This post on how troops are making golf more interesting reminds me of an old Mad Magazine piece by Al Jaffe called The Mad Game of Basebrawl. Jaffe had defensive and offensive teams on the field at the same time. The offensive team would try to interfere with the fielders trying to put the batter out. The batter could carry his bat as he ran the bases and could pick up blockers as he went along. It was a pretty silly idea, but a very funny piece. In fact, I believe that was the spoof that started me reading Mad regularly.

Derek Lowe was knocked around again today. The Orioles scored seven runs in 5+ innings (the first five Orioles reached in the 5th against Lowe). As far as I can tell, the main thing Derek is doing differently is walking more batters. Take a look at this chart:

Derek Lowe	BB/9	ERA
2002	2.0	2.58
2003	3.2	4.47
2004	4.4	6.84

When Lowe doesn't have his control, he walks batters. When he walks batters, he has to get pitches into the strike zone, and he has to do that by throwing the ball higher in the zone. And Derek's high pitches are hittable. Is there are real difference in Lowe, or have batters realized they take the low pitch and have it called a ball?

Somehow, Nick Johnson doesn't look like Babe Ruth in an Expos uniform.

Fred McGriff has hit his first HR of the season, giving him 492 for his career. He's trying to get to 500 before he retires. I wonder if the 500 HR mark will really make a difference to HOF voters? Why would McGriff be anymore or less of a HOF candidate with 500 than 491? I'd love to see a discussion involving a number of reporters in which they are asked to defend or attack the Hall of Fame credentials of McGriff and Palmeiro. The voters need to have this debate, because it's becoming clear that certain milestones are no longer a reliable indicator of career greatness.

BaseballMusings.com would be happy to host the discussion on-line.

Those of you who don't read the Boston Red Sox fan web sites on a daily basis may not be aware of what seems to be a repeat of the 1982 battle for third base in Boston. Carney Lansford won the AL batting title playing third for the Red Sox in 1981. The next year, he broke his ankle, and walk machine Wade Boggs started playing regularly. Boggs was so much obviously better than Lansford that Carney was traded at the end of the regular season for Tony Armas. There were clear advantages in keeping Boggs over Lansford; Boggs walked more, he was left-handed, and he was a year younger. Lansford was a good hitter for the A's. Boggs was a great hitter for Boston.

Now the Red Sox are faced with an injured Bill Mueller, and Kevin Youkilis playing very well. Things are not as cut and dried as they were with Boggs and Lansford. Yes, Youkilis walks a lot, but Mueller is no slouch in that department. Mueller has a .375 career OBA, an excellent number in any era. Mueller is a switch hitter, while Youkilis is a righty. Youkilis wins big in the age department, however, being eight years younger than Mueller.

It's a good problem to have; good hitting third basemen are hard to come by. My guess is that, unlike 1982, Theo will find room for both on the roster.

The Expos are batting Livan Hernandez in the traditional 9th spot today.

In looking at how poorly Joe Valentine started the game yesterday, I failed to notice that Frank Robinson batted Tomo Ohka, the pitcher, 8th. It's an unusual strategy, but one that was tried by Tony La Russa a few years ago. If you didn't know, there is some mathematical basis for this lineup.

Bruce Bukiet at the New Jersey Institute of Technology has done simulations that have convinced him that the last spot is not the best spot for the pitcher.

My colleagues and I studied the 1989 National League to ascertain principles common to optimal lineups and reduce the number of lineups we needed to test. We ranked players by Scoring Index - the number of runs a team would score on average if it had 9 copies of the given player. Interestingly, we found that the slugger - the player with the highest Scoring Index - should bat second or third on 3/4 of the teams and bat fourth on only 1/4 of the teams considered. We also found that the pitcher should almost never bat last. (These two findings are, of course, not in keeping with the way most managers construct their lineups.)

(You can download a postscript version of the research paper here.) To sum up his conclusions, the worst hitter should be as far away in the lineup from the best hitter as possible. So if you bat your best hitter in the top 3, you don't want a pitcher batting ninth, because that is going to reduce the rbi opportunities for your best hitter. He basically endorses the strategy that some AL teams use with the DH of putting a 2nd leadoff type hitter in the ninth spot.

When I first heard of this work, I was skeptical. I thought that giving extra plate appearances to poor hitters would do more harm than the extra rbi opps for the best hitters would help. But using the runs created formula and figuring how many runs would be gained and lost by switching the 8 and 9 hitters around, you don't lose that much. Jamey Carroll did have a hit, a walk and a run scored from the ninth spot yesterday. I don't think it makes all that much difference if you bat the pitcher 8th or 9th, but for a poor offensive team like Montreal, anything is worth a try.

On this Memorial Day I want to remember all my readers and their compatriots who are serving or have served in our armed forces for their dedication, service and sacrifice. Thank you for your commitment to a dangerous and harrowing task. I salute you.

Back in February, I noted an article about the Orioles using psychological tests to help determine who would make good pitchers, and what in what roles those pitchers would be most comfortable. Almost two months into the season, I thought it would be interesting to go back and revisit that story. Unfortunately, the Baltimore Sun link has expired, and you have to pay to get to the story. Nonetheless, so far, I'd say this method isn't working. The Orioles are last in AL in ERA, and are trailed only by the Colorado Rockies. Now, it could be that this method is great, and the Orioles haven't had time to implement it fully. But from the original story, they have used it some over the years. In fact they used it to make Arthur Rhodes a set up man.

Well, Rhodes was moved into the closer role with the A's this year. He's doing okay. He's saved 8 of 11, which is okay. His ERA is about the same as last year. He's striking out more batters, but he's also walking more and allowing more HR. But overall, he hasn't been a disaster as a closer.

So far, the scorecard has the Orioles psychology 0-2. When you introduce a new method, it's not good for it to be a miserable failure in it's first season. It tends to make others think it doesn't work.

In their 1991 Major League Handbook, STATS, Inc. first offered projections for the next season based on Bill James' work, including projections for minor league players who might make the big team in 1991. When Peter Gammons reviewed the book, he noted that STATS had predicted that Jeff Bagwell would win the NL batting title in 1991. Bagwell didn't win the batting title, but he had a great rookie season. As Bill James told me later, if Bagwell hadn't played well in 1991, no one would have believed in the validity of the system.

So my guess is a lot of baseball people are going to be pooh-poohing the Orioles use of these tests. That's too bad, because I believe it's going to take a while to see if these really work.

Joe Valentine made his first appearance this season for the Reds, starting against the Expos. He didn't get the Reds "pitch to contact" memo however, as he walked five batters in 1 inning and two batters. What's really strange of course, is that he's walked five against the Expos! Montreal last in the NL in walks with 109; you really have to be wild to walk five Expos.

The Angels and the White Sox play the rubber game of their series in Chicago this afternoon. Both teams have put a little breathing room between themselves and the competition. The White Sox lead the Twins by two games, and the Angels are ahead of both Texas and Oakland by 3 1/2.

John Lackey will start for the Angels. The White Sox appear to be a team designed just for him. While Lackey has been successful against righties this year (.250 OBA, .349 slugging), lefties have just pounded him (.394 OBA, .509 slugging). Luckily, the White Sox roster has a distinct lack of left-handed power. Jose Valentin is the only legitimate lefty power threat on the team.

Scott Schoenweis will take the mound for the pale hose. His high number of walks allowed are somewhat offset by his low number of extra-base hits allowed. You don't hear much about the Chicago rotation, but their top four starters all have ERA's between 3.45 and 3.93. The over starting ERA is 4.39, which is 3rd in the AL, but most teams would love to have four starters that consistent.

Enjoy!

My good friend Jim Storer called me to point out that the Marlins were starting Lenny Harris as the clean up hitter tonight. Lenny Harris, who has a .349 career slugging percentage. That's not even a great on-base average! Why? As far as I can tell, Cabrera is out of the lineup, and Harris is playing right in Miguel's stead. So of course, he has to bat in the same place; we wouldn't want to upset the rest of the order and we wouldn't want to move Choi up to a spot where his power would do more good.

This reminds me of how John McNamara used to bat Ed Romero leadoff when Boggs was out of the lineup. Can't these managers think?

Coming into today, the Twins are 9th in OBA and 9th in runs scored. Looking at the lineup, Lew Ford is great with an OBA over .400, but Jacque Jones is the only other player over .330. Some help should be on the way, as Joe Mauer has started his rehab assignment. He's already impressed the Rochester press.

The Indians have three pitchers on the AL top ten list of ERA leaders. Sabathia, Lee and Westbrook all have ERAs under 3.45. Yet, the Indians have one of the highest staff ERAs in the AL. At 5.11, their team ERA is 13th, only the Orioles at 5.41 are worse (a post on that number will be coming soon). The main problem for the Indians is in the bullpen, where the ERA is 6.29, 1 1/2 runs higher than any other AL team. White and Betancourt, have been okay with ERAs in the 3.70s. But from Betancourts 3.75, you jump to Jack Cressend and his 6.32 ERA.

So the Indians have five dependable pitchers. What can they do? If you look at the AAA numbers, there doesn't seem to be much help there either. AA looks better, but are the Indians ready to rush these kids to the majors?

They're best bet may just be to try to win the three games their good pitchers start. Save your best relievers for those games, and just take your chances with the other two. It's not a perfect strategy, but winning 3 out of 5 will get you into the playoffs most years.

It says a lot about the Seattle Mariners offense that Freddy Garcia is leading the AL in ERA, but has a 2-3 record. He'll face the man in The Prisoner's spot on the ERA list, Tim Wakefield. Garcia has pitched three games this year in which he allowed no more than one run, and did not get a decision. (Five times he's gone at least 7 allowing 1 run or less). Wakefield has been showing great control with the knuckle ball this year; his career walks per 9 is 3.6; in 2004 it's 2.7.

And of course, it's a special day at Fenway because the author of Bambino's Curse will be in the stands.

Enjoy!

Rob Mackowiak had a big day yesterday; birth of a son in the morning, a walk off grand slam in game 1, and a game tying HR in the bottom of the ninth of game two. This has other Pirates thinking.

In the locker stall next door, Wilson sat amazed: "Good friend has a kid. Goes deep twice in a night. Two walk-off homer victories. Pretty good night.

"Some of us are going to be talking to the doctor to see if we can have kids now, too."

There were five walk-off HR's last night, including one by Barry Bonds. It was good to see the Rockies pitch to Bonds with a man on first and two outs. It looks bad when it doesn't work, but I still feel it's the right strategy. Giants have won seven in a row.

I'm watching the bottom of the ninth in the Cubs-Pirates game, and a very interesting play leading off the inning. Tike Redman hits a fly ball to deep center, but not terribly deep center. Redman thought it was going to be an out, and didn't get a good jump out of the batter's box. But Patterson was playing shallow, and got a bad jump, too. About three steps out of the batter's box, Tike turned on the jets. The ball went over Patterson's head, and Redman headed for third (the Pirates were down 1 run). It was one of those decisions that baserunners make where they have to be right. Redman wasn't, but he was lucky that the throw was off line. A good throw would have nailed him. Both Nunez and Kendall have followed with singles, so in hindsight the extra base wasn't worth it. But the score is tied 5-5.

Update: With no outs and Nunez on third, Jack Wilson hit a short fly to center. Patterson made a terrific catch, but fell down. Nunez didn't tag, otherwise he'd have score easily. Two base running blunders. One cost them, one didn't.

Update: Rob Mackowiak doesn't leave anything to chance as he hits a grand slam to end the game and give the Pirates a 9-5 victory. It was nice to see the crowd was really into it as well.

Tonight's another good chance for the Mets to show they belong in the NL East race. After splitting a series from the Phillies, the Mets travel south to face the Fish in Florida. A nice matchup of lefties as the rejuvenated Tom Glavine faces the youngster Dontrelle Willis. Last time out, Dontrelle was outpitched by another old lefty having a great season, Randy Johnson. Willis is only 1-3 in five starts at Pro Player Stadium this year, and opponents are batting .339 against him in his home park.

Opposition batters have shown no power against Glavine this year. He's holding batters to a .285 slugging percentage. Watch for the matchup with Mike Redmond. He's 21 for 42 against Glavine lifetime.

Enjoy!

Correction: Mets and Phillies split a two game series.

It looks like Mondesi has signed with the Angels, but I don't understand this:

The former All-Star and Gold Glover said he got a $1.75 million contract for the rest of the season. He said he will make his debut in center field for the banged-up AL West leaders Sunday at Chicago.

"I'm very pleased with the agreement I reached with the Angels," Mondesi said.

Angels spokesman Tim Mead said he could neither confirm nor deny Mondesi's account.

Is he not confirming that Mondesi is an Angel, or just the terms of his contract?

Update: Jon Weisman has more on the Mondesi story. I have not been following it, I must admit, and didn't realize that Mondesi lied to get out of his contract. Jon brings up an interesting scenario:

What has happened this month with Mondesi and the Pirates is truly rare. A team and a player can essentially agree, or be duped into agreeing, that they are a bad match and initiate a no-fault divorce.

When you think about it, it seems harmless to both parties (although it might not be to the team that ends up paying Mondesi, a player of equal parts talent and flaw, too much money). But think how often this happens. Pretty much never.

And now, perhaps, a significant precedent has been set.

Consider if a talented but underpaid player decides he isn't satisfied with his contract. Say, I don't know, Eric Gagne. Free agency is a couple of years away. But Gagne announces that he's worried about a foreign invasion of Canada and heads home to protect his loved ones - though everyone knows this is a phony excuse.

Do the Dodgers suspend him - a suspension they might have to hold through the end of the 2006 season, when he becomes a free agent? Are they forced to renegotiate Gagne's deal then and there? Or do they decide that it just ain't worth fighting with a player that no longer wants to be here, and terminate his deal - allowing him to sign for big bucks with another team on the spot.

I believe there are more options than Jon has mentioned here. For example, Gagne can be traded. I remember Billy Sample telling me once that it was fairly easy to force a trade by your actions. Trading Gagne simply makes him someone else's problem, but he's not out of his contract, and at some point the club can take action against him for that breach.

The other thing, in the case of wealthy clubs, is that they can indeed sit on the contract. I don't really know if Gagne can afford to sit out a year of baeball. It's one thing to practice pitching; it's another to actually do it. So if the Dodgers were to call his bluff and sit on the contract, Gagne is taking the chance that his skills might diminish in a year and a half of inactivity.

Actually, I wonder if Mondesi is really going to get away with this. As this comment on Jon's site points out:

I would think that MLB in the form of the owners has an actionable tort here. They should be complaining to the commissioner that Moorad and Mondesi, by simple virtue of soliciting bids for a new contract, are invalidating the breach of the original contract. After all, if he was going to be able to play three weeks after he went on leave, there are negotiated procedures in place to protect his and the team's rights. If he gets away with this, then every team is going to be hit with Operation Shutdown (I know that was different but the game's the same), and this case will give the player precedent to get his contract terminated.

Tim Lynch sends this story from the NY Daily News about an 11-year-old who has been banned from pitching by an opponent because he's too good.

"He [Anthony] blows away the competition, so he is what we consider an illegal player," said Gambino.

Gambino noted Anthony has thrown a perfect game and two no-hitters against St. Athanasius players.

"He is an overwhelmingly, powerful pitcher. It's a very unfair advantage," Gambino said.

He said St. Athanasius is a church league that's not affiliated with Little League, and therefore is not bound by its rules.

Gambino said St. Athanasius' rules allow it to ban dominating pitchers from outside teams.

"He can come in here and hit 10 home runs a game. I don't care, as long he he doesn't pitch," Gambino said.

In other words, Gambino doesn't want his 11-year-olds to feel inadequate because they can't hit Anthony Seblano. This has to be one of the silliest things I've ever heard. How can Mr. Gambino's players ever expect to develop into good hitters if they don't face good pitchers? One of the reasons for sports competition at this age is to find out who can throw strikes and who can't, and who can hit a fastball and who can't. Unless the St. Athanasius players face this guy, we won't know if they can hit a fastball, and they won't have a chance to develop that skill.

Baseball talent is normally distributed, like almost everything in life. At age 11, little league and church league and community league teams are going to be made up mostly of kids of average talent. So if one team has an outlier, like the young Mr. Seblano, he's going to dominate. As these children grow up, the ones who aren't too good tend to drop out and move on to other pursuits. With fewer people playing, there are fewer teams, and the talent starts concentrating. It's harder for one player to dominate, but even in high school, the best athelete is often the best pitcher and hitter. As players age further, talent is concentrated further, first in the minors, then finally in the majors, where we see the upper tail of the normal curve playing.

So Mr. Gambino should welcome the challenge of Anthony Seblano. Make it into an event! Sell tickets so people in the neighborhood can come see a future major leaguer, and make some money for the church while you're at it. But don't tell your children they can't compete against this guy because you think they'll feel better. That's the wrong lesson.

By the way, I love Anthony's approach to pitching:

"Most of the time I just throw strikes. I never walk anybody," Anthony said yesterday. "I really don't think this is fair, because my teammates depend on me."

If I'm a major league scout, I'm keeping my eye on him for the next seven years.

What does it mean to be a .500 team? Normally, we think of a .500 team as one that wins as many games as it loses, and that's certainly a good definition. But a .500 team could also be a team that had an intrinsic .500 winning percentage. That is, a team that was like a fair coin, as likely to win as to lose.

Now, when you flip a fair coin a number of times, it's not always going to come up heads and tails the same number of times. Sometimes, it's not even going to be close. If you flip a coin 45 times, probability predicts that 95% of the time, you will get between 16 and 28 heads.

When a team that's instriniscally .500 plays, the result of the games are like the flip of a coin. A win is heads, and a loss is tails. Now, most teams are about 45 games into the season, so we'd expect teams that are intrinsically .500 to have between 16 and 28 wins. As it turns out, all but three teams have between 16 and 28 wins! Does that mean that those 27 teams are intrinsically .500? No, but it does mean we can't tell. A team that is 16-29 could really be an unlucky team that is intrinsically .500.

It also means that if you set up 30 teams that are really evenly matched, you could get standings like the ones you'll read in the papers tomorrow morning by pure luck. That's why when you see a team like San Diego playing well, or a team like Seattle playing badly maybe there's been a change in talent, or maybe just a change in luck.

That's why, when I see a team like Detroit, that's playing better than it's intrinsic winning percentage, I'd like to see them build on the luck by actually improving the team.

Carlos Pena went 6 for 6 today in the Tigers trouncing of the Royals today, including two home runs. However, even with the six hits, Pena's stats are still not impressive. At the end of the game, his BA is .236, his OBA is .315 and his slugging percentage is .459. Those aren't too far off his career averages. At 26 years old, it's unlikely that he's going to develop into a great player. At this point, he comes cheap, but isn't it possible to find a cheap first baseman who can hit? The reality of the situation is that the Tigers are in a pennant race. They have an offensive hole at a position where it's fairly easy to find offense. Should they go for it, just be happy to be close to .500. I always feel that when you have a chance to win, you should take it. Just for example, Marcus Thames is tearing up AAA. Why not give him a first baseman's mitt and see if he can hit better than Pena?

The Tigers are playing better than they probably expected. They can be better by plugging an offensive hole at a place where it's easy to fix. I think they should make a move and keep moving toward the division leaders.

I wonder how long the Marlins will continue to bat Choi behind Conine. Hee Seop had 2 doubles today to raise his slugging percentage to .565 and his OBA to .382. Conine is only slugging .404. With Lowell adn Cabrera doing such a good job of getting on base, it would be wise to put Choi right behind them, to give the big first basmen more opportunites to bat with men on, the situation in which his power is most effective.

Not surprisingly, the player I highlight as the poster child for the Dodger's poor offense hits a 420 ft. HR. Milton Bradley went deep against Ben Sheets, and the Dodgers are now only down 2-1. Sheets is pitching a great game, with 8 K and no walks through seven innings. He's at 109 pitches; we'll see how many he's allowed to throw today.

Update: Kieschnick is on in the 8th. Another great start by Sheets.

Eric Neel remembers Doug Pappas.

Ben Sheets could be in for a good afternoon as the Brewers finish up their three-game series with the Dodgers. Los Angeles has only scored 32 runs in their last 12 games for a 2-10 record. Sheets has had a great month of May, striking out 35 in 30 innings while walking only 8 and posting a 2.40 ERA. It's starting to look like the Indians did the right thing in getting rid of Milton Bradley, also. He had a good April, but his power has fallen off in May (.361 slugging percentage), and his main strength, getting on baes, isn't there either. His .421 OBA of last year is starting to look like a fluke.

Probably the best pitching matchup of the day is in Chicago, where Ryan Drese of the Rangers faces Mark Buehrle of the White Sox. Drese has done a very good job this year of keeping the heart of the order in check. The 3-4-5 hitters are batting just .209 against Ryan, and slugging a mere .290. Part of Buehrle's success is that his strikeout rate this season is about 2 per 9 higher than his career numbers. He's had three great starts in a row in which he's struck out 21 in 20 2/3 innings while walking just 4.

Enjoy!

Good new about the Boston Dirt Dogs over at Bambino's Curse. They've been acquired by Boston.com. Maybe now they'll have permalinks!

This is how baseball makes news in India.

The San Francisco Giants have climbed back into the race in the NL West. Although 3 games under .500, the Giants are in third place, 3 1/2 games out of first place. One big reason is that they now have the pitching staff in control. In April, it seemed like they couldn't get an out, allowing a 5.55 ERA. They've almost knocked two runs off that in May, down to 3.66. They has more than made up for a fall in offense of .5 runs during the same time period. With Bonds starting to hit again, that may change as well.

Schmidt, Tomko and Hermanson have all pitched well for the starters this month, although Schmidt is the only one with a win for his efforts. Rodriguez and Walker have anchored the bullpen. Herges has saved 6 of 7, despite an ERA over 6.00. If the Giants can maintain this level of pitching, they can win the west with a small increase in offense.

Daryle Ward hit for the cycle last night in the 11-8 Pirates victory. His father Gary also hit for the cycle, making them the first father-son combination to accomplish the feat. It was Daryl's first triple since 2000.

Up until this point, Esteban Loaiza had not pitched like the 21-game winner of last year. His big improvement was bring his strikeout close to 9.0. Entering tonight, however, he had only struck out 31 in 62 2/3 innings.

He had the strikeout pitch tonight, however. Against the Rangers he fanned nine in eight innings, and allowed zero runs. The White Sox have to hope this is the Loaiza they'll have for the rest of the year.

For the second game in a row, the Blue Jays win in their last AB against the Angels by the score of 6-5. This time it's Troy Percival blowing his fourth save of the season, allowing four hits and a walk in the last half of the ninth to give the Blue Jays two runs and the win. Percival has now walked 11 in 16 2/3 innings, while striking out 9.

Greg Maddux gave up back-to-back HR to Bagwell and Kent in the third inning. That gives Greg 13 allowed on the season; his career high is 24 set last last year. One of Maddux's great strengths as a pitcher throughout his career was his ability to limit his opponent's HR. That's slipping away. It doesn't appear to be Wrigley, as he's evenly split on allowing them on the road and at home. In the year of the old pitcher, Maddux is one who is actually looking old.

Tommy Phelps of the Marlins made his first start of the season tonight. As a reliever, he had struck out 16 and allowed 16 hits in 15 innings. Tonight, he brought both those numbers way down. Phelps went seven shutout innings, allowing just 1 hit while striking out two and issuing two walks. He kept his pitch count down, averaging a little over 13 pitches an inning.

Van Poppel pitched well enough to win, and the Red have to be happy with his progress. His ERA now stands at 3.63, and 72 of his 103 pitches were for strikes.

Matt Ginter appears to have caught the Mets shutout bug. He's good through five innings against the Phillies tonight, and he has to be. The Mets have only scored 1 run themselves off Myers. Ginter is letting his defense do all the work, as he's faced 19 batters, walked 1 and struck out none so far. If this holds up, it will be the third straight shutout for the Metropolitans.

Update: Bottalico ends the scoreless streak, allowing two runs in the 7th. Mets lead 3-2.

Update: Bottalico ends up giving up three, and combines with three other relievers to give up 6 in the 7th. Looks like the relievers haven't caught the bug. :-)

It's west coast offense day, so you may want to stay up for the late games. San Diego continues it's series in Colorado as Adam Eaton faces Jason Jennings. Both have ERA's over 5.00. Klesko has hit three HR off Jennings in 18 AB. Eaton and Jennings are both in the top ten in the NL in HR allowed, so look for the ball to fly out in Coors. On top of that, the Padres have the 2nd highest Runs/Game on the road in the NL (5.6 runs per game). Only the Astros scored more away from home.

The Diamondbacks and Giants face off in San Francisco with Casey Daigle going against Kirk Rueter. Daigle is coming off three straight poor outings where he failed to get past the fifth. On the season, he's walked 9 more than he's struck out. That's not a good ratio to have for the first time facing Barry Bonds. Rueter isn't much better, having walked 18 and struck out 16 in 50 1/3 innings. Rueter's been awful at home, going 0-4 with a 7.56 ERA.

Enjoy!

Bryan Johnson has a nice post on why Cincinnati's pitching to contact strategy still leads to strikeouts.

The theory of "pitching to contact" really sounds deceiving, because if done right the end result still has a lot of strikeouts. I always felt that it was more of a psychological trick to get pitchers to stop nibbling on the corners and to not be afraid to go after hitters.

It should be noted, however, that Wilson, Lidle and Harang are below their career K/9 numbers. I don't think that it invalidates the point that you want your pitchers to go after hitters, but it doesn't mean they'll strike out more.

Jeff Haney offers an interesting look at how over-under lines help show the tendancies of new ballparks. Gambling odds are very interesting. They're a way of distilling the thinking of a large number of experts into a single number, much like the way sabermetricians try to resolve the various offensive, pitching and fielding stats into wins.

The Mets shutout of the Phillies last night got them on the back page of the NY Post and produced this optimistic story by Michael Morrissey. The Mets are turning out to be another nice surprise this season; not a great team, but good enough to be in the race. The thing that stands out for me about the Mets is how well they have pitched at home. They are posting a 3.28 ERA at Shea vs. 4.55 on the road. And while the offense has been poor, it's been more consistent, scoring 4.1 runs per game at home, 4.5 on the road. Right now, they are looking like a team that fits their ballpark well; if they can stay near .500 on the road, they can post a winning season.

I guess I've been getting some criticism from other blogs. Shawn at The Greatest Game offers this:

When I started this journey into the baseball blog, I started where a lot of people did - David Pinto's Baseball Musings. You've all read it, I'm sure. Most of you are probably regulars. But there is something there now, which I don't think was there previously, that just bugs the shit out of me. And what's worse is that I just can't put my finger on it. I'm not writing to pass judgment on David, in fact he just sent an email response to a commented that I posted on Baseball Musings about Robert Heinlein (and he pretty much deferred to my knowledge on Heinlein). But there is something in the tone of his blog now that just rubs me the wrong way. I still read it every day, but not with the same zeal that I used to.

Al Bethke picks up on this:

First of all, I'm glad I'm not the only one. Secondly, I think much of this revolves around the fact David's blog was "the first" blog to hit the big time because he knew Rob Neyer, and Rob mentioned it in his column. It didn't jump to the top on its own, as Neyer, to my knowledge, has never given a plug to any blogger, even Aaron Gleeman, who is all but accepted as the best. I have read David's Musings since Neyer mentioned it, and have been almost silent about the inconsistencies (he often mentions how such and such "plays hard" and gives it as a reason for winning, and how "so and so has them playing a hard-nosed brand of baseball"). The constant Bud bashing has grown tiresome, and my e-mail exchange today with Pinto is glaringly devoid of facts, it is simply "Bud sucks, because I say so". He gives Selig no credit for the '02 CBA agreement, the first in history mind you that occured without a work stoppage. He wonders why the Brewers don't bring up their best prospects, seemingly unaware they are not ready, nor is it a good idea to start their arby and FA clocks when their positions are filled in the majors competently. He questioned BA's #1 ranking, and asks why the 20 and 21 year-olds aren't in the majors. Well, Prince is 19 and will probably be up before he's 22, but that makes no difference, he is biased because he doesn't like Bud.

I especially like Al's last line.

I tell you, this "Bud isn't that bad" bandwagon is getting exhausting to fight by myself.:)

Maybe you're the only one for a reason, Al.

To deal with Shawn first, I have to admit that my writing has slipped. I don't know why. Maybe I'm burned out. Maybe I should get away from the blog for a week or two. But it has been a lot harder writing this year than in the past. But if I'm noticing and other people are noticing, then there's something wrong.

Al has just been a jerk from the start. Any time I said something negative about Bud Selig, I'd get angry letters. He was really upset when I suggested that the Brewers should be contracted instead of the Twins, because the Twins were good and the Brewers had been extremely poor for a long time.

In a recent letter to me, Al stated the following:

As I've said many times, the Bud bashers can only agree on the fact they don't like Bud, but have no idea why.

I can't speak for anyone else, but here's why I don't like Bud.

• He fired Fay Vincent because Vincent stopped the strike in 1990 before any games could be lost. Vincent thought it was in the best interests of baseball not to have a strike then. Fay was willing to go against ownership, and that cost him his job, and it cost us an independent commissioner.


• He was as responsible as anyone for the strike of 1994. Selig's actions in the spring of 1995 showed that he was more interested in breaking the union than reaching a settlement with the players.


• The strike in 1994 destroyed the Expos. The 1994 Expos were the greatest team ever to play in that city; if the season had played itself out, they would have built a fan base, and they would likely not have needed to sell off the team in 1995. I believe that the Expos would be a very different franchise if the 1994 strike didn't happen.


• Bud Selig lacks imagination.
  

  Testifying before Congress in November 2000, Commissioner Selig asserted, "At the start of spring training there no longer exists hope and faith for the fans of more than half of our 30 clubs."

  
  Bud couldn't imagine that a revolution was happening in Oakland, or Minnesota, or Anaheim at the time. Bud couldn't imagine that there could possibly be another way of winning than spending lots of money.

  Al credits Bud with having the imagination to expand, introduce the wild card, interleague play, etc. Those are fine, but they were nothing original. He was just following the NFL.
  



• Bud lied about baseball's finances.


• Bud has a huge conflict of interest in being commissioner and owner of a team. And it always seemed to me that what Bud wanted for the game would most help the Brewers, not the game as a whole.

So there it is. Al thinks I don't give Selig credit for the good things. Okay. I'm fine with the wild card. I think interleague play has run its course, but it was a worthwhile experiment. Should Selig get credit for the attendance rise this year? I have no idea why it's up, but I suspect it's because of free agent movement, something Bud's been trying to rein in for 30 years. Al wants Bud to get credit for the 2002 settlement. Okay, Bud decided not to break the union that time. Good for him.

But why not break the distrust between players and management? Forging a real partnership between the players and the owners would be in the best interests of the players, fans and owners. If Selig could accomplish that, I'd forgive him for everything else. But I don't think Bud has the imagination to pull that off.

James Ondrey has started a new blog about the Indians, SaberTribe. Stop by and say hi.

The Marlins-Reds game is living up to expectations. Beckett has five strikeouts and no walks through 5, and has allowed only two hits. A Larkin HR has been his only mistake. Wilson has given up six hits, but he's spread them out. A double by Lowell and single by Cabrera account for the Marlins only run. It's 1-1 in the bottom of the 6th.

Update: Griffey goes deep in the bottom of the 6th, a three-run HR to give the Reds a 4-1 lead. I haven't seen many of Ken's HRs this year, but that reminded me of the young Jr. The perfect HR swing, and the ball just jumped out of the park. That's 492 HR for Griffey now.

It amazing to me that hitters are so strong they can injure themselves on a check swing. The Yankees had a player named Ron Bloomberg in the 1970s (he was the first designated hitter). He had a huge upper body for the time, although I doubt we'd be impressed today. But he'd swing so hard, he tear his should muscles. Memory is a bad thing to rely on, but I seem to recall him getting a hit and injuring his shoulder with the swing.

The Yankees visit Baltimore as the two teams meet for the first time this season. For the Orioles, it's a chance to show that they belong in the AL East Race after losing four in a row. For the Yankees, it's a chance to bury a competitor so they can concentrate on the Red Sox. Jon Lieber will face Erik Bedard. Bedard has great strikeout numbers, but walks way too many batters. The selective hitters on the Yankees will work him, so the Baltimore bullpen should be read for action early. It will be interesting to see how Lee Mazzilli does against Torre; as Joe's former coach, Lee should know the strengths and weaknesses of his former team as well as anybody.

A great pitching matchup in Boston as the A's and Tim Hudson face Curt Schilling, another member of the old pitcher's club. There's not much difference between the two in ERA, IP, starts wins or walks. The difference is in the strikeouts. Schilling will strikeout twice as many batters as Hudson. That can hurt Tim in a small ballpark like Fenway, where a ball in play may be off the wall instead of caught.

The Marlins at Reds offers both a compelling pitching matchup and a clash of top division teams. Josh Beckett casts for the Fish. Josh has been inconsistent this year. Sometimes he shows the brilliance of his game 6 shutdown of the Yankees, but he's also been lit up at times. The strikeouts, walks and HR are all where they should be, but he's been giving up hits at inopportune times (.297 BA against him with runners in scoring position). Paul Wilson remains undefeated at 6-0. After having things go so wrong for him during his career, it's nice to see some lucky breaks come his way. He's kept his walks low, and he's given up HR in bases empty situations. So far you can bend him, but not break him.

Finally, the Cubs and Astros get together in Houston for an NL Central showdown as Zambrano faces Oswalt. Carlos makes you wonder what the Cubs would be like if they had Prior on this staff all year. If Zambrano is your third starter, the other two must really be good. Oswalt is coming off two mediocre starts in which he's allowed 3 HR and 10 runs in 13 innings. He deserves better than a 2-3 record with his ERA, but not if he keeps pitching like that.

Lots of good pennant race action tonight. Enjoy!

I notice that the Dodgers (42,055 average at home) are first in the NL in home attendance and the Angels (40,538 average at home) are 2nd in AL. It looks to me that the Angels haven't taken fans from the Dodgers, but tapped a whole new vein of fans. And in an area that highly populated, there's plenty of fans to go around. I wonder what the TV ratings of the Dodgers and Angels are like this year? Has anyone heard?

Update: Jon from Dodger Thoughts links in the comments to this article in the LA Times, showing how TV viewing of baseball is also up this year.

An interesting post on Babe Ruth and how he became a selective hitter over at the Baseball Crank.

Quite an ending to the Angels-Blue Jays game. With men on first and second and two outs, Pond, Simon Pond, hits a shot to first. Kotchman makes a great play to get a glove on it, and it rolls just behind him (instead of shooting into the outfield. Gomez at 2nd must not have realized that the ball hasn't gone into the outfield, because rounds third and is halfway home when he realizes he's in trouble. Kennedy picks up the ball and throws to Molina, who properly runs Gomez back towards third, when he tosses to Amezaga. But unbeknowst to Molina, no one back him up at the plate. Weber races home, but Gomez wins the sprint and scores the winning run.

Correction: It was Gomez not Hinske who scored the run.

Kudos to the Blue Jays bullpen. They pitched 4 1/3 scoreless innings, allowing only two hits and 1 walk, and giving the Jays a chance to tie and win the game. Three games now separate the top three teams in the AL West.

Graves comes into the ninth with a three run lead, by any definition an easy save. He's given up two hits and a run scored on a passed ball. He's now facing Bagwell (the tying run) with a man on third and 1 out.

Update: Bagwell hits a medium line drive that Freel jumps for and snares. It's up to Lance Berkman now.

Update: Berkman grounds out to short. Graves gets his 21st save, and the Reds are by themselves in first place.

A nice game by John Thomson tonight, another good example of what can happen when you throw strikes. He pitched seven shutout innings, and although he gave up 8 hits, he walked no one. About 70% of his pitches were strikes; the Expos put many of those in play, but the 8 hits were well spread out. The Expos never got more than two in an inning against Thomson. I didn't see the game, but my guess would be that Thomson kept the Expos off balance all night.

With the score tied 4-4 in the bottom of the 8th, Austin Kearns goes deep with two on to give the Reds a three run lead. He's 8 for 21 since his return from the DL.

Juan Pierre was recently moved to the #2 spot in the lineup. I don't quite know why, his OBA this year is much better than Luis Castillo's. But he's responded. His 3 for 5 today brings him to 10 for 24 since making the switch.

Thirteen runs for the Fish today put them 0 games and percentage points behind the Phillies.

Joe Sheehan at Baseball Prospectus pens this tribute to Doug Pappas.

NPR has an audio report on Rickey Henderson playing in the minor leagues. It's really well done. Rickey also appears to have learned to speak in the first person, something that is addressed in the piece.

Brandon Webb walked the first two batters he faced in the second, and both came around to score as the Marlins picked up three hits subsequently. The Fish lead 4-0 after three.

Brandon Webb was one of the players who made 2003 the year of the young pitcher. He'll face Carl Pavano this afternoon as the Marlins host the Diamondbacks for the conclusion of their series. Webb has been walking a lot of batters this year; 4.58 per 9 compared to 3.39 last year. That's not the direction you want to see a young pitcher take. Meanwhile, Pavano has been stingy with the base on balls, allowing only 15 this year.

The other big game is once again in Cincinnati as the first place Reds face the Astros for the fourth game of their series. The Reds have taken the first three games to move into a tie in the NL Central with the Cubs. The Cubs, most likely, are hoping for a Houston win, as that would give Chicago sole possession of the division lead. Tim Redding faces Jose Acevedo. Berkman is 5 for 6 with three HR vs. Jose. Sean Casey is the only Reds batter to see much of Redding, and he's six for fifteen against Tim.

Enjoy!

Thanks to Dave Vincent, who keeps track of HR for SABR, I learned that Bonds has not gone a month without a HR since May of 1999. That month, Bonds was on the disabled list with a left tricep tendon tear and did not play at all. The only other month (April-September) in which Bonds did not homer was April of 1995. That was a short month, as the strike delayed the opening of the season until 4/25. So unless Bonds goes deep in the next seven days (a likely prospect), we're looking at the first full month in which Bonds has played that he hasn't homered.

Doug Pappas, despite being on vacation, helped out the Dener Post the day before he died, his last bit of baseball work.

We're seven weeks into the season, and all the races are very close. There are three tied divisions, and the biggest first place lead is held by the Red Sox at 1 1/2 games. What's more, only five teams are more tha 6 1/2 games out of first place. Cincinnati and San Diego are in first place. Pittsburgh is in last place, but only 4 1/2 games out, and only two games under .500, and they are playing in a strong division. It's anybody's ballgame this year.

And the fans seem to be loving it. Attendance at this point in the season last year averaged 25,234. This year, it's 29,041. That's almost 4000 fans per game. Let's say that each fanny in the seats puts $20 of profit into the clubs pockets. (I'm being conservative here. I know that's what independent minor league teams makes per fan). So that's about $80,000 more per game than last year. If you give each club 80 home dates, that's $6.4 million more than last year per club. Again, the $20 may be conservation. If it's $50, now you're talking about enough money to buy a superstar next year. It's enough money to keep Beltran on your team. It's enough money to give long term contracts to Young and Blalock, so you can control the cost of arbitration and future free agency. It's enough to keep teams competitive with each other. And as long as the Yankees keep spending, there will be plenty of luxury tax money to help out as well.

And I love all of it. I love the Yankees using all their resources to obtain the players they believe are the best. I love the small market teams realizing that spending isn't the only way to win, and finding ways to compete with young players, cast off but valuable veterans, and a good trade of two. I love it that the Sabremetrics doesn't always work, as evidenced in Toronto this year. That keeps things interesting, that keeps the discussion going, that keeps us asking questions and learning.

Every year I think, "What a great season." Two thousand four is no exception.

You know your pitching staff is having a bad day when Enrique Wilson has a double and a homer. His on-base + slugging is now higher than Jeter's! Yankees lead 7-3 in the 6th.

Well, the Reds did it. They brought the Houston Astros into town and sent them packing. The Astros sent their big three, Pettitte, Clemens and Miller to the mound. Pettitte pitched well, but the Reds selectivity forced him to throw 100 pitches in five innings, and the Reds pounded the bullpen. The got to Clemens on Saturday, and despite pitching problems of their own, the offense kept coming, and they won a close one 8-7. And today, Cory Lidle didn't pitch like someone with a 5.24 ERA. He threw strikes, and shut out the Astros with 106 pitches. This was an impressive series by an impressive team, and team that knows how to approach the game. It's going to be a fun race in the NL Central this year.

Kit Pellow hits a line drive double to break up the no-hitter with two out in the 8th. Still a great game by Tom Glavine, and if they hang on for the win, they will have reached the .500 mark.

Randy Johnson retired the Marlins in order in the first.

The Mets have moved McEwing out of center to first base, and inserted Cameron into center to give Glavine better defense behind him. He's gotten the first batter on a fly to left.

The Dodgers offense has gone away again. They were not able to score a run off Mike Hampton over six innings. This despite Hampton giving up nine hits and two walks. They've finally gotten a run off Gryboski in relief. Once again, a caught stealing and a double play helped reduce the number of runners actually on for LA.

Having beaten Randy Johnson 1-0, Glavine it appears does not want to be outdone in the no-hit department. He was perfect through six, then walked the leadoff man Hocking in the 7th. But that's it. The Mets have never had a perfect game thrown for their team. I don't have this game on TV, but I'm listening via the internet.

Lots of good matchups today. The Cincinnati Reds could be alone in first place tonight with a win and a Cubs loss. Wade Miller faces Cory Lidle. Dave Miley appears to have the right approach to the game. Even though the Reds are being outhit by 30 points (Reds .245 BA, Opponents .275), they get on base more (Reds .343 OBA, opponents .329). You can interpret this as the Reds pitchers are going after hitters, throwing strikes to avoid walking people, while the Reds hitters are very selective, willing to take a walk to get on base. Moneyball in Cincinnati, anyone?

A nice pitching matchup in Puerto Rico today as Jason Schmidt of the Giants faces Zach Day of the Expos. Zach has pitched much better than his 3-4 record indicates. He might have a better chance for a win against the mediocre Giants offense, but Schmidt is as likely to shut down the mediocre Expos offense. Bonds still hasn't homered in May. Bonds offense this month has been his 20 walks; he has a .460 OBA and that's it. What's more, when teams have chosen to pitch to him, he's made outs (he's 3 for 30). With the bad back, I wonder how long it will be before teams decide it's worth going after Barry.

The White Sox will try to win the series against the Twins today to claim a share of first place in the AL Central. Garland faces Santana. Garland is coming off two strong starts than lowered his ERA to 3.62. He's been a bit lucky to have an ERA that low. He has a tendancy to give up HR with men on base. That coupled with his walks not being that low and his strikeouts not being that high make me wonder how he's maintained an ERA that low.

Finally, the pitching matchup of the day is in Florida. Randy Johnson, fresh off his perfect game faces Dontrelle Willis. Johnson has allowed only 1 run and 3 hits in his last 16 innings, while striking out 20. Willis, after a great April has been hit hard in May, with opponents posting a .329 BA in the month.

Enjoy!

Sean Casey just delievered an RBI double in the bottom of the 8th to give the lead back to Cincinnati, 7-6. Clemens won't lose this game, but right now it doesn't look good for the Astros, as Griffey knocks in Casey with an insurance run.

Update: The first two batters for Houston reach in the top of the ninth, putting the tying runs on base.

Update: The insurance run proves to be just that as the Astros score 1 in the 9th, but lose to force a three way tie for the NL Central.

Baseball Told the Right Way is a new blog about the sport. Check out their analysis of the Dodger's season so far.

Roger Clemens has struck out 7 through three innings, but the other batters have gotten to him. He's given up seven hits and three walks, leading to four runs. Meanwhile, Harang has given up four singles and no runs. A win by the Reds tonight results in a three way tie in the NL Central.

If the stat blown save ever applied, it applies to Tom Gordon in this game. He made two bad throws in the eight allowed the Rangers to tie the game, then in the bottom of the ninth, he gives up a solo HR to Barajas after striking out Nix. Barajas, in limited duty, is now slugging .630.

One of the nice things about the game was when Barajas reached home plate, the entire Texas team was there to greet him. It reminded me of how the Red Sox reacted to game winners last year. These two wins have to be be confidence builders for the Rangers.

Here's an obituary on Doug Pappas from the SABR web site.

I had a feeling a couple of weeks ago that people were starting to write off the Athletics. That's a perilous tack to take. The A's have now won 11 of their last 14 and are leading the Royals 2-1 in the fifth today.

Bernie Williams breaks up Drese's no-hitter with a HR to right field. Tony Clark immediately follows with an opposite field HR down the left field line to give the Yankees a 2-1 lead. Clark will be seeing a lot of playing time with Giambi on the DL.

The Marlins got to Steve Sparks early. He lasted 2 2/3 innings, allowing 10 runs on nine hits and two walks, including a grand slam to Luis Castillo. Luis had a weak .308 slugging percentage entering the game.

Ryan Drese has had three easy innings so far. He's retired all nine Yankees he's faced, using only 32 pitches (20 for strikes). He's struck out 2, including A-Rod.

Update: Still perfect through 4, and only 41 pitches thrown. He's struck out A-Rod twice, and has the whole team off balance so far.

After getting Young and Blalock, Contreras throws Soriano a fastball up and in, and Alfonso puts it into the right field seats. Don't these Yankees know that you pitch Soriano low and outside? He's now 3 for 6 against his former team.

Looks like the Fox pre-game show is in high definition. It's taken forever for our local Fox affiliate to get it's digital transmitter going. I'm hoping they're showing the game as well, although it looks more like standard format in the segment from the pregame show.

Update: It's not high def, but it looks really good.

Todd Hollandsworth had a miserable 2003, but he's been reborn as a Cub in 2004. He hit his fifth HR in 52 AB today, and the Cubs are leading the Cardinals 7-1 in the ninth. It's a small sample, but with a .452 OBA and a .654 slugging percentage, Todd is proving to be a perfect replacement for Sammy Sosa.

The Dodgers found someone they can hit today. Jaret Wright gave up eight hits and three walks in 4 1/3 innings, leading to five Dodgers runs. Meanwhile, Jeff Weaver is pitching lie a Dodger, allowing no runs while striking out 9 in seven innings.

Cincinnati is making a run at first place in the NL Central. Austin Kearns is back and went 2 for 4 last night against Houston to help the Reds win 7-4. Now only leading the Central by one game, Roger Clemens takes the mound this evening against Aaron Harang. Harang is 4-1 despite a 4.57 ERA. What he's done well is keep the Reds in the game until the bullpen can take over. Clemens is undefeated, and going for his 8th win in nine starts. Matthew Namee ranks Clemens as the 2nd best old pitcher behind Randy Johnson. It's a pretty close call, but in the Year of the Old Pitcher, you don't want to miss a performance by either.

Enjoy!

The Braves and Dodgers have kept each other off the board tonight, with the game tied 0-0 in the 7th. The Dodgers have put plenty of men on base; four singles and five walks. But they've had four of those runners removed with double plays and caught stealing. The Dodgers have only scored 18 runs during their seven game losing streak.

I complain about Derek Jeter's defense enough, but I just saw him make a very nice play. He ranged past 2nd base to take a hit away from Michael Young and throw him out at first. Jeter appears to be moving faster in the field this year.

The DBacks and Marlins are engaged in the beginnings of a slugfest tonight. Both starters, Daigle and Oliver, have allowed four runs over the first four innings. Both have ERAs over 7.00; how long will both these teams let these pitchers start? Do they think they are going to suddenly find their control? Or a new pitch? Is there really no one at triple A or double AA who couldn't do better? Arizona is going nowhere fast, so maybe they can afford to have Daigle learn at the major league level. But the Fish are in a real fight with the Phillies for first, so can they really afford Oliver as a fifth starter?

Update: I spoke too soon. Daigle gave up another run in the fourth.

The White Sox are off to a 4-0 lead against the Twins and Carlos Silva. (Seems the hitters have finally figured out Carlos.) We'll have a tie for the AL Central if Chicago can maintain this lead.

Alfonso Soriano takes a high pitch from Kevin Brown and lines it into right field for a single in his first AB against his former teammates.

Paul is out of the game against the Indians after allowing 3 runs in 3 innings. That's not so bad, but he took 79 pitches to get through those three innings. There's no excuse for that. With 30 more pitches yesterday, Tim Hudson went eight innings. With five hits and three walks allowed, Abbott was lucky just to have allowed three runs.

Alex Rodriguez is getting roundly booed in his first AB back in Texas.

Update: A-Rod answers the boos with a HR down the line to give the Yankees a 2-0 lead. Sounded like there were some cheers as he rounded the bases.

Bill Kelly just wrote me to spread the news that Doug Pappas has passed away. Doug's Business of Baseball Blog was one of my daily reads. He presented the money side of the game clearly and eloquently. I never got the chance to meet Doug, but from his writing, I know I would have liked him. My sincerest sympathy goes out to Doug's family and friends. He will be deeply missed.

Pujols and Edmonds just went back-to-back with home runs in the Cubs game. The more I see Albert, the more impressed I am with him. Here's a player, 24 years old, that has a career .330 BA, .410 OBA and .608 slugging percentage. I mean, this guy hasn't peaked yet (yes, there's a chance he's older, but I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt for now). And on top of that, he's always in the lineup. Albert is laying the foundation to be the greatest hitter of all time. If he improves over the next three years as we might expect, we might very well see:

• A triple crown.


• A single season HR record.


• With good table setters, a single season RBI record.


• A .400 season.

And with Bonds starting to fade with age, a run of MVP's is certainly on the horizon. Some smart marketing executive has to start promoting this young man. He's going to be baseball over the next decade.

Michael Barrett certainly has found his offensive Mojo since moving to the Cubs. He has two HR today to bring his season total to seven. The most he's ever had in a season before is 12. Montreal is a good pitcher's park, but Barrett is hitting as well on the road as at home. Maybe there's a better hitting coach in Chicago? Jeff Petland isn't there anymore. Maybe Gary Matthews is responsible.

Correction: It was Jeff, not Jim Petland.

Steve Bonner wonders if Mussina is really out of the woods. I'd be curious to know how hard he's throwing his fastball.

It's the first meeting since the big trade. Alfonso Soriano and the Texas Rangers host the NY Yankees and Alex Rodriguez tonight in Arlington. So far the trade looks pretty even, with the Yankees getting a slight edge. A-Rod has a .363 OBA and a .519 slugging percentage. Soriano is at .341 OBA, .461 slugging. The ballpark in Arlington hasn't turned Alfonso into a monster HR hitter, although all his stats are much better there than on the road. A-Rod has also played better at home, but not to the same extent as Alfonso. It will be interesting to see how each reacts to the game.

Enjoy!

If you chose to participate in Henry Copeland's survey, the results are here.

Frank Thomas is having an interesting May. He hasn't hit for average (.220) but he's drawn a lot of walks (19), and nine of his 13 hits have been for extra bases. Tonight, he's hit, and he's continued to hit for power. He's 3 for 3 with a double and a homer as Chicago opens a four game series with Minnesota. The Sox need to take 3 out of 4 to tie the Twins for first in the AL Central, and they're off to a good start with Thomas driving in 3 of their seven runs. They have a 7-3 lead in the 6th.

Paul Wilson picked up three big runs in the sixth inning, and that was all he'd need as he goes eight on only 89 pitches to defeat the Colorado Rockies. It was a Maddux like performace, six K, zero walks and three hits. Danny Graves pitched the 9th for his 18th save (out of 22 Reds wins).

Kennedy pitched well enough to win, with 9 K in 7 innings. Both team now have something neither did last year, a dependable starter.

This wasn't Derek Lowe's night. He lasted only 2 1/2, allowing 8 hits (3 doubles) and seven runs. And despite walking four through three innings, Victor Zambrano has yet to allow a run.

Joe Kennedy is still mowing down Reds. And with a single tonight, Joe has more hits than the entire Reds team through five. His only mistake so far was issuing a walk to Larkin.

Update: LaRue breaks up the no-hitter with a single leading off the sixth. Wilson looks like he's going to bunt, then swings and gets a single through a drawn in infield to put runners on first and second with none out.

Update: Freel bunts with two outs, gets it down, and Kennedy throws it away to tie the game at 1.

Tim Hudson pitched eight good inning today. Not great, good. He gave up 10 hits, but only two runs (1 earned). Most of all, he threw strikes; 80 out of 109 pitches. That meant only one walk. And by keeping his pitch count low, he was able to stick around until the eighth, when the A's got the winning run. A lot of pitchers could learn something from this performance.

The Colorado-Cincinnati game is a pitching duel through 3 1/2. The only run has come on a solo HR by Castilla off Paul Wilson. Kennedy has the strikeouts working, K'ing 6 through three innings.

As if things aren't going bad enough for the Cubs, Neifi Perez just took Joe Borowski deep to give the Giants a 5-3 lead in the top of the 10th. It's Perez's first HR of the year, matching his season total from last year.

Update: The Giants win.

That's Feliz, not Martinez. I was surprised to see Feliz in the cleanup slot today for the Giants. But then I noticed he had a slugging percentage over .500. He had an excellent power year in 2003 after being under .400 his first three seasons. I don't know if the power is real; it's still a small sample, but he hit his 8th HR of the year today and is now slugging .537. Seems like Alou put him in the right spot. Maybe he's learned some strengthening exercises from Barry Bonds.

Kerry Wood is now on the DL. I believe that Prior, Wood and Sosa are the three best players on the team. As Bill Kelly said when he alerted me to this, "They blew up the Bartman ball, right?"

Todd Zeile gave the Mets an early lead with a two-run homer in the first. But his defense just cost them the lead. Playing in, with runners on first and third, he had a ground ball hit to him that he couldn't handle cleanly. By the time he had control of the ball, a run had scored and his only play was at first, where he got the out. It's the kind of play the stats just don't capture well. It was a ball in play, and the defense turned it into an out. But we just don't catch the negative of the bobble that let the run score.

It's a presidential pitching matchup in Cincinnati tonight as two pitching surprises face each other. Joe "The Patriarch" Kennedy faces Paul "League of Nations" Wilson. Kennedy continues to be as effective against righties as lefties. If you factor in power, he's even more effective against right-handed batters. That's real important when 79% of the batters you face bat from the right side. Wilson is back on track with two very good starts after four forgetful ones (none of which he lost). Although he's allowed 7 HR, only 1 has come with men on base. And his opponents have their batting average drop from .312 with the bases empty to .207 with runners in scoring position.

Has anyone noticed that D'Angelo Jimenez has become the Mark Bellhorn of the Reds? He does one thing really well offensively, and that's draw walks. He's in the top 10 in the NL in walks with 24, and his low .230 BA looks a lot better when you consider he has a .339 OBA. Getting on base is a very useful skill, and Jimenez is showing he can do just that.

Enjoy!

A very nice start by Jose Acevedo of the Reds tonight. Seven innings, five hits and 11 K vs. the Rockies. He threw only 90 pitches, 63 for strikes. It hasn't been a good year for Acevedo; maybe this will turn things around.

There's almost no one in the stands for the start of the Twi-Night double header in the Pittsburgh. If you're working downtown, get out to the stadium, get a seat down the line, and you can easily get a ball in the stands. Not much competition right now. Plus, the Pirates are ahead 1-0 in the first!

I'll say this, the Twins never say die. Down three runs in the top of the ninth, they load the bases against Terry Adams (on three hits), and Matt LeCroy pinch hits for Prieto and smacks a grand slam to centerfield. It was his first HR of the year and the first grand slam of his career. We'll see what the Blue Jays can do in the bottom of the ninth.

Update: Not a day for closers so far, as Nathan walks the leadoff man in the bottom of the ninth.

Update: Nathan get Catalanatto to ground into a DP. It didn't seem that hard hit to me; I'm surprised the Cat didn't get down the baseline quicker. The play was not close at first base.

Update: Johnson grounds out to end the game. Nice comeback win for the Twins.

The Blue Jays lead the Twins 3-2 in the 7th. That might indicate a well pitched game, but the Twins pitchers have walked four and allowed six hits, while the Blue Jays staff has walked five and allowed four hits. They've spread the on bases out, but not an impressive game for either Miller nor Lohse.

On the other hand, it's good to see Jose Offerman playing well. Last year at this time, he was playing 2nd for the Bridgeport Bluefish. He's driven in both Minnesota runs today, and his OBA is 120 points over his BA, so he hasn't lost his eye for the strike zone.

Update: Vernon Wells gets a hit with the bases loaded to give the Blue Jays a 5-2 lead.

Darren Viola sent me a link to this article on how the Yankees are replacing Cracker Jack with Crunch 'n Munch. (By the way, shouldn't the middle sound be spelled with two apostrophes, like the Cask 'n' Flagon? (Oops, there seems to be some confusion here. I remember the old wooden sign having two. But the one Soxaholix shows has one. Yet a google search for Cask Flagon bar shows most spell it with two.))

Where was I? Yes, this upsets Michele almost as much as a Ted Rall cartoon. Personally, I think they're both good products. They're both way overpriced at the park anyway. And no one is going to stop you from singing the song, even if the park doesn't sell the product.

Correction: Fixed spelling of Soxaholix.

Two very good series continue today in the NL. The Dodgers will be in Philadelphia sending Hideo Nomo against Eric Milton. There are no two ways about it, Nomo has not pitched well this year. His strikeouts are way down, less than 1 every 2 innings. Nomo has never had the control to afford to have his strikeouts fall. Unless he adjusts and stops walking people, I'm afraid his utility as a starter will be short lived. The man who paved the way for the influx of Asian ballplayers may soon be out of a job.

The Marlins try to avenge their defeat at the hands of the Astros last night as Carl Pavano host Tim Redding. After three straight starts where he couldn't get out of the fourth, Tim Redding turned in consecutive six inning, one run outings. He's the weak link in an otherwise strong rotation.

And don't forget to tune in to Arizona at Atlanta to see how many Braves Brandon Web strikes out. :-)

Enjoy!

Bob McManaman takes a look at the defense that helped Johnson score a perfect game last night. It was tough to see the ball last night, and Steve Finley used the Mike Cameron method of going to where he thinks the ball will land.

With darkening clouds drifting over Turner Field at dusk, fly balls were virtually impossible to spot. Finley said he was able to guess correctly with communication from Gonzalez and Cintron.

"You can see it come off the bat, and then you try to pick a spot where you think it's going to land within about 10 or 15 feet," Finley said. "They aren't easy here, though. It's tough to pick up fly balls in this park."

It should be noted that Johnson striking out nearly half the batters meant that the defense didn't have as much to do. Nonetheless, they performed flawlessly as well.

I was just looking at the NL Standings, and noticed that one of the best teams, the Dodgers, has lost five in a row, and the worst team, the Expos, has won 4 in a row. It's a great race in the entire league this year, where even the lowly and homeless Expos are within striking distance of first place. The AL is much the same, although three teams have built big enough deficits that it will be difficult for them to overcome.

One thing Jim Storer and I were talking about last night as we sat at the Bluefish game was the appearent lack of a great strategic manager right now. About the closest we could come was Buck Showalter. Our opinion of Joe Torre is that he's a great leader of men, and the right man for the Yankees job, but he doesn't do a great job of pushing buttons in game. Last night was a great example. Two stolen base attempts end in out, one of which was followed by the pitcher loading the bases. He did not run for Posada in the 9th, and Posada was thrown out. Then, when Quantrill was in trouble in the 11th, where was Rivera? Mariano had a day off on Monday, and in the past Torre has used Rivera in non-save situations. Where was Mariano? What should have been a close win for NY was given away to the Angels.

Update: By the way, it was the first time a West Coast team won at home since the Padres beat the Reds last Thursday. The Mariners and A's both lost last night.

The Big Red C has moved to MT. Stop by and check out his latest, especially his live review of last night's game.

Posada at 2nd, two out, top of the 9th. Bernie Williams lines a single into right. It's not hit that hard, so Posada tries to score, but Vlad throws a perfect strike to Jose Molina at catcher to nab Posada at the plate. It's the third baserunning blunder of the game for the Yankees. What I want to know is, why didn't they pinch run for Posada? Is there no one on the bench faster than him?

Also, it looks like on the replay that the ball beat Posada, but not the tag. He sure looked safe in slow motion.

Update: The Angels make their own baserunning blunder. Guillen leads off the ninth with a single, and is pinch run for with Amezaga. Amezaga then gets himself picked off. This game will make a good lesson on how not to run the bases.

With only two hits against the Angels in a nothing-nothing game, the Yankees have had two baserunners caught stealing tonight. They are now 13 for 24 stealing this year, a terrible percentage. If they are going to keep running like that, they would be better off not running at all.

Wouldn't you know it, I go to Bridgeport to see Rickey Henderson play, he does nothing, but the ageless Randy Johnson throws a perfect game against Atlanta. Congratulations to the Big Unit; if anyone in the game deserves to have a perfecto in his resume, he does.

Johnson used only 117 pitches to strike out 13 of the 27 batters he faced. He threw 87 strikes, an impressive 74%. The year of the old pitcher continues in fine fashion.

Look like those back spasms were more serious than first imagined. Sammy Sosa went on the DL tonight. That's a big blow to the Cubs, and it's especially painful that on the same night the Cubs get 1-hit by Jason Schmidt (13 K, 1 BB in 9 innings). However, what is Alou thinking, letting Schmidt throw 144 pitches, when his staff is in tatters as it is? We'll keep our eye on Jason over his next few starts. This may be a great example of winning the battle but losing the war.

Bonds did play, drew two walks and scored the only run. If you put Bonds on enough, he'll score. He's in a batting slump, pitch to him.

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I ask Jim about watching baseball in South Korea.

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I ask Jim about the biggest surprises and disappointments of 2004.

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I ask Jim who are his favorite players.

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I interview long time baseball fan and minor league season ticket holder Jim Storer about baseball while sitting with him at Harbor Yard in Bridgeport. In this part of the interview, I ask what he likes about minor league baseball.

Lots of good games tonight, but I'll pick San Francisco at Chicago, the "back spasm" game. Anytime you have Bonds going against Sosa, there's the potential for lots of fire works. Both are expected to be back in the lineup tonight, and they'll be facing pretty good pitchers in Schmidt and Clement. Sosa's only hit 1 HR off Schmidt in 38 AB; Bonds has three in 17 AB against Clement (and, naturally, four walks). Clement has been keeping the ball in the park this year, allowing only two HR so far, both late in games where he had thrown over 90 pitches.

Enjoy!

Doug Pappas has a post on the flow of revenue sharing money. Not surprisningly, the Yankees are by far the biggest donors. And, with the exception of the Milwaukee Brewers, the teams receiving the money appear to be using it to develop their farm systems. As the A's and Twins are showing, the way for a low revenue team to stay competitive is to let free agents go and keep a steady stream of good talent coming out of your minor league system, while filling holes with "bargain" players.

It looks like Troy Glaus will miss very significant time this season:

The most promising season in Troy Glaus' seven-year career probably ended Monday with the Angels' announcement that the third baseman would undergo shoulder surgery, another blow to a team already ravaged by injuries.

Lewis Yocum, team physician, will operate on Glaus on Friday to repair a fraying of the labrum, which is cartilage around the bone, and rotator cuff in his right shoulder.

Glaus is an excellent hitter, and a hot finish to the 2002 season (and the post-season) helped get the Angels their World Championship. The Angels do have lots of depth. As long as Vlad is healthy, they are going to have offense. Figgins can get on base, but he lacks Glaus' power. It's not a death knell by any means for the team, but it does bring them closer to the rest of the division.

The Indians are at it again. Once again they've taken an early lead, this time against the Chicago White Sox. And they need it. With a 6.79 bullpen ERA, and 4 saves in 14 opportunities, they are more than capable of losing in the late innings. Lee has already thrown 85 pitches through 4 2/3 innings, so I don't expect him to last past the 6th.

The Hardball Times has their win shares pages up. So far, six players have nine win shares; I-Rod, Michael Young, Jose Guillen, Scott Rolen, Sean Casey and Mike Lowell. And they're all tied for 2nd. Barry Bonds, is all by himself in first with 11.

The other interesting thing win shares confirm is that Jeter is having a good season fielding. I believe HBT is doing the full win shares calculation, not just an estimate based on games at a position. Jeter ranks third among AL shortstops with 1.8 defensive win shares. It also shows Alex Rodriguez is the best defensive third baseman in the AL. So at the moment, I'm going to say I was wrong. I thought leaving Jeter at short was the wrong thing to do, but right now it appears that the Yankees are actually stronger with this arrangement.

Ted Lilly does it again. Lew Ford takes him deep for two runs and a 3-1 Twins lead. Ford keeps playing well enough that it will be very difficult to keep him out of the starting lineup once everyone is healthy again.

Randy Wolf is pitching a great game in Colorado. He's struck out five through five innings, and has only allowed three hits, all singles. After getting three fly outs in the first inning, he hasn't allowed a flyout to the outfield since. Everything is either popped up or on the ground.

Update: That's Colorado for you. Wolf pitches a great game, hands a lead over the best bullpen in the NL, and they blow the game. Just shows how important Billy Wagner can be.

Henry Copeland of Blogads is conducting a blog survey. If you copy and paste Baseball Musings for your answer to question 22, I'll get some feedback on this blog. Also, it seems 80% of the respondents so far have been men. I know I have quite a few female readers, so make sure you're counted!

When I was in high school, my friend George Shawah and I used to golf a lot during the summers. One day, we ran into my 8th grade algebra teacher, Mr. DeLorme. As we headed to the first tee he said, "Hit them hard, and not too often!"

Chase Utley seems to have taken this golf wish to heart. Chase has two hits today, giving him six for the season. One of them is a bases clearing triple, which gives him three extra-base hits on the year. While he has a low batting average of .240, he has a pretty good slugging percentage of .480. If you're only going to get a hit every once in a while, it might as well be a big one.

Three games today, and all three have pennant race implications. The Phillies play an afternoon game at Colorado, with Randy Wolf facing Shawn Estes. The Rockies should really know better than to start Estes in a day game. Amazingly, this will be his 8th start under the sun! In his only start at night, he was hammered, giving up eight earned runs in just 4 innings. Randy Wolf has had a couple of good starts and bad luck. You'd expect with a 3.20 ERA for him to have a better record than 2-3.

Lots of action in the AL Central as the Twins, White Sox and Indians are all in action. Cliff Lee takes his undefeated record against the Chicago White Sox, as the Sox come off losing two out of three to the Twins. Lee's biggest asset so far has been keeping the ball in the ballpark; he's only allowed 1 HR in 40 2/3 innings. That makes the 22 walks a bit less damaging. This is a big series for the Tribe. Three games back of the White Sox, they can show themselves to be contenders with by winning this series.

Finally, the Twins face the Blue Jays in Tornoto as Brad Radke takes on lefty Ted Lilly. Opponents have hit Radke this year, with their BA standing over .300. But with the few walks he issues, his OBA is only in the .320's. Lilly has had his typical problem of giving up HR (7) and giving them up with men on base (4).

Enjoy!

Update: Chris points out in the comments below that Estes has been pushed back to Wednesday, and Cook will pitch today.

The raindrops ask, "How can you not love Rickey Henderson?" Well, I do love him, and I'll be going to opening day in Bridgeport with my good friend Jim Storer to see Rickey play for Newark against the Bluefish. If you're in southern CT, here's your chance to see Rickey up close and personal.

Mike at Mike's Baseball Rants documents a play by Tomas Perez and clarifies the infield fly rule.

This happened to my mother once.

It wasn't a good weekend for the NL West. The Rockies managed to beat the Phillies today for the only win in the division this weekend. The Cubs swept the Padres, the Reds swept the Dodgers, the Pirates took three from the Giants and, most embarassingly, the lowly Montreal Expos swept the Arizona Diamondbacks. The DBacks are now just 1 1/2 games in front of the Expos for worst record in the NL.

The starters each allowed six, but the bullpens of the Rockies and Phillies have been flawless so far. Madson has gone two scoreless in relief of Millwood, while Reed, Fassero and Harikkala have done the same for Colorado (does Harikkala hold the record for consecutive K's in a name?). It's 6-6 in the bottom of the 8th. The Phillies continue to have the best bullpen ERA in the NL by over .5 runs over the Dodgers.

The White Sox decided not to go away quietly, slamming the Twins for an 11-0 victory, knocking Carlos Silva out of the undefeated column with an exit after three innings. It's a nice tight race in the Central; with Cleveland and Detroit also winning, only five games separate the top four teams.

Milliliter Sabathia roared into the AL lead in ERA today with seven shutout innings against the Devil Rays. Matt Miller pitcher even better in relief, striking out 5 in two innings to completely shut down Tampa Bay. It's the kind of pitching the Indians need to see more of to be able to compete this year.

Travis Hafner added four RBI to bring his total on the season to 24. That gives the Indians three players with at least that many, including Matt Lawton the Victor Martinez.

The 22-year-old Omar Infante is starting to look like a decent major league player. He got the start today, and was two for three with a HR to raise his averages to .293 BA, .400 OBA and a .585 slugging percentage. He's also drawn 8 walks in 41 AB. It's a small sample, but given his age, it's the type of improvement you want to see. He's someone to keep your eye on.

Remember what a poor start the Phillies had? They were 1-6 to start the season, and looked like they might be out of the race before it even started. But they've won seven of their last eight, and with the Marlins playing .500 ball over their last ten games, the Phillies start the day percentage points ahead of the Fish for Phirst place. Based on their expected winning percentage, they should have a three game lead on the division. Looks like the bad luck at the beginning of the season is starting to even out for them.

Before I had a chance to look at the boxscore, I'm getting comments about Ben Sheets' great performance today. That's what I love about my readers, they really keep me on my toes!

Sheets did indeed pitch the game of his life. A complete game three hitter, one walk, and 18 strikeouts! Nick Green, the replacement for Giles, was the only starter who didn't K against Ben. What's really great about the performance is that Sheets did it very efficiently. He threw 116 pitches; that's 13 per inning. Only 25 pitches were called balls; that's less than 1 per batter. At least that says to me there likely weren't many foul balls in that game, at least not with two strikes.

The game score was 94, which according to this chart on ESPN.com would be the highest game score of the season. Sheets has really come into his own this year. Entering today, his K per 9 was 2.0 over his career average; that's leading to his allowing fewer hits than innings pitched for the first time in his career. And for the first time in years, the Brewers have a true ace on their staff.

There's a good article on SFGate.com about whether walking Bonds all the time is a good strategy. They quote Bill James, who did computer simulations of surrounding Babe Ruth with marginal players and walking him all the time:

"I have little doubt the excessive intentional walks to Bonds are helping the Giants," James said from his home in Kansas. "The walks set up so many innings."

James conducted a study, aiming to determine whether it makes sense to intentionally walk a batter such as Bonds or Babe Ruth every time he steps in the box. Into his computer, James programmed Ruth's best season (1921) and surrounded him with marginal players -- worse than Bonds' current supporting cast, according to James.

James simulated thousands of games. In one set of games, the computer walked Ruth every time. In the other set, Ruth was walked in normal situations.

"The conclusion of the study was that, as great a hitter as Ruth was, and as bad as his teammates were, it was still far, far more destructive to just walk him than it was to pitch to him," James said. "It wasn't even close. He was nowhere to the point it made sense to just walk him every time."

James chose San Francisco native Gino Cimoli, an outfielder in the late '50s and '60s, to bat after Ruth. In one full season of simulated games in which Ruth was walked every time, Cimoli batted .267 (right about his career average) with eight homers -- but a whopping 151 RBIs. His career high was 72.

Barry's intrinsic OBA is more like .520 (that's OBA once you take out the intentional walks). So even if you pitch to the guy, he still makes an out about half the time. And my guess is that if you really pitched to him, instead of nibbling around the corners, his OBA would be a lot closer to .400.

My guess is that managers don't want to answer the questions about not walking Bonds. Reporters will criticize you if you pitch to Bonds and he beats you, but it's okay not to pitch to Bonds and have someone else beat you. It's nice to see SF Gate realized this may not be the best strategy.

Of course, the best way for Bonds not to beat you is to have him out of the lineup. He's missing the entire Pittsburgh series, but is expected back Tuesday. We'll see.

The Mets started Ginter instead of Leiter, but the result was still an excellent matchup. In his first start, Ginter went into the 6th, allowing two runs, one earned. But that's nowhere near enough to beat Clemens right now. The Rocket struck out 10 in seven innings, allowing only 2 hits and 1 walk. His ERA now stands at 1.72. One more good inning out of the bullpen and he'll have eight wins in eight starts.

Update: Dotel blew the save. Once again, that's the problem with being a seven inning pitcher. The fate of your decision is left to others. Houston and the Mets are tied at 2 in the 10th.

Update: The Mets win on a Jason Phillips HR in the 13th.

Marcus Giles broke his collarbone last night and will be out 6-8 weeks. Not only is this bad for the Braves, but it dimishes baseball as well. Marcus is one of those players you just love to watch. He's always in the game, always giving his all, and producing both offensively and defensively. His broken bone came at the expense of one of those all-out efforts. Here's hoping for a speedy recovery.

One nice thing about the unbalanced schedule this year is we get to see Pedro Martinez pitch against Roy Halladay multiple times. Today's Red Sox/Blue Jays matchup will be the third meeting between these two Cy Young award winners this year. The previous two meeting have been close matchups won by Pedro.

The year of the old pitcher continues in Houston today as Al Leiter of the Mets faces Roger Clemens. Both have great ERAs; Leiter at 2.52 seems to deserve better than his 1-2 record, and one would imagine that he should closer to the 7-0 mark Clemens has with his 1.99 ERA. But Leiter's run support is 1.83 per nine innings pitched. Even Clemens would have a .500 record at that level. Meanwhile, Roger is getting 6.75 runs per nine, more than enough for most ML pitchers, but for Roger, it means a win every time out.

The Tiwns go for a sweep of the White Sox today as they send Carlos Silva to the mound against Mark Buehrle. Silva is one of four AL ERA title qualifiers still undefeated, and he has the most wins of any of them at 5. (The Twins have two of the four, as Johan Santana is also unbeaten.) Silva does not strikeout that many, but he's been very stingy with walks and HR, issuing eight base on balls on and allowing only two home runs. Buehrle had a rough April, but in three starts in May has posted a 2.33 ERA. A win by the Twins would give them a four game in the AL Central, which would be the biggest lead of any division leader.

Finally, the ESPN High Definition game may prove to be the slugfest of the day. The Angels and Orioles have combined for 30 runs over the last two days, and neither team is sending their best pitcher to the mound tonight. Nice to see that the Orioles have averaged almost 40,000 per game for the first two games of this series. It's a combination of the Orioles improvement and the Angels turning into a team you can't wait to see play.

Enjoy!

The Boston Dirt Dogs appear to have scooped the Boston Sports media on Nomar Garciaparra's injury. They are reporting that Nomar tore his Achilles sheath, a much more serious injury than earlier reported. The Boston press has criticized Dirt Dogs for this, in effect saying they are unreliable. The Dirt Dogs points out all the times they were right, even managing to claim they were right on A-Rod.

Edward Cossette of Bambino's Curse, who I admire greatly, would like this "bloggers vs. big media" story to get more play. So on his behalf, I'm writing up the story.

But also because I believe they are correct here. Boston Dirt Dogs did the leg work, found people close to Nomar and got the story. It's something any good reporter should do, but the Boston media spends so much ink criticizing everything they see they can't get out of the office to find out what's really going on.

Unfortunately, if you are reading this a few days from now, you'll have a difficult time finding the story because Dirt Dogs does not provide permalinks with their posts. Like Sons of Sam Horn, they do not make it easy for outsiders to give them publicity. The internet, and the blogosphere especially, is a conversation. If you really want to be part of that conversation, if you really want the support of everyone who is trying to get his or her voice heard, then make it easy for people to join in. Permalinks, track backs and comments all are part of that. It's time you joined the club.

As for the injury itself, it's too bad for Nomar. This is a very good team the Red Sox have assembled, and it would be even better with Garciaparra playing every day. And with his contract up, the huge payday may not be around the corner for someone who has missed significant time in two of his last four seasons and is past his prime. All-in-all, not completing the A-Rod deal looks very bad for the Red Sox right now.

A double complete game in Kansas City tonight. Mark Mulder and Darrell May each pitched excellently, the main difference being that Mulder allowed a solo HR, and May's one homer went for two runs. Each pitched nine innings. Mulder threw 116 pitches, May 119, and both had 41 called balls. It's one of those games where you're sorry there has to be a loser. Oakland keeps pace with the rest of the west and remains five games out.

You would think it would be difficult to replace the offense of a catcher like Javy Lopez. But Johnny Estrada has proven to be up to the task. He's 3 for 3 with a HR tonight raising his averages to .343 BA, .400 OBA and .533 slugging. Once more the Braves show they know how to put together a ball club.

The Twins came into Chicago with a one game lead to face the White Sox yesterday. Two well pitched games later, Minnesota has extended it's lead to three games. Seth Greisinger picked up his first win for the Twins. He usually has high strikeout and walk totals, but today he kept both low and limited the White Sox to four hits and 1 run over seven innings. Loaiza pitched more than well enough to win, allowing three runs over eight innings, but today it was just not good enough.

Torii Hunter had four hits, but just missed the cycle by a triple. Twins go for the sweep and a four game lead tomorrow.

Barry Bonds missed another game today after missing yesterday's with back spasms. He's having an interesting May; he's not hitting a lick, but he's being walked enough that his OBA is .459. I'm interested to see what happens if he keeps not hitting. Will umpires start calling close pitches strikes? I remember at the end of Jack Clark's career, something similar happened. Clark couldn't hit anymore, and he was using his selectivity to stay in the game. But when it became clear he wasn't going to swing at anything, the umpires started calling borderline pitches strikes. Since Clark couldn't hit those pitches anymore, his OBA went down, and he was out of the game quickly. Will Bonds career end the same way?

Victor Zambrano and Jake Westbrook continued their poor May performances today. Zambrano only lasted 1 1/3 innings, allowing six runs on seven walks. That's 35 walks in 50 2/3 innings for Victor. Westbrook has pitched four innings, using 64 pitches. He's already allowed four runs, but should be able to secure a win with one more good inning.

Hideki Matsui has one of five Yankees HR today, as they are tied 7-7 in the 8th against the Mariners. I'm seeing more of the Matsui I expected when he came over from Japan last year. He's hitting .288, through seven today, one point higher than last year, but his OBA is now .396, much better than the .353 of last year, and much more like the selectivity he showed in Japan. I didn't expect him to hit for power here the way he used to, but I did expect him to draw walks. This year, he' doing that, and is even a more valuable player.

Gerald Laird is having a very nice season for Texas. He has a hit and a run scored today, and now has a .371 OBA. He's been batting at the bottom of the order, and is likely a big reason that leadoff men Young and Blalock are in the top 10 in the AL in RBI.

I heard last night that Bronson Arroyo was going to start today despite being sick. The Red Sox should have him pitch sick all the time. He's gone seven innings giving up 3 hits, no walks and no runs. And he's only thrown 86 pitches. Nice start, no matter how he's feeling.

There are lots of ugly ERAs among the starters scheduled to go today. Sixteen of thirty starters today have ERA's over 5.00, many way over 5.00. There are only two games where both starters are under that line.

Victor Zambrano faces Jake Westbrook as Tampa Bay continues its series in Cleveland. Last night was a perfect example of what is right and wrong with the Indians; a great offense that got the team a 6-1 lead, but a lousy pitching staff that blew that lead. The Indians eventually won 8-7 in 10, but it should have been an easy victory. Zambrano, after a very good April, has allowed 10 ER in 12 IP in May, including seven walks and two home runs. Westbrook is also having a rough May, opponents hit .141 against him in April, .314 so far this month.

The latest game tonight is also the only other won that even resembles a good pitching matchup. Todd Van Poppel makes his 2nd start of the year, this time against the LA Dodgers and Odalis Perez. Perez has been doing a lot right this year, walking only 13 in 44 2/3 innings and allowing just four HR. You can run on him, however; base stealers are 6-0 against him. Look for the Reds to take advantage of this; they don't run a lot (20 attempts), but they run well (80% success).

The slugfest of the day I'll give to Pittsburgh at San Francisco where Josh Fogg (8.68 ERA) faces Brett Tomko (6.23 ERA). The Pirate bullpen is very good, so I expect to see them used early and often today. The Giants bullpen isn't, so if the Bay Ballplayers don't get a lot of runs early, look for an easy Pittsburgh win.

Enjoy!

Correction: I wrote the Padres but I meant the Dodgers.

In one of the stranger things I've seen, the Milwaukee Brewers are wearing throwback uniforms. Of the Milwaukee Braves. Nothing wrong with that, excpet they are playing the Atlanta Braves. Both teams have Braves emblazoned across their chests, making it really diffcult to tell which team is which. One thing for sure, the Braves will win tonight!

Mike Mussina is having another bad game. He's given up 11 hits and five runs through four innings. It was interesting watching him in the fourth. The Mariners were getting seeing eye base hits, soft line drives falling in, nothing hit really hard. Until the last batter, when Spiezio smoked one that Tony Clark caught at first and doubled up Randy Winn. Mussina's ERA is now at 5.40.

When the Yankees broadcast their TV games in Spanish, do they call the network Si?

With a name like Chone Figgins, you'd better be good. The young Angel is off to a very good start this year, with a high batting average and OBA. But he hadn't homered in the majors until tonight, when he hit a grand slam against the Orioles. He's filling in well for the injured Angels, but if he keeps playing like this, Scioscia is going to have to find a permanent place for him. With Eckstein continuing to decline, and Figgins being able to play anywhere, it would be logical to see him move to short.

The Indians are off to an early 4-1 lead, thanks in part to a three-run HR by Jody Gerut. There's nothing wrong with the Indians offense. With 179 runs scored, they are near the top of the league in runs scored. But with 200 allowed and a 5.35 ERA, they are near the bottom of the league in that category. But like the Texas Rangers of the last couple of years, you don't need to improve the pitching staff that much to get into contention. The Indians are six games out coming into tonight. Maybe we'll some young arms coming through the system as the year progresses; maybe they'll pick up the pitching in the off season. Either way, half the team is in place, and we'll see how the other half improves.

With two outs in the bottom of the first, Gil Meche has walked four straight batters to give the Yankees a 3-1 lead. The Yankees had gotten two on when the base on balls parade started.

Update: Villone is now on in relief. Meche threw 38 pitches, 21 for balls. Meche was averaging a walk every other inning coming into the game. This has been a problem with him his entire career.

Correction: It was a 3-1 lead, not 3-0.

The Tigers made a number of off-season moves, but three have paid off significantly 1 1/2 months into the season. Coming into tonight, Carlos Guillen, Ivan Rodriguez and Rondell White each had OBA's over .390. Last year, Young led the team with a .372 OBA, and only one other player was above .330. The team is now 7th in OBA and 3rd in runs scored. Good moves by Dave Dombrowski.

A battle of undefeateds tonight in Colorado. Eric Milton (3-0) leads the Phillies into Denver to face Joe "The Patriarch" Kennedy (4-0). Kennedy has a 2.40 ERA overall, and a 2.22 ERA at Coors. Kennedy has had 44 balls in play on the ground, 12 linedrives and 19 fly balls in Denver. Of those 44 ground balls, the infield has turned 32 of them into outs. Kennedy, more and more, is looking like the ultimate Coors pitcher.

Milton, with a high ERA for an undefeated record, is getting 6.55 runs per 9 innings pitched from the Phillies offense. When your offense is that good you don't have to be great to win. Should be an interesting game tonight.

Enjoy!

It was nice to see Orlando Hudson move into the leadoff spot last night for the Blue Jays, and even nicer to see his reaction to it:

"My heart was pounding when I was told I was going to bat leadoff against Schilling, a Hall of Famer," Hudson said. "He's an outstanding pitcher. The baseball gods were on my side."

They sure were as he scored five runs last night. It also brings up an interesting, and I think, important question. When do you start believing that a player has reached a new level of performance? Orlando Hudson had a career minor league OBA of approximately .350. Not outstanding but perfectly good; in my opinion, a bit low for a leadoff man. His first two seasons in the big leagues he had a combined .326 OBA, which is poor. But after 116 AB this year, he's sitting at .393. Now, anything can happen in 100 AB, so my gut feeling is that Orlando is on a big hot streak. The one thing that stands out against that, however, is that his walks are up. In his major and minor league career, he walks about once every 10 AB. This year, he's drawing a walk once every 8 AB. If he keeps that up, he'll fit nicely into the leadoff role.

The Jays are playing the hot hand right now, with the idea that if Hudson's improvement is real, they've found a new leadoff hitter.

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I'll be traveling today, but I'll be listening to the J.L. matchup in New York as Lackey faces Lieber. Lieber won't be throwing to Jorge Posada, who had his nose broken on a relay throw in the face last night. Posada is probably the one Yankee who is really difficult to lose. He's a good catcher and a great hitter, and that's a really rare combination. Luckily, the Yankees are deep enough that they should be able to sustain the offense. Listen for updates from the road!

It took Toronto and Kansas City 3:43 to play a 4-3 game today. Each of the starters was out after five innings, each having thrown at least 90 pitches. There were 20 hits and 14 walks, but only seven runs (five double plays helped). What did these pitchers do, take 60 seconds to get the sign from the catcher? Or did the batters just foul off so many pitches that they forced the pitchers to go deep in counts? Get the ball, throw the ball.

Carlos Beltran hit his 10th HR of the year in the first inning of the KC-Toronto game. He now has 21 extra-base hits in 32 games; he had 50 all last year in 141 games. That's a big jump, as you can see in his slugging percentage, which has gone from the low .500s to the mid .600s. I wonder why we aren't hearing any stories about Beltran using steroids?

Scott Broduer of Mass Live dot com links to a story that has baseball being invented in Pittsfield, MA in the 1700's. Pittsfield is about an hour west of my home. Needless to say, Pittsfield is making a big deal about this, storing the document mentioning baseball safely away in a vault.

Much as I would like to root for the home state team, Pittsfield claim is going to be about as dubious as that of Cooperstown. Baseball, like so many things on earth, evolved. Once you have opposable thumbs, the usefulness of grasping and swinging sticks becomes pretty appearent. And you swing to hit things. Throwing and catching also have their uses in moving things distances with minimal effort, so those skills would also develop fast. And if you hit something with a stick, you can transport it even farther, as long as you have a sure-handed centerfielder. :-)

So as human society evolved, games which involved swinging sticks and catching objects evolved to refine these important skills. If you visit Cooperstown, there is evidence the Egyptians were playing ball and stick games. They didn't call it baseball, frankly, because the ancient Egyptians didn't speak English! What we do know is that Cartwright was the first person to formalize the game as we know it today, but he based it on a game that was already being played, not something he invented out of thin air.

Pittsfield should be pround that they have the first recorded mention of baseball in the country. But let's not get carried away with anyone claiming invention of the sport.

Only Edward Cossette could so eloquently link feminine beauty to Dave McCarty and Pokey Reese:

And one need not restrict this notion of embracing unique qualities just to feminine beauty; take it to the baseball park with you as well. I mean as much as it's impressive to see the Greek god, sculpted body of a Barry Bonds, I actually am more fond of the way Pokey Reese's uniform hangs on him like the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz because he's so skinny.

I found in college that many men would look at a single flaw in a woman and judge her appearance on that. I've always felt you should find the most attractive feature of a woman and grok why that makes her attractive. I'm glad to see others have a similar philosophy.

I love lefty pitchers, and tonight it's old lefties night in Arizona. And you couldn't ask for a better contrast in styles as Tom Glavine faces Randy Johnson. Tom is from the Tommy John school of left-handed pitching. These hurlers are very effective against right-handed batters because the natural movement of their out pitch is away from righties. They also don't strike out a lot of batters, so they need a good defense behind them. Randy Johnson, of course, is from Steve Carlton University, which prefers the hard, intimidating nasty stuff. All they do is strike out batters. I don't know how much longer these two will be around, but if you missed the originals, be sure to catch the copies tonight.

Steve Bonner writes to me that the Yankees defense has improved, and he gives a humorous explanation why. However, he doesn't list DER, so gave a look to the graphs at The Hardball Times (scroll down to the pitching and fielding graph). It shows the Yankees with an above average DER! I, for one, am shocked. Let's start with my favorite whipping boy, Derek Jeter. Jeter is above average in range factor this year, for the first time in his career. Now, there are a lot of problems with range factor; it's highly influenced by a team's pitching staff. And while Kevin Brown may be getting more ground balls to the infield, the lack of lefties in the Yankees rotation means they are seeing fewer right-handed batters. (A quick check confirms this. Last year 56.8% of opposition AB were by right handers, this year, 55%.) So Jeter is doing something to make more plays. Maybe A-Rod is saying, "I would have had that," everytime a ball goes under Jeter's glove. Or maybe Jeter took all the Rodriguez should play short arguments to heart and actually did something about his defense. Either way, it's working.

I suspect Bernie Williams move mostly out of centerfield has a made a big difference too. Kenny Lofton is still an above average CF, while Bernie just can't chase down fly balls anymore.

The defense looks stronger at two positions that have been weak over the last few years. That's a very good sign for Yankees fans.

Jeff Weaver outpitched Kerry Wood tonight. I didn't think I'd ever write that. :-) Wood only lasted 2 innings, with tightness in his right tricep. Maybe he was just embarassed to be losing to Jeff Weaver.

Minnesota and Milwaukee are each involved in extra inning games tonight, the 7th for each team. That leads the majors. They are certainly giving their fans a lot of baseball for money.

Update: The Angels, on the other hand, have yet to play an extra-inning game. Good teams tend to win big.

Update: Yankees tied the Angels at 7 after 9. They're in the tenth now.

I don't know how much more effective Roger Clemens can be. In his 7th start, he went seven innings, threw 71 of 106 pitches for strikes, and struck out 11. He allowed 1 run on a solo homer. His ERA now stands at 1.99, and if the 6-1 Houston lead holds up, he'll be 7-0. An amazing start to a season at any age.

Rick Bauer was much more efficient than Sidney Ponson tonight. It only took him 1/3 of an inning to allow 7 runs, while Sidney gave up his 7 runs over six innings. The White Sox are not looking back as they lead 15-0.

The Red Sox couldn't get much off Milliliter tonight, but they did get to Jose Jimenez. Three hits and three earned runs. Sabathia went seven innings, but threw 116 pitches. Work the starters and get to the bullpen. Pedro was also gone after 115 pitches and seven innings, but in his case, the bullpen came through.

It's still early, but so far the most runs scored in any game is 9 as Texas leads Tampa Bay 5-4 in the bottom of the 8th. Of all the games underway right now, only the White Sox, with their 5-0 lead, have more than a 2 run lead.

The Sabathia-Martinez matchup in Boston is turning out to be a great one. Pedro has 10 K through six innings, letting the Indians get to him in the top of the first for two runs. Solo shots by Kapler and Ortiz tied the game for the Red Sox. The duel continues, 2-2 in the bottom of the 6th.

In the late 90's, a couple of the best Red Sox games I attended were against the Indians. The matchup each time was Bartolo Colon vs. Pedro Martinez. Tonight, the Indian's new ace, C.C. Sabathia will face the master of the changeup. Milliliter has been equally effective against righties and lefties this season; although righties have a higher BA against him, both side have a .265 OBA (excellent), and both righties have a slightly lower slugging percentage against (.330 vs. .367). It will be interesting to see how the Boston lefties handle him.

The stat that stands out for Pedro is his HR allowed, six. He allowed seven all last year. Luckily for Martinez, five have come with no one on base.

The red hot and red hatted Angels journey to Gotham to take on the New York Yankees. The Angels have won nine in a row to take a 2 1/2 game lead over the Texas Rangers in the AL West. The Yankees have won 10 of 12 since being swept by the Red Sox and now stand 1/2 game out of first place in the AL East. Kelvim Escobar will face the undefeated Kevin Brown. Escobar is pitching better than his ERA indicates; as luck would have it, he's been pounded with men in scoring position (10 for 21, 2 HR). Brown is showing his usual great control, having issued only 10 walks in 7 starts.

And in tonight's battle of first place teams, the Florida Marlins visit Houston to take on the Astros. If you like power pitching you're in for a treat as Brad Penny faces the ageless Roger Clemens. Penny trails Clemens in ERA by .07 runs. They won't need the air condition in Houston tonight with all the breezes from the bats. :-)

Enjoy!

It was a year ago (not by day, but by point in the season) that I started putting up daily attendance reports, as MLB stopped publishing the data. My guess is they are making it available this year:

Attendance, through same period	2004	2003	2002
Games	458	444	438
Attendance	28960	25198	26416

Even Bud Selig could be happy about that. So I guess all the folks who have been complaining about the latest scandal destroying baseball are wrong again. You can't destroy this game, it's too good.

So what's bringing the fans to the park? First I think it was the great set of playoffs at the end of last season. That captured back a lot of people. Secondly, it was the movement of free agents. The Tigers got Pudge, lets go buy tickets! The Orioles have Javy, lets go buy tickets! Then there was the A-Rod trade and all the excitement that created all winter. Let's go buy tickets and boo A-Rod! People who complain that free agency has caused teams to fall apart must also recognize that stars moving from city to city also has a positive attendance effect on the acquiring team. And finally, the weather has been real nice in the northeast compared to last year.

It's good to see people coming back to the ballparks. With luck, MLB can build on this to make the game even more popular.

Soccer Dad takes a look at the Orioles so far, especially their strategy of using the best pitcher available in the bullpen, rather than attempting to get the best lefty-righty matchup. I like that strategy. Everytime you bring in a new pitcher you're rolling the dice. I the person on the mound is getting people out, let him continue to be successful. Yes, there are times where the matchup is important; some players just don't hit lefties or righties well. But having someone on the mound who can actually pitch seems more important to me than having someone who throws from the same side as the batter.

Long time correspondent to this blog Andrew Godfrey has taken up the keyboard himself and gives us Baseball, Etcetera. Stop by and say hi.

Looks like it's a very high-scoring affair in Phoenix tonight. The DBacks lead the Mets 5-4 in the bottom of the third. Baldwin did not have a successful first start and is out of the game. Casey Daigle hasn't done much better, having allowed 7 hits and three earned runs through 3 innings. At some point, the Diamondbacks have to decide if Daigle is a major league pitcher. So far, he hasn't looked like one.

Pat Hentgen is having a very good night so far. He's only thrown 73 pitches through six innings and is shutting out the Royals allowing only two singles and a walk. So far, he's brought his ERA down to 5.15.

William Kelly at the Rooftop Report passes on the information that Manny Ramirez is not in the lineup tonight because he's in Miami becoming a citizen. A great reason to miss a game. Congratulations, Manny!

Lots of 2's in the Indians-Red Sox game tonight. Cleveland leads 6-4 in the 4th, and all the runs have been scored in 2 run batches. Six of the 14 hits in the game are doubles (Bellhorn had a triple just to be different). Both D'Amico and Kim were chased early. It's the battle of the bullpens now.

Update: Daubach hit a solo HR in the fifth to ruin the 2 symetry. It's now 6-5 Indians in the top of the sixth.

Wells and Phelps continue their RBI drives, each getting one in the first inning, but Hudson continues to be the leading hitter on the team with a three run homer to give the Jays a 6-0 lead in the top of the first.

Joe Sheehan at Baseball Prospectus reports that he's watching the Brewers more and more (link requires subscription). A good team that wins some games will do that for you. I also like the fact that his MLB Extra Innings viewing habits are similar to mine:

This is my fourth year of having the Extra Innings satellite package. Over the years, I've developed something of a system that determines what my "main" games are in any given time slot. Usually, I'm watching the most interesting pitching or team matchup, or perhaps someone's debut or pursuit of a record. My default if there are no games of note is the Yankee game, and if they aren't playing at a particular time, I could end up focusing on almost any matchup.

Mind you, I do all of this with remote in hand and a scoreboard Web page reloading on my screen so that I can jump to rallies or key moments. It's sometimes hard to believe that a little over a decade ago I was a slave to "Baseball Tonight" and hoping that the New York Daily News had the West Coast box scores. This is really a golden age of sports fandom.

As soon as we can easily copy things from Tivo to disk drive, bloggers can create their own highlight reels! It just keeps getting better.

There are only three matchups tonight, so pretty much the schedule is the game of the day. The best contest is Cleveland at Boston. Jeff D'Amico will take the mound for the Indians. If his opponents were a single batter, that batter would be having a good season. They are hitting .311 with six HR and 21 RBI in 119 AB. He strikes me as the kind of pitcher on whom the Red Sox should feast.

James Baldwin makes his first start since 2002 and his debut for the Mets tonight against the Arizona Diamondbacks and Casey Daigle. Shea Hillenbrand has already drawn 8 walks in 24 games this year. He drew 24 in 134 games last year. He's on a tear! Good eye, Shea!

Finally, the steaking Blue Jays visit the Kansas City Royals. A big sign that the Blue Jays offense hasn't hit it's stride is that Orlando Hudson is the team leader in OBA + Slugging. And while Delgado still hasn't started to hit, Wells and Phelps each have two HR and six RBI over their last six games.

Enjoy!

Alan Schwarz has a nice column on pitch counts over at ESPN.com.

The Toronto Blue Jays completed a sweep of the Chicago White Sox today, winning their fifth straight 5-2. They've outscored their opponents 29-15 in that stretch. They're still down 6.5 games to the Red Sox, but they're on the right track. They've temporarily knocked the White Sox out of first, pending the outcome of the Twins game.

On my last trip to Bethlehem, I wrote that I had found the best ice cream I had ever tasted at the Heavenly Hedgehog. One of the Bethlehem residents commented that the best ice cream was at another parlor on Linden St., Nuts About Ice Cream. As one who is always in search of great ice cream, I was excited to return to Bethlehem and try out this competitor.

I got there mid-afternoon and had Joshi, the owner pretty much to myself. I told him of my experience with Hedgehog and the reader recomendation. He told me how he started the company; how he makes everything by hand using the best ingredients. He's very proud of his ethnic flavors; you can tour the world in his freezer. I settled on a scoop of Raspberry Chocolate Truffle and a scoop of Fig. The Fig ice cream was very subtle; it had the fruitiness of the figs without the overwhelming sweetness. The Truffle was stupendous. Smooth chocolate ice cream with little explosions of raspberry has you bite into the truffles. Extremely well done.

Joshi then took me on a taste tour of his freezer. Saffron Pistachio was out of this world. His Sweet Cream takes like cannoli filling (I'm not a big plain ice cream person, but that's something I'm going to take home). He supplies most of the Thai resturants down and into Philadelphia with his Ginger Ice Cream. He pretty much has a flavor that represents any part of the world you love.

While I was busy enjoying my dessert, a woman walked in to pick up shakes for her and her husband. She told me how she has to try to take a different route home from work so she's not tempted to stop at Nuts About Ice Cream. That's a huge endorsement.

So which do I like better? I'm not saying yet. There are many more samples to try. I do know that when I leave town, I'm going to be packing multiple quarts from both merchants into my cooler. Who would have guessed that the ice cream center of the universe was in Bethlemhem, PA?

The Brewers finish up their series at Shea against the Mets today. What's interesting here is that the Mets have yet to beat an NL Central team. They are 0-8 against the heartland teams; if the Mets had just split those games, they would be four games over .500 instead of four games under, and tied with the Marlins for first place.

Victor Santos makes his 2nd start of the year for the Brewers. Victor has the strikeouts down; 10 in 9 innings so far this year, 102 in 137 innings for his career. But he doesn't have the control to go with it, have walked 92 in the same 137 innings. He'll face Steve Trachsel, who appears to have a problem with the bottom of the order. (Warning! Conjecture from small sizes! Take with a large grain of salt!) The 1-6 hitters in the lineup are 20 for 97 vs. Trachsel this year, a .206 BA. The 7-9 hitters are 14/42, .333. I have no doubt this trend won't hold up. But if it does I can see two possible reasons:

1. He getting tired as the bottom of the order comes up.


2. He lets up after working hard to get the tougher batters at the top of the order.

Something to keep your eye on today.

Enjoy!

There must have been something about these two facing each other that brought out the worst in both. Maybe each thought, "he's no good, he'll be easy to beat." Maroth gave up 9 runs (8 earned) in four innings, Dickey gave up six in 3 2/3. Maroth walked six while not striking out a batter; Dickey only allowed 1 walk, but nine hits. It's now 15-15 in the tenth. There were 18 total runs scored in the fifth inning. The Tigers scored 8 in the top of the fifth, then blew a 14-4 lead in the bottom on the inning.

It's nice to see Craig Biggio returning to form as a superb leadoff man. After 10 straight years with an OBA of .370 or higher, Biggio dropped to .330 and .350 the last two seasons. With a 3 for 4 tonight, Craig is at .411 and has scored 24 runs in 28 games.

The Bond market has been tumbling lately, and so have the Barry Bonds HR futures. After going on a torrid tear after passing Mays, Bonds has 1 HR in his last 14 games, in which he's only batting .240 but with a .661 OBA. The rest of the Giants are so bad, there's no reason to pitch to Bonds. And today's game is showing Bonds frustration:

The Reds again pitched to Barry Bonds very carefully. He flied
out three times and drew his 49th walk, the most in the majors.
Since missing three games with a sinus infection, Bonds is 0-for-8 with five walks in three games.

I think Barry is starting to swing at anything close. It's interesting, that the Giants own ineptitude may keep Barry from hitting a ton of home runs this year. Since no one else is doing any damage, walking Bonds is turning out to be a great strategy. And it very well may prevent Bonds from breaking Aaron's record.

How do you know you have a bad pitching staff? Two different pitchers give up HR to Pokey Reese in the same game. That's what Gobble and Grimsley did for Kansas City today. Gobble was okay through five, giving up four hits to the Red Sox, including a solo HR to Pokey Reese. But the balls were finding the gaps in the 6th as three straight hits (2 doubles) chased Jimmy. A few batters later, Reese connected again, a two-run shot.

I was surprised to see that Reese now has 43 career HR; I would have thought he'd been in the teens. Coming into today, his career slugging percentage was .356.

Jimmy Gobble faces Curt Schilling today as the Royals and Red Sox continue their series. Gobble showed promise when he first joined the Royals last year, and he's doing the same in 2004. He's looking more and more like a Tommy John lefty; the ball is put in play a lot against him, so when he's with a good defensive team he's great, and when he's with a bad defensive team he's rotten. In Jimmy's case, he needs the defense to gobble up the ground balls. KC's defense hasn't been that great this year, except when Gobble pitches. If you look at the same page, you'll see Schilling's defense has been poor behind him. I wonder how much that has to do with a harder throwing pitcher having more hard hit balls in play against him? I'll try to look at that later.

The Astros and Braves face off in Atlanta with Roy Oswalt facing the unlucky Horacio Ramirez. Ramirez is 0-3 despite a 2.43 ERA. He has not given up more than three earned runs in any outing, and last time he gave up 8 runs, but none of them were earned. He is walking more batters than he's striking out, however, and that's never a good sign for a hurler. Meanwhile, Oswalt is doing everything right; 32 K, 11 BB, 1 HR in 42 1/3 innings. He's been a bit unlucky, too, only having a 2-1 record despite a 2.76 ERA. That's the problem of depending on your bullpen; the chance of a decision goes down when your bring in a reliever.

Finally, an unlikely nice matchup in Texas, as the 3-1 Mike Maroth faces the 4-1 R.A Dickey. Both were poor pitchers last year, both have improved, and both are helped by better teams behind them.

Enjoy!

Eric Byrnes was the hero for the Athletics last night, taking a Terry Mulholland pitch deep into the left field stands for a two-run homer in the 13th and the win. From the recap on ESPN.com:

Eric Byrnes popped out to second when he had chance to win the game in the 11th inning.

He made his next at-bat count, hitting a two-run homer in the 13th inning to give the Oakland Athletics an 11-9 win over the Minnesota Twins on Friday night.

That AB in the 11th was the subject of much discussion in the Baseball Info Solutions scoring room last night. With men on first and second, none out, why weren't the A's bunting? Earlier in the evening, Bobby Crosby had executed the A's first sacrifice bunt of the year. Now granted, some of the desire for the bunt last night was due to the desire to have the game end so we could go to bed, but in general, if you are going to bunt, this is the perfect situation to use the sacrifice. If the bunt is successful, the opposition either has to bring the infield and the outfield in, or walk the next batter and hope for a double play. While Byrnes is off to a good start this year, over his career he's basically an average hitter. It's not like the A's had Barry Bonds at the plate. I'd hate to see that play in the first inning, but in the 11th inning of a tie game it makes a lot of sense.

But the strategy eventually worked for the A's. Bradford was able to keep Minnesota scoreless until Terry Mulholland made a mistake. We were sitting there wondering how Terry Mulholland could pitch so well against the A's. Let's face it, Terry hasn't been good since 1993. He's so old, I don't remember when he was young. And yet for 3 2/3 innings last night the A's could not manage a run off him. On the penultimate pitch of the game, a 3-1 count to Byrnes, Mulholland a perfect pitch on the lower inside corner. The ball got just enough of the plate in just the right spot. I turned to the person scoring the game and said something like, "Watch him hang the next pitch." And sure enough, Byrnes got the phattest pitch you'll ever see and crushed it. Am I psychic? No. Lucky? Absolutley. Maybe I just solved a complex pattern recognition problem. But it's nice to be right once in a while. :-)

Quite the start for Wilson Alvarez tonight after making eight appearances from the bullpen. He went seven innings against the Pirates, allowing 1 hit, no walks and striking out five. He's now struck out 20 on the season while walking only 3.

Pavano and Peavy are locked in a good pitcher's duel, 2-0 Fish after four. Pavano has only allowed 1 hit and thrown 53 pitches, while Peavy has struck out six. Neither has walked a batter.

Terrmel Sledge and Brad Wilkerson take Matt Morris deep with a pair of two-run homers in the first to give the Expos a 4-0 lead. Each homerun lifted the slugging average of the two players over .400. A rare power outburst for the Expos.

Carlos Zambrano has certainly stepped up to fill Mark Prior's role as ace of the Cubs staff. A two hitter today against the Rockies, both hits singles. With two double plays and an error, Zambrano only had to face one batter over the minimum. Even nicer, the game was a brisk 2:18.

Shawn "The Wilting Man" Estes couldn't take the heat again (despite the fact that it was only 50 degrees Farenheit at game time) and was gone after surrendering nine earned runs over 2 2/3 innings. He walked five and struck out none. The Cubs now trail Houston by 1 1/2 games.

Shawn "The Wilting Man" Estes returns to Wrigley Field today as the Rockies face the Cubs and Carlos Zambrano. It's a day game at Wrigley, and Dusty Baker will tell you Shawn can't take the heat. Of course, now that the Rockies have gone to a four man rotation with limited pitch counts, maybe Estes won't have too many problems. It should be noted that Estes, with the off-day on Monday, will be pitching with four days off. Expect a lot of swinging and missing today by the Rockies. Zambrano is striking out about 9 per 9, and the Rockies batters are tied for fourth in the NL for most strikeouts.

Another good pitching matchup in Florida as the first place Padres face the first place Marlins. Jake Peavy face Carl Pavano . Jake is pitching great, but he's not pitching deep into games. He has a 2-1 record in six starts, and if he wants to get more decisions, he's going to have to go farther than six innings. Pavano has been very effective against lefties, allowing just a .232 BA to them, although they have shown some power.

Enjoy!

As some of the commentors to this site indicated last night, MLB has taken the the Spiderman advertising off the bases. One thing that disappointed me about the first movie was that they didn't use the Spiderman theme from the old Saturday morning cartoon. The commissioner even gets mentioned!

Is he strong? Listen, Bud!
He's got radioactive blood.

Which brings me to this Bud Selig quote:

"It isn't worth, frankly, having a debate about," commissioner Bud Selig told The Associated Press in Oakland before the Yankees-Athletics game.

"I'm a traditionalist," he said. "The problem in sports marketing, particularly in baseball, is you're always walking a very sensitive line. Nobody loves tradition and history as much as I do."

Now that I'm no longer rolling on the floor laughing (expansion, wild card, realignment, interleague play, contraction), all I have to say is, "What a schmuck!" Bud, it's okay for baseball to want to make money through advertising. But don't try something like this, then try to say you're on the fan's side. It's very clear to all of us that the only thing you care about is the bottom line. According to Doug Pappas' counter, there's 968 days left in Selig's term. I going to have a big party when it goes to zero.

It didn't take long for Cleveland to score tonight. Matt Lawton leads off the bottom of the first with his sixth HR of the year.

Update: Lawton had been 1 for 14 with a walk against Pedro in his career.

Four hits by the first five Dodgers batters, including a three-run HR by Shawn Green puts Dontrelle Willis and the Fish in a 3-0 hole in the bottom of the first. Willis is falling behind batters, and the way he's going he may not make it out of the first.

Jose from Spain writes in response to this post:

I just wanted to comment on the logo thing on the bases. Here in Spain, where soccer is the most important sport, they have had ads on their shirts for ages. Some teams have an ad on the shirt and another one on their pants, on the butt. And the game is the same and commands the same passions. After a while you don't really notice. I think it's inevitable that baseball will do the same. Some soccer teams (Real Madrid, Manchester United) take in 10-12 million a year on their sponsorship deals for the shirts.

By the way, a Spanish team (Atletico de Madrid) has a deal with a movie studios and it displays a movie in the shirt, which changes about every six weeks or so.

What they haven't done, though, is put logos on the pristine green field. Rugby has though. Last Six Nations tournament (the most important rugby tournament in Europe, played by England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, France and Italy) had a couple of prominent logos of the Royal Bank of Scotland on the playing field. Or pitch, as they say in the UK.

European basketball has also big logos on the court. Like some NBA teams (the Rockets come to mind with that rocket drawn on the court, at least a few years ago), European basketball teams have logos on the court, similar to the NBA Finals logos you get at Finals time. Also, the keys and the central circle may have also some ads.

So, what is the fuss about some small logos on the bases which can't even be seen on TV?

Some people just like to make a fuss, Jose.

Michael Katz sends this link. Hollywood is thinking of turning Moneyball into a movie. Hooray for Hollywood!

The Braves just turned a 5-4-3 triple play. Kerry Robinson was the batter, who hit a hard grounder to third where Hessman stepped on the bag, then fired around the horn to end the inning.

Another hit, another RBI for Rolen against the Phillies. Cardinals up 1-0 in the first.

Mike Hampton continues to struggle to bring down his ERA. He gave up two HR and three runs in the first inning against SD and his ERA now stands at 8.20. If this keeps up, he'll be summering in the Hamptons.

Rooftop Report links to a story on how Moises Alou swings without batting gloves. Telling this story to Gary Miller (who's a friend) seems rather appropriate.

The Phillies host the Cardinals this afternoon with Jeff Suppan facing Randy Wolf. Wolf has been throwing a lot of pitches and hasn't been able to get past the sixth inning in his last three starts. But that's okay. The Phillies bullpen has a 2.27 ERA, the best in the NL. Whoever is on the mound will have to deal with phormer Phillie Scott Rolen, who is 7 for 17 with 6 RBI in five games against his old team this year.

Another team that's better off getting into their bullpen early is the Pirates, 2nd in the NL with a 2.51 relief ERA. (I guess they don't refuse to use the pen in Pennsylvania.) Kris Benson is taking the mound for the Buccos today against Wade Miller and the Astros. Benson has been walking a ton of batters, but it hasn't hurt his ERA too much yet because he's only given up one HR and is allowing a .195 BA with men in scoring position. Miller is much the same, walking one every other inning, but only allowing a .091 BA with men in scoring position.

Pedro gets his 2nd start of his contract push after his poor showing last Saturday. The fragile pitcher will try to prove once again that he's really worth a long term commitment. He'll face a tough opponent in CC Sabathia. Milliliter has been unhittable, allowing only 16 hits in 28 innings. Like his teammate Jake Westbrook, the Indians are playing great defense behind Sabathia, posting an .808 DER when he's on the mound.

The Yankees go for their 9th straight win and 6th straight against the A's tonight. Javier Vazquez faces Rich Harden, who's had a very interesting season. The process is there for Rich, but the results haven't followed. Harden has pitched 22 2/3 innings, striking out 23, walking 9 and allowing 2 HR. The walks are a little high, but those are good numbers. His problem early on appears to be with righties; RHB are hitting .317 against Rich, while lefties are hitting just .250. I suspect that righties have been lucky against him so far; that their BA will come down, as will Harden's ERA, and you'll see his wins go up.

Enjoy!

Congratulations to Mike Piazza and Roger Clemens. Piazza homered last night to set the record for catchers at 352, passing Carlton Fisk. We'll have to see how much he catches from now on.

Clemens passed Steve Carlton for 2nd on the all-time strikeout list. Clemens is now 6-0 with a 2.11 ERA. Clemens is fifth in the NL in ERA, and with his 6-0 record you have to start wondering if another Cy Young award is in his future.

I also noticed, looking at the top five ERA leaders, that the veterans appear to be having great years. Three of the top five are Leiter, Glavine and Clemens. It's a good year to be an old pitcher. :-)

With a man on second, 1 out in the top of the ninth, the Brewers decide to let their pitching/hitting star Brooks Kieschnick bat. When the count goes 3-0, the Reds intentionally walk him. I live for this!

Tampa and Texas have a pitching duel between Doug Waechter and Ryan Drese. Waechter has had one good and one poor start this year, while Drese has been consistently good. Right now, Drese and the Rangers are up 1-0 after four.

David Wells is in rare form tonight. Through five he's shutout the Braves, allowing four hits and no walks. When Wells has his control, he's hard to beat. And he'll have to keep it up if he's going to win as Wright has righted himself and allowed only 1 run to the Padres through six.

Joe Kennedy is getting the best of Zach Day tonight. Kennedy is shutting out the Expos with six strikeouts through six innings, allowing only one hit. Day isn't pitching badly, allowing seven hits and two runs through seven innings, but once again the Expos offense isn't coming through for him. It's 2-0 Rockies in the middle of the 7th.

Update: Kennedy left after six innings and 80 pitches, so the Rockies are sticking to their word to keep their starter's pitch counts low on short rest.

Probably the best pitching matchup of the day is happening north of the border. Lefty Joe Kennedy of the Colorado Rockies takes his amazing 2.67 ERA into Olympic Stadium to face Zach Day and the Montreal Expos. This will be Kennedy's first start of the year on three days rest as the Rockies move to a four-man rotation. Kennedy has pitched all but 6 of his 30 1/3 innings at Colorado, making his ERA even more impressive. He's only walked 8 batters in those 30+ innings, a big reason for his success.

Day has been very good with men on base, allowing only a .200 batting average (9 for 45), and only 1 of his four HR allowed have come with men on base. His 3.31 ERA makes him deserving of a better record than .500. You can see just how bad the Expos offense has been in these sets of graphs, especially the OBP vs. Slugging graph.

Enjoy!

Jay Jaffe at Futility Infielder takes on the productive outs crowd, or as he refers to them, the flat earth society.

The more I mull over productive outs the more incorrect I find it. One big problem is that you are only looking at situations in which outs are made, (Productive Outs)/(All Outs in Productive Situations). But why not count all successes in this situation? ((Productive Outs) + (Base Advancing Hits and walks))/(All Productive Situations) If getting a runner on first with no outs into scoring position is such so tremendously important, why not count the guys who do it by drawing a walk or getting a single? I'm going to try to work on this over the weekend.

I installed software yesterday to block spam in the comments to this site. If anyone has problems leaving a comment due to this spam blocker, please let me know.

I saw this article about Ralph Nader complaining about advertising on baseball uniforms yesterday, and said to my wife, "I think Ralph has finally gone senile."

Presidential candidate Ralph Nader called the advertisements on uniforms during Major League Baseball's season-opening series an "obscene embarrassment" and sent a letter of protest yesterday.

If Ralph thinks that's obscene, he hasn't surfed the web much. :-) I grew up thinking Ralph was the only honest man out there, someone who was really interested in protecting me. That started to fall apart when I read an article in the New Yorker a few years ago on how Ralph and his cronies pushed through air bags on cars, even though improvements in seat belts would be cheaper and safer. (Note: It's funny how all the good New Yorker articles I remember are written by Malcolm Gladwell.) Somewhere along the way Nader started believeing his own publicity and went from useful agitator to useless megalomaniac. I thought it was unusual for Bush to complain about steriods in his SOTU address, but at least those are illegal and Bush does have a solid connection to sports. As far as I know, it's perfectly legal for people to sell advertising for display at events like baseball games.

Doug Pappas discusses Nader here.

I hereby apologize to all the self-righteous columnists whose one-note rants about steroids have come in for so much mockery here. When it comes to self-important, factually challenged Grand Pronouncements to no real purpose other than to proclaim the speaker's moral superiority to his audience, no one compares to Ralph Nader. Yes, the man who could best serve his stated causes by blowing his brains out with a shotgun has turned his pen, and his ego, back to the world of baseball.

Of course, Doug doesn't like this form of advertising, and he appears not to like what baseball will be doing soon:

According to a report by Brian Steinberg and Stefan Fatsis in today's Wall Street Journal (no link yet, maybe later):

"Under a design nearing approval by MLB, the center of the top of first, second and third bases will be adorned with a 7.5-inch-square 'Spider-Man 2' logo consisting of black and yellow webbing against a bright red background. Home plate will remain white." Pitching rubbers and on-deck circles will be similarly decorated.

Of course, decorating the rubber and the bases is against the rules (emphasis added):

1.06
First, second and third bases shall be marked by white canvas bags, securely attached to the ground as indicated in Diagram 2. The first and third base bags shall be entirely within the infield. The second base bag shall be centered on second base. The bags shall be 15 inches square, not less than three nor more than five inches thick, and filled with soft material.

1.07
The pitcher's plate shall be a rectangular slab of whitened rubber, 24 inches by 6 inches. It shall be set in the ground as shown in Diagrams 1 and 2, so that the distance between the pitcher's plate and home base (the rear point of home plate) shall be 60 feet, 6 inches.

Frankly, I'd rather see a big Spiderman Logo painted in centerfield. And to tell the truth, if painting a big Coca-Cola sign in the outfield, or wearing Ford patches on their sleeves helped the Royals compete with the Yankees, I'm all for it. In fact, I welcome it. I'm sick of commercials. Baseball games are 15 minutes longer than they need to be because TV stations need to sell more ads to pay for broadcasting the games. Television as a whole should go to product placement within shows to give us more content. Broadcasters can now superimpose any image they want on the screen, from 1st down lines in football to lead lengths in baseball. ESPN puts up ads on wall behind home plate. Let's see more of those and faster baseball games!

Racing is covered with ads. The cars are covered, the drivers are covered, and it's the most popular sport in this country. (ESPN used to make all it's money on auto racing, and if they pre-empted a race with an important pennant deciding baseball game, the switchboard would light up.) Ads on the field and ads on the uniforms (think how much Randy Johnson is worth) are not going to change the excitement of the game or the fans enjoyment of the game. With the potential to cut down on between innings advertising, they might even make the games go faster. I wonder how much they'd change to put a Baseball Musings logo on the catcher's chest protector?

Down 8-3 in the fifth, the Yankees rallied for 8 runs of their own over the last three innings to pin a 10-8 loss on the Oakland A's. With 17 hits in the game, it looks like the team batting slump is officially over.

Oh, and they've tied the Red Sox for first place.

Congratulations to Alex Rodriguez who became the youngest player to reach 350 HR last night. A-Rod also got his 1000th RBI in the game.

The Oakland A's will run when they believe they can steal a base. Eric Byrnes heard you can run on Contreras, so he stole both 2nd and 3rd. Of course, staying at first would have been fine, as Chavez drives him in with a HR. The A's are now 8 for 11 stealing bases, and Byrnes is 5 for 5. Hatteberg followed up with another HR to right to give the A's a 3-0 lead after 1.

The Braves have seemed to do a good job of replacing Javy Lopez. Johnny Estrada went 3 for 3 tonight with three runs scored. He's now batting .347 with a .417 OBA and a .533 slugging percentage. You have to love catchers who hit like first basemen.

Andy Pettitte seems to be well recovered from his injury. He's struck out six Pirates through three innings tonight. Houston and Pittsburgh are tied at one.

You have a 10.52 ERA. You pitch in the best hitters park in the majors. What can your manager do to get you out of your slump? Start you in Montreal! The Expos are so far below the rest of the league in offense, I could probably get them 1-2-3. :-)

Jason Jennings got his dream start tonight. He's pitching in Montreal, a great pitcher's park, against a team with a .268 OBA and a .308 slugging percentage. And so what does he do with his opportunity? He gives up two HR and six earned runs in five innings. I'm sorry, that just doesn't cut it. I'm afraid Jason is on his way out of the majors.

Derek Lowe hasn't helped Edward Cossette's Sylvia Plath complex tonight. He's given up 9 hits and seven runs, but only 2 are earned. However, when you give up five unearned runs, it's not all the defense's fault. Cleveland leads 7-1 in the fifth.

Eric DuBose is having some control problems tonight. In four innings, he's walked six, thrown two wild pitches, and hit a batter (Lopez also had a passed ball). On top of all that, he's allowed four hits, but amazingly only three runs. The Orioles have turned two double plays, which helped.

Lyle Overbay hit a grand slam for the Brewers to help them to a 6-0 lead over the Reds. He now has three HR and 24 RBI on the season. Last year, he had 4 HR and 28 RBI in 86 games for the Diamondbacks. He's not Richie Sexson, but he's been a pretty good replacement so far.

Phormer Phillie Scott Rolen gets his first AB in the new Philly ballpark and singles in two. I don't know how most Phillies phans pheel, but I would still be upset that Rolen got away.

Dean Christopher has a different take on the curse of the Bambino.

This article on ESPN.com asks the question, "Is Carlos Beltran the next Barry Bonds." I'm pretty sure the answer is no. Carlos is at the age that if he were going to be Barry Bonds, we'd already know it (A-Rod, is in fact, the next Barry Bonds). Beltran's seasonal age was 26 last year. Here's a comparison of Beltran and Bonds through seasonal age 26.

Career through Seasonal Age 26	Bonds	Beltran
On-Base Average	.367	.350
Slugging Percentage	.485	.478
Win Shares	160	102

So Bonds had better stats than Beltran through the same age, but that's not even taking into consideration that Bonds earned those averages in the period from 1986 to 1991, when offense had yet to explode in baseball. So the difference in these numbers is greater than it looks, as you can see in the win shares.

The other interesting thing is that at the end of 1991, there was little doubt that Bonds was the best players in the National League. He won the MVP in 1990, and probably should have won it in 1991. Beltran finished 9th last year in the MVP voting, and did not get a vote in 2002. If you are going to be a truly outstanding player, the rare breed that at the top has Bonds, Ruth, Aaron, Mays and Ted Williams, it pretty obvious by the age of 27. The fact that this has not been recognized in Beltran tells me he's not going to have a hall of fame career.

But you never know. I was certainly wrong about Sammy Sosa.

The Marlins host the Dodgers tonight as the leader of the NL East meets the leader of the NL West. Josh Beckett is pitching better than his ERA would indicate. He's struck out 38 while walking only 10. His problem has been a .302 opponents batting average with men on base. Once batters get on base, they keep getting on. His opponent, Odalis Perez, has similar stats, but opponents are only hitting .250 with runners on against him. Now, I don't think pitchers have much control over this; I suspect this number will come down for Beckett, and it's where it should be for Perez. So expect a good pitching duel tonight.

One of the nice things about not being a fan committed to one team is that I can sit back and enjoy other fans losing their cool over a four game losing streak.

I was doing OK, coping fine with 3 in a row, but this one last night really hurt. I tossed and turned all night. Woke up feeling like Sylvia Plath. You know all depressed and thinking about sticking my head in a gas oven.

"Oh, Sylvia Plath, whose tragic suicide was misinterpreted as romantic by the schoolgirl mentality."

And by the way, the Yankees were two games down in the loss column yesterday. And although I've been told for years that you can't make up the losses, they're only down 1 today.

Jake Westbrook is out after six shutout innings against the Red Sox. Schilling struck out more (4-3) and walked fewer (0-2), but is at the short end of a 2-0 score. Schilling will give up home runs, and tonight Victor Martinez got him with a man on. Normally, that's not too bad, but Westbrook had decent defense behind him again tonight. A big play was in the bottom of the fourth, when the Red Sox had the bases loaded with one out, but Bellhorn hit a hard grounder up the middle that Cleveland turned into a double play. It was the type of ball that would have been a hit if the Indians were not playing for two.

Update: Wow, a really bad play by Alex Escobar of the Indians. David Ortiz hit a ball to deep center. Escobar got to it, but jumped, and esentially jumped over the ball. Right place, wrong move, and the Red Sox have a run and the bases loaded with 1 out in the 7th.

Update: Rick White, after getting burned by Escobar and issuing an intentional walk to Ramirez takes things into his own hands and strikes out Daubach and Varitek to end the inning. Indians lead 2-1 in the middle of the 7th.

Kurt Ainsworth has a shutout through five innings despite giving up four hits and five walks. The White Sox are 0 for five with runners in scoring position. Scott Schoeneweis had the Orioles score on him without the need for a hit in the first. Roberts walked, stole 2nd and 3rd, then scored on a ground out.

Update: Crede led off the 6th with a HR, which is as good as a hit with men in scoring position. :-) It's 1-1.

A good first inning for the Rangers. The Devil Rays only managed an infield single off Rogers, then the offense hit three home runs leading to eight runs in the bottom of the inning. Dellucci and M. Young had three run shots, and Soriano had started them off with a two run homer. Is there any stopping the Texas juggernaught?

First, I want to send my best wishes to Mike Port and his family. Mike is in the hospital recovering from a heart attack. Let's hope he's recovered and back to work soon.

And on the contract front, Manny Ramirez says he's willing to defer salary to keep Pedro and Nomar in Boston. That's very generous, especially as the Red Sox tried to dump his contract over the winter.

When asked after Sunday's game if he were joking, Ramirez reiterated his offer.

"I am serious," he told a reporter. "I want Pedro to stay. Pedro's the heart of the team. He's been here so long. I think it's going to be a sad moment to see him leave. That's why I said what I did. It's really no problem for me. Hey, how much money do I need?"

Ramirez told the Herald that he was also willing to defer money to keep Nomar Garciaparra in a Red Sox uniform.

Bernie Williams, in the same article, takes a pretty good dig at the Boston team:

"I'm just glad that I don't get paid to make those decisions," Bernie Williams was quoted as saying in the New York Post. "He's one of the great pitchers of his generation and it'll be interesting to see where he ends up next year. ... It's hard for me to talk about Pedro, but I think he would want an opportunity to play for a team that wins."

Ouch.

Jimmy Gobble has retired the first nine Blue Jays batters he's faced tonight. He's done this without a strikeout, so the defense is doing a good job tonight. It appears that the Jays aren't going deep into counts, because Gobble has only thrown 29 pitches to get those 9 outs, 20 of them for strikes.

Update: Gobble gets them 1-2-3 in the fourth.

Update: Gobble finally got a strikeout in the fifth. He's still perfect, and has thrown 46 pitches through five innings, 31 for strikes.

Update: Berg breaks up the no-hitter in the 6th, after the Royals had committed an error to end the perfect game.

Nathan Higgins has a new blog on the Red Sox, Lost in Sox. Stop by to say hello.

A good win for the Cubs today. They achieved a split with the Cardinals, which keeps St. Louis a couple of games back. The Cubs out-homered the Cards 3-2, but that doesn't tell the whole story. The Cubs had men on for each of their HR, resulting in six runs, while the Cardinals two were both solo shots.

Maddux pitches his third good game in a row. Most importantly, no walks, so it appears his control is back.

Most Valuable Network is a site whose goal is to feature news and information for all 30 major league teams. Give them a look.

Has Albert Pujols ever had a bad month? He just homered, and I realized I can't think of a long stretch where he's been in a real slump. The last time he had anything approaching a bad month was May of 2002, when he had a .348 OBA and a .456 slugging percentage, (I think most players would take that for a season). If he stays healthy, and is really as young as is reported, he's going to have amazing totals at the end of his career.

Maddux and Marquis are dueling in St. Louis, 1-1 in the fifth. Marquis has a hit, and Maddux reached on a fielder's choice, then stole a base and scored! He's now 6 for 9 in his career stealing, a break even percentage.

Update: Maddux just got his first hit of the season, a bunt single. He's an offensive powerhouse today! :-)

Update: And Maddux scores his 2nd run of the day on a Todd Walker homer. Cubs lead 3-1 in the top of the 6th.

Update: Just to show he was no slouch on the bases, Marquis stole a base also!

A reader alerted me to this story about the Rockies moving to a four-man rotation.

The No. 5 starter spot has been eliminated. The Rockies are going with a four-man rotation from now until, if all goes well, season's end.

"People are going to think we are crazy, but in this park, sometimes you have to go against the rules," said Jason Jennings, who joins Joe Kennedy, Shawn Estes and Scott Elarton as the Rockies' rotation. "You have to mix it up and try something different. We're all for it."

It's good to see the pitchers are on board. The Blue Jays tried this last year but it got torpedoed by the staff. The Rockies are going to limit the pitch count of their starters:

To help protect against arm fatigue, an 85-to-90-pitch limit will be placed on the starters, and Jeff Fassero becomes the extra eighth guy in the bullpen. Kennedy, who will be the first to start on three days' rest Wednesday in Montreal, needed only 74 pitches to record seven innings in his win April 25 against the Houston Astros. But there will be other times when 90 pitches won't get the starter through the fifth.

"I think it's a great idea," said Leo Mazzone, the Atlanta Braves' acclaimed pitching coach. "I think their pitch count might be a little too low. I think you can go 100, 110 pitches. But I think it's smart to go with a four-man rotation. How many teams have a fifth starter?"

Nice to see Leo thinks it's a good idea. Maybe the Braves will try it next. One thing that does bother me, however, is that they are just moving the fifth starter to the bullpen as a long man. I'd say eliminate that pitcher all together. If he can't start, he probably can't relieve, either.

It's a good experiment, and I hope it works for them. Teams are carrying too many pitchers these days and limiting themselves on their offensive moves. Ten pitchers should be enough for any team. Over that and you're just inserting lousy players into the game.

The Cubs and Cardinals finish their series this afternoon as a pair of ex-Braves face each other on the mound. Greg Maddux tries to put together a streak of three good starts after his first three rough ones. He'll be opposed by Jason Marquis, who's had four straight good starts after a rought first outing. I guess you could call this the Marquis matchup of the day. :-) The three previous games in the series were all low scoring and close. A win by the Cardinals would give them the series and put them only 1/2 game behind the Cubs.

The Red Sox look to Curt Schilling to end their skid against Jake Westbrook and the Cleveland Indians. Westbrook was moved into the rotation after pitching seven no-hit innings after Jeff D'Amico couldn't get an out on 19th of April. Westbrook has been pretty unhittable, despite not having that many strikeouts; opponents are hitting only .141 against Westbrook. Opponents are hitting .257 vs. Schilling despite his 39 K. It seems Cleveland is much more likely to turn a ball in play against Westbrook into an out. The DER behind Schilling is a low .663, while for Westbrook it's .883. (Think of it as opponents having a .337 BA when they put the ball in play against Schilling, and a .117 BA when they put the ball in play against Westbrook. These numbers do not include HR.)

Finally, the Tigers travel to Anaheim for a rematch of Mike Maroth and Bartolo Colon. Maroth pitched seven strong innings vs. the Angels last time out, and is 3-1 after losing 21 games last year. Colon got hammered by the Tigers, giving up seven earned runs in four innings and raising his ERA from 2.33 to 4.07. Things are going very well for the Angels, however. They are near the top of the league in runs scored and in the middle in ERA. That's a good formula for a winning season.

Enjoy!

One month into the season, and sixteen teams are within 3 games of first place (or in first place). The Texas Rangers have the best record in baseball after sweeping the Boston Red Sox. Detroit, San Diego, Pittsburgh and Baltimore are all over .500. No team is running away with a division.

I've been scoring a lot of game this year, so I've been watching a lot of game closely, instead of flipping from here to there. And I've notice a lot of good baseball. Sure there is the occasional screw up, like the Giants using Hammonds in right field yesterday, where everything hit was just out of his reach, or Timo Perez taking an easy run to first on a single, and not being able to advance to second on a bobble. But for the most part, the major leaguers I see are playing hard, making the tough plays, making good pitches, running the base intelligently and all-in-all having fun playing the game. The season's been a real pleasure so far.

A great pitching duel between Matt Morris and Carlos Zambrano yesterday in St. Louis. The Cardinals won 1-0 in ten innings, and the difference in the game came down to efficiency. Zambrano struck out 12, but had thrown 122 pitches through seven innings and had to come out of the game. Morris, who struck out four, only threw 112 pitches and was able to go a full nine, so La Russa only had to use his pen for one inning. Isringhausen was able to get the save while Fansworth allowed the only run of the game.

Now, all things being equal, I'd rather have Zambrano's 12 K. But sometimes being less dependent on your pen is a good thing.

Back-to-back triples in the Seattle-Detroit game by Winn and Suzuki. There's something you don't see too often.

Through four, Webb and Milton are each pitching well. Both have K'd 3 and walked 1. The difference has been Finley's solo HR.

It's a rainy day on the east coast, but if they can get it in, Arizona at Philadelphia offers a nice pitching matchup. The young Brandon Webb of the DBacks faces off-season acquistion Eric Milton of the Phillies. Webb's stikeouts and HR allowed are great, but his walks are very high (18 in 30 IP). Look for Abreu, Thome and Burrell to take advantage of this. Milton's overall record is probably a bit better than it should be. He's been extremely tough with men in scoring position so far this year. Opponents are just 1 for 15 against him in that situation with 1 RBI.

If you are looking for a west coast matchup, the Mets at Padres offers Tom Glavine vs. Ismael Valdez, both three game winners with excellent ERAs. Valdez is very dependent on his defense, as he's only struck out four in 22 1/3 innings. The Padres have a .775 DER behind him, an extremely good number. Glavine is similar, having struck out only 11 in 33 innings, and it turns out the Mets defense behind him has been even better, posting a .782 DER. This might be a good game to watch to see if it's the pitchers or the defense who are contributing more to the low ERA.

Enjoy!

The first place Texas Rangers took two from the first place Boston Red Sox last night. They won the opener despite a fine performance by Arroyo, but they won the night cap against Pedro "I'm As Whiny as Henry" Martinez. Someone should tell Pedro that if he's going to complain about his contract status and announce to the world that he's going to be a free agent, it's better to do it after a great game than before he gets shelled. Pedro gave up nine hits and six earned runs in 4 innings last night, and his season ERA now stands at 4.17. Someone should point out to Martinez that pitchers with 4.17 ERAs don't command 10s of millions of dollars in salary, especially when they are too fragile to pitch 200 innings in a season.

Oh, and if they bother to look in the rear view mirror, the Yankees, the evil team the Sox had buried, are now just 2 1/2 back. Dan Shaughnessy marks Pedro's complaints as the real start of the season. If the Red Sox go on a losing streak now, it won't be a day Boston fans forget easily.

The BALCO probe took a new turn yesterday with federal investigators obtaining all the results from all the drug tests taken last year. Doug Pappas has the politics pretty well covered here. But I really wonder about this series of events (from the ESPN article linked above):

1. Investigators wanted all the results from 2003.


2. The MLBPA, MLB and investigators negotiate that down to the ten who testified.


3. The union reneges on that agreement.


4. Federal investigators sieze all the results.


5. The Union had a chance to destroy the evidence and didn't.

When the MLBPA is involved, I always work on the assumption that Donald Fehr and company are the smartest people on the planet. Since what the union wants is no testing, what better way to get there than by having confidential results released by the federal government? Now, the MLBPA can break the agreement because the results were not kept confidential. And because they didn't destroy the results, they don't look like they were trying to hide something.

Yes, a few players have to sacrifice their reputations, but it will keep prying eyes out of their toilets for good. I think the tradeoff is worth it.

Two big positives for the Yankees this afternoon. Jon Lieber, pitching for the first time since the 2002 season, goes seven strong innings for the win. He allowed three runs and no walks, plus a solo HR to Matt Stairs. He was very efficient, using 91 pitches to get through 7.

The second positive was Jeter going 3 for 6. Looks like his slump is over. Bernie Williams looks like the only regular waiting to break out now.

A very encouraging outing by Jeremy Bonderman today. He went 7 2/3 innings, throwing only 107 pitches to earn his third victory of the season. He held Seattle to only 2 runs, 1 earned while walking none. He also lowered his ERA by over a run to 5.22. It's been a fun year in Detroit so far; the Tigers still get beat badly from time-to-time, but you're much more likely to see a win.

Mike Cusick sends me a link to this article about the poor relationship between the Giants pitchers and A.J. Pierzynski.

But several pitchers disagreed, and questioned Pierzynski's work ethic. The latest incident occurred before Wednesday's game, when two players confirmed Pierzynski ignored starting pitcher Brett Tomko's request to go over opposing hitters. Instead, the players said, Pierzynski resumed playing cards for another 20 minutes.

"I've never in all my years seen a catcher who didn't watch video before games," one pitcher said. "He doesn't watch hitters - other than the Twins games when they're on TV."

Does anyone know if this went on when he was with the Twins? That's pretty poor form, not to go over hitters with the starter before the game. Mike is wondering if this is why the Giants pitchers are doing so poorly. I don't know, but it's a good place to start laying blame.

Lots of games today. Three postponements last night lead to three double headers today. The Braves and Rockies, Red Sox and Rangers and Blue Jays and White Sox will all try to play two today. Eighteen games, plenty of action for everyone.

The pitching matchup of the day is in San Diego as Al Leiter of the Mets takes on Jake Peavy of the Padres. Both have sub-2.00 ERAs but not much to show for it (identical 1-1 records). One of the problems they are both having is lasting more than six innings. Both have been approaching 100 pitches in the sixth. A little more efficiency and maybe they can stick around long enough to get a win.

Game 2 in Texas tonight features Joaquin against a rather upset Pedro Martinez.

Declaring "enough is enough," Pedro Martinez last night closed the door on contract negotiations with the Red Sox, saying he will enter free agency after the season and play next year where he is wanted, even if it's the Bronx.

So much for the big happy family I saw at Fenway the other day. Pedro may very well use this season to propel himself to a big free agent contract, and that's good for the Red Sox, but he's just caused a lot of grief for the front office. Martinez not only complained about his lack of a contract, but also about Varitek, Lowe and Garciaparra. Theo and company are now going to be subjected to the ever cheerful Boston press grill them on contract negotiations for the rest of the season. And I just love this shot Pedro took at Larry Lucchino:

Martinez said he did not know why the Sox have not pursued him more intensely, but he suggested they may be interested in saving money. He did not name president and CEO Larry Lucchino but indirectly cited him.

"If you look at the background of those people in management, who was there with the Orioles when the team went from a competitive team to a noncompetitive team?" Martinez said. "Who was behind the Orioles? I don't know. You take your pick. I'm not going to mention their names."

I guess the honeymoon is over.

Vincente Padilla is another pitcher who's playing well but not winning. He'll have the tough task of hurling for the Phillies vs. Randy Johnson tonight. Johnson has been striking out batters at his normal high rate, but his results have been mixed. Every other game he's hammered, and he's due to be hit in this one. Maybe Padilla will get the support he needs tonight.

Enjoy!