub-.500 record and started the next season with a 7-game or longer winning streak, all 5 out of 5 teams improved. Furthermore, the average improvement was quite substantial, 12 additional games won over the course of a 162 game schedule. Note that these teams all have the Plexiglas principle (that teams' records tend to head toward .500, the mid-point) working in their favor.

Obviously the small sample size should make us wary of drawing firm conclusions. Nonetheless, I believe that the Royals win streak does hold signature significance, to borrow a Bill James phrase. While to predict a finish of .500 or better (81 wins) still seems unlikely, I'd predict that they'll do better than the 66-96 record that James insisted on. I'd guess that the Royals will avoid losing 90 games, which would be an improvement of at least 11 wins over their 2002 record.

If you like, feel free to reprint all or any edited portion of this e-mail and/or the spreadsheet in your blog, with or without accreditation. You should though credit www.baseball-reference.com for invaluable assistance in locating this data.

Here's the spreadsheet.

A nice bit of research, Michael. I'm also going to try a simulation to see if I can get a handle on the difference between my independence assumption and the real p-value.

Jed Roberts points out a flaw in my calculation of the Royals chances of winning eight in a row.

I think your calculation of the probability of there being at least one string of 8 consecutive victories in the Royals' season is not quite right. If I understand how you did it, you compute the probability of there not being a string of 8 wins in a row (1 - p^8), and then take that to the 155th power, there being 155 possible starting points for a string of 8 successes in a season. Your answer is then 1 minus that result. (I.e., 1 - (1-p^8)^155) The problem is that these 155 cases are not independent, so that you can't just multiply the probabilities together. For example, the games 1-8 and the games 2-9 have 7 games in common, so the probability of 8 successes in a row starting at game 2 is not independent of what happened in the 8 games starting at game 1. In particular, if the Royals failed to win 7 games in set 1-8, they have 0 chance of winning all 8 games 2-9. Another way to see that this method isn't right is to consider a much simpler case: what is the chance of seeing a string of 2 wins in a season of 3 games? For p = .5 your method would yield 1 - (1 - 0.5^2)^2 = 7/16. But the correct answer is 3/8, since of the 8 equally likely possible outcomes, only 3 contain strings of 2 wins: WWL, LWW, WWW.

At this point, if I were as smart as Larry, I would proceed to calculate the correct answer. However, being just a dummy, I cannot do this. At least, not without a lot more cogitation. It seems to me that the correct answer involves solving a rather difficult problem in combinatorics.

During my calculations, I made an independence assumption. I assumed that all eight game stretches were independent. As Jed's calculation shows, that's not the case. However, the calculation I make errs in making the probablility too high, meaning I'm less likely to call a streak significant. So I'm being cautious in the direction I want to be.

These independence assumptions are often made in this line of work. In my day job, we research language models for information retrieval, and we are constantly making independence assumptions to make calculations tractable. The one I made for the Royals calculation was a good approximation, but it makes the data look less significant than it is.

It's officially Greg(g) day, as Greg Maddux (37), Greg Myers (37) and Gregg Zaun (32) celebrate their birthdays!

Happy birthday to Brad Ausmus (34) and Kyle Farnsworth (27) also.

MLB has played two full weeks now, and what I find interesting is that there is only one team which I find completely without a change. That's the Detroit Tigers. Their offense is non-existent. Detroit is being outscored on average by 3.6 runs. And I don't really see any reason for their offense getting better any time soon. This is different from Arizona, where they have had a good offense in the past, and they just need to get out of their collective slump. The other teams I think are close here are the Rangers and the Reds, simply because their pitching is so bad. In the case of the Rangers, there's no track record here to indicate it might get better any time soon. But at least the Rangers have won a few games. The Reds starters have been a disaster, and moving Danny Graves into the rotation has weakened the bullpen. Even without Griffey, they could have a good offense, but not probably not good enough to overcome their pitching problems.

But the rest of the teams have enough positives that you can at least say, "With some lucky breaks, we have a chance." Stay tuned.

Kevin Brown is winning but struggling tonight. He's in the fifth tonight, and he's already walked 5 and thrown over 100 pitches. He just walked Bonds and gave up a run scoring triple to Snow. He's been a bit lucky tonight, since SF is only 1 for 5 with runners in scoring position. They are leaving him in to face Torrealaba, and he bunts to drive in Snow. I think the Dodgers went to far with Brown, and now he probably won't win.

A-Rod is 3 for 4 today with a single, double and HR. Outside chance of a cycle here with the Rangers leading 2-1 in the top of the 7th. A-Rod was 6 for his last 13 coming into the game.

The Diamondbacks are having a great day at the plate. All the starters, except Counsell, have at least one hit, and 7 have scored a run.

Greg pitched six Greg Maddux like innings today. He only gave up 2 hits, walked none and threw 40 strikes out of 59 pitches. It was odd he came out so early, but this article claims it was due to him pitching on three days rest for the 2nd consecutive outing. Still it seems Cox is babying him a little too much. Still the Braves have to be happy he's straightened himself out.

Once again, errors are the difference in the game. The Astros made two errors leading to five unearned runs. If those errors are not committed, the Astros probably win by 2.

I bet the Expos made a lot of new fans this weekend. The swept the Mets with one blow out and two close games. And they've moved into first place. Even in a small stadium, they drew on average 7000 more than they drew for a Mets game in Montreal over the previous three seasons.

I wonder if this is going to cause Montreal fans to react and come out to games to prove they are fans, too. If not, maybe MLB can expand the schedule in Puerto Rico.

What we saw from the Boston Red Sox pitchers today is what I believe management wanted to see all year. Lowe pitched seven solid innings; Baltimore was not able to get a hit with runners in scoring position. Wakefield came in for two innings and shut them down for the save. We'll see if it spreads to the rest of the staff.

The KC Royals winning streak ends at 9. The Indians beat them today, 6-1. Milton Bradley was the hitting start, going four for five with two doubles and a home run. He's been the Cleveland offense this year; he's now batting .370 with a .612 slugging percentage. Ricardo Rodriguez continues to pitch well for the Tribe, allowing one run in seven innings. He's really throwing strikes; 73 of his 99 pitches were for strikes today.

Up until I started to write this post, the Devil Rays were leading the game 1-0. Surprisingly, given their overall record, the DRays are 12-4 in 1-0 games, including 2-2 against the Yankees. Nick Johnson just scored to tie the game at 1. Coming into today, Nick Johnson had a .375 OBA in the number two slot, just what you want to replace Jeter's offense. He's two for two with 2 walks today, so that number is will be even higher.

The Indians have a 3-0 lead on KC in the bottom of the third. Ricardo Rodriguez is pitching well, 31 of his 38 pitches have been for strikes.

A more typical first inning for Greg Maddux today. Three up and three down, and only 8 pitches thrown.

Mark Hendrickson is off to a good start today. Through 2 innings, he's K'd 3 and allowed 1 hit vs. the Twins. One more K and he'll have equaled his total for his first two starts of the year.

Al Martin got throw out stealing in the first inning of the Yankees game. He's the fifth runner the Yankees have thrown out this year in 6 tries. That's the best CS% in the majors.

Update: Travis Lee led off the 2nd with a walk. After a strikeout, Lee tried stealing and got caught. The Rays are now 1 of 5 stealing against the Yankees this year. Do you think Piniella will figure out that this strategy doesn't work against this team?

The four through nine hitters in the Cleveland Indians lineup today are all batting under .200. Only Brandon Phillips has any secondary stats, with a .400 slugging percentage. Times have changed in Cleveland.

With a 3-2 win over San Diego last night, the Rockies are now 7-4 in 2nd place in the NL West. The Rockies now have a 4.97 ERA, which would be tied for the team's best ERA of all time (1995). The imporant thing, however, is that the team is scoring over 6 runs a game. When you do that, you don't need a great ERA to win.

With a 3-2 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers last night, Arizona is 0-6 in games that Johnson and Schilling started. Last night wasn't really Schilling's fault; he did allow three runs, but one was unearned. And the DBacks offense continues to sputter. Arizona is averaging less than 3 runs per game, and the only regulars hitting decently are Gonzalez and Williams. Womack has been horrible from the leadoff spot, with a .179 OBA.

Like Johnson, Schilling's strikeouts remain high, so I'm not that worried about him being in decline. But if the offense doesn't come back, 3 runs in 6 innings isn't going to win many games.

Chris Lawrence of Signifying Nothing comments on this Royals winning streak post and finds it an interesting applied probability problem. He also does the calculation of the nine game winning streak probability, and finds that it's now down to 4.65%. That's significant at the .05 level. So it's starting to look like the Royals are better than a .4074 team.

Significance is in the eye of the beholder, however. Some statisticians prefer a .01 level (1% chance) before they'll call something significant. My favorite statistican, Larry Gillick, doesn't like to draw a line and claim something is significant or not. He just looks at the p-value and treats it as another piece of information in making a decision. The Royals are very likely to win more than 66 games. But how many more, we don't know yet.

Earlier today I wrote about how Seattle was great on getting on base, but wasn't providing the power to drive in runs. Tonight, the first four men reached either by a walk, error or HBP. Then the hits started coming. After Cameron made an out, Seattle has 4 straight hits, including a double. It's 6-2 Seattle with one out in the first.

Craig Biggio is 0 for 3 tonight, and his OBA is now below .300 at .292. After years of getting on at a rate better than .380, Biggio fell off to .330 last year. He's only drawn 1 walk so far, and unless he can do a better job reaching first, the Astros are going to have to rethink using him at the top of the order. Richard Hidalgo would be my choice to replace him at leadoff.

Livan Hernandez must feel at home pitching in Puerto Rico. He went six innings allowing 8 hits and striking out 6. The .243 career hitter also had a hit and an RBI.

Everyone talks about Washington or Portland as a home for the Expos, but if San Juan embraces this team, why not there? Of course, if the Cubans could get rid of Castro, Havana would make a great major league city.

The Phillies are getting their money's worth out of the their big off-season pickups. Jim Thome was two for four with a walk today and is batting .326 and slugging .565 with an OBA over .400. David Bell scored 3 runs today, and is putting up a .417 OBA. And Kevin Millwood won his 2nd game today and has a 3.00 ERA.

Craig Stambaugh points out that after yesterday's post, the Pirates made two errors in the Cubs game today and lost.

Kerry Wood also had something to do with it, as he struck out 13 and only allowed 3 hits.

Pedro Martinez gave up 10 runs, all earned. That's the most he's ever given up in a game, earned or otherwise. The most runs he's ever given up in a game was 9, and the most earned runs he's ever given up in a game is 7. The Orioles collected 9 hits, but Pedro was also wild, walking 4. Disappointing opening night at Fenway.

The Tigers beat the White Sox 4-3. Shane Halter had the big blast with a 3-run HR, and Nate Conejo pitched 6 good innings to get the win. Congrats to the Tigers for getting in the win column!

The Royals won their 9th straight game today. Their bullpen went 3.2 innings with 0 ER to lower their ERA to 1.63, 2nd in the majors behind the Seattle relievers. In 27.2 IP, the pen has allowed only 15 hits and 12 walks, while striking out 35! Exactly what you'd like from your relief corps.

The last question Bill James was asked in this interview was "How many games are the Royals going to win." His answer was 66. They've won their first 8 games. Is there any evidence that Bill underestimated the Royals? Luckily, we can use probability to get a handle on this.

Will Carroll, who writes Under the Knife for the Baseball Prospectus recorded an interview with me Tuesday that will air today, Saturday, 3 PM EDT, 12 Noon Pacific. Here's the link to the net feed of the broadcast on Baseball Prospectus Radio. Hope you can tune in.

Barry Bonds had a HR and a stolen base last night. The SB gives him 495 for his career, bringing him closer to the magic 500 milestone. The impressive thing about Bonds SB isn't just the magnitude, it's the success rate. Bonds has only been caught 140 times; that's a 77.95% SB percentage. That's 40th all-time among players with at least 120 steals. In their book, The Hidden Game of Baseball Palmer and Thorn calculated that the break even point for stolen bases was around 66.7% So not only did Bonds steal a high number of bases, he did it in a way that actually helped his team.

Two bright spots for the Padres in last night's win over the Rockies. Brian Lawrence picked up his 2nd win with six solid innings of work. He struck out 8, and his ERA now sits at 1.71. He even added a HR last night, the first of his career. The other is the X-Man, Xavier Nady. X is getting on base and hitting for power. Interestingly, despite batting in the middle of the order, he has been scoring runs, not driving them in (11 runs, 4 RBI). He's 0 for 7 with runners in scoring position, but he's doing a good job of setting the table for the bottom of the order.

Randy Johnson has now made three poor starts this year. The question now appears to be, is this a decline that will end his career? Was the contract extension too generous for someone his age? As I'll argue in my radio interview at 3 PM Eastern time today, we'll have to watch his strikeouts to know for sure. When the Red Sox let Clemens go to the Blue Jays, because they thought his career was nearing its end, Bill James argued that Clemens high K per 9 proved he could still pitch. Let's look at Johnson's K per 9 by year:

Randy Johnson
Year	K per 9
1988	8.65
1989	7.28
1990	7.95
1991	10.19
1992	10.31
1993	10.86
1994	10.67
1995	12.35
1996	12.47
1997	12.30
1998	12.12
1999	12.06
2000	12.56
2001	13.41
2002	11.56
2003	9.87

So his strikeouts have fallen off, but they remain high. I'm not ready to close the book on Johnson yet. He's going through a rough patch, but at this point, I think it's a rough patch from which he can recover.

Chan Ho Park got a win against the Mariners last night. His line was interesting. In 5 innings he only gave up 3 hits, but he walked 7. If you look at the lineup the Mariners put on the field last night, you get an idea of why Park could be that wild and win. Look at the OBA and Slugging in this boxscore. Suzuki, Boone, Olerud, McLemore and Cirillo all have on base averages higher than their slugging percentages. This means that they are getting many more walks than extra bases on their hits. So the Mariners right now have half an offense. They get on base, but they don't get the hits (and long hits) to move those base runners around.

Now, if I had to have a problem with my offense, this would be it. There are a number of good hitters on this team, and eventually they will get their hits. If you keep putting men on base, they will come around to score. But it also shows that just walking all the time isn't enough.

In last night's A's-Angels game, two pitchers in particular showed they are not meeting expectations. Tim Hudson had his 2nd bad outing vs. the Angels. He's being very un-A like, now with nine walks and six strikeouts in 19 innings.

Meanwhile, K-Rod is in fact human. Yes, he's striking out batters (7 in 6 innings), but he's also getting hit and giving up runs. (2 HR, 6 ER in 6 innings)

Something to worry about? Not yet, it's still early. But it's a trend to watch.

Randy Johnson gave up five runs in the first inning tonight, all earned. He was a bit wild, walking one, hitting a batter and throwing a wild pitch. His ERA is now 6.75.

Tony La Russa left Matt Morris try to finish the game tonight. On his 120th pitch, Jeff Kent took him deep to give the Astros a 3-2 win. Did La Russa leave him in too long? The bullpen had pitched four innings over the last two nights. Morris did get the first two batters of the inning on 2 pitches, although Bagwell's fly ball almost went out. Once Berkman singled, though, Morris wasn't looking that strong. I think most managers would have lifted him at that point, and rightly so.

Paul Wilson had a good outing wasted by the Reds bullpen. Wilson allowed 1 run over six innings, but the pen has come in and allowed the game to be tied at 5, although none of the runs appears to be earned. However, there was only one error, so it wasn't like it was all the fielder's fault.

Tigers lost and got shutout. It's the third time this year they've done both. They did manage two hits tonight, none of them for extra bases. Maybe we should start calling them the "elite" Tigers hitters. :-)

Shane Spencer might have just cost the Indians a chance to tie this game. He went for a triple with none out in the top of the ninth, and Desi Relaford threw him out at third from right field. The Royals win, 1-0 and are now 8-0. According to Bill James, they'll only win 58 more games this year. :-)

How long before we start calling Runelvys Hernandez "The King?" He's been incredibly efficient. Through 6 innings tonight, he's pitched a total of 19 innings this year, and has thrown 238 pitches. That's 12.5 pitches per inning. He's going to keep the KC pen well rested if he keeps that up.

Update: Hernandez finished with 7 IP, 88 pitches. For tonight, that's 12.6 pitches per inning. His ERA is now 0.45.

Are the speed ups working? I just looked at average time of nine inning games through the same number of days last year. Here's a table with the results:

Nine Inning Games	2002	2003
Games	126	122
Average Time	2:57:06	2:46:17
Games	9.2	9.6

This is amazing. They have cut over ten minutes off the games without cutting down on offense. I don't know if it will last, but it's a trend worth keeping our eyes on.

Cory Lidle should have a much better ERA than he does. Coming into this game, he had pitched 13 innings with 13 hits, 1 BB and 14 K. Tonight, through 4, he's K'd 6 and allowed 4 hits. The problem is that he gives up long hits. Eight of the 17 hits he's allowed this year have been for extra bases. So while he doesn't let many runners on, he does allow them to advance around the bases a long distance.

David Cone is having a tough third inning. Schneider took him deep for a 2-run homer, and now Brad Wilkerson treated the island fans to a grand slam to make it 7-0. If the Expos keep playing like this San Juan will want them to stay. :-)

Cone has really struggled this inning. You wonder if his comeback has petered out.

Adam Dunn just hit his 4th HR of the season to give the Reds a 3-0 lead over the Phillies. Dunn is now batting .194 on the season, but with a .613 slugging percentage. He has six hits on the season, only 1 a single. So if he hits it, the ball goes a long way.

Just turned on the Mets-Expos game, and the shot I saw was looking out from home plate from the outfield. My first thought was Royals Stadium before they took out the artifical turf. It's a pretty ballpark; looks like there's just one deck. Too bad they don't have real grass. A Venezuelan, Endy Chavez got the first hit.

Update: Fans may be in for a real treat. Ohka has not given up a hit through 3, and Cone is pitching nearly as well.

Michael Tucker just made a great running catch for the Royals. John McDonald lauched a ball to deep left center, and Tucker on the full run got his glove up and had the ball settle right in. Made it look easy.

The KC Royals have the 2nd best defensive efficiency record in the majors. Catches like that are a reason why.

(Defensive efficiency is the percent of balls in play that are turned into outs. If you have a good DER, your pitchers can afford to have more balls put into play against them. If your team has a low DER, you better have a staff that can strike out a lot of batters.)

Once difference in the Pirates-Cubs game today is that the Cubs made an error and the Pirates didn't. That error led to an unearned run, which proved to be the margin of victory. I once saw a stat about team winning percentages when making at least 1 error, and teams that did so had a very poor winning percentage. This year so far, teams that make at least 1 error in a game are 67-75, a .472 winning percentage. Teams that don't make an error in a game are 70-62, a .530 winning percentage.

After doubling in two runs to pull the Cubs within 1, Alou made a base running blunder and was caught off 2nd after a lineout to right by Karros. Those DP's don't show up in the GDP numbers, but they have the same effect. Pirates lead 3-2 in the top of the 5th.

The Cubs just grounded into their 16th DP of the year, which leads the majors by four. Double plays effectively reduce your on-base percentage. The Cubs have a very good OBA of .376 coming into today. But if you take into account the DP's it is effectively reduced to .333. Overall, they are 4th in OBA, but if you adjust for GDP's, they are 11th.

The Orioles-Red Sox game has been postponed. It will be made up tomorrow at 1 PM as part of a day-night double header. Get to Fenway early!

Lou Rawls just sang the National Anthem. It's raining and freezing, but he did a great job, and the crowd yelled, "LOUUUUUUU!" at the end. Looks like all the Red Sox great they could gather are leading children of servicemen out for the first pitch. There's a huge American flag draped over the Green Monster. The seats on top look fantastic! Now Ray Charles is singing "America." Maybe Ray and Lou can do a duet of "Singing in the Rain." :-)

Joe Zibell has started a baseball blog, Baseball Writing. Check out his latest, on Ramiro Mendoza.

The Red Sox open at home today with fan favorite Pedro Martinez (and his extended contract) on the mound. Rain is in the forecast, however. Baseball comes to Puerto Rico today, as the Mets play in the Expos home away from home. Cone faces Ohka in that contest, which will be a home coming for Roberto Alomar. St. Louis visits the Central Division leading Houston Astros with Matt Morris on the mound. Randy Johnson tries to get back on track against the Milwaukee Brewers, and the always exciting Dodgers-Giants series continues. The Gaints have opened a 2.5 game lead on the Rockies and 4.5 game lead on the Dodgers.

Finally, the KC Royals try to continue their undefeated season against another weak offense as they travel to Cleveland.

Just wanted to remind you about the Baseball Musings radio interview tomorrow.

Kurt Ainsworth pitched a great game vs. the Giants archrival LA Dodgers last night, beating them 2-1. One way of evaluating a pitcher is to look at the stats of the batters against him, and ask yourself if you would want that batter on your team. If the answer is no, you have a pretty good pitcher. Right now, hitters against Ainsworth are batting .240, with a .264 OBA and a .380 slugging percentage. I would not want a hitter like that on my team. He's given up two HR, but since he's so good at keeping men off base, those have both been solo shots.

It's early in the season, and his career has been short, but Ty Wigginton is showing signs of being a good ballplayer. He's doing a good job of getting on base, as shown by his 9 runs scored (including the HR tonight) despite batting in front of the bottom of the order. At some point, the Mets need to move him to the top of the order. He's probably better than Cedeno at getting on base. With Alomar 1st and Wigginton 2nd, the Mets heart of the order will have lots of chances to drive in runs. (As I write this, Ty just doubled. He may score again.)

Update: Mets load the bases after scoring a run, no outs, and Josh Beckett gets it together and strikes out Glavine, Cedeno and Alomar to get out of the jam. Beckett has 5 K through 4 innings, but is down 2-0.

After wins today, the KC Royals and Montreal Expos are tied for best ERA in the majors at 2.57. Tony Armas, Jr. continued the K parade from yesterday with 11 today. D.J. Carrasco pitched three hitless innings for KC, allowing no hits and striking out 6. In 4.1 innings, he now has 8 K. Maybe Joe Posnanski was right about Sweeney needing to be positive.

It looked good for the A's through 3 1/2 innings, but the Texas bullpen got the job done. 5 1/3 innings, 2 hits, 3 BB and 6 K. And Ted Lilly had his old weakness for giving up the three-run HR comeback to haunt him.

Just as a follow up to this post, Jeff Bennett, researcher for Baseball Tonight tells me that's the most K in a game without a walk since 1900.