Bud Selig wants tougher penalties for drug abuse. Despite the fact that the players have already conceeded to reopening the CBA, and that testing seems to be working, Selig appears to be bending to Congressional pressure. I thought baseball owners owned the politicians.

Selig is blowing a chance to extend the cooperation between players and management. This is clearly a ploy to make the players look like the bad guys if they refuse the deal. It's too bad. I thought some trust had been developed between the parties. This has a potential to drive a wedge between the two sides once again.

I do agree on the amphetamine ban, however. If Selig had just asked for that in the context of the current testing, I'd support that. But this is going too far. As I've written before, the chance of a false positive is too high to have that harsh a penalty for a first offense.

A fine defensive play by Eric Byrnes to end the top of the 5th. The ball was hit in foul territory near the third base bullpen. Byrnes lept horizontally, got good air time, and made the catch parallel to the ground. Quite impressive, but he looks like he hurt his face on the landing.

The Milwaukee Brewers have loaded the bases in the 9th with 0 outs. It's tough not to win in this situation. Russell, Branyan makes his first out of the day flying out to shallow right, failing to drive in Lee from third.

Update: Damian Miller drives the ball over the drawn in right fielder for a single and a Brewer win. The crew came back from a 5-1 deficit to take the game 6-5.

With men on 1st and 3rd and one out, the Blue Jays walk pinch hitter Jorge Posada to face Tony Womack. It's an intersting move, in that it would have been easier to double Posada than Womack. And while you have a great chance to get Womack out, or cut down the runner at the plate, you have a great hitter in Jeter coming up next.

Update: Womack hits a solid line drive single to right-center to win the game for the Yankees.

Wang goes seven, leaves with the lead, and Gordon comes in and gives up a homer to Koskie to tie the game. The Jays now have runners on 1st and 2nd with one out. It's Gordon's second blown game of the year. Why take Wang out? He threw 81 pitches. Why do you have to go to Gordon just because this is the youngster's first MLB appearance? He was pitching well, let him keep going.

Junior hits his first home run of the season to extend the Reds lead over the Brewers to 4-1. Griffey had two great Aprils in a row in 1997 and 1998 when he hit 13 and 11 home runs respecitvely. I believe the 13 set a record for April at that time.

Ken Singleton brought up something in regards to the Blue Jays facing Wang. Nobody wants to be the first batter to strike out against the pitcher. I don't know why that matters so much, but the Jays have not struck out through five. They're putting the ball in play fairly early, so Chien has only thrown 54 pitches, 38 for strikes.

The Jays have also had four hits and scored 2 runs. Only two of the hits was a solid singles; the other three were well placed, infield hits. It just goes to show how much offense you can generate by putting the bat on the ball. Singles and ground outs all move runners.

Wang has a neat windup, Hideo Nomo without the back arch. The pause at the top of his delivery seems to be throwing off the timing of the Blue Jays hitters. New York leads Toronto 3-2 in the bottom of the 5th.

Calvin Pickering didn't make much of his chance in the majors this season, but Ken Harvey is starting out strong. His three for three today moves him to 6 for 12 since his callup, and he added a grand slam this afternoon. The Royals lead the Indians six to one.

I you live or near Longmeadow, MA, St. Mary's School is raffling off Red Sox tickets. I believe it's four box seats for the May 21st game vs. the Braves. Tickets are $1 each. They're selling in front of the Big Y today and next Saturday.

Does it get any better than Bush vs. Wang? Look for some Chien music from the Taiwanese pitcher today as he makes his major league debut against the Toronto Blue Jays. Chien has excellent strikeout and home run numbers in his minor league career. He needs the Yankees offense to straighten up, however, or he may suffer the same fate as Johnson at the hands of the Blue Jays.

David Bush has not lived up to his minor league numbers so far. He's already given up five home runs in 22 innings pitched this season; in his minor league career he allowed 19 in about 300 IP.

Jamie Moyer looks to go 5-0 in April as the Mariners face the Athletics and Joe Blanton in Oakland. Through 2004, Moyer averaged 5.5 K per 9. He's upped that to 6.5 per 9 this season. Blanton is losing despite a 1.75 ERA. The A's are scoring 1 run a start for Joe this season.

And if you're looking for some offense, the Cubs at the Astros offers two pitchers with ERAs over 5.00. Kerry Wood stand at 5.79 although he's coming off five decent innings vs. the Pirates. The Astros are another good choice for lowering his ERA. Brandon Backe's ERA is at 6.17 for the opposite reason; three decent starts, then the Cardinals pounded him last time out.

Enjoy!

Casey Abell laments in this post:

"Great pitching duels" are becoming tediously common. They're playing baseball tonight like it's 1968. Seven runs a game in the eleven completed games so far, with three shutouts. The four games in progress also look like low-run snoozers.

Baseball is still managing just over nine runs a game this season, thanks to the much-maligned DH. Otherwise, offense would look really bad. But offense is down big from last year. In fact, this is shaping up as the lowest scoring season since 1992.

I have to think that baseball can't avoid setting an attendance record this year, because they said bye-bye to Montreal and its tiny "crowds." If the poor offense continues, though, I can't see any kind of huge increase in attendance.

As it turned out, the 15 games last night average 7.1 runs per game. (Actually, 7.0667.) That is low for the offensive era, but not a record. Since the start of the 1993 season, there have been 26 days with lower average runs per game (minimum 10 games played), or about 2 a year. The lowest scoring day of this era happened on 6/14/1998, when the majors averaged 1 run less a game, 6.0667. If I remember correctly, that was an exciting month of ball as Sammy Sosa set a record for homers in June, and an exciting year as Sosa and McGwire battled for Maris' record.

Offense continues to be down for the year:

Through Same Number of Days	2004	2005
Games	333	335
Runs Per Game	9.8	9.2
HR Per Game	2.2	1.9

Good. Casey makes the mistake of believing that offense is the only thing that drives attendance. What drives attendance is exciting baseball. Sometimes lots of offense if exciting, and sometimes a well pitched, well defended game is exciting. I remember a close, low scoring game 7 of the 2001 World Series being one of the best games I've seen in recent times.

People think offense drives attendance because offense was the driving factor bringing people back to the ballpark after the 1994 strike. I'd argue, however, that what was bringing people back was the uniqueness of the era. We had not seen offense like that since 1930, and it was new and exciting. But after a while, it gets old. If offense was all that drove attendance, Coors would be full every day.

What if a starting pitcher goes after Hershiser's scoreless streak this season? That would draw interest. Or someone else had an ERA in the low 1's, or threatened to win 30 games. That would draw interest. And it would draw interest because we would start talking about records and comparisons to Hall of Famers and the like. Just like in 1998, it would draw fans because something unusual was happening.

What makes baseball boring for me is the pitcher holding onto the ball. I don't care how many runs score in a contest, if the pitcher takes forever to deliver a pitch, I go to another game. Last night I turned on the White Sox-Tigers game late. Urbina was on the mound taking forever. It was 2-1 Tigers at that point, and had an exciting finish with the Tigers winning in extra innings. But the pace was so slow I just turned to the DBacks-Padres where Webb and Peavy were not afraid to pitch to batters.

Casey may like high scoring game. That's great, everyone has different tastes. But it's a mistake to peg attendance to one side of the ball. The game can be exciting in many ways, and the majority of fans appreciate all of them.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

Soxblog remembers April 29, 1986, a day it was easy to get a ticket to Fenway Park. I was at Yankee Stadium that night, in town for a business trade show. It was real easy to get tickets to the Stadium then, too. The game was delayed by rain, then went on forever as the pitchers for the Twins and Yankees could not get the ball over the plate. It had to be one of the worst games I've ever seen. In the middle of the evening, a sign flashed on the scoreboard that Clemens had struck out 20. My friend sitting next to me started to wail, because he could have had Clemens in the 20th round of his fantasy draft and didn't take him.

Both teams have come a long way.

Sabermetrics and Moneyball get a mention on the show NUMB3RS tonight.

Jason Ellison continues to impress. He went three for five and scored the first run of the game. He's made the most of his first 30 AB, accumulating 14 hits, two walks and has stolen four bases in four attempts. We'll see if he can displace one of the geriatric Giants down the road. San Francisco wins in Pittsburgh 3-2.

A great pitching duel in New York as Roy Halladay outpitched Randy Johnson to win a close one 2-0. Roy outpitched the Big Unit, allowing only three hits and one walk as he pitched the complete game shutout. Johnson allowed 10 base runners, but it was a walk followed by a Hinske homer that did in Randy.

The Yankees offense wasted a good pitching performance for the second night in a row. The great Yankees teams of the late 1990's managed to win games like these. If the offense was down, the pitching would be stellar; if the pitchers had a bad game, the offense would score a ton of runs. That doesn't seem to be happening this season.

The homers have slowed, but Brian Roberts is still belting out the hits. He's only hit 1 home run since the 19th, but including his 2 for 2 so far tonight, he has 10 hits in his last five games, and he's hitting .382 with a .461 OBA.

Miguel Cabrera hit his first home since April 12th tonight. He's been hitting well since then with his average well above .300. But tonight he's added the power, and he's raised his slugging percentage for the year to .582. The Marlins lead the Phillies 5-1 in the sixth.

Livan Hernandez hits the Nationals third solo home run of the night to give Washington a 3-1 lead over the Mets in the bottom of the fifth. It's his 6th career homer.

C.C. Sabathia is off to a great start since coming off the DL. Through five innings tonight, he's struck out 15 in 17 2/3 innings. He's averaged 7.0 throughout his career; the K increase has helped him to a 1.02 ERA so far this season.

It looks like Baseball Tonight has its own blog! Not only is something like the whole cast writing, but they're getting guests like your Jim Thomes and George Wills. This should be fun.

Bleed Cubbie Blue links to an article on Dusty Baker's lack of use of young players.

When Dusty Baker took over as manager of the Cubs, he protested the “bad rap” he got in San Francisco for not “liking” young players.

Baker even said he wished he had a whole team of young players.

The Cubs don’t have a whole team full of young players, but they have had one of the most productive farm systems in baseball.

So has Baker beaten the rap? Hardly.

Baker has a perfect opportunity to work a pair of youngsters into important everyday situations, but he just won’t pull the trigger.

As veteran left fielder Todd Hollandsworth has struggled in the early going, Baker stubbornly refuses to give rookie Jason Dubois much more than a sip at a time.

The Cubs management could make it difficult for Dusty to use veterans by not signing them.

Some insight at Athletics Nation on how Eric Chavez fixed his swing.

Six players and both manager were either fined or suspended today for the Red Sox/Devil Rays brawl of last week. The suspensions are supposed to start tonight, but I assume they'll be appealed until the teams are ready to lose a start from their pitchers.

It's going to be a good night to watch baseball in Atlanta. First, Cox and La Russa become the first 2000 win managers to face each other since 1950. Second, old friends and teammates Mark Mulder and Tim Hudson battle against each other for the first time.

Mulder is coming off an impressive 10 inning shutout of the Houston Astros. He only threw 101 pitches in that outing, and is averaging 13.2 pitches per inning this season. Mulder has greatly cut down on his home runs allowed so far this year, giving up just 1 in 29 innings. Last year, he allowed 1 every 9 innings. Hudson is second in the NL in ERA at 0.96. He has not allowed more than 1 run in any of his four starts for the Braves.

Former Cy Young award winners face off in two games tonight. Roger Clemens host Greg Maddux in a battle of the two best pitchers of the 1990's. Clemens is still pitching that way, but Maddux has lost something. He used to be very good at keeping the ball in the park but has given up 39 homers in 236 2/3 innings dating back to the start of 2004.

Roy Halladay visits New York to face the Big Unit, Randy Johnson in the other battle of CYs. It should be an interesting weekend in the Big Apple, as I believe it's the first time a Wang has followed a Johnson in any rotation. That's a duo Bobby Cox should be managing. Rumors that the Yankees are thinking of hiring Dick Pole as a pitching coach are totally unfounded.

Enjoy!

Omar Vizquel is worried that Jose Mesa's feud with him isn't over:

"I am going to wear some extra padding because I'm not going to take any chances," Vizquel said. "If he hits me, I'll be ready. He still throws hard."

The feud developed between the once close friends when Omar showed up Mesa in an intersquad game, and then when Omar said some unkind things in his autobiography.

Mesa says it's over:

He insists he has no plan of hitting Vizquel in the head, back or any other body part.

"He's a professional. I'm a professional," Mesa said. "He's going to play his game, and I'm going to pitch my game. What happened is in the past. It's over."

Yes, these are grown men.

In the mail today was Larceny and Old Leather by Eldon Ham. It looks at the mischievous legacy of major league baseball. I'll be reviewing this book soon.

Here's a clever idea. A Curt Schilling "Bobble Ankle" figure is for sale with, you guessed it, an ankle that bobbles up and down. When you buy the doll, you're also making a donation to ALS and the Shade Foundantion. It's a great way for Schilling and Sox fans to remember the 2004 World Series Championship, and help others at the same time.

Tony Gwynn has been suspended for criticizing the Mountain West Conference. The former Padres great and current coach of the Aztecs had this to say:

After a three-game series at the Colorado academy on March 24-26 was postponed by snow, the two teams were scheduled to play three straight doubleheaders at San Diego last weekend. Air Force asked the league to waive its makeup policy, and the MWC Joint Council agreed to reduce the series to four games.

The decision angered Gwynn, who told the San Diego Union-Tribune that it was "an absolute joke."

"You want to know why this conference gets no respect in baseball? It's because of stuff like this," Gwynn told the newspaper. "It's hard to get credibility when they do stuff like this. We've got people around the country laughing at what's going on in the Mountain West Conference."

Tony was a true professional when he played the game, and it sounds like he doesn't tolerate people running the game in a haphazard manner. Good for him. Maybe the people who run the conference should also sit down with Tony and figure out how to improve things.

Wade Miller had a positive rehab start last night in Pawtucket.

Miller made his third rehab start, the first against Triple-A hitters, when he took the mound for the PawSox against Scranton/Wilkes Barre. He threw five scoreless innings in the PawSox' 1-0 win, allowing five hits (two infield bleeders) and two walks while striking out three. The Sox want him to make one more rehab start, meaning he could be in Boston by the end of next week for the start of the team's next homestand against Oakland and Seattle.

The Red Sox are down two starters, so the sooner Miller gets to the big club the better.

At the end of this article on Brandon Lyon there's a nice scouting report on the closer's four pitches. Since he has two types of fastballs, he actually appears to have five pitches.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

Kevin Brown retired the last 11 batters he faced, but leaves the game trailing 3-1 after seven. Brown only walked 1 and struck out five. What hurt him this evening were the balls in play that turned into hits. However, with the offense the Yankees have, they should be able to win a game where the starter only allows 3 runs in seven innings.

The Angels are the perfect team to go against pitchers like Brown and Mussina. They just put the ball in play, and with Brown and Mussina unable to overpower them, they keep finding holes. Eight of eighteen Angels who put the ball in play today against Kevin have been rewarded with base hits through four innings, and the LAAOA lead NY 3-0.

The Angels take a 1-0 lead in the top of the third. Figgins singles, steals second, then he goes for third and Guerrero hits the ball through the spot vacated by A-Rod. A perfect hit and run on the steal of third. Brown then gives up a double to Anderson that Sheffield bobbles and Guerrero scores. No error on the play, however, which I don't understand.

Brandon Inge led off the Tigers game with his third triple of the year. I thought that was pretty good for a former catcher, but Inge has a decent number of triples in this career (16 including tonight). He hit seven last season, and the ten over 2004-2005 ranks 10th in the majors. The Tigers lead 3-0 in the bottom of the first.

The Writers is a web site with a collection of works via various writers involved in sports and sports journalism. I was happy to see one of my favorite people from my ESPN days, Marty Aronoff, writing on the site. Stop by and say hi.

A very rare blown save today by Joe Nathan. Since becoming the closer for the Twins, Nathan had converted 50 of 53 chances, including a 6 for 6 this season. Of course, it wasn't all Nathan's fault as an error by Castro made the run unearned. It's also not a loss; the Royals and the Twins have moved to the tenth. If you blow a save, it's a lot better to get the win than see the team lose.

Angel Berrora got KC going in the ninth with a double. He's somewhat perfect today, going 2 for 2 with 2 hit by pitches. I though hitting batters was supposed to intimidate them. :-)

Baseball Blogger is a new blog covering the game. Stop by and say hi.

The double header between the Marlins and Rockies in Denver has been postponed. Those of you looking forward to the Smith-Kim matchup will have to wait for another day.

The Brewers and Cardinals are being delayed by rain and the game hasn't started.

Update: Looks like the Brewers and Cardinals will be getting underway about 2:35 CDT.

Greg Zaun hit his third homer of the season as the Blue Jays come back from a 3-0 deficit to take a 5-3 lead on the Devil Rays. Currently at .581, Zaun has the highest slugging percentage on the Blue Jays with 10 of his 20 hits going for extra bases. He's a 34 year-old catcher with a career .380 slugging percentage so don't expect this to last.

Update: Check out the comment on Josh Towers. The Blue Jays win 7-4.

In the mail today, National Pastime by Stefan Szymanski and Andrew Zimbalist. It's a look at the business of Baseball in the US and soccer in the rest of the world. I'll have a review after I've read the book.

Do you know what this reminds me of?

"The problem is when you're playing a team with a manager who somehow forgot how the game is played, there's problems," Schilling said on a Boston radio station Tuesday. "This should have been over a little bit ago. Lou's trying to make his team be a bunch of tough guys, and the telling sign is when the players on that team are saying, 'This is why we lose 100 games a year, because this idiot makes us do stuff like this.' They [Rays players] said that on the field."

It reminds me of this:

Schilling said he was wrong in some of his past comments that indicated steroid use in baseball was greater than what he told the committee.

“I made a mistake,” Schilling said. “Being called on that (at the hearing) made me actually start to look at the subject matter instead of guess about it.”

So is Schilling exaggerating again? How many players said that, Curt? Who were they? Curt, at this point, doesn't have a lot of credibility when he's not under oath.

It looks like a slugfest Thursday given today's pitching matchups. Colorado offers the most baseball and likely the most fireworks as the Marlins face the Rockies in a double header. The first game should be very good as Jason Jennings host A.J. Burnett. Jennings has a pretty good ERA this season despite a lot of walks and pitching in Coors. Burnett is just shutting down lefties this season; they're hitting .200 against him with no homers and a .246 OBA.

In game two, journeyman Travis Smith will face Byung-Hyun Kim, both making their first starts of the season. This one has a 15-12 score written all over it.

And you never know when Kevin Brown will pitch his last game, so you better watch. :-) He takes his 8.25 ERA against the Angels and John Lackey this evening. Brown is not fooling anyone, having given up twenty hits in 12 innings pitched.

Enjoy!

I'll be on Sports Bloggers Live Extra today at 12:15 PM EDT. We'll be talking about Schilling, Dykstra, Clemens and the Yankees.

To follow up last night's Mike Mussina post, the NY Times reports that Mussina's velocity was down last night:

While Mussina's velocity was a few miles an hour lower than normal -the radar readings listed his fastball at around 87 m.p.h. - Torre said those figures were erroneous. He said that Mussina was throwing a cut fastball and that was the reason for the decreased velocity. But Mussina admitted that his velocity was off; he said he was "hoping for a little more" on his fastball.

Mussina has surrendered 43 hits in 29 innings. Opponents are batting .361 against him. That basically means the hitters who have faced Mussina have combined to perform like hitters who could win a batting title in most seasons.

"It's a lot," Mussina said. "It bothers me. If you're not pitching well and don't feel as crisp as you want to be, you're going to give up hits."

As I mentioned in the comments above, part of the problem may be that Mussina has become predictable. Maybe in the next start he needs to throw nothing but knuckle curves for a couple of innings to get the batters used to something else, then come back with the fastball. It will look a lot faster at that point.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

Great defense and great base running in the DBacks-Dodgers game. With one out and Drew on first, Jeff Kent popped up foul down the first base fence. Tracy went for it, but had a bad angle. Counsell called him off and made a great catch as he hit the wall and fell into the stands. Drew, seeing that he was going in, tagged and made it to second easily. Nice play to get the ball (and hold on) and nice baserunning.

Of course, one play later Drew over runs third and is thrown out after an infield single by Bradley.

Was Bonderman really good tonight, or did the Indians give up after being blown out? Bonderman threw only 90 pitches in 8 innings, allowing only two runs. Was he just in the strikezone or did the Indians stop battling him? If anyone saw the game, please leave a comment.

The Indians offense has been very disappointing this season. They're scoring less that four runs a game after 20 contests.

In case you missed the tonight's broadcast on TPSRadio, you can download the archive here.

Shea Hillenbrand has two more hits tonight and another hit by pitch. He's been hit five times but only walked once. I looked up in the Lahman database players who have been hit at least five times and drew fewer walks than hit by pitches in the same year. It's happened 42 times. Most recently was Mike Kinkade, who was hit 16 times for the Dodgers in 2003 while walking 13 times and Einar Diaz who was hit 10 times that year while walking 9 times the same year.

The more I look at Mike Mussina's stats, the more I think he's approaching the end. He just keeps getting hit. The Angels have eight hits tonight in six innings, and two home runs have made the score 5-1 Anaheim. The Moose is just not striking out enough people given the defense behind him. He's throwing a lot of pitches, which tells me the batters are willing to take pitches or battle him with lots of fouls. Mussina needs to make an adjustment. He's probably needed to make that adjustment for two years, but pitchers have a difficult time accepting the loss of their fastball. Mussina won't survive with an ERA over 5.00.

A-Rod homered again tonight, his eighth of the year. If he hits another, I believe he ties a record for consecutive games.

Mark Grudzielanek hit for the cycle today as the Cardinals won their 11th game in 12 tries. And he did it the hard way, needing the triple as his last hit. Congrats to Mark! The Cardinals were the one team I felt really confident about calling a division winner. They're playing like they're going to run away with the division again.

The White Sox picked up their second one-run loss of the season today as the Athletics broke a 1-1 tie in the bottom of the ninth when Scutaro singled in Durazo. Jermaine Dye was playing shortstop that inning. The White Sox infield was banged up, and Crede was tossed from the game when he was hit by the pitch but the ump did not award him a base. The ump said Crede leaned into the pitch; you never see that called.

Again, a lost fly ball, this time by Rowand, gave the Athletics the boost they needed to win. The White Sox have had a three weeks of very good luck; they have to expect a little of the bad now and then.

Curt Schilling joins David Wells on the DL with a bone bruise on his repaired ankle.

Schilling's injury, which happened last Saturday at Tampa Bay, affected the same ankle that was covered by a bloody sock in last year's postseason.

He said he felt a sharp pain on his first pitch to Travis Lee in the sixth inning. Lee hit an 0-2 pitch for a double, driving in the tying and winning runs in the Devil Rays' 6-5 victory. Schilling stayed in the game through the seventh.

"The way it was explained to me was that the ankle bone was just not ready to take the force I put on it the other day," Schilling said. "I knew when I threw the pitch I had done something. ... I think it was the hardest pitch I've thrown all year."

Doctors told him that if he continued pitching without rest "there was a very legitimate possibility that we could break the bone and the season would be done," said Schilling, who is 1-2 with a 7.13 ERA. Last season he was 21-6 with a 3.26 ERA.

It looks like John Halama will be moved into one of the two slots. Wade Miller is not ready to return yet.

Sounds like this is a golden opportunity for the Orioles to put more space between them and the Red Sox.

The Oakland Athletics defense did a good job of bailing out Kirk Saarloos today. Saarloos walked 5 today, but four double plays by the Oakland infield helped erase most of those runners. Street induced the last of those DPs when he entered in relief.

Freddy Garcia has also just allowed 1 run so far. He's doing it the old fashioned way, having only allowed four hits and two walks through 7 innings.

Do you think the Atlanta Braves know Tom Glavine too well? Leo Mazzone must go talk to the hitters each time they face Tom and tell them everything he knows about what Glavine does wrong. The lefty is now 1-7 vs. his former team. In those eight games he has a 9.15 ERA and has allowed 65 hits and 21 walks. I really wonder if Tom tips his pitches, but it's only something that Mazzone knows about.

Kip Wells got his walks under control today for the Pirates. He had issued eighteen free passes in 23 2/3 innings coming into today's game, but shutout the Astros for seven innings issuing only one walk. The veteran bullpen of White and Mesa pitched two perfect innings to preserve the shutout.

The Astros have now lost five in a row, being shutout in three of those games. They're hitting .202 over those five games, 33/163.

The Baltimore/Boston game has been postponed due to rain.

Jon Weisman at Dodger Thoughts makes the case for and against Hee Seop Choi.

Rather than concentrate on OPS, I look at the fact that he's drawn 112 walks in 645 AB. Even though he only has a .355 OBA, the 112 walks tells me he has a good eye for the strike zone. I'd much rather take a chance on him than a Shea Hillenbrand type, who hits but doesn't walk.

Also note, that if Choi were putting up these numbers as a catcher or second baseman, there would be no argument about his playing every day.

Andy Pettitte is not pitching well today, but he's not being hurt too badly either. He's allowed eight hits and a walk through four innings, but only two runs. Pittsburgh even has two triples and a double, but have not plated many runs. After the Bay 1-out tripled in the third, Pettitte struck out the next two batters. He's still down 2-0 after four as Kip Wells has given up just three hits.

Tom Glavine has walked two of the first three batters he's faced today. That's 15 walks he's allowed now in about 23 innings.

He then got Franco to ground the the third baseman, and Brian Jordan devesated Matsui on the takeout slide at second.

Update: Glavine gets out of the inning with another grounder to third.

If you want to see the future of the AL in action, tune in tonight to the Devil Rays at the Blue Jays. Scott Kazmir takes the hill against early season sensation Gustavo Chacin. Kaz has been susceptible to the extra-base hit this year as opponents are slugging .443 against the lefty. Only four of the 19 hits off Chacin have gone for extra bases.

If old lefties are more your style, check out the Braves and the Mets. A rejuvenated Mike Hampton brings his 1.17 ERA to Shea against former Braves pitcher Tom Glavine. Hampton's allowed a decent number of base runners this season, but opponents are only hitting .125 with runners in scoring position against him. Glavine's had control issues this season. For his career, he walks a batter about once every three innings. This season, it's worse than one every other inning.

Finally, the Diamondbacks go for their eighth straight quality start as they send Brad Halsey against the Dodgers and Jeff Weaver in a battle of former Yankees. Halsey made his career debut at Dodger Stadium last June 19 and pitched a solid 5 2/3 innings, picking up the win. Jeff Weaver has good stats at Dodger Stadium, but he only has a 5-8 record to show for it in his 18 starts there.

Enjoy!

Magglio Ordonez needs hernia surgery and will likely miss 2 to 3 months of the season.

It's not clear how much he'll be missed. The Tigers are tied with Boston in runs scored per game at 5.7, 2nd in the AL. Ordonez made almost no contribution to that. If the Tigers can stay at that level of offense, Ordonez should give them a big boost when he returns.

The weekly Baseball Musings radio show will be on TPSRadio tonight and every Wednesday at 8 PM EDT. Check out their other sports programming as well. You can listen at any one of these links:

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The Diamondbacks can take over first place if they can finish a sweep of the Dodgers tonight. They won a squeaker over night, a 3-2 victory that almost turned into another Dodger comeback:

Choi flew out to left for the second out, leaving it up to J.D. Drew to push at least the tying run, standing just 180 feet from home, across the plate. Drew took the first two pitches for balls, and with the crowd on its feet on a 3-2 count, he hit a smash up the middle.

It ricocheted off Lyon's glove and was gathered in by the sure-handed Craig Counsell, who threw over to first for the final out.

Luck works in both directions.

There were a couple of comments left over night that the White Sox/Athletics game was pretty bad. The White Sox lost it on an error by Jermaine Dye when he dropped a routine fly ball. Ray Ratto describes it as a Lucy skit.

Facing Chicago's Mark Buehrle, who had already won games that lasted 1:51 and 1:39, with Bruce Froemming and his squash-court strike zone behind the plate to help usher along Buehrle and Oakland's Tim Hudson as impersonated brilliantly by Rich Harden - it was a platinum opportunity to come out, get a stadium blanket, watch a game and still be home in time to watch "The Shield."

Now if that isn't the national pastime at its best, you just don't know how to have a good time while keeping your car running in the parking lot.

But therein lies the game's inherent beauty - the realization that on any given night, everything you know to be true about the game turns out to be utterly false, and delicious, messy fun because of it.

There were five errors, two wild pitches and a balk to go along with 27 hits and eight walks. It wasn't a night for pitching and defense.

Kendall, Chavez, Kielty, Byrnes and Swisher each had two hits to break out of slumps. Oakland is not an inherently bad offensive team. They're going through a collective slump. If they collectively come out of it, runs will be plentiful in the Coliseum.

It wasn't a good night for closers as Jason Isringhausen and Armando Benitez both sustained injuries. It's not clear at this point if either of them will be placed on the DL, but the management of both teams is preparing for the possibility.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

J.T. Snow drives in the go-ahead run for the Giants with a triple in the fifth. That give Snow a single, double and triple tonight. He needs the homer for the cycle, but he hasn't hit a dinger this year.

Update: Ramon Hernandez hits the first pitch of the top of the 6th out to right field to tie the score at 2.

Mark Buehrle is getting some defensive help tonight. The White Sox have turned a double play in each of the first three innings. Harden has allowed 1 run, which is probably enough for him to lose tonight. :-)

Update: The Oakland Athletics scoreless innings streak ends at 26. Kotsay drove in Ginter to make the score 3-1 White Sox in the bottom of the fifth.

Eric Milton gave up four home runs tonight. It's the second time in his career he's allowed four homers in a game. It happened last year on June 9th against the Chicago White Sox. He came into tonight with the most HR allowed since the start of 2004 with 49, and he's extended that lead tonight. Jamie Moyer is next on the list with 47.

Keith Foulke, on for a two-inning save, gives up a two run shot to Miguel Tejada. Tejada joins Ramirez and Rodriguez at the 25 RBI level tonight.

Jose Reyes had an at bat tonight that epitomizes what's wrong with his never walking. In the bottom of the 7th, Reyes stuck out swinging at a ball head high. It was the level of his eyes; he had no chance to hitting the pitch. At this point, there's absolutely no reason to throw the man a strike. Twenty games into the season, he has not drawn a walk or a hit by pitch.

Shea Hillenbrand has drawn one walk. But when he puts the ball in play, he gets hits. If you are not going to walk, you better be able to hit in the high .300s. With his 3 for 4 tonight, Hillenbrand is hitting .388. And while he has only 1 walk, he's gotten himself plunked 4 times for an OBA of .422. It doesn't matter how you get on, just get to first.

Alex Rodriguez will lead off the 8th inning. If he homers, he'll have hit a solo, two-run, three-run and grand slam homer.

I have a request in to David Vincent, the keeper of the SABR home run log, to see if that's ever been done before.

Update: I just spoke to Bob McConnell, who used to keep the home run log for SABR. He doesn't believe anyone has hit for the HR cycle in the major leagues. I'm waiting for David Vincent to confirm that.

Update: The Angels are out in the 8th. A-Rod coming up next.

Update: Just saw the replays of the homers. None of them were cheap. All to the deepest part of the park, left center.

Update: The Angels have brought in Woods, a lefty.

Update: A-Rod hits a hard fly ball to center for his first out of the evening. No record, but an excellent night nonetheless.

Update: David Vincent confirms that the homer cycle has never happened. Mark Whiten had 12 RBI in his four homer game, the only player to have 10 or more RBI on his 4 homers.

Nick Johnson hit his first home run of the season tonight, but then left the game with an injury to his left knee. I've no idea at this point if it's bad, but Nick just can't seem to stay healthy.

Update: It doesn't look like a serious injury. Johnson fouled a ball off this leg.

A-Rod hits his third home run of the night off Colon, this time a grand slam. That give him a two-run, three-run and grand slam tonight. Can he get the solo shot for the home run cycle?

Update: A-Rod will be coming up momentarily in the 6th inning.

Update: There are two on with Alex coming to the plate. No cycle here, just a record.

Update: This is A-Rod's third three homer game and his 38th multi-homer game. It's a personal best in RBI; he had two 7-RBI games previously.
Update: No homer, but Rodriguez singles to drive in Bernie Williams for his tenth RBI of the game. He ties Manny Ramirez for the ML lead in RBI for the moment.

Update: Giambi's walk and Posada not hitting into a double play means A-Rod will get another chance at a four-homer night in the 8th at the latest.

Albert Pujols hit his fifth double of the year tonight and is fast approaching 200 for his career (he needs six more). Given that Pujols is only 25, should we start thinking about Albert breaking the doubles record?

The record is 792 by Tris Speaker. Bill James believes a record becomes soft when the yearly leader's total is about 1/18th of the record. For the doubles record that would be 44 a season. Over the first four years of his career, Pujols is averaging 47 doubles a year.

Albert is entering the peak of his career. He's already had two seasons of 50 doubles. If he can put together 250+ doubles over the next five years, he'd enter his 30's about 350 away from the record. That's 35 doubles a year for a player starting to decline. If he lay a very good foundation over the next five seasons (maybe with a couple of 60 double seasons), he'll have a shot at Speaker.

Update: Pujols hit his 2nd double of the night. He's 3 for 4 and has driven in all four runs for the Cardinals this evening.

Alex Rodriguez adds another homer against Colon. He's now 16 for 39 vs. Bartolo with five doubles, a triple and five home runs. The five RBI tonight gives him 20 on the season and puts him up with the league leaders.

The top three RBI men in the majors are featured in tonight's Orioles-Red Sox game. Tejada leads with 23 and Roberts has 22. Manny tied Brian in the Red Sox five-run second inning, driving in two. All three have more RBI than games played this year.

Update: Manny adds three more RBI with a three run homer to take the major league lead.

Alex Rodriguez takes Bartolo Colon deep in the first inning to give the Yankees a 3-0 lead. It's A-Rod's fourth career homer off Colon in thirty eight at bats. He has 15 hits against Bartolo, 10 for extra bases.

I wanted to follow up the scoring position post from Sunday with a graph. (Click on the image for a larger view.)

As you can see, the trend line's slope is pretty close to 1, meaning that the if you want to predict a player's BA with runners in scoring position, you'll make a pretty good guess if you pick his career average.

The Braves have plated three runs so far against Pedro Martinez in the first. The Braves are doing a good job of getting the bat on the ball; they're not hitting the ball hard, but the balls are finding holes.

The Houston-Pittsburgh game has been postponed.

Jeff Kallman at The Catbird in the Nose Bleed Seats remembers the recently departed Earl Wilson. Wilson hit 35 home runs in 740 AB as a pitcher, a rate of 1 HR every 21 AB. Lots of position players wish they had that kind of rate.

Military service had kept Wilson from becoming the first black player on the Red Sox, the honour falling in due course to Pumpsie Green, and now he would be traded to the Tigers (in June) for an outfielder named Don Demeter. “And Earl Wilson hit more home runs as a pitcher for Detroit,” fumed the journalist David Margolick, still steaming after all those years, “than Demeter hit as an outfielder for the Red Sox.”

There are lots of excellent pitching matchups tonight. The best may be at Shea, where John Smoltz takes the mound for the Braves against Pedro Martinez and the Mets. Smoltz and Martinez are 1-2 in the NL in strikeouts per 9. Once difference between the pitchers this season is that Pedro has done a much better job of putting away hitters with two strikes. They're batting .064 vs. Pedro (4/64) but .222 vs. Smoltz (14/63). A .222 average might seem pretty good, but this year NL hitters are averaging .190 when they have two strikes.

Matt Clement and Rodrigo Lopez hook up again after a dazzling duo on April 21st. The Red Sox took a 1-0 victory in that game, the only run coming due to an error. Both pitchers are among the league leaders in ERA. Both are keeping the ball in the park, each having allowed just 1 home run so far. Since the Orioles and Red Sox are 1-2 in home runs hit, we'll see if that holds up tonight.

It's the battle of the Jo(h)n's in Washington as Lieber and the Phillies face Patterson and the Nationals. Both pitchers are very stingy issuing walks this season. Lieber has allowed 2 in 29 2/3 innings, third in the majors. Patterson has only allowed 4 in 21 innings, helping him to an 0.86 ERA.

There's two in the Bay area tonight as Mark Buehrle faces AL ERA leader Rich Harden in Oakland and Adam Eaton takes on Jason Schmidt in San Francisco. Buehrle pitches so fast that east coast viewers can watch the whole game and still catch all of Letterman. Harden has only allowed 1 run all season, and given the way the Athletics offense has been playing lately, he'll need to allow negative runs to win. :-)

(Aside: shouldn't the pitcher from MIT wear the number i? It would be especailly appropriate if he pinch ran.)

Adam Eaton has gotten especially good run support so far, with the Padres scoring 15 runs in his 21 2/3 innings pitched. Schmidt has been a buzz saw at home, allowing the opposition just a .169 batting average in three starts there.

Enjoy!

There's a good graphic on Baseball Tonight Extra showing that since Mark Prior's MLB debut, he's had the highest K per 9 rate of any pitcher in baseball (400 IP minimum). And the best thing is they got it from the Day By Day Database! Now, if I could just get them to include a hyperlink...

Redleg Nation interviews Cincinnati Post beat-writer and spring training blogger Marc Lancaster. I liked his take on Adam Dunn:

RN: What about Adam Dunn? He seems like the same type of regular guy.

ML: He is. In a different way, he is. He’s just a fun-loving guy who doesn’t – and I don’t want this to sound the wrong way, because I don’t think of it like this – he doesn’t take it too seriously. I mean, he works his butt off at what he does, but he’s never going to let it define him. And I think that’s a very healthy thing. You can really get caught up in stuff, as tense as the season is, and he has, I think, a really good attitude toward how to approach this game.

If you remember, in the past, when people were approaching that Major League strikeout record, they’d sit out the last six games of the season, or something. Jose Hernandez did it with Milwaukee a few years ago. And Adam was just like, “Whatever. Bring it on.”

And the truth is, there was a list of guys in baseball last year who would not have traded their entire set of numbers for Adam Dunn’s. A really short list. Pujols, Bonds, Rolen, maybe. Not a whole lot of guys who wouldn’t have taken exactly what Dunn had, strikeouts and all, considering all the other production he put up.

He’s an unbelievable talent, he really is.

John Hickey talks to Richie Sexson about the first baseman's slump. He also provides a chart showing how Richie usually turns around slow starts.

David Wells injured his foot last night against the Orioles:

The 41-year-old southpaw left the game after sustaining what initially was diagnosed as a sprained right foot while trying to field a ground ball in the fourth inning. He was taken for undisclosed tests at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where the Sox frequently send players for MRIs.

Johnny Damon summed up Boston's pitching woes:

``Our pitching staff is pretty banged up,'' said Sox center fielder Johnny Damon [stats, news], who was 3-for-3 with two walks. ``I said all along in spring training, if we can stay healthy, we'll be fine. We have Curt Schilling, who's not totally healthy. We have Wade Miller [stats, news] (rotator cuff) and now David Wells, and Matt Mantei got hurt. We just need to stay in the thick of things.''

The Diamondbacks are surging toward first place with a four game winning streak. They're 1 1/2 games out after defeating the Dodgers last night behind strong pitching by Javier Vazquez. Vazquez's performance was a microcosom of his best seasons; lots of strikeouts, few walks and scoring on homers.

The Diamondbacks starters now rank 5th in the NL in ERA, despite a high ERA by Vazquez. With Halsey and Webb pitching well, Ortiz and Estes holding their own, a return to the form Vazquez showed between 2001 and 2003 will give the Diamondbacks one of the best rotations in the division. A nice job so far by Joe G. Jr. to rebuild that staff.

Update: There's some speculation that Joe Garagiola Jr. might be headed to MLB headquarters to replace Sandy Alderson. That would be too bad for the Diamondbacks. Joe has done an excellent job in his tenure with the Diamondbacks, winning a World Championship faster than any other expansion team. Not all of his moves have been great (see Richie Sexson) but overall he's put together a very good team year-to-year. That's not easy to do.

From yesterday's Games of the Day:

The White Sox move their winning ways to the west to take on the Athletics. These staffs boast the top two team ERAs in the American League this year. Oakland sends it's weak link to the mound in Barry Zito. So far, his younger counter parts have out-pitched him. He'll face Jon Garland, who has improved in each start he's made this season, all wins. Garland gave up 3 runs in six inngings, than two runs in seven innings, then 1 run in 8 innings. He's due for a shutout tonight, and with the A's being the 2nd lowest scoring team in the AL that could easily happen.

Garland pitched a complete game shutout last night, as the White Sox stopped the Athletics 6-0. The Athletics have now gone 22 innings without scoring a run.

Garland has only struck out 11 in 30 innings. Given that his opponents have only 21 hits, he's either been very lucky or the Chicago defense is playing very well behind him.

Bill Ferris sent me this post on the correlation of winning in one-run games and winning overall. His nice graphs show the randomness of the whole thing. Notice that the correlation between overall winning percentage and winning percentage in one-run games is .57. That means, given any team, you could probably do as well guessing if they are above or below their overall percentage in one-run games.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The Astros are shutout for the fourth time this season as Pittsburgh defeats them 2-0. Jose Mesa picks up his 7th save in 7 tries.

Mike Piazza appears to be turning into a hitter that hits for power or doesn't hit at all. He's three for three tonight with two doubles; that gives him 15 hits on the season, 9 for extra bases. He's only batting .238. It's still early, but if this trend continues, Piazza should be dropped behind Floyd and Wright in the lineup.

Oliver Perez leaves the game with men on 2nd and 3rd and two out in the 8th. White comes in and gets Bagwell to fly out to end the inning.

Perez pitched very well, allowing four hits and walking only 2 while striking out 9. He had given up 16 walks in 19 innings coming into the game. He did throw over 120 pitches, and 80 were for strikes. The Pirates have to breathe a sigh of relief after this performance. The Bucs lead 2-0 in the bottom of the 8th.

Zach Day walked six while striking out two tonight vs. the Phillies. That gives him fourteen walks and seven strikeouts this season. He's not going to stay in the majors with pitching like that.

The Houston Astros seem to be the cure to Oliver Perez's problems. He's throwing a no-hitter through five innings and has walked only two to go with seven strikeouts. He has thrown 81 pitches so far, so it's not clear how long he'll go.

Update: Bagwell breaks up the no-hitter with 2 out in the 6th.

If you have a chance, catch the double play in the top of the first of the Braves-Mets game. With men on first and third, one out, LaRoche grounded back to the pitcher. The ball hit Heilman in the leg and bounded over to the third baseman. Wright didn't have a chance to get the runner at the plate, so he threw to first to get LaRoche. Wright, however, left third base open, so Jordan (who had moved to 2nd) took off for third. Reyes ran with him, and Woodward threw a perfect strike to a moving Reyes so to get the tag play on Jordan. Appropriately, it looked like a football play.

With two stolen bases tonight, Brian Roberts is in 2nd place in the AL with 9. Although a few people have had high numbers of home runs and stolen bases in a season, I wonder if anyone ever led the league in both? Especially since Ruth changed the game around 1920.

Throws Like a Girl attended the Clemens-Mulder matchup in St. Louis and writes her impressions of the game and the Cardinals fans.

This just made me laugh out loud. :-)

Troy Percival gets his first save of the season as the Tigers defeat the Twins 6-4. Radke did not walk a batter in his 6 1/3 innings, but the bullpen walked three to take the loss. Urbina and Percival were perfect in the setup and closer role, each striking out two of the three batters faced. Chicago's lead in the AL Central goes to 4 1/2 games.

Correction: Fixed Chicago's division. They were in the AL West for most of my life.

Here's a Phillies fan who is taking the Braves sweep well.

Lisa Gray makes a very good point today. If you're sitting in the stands and watching what looks like a triple play turn into a double play, you have no idea what's going on. Her solution: mike the umps just like in the NFL. Then, if a complicated play like that happens (or even the A-Rod play in the ALCS when the umps had to confer) they can turn the mike on and explain it to the fans in the stands (and the listening and view audience). Not a bad idea.

Fishstripes uses the Marlins day off to take a look at a couple of Florida prospects.

Monroe gets a hit with runners in scoring position for the Tigers. He singles with the bases loaded to tie the game at 4 in the bottom of the 7th.

Update: The Tigers take the lead on a ground out that should have been a double play.

Justin Morneau doubles in Nick Punto and Joe Mauer, all reaching with two outs in the 7th. The Twins take the lead 4-3 going into the 7th inning stretch.

Mauer is 1 for 3 with the walk and now has a .422 OBA.

Dan Agonistes reprints an article from the 1880's that explores the proper batting stance. The author finds that there are as many stances as there are good hitters. Some of the descriptions are pretty strange and are no longer seen on major league teams.

The Tigers are hitting today, but not scoring much. They've had 10 hits, but left seven on base. Detroit has been very good this year hitting with ducks on the pond. They hit .332 with runners on base this year, and .331 with runners in scoring position. They trail only the Twins in batting with runners in scoring position. The Twins are 1 for 5 with men in scoring position as well today.

Update: The Twins load the bases with one out in the sixth, but fail to drive in a run. They're now 1 for 7 with men in scoring position. Tigers still lead 3-2 in the middle of the 6th.

Balls, Sticks and Stuff rounds up the poor performance of the Phillies so far this year.

Carlos Guillen works Brad Radke for an 11 pitch at bat and finishes it with his first home run of the season. Dimtri Young follows up after an out with a solo shot down the line, and Monroe triples after that. Radke has now allowed seven home runs this season; it's a good thing he's only walked 1. Radke gets out of the first down 3-0.

What a great pickup Carlos Guillen turned out to be. He had steadily improving offensively during his career with Seattle; at age 28 he found himself with Detroit. He's now batting .403 with a .456 OBA. Imagine Carlos and Ichiro at the top of the Mariners lineup.

Given the Michael Lewis piece yesterday, I found this comment on Alex Cintron to be very interesting:

Alex Cintron's work habits have improved over last year when he drew the ire of management, and he's no longer swinging for the fences. Instead, he has returned to being the line-drive, contact hitter that got him to the majors. He's increasing his value more than anything the team could receive in a trade.

Alex is getting on base at a .444 clip this season, vs. .301 in 2004.

The Orioles visit Boston tonight holding a one-game lead over the defending World Champion Red Sox in the AL East. It's a good pitching matchup, too as Bruce Chen faces David Wells. As of this morning, the Red Sox had four starters in the top 20 among AL ERA leaders, with Wells at #20. Chen is tied for 17th. When the two faced each other in Baltimore last week, Chen was roughed up while Wells pitch eight shutout innings, striking out five and walking only 1.

Mark Prior has yet to allow an earned run this season. He'll face Paul Wilson as the Cubs host the Reds. The offenses for the two teams have the same OBA entering today, .330 (about league average). The difference in the offenses is that the Cubs get there with more hits, having a .266 BA vs. .248 for the Reds. More hits means more baserunners get moved, so the Cubs have outscored the Reds on a per game basis 4.7 to 3.8.

The White Sox move their winning ways to the west to take on the Athletics. These staffs boast the top two team ERAs in the American League this year. Oakland sends it's weak link to the mound in Barry Zito. So far, his younger counter parts have out-pitched him. He'll face Jon Garland, who has improved in each start he's made this season, all wins. Garland gave up 3 runs in six inngings, than two runs in seven innings, then 1 run in 8 innings. He's due for a shutout tonight, and with the A's being the 2nd lowest scoring team in the AL that could easily happen.

Finally, it the battle of the former AL East pitchers in LA as Javier Vazquez and the Diamondbacks visit Derek Lowe and the Dodgers. Derek's western career has gotten off to a much better start than Javier's, but Vazquez has pitched better than his ERA or his record indicate.

Enjoy!

Correction: Corrected Javier Vazquez's team.

John Perricone uses Micheal Lewis' NY Times Magazine article as a starting point to criticize Brian Sabean's 2005 construction of the Giants.

A team that a year ago was plagued by poor relief pitching and grounding into double plays got older, and slower, replaced one single guy in the bullpen, and is now plagued by poor relief pitching and grounding into double plays.

Former speedster Marquis Grissom is tied for 2nd the ML in grounding into double plays. No wonder they lead the NL with 22 team GDPs.

As posted yesterday, MLB.com is now offering blogs for budding writers who'd like to express their opinions about the game. Joe Choti, CTO of MLB.com just called to address some of my reservations about the program. I was concerned that bloggers would not have enough disk space or bandwidth to grow into major blogs. Joe assured me that the monthly limits are flexible; MLB.com would work with successful bloggers to get them the resources they need. That's excellent news for writers who want to take advantage of MLB.com's traffic in growing their blogs.

I want to thank everyone who has visited the site since writing and maintaining Baseball Musings became a full time job. March was my best month for traffic in the three years publishing this blog, and April is on target to do even better. Your visits are the most important way of supporting Baseball Musings, since high traffic attracts advertisers.

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When do you start believing a trend is more than a trend? When do you start believing a player or a team has some intrinsic ability to accomplish a feat?

The White Sox are off to a 9-1 start in one-run games (they're 6-3 otherwise, still very, very good). But last year they also did very well in one-run games, going 28-18, 2nd in the AL behind the Oakland Athletics (33-19). That makes them 37-19 in the closest of games under the guidence of Ozzie Guillen, a .661 winning percentage.

We're very close to this not being just luck. It all depends on what you think the White Sox intrinsic winning percentage is. One can argue that in one run games the winning percentage of any team should be close to .500. In games that close, the teams are by definition evenly matched, and the contest can turn on a bad hop or a single mistake by a pitcher (see Joe Blanton last night). If teams should play .500 in one run games, then we would expect the White Sox to win between 21 and 35 games given 56 opportunities (the 95% confidence interval).

If instead, we base it on the White Sox 2004-2005 combined winning percentage, .541, we get a 95% confidence interval of 23 to 38 wins. The White Sox are in this interval, but very close to the high end.

A better way to get a team's intrinsic winning percentage over this period is to figure what their winning percentage should be based on their runs scored and runs allowed. The White Sox under Guillen have scored 951 runs and allowed 895. That works out to be a winning percentage of .530 under Bill James, Pythagorean Formula. At .530, the 95% confidence interval is 22 to 37 wins in 56 games. Guillen's right at the top.

At this point the White Sox record in one-run games sits on the fine line between luck and skill. I had my doubts about Ozzie Guillen's skill as a manager when he took the job; I have to give him lots of credit for the success so far.

In this case, we're talking about games in which only one run is scored. The LAAOA just defeated the Oakland Athletics 1-0. It's the ninth 1-0 game in the majors this season. Last year, through this point in the season, there had only been one 1-0 score.

The Athletics can't hit their way out of a bag this season, but they're backing up their pitchers with great defense. I've seen two fantastic catches in the outfield tonight and good work by the infielders on double plays. The game is scoreless after six innings.

Update: Steve Finley puts one where no defener can get it, giving the Angels a 1-0 lead in the 7th. Blanton has now given up three home runs, all solo shots.

Kelvim Escobar is showing no ill effects from his elbow injury in his return to the majors tonight. He's struck out six Athletics through three innings. He has a great career K per 9 of nearly 8.0.

The White Sox eeked out another close win today, defeating Kansas City 4-3. Chicago is now 9-1 in one-run games. The Indians (who lost by 8 today) have also played 10 one-run games and are 3-7. The difference between the two teams in the standings (6 games) is almost entirely due to their difference in these close games.

Since we have 5' 7" players on our minds today, let's notice that David Eckstein is having a great season leading off for the Cardinals. He went 3 for 5 with 2 runs and 2 RBI in the Cardinals 8-5 win over the Astros. David now has 17 hits and 9 walks in 16 games for a .408 OBA. Fifteen of those 17 hits have been for singles (with two doubles). With Eckstein on base 26 times, however, he's only scored six runs. The two and four hitters in the Cardinals lineup have not hit well. When Walker and Rolen get rolling, I expect David will be crossing the plate more often.

The Washington Nationals gave a clinic today on setting the table. Wilkerson, Johnson and Vidro, the 1,2,3 hitters, reached base 11 times and scored eight runs. Wilkerson was a triple shy of another cycle. The team formerly known as the Expos earned an 11-4 victory over the Mets.

Reading the Bill James article this morning made me wonder if there was a way to study the situational hitting issue in a different way. I have compiled a database from Retrosheet of every play from 1974 to 1992. (Those are the years Retrosheet has complete seasons.) I decided to look at the data to see if anyone hit significantly better or worse with runners in scoring position over that time.

First, I do not mean to say this is a clutch statistic. My opinion is that it is very difficult to define a clutch statistic. For every situation you name, I'll come up with a subset within it that's not clutch. As you eliminate more and more non-clutch situations, you end up with a very small sample size of real clutch situations for players. But runners in scoring position (RISP) is a nice proxy.

I decided to study the group of players during that time frame who had at least 1500 AB. At 1500 AB, we're getting a good handle on the ability of a hitter. Someone who hits .300 over 1500 AB has a 95% confidence interval of .277 to .323. In other words, it's very unlikely for a .300 hitter to hit .260 over 1500 AB.

So for each player with 1500 AB from 1974 to 1992, I record their AB, hits, RISP AB and RISP hits. I took hits/AB to represent the probability of that player getting a hit. I used that probability to calculate a 95% confidence interval for the expected number of RISP Hits given the number of RISP AB.

There were 567 players in the study. Now, my expectation would be that 95% of the playes would be within the 95% confidence interval. In other words, given 567 players, I would expect 14 hitters to be above the interval and 14 to below the interval.

Instead, the study only found 10 players to be above their hit expectation and 4 to be below.

So if 567 players studied, 553 all had hits with runners in scoring position within the 95% confidence interval! Players hit with runners in scoring position just as we'd expect them to hit.

Here's a list of the players who hit above their expected level with runners in scoring position. Pat Tabler appears to have deserved his reputation.

Players Above 95% Confidence Interval

Player	At Bats	Hits	RISP AB	RISP Hits	Low End 95% CI	High End 95% CI	BA	RISP BA
Jay Bell	2444	627	535	158	118	157	0.257	0.295
Robin Ventura	1736	470	432	137	99	135	0.271	0.317
Greg Vaughn	1538	360	417	117	81	115	0.234	0.281
Mark McGwire	3123	772	781	220	170	217	0.247	0.282
Pat Tabler	3911	1101	1096	347	280	338	0.282	0.317
Scott Fletcher	4411	1155	1058	314	249	305	0.262	0.297
Larry Parrish	6792	1789	1717	491	417	488	0.263	0.286
John Ellis	1573	409	394	124	86	120	0.260	0.315
Rennie Stennett	3532	966	800	248	194	244	0.273	0.310
Frank Duffy	1864	422	415	118	78	111	0.226	0.284

Here's the list of players who hit below expectations. Mickey Tettleton, one of my favorites, is on the list.

Players Below 95% Confidence Interval

Player	At Bats	Hits	RISP AB	RISP Hits	Low End 95% CI	High End 95% CI	BA	RISP BA
Mickey Tettleton	2873	693	707	147	148	193	0.241	0.208
Dave Anderson	2026	490	461	93	94	130	0.242	0.202
Rick Schu	1564	386	348	65	70	102	0.247	0.187
Earl Williams	1518	365	398	78	79	113	0.240	0.196

My conclusion is that there's no difference between a player's overall batting average and his batting average with runners in scoring position that can't be explained by luck. If you'd like to play with the data, here's a spreadsheet you can download. As always, I'm interested in your comments on this experiment.

I've put the table of all players in the study sorted by RISP BA in the extended entry. Notice how the good hitters tend to be good with runners in scoring position.

Update: I was not able to fit the entire table in the extended entry. You can see the rest by downloading the spreadsheet and manipulating the data.

Randy Johnson didn't need the support today, but I'm sure he was happy to have 11 runs behind him. Johnson pitched a masterful game, striking out seven over eight innings, allowing only three hits and one walk.

More interesting, however, is one Andy Phillips, called up to fill the roster spot of Ruben Sierra the other day. Andy was two for four with a double and a homer this afternoon. In his short major league career, he has four hits, 1 double and 2 home runs. He has a career minor league slugging percentage of .509; he's at the peak age for power. Neither Tino nor Giambi is producing many big hits. Why not give the 28 year old a chance to play?

Sideny Ponson just missed a shutout, but gets a complete game win as the Orioles defeat the Blue Jays 7-1 to remain atop the AL East. Sir Sidney gave up five hits and walked four. He threw 131 pitches, which is one of the higher counts I've seen this season. The Orioles pitching staff is starting to look formidable.

Michael Lewis, the author of Moneyball, has an excellent piece in today's NY Times magazine. It's about how the quest for power can corrupt players, moving them from what they do well (getting on base, hitting to the opposite field), to what they do poorly (small players trying to hit for power).

It's one of the best written articles on baseball I've read all year. It's long but it's more that worth the read. At the heart of the story is the idea that power hitting can be learned. I have a copy of a study by Sig Mejdal, a NASA biomathematician. Sig was able to discern the effects of age and experience on offensive stats. Sig's work shows that players reach peak HR age at 27. But experience (how long you've been in the majors), keeps adding to a player's ability to hit home runs, even after ten years. So maybe we shouldn't be so surprised about Roberts and Belliard. Maybe baseball should just let good hitters develop, and see if the home runs come with time.

Make sure you look at the picture of Steve Stanley. Take a good look at the size of his arms. Here's a person who's never used steroids, and look at the size of his muscles. He's a 5' 7" monster. Looks to me like you can grow a lot of muscle with a good exercise regimen.

The theme for this afternoon is "recovering pitchers day." Randy Johnson has been less than dominating for the New York Yankees despite very good strikeout and walk numbers. He has been vulnerable to the long ball this season, giving up a homer about every five innings. He'll face the rejuvenated Pedro Astacio in the Bronx this afternoon. Pedro has yet to allow a homer in 22 IP, leading to his 1.64 ERA.

Sidney Ponson wasn't horrible against the Tigers his last time out. He'll need to do better than that against the Jays today as Toronto sends Roy Halladay to the mound. Roy appears to be returning to his Cy Young form of 2003, which would be a huge boost to the Toronto rotation.

Kerry Wood gets a chance to work out his kinks vs. a low scoring team, the Pittsburgh Pirates. At 3.0 runs per game, the Pirates are the lowest scoring team in the majors. They'll send Josh Fogg. Fogg has a much better ERA than Wood despite allowing almost has many HR (5 for Wood, 4 for Fogg). A big difference between the two is that batters are hitting just .188 vs. Fogg with runners in scoring position, while they're hitting .263 vs. Wood.

Finally, Brad Penny makes his 2005 debut for the Los Angeles Dodgers today. He'll be starting in Coors, where he has a 4.00 ERA in three starts. That's not bad. Jeff Francis, who has 12 walks and 7 strikeouts in 16 2/3 innings will oppose him.

Enjoy!

There's been a lot of pixels lit over Brian Roberts' home runs, but another second baseman isn't far behind. Ronnie Belliard hit his fifth home run of the season last night, helping Cleveland to a 5-2 win over Seattle. Ronnie has shown more power than Roberts over his career, coming into 2005 averaging about eight homers a year from 1999 on. But he has a .408 career slugging percentage and is sitting at .596 this season. Also like Roberts, he hit a ton of doubles in 2004. His 48 doubles were 2nd to Roberts' 50 among AL hitters last season. Have these two middle infielders discovered a way to turn doubles into homers? That would be alchemy at it's best.

David Leonhardt in the New York Times discusses a recent article in The Baseball Research Journal by Bill James. In the article, Bill argues that a method used to evaluate if clutch hitters exist is not a viable method.

All “real” skills in baseball (or anything else) are persistent at least to some extent. Intelligence, bicycle riding, alcoholism, income-earning capacity, height, weight, cleanliness, greed, bad breath, the ownership of dogs or llamas and the tendency to vote Republican . . . all of these are persistent phenomena. Everything real is persistent to some measurable extent. Therefore, if something cannot be measured as persistent, we tend to assume that it is not real.

Bill argues that too much noise in the data makes measuring of persistence of certain statistics nearly impossible. One thing I love about Bill is that if he feels he made a mistake in doing research, he comes right out and says it, and this is one of those articles. Mind you, he's not saying that clutch ability exists; he's saying that persistence studies can't prove that it doesn't exist.

Here's his conclusion about clutch hitting:

On (1), it is my opinion that this should be regarded as an open question. While Dick Cramer is a friend of mine, and I have tremendous respect for his work, I am convinced that, even if clutch-hitting skill did exist and was extremely important, this analysis would still reach the conclusion that it did, simply because it is not possible to detect consistency in clutch hitting by the use of this method.

So there you have it. Clutch hitting is an open question. Sounds like a great research project for a budding sabermetrician!

One thing I've noticed during my research time is that when I did long term studies of players hitting overall vs. hitting in various situations, the same players tended to cluster together, only in different orders. At the end of 2003 (when I still had access to STATS, Inc. database of situational hitting from 1974 to the present), I looked at slugging percentage with runners in scoring position from 1974-2003. The top 25 in that list were the same as the top 25 for overall slugging percentage from 1974-2003, just in a different order (I believe it was based on a minimum of 5000 overall AB). A study along those lines for batting average or OBA would go a long way toward showing the existence or non existence of this ability.

MLB.com has a new affiliate, MLBlogs.com. For about $50.00 a year, you can set up and write a baseball blog, powered by a special version of Movable Type. Plus, you have MLB.com behind you, meaning you have the potential for a lot of visitors.

MLB.com has some interesting people blogging. For staters, Tommy Lasorda. (I can't hear or see the name Tommy Lasorda without thinking of Fletch.) They have a groundskeeper, a fan whose specialty is catching foul balls, and talent from MLB.com.

I was thinking this is pretty good. Maybe I should move Baseball Musings there. And then I see the mistake they made in setting up users:

Your diskspace allotment
The 50MB of storage space you have with your membership.

Your actual diskspace usage
The amount of your total storage you are using currently; this figure is updated daily.

Your bandwidth allotment
The 250MB data transfer you are allowed with your membership per month.

When your pages are visited or files are downloaded, the data is transferred and this counts as bandwidth.

Just 250MB bandwidth? BaseballMusings sent that to Australia this month. That's not much for $50 a year. I get 19 Gig a month for $11. Plus tons of diskspace. Plus multiple MySQL databases (which is why Baseball Musings can bring you the Day by Day Database).

MLB.com is thinking small. Blogs are a great way to drive traffic to their site, promote MLB properties, TV, Radio, fantasy games, etc. Bandwidth is cheap. Diskspace is cheap. Give each user 30 gigs of bandwidth and 1 gig of diskspace to start. Encourage them to blog all the time and give them plenty of room to grow. Make the big baseball bloggers want to move there.

The tools look really good. They have WYSIWYG editing. I saw some mention that you will be able to link to statistics in your entries, but I couldn't find more details. And, of course, being linked by MLB.com is huge. But instead of offering fierce competition to sites like Baseball Musings, they're limiting their bloggers to six hours of this site's readership. My suggestion to new bloggers would be to use MLB.com as a way of getting started, and as soon as you get big, get your own domain.

Update: 4/25/2005. MLB.com tells me they are going to be flexible with disk space and bandwidth. See this post.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

Roger Clemens leaves after seven shutout innings, but Mark Mulder pitches for all intents and purposes a complete game shutout. The only problem is that Qualls continued Clemens great work and put up two gooseggs himself. I haven't seen if Mulder is coming out for the 10th. He's only thrown 95 pitches.

Update: Mulder does start the 10th, giving up a single to Jason Lane.

Update: A double play helps Mulder get out of the inning only throwing six pitches.

Update: The Cardinals win it in the 10th on a Larry Walker RBI single. It's the frst extra-inning complete game shutout since Roy Halladay went 10 on 9/6/2003, and only the 2nd one since Dave Stewart did the feat on 8/1/1990!

Dontrelle Willis goes to 4-0 with a win over the Cincinnati Reds this afternoon. Take a look at the boxscore for the Marlins pitchers. They used five, and all five have great ERAs. The team came into the day with a 2.36 ERA, leading the majors by 0.8 runs.

Roger Clemens and Mark Mulder are locked in a scoreless duel through five. Each has pitched five, allowing 2 hits and striking out 4. The difference is that Clemens has walked four. The big four for St. Louis are the only ones to reach base for the team; 2 singles and 4 walks. Mid-game, Clemens' ERA is down to 0.35

Cha Ho Park pitched a very decent game today. Jim Kaat was pointing out how effective Park was changing speeds, and how he had good movement on his sinking pitches. He did walk five, but he only allowed three hits and one run in 6 1/3. The Rangers will take that from Chan Ho every time.

Jae Seo was called up to make an emergency start today as Kaz Ishii goes on the DL. Seo has gone five shutout innings so far, not allowing a run or a walk. He's also pitching efficiently, and can probably finish the game at this rate.

Jaret Wright was just removed after throwing a pitch and grabbing his arm. I'm sorry to say that an injury to Wright could only help the Yankees at this point.

Brian Roberts hits number seven. It's interesting; last year he had 50 doubles and 4 homers. This year, he's only had 1 double to go with his lucky number of homers. It's as if the balls that were going into the gap last year are now going over the fence.

David Dellucci takes Jaret Wright deep in the 2nd inning to give the Texas Rangers a 1-0 lead. It's the fourth home run Wright has allowed this season; last year he only gave up 11 dingers the entire season.

Update: Teixeira and Mench hit two-run homers with two out in the third, and Wright is getting booed. That's six homers allowed this season by Jaret, more than half of what he allowed all last year. The Rangers lead 6-0.

I think part of the fan displeasure is how the inning happened. Wright gave up two singles, then the infield turned a DP to put a runner on third with two out. They gave Wright a chance to get out of the inning. Instead, he gives up hits, homers and makes an error to give the Rangers five runs.

The Twins/Tigers game has been postponed.

ESPN is reporting that Bonds is on crutches again. Bonds explains why on his web site:

I just wanted to give you an update of what happened Thursday, 4/21. I had some fluid drained out of my right knee because there was a little bit of swelling. By draining the fluid, it alleviates the discomfort. My doctor wants me to use crutches for the next couple of days to make sure the fluid doesn't come right back. This was merely a precautionary measure. My spirits are still high about my recovery as a whole and I can't wait to get back to rehabbing next week.

It's pretty obvious that he won't be back on May 1. His original estimate of 1/2 a season seems a lot more reasonable at this point.

This could be a big postponement day as rain and snow threaten games in New York, Chicago and Detroit.

The Astros and Cardinals meet again in St. Louis, this time with Houston sending Roger Clemens to the mound against Mark Mulder. Clemens is off to a terrific start after having a rather high spring ERA. Clemens leads the majors with an 0.43 ERA and has struck out 26 in 21 innings while walking only 2. Mulder found the truth in his last start against the Pirates after two lackluster performances to start the season.

Battling Clemens for the NL ERA lead today will be Tim Hudson, who has posted an 0.82 mark so far in 2005. He'll face the Phillies and Randy Wolf. Wolf has struck out over five times the number of batters he's walked this season; given the Braves low OBA of .300 he probably won't walk many more today.

Two very good matchups out west today. Shawn Chacon is back in the rotation and made to good first starts for the Rockies, allowing 1 run in each of his first two starts. He only pitched six innings in each, but the encouraging thing is that the starts were in Coors and the BOB, two good hitters parks. He'll face Odalis Perez, who is off to a 3-0 start for the Dodgers. Perez has not allowed a home run in his first 17 2/3 innings, and opponents are only slugging .230 against him.

The Padres visit the Diamondbacks and send Jake Peavy to the mound against Brandon Webb. Webb has only allowed 1 HR this year despite three games in either the BOB or Coors. Peavy continues his spectacular pitching of 2004, coming in with 26 K and only four walks in 20 2/3 innings pitched.

Enjoy!

Calvin Pickering was sent down to the minors yesterday. The Royals gave him 27 AB, and Pickering did not make the most of his opportunity. I guess there isn't room for Sweeney, Stairs and Pickering if two of them are hitting well.

The Giants offense has hit a snag. After a torrid ten games of scoring (6.6 runs per game), they've only managed two runs a game over their last five contests. Edgardo was hitting .488 with a .560 OBA and a .756 slugging percentage through April 17. Since, the numbers are .176/.333/.176.

If you look at the Giants players over this season, Alfonzo is the only player who has combined the ability to get on base with power. With 2/3 of the lineup making a lot of outs, there's not going to be many on base for the sluggers to drive in.

Brad Halsey pitched another nice game for the DBacks last night, holding the Padres to two runs over seven innings as Arizona went on to a 5-3 win over San Diego. It's giving me hope that the Diamondbacks will have a pretty good year. Take a look at how the DBacks starters are doing so far this season. Webb and Halsey are pitching very well. They're 5-0 combined. If those two can pitch well enough to be significantly over .500, the rest of the staff just has to tread water to have a chance at the playoffs. The real interesting pitcher on the list is Javier Vazquez. Look at his strikeout and walk numbers. Those are not the statistics of a pitcher with a 7.65 ERA. Quick and dirty DIPS gives him an ERA of 3.50. If Vazquez can improve that much over the course of the season, that would give the DBacks three more than solid starters, and that should be enough to compete.

The Day by Day Database is now up to date.

Cory Sullivan, the new Rockies centerfielder, has a double and triple in his first two plate appearances. Given that they're in Colorado tonight, there's a good chance of the single and homer. The Dodgers are losing 4-0 after three.

The Reds are really working Burnett hard tonight. Through three innings he's already thrown 72 pitches. The Marlins starters have been pretty efficient this year, especially Willis, Beckett and Burnett.

I'm enjoying seeing Jose Reyes having the same BA and OBA in the boxscore everyday. It's not so much that he hasn't walked, but he hasn't been hit by a pitch or even hit a sacrifice fly. This late, to have every plate appearance end in an AB is pretty unlikely.

Kevin Brown doesn't waste anytime giving up a run. Soriano singles, steals, moves up on a wild pitch and scores on a Blalock single. Texas gets off to a 1-0 lead and makes the slugfest prediction look good.

Update: Brown ends up giving up five hits, a walk and four earned runs in the first inning, raising his ERA to 12.86.

It's raining in Chicago, and the start of the game is being delayed.

Update: 4:00 PM CDT and it's still raining.

Update: The game has been called off. I have not seen a makeup date.

I don't like the current division setup. I don't like divisions being of different sizes, and I especially don't like the haphazard scheduling.

One of the problems is that you're trying to fit a schedule into a number of games (162) that was designed for a ten team leauge (18 games vs. every team), but also works very well for a league with two six-team divisions (18 games vs. divsion rivals, 12 games vs. teams in the other division).

One nice thing about six-team divisions is that you can have stretches where all the games are in the division, and all the games are outside the division. This was how the AL and NL were before expansion to 14 teams each.

In the past, I've written about reorganizing the leagues to eliminate the wild card and recreate better schedules; this usually means going to eight divisons, which means expansion. But if I'm willing to keep the wild card, we can have nicer scheduling without expansion.

The AL and NL are historic artifacts. There are no longer separate league offices; AL teams play NL teams during the regular season. The only difference between the AL and NL right now is the designated hitter. So let's drop the leagues and form five major league divisions.

Five divisions of six teams would yield five division winners. The playoffs would be brought up to eight teams with the addition of three wild cards, the three best 2nd place finishes. Teams would play 18 games against each of their division rivals for 90 games. The remaining 72 games would be divided among 12 teams from the other four divisions, three games home and three games away. Matchups are based on the standings from the previous seasons. The teams finishing 1,2,3 play all other 1,2,3 teams. The teams finishing 4,5,6 play all the other 4,5,6 teams.

I like setting up inter-division play like this because it gives a team that's on the rise a better chance to make the playoffs. It also provides an incentive for teams to be good; if you're good, you get other good teams to visit you, which should bring in more fans.

Here's how I see the divisons shaping up under this scenario:

1. The East Coast Division
• New York Mets
• Philadelphia Phillies
• Washington Nationals
• Atlanta Braves
• Tampa Bay Devil Rays
• Florida Marlins
2. The Northeast Division
• Boston Red Sox
• New York Yankees
• Baltimore Orioles
• Pittsburgh Pirates
• Cincinnati Reds
• Cleveland Indians
3. Upper Mid-West
• Toronto Blue Jays
• Detroit Tigers
• Chicago Cubs
• Milwaukee Brewers
• Minnesota Twins
• St. Louis Cardinals
4. The Spread Out
• Chicago White Sox
• Kansas City Royals
• Houston Astros
• Texas Rangers
• Arizona Diamondbacks
• Colorado Rockies
5. West Coast
• Seattle Mariners
• San Francisco Giants
• Oakland Athletics
• Los Angeles Dodgers
• Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
• San Diego Padres

Under this arrangement, the division winners would have been:

• Braves


• Yankees


• Cardinals


• Astros


• Dodgers

and the wild cards would have gone to Boston, Anaheim and Minnesota. Same teams as actually were in the playoffs in 2004. Playoff pairings can be based on record, with all division winners getting a higher seeding than wild card entrants. You can even do the division winner can't play a wild card from the same division so you can wind up with a Red Sox-Yankees semi-final.

My guess is that you'd get a better mixing of teams than we're currently getting with interleague play. The Cubs and White Sox might not play every year, but it would be pretty close to every other year. And if you're going to get the big draws into your stadium, you have to play well.

I'd love to hear comments on this.

Following up on a post from a week ago, scoring is still down about 1/2 a run from the same time last year:

First Nineteen Days	2004	2005
Games	230	237
Runs	2273	2205
Runs/Game	9.9	9.3
Home Runs	522	469
HR/Game	2.3	2.0

The Major League save percentage is up closer to where it was last year, however. Through the first nineteen days of 2004, it was 64.2% (115/179). So far through 2005 it's 61.6 (106/172).

The marquee matchup of the day is in Atlanta where the Braves host the Phillies tonight. It pits Brett Myers, second in the NL in ERA vs. Mike Hampton, tied for third with his teammate Tim Hudson. It's a recap of Sunday's game in which Hampton and Myers matched goose eggs for eight innings. The Phillies eventually won 2-1 in ten.

Myers success has come with a jump in strikeouts and a reduction in walks. He came into this season with a respectable 6.0 Ks per 9 and a less respectable 3.4 walks per 9. So far in 2005, he's struck out 20 in 20 1/3 innings while walking only 2.

Hampton isn't using the strikeout as a weapon; he's letting batters put the ball in play and having his defense do the work. He's already induced five double plays; taking five of the 22 men to reach base off the tally make his effective opposition OBA .207. Righties are only 12 for 55 against him, with only three extra-base hits.

If you're looking for a slugfest tonight, check out the Rangers playing at Yankee Stadium. Chris Young takes his +7 ERA vs. Kevin Brown's +9 ERA. Two good lineups vs. two struggling pitchers should produce some fire works.

Enjoy!

I forgot to mention earlier this morning that the Day by Day Database is up to date.

Baseball Zealot is a new blog covering all of major league baseball. He links to a post on Dusty Baker's handling of the bullpen that is similar to my post on Wedge.

Was Watching is a new Yankees blog featuring reviews of the games. He noticed Chacin's glasses last night:

Gustavo Chacin (who's full name is Gustavo G. Adolfo Chacin, by the way) is something with those shades. I've already seen some 'net references to him and Corey (Sunglasses at Night) Hart. Personally, the first thing I thought was "The dude reads too many comics and thinks he's Scott "Cyclops" Summers of the X-men." Turns out it's just a prescription thing - like that Punky QB Jim McMahon doing the Superbowl Shuffle.

I got more of a Roy Orbison impression from the glasses.

The Cleveland Indians got off to a 5-0 lead last night and slowly frittered it away into 6-5 ten inning defeat.

But their run production shut down after the second inning.

"Washburn made some adjustments and we didn't make any adjustments back," Wedge said. "We've got to do a better job of putting a complete game together when it comes to what we're trying to do offensively. We've got a ways to go to get to that."

What struck me about strategy, however was Cleveland's bullpen use. With Millwood at 91 pitches, Wedge starts playing the righty/lefty game. He ends up using five relievers to blow the game and a sixth to lose it.

I thought he should have stayed with Betacourt longer. Betacourt has been lights out this season, and struck out the two righties he faced, including Guerrero. If you let Rafael pitch the seveth, you save Rhodes for the eighth, and maybe you have a 2-run lead going into the ninth, and when Wickman gets in trouble you have a few more arms in the bullpen.

I'm sure there were good reasons for the matchups Wedege chose. But I hate to see a pitcher pulled when he's pitching great. It just leaves you less manuverability down the road.

Rich Harden tossed seven shutout innings last night to move into the AL lead for the ERA title with a 0.44 mark. That gives Oakland three starters in the top 10. As you can see here, if Barry Zito pitched decently, the Athletics would have four solid starters. Not bad for a team that stripped two front line pitchers over the winter.

The big problem with Oakland right now is that they only have three regulars who are getting on base at all. The good news is that four of the players with low OBAs are likely to improve; Kendal, Durazo, Chavez, and Hatteberg are all capable of much better numbers. When the collective slump ends, I expect the Athletics offense to jump from it's current 3.8 runs per game, worst in the AL.

Even though Pedro hadn't thrown many pitches, the Mets took him out early with a 10-1 lead. It's a good idea, as Pedro is somewhat fragile. He threw 88 pitches in 7 innings; if he can keep that up, the Mets will be able to leave him in long in close games.

Quite the duel in Baltimore tonight, and like in Washington, the game turned on a shortstop error. Matt Clement and Keith Foulke outdueled Rodrigo Lopez and BJ Ryan as the Red Sox pick up a 1-0 victory and move into first place in the AL East. Neither stater allowed an earned run, and both went eight innings. They should be among the AL ERA leaders come tomorrow morning.

Pedro Martinez, staked to a big lead, is being very efficient in dispatching the Florida Marlins tonight. He's only thrown 57 pitches through five innings, while still striking out five. The faster he eliminates batters, the longer he can go in the game, and the more likely he'll be to earn a win.

I turned on the NY-Toronto game in the 4th to get at look at Gustavo Chacin. Of course, he picks that inning to start getting hit. The Yankees are up 3-0 after getting men on 2nd and 3rd and Jeter hitting a sacrifice fly.

Chacin has a great motion. As he goes through his windup, he bends his arm behind his back to hide the ball for a second. I could see where that would give hitters trouble.

Doug Mientkiewicz slams Al Leiter with a bases loaded homer, giving the Mets a 4-1 lead in the 2nd. Al doesn't have his control tonight, having issued three walks this inning.

Chris Carpenter spun a seven hit complete game shutout against the Cubs this afternoon. It's the 7th complete game shutout of the season. Last year, at this time, there were only 4. It's also the 18th complete game of the year; there were only 7 at this point last season (and we still have this evening to add to things).

If you are going to hit .140 as a shortstop, you better be the best defensive player at your position. Guzman was not today. He made an error that allowed two runs to score in the 9th inning, handing the Braves an unearned victory. It was the worst possible time to boot a ball. Maybe the Nationals will get lucky like the Cubs have have Cristian injure his groin.

Upate: I'm told it wasn't a booted ball, it was a throwing error. Still, the post holds. He should be making an error in that situation. I just watched the play on Tivo. He did a good job getting to the ball in the hole on a very wet infield. He rushed his throw, however. It would have been a very close play if he had taken his time and set himself, but even if he didn't get the batter, it would have been a tie game at that point.

Also, Nick Johnson tried to hold the bag and reach for the ball. If he had come off the bag, he might have stopped the throw from going by and saved a run.

The White Sox take a 4-3 win over Detroit today, running their record in one run games to 7-1. Guillen is investing a lot in one-run strategies, the team being near the top of the league in stolen base attempts and outs invested in one-run strategies (CS+SH). They've also been very good at hitting sacrifice flies. The Gene Mauch managers live on.

Jayson Bay also breaks his home run drought, hitting his first dinger of the season in the fifth for Pittsburgh. Along with Oliver Perez, he's off to a slow start after a great 2004. His solo shot was only the fourth RBI of the year for the Pirate outfielder.

It's like a slugfest without the slugging in Minnesota today. The Royals and Twins have combined for 16 hits through three innings, only three for extra bases. Neither team has drawn a walk, and the Twins lead 7-5.

Johns Smoltz and Patterson are pitching terrific games through five innings. Patterson has struck out five while giving up just one hit. Smoltz has allowed a run on two hits while striking out six. Once again, the Braves offense is letting the big righty down.

I've been wondering why Guzman is still batting 2nd for the Nationals. Now I see the reason. He's there to sacrifice Wilkerson from second so someone else can drive him in. Heaven forbid Guzman could get a hit and turn it into a big inning. The Nationals are up 1-0.

The long drought is over. Jim Thome has homered. Down 3-0 in the fourth, Pat Burrell drew a walk to bring Thome to the plate, and Jim responded with a two-run dinger. Michaels and Pratt repeated the walk/home run combination to put the Phillies ahead 4-3.

Has anyone noticed that the NL is putting up better offensive numbers than the AL this season?

2005	AL	NL
Batting Average	.261	.260
On Base Average	.326	.331
Slugging Average	.410	.416

The NL is getting on base more and hitting for more power, despite having a pitcher bat. This has to be the best reason I've ever seen for getting rid of the designated hitter.

I think a big reason for this is the AL #4 hitters aren't getting the job done. There are 9 teams with aggregate #4 hitters with OPS under .800. If you can't get a .350 OBA and a .450 slugging percentage out of your cleanup guy, you have a problem. And lots of AL teams find themselves in that situation.

Willy Mo Pena continues to pound the ball for the Cincinnati Reds. He doubled in the first run of the game with two out in the first for the Reds. He now has 13 hits, 11 for extra bases and is slugging .971.

Pena and Dunn are a potent slugging duo so far. If Griffey and Kearns can come around, they can turn Cincy into a high power offense.

Via Instapundit, it seems some bloggers are making a go of it through donations.

With enough tips, John Aravosis, a Washington writer, political consultant and creator of the Web site StopDrLaura.com, can cut back on chasing consulting dollars and spend more time blogging, he told readers last week on http://americablog.blogspot.com.

Aravosis' fund drive is getting help from a high-powered pal, Philadelphia's Duncan Black, the economist known as Atrios, at http://atrios.blogspot.com. Atrios has asked readers to help Aravosis.

On his blog, which he says averages 120,000 page views a day, Atrios said all should give to their favorite bloggers, and wealthy readers should pony up "a grand or two." He no longer solicits tips - although he doesn't turn them down - and relies instead on blog ads.

I'm glad this is working. I'm trying to work to the point where advertising will support this site. Until then, your donations are always welcome. Ten dollars today will go a long way toward making this site self sufficient. I hope you'll join the almost 200 people who gave during March.

We'll see how fast Mark Buehrle can pitch today as the White Sox visit the Tigers. Last time out he won 2-1 in 1:39. He's facing Jeremy Bonderman, who has pitched well against the Royals but was hit around by the Indians. Bonderman's last start was 2:25 in a 7-1 victory; maybe they can break 1:30 today.

The Cubs will be without Nomar Garciaparra today, and possibly for a while. His groin injury leaves Chicago without their starting middle infielders as they take on the Cardinals once again. Given the way Nomar was hitting, they can't be any worse with his replacement. :-)

Al Leiter faces his replacement, Pedro Martinez this evening in Florida. It's a rematch of their last start where Al bested Pedro over seven innings 2-1, but the Mets took home the victory vs. the bullpen. Both have nearly identical ERAs, but Pedro is allowing half the base runners.

The Yankees get a look at Gustavo Chacin in Toronto tonight. Chacin made his first start against the Bronx Bombers last September and also earned his first win that night. He's yet to pitch a bad game in the majors. New York will send Mike Mussina to the mound. Mussina continues to show poor control, having walked 8 batters in 16 2/3 innings this season.

A very good pitching matchup in Seattle as Rich Harden goes to the hill vs. Ryan Franklin. Franklin is 5th among AL ERA leaders entering today, but a good outing by Harden will move him to the top of the list (he's a couple of innings short of qualifying for the lead). It's a contrast in styles, too as Harden is a power pitcher striking out over 8 per 9, while Franklin might manage two Ks over a complete game.

Enjoy!

I've noticed a few pitchers striking out a lot of batters but still getting hammered. I'm finding little evidence, however that there is anything different vs. previous seasons. For example, here's a table showing the results when a starter goes at least five innings and strikes out at least 1 batter per inning (I'm using 1993 as my starting point because offense has been fairly consistent over that period):

Starters, Min 5 IP, 1 K per IP	1993-2004	2005
Games Started	9533	89
Record	4299-2599	35-18
Winning Percentage	.623	.660
ERA	3.40	3.36
Strikeouts per 9	10.7	10.5
Hits per 9	7.9	7.9
Home Runs per 9	0.94	0.80

What I'm seeing is that pitchers who go less than five innings with lots of strikeouts are getting hammered more than usual:

Starters, <5 IP, 1 K per IP	1993-2004	2005
Games Started	2603	11
Record	0-1632	0-8
Loss Percentage (L/GS)	.627	.727
ERA	13.56	15.22
Strikeouts per 9	11.3	12.0
Hits per 9	17.4	19.6
Home Runs per 9	2.79	3.68

So pitchers have had bad outings with lots of strikeouts for a long time. This year, the bad outings are extemely bad, but it's only 11 games. It's not a trend. Striking out a lot of batters is still a very good thing.

Jake Westbrook may be the unluckiest pitcher in the AL so far this year. He's 0-4 after being shutout by the LAAOA last night. He's only gotten two runs in support. He's pitched well enough to win in three of his four starts and now has two eight inning complete games.

Bartolo Colon pitched even better, going eight shutout innings before turning the game over to K-Rod for the save. Francisco Rodriguez is one closer who is not having any trouble. In six innings he's allowed just two hits while striking out 9.

The Mariners beat the Oakland Athletics 7-6 as Barry Zito had another poor outing. He did settle after the Boone grad slam, not allowing a run over the next five innings. Maybe that woke him up.

Adrian Beltre went 3 for 5 last night, but so far is having a disappointing season for the money he's making. He only has 3 extra base hits, and his OBA leaves a lot to be desired as well.

Javier Vazquez pitched seven shutout innings against the Giants last night to earn his first win of the season. The interesting thing is that it's the first game this season where he hasn't been striking batters out. In each of his first three starts, he struck out more than a batter an inning and was hammered. He struck out 2 last night and pitched a shutout. Has be been trying to hard to strike out batters?

Finally, the Dodgers starters continue to dominate the Padres batters. Woody Williams was just as good for the Padres last night, but the bullpen allowed the tying run in the 8th and the winning run in the tenth. Drew appears to be breaking out of his slump. He didn't have a hit until 4/10, but has been the J.D. Drew of 2004 since.

The Day by Day Database is now up to date.

Ben Sheets had a game tonight that's been all too typical this season. Sheets went six innings, struck out seven and walked only one. He threw 109 pitches, 74 for strikes. Given that information, one might assume he had a pretty dominant game. Instead, he gave up six runs, four earned, including two home runs.

We saw this with Schilling on Monday and Randy Johnson last night. Lots of strikeouts, few walks, and no domination of the opponent. I'm going to look at this tomorrow to see if it happens more often than I think.

Meanwhile, Oswalt struck out eight and walked none, and wsa perfectly dominating, pitching a complete game and using only 96 pitches to finish the four hitter.

Oliver Perez still has not found his control. He only lasted four innings tonight, throwing 92 pitches, forty four for balls. He's now walked 16 batters in 19 innings pitched. Perez was a huge strength for the Pirates last year; now he's turning into the weak link in the rotation. With 11 reaching base by a hit or a walk, he's lucky he only allowed three runs tonight.

A reader sent this article about a 16-year-old phenom named D'Arby Myers. He sounds too good to be true:

His physical skills are immense. He's 6 feet 3, 170 pounds, and the way he runs, throws, catches and hits would cause any scout to list him as a top prospect.

He also has a 4.0 grade-point average, with A's in chemistry, U.S. history and American literature. A baseball player with brains. What an unbeatable combination.

But what shows that he can make it to the top of his profession is the way he plays the game. There's never a swing in the batting cage that he doesn't enjoy. There's never a moment when he's in uniform that he doesn't feel as if he has found his life's calling.

"It's the sport I feel connected with," he said. "I played all the other sports … basketball, football, even hockey … but there's something about baseball that brings me joy inside. Since I was little, all I've wanted to do was play ball."

Is he the next teenager to make the majors?

The military is being honored in San Diego tonight, and the Padres are wearing camouflage jerseys. When the camera catches Woody Williams at the right angle, his shirt blends in with the crowd and his torso becomes difficult to see. It's impressive how well that works.

The Padres lead 1-0 in the second.

Barry Zito gets off to another bad start. Bret Boone takes him deep for a grand slam. Boone is now just three RBI short of 1000.

I just turned on the Cubs-Cardinals, and the St. Louis announcers are describing a groin injury to Garciaparra that sounds pretty bad. I have not seen a replay, but it appears he was in a great deal of pain. If this is a severe injury, it will put the starting middle infield for the Cubs out of action.

The Washington Nationals pitch their first shutout, stopping the Braves 2-0. Zach Day did the bulk of the work, going seven innings allowing 3 hits. He did walk four, however. The Braves are another team that hasn't walked much this season, so Zach must have been a little wild.

The White Sox win a blow out tonight, defeating the Tigers 9-1. Jon Garland lowers his ERA to 2.57 as he goes eight innings allowing only 1 run. The White Sox now have a 3.38 team ERA. At that level, they can afford to continue to be a low scoring team.

The White Sox even managed to draw three walks tonight, bring their season total to 22. They came into tonight's game last in the majors in walks, trailing the Devil Rays by 16! I guess they really miss the batting eye of the Big Hurt.

Nomar Garciaparra, off to a very slow start, volunteered to hit lower in the order and was dropped to sixth today by Dusty Baker.

No one is quite sure what is causing Nomar's slump. He had a great spring. My theory is the great spring was the cause. This was Nomar's first camp in Arizona. Although not a mile high, Arizona is pretty high above sea level, causing the ball to jump. Garciaparra found it easier to hit in this situation, and may have gotten into a bad habit. Someone's going to need to go back to his Boston batting tapes and see what the shortstop was doing differently.

Matsui, A-Rod and Sierra hit consecutive doubles off Ted Lilly to put the Yankees on top 2-0 in the 2nd inning.

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With Brian Roberts' great start, you might wonder if it's luck or a real change in his ability. One way to gage this is to look at the probability of Roberts hitting six home runs in 57 at bats. (This is similar to the calculations made for Ichiro Suzuki as he approached the hit record last year.)

Roberts came into this season with 12 home runs in 1507 AB, meaning the probability of Roberts hitting a home run in a given AB was about .007989. Not very high. First, I'm going to ask the question, what is the probability of Roberts hitting at least 6 homers in 57 at bats based on his previous career. The answer is somewhere between 6 and 7 in a million. (6.6E-6) The other question I ask is what is the 95% confidence interval? If we give Roberts lots of 57 AB chances, 95% of the time he'll hit home runs between these two numbers. The 95% confidence interval for Roberts is 0 to 2.

So even with a small sample size of 57 at bats, we're looking at very rare event. It's rare enough that I'm inclined to believe that his previous career no longer represents Roberts' ability. We can estimate a lower bound on the new probability of Roberts hitting a home run by finding the smallest probability that includes 6 HR in the 95% confidence interval. That's .04, or about five times his previous probability of hitting a homer. So if you give Roberts 500 AB with this probability, he'll hit about 20 homers this season. Time will tell how well we called this.

There's not much news about Bonds rehabilitation. But the little that's out there is not good.

The Mets travel south to Miami to face the Florida Marlins. Aaron Heilman, fresh off his one-hitter, will once again face Josh Beckett. Josh is third in the NL with a 0.45 ERA (Clemens is at 0.43, Myers at 0.44). It's difficult to pick an ace on the Florida staff right now, but Beckett certainly has a claim to the title.

The Yankees send Carl Pavano to the mound against former Yankee Ted Lilly and the Toronto Blue Jays. It will be a nice contrast between what they have and what they could have had. The Yankees starters are 3-6 with a 5.94 ERA. They Yankees starters have two problems; they're allowing a lot of home runs (1.6 per 9 innings) and balls put into play against them are going for hits. Their strikeout and walk numbers are very good, but the opposition is smaking the ball when they put it in play. Opponents have a .317 BA against the Yankees starters, and they're slugging .505. Toronto starters, on the other hand, are only allowing a .249 BA and a .410 slugging percentage.

The Pirates face the Reds this evening, and the interest here is Oliver Perez. He enters the game with a 9.60 ERA. He's walking close to a batter an inning. Paul Wilson takes the hill for Cincinnati. The Reds offense hasn't clicked yet. They have struck out more than any other team while being near the bottom in walks drawn.

The Cubs renew their rivalry with the Cardinals in St. Louis. Carlos Zambrano faces Jeff Suppan. The Cardinals are not doing a great job of getting on base. Their 37 walks are tied for the lowest in the NL. Walker, Eckstein, Pujols and Edmonds have drawn 26 of those.

Out on the West Coast, the Dodgers try to keep their winning streak going. They'll send Derek Lowe to face the Padres once again. Last time out, Lowe pitched a complete game shutout against tonight's opponent, Woody Williams. Williams has allowed 20 home runs in each of the last two seasons. He's given up four already in 2005 and opponents are slugging .559 against the former Cardinal.

Enjoy!

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The Red Sox have given Tim Wakefield an interesting contract. It's a club option for each year in the future. He'll earn a base $4 million, and incentives can drive that higher. Basically, as long as he continues to pitch well, he'll be a Red Sox player. Being a knuckleballer, that could be another decade.

Dan Shaughnessy sums up why Tim is such a great deal here.

This really makes me go back and wonder what management in Pittsburgh was doing in the early 1990's. They alinenate Bonds so he walks, then release Wakefield instead of trying to figure out why he was having trouble. They give big money to Van Slyke when he's at the end of his career. No wonder that great team went down the tubes so quickly.

John Eisenberg of the Baltimore Sun is wondering where the fans have been the last two nights:

The weather was splendid. The Orioles were in first place, coming off that euphoric weekend sweep of the Yankees. For the first time in years, they're sending out signals that they have the potential to put together something real.

What a strange time to have a small-market moment.

But that's precisely what they had, setting a record for the smallest crowd in park history (16,301) Monday night, and then attracting just 1,708 additional fans last night.

I don't think it's the Nationals. John gets it right here:

But while conceding that the Nationals are having some impact, I still think the Orioles' seven straight losing seasons have cut the deepest into their ticket-buying public.

Too many real fans have been turned off or are waiting for the team to keep playing winning ball for longer before they come back.

Winning brings the fans out. If the Orioles keep their winning ways going for another month, we'll see big crowds again at Camden Yards.

The Day by Day Database is up to date.

The White Sox win another low scoring close game, beating the Twins 3-1 tonight. I don't know how Orlando Hernandez allows 10 hits and one walk in six innings and doesn't allow a run, even with the defense turning double plays. It seemed whenever El Duque got into trouble, he induced the GDP, pop up or strikeout. It must have been nerve racking for White Sox fans to watch that game.

Chicago now has the best record in the AL and a two game lead on the Twins.

A nice return to the rotation for Matt Morris tonight. Six innings, one walk, seven strikeouts and a win. He only used 71 pitches to get through his six innings; that kind of efficiency in the future will take him deep into the games.

Yadier Molina collected two more hits and has raised his batting average to .154. He's getting in the range of good hitting pitchers now. :-)

The Mets had 15 hits tonight against the Phillies; 1 double, 1 triple and 7 home runs, a team record. The Mets only had 12 HR in their first 13 games. Victor Zambrano, the pitcher, hit the triple. It was the first triple by a Mets player this season.

Brian Roberts keeps belting the ball. His sixth HR tonight sets a new career high for the Orioles leadoff man. Three RBI take his total to 17 in 13 games.

If he keeps hitting like this, do the Orioles move him to the middle of the order? Or do they continue to take advantage of his high OBA at the top and see if he can drive in and score 100 runs at the of the order?

I've been out all evening, but the last thing I exepcted to see when I came home was Hideo Nomo outpitching Randy Johnson. With eight strikeouts and no walks, you would have expected the Big Unit to have a big night. But Eduardo Perez took him deep twice, driving in three runs. So far, the Yankees are not getting their money's worth out of Randy.

Francis and Estes didn't get rocked as I expected. Estes gave up six walks and six hits but only yielded 3 runs in five innings. Francis went deeper, allowing only four hits over 7 2/3 innings. He's in line for the win if the bullpen can hold the game. It's 3-1 Rockies in the 8th.

The starters in the Indians Royals game did not get the job done, each giving up five runs. But the bullpens have been great. The KC relievers have gone 2 2/3 allowing 1 hit, while the Indians have gone 3 1/3 striking out six.

Brazoban is brought in to get the save for the Dodgers, and walks Overbay to start the inning. Lee singles to put men on first and second with no outs. Despite having two saves, Brazoban has allowed a lot of baserunners this year.

Update: Brazoban strikes out Miller for the first out.

Update: Cirillo K's for the 2nd out.

Update: Magruder pops out, and the Dodgers win another. The offense keeps rolling.

Richie Sexson hits his fourth homer of the year in the first inning, a three run shot. All four homers he's hit this season have been with men on base. He