Ken Griffey hit a two-run homer in the top of the ninth Tuesday night, turning a 9-1 effort into a 9-3 loss. The homer, however, sends Griffey past Sammy Sosa on the all-time home run list, fifth behind Bonds, Aaron, Ruth and Mays. Since the start of the steroid scandals, Griffey gained as much stature as Sosa lost. Are people generally happy Ken passed Sammy, or doesn't it matter?

Manny Ramirez hit two more home runs for the Dodgers Wednesday night, having no problem with PETCO Park. Los Angeles won 7-2, extending their lead to 3 1/2 games. Manny this season has now played about 1/4 of his games with the Dodgers (27.5%), but has 41% of his home runs with his new team and 37% of his RBI. At this point, I have to believe Fox is rooting for a Dodgers-Red Sox World Series, just for the Manny story line. Of course, Brewers-Twins would save a lot of travel costs. :-)

T.J. Simers tries to get the Dodgers to talk about the playoffs, but they won't bite:

"Hopefully, we'll make the playoffs," Manager Joe Torre said, and sometimes he sounds so clueless.

The Brewers could mess it up if they fail to win the wild card, but right now I've got Lowe opening against the Cubs, Chad Billingsley following and then everything riding on the No. 3 starter.

If it's Penny, the guy who led Florida to a World Series win, and a healthy Takashi Saito closing the game -- the Dodgers have a shot of being a real force in postseason play.

"I don't disagree," Torre said when I listed the ideal rotation, placing Hiroki Kuroda fourth and everyone else beyond Lowe, Billingsley and Penny as no factor.

Lowe pitched previously in the World Series on two days' rest, so he can go in Game 4 for the Dodgers, setting up Game 5 for Billingsley. I just need to know where there's a good restaurant in Chicago.

"You sick so-and-so," Torre joked, "but I say that with love."

The Arizona announcers sounded totally defeated after the Arizona loss yesterday. Do they really think the Dodgers are incapable of another long losing streak? Or that the DBacks can't rip off six in a row at home against the Reds and Giants? I think Torre is right. It's much too early to be thinking playoffs.

Mike Jacobs went deep against St. Louis today for his 30th home run of the season. That matched Dan Uggla for the club lead and represents the fourth time the Marlins employeed two players with 30 homers. Hanley Ramirez stands at 29, so this will likely be the first season in which the Marlins produce three 30-HR players.

They only saw one season of thirty or more home runs in their first seven years of existence, 42 by Gary Sheffield in 1996. Since 2000, they've only missed in 2002 and 2006.

The Cardinals lead 2-1 as Albert Pujols hits his 32nd home run. That equals his total from 2007, Albert's career low.

Bleed Cubbie Blue lets out a sigh of relief after the Cubs big win against the Reds on Saturday. Alfonso Soriano hit three home runs to help the Cubs score 14 runs, as many as they scored in their six game losing streak. Soriano's home run total at Great American Ballpark goes to ten in just 92 at bats. A 9.2 AB/HR rate translates to 54 home runs over 500 at bats. Maybe the Reds should have been the team to pursue Alfonso when he was a free agent.

Nick Swisher homered for the only score so far in the White Sox/Indians game. Nick's power returned after the all-star break. He hit 12 home runs in 93 games before the break, 11 in 40 games since.

Javier Vazquez has not allowed a hit through four and walked just one batter as the White Sox lead 1-0.

It looked like Justin Morneau might not reach 20 RBI in a month for the first time this season. He came into Sunday afternoon's game against the Athletics with 18 RBI for August. He knocked in four runners today, including himself with a three-run homer. That brings his total for the season to 108.

Jim Thome hit career home run 536 to tie Mickey Mantle for 14th on the all-time list. His first inning shot gave the White Sox a 2-0 lead which they have maintained into the third inning.

Alex Rodriguez hit a solo shot for the Yankees, cutting the Toronto lead to 4-1. That's 547 career for Alex, placing him one behind Mike Schmidt for 12th on the all-time list. There's a 15 home run gap between Schmidt and Reggie Jackson, so Alex would need a very good September to catch Mr. October.

Geovany Soto drives in seven of the Cubs fourteen runs tonight, knocking out two doubles and a homer. He's doing a great job of getting on base in August, and his three extra-base hits bring his August slugging percentage over .500. The Cubs needed all seven of those RBI as they down the Pirates 14-9.

Vernon Wells home run streak continues as he goes deep tonight, his third game in a row with at least one long ball. He has four in that stretch, more than a quarter of his season total of 14. He's not just hitting home runs, as his three hits tonight give him nine in those three games. Combined with a strong six inning effort by Roy Halladay, the Blue Jays defeat the Rays 6-2. Tampa's lead over the Red Sox is down to 3 1/2 games.

The Texas Rangers pounded out ten extra-base hits tonight against Detroit, two double, two triples and six home runs. The only managed four singles. Byrd doubles twice, Metcalf homers twice, and Hamilton takes home a triple and a homer. It's the sixteenth time this season a team collected at least 10 EXBH in a game and the second time for the Rangers.

Even better, Kevin Millwood pitches a complete game, giving up six hits and one run. It's his second complete game of the season and lowers his ERA to 5.24.

Ken Griffey, Jr. hit his first home run with the White Sox in the second inning off R.A. Dickey. That long ball ties him with Sammy Sosa for fifth on the all-time home run list. It took a while to get there, as his last home game on July 30th. Griffey went 13 games without a dinger.

Dickey did not come out for the third inning, and Chicago leads Seattle 10-1 in the top of the fifth.

Jon Lester and Jeremy Guthrie came through with their pitching duel. The Red Sox took a 2-1 lead into the top of the eighth on solo homers by Bay and Varitek, while Huff provided a long ball for the only Baltimore run. With Ortiz on first after an error, however, Rocky Cherry pitches to Jason Bay, and Bay delivers for the second time, a two run shot to put the Red Sox up 4-1 and give them some insurance for the eighth and ninth innings. Bay's 3 for 4 tonight and is now slugging .569 for Boston.

Evan Longoria hit his third home run in four games since the all-star break, as the home run derby appeared not to hurt him. The homer was his 19th of the season; he's now just four behind Sizemore and Quentin for the AL lead. If Longoria were to catch the leaders and win the home run crown, he'd be the first rookie to do so since Mark McGwire in 1987.

Scott Kazmir pitched seven scoreless innings as the Rays down the Athletics 4-0. They'll at worst maintain their 1 1/2 game lead in the AL East.

Ryan Howard continues to make up for his slow start with an amazing July. He plates the first run of the night for the Phillies with a solo home run in the second. The gives him nine home runs in 14 July games and 17 RBI. The Phillies lead 2-0 in the top of the third.

Steve Kroner takes a look at some of the odd stats of Jack Cust.

One way to put Cust's season in perspective: When he gets to the plate, it's more likely that the ball won't be put in play than it will be. He has 364 plate appearances. Add two hit-by-pitches to his walk and strikeout totals and you get 183.

He's no action Jackson. He's leading the team in OBA despite a .229 BA. Those types of players can be shut down by good pitching however. If pitchers throw him strikes, he can't walk, and then he just becomes Dave Kingman.

Grady Sizemore likes his chances in the home run derby due to the short rightfield porch at Yankee Stadium:

"I may be a little more pull-conscious, but other than that, I'm not going to change my approach," said Sizemore.

Along with bringing bench coach Jeff Datz to pitch to him for the derby, Sizemore said he would try to use the fact that his left-handed swing is an advantage at Yankee Stadium. The right-field fence there is 11 feet closer to home plate than at Progressive Field.

If Berkman hits lefty (and why wouldn't he?) there will be five left-handed batters in the derby. My guess is this is why A-Rod isn't competing. It will be difficult for a right-hander to win this competition.

Rick Ankiel hit well tonight, going 3 for 3 with a home run as the Cardinals shut out the Pirates 6-0. The centerfielder drove in half the St. Louis runs, two of them coming on the long ball. The home run set a milestone for Ankiel as well. He's now hit more home runs (33) than he allowed as a pitcher (32).

Ryan Howard stays hot, leading off the second inning with his 28th home run of the season. That gives Ryan eight home runs in his last 10 games. He has 16 RBI to go with the eight dingers. He also extends his hitting streak to 14 games. Chase Utley carried the team early, Howard is carrying the team now.

I was being driven back from the auto repair shop this morning, and the radio was playing "Sunglasses at Night." I thought, I'll have to do a Corey Hart post today. Luckily, Hart homered this afternoon, helping the Brewers to an 11-1 victory over the Rockies. It was the 15th homer for Hart, bringing his slugging percentage up to .510 for the season. Fielder hit his second triple of the year, matchng his career high, and Gabe Kapler knocked out three doubles as the Brewers picked up a total of seven extra-base hits in the game.

Ryan Howard hit his 26th home run of the season to give the Phillies a 2-0 first inning lead over the Cardinals. The shot allows Howard to pass his teammate Chase Utley for the major league lead in home runs. After hitting five in June, Howard has six dingers in ten July games.

Update: Howard goes deep again in the 6th. If he keeps this up, he won't want to stop for the all star break. The Phillies lead the Cardinals 4-1 in the sixth.

Miguel Cabrera goes four for four with two homers as the Tigers pound the Indians 9-2. He came into the evening with a .471 slugging percentage and raised it to .495. Miguel has now collected ten his in his last five games with four home runs. This is what the Tigers expected when they made the trade in the off season.

Alex Rodriguez homers off Tim Wakefield to start the Yankees second inning, giving the Yankees a 1-0 lead. The homer is A-Rod's 536 career shot, tying him with Mickey Mantle on the all-time list. Alex reached that level four years younger than the Mick.

I wondered how the crowd would react, and despite the news on the gossip pages, Alex received a huge cheer and came out for a curtain call. Number 13 is now 13th on the all-time list.

J.J. Hardy has been dyn-o-mite lately, hitting two home runs today to bring his July total to six. He hit six through the first three months of 2008. He also doubled, making him 15 for 25 on the month with nine extra-base hits. The 11-6 win over the Pirates gives Milwaukee a 5-1 record in July, and they've outscored their opposition 39-23, over two runs per game.

Alex Rodriguez picks up the Yankees first hit of the night in the fourth, his 16th home run of the season. That gives him 534 for his career, tying him with Jimmie Foxx for 14th on the all-time list. Up next is Mantle at 536. I suspect that will be a big deal if he hits that one at Yankee Stadium.

The Yankees trail the Rangers 2-1 in the fifth.

Update: Another milestone to watch for is Alex's 540th home run. His seasonal age in 2008 is 32. When he hits home run 540, he'll hold the record for most home runs through age 34.

B.J. Upton takes Masterson's first pitch over the fence in centerfield for a 1-0 Rays lead in the bottom of the first. The stands look as full as I have ever seen in Tampa Bay for a weeknight game.

Update Sheilds is dealing tonight. He's retired the first nine Red Sox batters, four on strikeouts. He's thrown just 31 pitches, 22 for strikes.

Update: Pedroia singles with one out in the fourth.

Update: With two out, Manny walks and Lowell singles to tie the game at one.

Adam Dunn hit his 20th home run of the year and drove in three to help the Reds to a 9-5 win over the Cleveland Indians. That's seven straight years of 20 homers for Dunn. He just missed eight straight with 19 in his rookie season of 2001.

He's hit at least 40 every season since 2004, and halfway through the season he's halfway there. He's in a very tight group at the top of the HR chart since the start of the 2004 season:

Most HR, 2004 through June 29, 2008

Slugger	Home Runs
David Ortiz	190
Alex Rodriguez	188
Adam Dunn	186
Albert Pujols	185
Mark Teixeira	160

That's impressive company for the Cincinnati slugger.

Carlos Delgado hits a second home run for the Mets and drives in nine runs as the Yankees fall 15-6. With 44 RBI on the season, 1/5 of Delgado's came in the afternoon end of the double header. With the win, the Mets sweep all three games at Yankee Stadium.

Mark Teixeira and Brian McCann hit back-to-back home runs in the fourth inning to put the Braves up 4-0 on the Seattle Mariners. For Teixeira, it's the second home run of the game. The Braves first baseman is suffering a power outage this season. Even with those long balls, his slugging percentage is just .454, over 100 points lower than 2007 and about 70 points below his career average. That's going to make him a lot less desirable as a free agent next winter.

Update: Teixeira adds a third home run, this time a two-run shot in the seventh. It's his second three home run game, the first came against the Orioles on 7/13/2006.

Marcus Thames hit another home run last night, bringing his total to 14 for the season. With nine of his last eleven hits for home runs, Thames climbs high on the all-time list for highest percentage of hits for home runs.

All time leaders, percentage of HR for Hits (100*HR/Hits)

Slugger	Percentage
Mark McGwire	35.9
Kevin Roberson	32.8
Ryan Howard	30.5
Russell Branyan	29.2
Adam Dunn	29.0
Marcus Thames	28.8
Dave Kingman	28.1
Ken Phelps	27.8

Given Thames's poor OBA, he's much more like Dave Kingman than Dunn or Phelps.

Alex Rodriguez and Jason Giambi hit solo home runs in the second to put the Yankees up 2-0 on the Padres. That gives Alex 531 for his career. That puts him three behind Jimmie Foxx for 14th place and more importantly to New York fans, five behind Mickey Mantle for 13th place.

Update: Giambi adds a second home run for seventeen on the season, and the Yankees are up 7-0 on the Padres in the fifth. He's now slugging .598 on the season.

Carlos Beltran appears to be trying to save Willie Randolph's job as the Mets' centerfielder (DH in this game) hit two solo home runs so far tonight. That brings Beltran's total to ten on the season, and the Mets lead the Angels 4-1. His five home runs in June equal his combined April-May total.

He drinks a whisky drink
He drinks a vodka drink
He drinks a lager drink
He drinks a cider drink

Marcus Thames homers in his fourth consecutive game to give the Tigers a 1-0 lead in the second. He's also hit six homers in his last nine games. Almost all Thames offense is in his power as he has a .255 BA and a .328 OBA, but a .591 slugging percentage. Fifteen of his 28 hits have gone for extra bases.

Update: Thames hits a second home run in the game. The Tigers lead 3-2 in the top of the fifth. It's a big night for multi-homer games.

The Red Sox hit four home runs Sunday afternoon as they down the Reds 9-0. Since David Ortiz last played on 5/31, Boston is hitting for more power:

Red Sox 2008	March-May	June
Batting Average	.280	.283
Slugging Percentage	.441	.488

J.D. Drew hit his seventh home run since since Ortiz went down. He's hitting .447 with a 1.085 slugging percentage. Lowell, Ramirez, Youkilis and Casey are all putting up high slugging percentages in David's absence. So far, the Red Sox are weathering this injury just fine.

The balls are flying out of Minute Maid Park. Wednesday night, the Brewers and Astros combined for eight home runs in a 10-6 Milwaukee victory. This afternoon, five more have left the field and the Brewers lead 7-3 in the sixth. Needless to say, eight of the thirteen homers belong to the Brewers, with three coming off the bat of Corey Hart. He's driven in seven runs in the last two games.

Ryan Doumit continues his hot home run hitting with a two run shot in the first inning against Washington. He's homered in three straight games, a total of four in that time. He's now slugging .661 on the season. The Pirates lead the Nats 2-0.

Jason Giambi takes Justin Duchscherer deep in the second inning, the first home run Justin allowed in 41 2/3 innings, according to the broadcast. It's Giambi's 15th of the season, one more than he hit last year.

Congratulations to Ken Griffey, Jr. who hit the 600th home run of his career in the first inning tonight. He's the third player this decade to break the barrier. After his first decade in the majors, Ken seems a shoe in to challenge Aaron, but he struggled to get to his milestone. It shows just how quickly injuries can sap a player of his power.

Update: Volquez has a no-hitter through four. This may be one of those days where one event over shadows another, like Ryan throwing a no-hitter when Henderson set the stolen base record.

Update: Luis Gonzalez leads off the fifth with a single. The Reds lead the game 6-0.

Alex Rodriguez homered in the Yankees 3-2 loss to the Royals this afternoon, his 528th home run. When A-Rod debuted on 7/8/1994, Griffey led him by 165 home runs. Alex has that down to 72 now.

Fielder, Hardy and Braun each homer as the Brewers defeat the Diamondbacks 7-1. That gives the team eleven home runs in the last five games. The three-four hitters, Fielder and Braun have seven of those in 28 at bats. Milwaukee has won five in a row and are now tied with Astros for third in the NL Central, both 6 1/2 games behind the Cubs pending the outcome of the game in San Diego.

Dan Uggla keeps the pressure on Chase Utley for the title of most powerful second baseman. Uggla hit two home runs so far tonight to put the Marlins up 4-3 in the top of the fourth. That three multi-home run games for Dan this season.

Chipper Jones hits a three-run home run to put the Braves up 3-1 in the bottom of the first. That raises his average to .410. There's little sign of his cooling off.

Prince Fielder breaks a 3-3 tie in the bottom of the 8th, leading off the inning with a long home run way up off the steel support tower in centerfield. He's heating up as that was his third home run in his last four games.

After struggling to reach 500 home runs, Manny homers in his third straight game. Manny hasn't hit that many homers in Baltimore in his career. That's his 18th in 91 games. Boston and Baltimore are tied at two in the bottom of the seventh.

Chase Utley remains on fire, hitting his 21st home run of the season, a two-run shot off Bronson Arroyo in the first inning. He's homered in five straight games, and seven of his last eight. He's also one short of his total from last year in less than half the games.

Utley had a streak of homering in five straight games earlier this year. That's two pretty good streaks for one season. Mark McGwire had two streaks of four in 1998, and Bonds had two streaks of six in 2001.

Correction: I misread the game log earlier. I've corrected Utley's streak.

Chase Utley became the first major league player to reach 20 home runs this season with a solo shot against the Marlins this afternoon. Utley in his second home run hot streak of the season:

Chase Utley	Games	Home Runs
Through May 3rd	31	13
May 4th - May 24th	20	1
May 25th - June 1st	7	6

In the middle slump, all Utley's batting stats suffered. He posted an OBA and a Slugging Percentage of .306. With the game tied at five in the seventh, Utley might get a chance to hit another today.

Update: The Phillies score two in the bottom of the seventh to take game 7-5 and move back into first place by 1/2 game over the Marlins.

Manny Ramirez became the latest player of his generation to reach 500 home runs and the 24th overall. There are now nine players whose careers started in the mid 1980s or later who reached this milestone. Congratulations to Manny on his achievement!

The next question becomes, how high can he go? Manny's seasonal age is 36, and his skills as a batter started to diminish in 2007. It was the first year his slugging percentage fell below .500 since his cup of coffee in 1993. His playing time dropped in 2006, with Manny losing about 30 games to injury in both 2006 and 2007.

Prior to this season, Manny went through an intense training regimen. The result so far is a slugging percentage up 8 points and an OBA down 19 points. In other words, the falloff we saw from Manny in 2007 appears to be real. What has improved is Manny's ability to stay in the lineup, as he's played 54 of the Red Sox 58 games.

So it looks like Manny's new home run level is somewhere between 20 and 30 home runs a year, probably 25 on average. Even with his performance falling, Manny's coming off such a high level that he'll continue to be valuable for a few more years. That means he'll keep playing.

I don't know if it will be with the Red Sox, however. One thing that's helping Manny's cause right now is the large per year contracts given to Hunter and Andruw Jones. Given the relative performance, Manny's $20 million options don't look so bad. It could be the Red Sox want to spend that money long term, however. It's interesting that now that the option is near, Manny wants to stay in Boston and loves the Red Sox fans, etc.

Does he have four more years of 25 home runs in him? I'd say the odds are good. I'd expect him to pass Sosa, but not get to Mays.

Ken Griffey, Jr. hits a two-run homer in the first to put the Reds up 2-0 (Bruce singled in front of Griffey). That gives Ken 599, and Fox will cut into his plate appearances to see if he hits 600. Phillips followed with a big fly of his own, and the Reds lead the Braves 3-0 in the first.

Chipper Jones singled in the top of the inning to raise his BA to .412.

Paul Konerko is one of the players responsible for the power outage in the American League this season. Over his previous fifteen games, Konerko was not only batting .169, his ten hits turned out to be all singles. He finally showed some life tonight against the Rays, going two for four with a home run as the White Sox won 5-1. Konerko's and Thome's poor starts are one reason the White Sox may be able to hang on for the AL Central crown. At some point their likely to regress toward their career averages, improving the White Sox offense as they do.

Marcus Thames hit two two-run home runs Wednesday night as the Tigers took down the Angels 6-2. All five of Thames' home runs came off lefties this season.

Marcus is a powerful out machine, and that makes it tough to put him in the lineup every day. As you can see in his career splits, even against lefties, his .336 OBA is just adequate, which his .507 slugging percentage is very good. He generates some power against righties, but just sucks up outs with a .287 OBA.

If Thames had figured out how to improve his OBA early, he might have had a very productive career. Instead, his power alone keeps him in the majors to occasionally make a lefties life miserable, and otherwise sit on the bench.

Josh Hamilton helps take down the Rays 12-6 as he doubles and hits a grand slam to drive in five runs. That brings his RBI total to 58 in 53 games played (54 Rangers games). That puts him on a pace for 174, which would be 10 short of Gehrig's AL record. The last player to have more RBI than team games played was Manny Ramirez in 1999. He drove in 165 that season.

Jason Giambi just hit a home run over Boog Powell's food stand in Baltimore. It must be the moustache. The Yankees already have four hits and a 1-0 lead in the second, as they're having no problem with the lefty Burres so far tonight.

Update: Damon adds a three run shot, and New York leads 4-0. Both homers were by left-handed batters.

Update: Millar and Hernandez go back-to-back in the bottom of the second to cut the Yankees lead to 4-3.

Jason Giambi goes the opposite way and delivers a home run into monument park for a 3-0 Yankees lead. Five of the last six batters picked up hits for the Yankees and they now lead 4-0, still batting in the second. The homer makes Giambi 15 for 48 in May, bringing his average for the month over .300.

Gordon Edes presents some trivia on the Red Sox hitting two grand slams in a game. Drew and Lowell each went deep with the bases loaded today.

Alex Rodriguez hits a two-run homer in the six to cut the Orioles lead to 10-2. Otherwise, Daniel Cabrera is pitching very well, not allowing a walk so far tonight.

Dan Uggla just hit his fourteenth home run of the season, an upper deck job into left field. The solo shot off Owings extends the Marlins lead to 3-1 in the bottom of the sixth.

Hendrickson was out after five having thrown 97 pitches while striking out seven. Owings is at seven strikeouts himself and still in the game.

Evan Longoria delivered a two-run homer in the top of the 13th Monday night to put the Rays on top of the Athletics 7-5. Tampa Bay held on for a 7-6 win. In his very short career, Longoria has hit four of his five home runs from the seventh inning on. He also seems to hit them in fairly meaningful situations. Two have come with the game tied, one with the Rays up by a run, one trailing by a run and one trailing by two.

Ryan Ludwick keeps supplying the Cardinals with power. He puts the Cardinals up 2-0 in the first with his 12th homer of the season. He now has 41 hits, and a Mark McGwire like 25 for extra bases. His .767 slugging percentage is more than twice his .342 BA, meaning is average hit is more than a double.

In his 68th at bat with the Athletics, Frank Thomas finally delivers a home run. There was no doubt about this one, as it clears the fence right over the 400 foot sign in centerfield. The shot with Jack Cust at first puts the A's up 2-0 after one.

The Tigers Matt Joyce hit his fourth home run of the season Saturday night, providing the winning cushion as the Diamondbacks fell 3-2. Joyce had an interesting minor league career as he advanced a level every season without doing much the last two years. At 23, however, he seems to have found his power stroke as he started the season with five home runs in 97 at bats at AAA, and how added four more in 30 at bats at the major league level. Someone thought they saw progress as a hitter where the stats weren't telling the whole story. So far, they are correct.

For the second game in a row, Alfonso Soriano hits two home runs. He's on a power tear right now, homering in five of his last six games, seven in total.

Nate McLouth may have the last swing, however, as he hits a two-run homer in the top of the ninth to great a five run tie.

Update: Soriano ends up going five for five, missing the cycle by a triple as he doubles in the ninth and scores. The Pirates, however, hang on to win 7-6.

Jayson Werth is due up third as the Phillies go to the bottom of the seventh. He'll come to the plate with three home runs and nine RBI under his belt with a three-run, grand slam and solo shot.

Update: Werth comes up with no one on, so he won't get the home run cycle in this at bat.

Update: Werth pops out in foul territory. Still a game to savor for the Phillies outfielder.

You can't spell Jayson without Jays, and Werth is single-handedly destroying Toronto tonight. In consecutive innings he hit a three run homer and a grand slam for seven RBI. He just needs a two-run shot and a solo homer for a home run cycle.

Update: Werth hit the solo shot in the 5th inning. We'll see if he can hit four, which is amazing all by itself, and if he can make it a two run shot.

Update: Here's the list of four homer games. Phillies have accomplished the feat three times previously, one fifth of the instances.

Alfonso Soriano homers in the first and second innings of this afternoon's game to drive in four of the Cubs six runs as they take an early 6-0 lead on the Pirates. Soriano now has 21 hits in May with six home runs and 11 extra-base hits.

The Braves established an 8-0 lead early, but the Phillies fought back, falling just short 8-6. Chipper Jones goes two for four to raise his league leading batting average to .418. It continues to be a very loud .400 he's hitting as the hits were a double and a home run, raising his slugging percentage to .705.

On the other side, Chase Utley moved back into the home run lead by hitting his 14th of the season. Ryan Howard homered also, extending his hitting streak to six games.

Ryan Braun didn't hit two homers tonight, but he did knock out a double and a triple. That helps the Brewers to a 5-3 win over the Dodgers. It's his fourth consecutive game with two extra base hits, and over the game he's raised his slugging percentage from .444 to .563.

Ryan Church continued his May slugging binge, knocking out a double and homer in for at bats as the Mets down the Nationals 6-3. Church is slugging .780 on the month, with 32 total bases in 41 at bats. He also drove in four runs tonight, one of the few Mets hitters able to take advantage of men on base. New York only plated six runs despite collecting fourteen hits and two walks.

Ryan Braun follows up his two home run performance from Sunday with another tonight. That leaves him one short of the record for consecutive games, and with the game in the top of the seventh inning, he should get a chance to tie it.

Eric Gagne is in to start the seventh with an 8-1 Brewers lead. It will be very difficult for Gagne to blow this game, but he's giving it a try as he starts by walking the leadoff batter.

Update: Braun grounds out to shortstop to end the seventh inning. It looks like he won't get three homers tonight.

The Florida Marlins keep winning. Dan Uggla hit his seventh home run of the season and the sixty sixth of his career. He started playing in 2006, and since that time, here's the list of players with more or as many homers as Uggla. It's not very long.

Renyel Pinto pitched two scoreless innings to lower his ERA to 0.76. He's cementing his status as the greatest baseball player named Pinto.

Joey Votto goes deep three times off three different pitchers as the Reds are now out to a 9-0 lead. He drives in four with the three shots.

For those of you who believe Dusty Baker wears out young pitchers, Edinson Volquez starts the seventh. He's close to 100 pitches, the field is wet due to rain, and the lead is not in jeopardy. The Cubs announcers questioned the wisdom of letting him start the inning.

Update: I believe that Dusty didn't have anyone up in the bullpen, either. Volquez has allowed two base runners this inning and Brenly noticed Edinson's body language says he's tired. He's already past his career high in pitches (112), and the Reds are leaving him in the game.

Update: He gets a strikeout to end the inning, setting a career high with 118 pitches thrown.

Update: Votto leads off the eighth with a chance for a four home run game.

Update: He grounds out to short.

Royals Authority is looking for the next Jack Cust.

Richie Sexson hit his seventh home run of the season tonight, tying him for second place among AL home run hitters. He's not hitting for a high average, but half his hits have gone for extra bases. If you're going to be an unproductive hitter, that's the way to do it.

The Astros came into the series against Milwukee with 30 home runs in 29 games. The bats came to life Friday as each home run raised money for muscular dystrophy, and continued as they hit nine homers in the three games. They use that power to sweep the Brewers, outscoring them 21-12 and are just 3 1/2 games out of first place pending the outcome of the Cubs/Cardinals game.

Pat Burrell won some Philadelphia hearts tonight as he hits a two-out, two-run homer to defeat the Giants 6-5 in ten innings. San Francisco scored in the top of the inning, as former Phillie Aaron Rowand hit a solo shot. After an Utley single and a Howard strikeout, Burrell hit the first long ball of the season off Brian Wilson. All six Phillies runs scored on two-run homers as Utley and Feliz went deep earlier.

Chase Utley hit home run number twelve tonight, bringing his major league leading total for the year to twelve. That's four more than any other player in the majors. He's picked a good year to try to lead the league in long balls, as no one else seems to be off to a great start.

He's hitting more than home runs as well. He also has ten doubles and a triple for twenty three extra base hits, more than half of his forty two hits. He's walked eleven times to push his OBA well over .400. He's the complete hitter this season.

The Tigers sweep the Yankees with an 8-4 victory tonight. The middle of the order did a lot of damage tonight as Ordonez, Cabrera and Guillen combined to go seven for thirteen with two walks, and Sheffield added two walks from the third spot. Magglio and Carlos picked up doubles, while Cabrera added a triple and a homer. The Quartet scored and drove in five runs as they were too much for Kennedy and Albaladejo, who each gave up four runs. This is exactly what the Tigers were expecting when they assembled this lineup.

I'm watching the San Diego feed of the Padres-Phillies game. As Howard steps up to lead off the bottom of the eighth, they run a graphic showing that he's hit the most home runs since the start of the 2006 season. As the announcer intones that stat, the first pitch comes in and Ryan deposits in the rightfield stands for a 3-2 Phillies lead. Producers love those moments, although as San Diego broadcasters, I bet they want that moment back.

Adrian Beltre hits his fifth home run of the season, a three-run shot in the top of the ninth to break a 2-2 tie with the Indians. Betancourt gave up three straight hits to start the inning, ending with the home run. That's three home runs allowed by Rafael in 11 1/3 innings.

Beltre is living up to his contract this season with a BA over .300, an OBA over .400 and a slugging percentage over .500.

Carlos Quentin ties the game 1-1 with a solo home run in the bottom of the sixth. That's his third home run off Orioles pitching this season, half of his total. He's now slugging .605 on the season, proving to be a valuable pickup.

Daniel Cabrera is lucky to have allowed just one run so far. He's put ten men on base via a hit, walk or hit by pitch, but the White Sox left the bases loaded in one inning and two on in two other innings.

Troy Glaus's power took a dive this April. Coming into this season, Glaus had career totals of 277 homers and 241 doubles. He only played two season in which he collected more doubles than homers. In 2008, however, he started with eleven doubles and no homers. He was hitting the ball hard, just not out of the park. That changed today as he picked up his first tater of the season, a two-run shot to cap a four run Cardinals fifth inning. This is similar to what happened to David Ortiz last year, where he lost nineteen homer but picked up twenty three doubles.

The Cardinals defeated the Astros 5-1 as Kyle Lohse continues to be one of the best signings of the winter.

Matt Kemp picked up five RBI in the first inning tonight. His first time up he hit a sacrifice fly to cut the score in half 2-1. In his second plate appearance of the inning, his grand slam put the Dodgers up 10-2. Since April 15th, the Dodgers, seem to be an all or nothing team. The either score a ton of runs or very few. I guess the offense switch was set to on this evening.

Jason Giambi hits his second home run of the night, both to right center. He's now batting .190 but slugging .500. Eight of his eleven hits, three doubles and five homers, have gone for extra bases. With an .851 OPS, that's about the most productive .190 you'll ever see.

The Brewers defeat the Phillies 5-4, but Chase Utley is the first player to reach ten home runs. My SportingNews.com column today addresses the rarity of a second baseman leading the majors in home runs.

My latest column at SportingNews.com looks at why it's been 82 years since a second baseman led the majors in home runs.

Chase Utley extended his home run streak to five games with a solo shot in the sixth. He's trying to tie Long, Mattingly and Griffey with streaks of home runs in eight straight games.

The Phillies lead 9-5 going to the bottom of the ninth. Werth and Burrell also went deep.

Chase Utley just hit his second home run of the game to put the Phillies up 4-0. He's driven in all four runs with a solo shot in the first and the three-run homer in the fifth. His homer in the first extended his home run streak to four straight games.

Chase is now slugging .795, with sixteen of his twenty five hits going for extra bases. Six of his eight home runs, however, came at home.

Update: It's a good thing Utley hit the home run when he did. Reyes leads off the sixth with a triple, and three more hits later the Mets have scored three and they have a man on with none out.

Update: With one out, Beltran steals second, then scores on a bloop single to right. The game is tied at four.

Chipper Jones hit two home runs for the second game in a row, this time against the Dodgers. Jones has had a pretty consistently powerful career. Only three times since his first full season in 1995 has he slugged under .500. He now eight home runs away from 400, and is a .300/.400/.500 hitter for his career.

Chipper's 38 multi-homer games rank ninth since 1995. Sammy Sosa leads the pack with 58 in that time frame.

Bobby Abreu and Alex Rodriguez go back to back in the first inning to give the Yankees a 3-1 lead over the Red Sox. (Girardi let Wang pitch to Ramirez in the first inning with a man on second and two out, and Manny doubled.) Alex moves ahead of Williams and McCovey and claims 15th place on the all-time home run list for his own. He's now a dozen behind Foxx for 14th place.

Travis Buck drives in all three Oakland Athletics runs as the A's take the game against Toronto in twelve innings, 3-2. Buck's doubles give him six on the season.

For his career, Buck averages a double every 11.5 at bats. That would be 52 in a 600 at bat season. Given that he's still young and should be improving, we might see 60 doubles from Travis someday.

Miguel Tejada makes a good first impression on the Houston fans as he hits a two-run homer in the bottom of the ninth to defeat the Cardinals 5-3. After eight shutout innings by Rodriguez and Brocail, Valverde blows a three run lead in the ninth. He gave up two walks, two singles and a double.

Lee, however, singled to start the inning and Miguel hit the first pitch for a home run. The Astros hit four dingers tonight after hitting seven in their first seven games.

Chris Young started hitting home runs in bunches on August 14 of 2007. Starting on that date, he leads the National League in long balls. Saturday's two home runs against Colorado marked the fourth time in that span of 47 games that Chris went deep twice. With that kind of power you wonder how long the Diamondbacks can afford to keep him in the leadoff spot.

David Ortiz and Jason Varitek both homered today as the Red Sox defeat Oakland 5-0. Those two seemed most discombobulated in Japan. Varitek got his first hits last night, and two more today. Big Papi finally delivered for the Red Sox this afternoon.

Harden was a bit wild but kept Boston off the scoreboard for five innings. The bullpen couldn't hold the fort, however. Meanwhile, Lester, Corey and Delcarmen had an easy time with the Athletics. The usually selective A's only managed three walks in the game.

Tom Tango looks at the reasons for the increase in home runs from 1993 on, and comes down on the ball. It's important to know that the ball is not technically juiced, but is manufactured at the high end of the allowable range. My theory (which I could never get ESPN to pursue) was that there was a change in manufacturing practices that produced a more consistent ball. That consistency was set at the high end.

My guess is that under older manufacturing techniques, hundreds of thousands of balls were manufactured before they were tested. I'm guessing as time went on, these balls became looser, and overall the balls tended to fall in the mid range of the specification. With the introduction of control charts into US manufacturing in the late 1980s, however, testing is done every 100 balls or so, and the second they get a little out of whack, the process is corrected. I talked to the manufacturer in 1993, and they told me at that time they were producing the most consistent ball ever. What they needed to do, however, was produce the mid-range ball, not the high range ball.

Alex Rodriguez hit his 54th home run tonight, driving in three and scoring twice. That gives him a new career high in runs scored (142) to go with his RBI high. He needs four more runs or RBI to reach a combined total of 300 for the season.

It's an interesting level to reach because it tells us something about the player and the team. To both score and drive in lots of runs, a player must get on base often and hit for power. You have to provide the batters behind you with opportunities for RBI, plus provide the power to drive in the runners on base when you come to the plate. But for both runs and RBI to be this high, you need a great team around you. The table setters need to be great at getting on base. The batters behind need to supply plenty of power themselves. So when you see a batter with these run and RBI numbers, you know you're seeing a great player in the middle of a great offense.

Update: Alex gets his third hit and fourth RBI of the night, giving him 155 on the season and a combined RBI + Runs of 297.

David Ortiz ended his streak of nine consecutive hits in the sixth inning tonight when he grounded out. Earlier in the game, he picked up his fifty second double of the season. With a .445 OBA and a .617 slugging percentage, imagine what Ortiz would have done with a healthy leg!

Prince Fielder goes deep to the opposite field as he delivers his second home run of the game and reaches the 50 home run mark. He and his dad Cecil become the first father-son combination to each reach 50 homers. Cecil hit 51 in 1990 for the Detroit Tigers. The Brewers lead 9-1 in the seventh as they try to gain a game on Chicago.

Alex Rodriguez, after a long drought, hits home run 53 on the season. It's a big one, too, a grand slam that puts the Yankees up 5-0 in the third as they try to clinch a playoff spot. That takes him to 151 RBI and 139 runs scored, a total of 290 on the season.

By the way, no player has ever ended a season with 53 home runs. There were seven 52 home runs seasons and five 54 home run seasons, but never a 53. Maybe that will change this year.

Carlos Pena hit his 40th home run today, putting him in a class with Tiger slugger Hank Greenberg. In 1936, Hank played just 12 games and hit one home run. He came back in 1937 to hit 40. Last season, Pena played 18 games and hit just one home run.

That's not the biggest difference between two seasons. McGwire hit three in his cup of coffee season of 1986, then game back to win Rookie of the Year honors with 49. Killebrew did something similar, although he played small parts of five season before becoming a regular in 1959, going from 0 to 42 home runs. But for players well into their careers, the 39 home run difference is a record.

Tampa Bay wins game number 63, avoiding 100 losses this year.

Vlad Guerrero goes deep in the first inning to plate the only run of the game so far as LAnaheim leads Chicago 1-0 in the third. The home run gives Vlad 25 on the season, the tenth season in a row Vlad reaches 25 home runs. It's also the fourth time he's reached 120 RBI in a season.

Prince Fielder set a new franchise record for home runs last night as his 46th of the season is the new Brewers mark. His teammates are calling for for him to be the Most Valuable Prince:

Prince Fielder's teammates describe him with words such as charismatic, special and unbelievable.

Francisco Cordero has other ideas.
"To me, he's got to be the MVP," Cordero said. "I think Prince is going to be the MVP in the National League."

If recent impressions help the voters decide, then Fielder may indeed get the nod. He's leading the National League in slugging percentage in September, with a very healthy batting average and OBA to go with it (although he's no Jack Wilson). With the Brewers winning last night and the Cubs splitting the double header with St. Louis, Milwaukee is back to one game out in the NL Central. A few more key home runs by Fielder over the last two weeks, and the votes and the division title my fall his way.

(The award should go to Hanley Ramirez or David Wright, although I wouldn't have a problem if Fielder took home the trophy. If Fielder does hit fifty home runs and Ramirez wins the MVP, he'll have two things in common with his dad, hitting 50 homers and losing the MVP award to a power hitting leadoff man.)

Alfonso Soriano hits a late game home run to give the Cubs a 3-2 lead over the Cardinals. That's his seventh home run in fifteen games this month. Of course, since he's hitting them from the leadoff spot he's only driven in 13 runs.

Update: Cubs win 3-2. Looper pitched a great game, giving up one run in seven innings, striking out five. But the bullpen gave up the big fly to Soriano, and that's all the Cubs needed. They now lead the Brewers by two with another game coming up tonight.

Prince Fielder hits his forty fifth home run of the season, reducing the deficit to two as the Reds lead 5-3 in the top of the eighth. With his 1 for 2 tonight, Fielder is hitting .415 in September with six home runs and an .854 slugging percentage. He's five home runs away from repeating his dad's feat of fifty home runs in a season. They'd be the first father-son duo to accomplish that.

David Wright hits a home run in the first inning to put the Mets up 1-0 on the Phillies. The Mets third baseman continues to have a fine second half, raising both his OBA and slugging percentages 100 points vs. before the All-Star break.

Alex Rodriguez failed to hit a home run against Toronto last night, bringing his odds of passing Maris down again. If he plays all sixteen remaining games, Alex should get about 71 more plate appearances. With his home run rate this season .0811 HR/PA, the probability of his hitting at least ten more home runs is 0.06, or about 1 in 16.

David Ortiz is back. He hit two home runs tonight, the second a two-run shot with one out in the bottom of the ninth to defeat the Tampa Bay Devil Rays 5-4. It was a very high fly ball into the first row of the seats in right. Delmon Young seemed to lose track of the ball; it was the kind of fly that he could have leaped and caught if he was in the right position. Ortiz drives all five runs and now has 40 RBI in his last 39 games.

Jim Thome hit his 499th career home run this afternoon to give the White Sox a 2-1 lead over the Indians. He's looking to become the twenty-third player to crack the 500 home run level, and the third this season. It looks like Manny Ramirez, the other player with a good shot at 500, will need to wait until next year.

Alex Rodriguez did not homer last night. Given his stats this season, he should come to the plate eighty more times in 2007. With a home run rate of .0821 per plate appearance, the probability of him hitting at least ten more home runs in those eighty PA is .1192.

Hanley Ramirez knocked out two home runs and a double Tuesday night to bring his extra-base hit total for the season to seventy-seven. It's very likely he'll end the year with eighty or more extra-base hits. There was a time when that was an impressive accomplishment. Take a look at the period from 1982-1992, the eleven non-strike seasons leading up to the offensive boom of the 1990s:

Players with 80+ extra base hits, 1982-1992

Player	Season	EXBH
Robin Yount	1982	87
Kevin Mitchell	1989	87
Don Mattingly	1985	86
Don Mattingly	1986	86
Cal Ripken Jr.	1991	85
George Bell	1987	83
Hal McRae	1982	81
Mark McGwire	1987	81
Juan Samuel	1987	80
Dave Parker	1985	80
Howard Johnson	1989	80

Just one dozen players accomplished the deed, and three of those came in the big home run year of 1987. From 1993 to 2006, players reached 80 extra-base hits 112 times, including three such seasons in the strike shortened 1995 season. (We've had two reach that level already in 2007.) Twenty years ago, a season like this would win Hanley the MVP, now it's a common occurrence.

Bengie Molina just hit his second home run of the game, both hard shots off Livan Hernandez. That gives him five home runs in seven September games. He hasn't hit more than four in any other month this season. The Giants lead 3-0 in the bottom of the fourth.

Alex Rodriguez went deep again today, hitting four home runs in the three game series at Kansas City and five in six games at Kauffman Stadium this season. Alex came up in 1994 but didn't hit his first home run in KC until 1999, and now has thirteen at the park. I'm sure after this weekend, Alex would like to finish the season hitting there.

The Yankees win 6-3, and it turns out to be a good weekend for their AL Wild Card hopes. The Mariners won today over Detroit, so with the Yankees sweeping Kansas City, they increased their lead over both the Tigers and Seattle. Wang won his eighteenth, keeping pace with Beckett.

Alex needs ten more home runs to break Maris' single season AL home run record. With A-Rod expected to get 85 more plate appearances this season and a home run rate (HR/PA) of .0828, he now has a 16.5% chance of at least 62 homers this year.

The two home runs tonight really boosted Alex's chances of hitting 62 home runs this season. I estimate he has 89 plate appearances left, and with his current rate of .0819 HR/PA, the probability of him hitting at least eleven more dingers is 11.1%. It was about 3% this morning.

Alex Rodriguez just hit his fiftieth home run of the season, a shot just over the fence in dead center field. He's the first Yankees right-hander to hit fifty in a season, and the first since Maris and Mantle in 1961. That's six for Alex in the first eight days of the month. If he can keep up that pace for sixteen more days he'll set a new AL single season record. It's the third time Alex broke the 50 barrier. He did it previously in his first two years with Texas.

Update: Alex goes deep again, a solo shot leading off the sixth inning. This time, he pulls it into the Yankees bullpen. He should turn his ankle more often. It's his eighth multi-homer game of the season. In addition, the broadcast said he set the record for a third baseman with 49. Schmidt hit 48 as a third baseman in 1980.

The two runs scored gives Alex 130 on the season. It's the third time he's both scored and driven in 130 runs. He could easily end up 140-140.

Update: It's the 63rd time a player reached 130-130 in a season. Babe Ruth is the only member of the 170-170 club. The last to reach 140-140 was Sammy Sosa in 2001, the twenty third player to accomplish the feat. However, you have to go back to 1949 and Ted Williams to find the penultimate accomplishment of the feat.

Update: Rodriguez is now the only player to set a single season major league record for home runs at two positions, shortstop and third base.

Alex Rodriguez hit his forty ninth home run of the season in a 3-2 Yankees victory over the Kansas City Royals. Breaks his record for most Yankees home runs by a right-handed batter, and increases his odds of break Roger Maris' AL record to 0.032, or 3.2%.

David Ortiz homered for the Red Sox tonight, a solo shot to tie the game at six. In 48 games since the All-Star break, Big Papi has hit 13 home runs and driven in 44. That compares to 14 home runs and 52 RBI in 91 games before the break. He was slugging well in the first half due to lots of doubles, but now he's adding the homers as well and his slugging percentage is up about 50 points in the second half.

The score remains six-all in the bottom of the sixth. Buchholz is in and walked the first batter he faced. We'll see how long he goes before allowing a hit.

Update: That didn't take long. Tyke Redman, the second batter in the inning picks up the safety.

Update: I forgot to mention that with the score tied and Wakefield out, he'll pick up his first no decision of the season.

Correction: I misread the line score. Papi's home run tied the game. I've modified the post to reflect that.

Alex Rodriguez still has a small chance at breaking Roger Maris' American League home run record. After hitting two home runs last night, Alex needs fourteen long balls to reach sixty two. Based on his performance this year, the probability of Alex hitting a home run in any given plate appearance is .0783 (48/613). He averages 4.44 PA per game, so with twenty two games left, he should get another 98 plate appearances. The probability of his hitting fourteen home runs in those 98 PA is 0.0205, or about 2%. The odds are double that for him at least tying Maris.

The Colorado Rockies lost to the San Francisco Giants last night 5-3. Barry Bonds hit his twenty sixth home run at Coors Field in the game. Barry's the all-time leader among visitors at Coors, although Sammy Sosa just didn't get enough games there.

Alex Rodriguez homers in the bottom of the seventh off Washburn to tie the Yankees-Mariners game at two. He also ties Mel Ott on the all-time list with 511 career home runs. He's about to move up the ranks fast, as his next long ball ties him with Eddie Mathews and Ernie Banks for 17th on the all-time list. He also keeps pace with Barry Bonds, who hit number 762 this evening.

Update: The Yankees load the bases with one out, bringing up Posada as a pinch-hitter. He walks to force in the go-ahead run as the Yankees take a 3-2 lead in the bottom of the seventh.

Update: A-Rod hits two home runs in one inning as he starts and ends the scoring, hitting a two-run shot as the Yankees score eight in the seventh. They've added one in the eighth to make the score 10-2. In one night, Alex ties three greats, Ott, Mathews and Banks. He also ties his Yankees record for most home runs by a right-handed batter, 48.

Correction: Mathews, not Williams. Ted is the next person to tie at 521.

With 22 games left can he hit fourteen more and set a new AL record? It would be quite a finish to his season.

Wily Mo Pena hits his fifth home run in fifteen games for the Washington Nationals, the same number he hit with the Red Sox in 73 games. He's not hitting for any higher an average or getting on base much more, but he is smacking the ball when he hits it. The Natonals are up 6-1 on Florida in the seventh.

Alex Rodriguez hit home run number 45 today as he drove in four runs after having his bat confiscated.

Tampa Bay had Rodriguez's bat confiscated in a classic case of gamesmanship - one inning after umpires took away Akinori Iwamura's unusual model when Yankees manager Joe Torre questioned if it was legal.

"It's just retaliation. There's nothing wrong with Alex Rodriguez. He's a great player. It was tit-for-tat entirely," Devil Rays manager Joe Maddon said. "I said, 'It's an illegal bat.' I said, 'I can't see inside it, but there might be something inside that bat. I don't have X-ray vision. He's got 45 home runs, it's Sept. 1.' That was my argument."

Both confiscated bats were sent to the commissioner's office for inspection.

Iwamura didn't have that luck, going 0 for 4 with a walk.

Alex's home run was his 164th since joining the Yankees in 2004. There's very tight race for most home runs in that time span between four players. Just six home runs separate David Ortiz from Adam Dunn, with Pujols and A-Rod in between. With all four over 160, each member of the quartet has a good chance to producing over 200 home runs in a five year span.

Ryan Howard delivers a home run in the bottom of the tenth to finish a 4-2 comeback victory over the Mets. It was a massive shot, hit the opposite way to left field, putting the Phillies just four games behind the Mets. The Mets bullpen wastes a stellar effort by Tom Glavine who pitched a short shutout, giving up eight hits (all singles) over seven innings, but walking none. But Philadelphia tied it off Feliciano in the eighth, then won it off Mota in the tenth.

Adam Eaton pitches okay, giving up two runs in 5 2/3 innings. He's now given up six runs to the Mets in 18 2/3 innings this year. But the bullpen allowed just one hit over 4 1/3 innings of work, keeping the Phillies in it until the home run heroics of Howard.

For the seventh consecutive season, Albert Pujols reaches the thirty home run level. That also represents Albert's entire career. He's now homered in five straight games and six of his last seven. The Cardinals might want to put some people on base however, as he only has eight RBI over the seven games. St. Louis leads the Marlins 6-4 in the eighth.

Luis Vizcaino manages to put two runners on base with two out, giving Anderson a chance to set a major league record for RBI if he hits a home run.

Update: Anderson hits the ball up the middle, but Betemit grabs it and throws him out to end the inning. Still a remarkable night for Garret Anderson. He sets an Angels record for RBI in a game and the club record for career grand slams.

I just turned on the Yankees-Angels game before going to bed, just in time to see Garret Anderson hit a grand slam. He's 4 for 5 tonight with two doubles and two homers, and he's driven in ten runs. The grand slam was his eighth as an Angel, breaking the record held by Garret and Joe Rudi. The Angels lead the Yankees 18-5 as the teams go to the top of the seventh.

Update: Anderson is one RBI away from the AL record held by Tony Lazzeri and two from the ML record. The Angels also scored five runs in an inning three times tonight.

In what's turning into a slugfest in Anaheim, Alex Rodriguez picked up his second RBI of the night, giving him 120 on the season. It's the eighth time he's reached that plateau. That's tied for third all-time. Jimmy Foxx and Joe DiMaggio each had eight 120 RBI seasons. Ruth is the all-time leader with eleven, and Gehrig is right behind him with ten. I guess it helps to be a Yankee.

Prince Fielder's HR tie with Alex Rodriguez doesn't last long, as A-Rod hits a two run shot in the top of the sixth in Anaheim to give the Yankees a 4-3 lead. He reaches the 40 home run plateau for the 8th time in his career.

Milwaukee leads the Arizona Diamondbacks 9-0 in the fifth inning. The Brewers have three home runs so far, one by the pitcher Gallardo, one by Hall and one by Price Fielder. The young Fielder's 39th ties him with Alex Rodriguez for the Major League lead. It's his ninth home run in August.

During their 21-6 run, the Diamondbacks have lost by five or more runs four times. It's a big reason their run differential is negative for the season.

With the Cardinals up 5-4, Lou Piniella brings in Carmen Pignatiello to face Rick Ankiel. The lefty-lefty matchup doesn't work as Ankiel takes the first pitch of the seventh inning deep the other way for his fourth home run. Ankiel is two for four today with a double and a homer, and has homered every 7.75 at bats. McGwire is the career leader in that category at 10.6. Bonds in 2001 and McGwire in 1998 were the only two players to be under 8.0 for a full season.

Update: The rain keeps coming down, and the tarp is out in the bottom of the seventh.

Update: The game resumes and the Cardinals hold on to win 6-4. They manage to cut their losses to one game in the standings to Chicago.

It's been a down home run year for David Ortiz, but he hits a big one tonight. Down 5-0, the Red Sox score two in the fifth, then load the bases for Big Papi. He delivers a grand slam that puts the Red Sox in the lead 6-5. Not a walk-off, but I'm sure it will do. :-)

Update: In the bottom of the sixth, Youkilis limps off the field, and he grabs at his hamstring.

Moises Alou is making the most of his time back from the disabled list. He hit his seventh home run of August tonight, tying Prince Fielder for the most in the majors this month. That's almost half of the Mets total of 16 in August. The Mets lead 4-1 in the fourth.

Shelly Duncan hits a two-out, three-run homer in the bottom of the ninth to tie the Orioles at three. It breaks seventeen consecutive scoreless innings for the Yankees offense. All six of his home runs have come at home, and four of the six were hit with men on base.

The Orioles bullpen wastes another great start from a pitcher. Bedard went seven innings, striking out eight and allowing just four hits. He's the first pitcher to pass 200 K this season.

Update: Bradford get the Orioles out of the inning. They'll play extra frames in New York.

Magglio Ordonez slugs two home runs in one inning as the Tigers score eight in the second, and Ordonez drives in half of them. His two for two raises his slugging percentage to .600. The Tigers offense appears to be getting back in gear as they've scored 22 runs in the last three games.

Rick Ankiel picks up his third hit of the season in the first inning today, a two-run homer scoring Aaron Miles. He's hitting .333 with a 1.000 slugging percentage after nine at bats. This could turn out to be a great year-end story.

Update: Ankiel does it again. After a single, he hits another home run in the seventh. That's five hits, two singles, three home runs. The Cardinals are leading the Dodgers 6-1 in the 8th.

The Braves just managed to hold off the Mets today as New York scored three in the bottom of the ninth to give the Braves a one-run win, 7-6. One of those Braves runs came on a Mark Teixeira home run, his fourth since joining the team. So far, six of his ten hits with the Braves went for extra bases, and he's slugging .686 in his eight games with Atlanta. The Braves gain a game on the Mets over the three game series and are now just 3 1/2 out of first place.

The post about Ruth made me wonder if today's sluggers beat up on the bad pitchers of today. The Day by Day batting events go back to 2000, which makes it easy to figure out batter vs. pitcher stats. And since there is a great slugger whose career is covered by that time frame, I'll start with Albert Pujols. Pitchers are divided into bins based on their ERA in the season they faced Albert. The bins go from x.00 to x.99, with the x representing the bin number. So any stats Pujols gathered against Jake Peavy in 2004 go into the "2" bin, but in 2006 they would go in the "4" bin.

Albert Pujols vs. Pitchers, 2001-2007. Bin represents a range of one run of ERA.

Bin	PA	AB	H	HR	OBA	Slug	ABperHR
0	7	6	1	0	0.286	0.167	Infinity
1	80	69	17	2	0.342	0.391	34.5
2	440	383	101	21	0.356	0.48	18.24
3	1261	1096	344	65	0.399	0.571	16.86
4	1491	1285	417	97	0.413	0.63	13.25
5	759	642	242	51	0.470	0.702	12.59
6	301	250	91	23	0.463	0.748	10.87
7 or greater	193	150	70	15	0.577	0.853	10

So as you can see, the worse the pitcher, the better Albert performs. Let's check Bonds:

Barry Bonds vs. Pitchers, 2000-2007. Bin represents a range of one run of ERA.

Bin	PA	AB	H	HR	OBA	Slug	ABperHR
0	5	3	0	0	0.4	0	Infinity
1	70	45	6	3	0.443	0.356	15
2	388	258	69	19	0.512	0.535	13.58
3	1046	759	228	67	0.491	0.642	11.33
4	1397	988	322	120	0.521	0.765	8.23
5	663	467	167	58	0.545	0.807	8.05
6	246	168	69	27	0.594	0.97	6.22
7 or greater	157	104	41	16	0.596	0.904	6.5

Bonds kills everyone, but if you send a pitcher against him with an ERA of 6 or more, you're just asking to see a long ball. Now here's A-Rod. He's not as extreme as the others:

Alex Rodriguez vs. Pitchers, 2001-2007. Bin represents a range of one run of ERA.

Bin	PA	AB	H	HR	OBA	Slug	ABperHR
0	13	11	1	0	0.231	0.091	Infinity
1	80	71	8	0	0.213	0.169	Infinity
2	421	354	94	15	0.376	0.449	23.6
3	1464	1273	361	84	0.373	0.529	15.15
4	1825	1540	471	131	0.408	0.612	11.76
5	989	835	282	72	0.434	0.666	11.6
6	379	307	103	27	0.455	0.671	11.37
7 or greater	255	213	78	23	0.462	0.77	9.26

Notice that A-Rod's home run rate isn't that different once the pitcher's ERA goes over 4.00. He kills them all equally well. And let's finish with Manny Ramirez:

Manny Ramirez vs. Pitchers, 2001-2007. Bin represents a range of one run of ERA.

Bin	PA	AB	H	HR	OBA	Slug	ABperHR
0	7	5	1	0	0.429	0.2	Infinity
1	89	80	15	1	0.270	0.250	80
2	320	284	78	11	0.350	0.437	25.82
3	1179	993	279	66	0.391	0.542	15.05
4	1568	1330	432	94	0.421	0.614	14.15
5	888	731	250	61	0.452	0.67	11.98
6	381	314	127	35	0.509	0.834	8.97
7 or greater	254	201	70	23	0.478	0.746	8.74

For all the pattern is about the same. They mostly face pitchers with a seasonal ERA of four or higer, and they hit them very well as far as home runs are concerned. With the exception of A-Rod, these hitters keep getting much better as the pitchers get worse.

Jermaine Dye continued his hot start in August with two more hits and a home run in a 7-4 win over the Tigers. He's six for fourteen with three home runs in the month, a .429 batting average. He's hit ten home runs in twenty two games since the All-Star break, compared to twelve in seventy one games before. But his batting average hasn't come back until recently.

Vlad Guerrero broke out of his home run slump last night:

The first one was a high-arc shot that barely cleared the left-field fence. The second was a towering blast that left no doubt, landing halfway up the seats beyond the scoreboard in left-center.

With two swings of his mighty bat Thursday night at McAfee Coliseum, Vladimir Guerrero restored his standing as one of the most feared sluggers in baseball.

The All-Star game Home Run Derby champion, who had been mired in the longest power outage of his career, homered twice and drove in four runs to propel the Angels to a 6-4 victory over the Oakland Athletics.

Vlad hit .315 in the 30 games between homers, but he didn't dive in many runs, just 15. One third of his thirty nine hits went for doubles.

Joe Saunders allowed just two runs over 6 1/3 innings, staying undefeated at 5-0. He lowered his ERA to 3.10.

The White Sox take the game against the Yankees 13-9. After the 8-8 tie, Jermaine Dye delivered the game winning RBI in the fourth with a two run homer. He later hit a solo shot, and picked up two doubles as well for a dozen total bases on the day. He raised his slugging percentage almost 30 points today. The Yankees lose a game in both the Wild Card and AL East races.

In the first and second innings of the game against the Orioles, the Yankees load the bases for Alex Rodriguez. No player ever hit a grand slam for his 500th home run, according to the broadcast. Alex strikes out in the first, then grounds into a double play to end the second. The Yankees, with all the base runners, lead Baltimore 3-0 going to the bottom of the second.

Alex Rodriguez doesn't homer in the resumption of the suspended game. His 500th home run really will be his 500th home run. The Yankees win 8-7.

Carlos Beltran is certainly having an odd month.

Beltran hit a double and homer in the Mets 4-1 win over the Dodgers Friday night. He's only hitting .185 for the month, but nine of his twelve hits have gone for extra bases, giving him a .446 slugging percentage. So Carlos presents an interesting problem for opponents. In a slump, the right strategy is to go after him. But when he does hit he does a lot of damage. Unfortunately, most of this came with the bases empty. He's only four for thirty with men on base this month.

Andruw Jones is back in the swing of things.

(Photo: Todd Kirkland/Icon SMI)

Through the end of June, Andruw had hit twelve home runs and was just slugging .377. That's low for a career .500 slugger. He's found his home run swing since, however. He hit his seventh home run of the month tonight, a two run shot in the first to put the Braves up 2-0. Including that dinger, Jones is slugging .732 and as 18 RBI in 15 games. The Braves are happy to have the old Andruw back.

It turns out Andruw made a change. He's choking up on the bat:

Jones began choking up on the bat while the Braves were on their West Coast trip before the All-Star break at about the same time as his resurgence after the worst half-season of his career.

"It's a good idea," Cox said of choking up, which was common when the manager played but rare in this era. Bonds is one of the few hitters who does it.

"You have better bat control," Cox said. "You don't have to jump out to hit the ball. You can let it come to you. There's a lot of pluses. If it's good enough for Bonds, it should be good enough for a lot of people."

Ryan Howard homers for the third time in two games, tying the game with the Dodgers at one. His three homers against Los Angeles ties the most he's hit against a team this season. He's hit three against the Reds in four games and three against the Braves in nine games. He's only played three against the Dodgers.

Troy Glaus hit well tonight, smacking two home runs and a triple against Yankees pitching. The three-bagger was his first since 2005, and only the ninth of his career. It came very close to being his third home run of the game, hitting off the wall in the left-center power alley. It wasn't enough, however, as the Yankees outscored Toronto 6-4 to push the Blue Jays two games behind New York.

Ken Griffey goes deep in the second inning, a three-run homer to put the Reds up 5-0 over the Braves. It also gives him 587 for his career, breaking a tie with Frank Robinson for sixth place on the all-time list. He trails Sosa by 15.

Chris Duncan hit his 18th home run of the season in the first inning to give the Cardinals a short-lived 2-0 lead. Duncan is turning out to be a very good offensive player. Since the start of 2006, minimum 500 plate appearances, Duncan came into the day ninth in slugging percentage. He's ahead of more famous sluggers A-Rod and Manny.

The Mets beat the Reds 5-2 today, but I can't wait to see the replay of Adam Dunn's home run:

Adam Dunn knocked out a scoreboard panel with a long home run for Cincinnati, which has lost 14 of 20 on the road.

Prince Fielder follows Ryan Braun's three-run shot in the fourth with a home run of his own, giving Prince thirty on the season. That brings him to sixty for his career, doubling his career total coming into the season. His first thirty came in 628 at bats. He came into tonight's game with 324 ABs.

Braun continues to impress at the plate. With the 1 for 2 so far tonight, his OPS is 1.071. He also has scored 37 runs and driven in 35 in 41 games.

Matt Stairs and Alex Rios go deep leading off the sixth inning against the Red Sox. They're the third pair of hitters to lead off an inning with back-to-back homers tonight. The Blue Jays have narrowed the Red Sox lead to one run.

If Barry Bonds becomes the all-time home run king, he doesn't think his reign will last long:

Bonds, who turns 43 on July 24, entered the All-Star break with 751 homers, four shy of Hank Aaron's record. Rodriguez, who turns 32 on July 27, leads the majors with 30 home runs this season, raising his total to 494.

Asked whether A-Rod would make his reign short, Bonds quickly replied: "Oh, definitely."

"His talent is unbelievable. I don't think people really appreciate his talent. His eye-hand coordination, his actual strength, his actual recognition of the ball, those are things you can't teach," Bonds said. "It's great because I know what he knows and I can see what he sees. I'm just older and can't do it as often. Willie (Mays) told me 'I see what you see, I just can't do it anymore."'

In the past, the players who hit tons of home runs in their twenties faded in their thirties. The three players who reached 700 had three of the great late career surges ever. Given the year he's having at age 32, A-Rod would probably need 250 home runs to break the new record. That's still better than 30 home runs a year for eight seasons. It's certainly within his reach, but there's plenty of room for him to fall short. You just need to look no further than his former teammate Ken Griffey to see how a great young home run hitter can fall short of the record due to injury.

Justin Morneau picked up twelve total bases with his three home runs last night, but Adrian Beltre did him one better. Beltre went five for five versus the Athletics on Friday, hitting two homers and two doubles to go with a single. The thirteen total bases raised his slugging percentage from .441 to .480. Even his OBA went up eleven points, for a 50 point increase in OPS in one night. He's the fourth player to reach thirteen total bases in one game this season, the high for 2007 (it includes teammate Raul Ibanez on 6/11). On 5/28, Beltre also had two doubles and two homers for twelve total bases, meaning that 19% of his total bases came in two games! The Mariners picked up a game on the Angels with a 7-1 win.

Alex Rodriguez took a day off to rest his hamstring yesterday, and it paid off tonight. Alex is three for four with a single, double and a two-run homer to put the Yankees up 12-9 in a slugfest. New York got off to an 8-3 lead, but the Angels came back to tie the score at nine. They've gone to the top of the seventh.

Update: I forgot to mention A-Rod tied Gehrig and Fred McGriff with 493 home runs.

Chipper Jones hit two home runs last night one in the sixth to put the Braves up 7-6, and one in the eighth to finish the scoring as Atlanta took the game from the Dodgers 8-6. Jones is having another great season with a .329 BA, a .416 OBA and a .603 slugging percentage.

In his fifteenth year, is Jones a Hall of Famer? His career averages are very good, .305/.402/.544, a 300-400-500 hitter. That makes him a complete offensive player. He's scored as many runs (1232) as he's driven in (1238). He's close to 400 home runs and has over 2000 hits and 1000 walks. He's had only one off year, 2004. His defense left a lot to be desire over the years. What do you think? How much should counting stats vs. averages weigh in a Hall of Fame selection?

Jose Reyes hits a triple over Hunter Pence's head in centerfield, all the way out to the hill at Minute Maid. Reyes is so fast he came into third standing up, and Alomar had to put up the stop sign so he didn't go for the inside the park home run. He scores on a single by Ledee that hits first base and handcuffs Berkman.

Magglio Ordonez hit his 35th double of the year this afternoon against the Indians. He had gone twelve games without a two-bagger, but with 35 in 83 games, he's on a pace for 68 which would still break the single season record. The Tigers lead the Indians 9-3 in the seventh inning. Polanco, Sheffield and Guillen all went deep for Detroit.

Ryan Howard reaches the twenty home run plateau, knocking a shot into the rightfield bullen at the Juice Box. His two-run homer extends the Phillies lead to 6-1 over the Astros. Cole Hamels recovered from the rough outing in his last start. He's struck out eight in seven innings without walking a batter.

Burrell adds the fourth home run of the day for the Phillies, and they lead 7-1.

Kevin Hench examines David Ortiz's power failure:

The lousy selection of pitches to choose from has been compounded by the lousy hitting weather that has bedeviled Papi right out of the gate.

On April 6, in normally hitter-friendly Texas, Ortiz went 0-for-4 as Robinson Tejeda two-hit the Red Sox over seven innings with a gale-force wind blowing into the batters' faces. The teams combined for seven total bases. It was physically impossible to hit the ball out that day.

It was an omen.

The wind has blown in three directions at Fenway this season. In from left. In from center. And in from right. Longtime Red Sox analyst Jerry Remy who grew up in Fall River, Mass., and played for the Sox from 1978 to 1984 has remarked frequently this season that he's never seen the wind quite like this.

In a word, it blows.

Fenway is already murder on left-handed power hitters with right field darting out abruptly to 380 feet, but it's been playing to a par-7 this year for lefties. At least eight times Big Papi has hit a ball on the screws only to see it die on the warning track and disappear into an outfielder's glove

.

Ortiz only hit three home runs at Fenway this season vs. ten on the road. Note that Ortiz was a better road home run hitter in 2006, hitting 32 of his 54 away from Fenway. He's way off both those paces this season. And although the explanation of Ramirez having a bad season make a bit of sense, I think pitchers just decided that Ortiz is too dangerous. At this point, no one wants to challenge Big Papi. He's going to need to adjust to the new way pitchers treat him. He still has his plate discipline, and he's still hitting the ball hard as you can see in his doubles total. Eventually, he'll start hitting the mistakes out of the park.

Carlos Beltran hit two home runs for the second game in a row. It's not like CBP has been a great home run park for him. Before the second game of yesterday's double header, Carlos hit only two home runs in 26 games there. His power at that ballpark was for doubles, as he hit 14 of those. The two long balls give Carlos fourteen for the season, still way off his pace of last year when he hit 41.

Barry Bonds led off the eighth inning last night with the Giants trailing 3-2. Hernandez pitched him well, but Bonds worked the count to 3-2. Pitch four had nice movement over inside corner; Barry swung and pulled it foul. Pitch five just missed the low outside corner. It was close enough that a player without Barry's reputation for selectivity might have been called out. But after five good pitches, number six was a curve ball that hung in the strike zone. Bonds' eyes lit up. His swing was so perfect you knew it was gone as soon as the ball left the bat. The ball landed back in the right-center seats, and the crowd went wild. No matter how fans feel in other parts of the country, it sure looked like unanimous support at AT & T park. Six more to pass Aaron.

Livan through three strikes in that at bat. The two tough ones Bonds fouled off. The phat one Bonds crushed. It was an impressive piece of hitting, and a great example of why Barry is the greatest hitter of his generation; he swings at strikes and takes the balls better than anyone.

Joe Mauer comes to the plate in the top of the fifth with the bases loaded and hits a grand slam to put the Twins up 6-0. Verlander is wild tonight. All three of the base runners walked, and Justin allowed five in total but only three hits. Through four innings of work, Santana struck out three and walked none.

Verlander just gave up his fourth hit of the game, and it looks like he's not long for this game.

Jose Reyes' home run this afternoon was his seventh at Citizen's Bank Park, tying Mike Lowell and Adam Dunn for most by a visitor at that yard. Jose has over twice as many at bats there as Dunn, however, and quite a bit more than Lowell.

Sorry, I missed Frank Thomas' 500th home run earlier today. Congratulations to the Big Hurt on that milestone!

Update: Peter Schmuck notes that milestones aren't what they used to be.

The great hunt for round numbers has been going on since the game's Golden Age, and there was a time when fans from all over the major leagues would stop and express their collective awe at a 300th victory or a 500th home run.

That, of course, was before it happened every day.

Prince Fielder hit his NL leading 27th home run of the season, helping the Brewers to a 6-1 win over the Houston Astros. He remains on a pace to finish with a total in the high fifties. That would set a Brewers record by a wide margin. Richie Sexson twice hit 45 homers in a season, matching the total by Gorman Thomas. When he gets to 34, he'll be in the top ten. Eddie Mathews holds the Milwaukee record with 47 in 1953.

Ken Griffey, Jr. hits his 20th home run of the season to put the Reds up 1-0 on the Mariners. In his old home town, Griffey ties McGwire for seventh on the all-time home run list with 583. Given that he now has 20 home runs less than halfway through the season, there's a good chance of Ken joining Sammy Sosa at reaching the 600 level this season.

Update: Griffey hit a second home run in the game to pass McGwire. Unfortunately, those were the only two runs the Reds picked up in the game as they lose 3-2 to the Mariners.

Alfonso Soriano hit a home run for the third game in a row and in four of the last five. It's his eleventh homer of the month, and he's slugging .770 in June. The blast helped the Cubs to a 3-0 win over the White Sox. The Cubs take the Windy City Series 5-1, outscoring their cross town opponent 33-21.

Sammy Sosa hits number 600 against his former club, the Cubs. He becomes the fifth player to crack the 600 level behind Aaron, Bonds, Ruth and Mays. Now that he's reached the milestone, I wonder how long he'll stay with the Rangers. His OPS is just a bit over .750, so he's not exactly tearing up the league. It seems to me the Rangers could find a better DH.

Will Sosa get into the Hall of Fame? Or will the cork bat and steroid allegations hurt his chances?

Ken Griffey, Jr. hit home run number 582 tonight, helping the Reds to a 4-0 lead over the Athletics in the fourth inning. The solo shot leaves him one home run behind McGwire for seventh on the all-time list.

Magglio Ordonez continues his assault on Earl Webb's double record with his 34th two bagger of the year tonight. That puts Ordonez on a pace for 78 doubles, which would crush Webb's 67 in 1931. Even if Magglio returns to his career double rate, he should bang out another twenty-two this season, putting him at 56. This may end up being the best run at Webb ever. Could both the AL doubles and home run records fall in the same season?

Update: What might be even more amazing is that Sean Casey hit his first home run of the season today.

Correction: I can't add. 34+ 22 is 56. It's been a long day.

Home Run Derby remembers Sosa's milestone home runs in baseball cards. Look at the difference in body shape between 200 and 300.

And in an interesting coincidence, it's entry number 756 for that blog!

Prince Fielder hit home run number 26 in the bottom of the first to give Milwaukee a 2-1 lead over San Francisco. That puts him on a pace for 61. Even if he falls off a bit, he has a very good chance of reaching 50, would make Cecil and Prince the only father son combination to each hit 50 home runs each.

Barry Bonds delivers a home run at Fenway, adding that to the parks in which he's gone deep. Number 748 puts him eight homers short of the career record.

Alex Rodriguez hit home run number 26 this afternoon as the Yankees won a slugfest the with Mets 11-8. His two run shot puts him on a pace to break Roger Maris' American League record of 61 home runs in a season. Alex's current pace is for 63. If he should reach that level, he would be only the third AL player to reach 60 home runs, all for the Yankees.

Sammy Sosa hits number 599, a grand slam to put Texas on top of Cincinnati 7-4. The Reds have added two since then, but the slam remains the difference in the game.

Barry Bonds follows a Klesko single with a Boeing home run, number 747. That ties the Blue Jays at three. Josh Towers put a ball over the plate on the outside half, and Barry smacks it into the center field seats. He needs nine more for the record.

Troy Glaus continues to generate offense for the Blue Jays, smacking two home runs today to raise his OBA to .401 and his slugging percentage to .557. The problem for the Blue Jays concerning Glaus is that he's only playing about 2/3 of the team's games. Today was Toronto's sixty second game, and Glaus' forty third. The Blue Jays took the Dodgers 11-5 this afternoon.

Albert Pujols smacked two home runs this afternoon as the Cardinals took the Angels 9-6. That gives Albert six home runs in his last seven games, and this is his second multi-homer game in that stretch. He's driving in twelve runs during that time. Despite Albert's success, the Cardinals are only 4-3.

Carlos Pena continues his power output, keeping on pace for the best year of his career. He doubled and homered so far this afternoon, pushing his slugging percentage to .631. Eighteen of his forty hits so far went for extra bases. It's only 130 at bats for Carlos, so I'm not getting my hopes up that he's finally matured as a hitter. But right now, he's giving the Devil Rays a legitimate power threat at first base.

Albert Pujols hit two home runs today as the Cardinals defeated the Astros 8-6. The eight total bases bring his slugging percentage over .500. For his career, Pujols is a .621 slugger. It was a good day for St. Louis power as the Cardinals hit five homers in the game.

Victor Martinez homered today. His two run shot temporarily tied the game, but the Tigers come back with one in the second to take a 3-2 lead. The homer was Victor's sixth vs. the Tigers this season, meaning 3/4 of his his against the Tigers cleared the fence. He's 8 for 27 against Detroit after the homer, with 13 RBI. For the season, Victor's home run total is twelve.

Prince Fielder helps Milwaukee to a 4-3 win over the Marlins with his nineteenth home run of the season. That ties him with Alex Rodriguez for the major league lead. Prince is now slugging .641 on the season with 43 RBI.

Gary Sheffield gets the Tigers off to a good start with a two-run homer in the first against Tampa Bay. That's Gary's ninth homer in May, tying him with Justin Morneau for the most AL homers in the month. The Tigers lead 3-0 in the bottom of the first.

Update: Ordonez picks up his 26th double of the season. That puts him on a pace for 83 this season, which would crush the major league single season record. However, if Ordonez reverts to his career doubles rate for the rest of the season, he'd pick up another 27, so it's not safe to give him a good shot at Earl Webb yet.

Magglio Ordonez blasts two home runs tonight to raise his slugging percentage to .695. That gives him a dozen on the year, and with 21 doubles, a total of 33 extra base hits. With the Tigers in first place, the once derided Ordonez is looking like an excellent MVP choice.

Justin Morneau hit his eighth home run of May to help the Twins to a 3-2 lead against Texas. That ties him with Jack Cust for most May home runs in the AL, although Cust reached his number in just sixteen games. The Twins chased Robinson Tejeda in the top of the fourth after he failed to get the first two batters. He gave up seven hits and three walks, and at least four runs.

Update: Both runners score in the fourth, and Tejeda's line is complete with five runs allowed.

Ken Griffey, Jr. hit home run number ten on the season, a two-run shot that temporarily put Cincinnati ahead of Washington 2-1. For his career, home run 573 ties Harmon Killebrew for eighth on the all-time list.

Last night I noted that Prince Fielder was just off a fifty home run pace, one that would make him the first relative a fifty home run hitter to reach the same level. He hit another late in the game to give him fourteen on the year, and put his pace right on 50 homers. The Brewers won the game 9-5. Given that Hardy also owns fourteen long balls, both could reach the goal, a rare feat on the same team.

Prince Fielder hit home run number thirteen tonight for Milwaukee, helping them to an early 2-0 lead over the Dodgers. It's the 45th game for the Brewers, which puts Fielder on a pace for 47 home runs. It's not much of a stretch for him to reach 50. If that happens, I believe he'll be the first relative of a 50 home run hitter to reach that level as well. The Griffeys didn't do it. Neither Aaron ever did it. The Bonds' didn't do it. And while Greg Vaughn reached 50, his cousin Mo topped out at 44.

Go Prince!

Alex Rodriguez appears to have his home run stroke back again. Wakefield threw a knuckler that just hung in the strike zone, and Alex crushed it either into or over the bullpen (it was tough to tell from the broadcast). That three homers in three games for Alex after a bit of a drought. The Yankees lead 2-0 after one.

Magglio Ordonez took a Tim Wakefield knuckleball out of the park tonight for his eighth home run of the season. That extends his extra-base hit lead in the American League to 27. His extra-base hit total for 2007 is already higher than his total in 82 games in 2005 for Detroit. He seemed like a bad signing that season, but he's paying big dividends now.

J.J. Hardy is Dy-no-mite! He hits his twelfth home run of the season to put the Brewers ahead of the Phillies 4-2 and take sole possession of the NL lead in the category. It looks like the most important move the Brewers made in the off season was moving Hall to center and Hardy permanently to short.

Pat Burrell goes deep twice for Philadelphia as they take a 5-2 lead over the Cubs. Both come off Hill, the second chasing him from the mound after two batters in the sixth. Pat's driven in all five runs for the Phillies tonight.

Hamels also allowed two home runs, but both were solo shots.

The Phillies were trailing 3-0 in the seventh when they loaded the bases off Randy Johnson. Melvin went to the pen for Medders, and Manuel brought a surprise off the bench, Ryan Howard. The big slugger showed why he won the MVP in 2006, hitting a grand slam to change the deficit into a lead. The Phillies add two more and lead the DBacks 6-3 in the ninth.

Barry Bonds hit his eleventh home run of the season, leaving him eleven short of breaking Henry Aaron's record of 755. The solo shot raises Barry's slugging percentage to .818.

One of the more generous projections for Barry was in the Bill James Handbook. That predicted an OBA of .495 and a slugging percentage of .612 with 32 homers. Looks like he's going to blow by all those numbers sans a serious injury.

Alex Rodriguez slams his first home run since April 23rd. With two runs scored and two RBI so far tonight, Alex remains ahead of games played in both categories. In 31 games he has score 34 and driven in 39.

Barry Bonds delivers home run number ten on the season and 744 for his career to tie the Phillies at one in the second inning. Barry's on a pace for 56 home runs this year, which would take him most of the way to 800.

Alex Rodriguez picks up his first RBI since 4/23. His infield hit scored Damon from third and brings Alex's total to 36. He was off to such a great start, he still has nine more RBI than games played.

Update: Alex scores a run as well as the Yankees send 10 men to the plate in the first, scoring the first five runs of the game. That's 30 runs in 27 games for Alex. No one has driven in and scored more runs that games in a season since both Ruth and Gehrig accomplished the feat in 1931.

Update: The Mariners come back to tie the game at six. But in the bottom of the fourth, A-Rod comes up with men on first and second and two out and delivers a double to drive both in. The Yankees lead 8-6. Igawa's allowed three homers in the game.

Update: Igawa gives up two hits to start the fifth, and Torre brings in Mr. Bean. Coulter faces four batters, doesn't get an out, and four runs score to put the Mariners up 10-8. Vizcaino comes in and allows two more to score, and there's still no one out.

Keep your eye on Vlad Guerrero's RBI as the season progresses. With a two-run homer in the first today, the right fielder lifted his RBI total to 29 in 27 games. More RBI than games played is a rare event.

Barry Bonds hits home run number nine on the season and the 743rd of his career. The two run shot gives the Giants a 2-0 lead, but the Rockies come back to tie the game with two in the fifth. Barry now has scored and driven in 19 runs on the season.

Josh Willingham drives in all five Marlins runs tonight as they defeat the Mets 5-3. The leftfielder hit a bases loaded triple in the first and a two-run homer in the eighth. Josh now has collected 23 RBI in 25 games.

Alfonso Soriano leads off the Cubs/Pirates game with a home run over the centerfield fence off Tony Armas, Jr. That's the first home run of the year for Alfonso.

Update: The Pirates come back in the bottom of the first as the first three batters pick up hits off Ted Lilly. An error and a walk lead to a three-run first for Pittsburgh. They lead 3-1 in the second.

Update: Jacque Jones hits his first home run of the year in the top of the first, in almost the exact same spot as Soriano.

Barry Bonds put the Giants up 2-0 early with his eighth home run of the season. That puts him fourteen home runs away from 756. It's looking more and more like Barry will get there sometime in June.

Barry Bonds put the Giants up 2-0 early with his eighth home run of the season. That puts him fourteen home runs away from 756. It's looking more and more like Barry will get there sometime in June.

Derrek Lee picked up his 13th double of the season, tying him with Chase Utley for the NL lead in that category. Throughout his career, Lee balanced his doubles and home runs, favoring doubles by a bit. But this season, he's only hit one home run. He's slugging .565, so there's nothing to complain about, but has he lost a bit of his power? Or is he simply hitting line drives, and the home runs will come eventually?

Sammy Sosa hit two solo home runs this afternoon as Texas lost to Cleveland 9-4. That gives him six for the season and six away from six hundred. Sammy seems to be swinging for the fences as his batting average is just .239 but he's slugging .535. With a .289 OBA, he's not exactly trying to help the team by getting on base, either. Still, if you are going to be good at one thing, hitting home runs remains a good choice.

Derrek Lee answers a two-run fifth by the Brewers with his first home run of the season. Lee knocked out nine doubles so far this season, so his slugging percentage was good, but that's the first ball to leave the park. The Cubs now lead 6-2.

Red Reporter felt there was too much coverage of Griffey last night and not enough of Alex Gonzalez.

Alex Gonzalez had an incredible night in just about every area of play. His throw to get Albert Pujols was amazing. It really annoyed me to read the AP recap and find four paragraphs devoted to Ken Griffey Jr. and just one about Gonzalez. I was obviously happy to see Junior's home run, but him moving into 10th place on the all time home run list feels like a non-story to me at this point. Not sure why that is exactly, but he feels like an afterthought in general now, which is a little strange.

Gonzalez is a glove man who hit did something unusual for him, hit two home runs in the game. Balance that with an all-time great passing another all-time great on the home run list. The assault on both the 500 and 600 home run levels is a big story of this season.

More importantly, the win over Cardinals puts the Reds in second place in the NL Central and drops St. Louis to fifth. St. Louis starting pitchers allowed seven earned runs in two consecutive starts and only posted one good game in their last eight contests. Too many balls in play led to 59 hits in 45 innings over that time.

Correction: Fixed the division.

Alex Rodriguez just took Reyes deep in the top of the ninth inning. His second home run of the game ties the major league record of 14 home runs in April set by Albert Pujols in 2006. That makes the score 10-8 Devil Rays, and the Yankees are down to their final out after Giambi Ks.

Update: With the four for five tonight, he's also hitting .400 on the season.

Update: Matsui flies out to end the game with the Devil Rays winning 10-8. Six of the nine Devil Rays offensive players collected multiple hits in the game. The Yankees pitching continues to be poor.

If A-Rod was to revert to his career rate of RBI per game for the rest of the season, he'd drive in 146 runs. With three tonight, he's driven in 34 runs in 18 games.

Alex Rodriguez blasts his 13th home run of the season leading off the second inning for the Yankees. That ties him with Ken Griffey, Jr. for the American League record for most home runs in April. He needs one more to catch Pujols for the major league record. He's now slugging 1.028, which is an MVP like OBA + Slugging.

Update: Igawa gives the run back and more in the bottom of the second as Baldelli crushes a three run homer to break a 1-1 tie and put the Devil Rays up 4-1.

This was a good call. David Ortiz pulls the ball down the line in his third at bat for his sixth home run of the season. The two run shot puts the Red Sox up 7-4 and caps a three-run fourth inning.

Alex Rodriguez leads off the third with his seventh double of the season. That's 19 extra base hits for Alex, and so while we think about his breaking some single season home run record, we should also think about his breaking Babe Ruth's 119 extra-base hit record from 1921.

Travis Buck his first ML home run, driving in two more to bring his total to five RBI on the night. Buck's two hits tonight are both for extra bases, and seven of his eleven ML hits are long ones.

With men on first and second and two out, Alex Rodriguez takes Curt Schilling deep for the second time tonight. He pulled the first one into the Monster Seats, but this time he drives the ball into the bullpen in right center. He's now five for seven on the season with RISP and 2 out. The second dinger moves him past both Stargell and Musial for 25th on the all-time list.

Update: Alex drove in four so far tonight, giving him 30 RBI on the season. I'd love to see someone challenge Hack Wilson's record of 191, or at least Gehrig's AL record or 184.

Alex Rodriguez leads off the fourth inning with his eleventh home run of the season. That's four straight games with a home run for A-Rod, and he's homered in 10 of 15 games. The Yankees lead 2-0 in the middle of the fourth.

Chipper Jones puts the Braves up 2-0 with his fifth home run of the season. The first inning shot is number 362 for his career, moving Chipper past the Yankee Clipper, Joe DiMaggio.

In case you didn't notice, Barry Bonds leads the NL in slugging percentage. He doesn't seem to be drawing an inordinate amount of intentional walks this year, either. Of course, he's only been up seven times this season with men on base and first open.

Jeff Kent provided some offense today as the Dodgers picked up an easy win against the Rockies 8-1. He knocked out three hits, scoring twice and driving in two. But one of his hits was a double, the 507th of his career, breaking a tie with Babe Ruth for 39th on the all-time list. He need 21 more this year to tie Frank Robinson for 30th all time.

Victor Martinez breaks open a tight pitching duel in the Bronx with a three-run homer in the top of the seventh. That puts Cleveland up 5-2, equalling their output of the previous two games.

Fausto Carmona gave the Tribe six very good innings, allowing just two runs and throwing 97 pitches. At that pitch level, I assume he's done for the day, but he's in line for the win.

Manny Ramirez finally picks up his first home run of the season. It's timely two, as the two run shot in the eighth ties the game at three and prevents Roy Halladay from picking up a win.

Update: This is the third year in a row Manny homered late. In 2005, it was on 4/16 and in 2006, 4/21.

Albert Pujols visited Barry Bonds' home park last night and both sluggers delivered home runs. Albert picked up three hits to raise his average to the Mendoza line, and his two-run homer in the third inning gave the Cardinals a 4-1 lead at the time. Bonds waited until the eighth inning when his solo shot tied the game at five. That sent the game to extra innings. Rich Aurilia won it with a single in the twelfth.

Both bullpens pitched well last night, as was the case across the majors (four extra-inning games yesterday). Despite a no-hitter by Buehrle, major league starters yesterday posted a 4.11 ERA while relievers were over a run lower at 3.09. They struck out more per nine and gave up far fewer home runs per 9 IP. For the year, relief ERAs are running about .5 runs lower than starters, and the big difference is home run rates, 0.7 per 9 for relievers, 0.9 for starters.

Alex Rodriguez hits his ninth home run of the season, a two-run shot that extends the Yankees lead over Cleveland to 8-2. It almost seems that Alex absorbed all the home run power from the usual sluggers who are off to a slow start. He's now just two behind Thome, Stargell and Musial, and twenty behind Yankees great Lou Gehrig.

Cardinals Diaspora vents frustration about Albert Pujols:

But for the first time in roughly 5 years Albert Pujols stepped into the box with the bases drunk, a closer on the ropes and a chance to salt away a comeback win that should have never happened- and I kind of got the feeling like he wouldn't get the job done. As much as the Waterboy and I tried to fool each other into thinking the W was imminent, deep down we weren't confident. Solomon Torres was. 3 pitches and an infield fly later, the crowd filed out with 45,000 similar thoughts- what happened to Albert?

The conundrum is hard to verbalize, though. I mean, this man has pretty much been the epitome of clutch for his entire career. He's made the extraordinary look routine and the routine look like child's play. His determination made him not only the most feared hitter in MLB, but a Gold-Glove fielder as well. So to sit here and bitch is like telling Gissele to toss off because she's got a mole on arm. On the other hand, I think we can all agree on the fact that Pujols is way, way off. He's way out in front of pitches, his patience is shot- it's a hot mess.

Please repeat after me: "Anything can happen in 100 at bats."

Albert Pujols has 47 at bats so far this season. The 95% confidence interval for hits for a career .330 hitter is 9 to 21. Albert is 8 for 47, which puts him just barely of the the range. Okay, maybe you should worry a little, but two hits today and he's back at the low end of the range. Another two weeks like this however, and Cardinal fans can really start to worry.

David Ortiz launched his fourth home run of the season to make the score 7-1 in favor of Boston. With his 2 for 2 today (with a double), Ortiz's averages are back to their usual fine levels, .300 batting, .400 OBA, .700 slugging.

Jimmy Rollins extends his home run lead in the National League with sixth long ball of the season. That's about a quarter of his total of 25 from 2006. The Phillies lead 5-4 in the sixth inning. Hamels only struck out two so far today, and allowed a three-run homer to Jason Lane.

Barry Bonds homered twice tonight to lead the Giants over the Pirates 8-5. It's the first time he homered at his old home town since August of 2004. That puts Barry at 737, eighteen homers behind Aaron.

Alex Rodriguez just boffed Boof, taking him deep on a 3-2 pitch for a 2-0 Yankees lead. That's A-Rod's third first-inning homer of the season.

So far this season, the Cardinals big three hitters remained quiet. Today, Pujols and Rolen combined to collect four hits and six RBI as Albert goes deep and Scott doubles. Despite the outburst, the two are still hitting under the Mendoza line. Their offense was more than enough today to send Houston to a 10-1 loss.

Kip Wells pitched a great game, seven one-hit innings with seven strikeouts. He lowered his ERA to 1.38 and now has 14 K in 13 IP this season. Kip's never been a great strikeout pitcher, and you wonder how much his circulatory problems hurt him as a pitcher in the past.

Alex Rodriguez comes up with men on first and third in the first inning and blasts his third home run in two games. This one goes the opposite way to right field. That means no part of the park is safe, as his first yesterday went down the left field line and the grand slam landed in center. That gives the Yankees a 3-0 lead after one inning.

Update: The Yankees fans don't like Kevin Millar. He's booed as he comes up in the top of the second, then answers the boos with a two run homer. The Yankees lead is down to 3-2. That's Millar's second hit of the season and his first for extra bases.

Sammy Sosa blasts his first home run of the 2007 season, extending the Rangers lead to 7-3 over Boston in the sixth inning. He hit it to the left side of centerfield, but he knew it was gone as he gave it the Sammy hop. He needs eleven more to reach 600.

Adam Dunn picked up his third home run of the season and walked three times as the Red defeated the Pirates 7-5. I also like the fact he's batting second in the Reds lineup. It almost looks like Narron used the lineup analysis tool to create his order. Dunn now struck out four times in five games. If he keeps up that rate, he'll cut his strikeouts by more than 60.

Update: Dunn's home run today was really a dropped ball:

Adam Dunn hit a home run that bounced off right fielder Xavier Nady's glove and into the seats. Nady thought he caught the ball and cocked to throw, only to peer into an empty glove.

"I'd like to hit every home run 500 feet, but I hit it in the air and the wind took it and it went a lot farther than I thought," Dunn said. "Strange? Yes, I've never had anything like that happen."

So I wonder what negative thing the New York papers are going to say about Alex Rodriguez hitting a two-out, two-strike, walk off grand slam? All he did today was drive in six of the Yankees runs with two homers, a double and a walk, and he also scored four. I'm guessing the headline tomorrow in at least one paper will be "Mr. April."

Of course, if Jeter doesn't draw that clutch walk with a man on first, A-Rod never gets the chance to hit the homer.

Barry Bonds hits his first home run of the season, a shot into the leftfield stands. That's 735. Young worked Barry outside in the at bat, and on the previous pitch, Barry took a pitch low on the outside corner that looked like a strike to me. If it's not Barry, another batter might have been rung up on that location. Young brings the next pitch up a bit, and Bonds tomahawks it out of the park for a 1-0 Giants lead.

Update: In Bonds' second plate appearance, Cain hits the outside corner on another two strike pitch, but once again doesn't get the call. However, this time Barry grounds out.

There's a nice comparison of Adrian Beltre's 2004 and 2006 swings at The Baseball Analysts. In the first comparison video, you can see how much faster he finishes the swing, indicating to me a faster bat.

Royals Authority explores the enigma that is Ryan Shealy.

Joe Duellman writes:

I just noticed that Adam Dunn is slugging under .500 despite hitting 40 home runs so far this season. That seems like something that would happen very rarely. Who is the last player to do this? Is it as uncommon as I think?

It's more uncommon than you think. The lowest slugging percentage by a 40 home run hitter is .506 by Jay Buhner in 1997. Jay hit 40 that year, but his batting average was just .243. After play tonight, Dunn is hitting just .233, and almost have his hits went for extra bases.

David Ortiz tied Babe Ruth's AL record for road home runs with his 32nd yesterday. The Red Sox play their last road game tonight, giving Big Papi a chance to break that mark.

This is an impressive record. Road statistics eliminate much of the noise of home parks. Fenway this year is a poor home run park. In the Fens, we've seen 150 home runs. Away, Red Sox games produced 214. I don't think they'll catch up over the final six games.

So this is an achievement that should not be dismissed. Fenway Park knocked a few homers off David's total. And remember, he missed a number of road games with his heart scare, so I would guess the number of road games he's played (76) is comparable to the number Ruth played in the shorter 1927 season. This really should go down as one of the great home runs seasons in the history of the league.

Barry Bonds hit his 26th home run of the season, moving past Hank Aaron for the most home runs in National League history, 734. He accomplished this in the city where Aaron spent more than half his career. I wonder if Selig was at the game, and if he'll congratulate Barry afterward? There's really no excuse for Bud not to be there.

Congratulations to Barry Bonds on reaching this milestone! I'm impressed he was able to get this far on his two bad knees and bad elbow. Aaron's MLB record now looks reachable in 2007, if anyone signs him to play.

In a wild game, won 13-12 by the Brewers, Barry Bonds tied Henry Aaron's National League record of 733 home runs. He doubled twice and drove in six runs. The three run shot in the sixth gave the Giants an 11-10 lead, bringing them back from a 9-4 deficit. But the Brewers scored three times in the bottom of the eighth to spoil Barry's moment and the Giants chances of making the playoffs.

The Marlins just intentionally walked Ryan Howard with a man on first and two out. He's getting the Bonds treatment. The fans stood and booed. Good for them. Walking Howard makes the Phillies offense better, not worse.

Update: Jeff Conine drives the ball up the middle for a base hit, scoring Utley from second. The walk backfires.

An umpire's bad call cost Ryan Howard a home run last night:

The game was scoreless and Cole Hamels was working on a no-no (which he carried into the seventh inning) when Howard came up with two outs in the sixth inning.

Howard had gone an eternity - OK, six games, but that's a lot for him - without a homer. It looked like the drought was over when he lofted a fly ball that cleared the 19-foot left-field wall. Hilgedick had the ball in his glove, but couldn't hang on. It fell onto the field, creating the impression that it hadn't cleared the wall and sparking a mini-controversy that may be talked about for years to come, especially if Howard finishes with 59, 60 or 61 homers.

Third-base umpire Larry Poncino, who unlike the rest of us doesn't have the benefit of using instant replay when making calls, watched Hilgedick get a glove on the ball at the top of the wall and ruled it fan interference. Instead of trotting around the bases with his 57th homer, Howard stopped at second with his 22d double.

Poncino later admitted to blowing the call - "It was over the fence. That's it," he said - and you can rest assured that he was privately ecstatic that this didn't turn out to be a one-run game. In the end, the call had little bearing on the outcome, an important, 7-2 Phillies win. But it might have a bearing on a slice of baseball history and an issue many people are batting around.

That non-home run might go down in history with Al Kaline's rained-out homer that left him with 399 for his career. It's sure to join the retrosheet list, at least.

Eric Chavez homered in the top of the second to put Oakland up 2-1. That shot is his 18th of the year. He started off with nine in April and finally doubled that total. It's the first time he's had more than one in a month since June. The Devil Rays tie it in the bottom of the second as Cantu takes Zito deep.

Art Kyriazis send this article from Saturday about Ryan Howard's great season since the All-Star break:

Now for the statistics portion of the story, in which Howard's amazing season has picked up incredible steam. In the past 16 games, he's 26-for-56 (.464) with 13 homers, 26 RBIs and 20 runs scored. He has 28 homers and 67 RBIs in the 54 games since the All-Star break, and hasn't gone more than four games without a homer in that span. His seventh multihomer game this season tied him with Dick Allen for the most in franchise history.

With 56 home runs, he's tied for the 15th best single-season total in Major League history, matching Hack Wilson (1930) and the twice-reached amount of his idol, Ken Griffey Jr. (1997-98).

Arthur points out that Ryan's on a 84 home run pace since the All-Star break. Howard's finish is very similar to Pujols' start, except even better. Ryan's OPS over this time is about 150 points better than Albert's at the beginning of the year, and we thought that was an incredible start to the season. So much for the theory that home run derbies ruin home run hitters.

If someone's playing with Barry Bonds on the San Francisco Giants this may not be the best way to start an article about a career year:

Ray Durham's transformation as a hitter extends from head to toe.

Start with Durham's mind, which has absorbed steady doses of advice from one Barry Bonds.

Proceed to Durham's eyes, through which he noticed a facet of his batting stance that he reclaimed after watching videotape.

Neither of these facets would have meant much without Durham's legs, which have endured numerous injuries since he joined the Giants in 2003.

Now Durham's healthy, enabling him to use his legs as the base for his swing that has made him one of the most productive second basemen in baseball.

Old player, often injured, talks to Bonds, starts hitting home runs, plays in the Bay Area. I know, he's smarter and lifting weights!

Bonds also has helped Durham between at-bats. When he's batting left-handed, the switch-hitting Durham studies how pitchers throw to Bonds to gain an idea of how they might approach him.

Perhaps more importantly, Durham said that while they're in the dugout, Bonds often will notice when a pitcher repeats a certain sequence of deliveries and points that out to teammates.

"Sure enough, I go up there and it's the same exact sequence," Durham said. "That's why I think I've done as well as I've done, because I can sit there and listen to him go through what the pitcher's thinking and what the catcher's going to call before he calls it. He's amazing."

This, of course, is the one thing people miss when evaluating Bonds. He's developed a great internal pattern recognizer over the years when it comes to pitchers, and knows what's coming. Pitchers might want to go out of their way to randomize what they throw to Barry, although I wouldn't be surprised if he could pick up subtleties in their deliveries and figure out what the pitch is anyway.

The seed for Durham's improvement was planted in mid-July, when he watched videotapes of his at-bats with the Chicago White Sox in 2000-01 and noticed that he crouched more at the plate then. Durham was an American League All-Star in 2000 and set his previous career high the following year with 20 homers.

"I saw my stance back then and looked at it now and it was night and day," Durham said. "... It's weird how you can do the same things early in the season and change one little thing and you take off."

Implementing that change forced Durham to adjust his physical regimen.

"I had to do a lot more work with my legs because I hadn't been on them, and I knew they probably would get a little tired," he said.

This might seem risky for Durham, who went on the disabled list twice each season in 2003 and 2004 with assorted leg injuries and was sidelined April 28-May 11 this season with a strained left hamstring. But he said that performing more stretching exercises -- "body-weight stuff, squats, lunges" -- has kept him on the field.

I don't mean to be so hard on Ray Durham. He's been a very good player for a number of years. But if you were developing a pattern recognizer for picking players who might be juicing, wouldn't he fit the bill?

Mike Piazza hits his 20th home run of the season in the second inning, a solo shot that helped San Diego to a 2-0 lead. The long ball put Mike's season slugging percentage over .500. The last time Piazza slugged that high was 2002 when he finished with a .544 mark. He hasn't hit over 20 home runs in a year since, but it looks like he'll top that mark this season.

Update: Atkins his a two-run shot in the top of the third to tie the game and eliminate this contest from the shutout competition. At age 26, Atkins' made an impressive leap in his second full season in the majors. His homer tonight was his 66th extra-base hit of the season after 45 in 2005. His double total alone is 43.

Albert Pujols put the Cardinals up 1-0 in the first with his 44th home run of the season. He needs three more to set a new career high, five more to reach 250 in six seasons.

In a comment to this post, a Phillies fan and good friend writes:

Since entering the league around the middle of last year, Howard has now hit 23 + 52 = 75 home runs in 1 1/2 seasons. He is on pace to hit 500 home runs before the age of 30 in about five seasons and clearly at this pace will pass Barry Bonds, Willie Mays and eventually Henry Aaron despite his late start and being 26 years of age.

No. First of all, he has 76 homers, not 75 (he hit 2 in 2004). Secondly, a great finish this year and three great season afterward puts him at 240 homers through age 29, which isn't quite 500. Albert Pujols, who is the same age, has 243 homers. In order to catch Albert in three years, Howard would need to outhit Pujols by about 60 homers a year. Even Babe Ruth, who got off to a late start due to being a pitcher, hit 163 homers through age 26.

The more interesting question is why Howard didn't get a chance to play until a Thome injury? Why was a player who hit for average, got on base and hit for power spending three years in A ball? If Philadelphia realized what they had, they could have signed a stop gap instead of Thome, and maybe Howard comes up in 2003 and has 150 homers already. And when I talk about first basemen being easy to find, I wonder how many teams might have traded for Ryan, since the Phillies were happy with Thome. He might get to 500 home runs, but if he were full time in 2004, that would be a lot more likely.

It's a big home run day as Albert Pujols slugs three homers to keep pace with Ryan Howard. At one point, Albert was running away with the home run race, but with the injury, he's now ten behind Ryan. They're in the sixth inning, so Albert should get a shot at four in the game.

Update: Pujols is coming up in the bottom of the seventh.

Update: On a 1-1 pitch, Pujols flies to the edge of the warning track in left. He's driven in all five runs today as the Cardinals lead 5-0. Reyes struck out 9 in his 6 1/3 innings of shutout ball.

A-Rod seems to have recovered from his west coast illness just fine. He hit two more home runs today, bringing his season total to 31. He drove in four runs for 103 on the season. That's five home runs and 12 RBI in his last four games. It will probably end up being an off year for Rodriguez in terms of power, but still a better season than he put up in 2004.

The Yankees have to be happy with Darrell Rasner's first start for New York. He allowed just one run over six innings while walking none. In 15 career major league innings he's allowed 10 hits and walked just 2. New York leads Minnesota 8-1 in the eighth inning.

Update: A-Rod drives in another run in the 8th with a single to give him five on the afternoon and 104 for the season.

Ryan Howard just hit his third home run of the game, blowing by the 50 home run mark to give himslef 52 on the season. He'll come up again in the 6-1 game for a shot at the single game record of four.

The record for a double header is five, and they will play a nightcap today.

Update: Howard is up in the 8th with one out and none on.

Update: McBride hangs one and Howard lines it into center field for a single. Thirteen total bases on the day isn't bad. He's now slugging .661 on the season.

Chipper Jones homers in the top of the first of game two versus the Phillies to give the Braves a 2-0 lead. In his last eight games, Chipper's collected nine hits, five of them for homers. He's not hitting for a high average, but he's making them count. He's driven in twelve runs in that time.

Update: The Phillies come back to tie the game at 2 with a run in the first and a run in the second.

Update: The Phillies take the lead as Victorino runs outside the first base line to reach first, driving in a run. The umps seem to make a "no harm, no foul" call as LaRoche could not have tagged him anyway. Doesn't seem right to me. The run would have scored anyway. Phillies lead 3-2.

Ryan Howard connects for his 49th home run, passing Mike Schmidt to claim the single season home run record for the Phillies. With a month to go, he's likely to shatter the record, and may become the first player since 2001 to reach 60 home runs in a season. Even more importantly, the shot ties the Nationals at two.

Barry's knees must be okay as he goes deep for the second time in the game. It's his first multi-homer game in exactly two years, also at Atlanta.

Carlos Beltran hits a solo home run in the first inning at Coors to help the Mets to a 2-1 lead over the Rockies in the second inning. It's his 24th road home run of the year, keeping pace with Ryan Howard for most long balls away from home in the National League.

Ryan Howard adds a three-run homer to the Phillies attack to make the score 9-3 over the Nationals. His 48th dinger of the season puts him ahead of the ill David Ortiz for the major league lead in homers. His 2 for 3 night puts his slugging percentage over .700 for the month of August.

Vernon Wells homered in a 10-6 Toronto win over the Royals today, bringing his total to 30. Twenty-three of those, however, have come in the stadium formerly known as Skydome. That ties him with teammate Troy Glaus for most home runs at home in the AL. Wells is having a decent season on the road, but he's slugging about 200 points lower away from his home park. He's an MVP at home, just a good player away.

Ted Lilly got the win but didn't pitch well. After giving up six runs in 5 1/3 innings, I doubt he minded leaving the game.

Correction: The Blue Jays beat the Royals, not the Devil Rays, though it's tough to tell the difference. :-)

Jermaine Dye hit two home runs and a double today to help Chicago to a 10-0 win over Detroit. Dye is now slugging .651, 170 points over his career average. His career high before this was .561in 2000. It's pretty unusual for a player to set career highs in power at this age (32). I wonder if we'll start hearing steroid rumors about him. Does anyone know if Dye changed his approach to hitting this year, or if someone's coached him differently?

Update, 8/25/2006, 8:45 AM: There's an argument in the comments for the park helping Dye. The problem with that argument is it doesn't hold water. In 2005, the park was neutral for him in batting average and OBA. It did, however, help his slugging percentage. In 2006, the park is neutral in OBA once again, but his BA and slugging are much better away from Chicago. Note also that these results are indeed outliers. The 95% confidence range for hits in 424 at bats is 92 to 136. Dye collected 138 hits so far. For OBA, the range is 142 to 182, and Dye reached base 186 times. This season represents a big departure from career norms for Dye, and the probability that it's random is small.

Alfonso Soriano led off the first for Washington tonight with his 39th home run of the season, tieing his career high in home runs. Zimmerman also homers in the inning to drive in two, and the Nationals lead the Phillies 3-0 in the bottom of the first.

The Mariners and Rangers are tied at three in the top of the fourth inning. Ben Broussard hit his third home run since joining Seattle. He's hitting one in about 10 at bats for the Mariners; he was hitting one every 20 at bats for the Indians.

Alfonso Soriano hit his 38th home run of the year in a 3-1 loss to the Mets today, putting him one shy of his career high. Since and including 2002, Soriano ranks 7th in the majors in home runs hit. That's quite impressive. But please take a look at the walk column. Soriano is the only player in the top 10 below 200 walks. Vlad Guerrero is next among that group, and he has 120 more walks than Soriano.

Usually someone who can hit home runs at that rate induces a bit of fear in a pitcher. They pitch more carefully to these hitters, especially in tight situations. So either the pitchers are less afraid of Soriano (doubtful), or he's just not taking advantage of pitches outside the strike zone. Either way, this is another part of the argument that his offensive strengths make him a better lower part of the order hitter.

Wilson Betemit has certainly supplied some power in his brief tenure with the Dodgers. His two-run homer in the fifth broke a 4-4 tie and was the difference in LA's 6-5 win over the Giants. It's his fourth homer in 45 at bats for the Dodgers, giving Wilson a .622 slugging percentage with his new team.

Juan Rivera keeps slugging. He just hit a two-run homer to cut the Indians lead to 3-2. He stays hot since the break. He had 11 homers and 36 RBI in 55 games before the break, 9 homers and 28 RBI in his last 26 games since.

Via Bronx Banter, a detailed analysis showing flaws in Alex Rodriguez's swing compared to last year.

I can not bring myself to believe that A-Rod all of a sudden can't hang in NY or deal with his surroundings, especially coming off his best offensive season. What is much easier to believe is that his swing has slipped a bit, but with a few adjustments, he can get back to being his usual MVP self.

What I'm wondering is why the Yankees staff doesn't pick up on this? Isn't that their job?

Aaron Gleeman notes it's been 19 years since the Twins had a slugger hit 30 home runs in a season:

Prior to Morneau, the last time a Twins hitter homered 30 times in a season was back in 1987, when Kent Hrbek (34), Tom Brunansky (32), and Gary Gaetti (31) all did so. Kirby Puckett nearly made it a foursome with 28 homers that year, which makes it all the more difficult to believe that it took nearly 20 years for the team to produce another 30-homer season.

They used to call it the HHH Dome the Homer Dome. That's been a misnomer for a long time. I've always prefered the Metro Nome. :-)

David Ortiz continues to pound the ball. His solo homer in the 7th inning brings the Red Sox within one run of the Royals as they trail 5-4. It's his tenth since the All-Star break. He's hitting a homer every 9.6 at bats in that time.

Vlad Guerrero hits his 25th home run of the season on a low pitch on the outside part of the plate off Sowers. He blasted it to the opposite field, and from his swing it looked like that was his plan all along. He's now 12 for 24 against the Indians in seven games with three homers and nine RBI.

Ryan Howard hit home run number 39 tonight, a two run shot that has the Phillies up 2-1 in the top of the fifth. It looks like Ryan's 2006 season is going to compare very favorably to Frank Howard's 1969 season. Frank is the only Howard to hit 40 homers in a season, although that's likely to change soon. Moe, Curly and Shemp could not be reached for comment.

The Phillies score 5 in the top of the fifth to make the score 7-1 over the Braves.

Juan Rivera homered this afternoon as the Angels lead the Rangers 10-3 in the top of the 9th inning. His three run shot in the 4th extended the lead to 7-0 and pretty much put the game out of reach. On July fourth, Rivera hit two homers in a game at Seattle. Since then, he's tied with David Ortiz for the most home runs in the majors with 13.

Chase Utley gets a day off after the end of his streak, but Ryan Howard is still in the lineup and he homers in the first to give the Phillies a three-run lead over the Mets. That home runs in consecutive at bats for the NL leader. The very tight home run races in both leagues have disappeared as Howard and Ortiz opened up bigger leads. The Phillies lead the Mets 3-1 in the bottom of the fourth

Carlos Guillen has the Tigers two extra-base hits tonight, a homer and a triple. That brings his slugging percentage up over .500 for the season. The Tigers lead Tampa Bay 6-2 in the bottom of the third.

Update: Guillen picks up a double in the eighth to complete the cycle. It's the third one this season. He's 4 for 5 tonight with three runs and two RBI. The Tigers lead 9-3 in the bottom of the 8th.

Update: It's the first cycle by a Tiger since Damion Easley on June 8, 2001.

Carlos Beltran picks up where he left off in July. He's 2 for 2 with a double and a homer to help the Mets to a 4-1 lead over the Marlins in the top of the fourth. That gives Carlos five home runs in his last three games. He's just five away from his career high in home runs.

Wily Mo Pena picks up a single in his third at bat in the sixth inning. He just needs a double for the cycle. A ball off the wall should do it for him at Fenway. The Red Sox trail the Indians 8-6 in the bottom of the sixth.

Update: Pena strikes out in the bottom of the 8th. The Red Sox will need to score a couple of runs to give Wily another chance at the cycle.

David Ortiz just hit his 36th home run of the season and 13th in July. If he can repeat that number the next two months, he'll pass Maris for most home runs in a season for an American Leaguer.

Alfonso Soriano hit his 32nd home run in the bottom of the first to put the Nationals up 1-0 on the San Francisco Giants. That now ranks him 7th on the single season home run list for the Expos/Nationals. Vlad Guerrero's 44 from 2000 are clearly in his sights. The question is, will he be with the team long enough to get there? Shades of Mark McGwire in 1997.

Luis Gonzalez homered in the first inning of today's game against the Phillies to give the Diamondbacks a 1-0 lead. Take a look at his June vs. July numbers and remember, anything can happen in 100 at bats.

Frank Thomas hit two home runs against the Red Sox yesterday, prompting Eric Gilmore to praise the off-season signing:

Thomas has been better than the A's ever imagined. He slugged two more home runs Wednesday, tying Nick Swisher for the team lead with 22. He drove in four runs, passing Swisher for the team lead with 58.

Beane landed Thomas with a one-year, $500,000 deal with $2.6 million in incentives. In a baseball world filled with multi-year, multi-million dollar deals, that was the equivalent of wagering $5 in a slot machine and hitting a jackpot.

"This was the best-case scenario," Beane said.

What's also good to see is that the walks are piling up as well. While Frank's batting averages aren't near his career levels, his .374 OBA is very good. His 30 doubles years are gone, as his legs really can't take him to second base anymore. He's a two dimensional player, but those two dimensions are getting on base and hitting home runs. The A's will take that.

Juan Rivera at age 27 (seasonal age) tied his career high in home runs as he hit number 15 tonight, driving in two. He did it in about 120 fewer at bats than last season. Rivera is at the peak of his career in terms of age. It took him a while to get a regular job, but he's making the most of it. The solid power season he's experiencing will go a long way toward keeping him in the majors for a number of years. The Angels win the game 8-4, and losses by both Texas and Oakland would put LAnaheim into a tie for first place in the AL West.

Bill Hall hit his 20th home run of the season in the sixth inning to tie the Cincinnati Reds 7-7. Hall is three home runs ahead of last year's pace in about 2/3 of the at bats. He traded getting on for his power, however. Last year he hit .291 and had an isolated power (slugging percentage minus batting average) of .204. This season, with a .266 batting average, his isolated power stands at .285. Disappointing, however, is that he's seen a big drop in his OBA, from .342 to .312.

Xavier Nady hits a three-run homer in the bottom of the fourth to bring the Mets back from a 3-1 deficit to a 4-3 lead. It's his fourteenth homer of the season. He's now played two more games at Shea than on the road, but that's his tenth home homer. He's hit like an MVP at Shea this year, a AAA player on the road.

Aramis Ramirez homers in the first inning against Livan Hernandez to put the Cubs up 1-0. He's now homered in three consecutive games, four in total. He only four over the previous month of games. The Cubs add another and go to the bottom of the first up 2-0.

Earlier tonight, Jim Thome tied David Ortiz for the AL home run lead with 32. Big Papi comes back with this 33rd of the year off Jamie Moyer in the first inning of the Red Sox/Seattle game. It's Ortiz's eleventh homer off a lefty. He's hitting 1 every 11.7 at bats vs. lefties, 1 every 10.2 at bats vs. righties. There doesn't seem to be much of a platoon advantage for pitchers as far as his long balls are concerned.

The AP notes that Alex Rodriguez's home run tonight was number 450 on his career, making him the youngest player to reach that number of home runs.

Rodriguez, who turns 31 next Thursday, is the eighth player to get his 2000th hit before his 31st birthday.

The milestones come at a time when Rodriguez has struggled. He committed his team-leading 17th error in Thursday's loss to Toronto.

Ken Griffey Jr. was the previous youngest to reach 450. He was 31 years, 261 days old when he did it August 9, 2001.

The great young home run hitters tend not to finish well. Will Alex be the exception and use the great foundation he's laid to pass Aaron (or Bonds if he gets there)?

The Boston Globe NL Roundup column compares Barry Bonds' 722nd home run with the first by Carlos Quentin:

Barry Bonds moved within 33 home runs of career leader Hank Aaron and left the ballpark without talking to the media. Carlos Quentin moved within 754 of Aaron and was talking up a storm.

Maybe Barry was celebrating not getting indicted yesterday. For some reason, the case seems to hinge on Greg Anderson:

Shortly before the trainer was freed, the agents handed him a subpoena to appear before a new grand jury next Thursday.

Anderson, who pleaded guilty to distributing steroids in the BALCO case, would be a star witness for the prosecution if it could get him. If he again refuses to testify, he could be imprisoned for the entire 18-month life of the new grand jury.

A friend who accompanied Anderson out of jail, Paula Canny, said afterward that the trainer was "never, ever going to talk. Never." Anderson, she said, was "in for the long haul."

So now, does Anderson go to jail for 18 months, or does he talk? To a certain extent I agree with Bonds' lawyer on this one:

An hour before Ryan's statement, Bonds' attorney, Michael Rains, stood outside the federal building in San Francisco and railed against the government for its "persecution" of the Giants outfielder.

"They don't even have enough to indict a ham sandwich," Rains declared, "let alone Barry Bonds."

It strikes me if you want to indict Bonds on tax evasion, the two witnesses cooperating with the government should be enough. I don't see where Anderson can add to that count. But if the charge the government really cares about is perjury, then this is a waste of time. BALCO is over. Justice was served there. Getting Bonds on perjury doesn't do anything but get on record what many already believe, that Bonds used performance enhancing drugs. A tax evasion conviction might actually net the government some money (although given the cost of the grand juries and prosecution, probably not). On the steroid issue, there is definitely the tinge of persecution here.

The Oakland Athletics defeated the Baltimore Orioles 5-1 today to assure they stay in first place. Frank Thomas drove in the first two runs of the game with a single in the first, and added a solo home run later. The RBI single was unusual for Thomas this year. Of his 51 RBI in 2006, twenty seven came via the home run. Only fourteen come via the single. In the past, Thomas' high batting average allowed him to drive in runs many ways. Now, it seems to be power or nothing. Only 10 of his singles resulted in RBI this year.

Alfonso Soriano gives the Nationals an early 1-0 lead as he takes Dontrelle Willis deep leading off the game. It's the fifth leadoff home run for Soriano, as he breaks a tie with Youkilis and Biggio.

Hanley Ramirez answers that with his own leadoff homer, his second in a row and fourth of the year. The Marlins add another run as O'Connor allows the first three batters to reach and lead 2-1.

Chipper Jones came to bat one more time in the ninth, and managed an infield single. Unless the Cardinals can score 12 runs in the bottom of the 9th, the extra-base hit streak is over. Chipper did pick up three singles on the night, a good game for any hitter.

Chipper Jones flys out to deep center leading off the seventh. Still no extra-base hit. He'll need some more offense by the Braves to get a chance to hit again. The Braves lead the Cardinals 13-2.

Chipper Jones tied a cool record today:

Atlanta's Chipper Jones hit a two-run homer Sunday to give him an extra-base hit in 14 straight games, tying the big league record set in 1927 by Pittsburgh's Paul Waner.

Jones extends his overall hit streak to 16 games, with seven homers in that stretch.

Peavy gave up two homers today, continuing his problems with the long ball. He's now allowed 16 this year, after giving up 18 all 2005.

The Cardinals completed their four-game sweep of the LA Dodgers this afternoon, winning 11-3 behind the bat of Albert Pujols. Albert knocked out four hits in five at bats while driving in three. He raised his batting average to .328, his OBA to .443 and with two doubles his slugging percentage to .726. And despite missing 17 games, he leads the league in homers and is second in RBI. While the injury hurt his chances of breaking Bonds' single season home run record, it doesn't appear to have hurt his chances to win the MVP.

Ryan Howard hit his 30th homer of the year, staying one behind Albert Pujols. He picked up a double as well. That gives him six hits in five games against the Giants this season, four for home runs. That's the most he's hit vs. any team this season. The whole team hit today as the Phillies demolished the Giants 14-6. Burrell just missed the cycle by a triple, but he had a perfect day, going 4 for 4 with a walk.

The Cincinnati Reds held off a late surge by the Colorado Rockies to take their first game of the second half 9-7. Ken Griffey, Jr. hit his 19th home run of the season, the 555th of his career. That puts him 200 behind Aaron. At age 36, there's not much chance of his catching Hank. But the total shows the greatness of his 20's. Despite five years of injury, he's still among the greatest home run hitters of all time. While he might not get 200 more, 105 pulls him even with Mays. That's probably doable.

Mark Teixeira homered off Johan Santana yesterday, something the Rangers are taking as a good sign:

Much has been made of the decline of Teixeira's home run production. At the All-Star break last season, he had hit 25 homers. He connected for his ninth Sunday. But his teammates believe that is a sign of good things to come in the second half.

'Because he's so talented, people expect so much,' said center fielder Gary Matthews Jr. 'As long as he's getting his at-bats, it's definitely a lot easier to make the adjustments you need to make. We've talked about it and we think that Tex is primed for a really big second half.'

Last season, all 25 of Teixeira's pre-break home runs came against right-handed pitchers. Against left-handed pitchers in the first half of 2005, he was pretty useless. That picked up the second half, where he hit lefties very well. In 2006, he's continued to have decent power against lefties, but his power against righties shifted.

Teixeira is now hitting more doubles than homers. Last year at the break he had 16 doubles. That's number is 22 this season. Was he reduced to warning track power, and the ones in the gap are turning into doubles? Could it be that his bad first half against lefties made him work more on this right-handed hitting, and that cost him something from the left side? Could it be an injury? No one's discussed that. He's 26, so he should still be improving. Since he was born in the United States, there's not much chance of his age being incorrect. There will no doubt be rumors of the involvement of performance enhancers. And, like Mike Lowell last year, it may just be a season of bad luck.

I'd love to hear from the people who see him play every day. What do you notice that's different?

David Ortiz hits a two-run homer in the first inning as he goes head-to-head with Jim Thome in Chicago. That makes him the first player to 30 home runs this season. Ortiz is on a great home run roll, hitting 12 in his last 18 games while driving in 27. Right now, he's on a pace for 58 home runs.

Travis Hafner hit his fifth grand slam of the year tonight, one short of the record held by Don Mattingly. The Indians are all over the Orioles, chasing Kris Benson after three innings and 7 runs. They've also scored off Chen to make it 8-0.

By the way, those were the only six grand slams Mattingly hit in his career. Hafner had one other before this season.

Alfonso Soriano responds well to the day off, leading off the Marlins/Nationals game with a home run. Soriano went 13 games without hitting a long ball. It was quite a slump, as he picked up only seven hits, three of them doubles. The Nationals lead the Marlins 1-0 after one.

Update: Soriano adds a second home run, a two run shot that makes the score 6-1 Washington.

Adam Dunn doubled and scored in the first inning to give the Reds a 1-0 lead over the Brewers at the end of one inning. What struck me when looking at Dunn's year-to-date statistics is that he's now scored 58 runs but he's only driven in 53. Most middle order sluggers do score lots of runs (they're usually on base a lot), but they also drive in more. Dunn, however, has a high OBA and a low batting average. It's tough to drive in runs with walks. Couple that with a .191 batting average with runners in scoring position, and you have a slugger who just isn't doing a great job of bring base runners home. As you can see here, he has one of the lowest RBI Percentages in the majors. Maybe that's why he's batting second.

David Ortiz just hit the third home run of the day off Josh Johnson, doubling the number Johnson allowed this season. Ortiz ties Jim Thome for the AL lead in home runs with 26. It's good to see designated hitters doing their jobs, providing lots of offense.

Update: Thome doesn't let the tie last long as he homers against the Cubs for number 27.

David Ortiz reached the 200 home run mark with a solo shot to center field in the 8th inning to put the Red Sox up 4-2. He's hit 142 in three and a half years with the Red Sox. He never hit more than 20 in a season with the Twins. It's just amazing that team didn't realize what it had in Ortiz.

Update: Papelbon comes on and picks up his 24th save of the season. As I watched him pitch to Julio Franco, I wondered if Jon was born after Julio premiered. Not so, but in checking the database, there have been 122 players this year in the majors who were born after 4/23/1982, the day Franco came up with the Phillies. Felix Hernandez remains the youngest player in the majors, born 4/8/1986, nearly four years after Julio came into the NL.

Ken Griffey Jr. hit his 552nd home run tonight, helping put the Reds up 5-2 in the sixth. He's likely at this point to end the season less than 200 behind Aaron. He's 36; it doesn't seem likely he can catch Hank, but how high can he go? Six hundred seems very reachable, but we saw how quickly McGwire and Sosa went from highly likely to reach that number to out of baseball. How high can Griffey go? Six hundred? Catching Mays? Catching Ruth? My guess is that he comes very close to Mays, and hangs around until he passes Willie.

Jason Giambi came up twice so far with runners on base and delivered a home run each time off Tim Hudson. That gives Jason nine for the month of June and twenty two on the season. He's driven in all the runs as the Yankees lead 5-0 in the bottom of the second. Hudson's given up five his and three walks among the fourteen batters he's faced.

Twice tonight the Yankees came back to tie the Phillies and twice tonight Ryan Howard put them back ahead. He drove in the first five runs with two homers, and then when the Yankees tied it at five, he tripled in two more for a 7-5 Phillies lead. He's three for three, the rest of the team is five for 24. But he's come to the plate with five runners on base and drove in all of them.

Correction: I orginially had Howard with a double. Did the official scorer change his mind?

The Reds lead the Mets 4-1 in the 9th. The go-ahead run came on a home run by Ken Griffey, Jr., number 548 of his career. That ties him with Mike Schmidt on the all-time list. Ken got there about 200 at bats sooner.

Paul Konerko and Jermaine Dye combined to drive in four of the five White Sox runs tonight as Chicago kept pace with Detroit 5-2. That gives Thome, Konerko and Dye a combined 150 RBI after 64 games. Four hundred combined RBI is certainly a possibility.

David Ortiz on the Twins, from an SI interview republished at Boston Dirt Dogs.

The Twins, Ortiz says, so enthusiastically stressed small-ball tactics such as hitting behind runners that “if you moved the runner over from second base [with a groundout], you got high fives in the dugout like you just hit a home run.�

In his first at bat with the Red Sox, while batting cleanup in a spring training game, Ortiz happened to come up with a runner on second base and no outs. “I came in with that little pull, cheap-shot s---,� said Ortiz, explaining his grounder to second base on an outside sinker. “I still had the Minnesota Twins in my system.�

This time there were no high fives waiting for him in the dugout, just manager Grady Little with a word of advice. “Hey,� Little said. “Next time? Bring him in.�

Ortiz smiles at the memory. “I was like, O.K.!� he says. “I had a little more freedom than what I was used to.�

Feel free to relate this to the Terry Ryan post from earlier today.

A reader sends this request:

I am trying to locate a picture of the Jack Clark home run hit from the Oct 16, 1985 playoff game.....I can't find it anywhere and I know it is out there because I have seen it .....any help would be greatly appreciated

If you can help, leave information in the comments. Thanks.

My wife and I were about to leave the house when I said to her I'd like to wait a minute. David Ortiz was up and he'd either hit a homer or make an out to end the game. Otsuka had worked him well in the at bat, getting ahead 0-2, then moving the ball in and out trying to get Papi to fish. The count went to 2-2, and David barely fouled off a good slider. That's when I made my statement. On the next pitch Ortiz got all of it and the three run shot gave the Red Sox the 5-4 win.

It was Ortiz's 11th ninth inning home run since joining the Red Sox. Interestingly, while his home run rate is very good in the ninth, his over batting is only worse in the second inning (where he also hits a lot of home runs). It's really in extra-innings where Ortiz shines, hitting six home runs in just 27 at bats. Nevertheless, at this point David is probably the most feared hitter in the majors in the bottom of the ninth with the game on the line.

Giambi goes deep in the bottom of the fourth to cut the lead in half. After hitting four homers in May, Giambi just hit his fifth of June. That takes Jason's slugging percentage up to .636, and his OPS to 1.089.

The Mets launched five home runs from the heart of the order in their 10-6 win over the Arizona Diamondbacks. Beltran and Delgado hit two each, while David Wright added a single dinger. The trio drove in eight of the Mets runs. The 3-4-5 hitters for the New York NL franchise combined for 48 home runs this season. That's the most in the National League and second in the majors (the White Sox are way ahead of everyone with 58).

The loss drops Arizona into a tie for first place with the Dodgers. They broke their offensive slump, but for the fourth game in a row and five of the last seven they allowed 7 runs or more.

Frank Thomas puts the Athletics up 1-0 with a second inning home run off Randy Johnson. Thomas now has seven hits in June, four of them home runs and five for extra bases. He's raised his slugging percentage to .523. It's now 2-0 in the bottom of the third.

Update: It's bombs away on Johnson tonight as Kielty and Perez also go deep against the Big Unit to make the score 5-1. Johnson gave up a career high 32 homers last season, and with 15 allowed so far is on a pace to pass that mark. The As are still batting in the fourth and added another run to make it 6-1.

Update: Johnson is out after four innings. In addition to the home runs, he allowed five walks while striking out just two. It's only the 48th time Johnson walked more than he struck out in a game, and 40 of those games came before the 1995 season. He's now hit that mark three times this year, the most since since four in 1994.

Alfonso Soriano hit home run number 23, a solo shot to extend the Nationals lead over the Phillies to 5-2 in the seventh. More impressively to me, Soriano drew two walks in the game to raise his total to 21. His career high is 38, so he's well on his way to setting a new career high. While his .600+ slugging is great, with his .360 OBA he's no longer wasting outs at the top of the lineup.

Correction: It was his 23rd, not his 22nd.

With Albert Pujols on the shelf, the other National League sluggers have a chance to catch up to him in the home run race. Alfonso Soriano is the first to make a move, hitting home run number 20 to give Washington a 1-0 lead in the top of the fourth. Tony Armas has retired the first nine batters he faced.

Damion Easley slugged three home runs in the night cap to give the Diamondbacks a 13-9 victory over the Braves. Easley drove in over half of the Arizona runs with a pair of two-run shots and a three run homer. It wasn't an easy win as the Braves, down 10-2 in the seventh, pushed seven runs across in the bottom of the inning. Brandon Medders allowed six runs in relief, five unearned however.

It was Easley's fifth multi-homer game of his career, but his first hitting three dingers. With the sweep, Arizona extends their lead over the Dodgers to 1 1/2 games.

Juan Gonzalez signed a contract with the Long Island Ducks of the independent Atlantic League. I'll have to get down to Bridgeport to see him play.

David Ortiz goes deep off Ted Lilly in the first inning, his sixth home run in 75 at bats against left-handed pitchers this year. He's 20 for 75 now vs. lefties, with 12 of his 26 extra-base hits coming off the lefties. There doesn't seem to be much of an advantage for southpaws against Papi anymore.

The Philadelphia Phillies took an 11-2 win from the Nationals tonight. It was a close game until Ryan Howard launched a three-run shot in sixth to put the Phillies ahead to stay. He tied Soriano for 2nd in the NL with his 18th home run. If Pujols wasn't such an outlier this year, it would be a very interesting race for the home run title in the NL. Coming into today, seven players had between 15 and 18 home runs. We'll see if any of them can catch Pujols as the season goes on.

Albert Pujols recorded his 25th home run of the season this afternoon to defeat the Astros 3-1. Houston held a 1-0 lead from the third inning until Albert launched his three-run shot in the bottom of the seventh. He continues his pace to top Bonds, and the Cardinals continue to open distance between themselves and the rest of the division. The Reds lost to the Cubs (that's embarassing) and Milwaukee lost to the Pirates. The Cardinals now lead by five games and once again are starting to pull away in the division. I thought they'd come back to the pack this year, but with the tremendous year by Pujols they're winning again.

While Albert Pujols goes after Bonds for the single season home run record, people forget that no one in the American League ever surpassed Maris' mark. Jim Thome is making a try, however. He hit two home runs today in the White Sox scored 11 against the Indians this afternoon. That puts his season total at 20, and to catch Maris you need to average a little more that 10 home runs per month. Jim's off to a good start to try to break an American League record that has stood for 44 years.

Jason Bay extended his home run streak to six games yesterday, bringing him within two of former Pirate Dale Long. Long holds the NL record, homering in eight straight games and is tied for the Major League record as well. You can read an account of Dale Long's record streak here, set fifty years ago.

I've been staying up to watch Barry Bonds hit 715, and of course he does it on the day I'm out of the house. He hit 715 this afternoon off Byung-Hyun Kim in the fourth inning to set the record for most home runs by a left-handed batter and move into second place on the all-time home run list. Congratulations to Bonds on achieving this milestone!

It's been a few days since Albert Pujols hit a home run, but he's still on pace to set the single season home run record. He now has 24 in 50 games.

Despite these shots, both the Giants and Cardinals lost. Colorado took the game 6-3 over the Giants, and San Diego defeated St. Louis 10-8.

With men on 2nd and 3rd and none out, Bonds is intentionally walked.

Update: Durham makes them pay with a hit that drives in two.

The Rockies, trailing 2-0 pitch to Bonds with a runner on second and one out. Francis throws a pitch outside, then comes low and in for a swinging strike. He gets the third pitch under his belt inside and Bonds fouls it off for a 1-2 count. Francis goes away again for ball 2. Another low inside pitch in the strike zone, and Barry fouls it off. Bonds then grounds out to the first baseman 3-1, advancing Vizquel to third.

Nice to see a team challenge Bonds in that situation. He's just not that scary anymore.

Jeff Francis starts Barry off with a big, slow sweeping curve that doesn't break enough and hits Barry in the back of the leg. Durham drives in Vizquel with a double and the Giants lead the Rockies 1-0.

U.S.S. Mariner likes Albert Pujols breaking the single season home run record. He believes there will be pressure not to intentionally walk the St. Louis slugger:

Every manager who faces the decision on whether or not to walk a hitter has to decide whether that’s the best move. If they’re facing a player involved in the home run chase at home, they have to make an additional consideration: how pissed are these fans going to be if I don’t pitch to this guy, and does that mean the owner’s going to be chewing on my butt before tomorrow’s game?

That pressure will be much greater for Pujols. People believe he’s clean. They like him. They don’t like Bonds. He’s tainted, and as long as he holds the record, the record is tainted. When Pujols threatens 73, they will yearn for his success, even at the expense of their own team, because if the record is held by a clean player, the record’s redeemed, and baseball will have in a symbolic way closed the book on the steroid era.

The intentional walks to Bonds didn't start coming in droves until the 2002 season. With that policy established for extreme sluggers, we should be seeing more issued to Pujols as the season progresses. If not, DMZ's hypothesis will look correct.

Hat tip Baseball Primer Newsblog.

Jason Bay is on quite the home run tear. In his last seven games he's hit seven dingers, including two multi-homer games. He's also driven in fourteen runs.

Unfortunately, his power surge hasn't done much to help the Pirates win. They're 1-6 after falling short in an 8-7 loss to the Diamondbacks tonight. The Pirates scored 33 runs in that stretch, meaning Bay's driven in 42% of the team's runs scored. With a little help from his friends, they might have turned four one-run losses into one-runs wins.

Barry Bonds is not in the starting lineup for the Giants today.

Finley walks to start the ninth.

Bonds fouls a high outside pitch for strike one. Bonds then pulls the ball to the second baseman on the rightfield grass for a groundout.

Marquis starts Barry off with a pitch in the dirt. Not surprisingly, Barry doesn't swing. He does at a low inside pitch and fouls it off to even the count. Jason just misses the inside corner with ball 2. He then hits a high pitch over the plate a mile in the air for a fly out to right center. He's 1 for 3 tonight with a single.

Once again, Marquis starts Bonds off with a strike, this time on the inside corner. He then comes inside low for a ball. Again, Marquis does not take advantage of the first strike, throwing ball two high. Bonds pulls the next pitch into right field, but the second baseman is playing out there and throws out Barry easily at first. It's a base hit against a normal defense. Bonds seems to be pulling the ball more lately.

Steve Finley just hit his 8th triple to drive in a run and bring up Barry Bonds. Marquis starts him with a low pitch on the outside corner for a taken strike. Pitch two is low for a ball. Pitch three is high and outside. He then goes low for ball three. The last pitch is low in the strike zone and Bonds lines it to right for a single. It was just over the glove of the second baseman who was shifted into shallow right. Finley scores and the Cardinals lead 3-2.

Steve Finely now has 12 extra-base hits on the season, 8 of them triples.

Forty six games. Twenty three homers. Albert Pujols goes deep in the first inning for his first home run at the park named after a phone company in San Francisco. He's been steady on that home run every other game pace since his tear in the middle of April. We'll see if Bonds can match it tonight.

Bonds walks on four pitches, three outside, one inside. That's it for Barry as Ellison runs for him. He ends the night 1 for 3 with a walk and a 3-1 Giants lead.

Barry gets a good pitch to hit on the first toss by Mulder. It was above the belt, just to the outside part of the middle of the plate. Barry just got under it, popping out to shallow center. He's 1 for 3 with a single and an RBI.

Bonds grounds out on a 3-0 count to Pujols. Bonds pulled the ball sharply, but Albert was playing the line and made a nice play. Bonds does drive in a run with grounder, tying the game. Barry's 1 for 2 with a single so far.

Albert Pujols and Barry Bonds meet tonight, each in pursuit of home run immortality. Barry is looking to take second place on the all-time home run list for himself. Albert continues on a pace to break Barry's single season record. Both, in the long term, are chasing Henry Aaron.

Which bring me to my question of the day; how do you catch Aaron? Or, to make it simpler, how do you get to 700 home runs? I would have thought the way to get their was to set down a solid foundation of home runs in your twenties, then keep healthy through your thirties. But that's not the way it's been done at all.

Baseball reference provides a list of player records by age. Most through, during, and after a certain age. Look at the list of players with the most home runs through age 25, which includes Albert Pujols' last full season. There's lots of big names on the list, Hall of Famers, players who went on to 500 home runs. But the big starts weren't enough to propel them to 700. Now look at the list from age 35 on. There's all three 700 home run hitters, big as life. What's even more interesting is that there is no overlap on the list. So far, no big young hitter was able to make as big an impression from age 35 on.

Of the active players on the through age 25 list, we've already seen Griffey burn out early. Andruw Jones had a big boost in his production last year, but he doesn't seem to be repeating it. A-Rod continues to smack the ball, and doesn't have much of an injury history. Pujols does. The next person to get to Aaron's record might be someone a bit off our radar, who finds better conditioning (Ruth, Bonds) or a better ballpark (Aaron) late in his career and goes on a rampage. I've thought for a long time that tracking players home runs through a certain age vs. Aaron was the way to look for the record breaker. Now I'm wondering if big season at age 35 won't tell me more.

Bonds singles to right on an 0-1 pitch. Once again, Gaudin threw a good sinker, but Barry was able to golf it into right to go 2 for 3 with a walk this afternoon.

Chad Gaudin takes over in the fifth after Blanton gets knocked around (and possibly hurt) in the fourth. On a 2-1 count, Gaudin throws a nice pitch that moves away and down from Barry, and Bonds grounds it up the middle for an out. The Giants lead 5-0.

Barry leads off the fourth, and after taking ball one high and outside, Bonds takes a lower outside pitch to center for a line drive single. Kotsay was playing deep, otherwise he might have caught that ball.

With men on first and third in the first, Steve Finley hits a fly ball to medium right field. Randy Winn doesn't try to score as Payton makes a strong throw in. Vizquel takes off for second on the throw, which is cut off, but Vizquel barely beats the relay. Of course, first base open, the Atheltics intentionally walk Bonds. Durham then hits a slow roller to first for the second out and a run in the Giants column.

Albert Pujols connects in the fourth inning for his 22nd home run of the year to give St. Louis a 1-0 lead over Kansas City. It's the forty fourth game of the year for the Cardinals, putting Albert back on a pace to hit 81. With the solo shot, he's split his homers down the middle, 11 with the bases empty, 11 with men on.

Now that Bonds caught Ruth, we can now watch to see if Pujols catches Bonds. Albert just blasted his 21st of the year, a three run shot in the eighth inning to extend the Cardinals lead to 4-0 over the hapless Royals. That's 21 homers in 43 Cardinals games for Pujols.

In 2001, the Giants also reached 43 games on May 20th. Through that date, Barry Bonds had 22 home runs on his way to hit 73.

According to the Fox broadcast, Bonds just tied Babe Ruth for most home runs by a left-handed slugger. No cut-ins on ESPN or Fox. You'd think they could put a small image in the lower corner while Barry was batting.

Congratulations to Bonds on reaching this milestone!

Update: They finally showed the highlight. It was a blast, high into the right-centerfield seats. Off a left-hander, no less.

Update: In case you're wondering, Ruth hit is 714 home runs in 8398 at bats (I'm not sure exactly which AB produced 714, but it's pretty close to his last). Bonds did it in 9234.

Update: Bonds has many more doubles than Ruth (570 to 506), but Ruth leads in triples (136 to 77). The net result is five more extra-base hits from Bonds.

Carlos Delgado just flicked his bat out and hit an opposite field home run out to left center. He didn't use his legs, he hardly turned his upper body. Just his arms. It was a good pitch, too, a ball on the outside part of the plate that was curving away from Delgado. The Mets lead the Yankees 3-0 in the bottom of the fourth.

Meanwhile, Pedro struck out six through his four innings.

Bonds flied out to center in the second, and he's batting in the fourth with Finley on first base. The count goes to 3-2, and Barry walks.

Bonds bats again. He's batted in every inning but one tonight. Gallo starts him with a strike on the outside corner. He then flies out to center to end the inning. With the score 12-3, I suspect Bonds won't go to the outfield for the bottom of the sixth.

Update: Ellison replaces Bonds in left. Barry goes two for four with a HBP and scored three. It was by far the best night I've seen Barry have at the plate in a long time. He was able to consistently pull the ball, something he hasn't been doing much this year.

It's 11-3, so for the second inning in a row, Bonds leads off. Russ Springer throws the ball behind Barry's behind, then comes inside and hits the knob of Barry's bat. Springer was warned after throwing behind Bonds, but keeps coming inside, getting ball 2 on Barry's hands. Springer hits Bonds on the should on a 3-1 pitch, and he and Garner are tossed. Springer sure looked like he wanted to hit Bonds in that plate appearance. I don't know why Russ would go after Barry like that, but I suspect there will be a fine. There was nothing subtle there at all.

With the Giants up 6-2, Bonds comes up for the third time in the game in the fourth inning. After getting ahead 2-0, Barry lines a single by the first baseman for his second hit of the game. This is the first time in a while where I've seen Bonds pulling everything. He's 2 for 3 with two singles.

Bonds takes the first pitch for a strike, then gets a hold of one and sends Lane back to the warning track in right. Again, the pitch was belt high over the plate, and Bonds hit it well. It just wasn't good enough as Lane had plenty of room to haul it in. Durham was able to tag from first, however. Bonds is 1 for 2 with a single.

Barry Bonds falls behind Wandy Rodriguez 0-2 on a taken strike (inside low) and a foul ball. Wandy wastes two on the outside (Bonds won't chase that pitch). Barry fouls off pitch five the opposite way, as he does with pitch six. Both were on the low outside corner. Another pitch on the outside part of the plate, and a check swing foul. Wandy then gets a pitch on the inside part of the plate above the belt and Bonds drives it down the line for an RBI single. He can still drive pitches up in the zone.

Update: Bonds can't run tonight. Most players would have a double on a liner down the right field line. Feliz follows with a fly ball that drops in the left field corner, and Bonds can only make it to second, prevent Pedro from being credited with a double.

Barry Bonds comes up to bat in the sixth inning with men on first and third and no one out. Dave Borkowski is pitching, and throws the first two pitches outside for balls. He then gets a strike on the knees on the outside corner. Pitch four is high and outside for ball three. He then throws a strike at the knees. Bonds rolls is eyes at both called strikes. The first 3-2 pitch is pulled foul. Bonds then pops out to shortstop for the out. He's 1 for 3 with a walk and a double.

Once again, Bonds is up with men on first and second and one out. This time, however, he faces Trever Miller. Bonds takes the first pitch for a strike, again, at the knees on the inside corner. A sweeping breaking ball that finishes outside the strike zone is missed by Barry for strike two. Miller wastes a pitch, then Bonds fouls off one up on his hands. Miller finishes Bonds off with a big breaking ball that just catches the inside corner and Bonds looking for strike three.

Barry walked in the first inning, and comes up in the third with men on first and second with one out. The fans are holding up asterisks. Barry fouls off the first pitch to the third base stands. He takes the second pitch for a strike at the knees on the inside corner. That seems to be the best place to get a called strike on Barry. The third pitch is up in the middle of the strike zone, and Bonds hits a screaming line drive to right. If hits in front of Lane and bounces over his head for an RBI double. It's the best swing I've seen from Bonds since the homer in Philadelphia.

Bonds hits the first pitch into shallow left center, where the shortstop makes the catch back peddling. He's 0-2 in the game with two walks. His batting average is down to .217.

Vin Scully is saying the buzz in the pressbox is that Bonds won't play in Houston so he can try to break the record when the Giants play interleague against the Oakland Athletics. The Giants then come back to SF for six games. If that's true, then the Giants don't think Bonds is helping them win, he's just playing for the record. But with his OBA, Bonds is helping, so he should be in the lineup.

Of course, the Giants, I'm sure, can find a physical excuse for Barry not to play. When you have two bad knees and a bad elbow, it's pretty easy. At least then it won't look like they're more interested in the record than winning.

With the Dodgers ahead 2-1 and a man on first, the Seo walks Bonds on a 3-1 count. Not intentional, but Seo was being very careful

Bonds fouls off the first pitch, then Seo catches the inside corner for a called strike. Seo wastes one inside, then Barry fouls two off. Seo is working more inside this time. Bonds grounds back to Jae for the third out in the inning.

Barry Bonds is up with a man on third and one out. Seo is pitching to him!

Update: Seo pitches carefully to Bonds and goes 3-0, then Little decides to issue the intentional walk

Update: Finley forces Bonds. The Dodgers can't complete the double play and Winn scores from third for a 1-0 San Francisco lead.

Alex Rios keeps banging out extra-base hits. He hit his second triple and eighth home run today as the Blue Jays helped Josh Towers to his first win of the season, an 8-3 victory over the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. With their 8 runs scored, the Blue Jays move past the Yankees for second in the AL in runs per game at 5.86. Rios raises his slugging percentage to .692, which could end up leading the league by the end of the day.

Ken Rosenthal and I are in complete agreement:

Attack him. It's safe.

Barry Bonds is batting .222. Yet he's second in the National League with 36 walks, and first with a .475 on-base percentage.
When will opposing managers stop treating him as if he's the Bonds of old, and start confronting the reality that he's nearly broken down at 41?

Opposing managers just help the Giants by walking Bonds. It was true when he was healthy, and it's more true today.

Albert Pujols followed up his RBI single in the first with a solo home run in the second. That gives him 19 in 37 Cardinals games. That a pace for 83 on the year. The Cards lead the DBacks 4-1 in the third.

Bonds walks on four pitches, although the fourth one looked like the one that Bonds struck out on in the first.

Bonds swings at the first pitch from Sele and drives the outside pitch the opposite way. Ethier makes a nice running catch on the deep liner. Bonds is 0-2 with a strikeout.

Bonds is batting third in the Giants lineup today, so he'll be up in the first inning.

Update: Sele starts Barry off missing with three breaking balls on the outside part of the plate. He comes back and gets the called strike on a 3-0 fastball, they two fouls before freezing Bonds with a breaking ball low in the strike zone for the strikeout. The Giants go 1-2-3 in the first.

Bonds swings at the first pitch and flies out once again to left center field. He goes 0-3 with two walks. His BA is at .240 and his OBA's at .491. The Cubs did a good job against Barry in the series, allowing him just one hit when they didn't issue a walk.

Bonds gets around on a 1-0 pitch, pulling it hard to right, but it's right at the right fielder for the out. Bonds is 0-2 in the game with two walks, one intentional. The spill into the stands didn't seem to bother him, he actually turned on the ball quite well in that at bat.

With a man on second and the Cubs trailing 6-0, Sean Marshall pitches very carefully to Barry and walks him on a 3-1 pitch. He's 0-1 with two walks (one IBB) so far.

Update: Steve Finley just drove in Bonds with his seventh triple of the year. He leads the majors and has 119 for his career. At this point in time, 100 triples in a career is very impressive.

Update: I'm a little surprised Barry Bonds is still in the game with a 9-0 lead. I thought at the start of the season Alou was going to pull Bonds from blow outs to save him for the rest of the season. He's already pushing Barry by playing him a day game after a night game, why go further?

Marshall gets a called strike on the first pitch to Barry with a sweeping curve ball. He then gets Barry to ground out pretty weakly to the first baseman, unassisted. Bonds is 0-1 with a walk. Barry's batting average is now .247, and his OBA is at .495.

Niekro doubles in two runs as the first three Giants reach base. That gives Baker an excuse to issue an intentional walk to Bonds. The Giants lead 2-0.

Update: Feliz makes them pay for the walk with an RBI single. Finley follows with a drag bunt to load the bases. That's six in a row on base for the Giants.

Update: Mike Matheny gets the fifth hit of the inning to make it 4-0. Frandsen then grounds into a force to record the first out of the inning and plate the fifth run. Marshall doesn't have his good stuff today.

Update: Ten men bat for the Giants in the first. That means Bonds will get his second chance of the game in the second inning.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch notices that Albert Pujols is not only on a record setting home run pace, but a record setting RBI pace as well.

Pujols' previous home run high was 46, in 2004. In a related development, Pujols, who leads the majors with 43 runs batted in, is on pace to drive in 199. Hack Wilson's record, set in 1930 for the Chicago Cubs, is 191.

So, how many homers is Albert going to hit? Let say that Albert falls back for the rest of the season to his career home run rate, one every 14 at bats. Since Albert always gets 590 at bats (his career at bats: 590, 590, 591, 592, 591), we'll say he has 474 at bats left. That would give him 34 more home runs for 52. Not a record, but certainly an impressive total, and one that would solidify his chances at breaking Aaron's career record.

We need to ask if these 18 home runs represent a new level of performance. Based on his career through 2005, the probability of an Albert Pujols at bat ending in a home run was 0.068. The 95% confidence interval for home runs in 116 at bats for that probability is 3 to 14. Pujols is way over that. The probability that Albert, given his career numbers would hit 18 home runs in 116 at bats is .00086. It sure looks like there's something different about Albert's home run power this year.

It's not just the new ballpark. Albert's home run rate is way up there, but it's also way up on the road:

Pujols HR/AB	2001-2005	2006
Home	.065	.169
Home	.071	.137

So what's a good rate to use for future predictions? A home run probability of .095 puts 18 in the 95% confidence interval for 116 at bats. That would give Albert 45 more home runs on the season (his career high is 46) for a total of 63. Past former Cardinal Roger Maris, but well short of the record.

Frank Thomas summed up his slump this way:

While Thomas appears to be overanxious in some at-bats, lunging for the ball on occasion, he said, "It's hard to figure out right now. Some at-bats you have it, some you don't. It's kind of weird. I'm taking strikes and swinging at balls. This is typically what you do when you get in a rut like this. I've seen guys go through them before. Now I know how they feel. I can tell you, it's not a good feeling."

This is a person who seldom swings at anything outside the strike zone. He's on a pace to equal his career high in strikeouts, 115 in 2002 and 2003. But he drew a lot of walks in those two years, and in 2006 those look they are going to come in around 60. That's fine for most players, but well below the level of Thomas.

Bonds pops to short on an 0-1 pitch. He's 0-3 tonight with a walk. That looks like it for the evening with the Cubs up 8-1.

Zambrano gets ahead of Bonds 0-2, then wastes two outside. He comes back with a perfect pitch that starts inside then breaks back over the plate knee high to strike out Bonds looking.

Zambrano is finding a way to win with few runs as he's held the Giants to one so far. He's issued five walks, but just three hits. The Cubs lead 3-1 after five.

Bonds lines out to Pierre. Once again, he's not pulling the ball, he keeps hitting fly balls to center.

He walks on a 3-1 count.

Albert Pujols added a double to his home run today to give him 24 extra-base hits on the season. We're five games away from being a quarter through the season, and Albert is setting himself up for a good run at 100 extra-base hits. He's come close twice before, 95 in 2003 and 99 in 2004. He usually has more doubles than homers, but that's been reversed this season. I don't think anyone is going to complain.

Albert Pujols wastes no time today, going deep in the first inning for a 2-0 Cardinals lead over the Rockies. For the sixh time this year he's gone deep in consecutive games. That's 18 home runs in 35 team games.

Bonds takes a strike on the first pitch, but it's called a ball. He launches the second one into right center for an out to end the 8th. See you tomorrow!

Scott Eyre actually got a called strike on the outside corner on his first pitch to Barry Bonds. He also gets a called strike on the 1-1 pitch, a fast ball low down the middle. Barry works the count to 2-2, and Barry gets one up in the zone and takes it to left center for a single.

The Giants lead 6-1, so I'm surprised that Bonds isn't being lifted for a pinch runner. Doesn't seem like there's much of a chance of Barry batting again in this game.

Update: If there's no double play, Bonds should bat in the 8th.

Carlos Lee hits his 15th home run of the season to help the Brewers to a 4-1 lead over the Padres. Lee is on a pace for 74 home runs.

Barry Bonds works the count to 3-2, then smashes a ball to center field. Juan Pierre goes back, and catches the ball just over the fence to save three runs.

Hill tied up Barry with a good inside fastball that Bonds just managed to foul off for strike two. He then went outside twice and missed. I don't understand why he didn't go back in high on Barry's hands again. It seems a good place to get Bonds out.

Barry Bonds swings at the first pitch from Hill in the fourth, a high fastball. He just misses getting all of the ball and flies out to center.

Roy Halladay pitched a great game, and Matt Holliday hit two home runs against the St. Louis Cardinals. The Rockies are up 6-0 in the seventh.

Bonds launched home run 713 in the top of the sixth inning. It the first home run of the season Bonds pulled. He hit it off the McDonalds sign on the edge of the upper deck. That cut the score to 5-3, but the Phillies came back with two runs in the bottom of the sixth.

That was probably the best swing I've seen from Bonds this season. He was able to get his whole body behind the ball.

Alex Rodriguez broke his power drought tonight. A-Rod went 13 games without a home run, and only hit .213 and slugged .255 during the unlucky games. He did, however, draw 11 walks and drive in nine runs.

The main difference between Manny Ramirez on the road and at home this year was his power. HIs BA and OBA were very close, but Manny didn't hit a home run at Fenway until this evening.

Vlad Guerrero finally hit something other than a single or home run. The Angels right fielder knocked out his first double of the season, as well as another single. It's no where near enough, however, as the Blue Jays are winning in a blow out 12-3 in the 8th. Alex Rios knocked out three more hits to raise his batting average .402.

Barry Bonds is sitting out the day game after the night game (and the battng practice beaning).

Bonds hits number 712 in the bottom of the eighth inning in a 5-3 loss to the Padres. The solo shot puts him two away from tying Babe Ruth for second place on the all-time home run list. I haven't see the replay yet, but the play by play describes it as going out to center. That means Bonds has yet to pull a ball for a home run. I'm not sure what to make of that. Can he not get around on an inside pitch? Any experts care to speculate on how to pitch Barry if he can't pull the ball? Keep the pitch in on his hands?

Eric Chavez give the Athletics an early 3-0 lead with his tenth home run of the season. A hit batter by Lackey and a Swisher single set up the three run shot. It's also Chavez's 200th career home run.

Eric Chavez and Nick Swisher continue to generate most of the offense for the Oakland Athletics. They both went deep today and drove in all five Athletics runs. They now total 19 home runs. That ties them with Gomes and Wigginton for most home runs by an AL duo. The Athletics are up 5-2 on the Royals in the fourth inning.

Lance Berkman moves into double digit territory in home runs as he gives the Astros an early 2-0 lead over the Reds. It's his seventh home run with men on base this season.

Albert Pujols won the game for the Cardinals last night with a home run in the bottom of the eighth that ended up being the difference in a 2-1 defeat of Washington. Number 14 sets the record for the month of April. I remember Graig Nettles setting the AL record with 11 in 1974. Since the season starts earlier and earlier, that marks been passed or tied a number of times since then. Jonny Gomes is at 11 this year; one more puts him fourth on the April list as no one's ever hit exactly 12 in the month of April.

Albert Pujols is now 1/3 of the way to his total last year or 41. Even if he goes back to averaging seven home runs a month, he's likely to hit 50 this season. Maybe it's Albert's turn to save baseball. Fans love and respect him; there's no hint of scandal. Although some have speculated that Albert is older than published, if he's 26 Pujols should be hitting his peak. Griffey missed 50 by one home run when he was 26, then had his back to back 56 seasons at 27 and 28. His home run production taking a jump now indicates to me that his age is believable.

So as Bonds struggles to pass Ruth for his career, does Albert drown out the question surrounding Barry by setting the single season record? Someone should start to think about a camera crew following around Pujols all day.

Kevin Mench had a hit, a run and an RBI tonight but no home run. His home run streak stops at seven games, but his hitting streak goes to 13 games.

More importantly, the Rangers pulled out a 7-5 win. Millwood pitched an excellent game against his former teammates, striking out seven in seven innings while walking none. And Brad Wilkerson, off to a bad start, knocked out two hits, including a home run.

Kevin Mench had a hit, a run and an RBI tonight but no home run. His home run streak stops at seven games, but his hitting streak goes to 13 games.

More importantly, the Rangers pulled out a 7-5 win. Millwood pitched an excellent game against his former teammates, striking out seven in seven innings while walking none. And Brad Wilkerson, off to a bad start, knocked out two hits, including a home run.

Kevin Mench homered in his seventh straight game in the eighth inning last night, and is now just one homer shy of the record shared by Dale Long, Don Mattingly and Ken Griffey, Jr. As you can see, the three in the Day by Day Database are all impressive streaks.

It turns out the probability of hitting home runs in nine straight games is about equal to the probability of a 56-game hitting streak. So a seven game home run streak is pretty amazing, an eight game streak is on par of slightly better than the 44 game hit streaks, and if someone can go nine straight games, they'll be on par with DiMaggio.

Metsblog.com comments on Mike Piazza's 400th home run. Piazza's place in the Hall of Fame is pretty well cemented, so this milestone is simply another reason to vote for the catcher.

However, that greatness appears to be a thing of the past. Piazza so far is not hitting for average, nor is he getting on base. The hits go for extra bases, but they don't come very often. The Padres did a poor job this winter of stocking their catching corps. And the Mets did the right thing replacing Mike with Lo Duca.

Kevin Mench extended his home run streak to six straight games today as the new shoes appear to be ruby slippers. His grand slam in the fourth gave the Rangers a 4-1 lead on the Athletics.

However, the A's fought back to tie the game at four and in the 10th Jay Payton drives in two to give Oakland the 6-4 lead.

Update: The Rangers load the bases in the bottom of the 10th but don't score, and the Atletics take home a 6-4 victory. Joe Kennedy gets a very tentative save on a very tentative afternoon by the Athletics bullpen. They gave up seven hits in 6 2/3 innings but allowed just one run.

Barry Bonds hits his second home run of the season, and the second to left field. Trachsel gets a 1-1 pitch high and outside, and Barry was able to drive it. He was visibly limping, however, after he crossed the plate and headed back to the dugout.

Update: They just showed Barry in the dugout, and he was clearly in pain. He just limped down the steps out of the dugout.

They're now showing a replay where he was grimacing just before he reached third base on his home run trot.

Update: Bonds is back in left field for the top of the third. What ever was bothering him running the bases isn't keeping him out of the game.

Chipper Jones is back in the Atlanta lineup tonight and he's hit his first homer of the season, a two run shot. That's all the runs the Braves have scored tonight as Milwaukee leads 3-2 in the seventh.

I don't know when Kevin Mench put on his new shoes, but with a home run tonight he's working on a 10-game hit streak and a 5-game home run streak. The Rangers lead the Athletics 4-0 after three.

Jonny Gomes breaks the log jam at the top of the AL home run leader board, reaching double figures in the first inning off Mike Mussina. In 20 games, Gomes is almost halfway to his 2005 total of 21. Chris Shelton got the attention for his fast start, but Gomes now homered in three straight games.

Derek Jeter goes over the fence to the oppposite field after a Damon walk to give the Yankees a 2-1 lead in the bottom of the first.

Moises Alou got the last laugh in the Mets-Giants game last night. Twice the Mets walked Barry Bonds, and twice Moises drove in runs, five in all. He now stands at 17 RBI in 15 games. The Giants will be happy to keep that ratio going for the rest of the year. And the younger Alou doesn't believe things will change:

"I love it, I'll take it," said Alou, who broke the game open with a two-run single in the seventh inning with the bases loaded. That said, Alou couldn't discuss what happened without expressing pity for Bonds.

"I feel sorry for the guy," Alou said. "He comes to play a game and he doesn't get to play it. Especially me, I like to swing the bat. I would hate to come to the ballpark and walk and walk."

But if Alou keeps hitting, will opposing teams begin pitching to Bonds? "That time will never come," said Alou, smiling

.

I watched Bonds' third plate appearance of the evening. Glavine walked him unintentionally, after pitching him very well. At one point, Tom hung a breaking ball but all Barry could do was foul it off. Glavine tried to hit the outside corner twice (I though he did, actually), but the pitches were called balls. He refused to challenge Barry when he had him down in the count. Alou launched a ball to the wall in left, just missing his second three-run homer of the game.

And it's not the Moises is more dangerous than Bonds, it's that Bonds just isn't that dangerous right now. And if the strategy is supposed to lead to winning, it's not working as the Giants are 11-8 and in first place in the west.

Albert Pujols takes Oliver Perez down the left field line for his 12th home run of the season. The Cardinals lead the Pirates 1-0 at the end of one. He now has 5 home runs in 15 ab bats vs. left-handed pitchers.

J.D. Drew continued his hot hitting today, knocking out two more hits, including a home run. Drew is a 3-4-5 player so far this season; .300 BA, .400 OBA, .500 slugging percentage. The trick for the Dodgers is to keep him in the lineup. The Dodgers defeated the Diamondbacks 6-4.

Vlad Guerrero continues his streak of hitting nothing but homers and singles, going two for four with one of each of three RBI. That was a big part of the Angels 4-3 victory today. The bottom of the Athletics order contributed nothing today, combining to go 0 for 13 with six strikeouts. None of the four in the 6 through 9 slots today has a slugging percentage over .300.

Jason Giambi drove in five of the Yankees seven runs today as New York defeated Baltimore 7-1. That gives Jason 17 RBI in 16 games this season.

Randy Johnson and Mariano Rivera combined for a four hitter, all four hits coming off the bat of Miguel Tejada.

Chad Tracy continued his hot hitting last night, smacking three doubles in a four for four night. Luis Gonzalez hit his seventh double of the season, two. The duo is providing plenty of power in the middle of the Arizona lineup as each is slugging .594.

Alfonso Soriano didn't mind the rain delay in Washington last night as he slugged three homers in a 7-3 victory over the Atlanta Braves. He also added a double for 14 total bases in the game and drove in five of the seven runs. It was Alfonso's first three home run game of his career.

John Patterson continues to strike out batters, and now has 32 in 25 2/3 innings.

Manny Ramirez breaks his home run drought as he follows a two-run shot by David Ortiz with a solo of his own. The Red Sox lead 3-0 through three, and the Blue Jays are hitless.

Update: Manny hits a second homer in the game, a two-run shot and the Red Sox lead Toronto 6-2 in the 8th.

Andruw Jones launches his second home run of the night to extend the Braves lead over the Mets to 7-1 in the top of the fifth inning. It's his first multi-homer game of the season after hitting nine last year. He's now had a multi-homer game every year he's been in the majors, 31 for his career.

Albert Pujols becomes the first player of 2006 to reach double digits in home runs. His tenth homer of the year doesn't help much, however, as it cuts the Pirates lead to 8-2.

Suppan only last two innings, giving up eight hits, five for extra bases.

Manny Ramirez breaks his extra-base hit drought with a double, driving in David Ortiz. The Red Sox lead the Devil Rays 1-0 in the fourth.

Albert Pujols keeps pace with Chris Shelton, hitting his 4th home run in two games, his ninth of the season. One more tonight and he ties a record for homers in two games held by a few players. The Cardinals lead Pittsburgh 2-0.

Update: I just watched the home run on Tivo, and Albert didn't even get all of the ball. I thought it was going to be a high fly ball at first, but it went out to right of center.

Update: Pujols doubles in his second at bat, ending four straight at bats with a home run.

Update: Pujols walks his third time up. They were pitching carefully to him with a man on first.

Update: Albert flies out in the 7th. He may get one more chance at a home run if the Cardinals can put on a few runners.

Chris Shelton ties the Indians with a solo home run in the second inning, his ninth of the year. It appears not only can't you stop Shelton, you can't even hope to contain him! Casey Blake, however, follows with a blast of his own in the third to give the Indians a one-run lead once again.

Joe Morgan just gave a very good analysis of Barry Bonds swing. He pointed out how his knee and elbow are preventing him from driving the outside pitch. Bonds ended up flying out to the warning track in straight away center. He's still strong enough to drive the ball without putting his whole body into it, but not strong enough to hit it out of the deepest part of the park.

Wigginton and Gomes each hit two-run homers today for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, each their fifth of the season. Both are slugging in the high .600s. The pair were batting 3-4 today as the DRays beat the Royals 9-5. Those two are hitting for average, getting on base at a good clip in addition to the home runs. The Devil Rays drew five more walks today to maintain their major league lead in the category.

Matt Holliday earned three-quarters of the cycle so far this evening. He smacked out a double, triple and home run, driving in five runs to help Colorado to a 9-4 lead over the Phillies after seven. Unless the Rockies have a big eighth inning, there's not much chance of Holliday getting a shot at the cycle.

Travis Lee and Ty Wigginton each hit his fourth home run of the year tonight. If I may quote the Chewbacca Defense, "that does not make sense!"

The Devil Rays lead the Orioles 4-1 in the seventh.

Carlos Beltran homers in the first inning to give the Mets a 1-0 lead. It's his third dinger of the season. In 2005, it took Carlos 16 games to reach that level. He's playing his 8th game of 2006 today.

Update: Wright and Floyd follow up with homers in the first to make the score 4-0. Livan Hernandez isn't being helped by RFK today. That's five homers on the year against Hernandez in 13 innings. He allowed 25 in 246 1/3 during 2005.

Justin Morneau's freakish season continues. He hit his fourth home run tonight, going 1 for 3. He only collected seven hits on the season so far, so he's sitting with a .226 BA but a .613 Slugging Percentage. That means his average hit is pretty close to a triple. Now, he just needs to increase the frequency of those safeties.

Correction: Should be slugging percentage on the .613, not OBA. One commentor says that's closer to a double. Slug/BA = Bases per hit. .613/.226 = 2.7, which is closer to a triple.

Jim Thome launches his fifth homer of the season to tie Shelton, Hafner and Chavez for the AL lead. Will see if Shelton can answer the challenge as Chicago takes a 1-0 lead over the Tigers.

Khalil Greene smacked two home runs off Sergio Mitre this afternoon, helping the Padres to victory in the Marlins home opener. That give Greene four, tying him with Berkman, Preston Wilson and Dunn for the NL lead. Khalil only has six hits on the season, but they've been loud ones.

The Reds are up 3-0 on the Cubs. Cincinnati batters knocked out three hits, all home runs. Griffey and Dunn slammed the first two, but Bronson Arroyo hit number three. That's two starts for Arroyo, two dingers dinged. Maybe the Reds should make him an outfielder!

Lance Berkman and Preston Wilson each homered today. They're tied for NL lead in homers now with four. Preston effectively replaces Bagwell in the lineup, and with this start he's doing a good job. Wilson has an injury history, so the Astros have to hope he doesn't replace that part of Bagwell's carer. The Astros and Nationals are tied at three in the eighth.

Chris Shelton added a triple tonight to his two doubles and five home runs this season. That's eight of twelve hits for extra-bases, and the Tigers are off to a 4-0 lead on Texas in the third.

Update: Shelton triples again! Meanwhile, Verlander struck out five through four innings with just 59 pitches. The Tigers lead 5-0.

The Tigers are off to a 4-0 start, defeating Texas 5-2 last night. Once again, Chris Shelton helped power the team to victory with two more extra-base hits. Shelton' OBA is .722, higher than Babe Ruth's career slugging percentage. Of his eleven hits, seven went for extra bases. He looks like an early favorite for player of the week.

Chris Shelton smacks two home runs in the first four innings of the Tigers-Rangers game. He launched two on opening day, also. Ordonez, Inge, Thames and Monroe also homered, accounting for all seven runs. The Tigers lead 7-0.

The Thames homer chases Dickey, who gave up all six shots. He allowed four in 29 2/3 innings last year.

Paul Konerko hit his 40th home run of the year today. He becomes only the second White Sox player to have multiple 40 home run seasons.

If you look at the history of home runs in the American League, the White Sox stand out by their lack of the long ball across the decades. Up until the 1990s, the White Sox were last among the original AL teams in home runs hit by a wide margin, about 600 homers. In the last decade and a half they've passed the Senators/Twins. That's thanks to players like Frank Thomas, Belle, Ordonez and Konerko. Every other charter member of the AL is over 10,000. It's not surprising that the most successful decade for the White Sox in since the 1910's came with the arrival of some power.

Correction: Multiple 40 home run seasons.

Travis Hafner applies his power to Kansas City tonight. His three run homer in the third puts Cleveland up 4-1 over the Royals. He's now homered in five straight games, hitting six dingers and driving in 15.

Update: The Royals are showing no quit. They've come back with four runs in the fourth to tie the Indians at five. Mark Teahan hit a rare home run, a grand slam.

Ronald Blum notes the drop in home runs in 2005 and asks around for explanations. I thought this one from Johnny Damon was interesting:

Boston center fielder Johnny Damon cites better pitching.

"We haven't really faced too many chumps for pitchers this year," he said. "Young guys coming in have got some unbelievable stuff."

This strikes me as something we can test. It turns out the 23 year olds (June 30th age) are very good this year, posting a 3.75 ERA. But the 33 year olds are also very good, with a 3.65 ERA. The group aged 24 to 28 is the best run of ages. These players in their prime post a combined 4.28 ERA in 18,169 1/3 innings. All other pitchers post a 4.31 ERA in 21,601 innings. It seems to me all ages are pretty good this year.

I don't think Damon's point is that far off, however. As offense rises, good pitching becomes more valuable. Pitchers get paid more money, encouraging ballplayers to want to be pitchers instead of hitters. Teams do more work to find good pitchers. It's the market correcting for too much offense.

Manny Ramirez drove in the winning run last night with a plunk, and tonight he just put the Red Sox up by one with a blast over the Sport Authority sign on the Green Monster.

Barry Bonds hits his first home run of the season in the bottom of the first. Randy Winn led off the inning with a solo shot as well. That puts Barry 10 behind Ruth on the all-time list.

Carlos Delgado continues his hot September hitting with a two-run homer in the bottom of the first vs. the Phillies. That raises his September batting average to .404 with five home runs and 12 RBI in 15 games. He' earning his free agent money down the stretch.

Alfonso Soriano hit his 34th home run of the season today, helping the Rangers to an extra-inning win over the Baltimore Orioles. Alfonso has now driven in and scored 96 runs. I'm not surprised at the RBI total, but I am by the runs scored total. Alfonso is posting a low .314 OBA for the season.

This season of Soriano's reminds me of the 1992-1993 seasons of Joe Carter. He had a lousy OBA but good power and ended up scoring a lot of runs. Right now, Soriano isn't similar to Carter according to the list at BaseballReference.com, but I wonder if that will change with time.

Miguel Cabrera adds a solo shot to give the Marlins a 4-0 lead. He's already passed last year's mark in hits, double and triples and needs three more long balls to top his career high in home runs. He having a fantastic year and still have plenty of years to improve.

Update: Dontrelle Willis goes deep as well. That's the first home run of the year for Dontrelle and the third of his career. The Marlins now lead 6-1.

Carlos Delgado give the Marlins an early 1-0 lead, driving in Cabrera with a triple in the first. After not hitting a three-bagger in 2004 and the first half of 2005, Carlos now has three since the All-Star break. Three in one season also matches his career high.

Andruw Jones connected with his 48th home run of the season, setting a new Braves single season record. The Braves lead the Nationals 3-0, and Washington's hopes for a playoff berth are slowly fading away.

Andruw Jones 47th home run tied him with Eddie Mathews and Henry Aaron for the Braves record for home runs in a season. Looks like Jones will blow this record away.

Ryan Howard is starting to hit like Frank Howard. He hit his 5th in eight September games tonight, helping the Phillies to a 7-4 lead over the Marlins. For all the home runs, however, Ryanl does not have many RBI, only eight for the month. Are the Phillies opponents not pitching to him with men on base?

According to this story, Hideki Matsui's home run tonight gives him 400 for his combined big league career in Japan and the United States.

Vlad Guerrero reached the 300 HR milestone, hitting a solo shot in the 5th to extend the Angels lead over the Mariners to 3-1.

Michael Young hit his 20th home run today, giving the four Texas infielders 20 home runs each.

The homer by Young marked the second season in a row that all four players in the Rangers starting infield hit at least 20 homers. The only other team's infield with four 20-homer hitters was the 1940 Red Sox, a group that included Hall of Famers Jimmie Foxx, Joe Cronin and Bobby Doerr.

Andruw Jones drove in five runs so far today with his 43rd home run and a single. That puts him at 108 RBI for the season, 11 ahead of Derrek Lee. It's looking more like Lee won't be able to win the triple crown, but Andruw is likely to take 2/3 of the title.

Alex Rodriguez hit his 40th home run of the season in a losing cause last night. It's the seventh time A-Rod reached the 40 plateau, putting him in some pretty good company.

Most 40 Home Run Seasons

Player	40 HR Seasons
Ruth	11
Aaron	8
Bonds	8
Killebrew	8
Sosa	7
Griffey Jr.	7
Alex Rodriguez	7

At his young age, four more seasons of 40 is quite possible.

Jason Giambi set two milestones with his three-hit, seven-rbi game. He reached 1000 RBI and 1500 hits for his career. The seven rbi doubled his total for the month. Giambi's last home run was on August 4th, also a two home-run game. In fact, his last three games with homers have all been multi-homer games.

Correction: Missed a 0 on the RBI total. It's one-thousand RBI.

Ken Griffey Jr. kept his hitting streak alive today in fine fashion, belting a double and homer to help the Reds to a 7-2 victory over the Pirates. At fourteen games, he owns the longest current streak in the majors, and has 8 home runs to go with his 27 hits, good for an .898 slugging percentage over the last 14 games.

Ken Griffey Jr. and Adam Dunn combined to hit three home runs tonight, giving the duo 67 on the year. The record for a Cincinnati pair of sluggers is 87 home runs, hit by Ted Kluszewski (47) and Wally Post (40) in 1955. The 1970 Reds fell just short with 45 by Bench and 40 by Tony Perez.

Victor Martinez continues to pour on the offense. He went four for five tonight with four runs scored. His double and homer give him 18 extra-base hits since the All-Star break in 39 games. He had 23 EXBH in 76 games before the break.

Derrek Lee became the first player in the majors to reach 80 extra-base hits this season, banging out two doubles as the Cubs lost 3-1 to the Braves today. That brings Lee's total to 81. I remember being impressed when Don Mattingly achieved 80+ two seasons in a row in 1985 and 1986.

The century mark is in sight for Lee. There have been two eras where we saw a number of 100 EXBH seasons. Between 1921 and 1938 the feat was accomplished seven times. In 2000 and 2001 it was accomplished seven times. The outliers are Stan Musial, with 103 in 1948 and Albert Belle with 103 in 1995. Belle's may be the most impressive of the lot, as the season was strike shortened that year.

Maybe a demotion and some competition from Chris Shelton was just what Carlos Pena needed to realize his potential. He hit two more homers this evening off the team that traded him to the Tigers, giving the Tigers a 4-1 lead on the Athletics in the 7th. He now has five home runs in four games since his return.

One big reason the Indians got off to a slow start this season was the poor hitting of Victor Martinez. Before the All-Star break, Martinez was hitting just .236 with a .312 OBA and a poor .380 slugging percentage. About all he was doing well was drawing walks. Since the break, however, he's recovered well. With his two for four so far tonight he's hitting .375 since the break with an OBA over .440 and a slugging percentage around .575. His season averages are now very close to last year's numbers.

Jay Payton continues to be a power force for the Oakland Athletics. He hit his 10th home runs for that team in his 114th at bat. He's not getting on base, but here's one case where the player's power is going a long way toward making the outs worth it. The A's lead the hapless Royals 3-0 in the third.

Miguel Tejada doubled and scored in the second inning today to help the Orioles to a 2-0 lead early. It's Miguel's 41st double of the season, one away from his career high set in 2003 with the Athletics. Tejada hit between 30 and 33 doubles from 1999 through 2002. He's been right around 40 since then. He's increased his doubles power without increasing his home run power.

For the third game in a row, Alex Rodriguez gave the Yankees the early lead. After singling in runs in the first the last two days, Alex waited for the fourth inning to put New York on the scoreboard tonight. He hit his 36th home run of th year, equalling his mark from the 2004 season. He's hit 8 this month, and the most he's hit in a month this season is 9.

Vlad Guerrero just hit another amazing home runs. At firs I thought the ball was up in his eyes, but on the replay it looked more like it was at his shoulders. Despite the fact that the ball was way out of the strike zone, Guerrero found a way not only to meet the ball, but knock it 430 feet into the left field stands. Normally, pitchers can exploit a hitter who fishes for balls that far out of the zone. But Vlad, with those long arms and great bat speed doesn't seem to have a spot he can't reach with power.

Derrek Lee and Albert Pujols are going head-to-head in the triple crown race today. Both have a home run and multiple RBI. Pujols' two RBI (so far) tie him for the NL lead with Carlos Lee. Derrek is now three home runs behind Andruw Jones for the NL lead, and his hit leaves him at a .348 BA for the NL lead. The Cubs lead 7-4 in the 5th.

Update: Lee finishes with two home runs on the day and four RBI. He now leads Pujols by 10 points in the batting race. However, if Cabrera has a big night he could end up in the NL lead for the batting title.

Casey Kotchman gets another start as Erstad recovers from a an inflamed right hip, and it pays off for the Angels. He's driven in five of the six Angels runs today with two home runs, one a grand slam. I'd like to see Erstad move back to center when he gets back and Finley move to the bench. Keep Kotchman at first!

David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez combined to collect three extra-base hits today. That gives the pair 108 on the season. That got me wondering, what pair of sluggers collected the most extra-base hits in a season? The answer is Gehrig and Ruth in 1927. Yes, Gehrig and Ruth. While Ruth was knocking out 60 homers on his way to 97 extra-base hits, Gehrig put up 52 doubles, 18 triples and 47 homers for 117 long hits. David and Manny have a ways to go to catch that pair.

The Boston record is 178, set by this same pair last year.

Adam Dunn put on quite a show over the last five games. He's hit four home runs and taken advantage of his RBI opportunities to drive in 14. He's even cut down on his strike outs a bit, averaging just one per game over the stretch. He's now tied for 7th in RBI with 77 and tied for the ML lead in home runs with 32.

Manny Ramirez hit another three run homer. His first inning shot gives the Red Sox the early lead against Kansas City and makes him the first player in the majors to reach 100 RBI this season.

Update: Manny and Edgar Renteria collide in left field on a ball that Manny caught. Renteria appeared to get Manny in the face, and Manny is out of the game.

Manny Ramirez had a good night back in the starting lineup. He drove in four of Boston's six runs with a homer and a single as the Red Sox pick up another victory 6-4 over the Royals. Manny is now just three RBI short of his 8th straight 100 RBI season. He's still tied with Alex Rodriguez for the AL home run lead as A-Rod goes deep in the Yankees-Indians game.

Update: Fixed a typo.

Jason Giambi hit his 13th home run of July. That's more than he hit in all of 2004. He now has a .440 OBA and a .542 slugging percentage for the year.

Update: Giambi hits another one in the 7th. It's his fourth multi-homer game of the month. The Yankees still trail 4-2 after seven.

Jonny Gomes hits three homers to help the Devil Rays to a 7-3 victory over the Royals tonight. It was the first three homer game in DRays history. With the win, the Devil Rays move past the Royals and no longer have the worst record in the American League. Maybe I got off the Devil Rays bandwagon too soon. :-)

Sammy Sosa followed up a Tejada three run homer with a solo shot of his own. It's the third home run for Sammy in four games. The Orioles could use some more offense right now. They've been waiting a long time for Sosa to contribute. Maybe he's finally finding his swing.

Brian Spurlock does not want to see Ken Griffey traded.

Of course, I also have to endure the whining of "fans" who claim Junior is overpaid and underproductive. They forget that he had a good season in 2000 and then was plagued by injuries - the result of going all-out. He's just starting to come back, but the "fans" and radio know-it-alls want to trade him.

Ken Griffey Jr. is a bona fide superstar, a first-ballot Hall-of-Famer who will end up with 700 home runs. He signed a contract below market value to come here, but all anyone talks about is how his contract is hindering the Reds.

All good points. However, if the Reds could use Griffey to get some young pitching, I'd do the deal. Griffey's best years are behind him and he's an injury waiting to happen. The Reds would be well served to trade him if the right deal comes along.

Alex Rodriguez turns 30 today. It's a good point to look at his career and see how he's doing vs. the all-time greats. A-Rod has more home runs at age 30 than any other player. But it's more useful to look in terms of full seasons.

Seasonal age is the age a player is for most of the baseball season. The cut off is July 1. Whatever age you are before July 1 is your age for the year. By this measure, Alex is only 29. By seasonal age, here are the most home runs through age 29:

HR through seasonal age 29 (age before July 1)

First Name	Last Name	Home Runs
Alex	Rodriguez	409
Ken	Griffey Jr.	398
Jimmie	Foxx	379
Mickey	Mantle	374
Eddie	Mathews	370
Hank	Aaron	342
Mel	Ott	342
Juan	Gonzalez	340
Frank	Robinson	324
Harmon	Killebrew	297
Ralph	Kiner	294
Vladimir	Guerrero	291
Johnny	Bench	287
Babe	Ruth	284
Andruw	Jones	282
Darryl	Strawberry	280
Willie	Mays	279

A-Rod and Vlad will continue to add to these totals this year, and Andruw Jones gets next year as well. That means that A-Rod is likely to have a 20 to 30 home run lead on Griffey at the end of the season. If Alex can end the season with 430 home runs, he'll have 11 more seasons to bring him through seasonal age 40. He'll have to average 30 home runs a season to break Aaron's record. Not easy, but certainly not impossible. Still when you look at the names on the list, it's amazing how many were ahead of Ruth at the same age and never caught the Babe.

Correction: I meant 30, not 33.

Manny Ramirez moves into the AL lead in home runs with a two-run shot in the first inning against Tampa Bay. Early in the season, Manny was not hitting well on the road, but now his homer totals home and away are even.

As I wrote the above, Alex Rodriguez hit one to straight away center field for his 28th.

The Tigers didn't have Magglio Ordonez most of the season, but what a month he's had since he returned to the lineup on July 1st. He's knocked out 31 hits in 21 games and currently has a 17 game hit streak, the longest currently in the majors. The Tigers are having their best month batting of the season, and are three games over .500 for the month. It took a while, but the gamble of signing Maggs appears to be paying off.

The Tigers had a big power day, knocking out 13 hits. With 26 total bases in the game, their average hit was a double. With so many hits, and so many long hits, it's pretty amazing that they only scored five runs. The team was only one for eight with men in scoring position. So it's a good thing they had the long hits. Four of their runs came on long hits with a man on first or the bases empty.

Jason Giambi hit his 14th home run of the year tonight, and his 9th in the month of July. After a dismal start, he's regained the stroke that earned him the big contract from the Yankees. His slugging percentage is now over .500 on the season.

Jason Giambi is the one person playing today that we are reasonably sure used steroids extensively. Can we be reasonably sure he's not using them now? I assume he's been tested, although test fail. I think, rather, the pituitary tumor probably put him off to their use anymore. I'd say the chances of Giambi still using steroids are low.

So, have we learned anything? Giambi was a big strong ballplayer with a good eye for the strike zone and tremendous power. If he is still that ballplayer off steroids, maybe steroids don't have much of an effect. In other words, as I've often argued on these pages, the whole steroids issue is overblown. Players who use them are just getting snake oil. The believe the pills and injections and creams give them a boost, but it's their own hard work that makes the difference. And the people who complain about them are equally exaggerating their powers. What is the difference between Giambi now and the Giambi of two years ago? He's huge and he's hitting home runs, just like then. So please, someone explain to me what is the big deal. It seems to me there's no reason to use the junk, and there's equally no reason to be too upset when someone does, because it really doesn't seem to help all that much.

Update: As I wrote this, Giambi hit another home run. That's 15 on the year, 12 behind A-Rod, who also homered tonight. He trailed A-Rod by 18 at the start of July.

Ken Griffey Jr. hits his 522 career home run and 21st of the season to pass Ted Williams and Willie McCovey on the all-time home run list. Two more homers and he'll have passed his best season mark of the century.

Carlos Beltran hit just his third Shea Stadium home run tonight. His struggles in this park remind me of Bobby Murcer in 1974. The Yankees moved into Shea for two seasons while their Stadium was being remodeled. Murcer had been used to pulling balls for homers in the old park, and with the deeper lines in Shea couldn't do it. He had two homers at Shea all year, both in late September.

Aramis Ramirez takes his turn hitting two homers in a game. After Derrek Lee and Todd Walker slugged a pair each yesterday, Ramirez hit his 23rd and 24th homers against Cincinnati tonight. Aramis hit 10 home runs in April and May in 47 games. He has 14 in 42 games since June 1.

Prior has another good outing, striking out 8 in 6 2/3 innings. With Lee and Ramirez hitting well, three runs allowed by a starter should be more than enough to win for the Cubs.

Derrek Lee keeps crushing the ball. They're only in the third inning and he's already hit two home runs, bringing his ML leading total to 30. Given the HR characteristics of the GAB, we'll keep our eye on Lee tonight to see how many he hits. The Cubs lead 4-1.

Update: Lee walks in the fourth inning. Todd Walker, batting 2nd tonight, hit his 2nd homer of the game just before the walk. Brandon Claussen allowed five home runs so far tonight, 50% of what he had allowed coming into this game. If he allows one more he'll tie the NL record for a game.

Ken Griffey hit his 6th home run of July this afternoon. It was the 20th of the season, matching last year's total, and the 521st of his career tieing him with Ted Williams and Willie McCovey. Pretty good company. The Reds won 9-4 over the Rockies.

Ken Griffey Jr. hit his fifth home run of July tonight. He's improved his batting average and on-base average every month this season, and he's slugging over .700 in July. Griffey now has 520 career home runs, putting him one behind Ted Williams and Willie McCovey.

Now the Reds just need to turn his offense into wins.

Joe Morgan just made a very good point. Reggie Jackson is at the event tonight, and Joe said that he always thought of Reggie as a big player. But every player in the derby tonight is as big or bigger than Reggie.

Baseballreference.com lists Reggie at 6 feet, 200 pounds. That's the same size as Abreu. Ivan Rodriguez is shorter but heavier. It's one more reason offense is up since Jackson's day.

Andruw Jones blasted his 27th home run of the year, a two run shot in the 8th inning. Andruw hits a high proportion of his homers late in the game; that's his 12th from the 7th inning on. More importantly, that home run put the Braves ahead 5-4. A win in the night cap would mean they'd pick up 1 1/2 games on the Nationals today.

Giambi's power streak continues. His solo shot in the second inning gives him six extra-base hits in six July games. A-Rod hit his 22nd, and the Yankees lead the Indians 3-1 in the third.

Frank Thomas is making up for lost time. He hit his 11th home run of the season tonight. That's 11 homers in 71 AB through six innings tonight. Just to put this in perspective, the AL home run leaders are Manny Ramirez and Mark Teixeira have 22. Manny has 290 AB, Mark 335 coming into tonight action. Given the lack of power in the AL this season, Thomas could wind up winning the home run title!

Manny Ramirez hit his 3rd grand slam of the season tonight, giving him 20 for his career and putting him just three behind Gehrig. This chart should now show Manny with 3 at age 33.

Update and Correction: I've updated the table at the above link with this home run. A reader also pointed out an error. Manny had 2 slams at age 26. That also was updated.

Jason Giambi homers leading off the second inning for the Yankees to give New York a 1-0 lead. It's significant because it pushes Giambi's slugging percentage above his on-base average. He now has a .417 OBA and a .419 slugging percentage. He already has more home runs in July (3) than he had in May and June combined (2).

Update: Giambi finishes the day 3 for 4 with 2 doubles and a homer. He raised his OBA to .420 and his slugging percentage to .433. The score is 12-2 in the 6th, and Giambi's been lifted for a pinch runner.

Travis Hafner is making an early bid for July player of the year. He went four for five today with two home runs and five RBI. He's nine for sixteen in the first four games of the month with three homers and seven RBI. The Indians are leading 9-1 in the ninth, and are about to win their 8th game in their last 10 tries.

Update: Rondell White hits a two-run homer in the 9th, but the Indians still win 9-3.

The Diamondbacks are off to a 5-0 lead over the Dodgers in the first inning tonight. Shawn Green hit a two-run homer; five of his 14 homers this season have been hit against Los Angeles.

Manny Ramirez hit the 19th grand slam of his career this afternoon. At age 33, he has a decent chance of catching Gehrig's record of 23.

Grand Slams by Seasonal Age	Gehrig	Ramirez
22	1	0
23	0	1
24	2	3
25	1	2
26	2	2
27	2	2
28	3	3
29	2	1
30	0	1
31	4	0
32	2	2
33	2	3
34	1	NA
35	1	NA

Age 31 made the difference between the two players. Gehrig's career ended prematurely. Manny has the luxury of playing for a team that believes in on-base percentage, so he's likely to have lots of opportunities if he stays with Boston.

Thanks to David Vincent of Saber for the data.

Update and Correction: July 6, 2005. Manny hit his third grand slam of the year on Monday, July 5, 2005. The age 33 now reflects this. I've also corrected a typo in the original table. He should have 2 at age 26.

This post on Lee vs. Pujols for the All-Star game led to a very interesting discussion, with good arguments being made for both first basemen. Lee hit two more homers today (through the 7th inning), giving him 22 on the year with 64 RBI. He's three for three with a walk to raise his OBA to .476. That's Bonds territory. With Lee leading the majors in home runs at the moment, I'd vote for him.

Carlos Lee hit a homer as well, and with two RBI maintains his ML lead in RBI. Deciding who is All-Lee may be tougher than deciding who's an All-Star.

Morgan Ensberg looks like he's regained the slugging form he showed in 2003. He knocked in all three of the Astros run through three innings with his 17th homer of the season. His OBA and slugging percentages are nearly identical to his 2003 marks, after a season where he played part time and his production fell off. He's right there with Aramis Ramirez and Troy Glaus for best offensive third baseman in the NL this season.

Frank Thomas hit another home run last night, but he's slipped to one home run every 5 1/3 AB. :-) If you look at home run leaders for June, and compare Thomas' at bats to every one else with six or seven, you'll see he's on a remarkable tear.

Mark Teixeira broke the four-way tie for the AL home run lead today with his 20th in a losing cause against the Nationals. Mark's been consistent this season, hitting 6 in April, 7 in May and now 7 in June. At age 25, he's improved his batting average and slugging in each season he's played. As he approaches his peak years, he's in a position to be a major slugger over the next half-decade.

With another home run tonight, Frank Thomas is hitting a dinger every five at bats this season. The are 96 games left in the White Sox schedule. So if Thomas can get another 300 at bats, he could set the AL record for home runs in a season. :-) Actually, this couple of days on/couple of days off schedule appears to be helping Frank. He's in the zone, and it will be fun to see how long he can maintain this pace.

Jason Giambi won back some fan support tonight as he hit a two run homer in the bottom of the 10th inning to complete a 7-5 comeback victory for the Yankees. The Yankees were down 4-1 and 5-2, but scored six runs in the last four innings to keep pace with the Orioles, Red Sox and Blue Jays. It was a shot, landing in the upper deck down the right field line.

Despite his hitting problems, Giambi still has a .388 OBA. He's a valuable offensive player, just not as valuable as he was once.

Frank Thomas' come back is both fitful and powerful. He's not back to full time status, but when he hits, he's hurting the ball. He's 1 for 3 through six innings tonight, but that one hit was his fourth home run. That's seven hits on the season for Frank, four for home runs. He's slugging over .900 so far.

Hee Seop Choi smashes another home run in the top of the first to put the Dodgers up 1-0. He's now homered in four straight games, and has seven in that time frame.

Jason Lane added to his June power numbers with a two run homer against the Orioles. That gives him 12 hits in June, nine for extra bases, including four home runs. He's been the top slugger on the Astros this month, a month in which the team's had a good slugging percentage, .447 entering today.

Update: Ensberg adds a two-run shot, his fifth of the month. Depite the two homers, the Astros are down to the Orioles 7-4 in the 6th.

Hee Seop Choi was much of the Dodgers offense today, hitting three solo home runs as the Dodgers defeated the Twins 4-3. I thought three homers at Dodger Stadium might be rare, so use the Day By Day Database to look at three home run games there since 1974. Today's was the 7th since the start of the 1974 season. Of the six preceeding three homer games, only one was accomplished by a Dodger; Shawn Green in 2001. Dave Kingman did it twice. The last was by Mike Lieberthal on Aug. 8, 2002.

Correction:Fixed the score.

Eric Chavez continues his hot June hitting today. He collected three more hits today througn five innings to bring his total for the month to 15. Two were for extra bases, a double and a homer. That brings his slugging percentage up to .892 for the month. He was in the low 300's in both April and May.

Update: Chavez is not 5 for 5 through eight innings and added another home run.

Brian Giles hit his first home run at PETCO this season, a solo shot in the 6th inning. Entering today, Giles was slugging nearly 400 points higher on the road, .682-.295.

Alex Rodriguez reached the 400 home run plateau last night, lacing his second shot of the game in the 8th inning against the Brewers. The New York Times publishes in their side bar the youngest to reach 400. A-Rod beats Griffey by 190 days. Although that's not really fair. Ball players don't play all year, so there can be big gaps through no fault of the player. He's also the first player to reach 400 at seasonal age 29, which is a better comparison.

Notice, too, that Alex is two years ahead of Aaron. Hank needed an unprecedented finish to his career to catch Ruth. A-Rod just needs to stay healthy and have a few more big years before he starts coasting. The five players between Rodriguez and Hammerin' Hank failed to reach the record. It's A-Rod's turn now.

Also note that the three men to reach 700 aren't very high on the list. Aaron, Ruth and Bonds were always great home run hitters, but each attained 700 with a late career surge. In the five years from seasonal age 35 to 39, Ruth hit 192 home runs, Aaron 203 home runs, and Bonds 258! A-Rod can easily hit 200 home runs over the next five years. He then only need to smack another 156 at that point to catch Aaron. How easy it looks, but how difficult it is to achieve.

Alex Rodriguez joins Al Kaline and Andres Galarraga as a member of the 399 home run club with his 18th of the season.

Alex now has about six weeks to hit his 400th home run before he turns 30. That's an amazing accomplishment. Also, this sets him up for a good run at Aaron's record. Let's be conservative and say he ends the season with 420 career home runs. He'll be 335 from the record. That's 10 years hitting about 33 homers. A couple of years of hitting 50, and he knocks a year off reaching that mark. As we've seen lots can happen between now and then. Ken Griffey Jr. had 398 home runs through seasonal age 29 (the 1999 season). We saw how he fell apart. Even Bonds, as close as he is to the record might not reach it. But with Sosa fading, my money is on Alex.

Sammy Sosa should take Dave Williams with him to the home run derby. Sammy just hit his 6th career homer off Williams. He's now 8 for 13 vs. Williams with eight walks. The Pirate lefty might be better off walking Sammy every time up. The Orioles lead the Pirates 1-0 on the 2nd inning blast.

Ivan Rodriguez's broken hand doesn't seem to have hurt his power stroke. He double and scored the game winning run yesterday, and he's added a homer and double tonight as the Tigers defeat the Orioles 5-3. Jason Johnson allows one earned run in eight innings and lowers his home ERA to 1.62.

Mark Teixeira is three quarters of the way to the cycle as the Rangers are pounding the Tigers 8-1. He's 3 for 4, and needs the homer to complete the feat.

Kenny Rogers is pitching well again, allowing just one run through six innings so far.

Hideki Matsui breaks a long home run slump with a 2-run shot in the second off Zack Greinke. His last home run was April 8th. He went 46 games without a long ball.

What happened to Aubrey Huff's power? He hit his third home run of the season today. Just his third. While his batting average is down 60 points from last year, his slugging percentage is down about 130 points. His strikeout and walk rates look to be about the same. Could he have lost some strength?

Derrek Lee hit his 15th and 16th home runs today in a 5-1 Cubs victory over the Colorado Rockies. He's now half way to his career high of 32, set last year. At this rate, 50 homers is not out of the question.

He's not just hitting for power. He's getting on base over 45% of the time, and he's stolen 8 bases in 9 attempts. He's the complete package this season.

Alex Rodriguez hit his 17th home run of the year and the 398th of his career to put the Yankees ahead to stay tonight. He's now having he kind of year the Yankees expected when they traded for the young slugger. He has 49 RBI in 47 games played, and he's scored 43 runs. His 30th birthday is July 27th, and he's likely to be well over 400 homers by then. He'll only need to average 30 homers a year during his 30's to reach 700.

Carlos Lee cracked a two-run homer in the bottom of the first to put the Milwaukee Brewers on the board. The two RBI extend his NL leading total to 43. Twenty nine of those have come this month, and he's now tied with Bobby Abreu for most in the majors this May.

Sometimes even a small sample size makes you wonder. With two AB tonight, Alex Rodriguez has now faced Wil Ledezma five times. He has 1 walk and four home runs, including two tonight. That gives Alex a 1.000 OBA and a 4.000 slugging percentage against the lefty. You can't get any better than that.

Carlos Delgado continues to show why any number of teams should have been persuing him in the off season. Three more hits tonight, including the three-run homer. He's now brought his OBA over .400 and he's slugging .561. Willis gets his 8th win.

Juan Encarnacion homered today to help the Marlins to a 4-3 victory over their fellow sea creatures, the Devil Rays. Juan now has a .365 OBA and a .493 slugging percentage. Compared to his career averages of .313 and .441, the 29 year old is having the best year of his career. In most seasons, Juan is a below average offensive outfielder. This season, he's found a way to help the Marlins.

The Chicago White Sox won the first round of the Windy City Championship today, defeating the Cubs 5-1. The White Sox got homers from Dye and Crede today to bring their total to 46. The came into the day 5th in the American League in homers. For a team that was going to go for speed, they're certainly supply some power.

Troy Glaus has two more extra-base hits tonight to move ahead of Derrek Lee into the NL lead with 26. He's driven in two and scored two to help the Diamondbacks to a 7-4 lead over the Astros.

Congratulations to Manny Ramirez on his 400th home run. According to The Bill James Baseball Handbook 2005, Manny has a 13% chance of hitting 700 home runs and a 4% chance of passing Aaron. He'll be 33 in a couple of weeks; if he plays through age 40, that gives him most of eight seasons. An average of thirty homers a year takes him well over 600 and pretty close to Willie Mays.

Manny has 164 homers for the Red Sox, 11th on the Boston all time list. He needs six to tie Jackie Jensen for 10th. Manny needs 67 homers in a Boston uniform to pass Mo Vaughn for fifth place on the all-time team list. There's a big gap between 4th and 5th as Dewey Evans has 379 round trippers. It's conceivabe that if Manny finishes his career with Boston he'd wind up third on the list behind Williams and Yastrzemski.

So, will Boston keep an aging Ramirez around if he's going for 600 or 700 home runs? They tried to dump his contract after the 2003 season, putting Manny on waivers. Let's say that Manny has 550 career homers at the end of 2008 when his current contract expires. It would probably make good baseball sense to let Manny go at that time and put the money into younger players with a up side. But it might also attract a lot of attention to keep Ramirez and watch him go for 600 and Mays. (Although A-Rod may have passed Manny by then. In seasonal age he's four years yonger and only seven homers behind Ramirez.) My guess is that if the situation comes up, the Red Sox would offer a significant pay cut if Manny wanted to stay.

I was listening to the Yankees game as I drove through Connecticut today, and I had to call my dad after Tino Martinez hit two more home runs in the game. Dad says Tino is a gentleman, and he's really happy to see him doing this well.

With 10 home runs halfway through May, it's time to start wondering if Tino can set the May record. It's currently held by Barry Bonds, who hit 17 in May 2001. The AL Record is 16 held by Yankees great Mickey Mantle, who hit 16 in 1956. Mark McGwire also hit 16 in May 1998.

The Braves Dodgers game last night treated us to the rare opposing grand slams in the same inning. In the top of the 8th, Adam LaRoche blasted one off a tiring Jeff Weaver to give the Braves a 4-2 lead (note to Jon Weisman; Tracy didn't pull Weaver soon enough). But in the bottom of the inning, Bradley connected with his 2nd homer of the game, also a grand slam to take the lead back for the Dodgers.

Bradley's had a huge power surge this season. He's hitting a HR every 13.6 AB compared to one every 39.3 AB through 2004. Kent, Choi and Bradley are quickly becoming a dominant murders row.

Last night Adam Dunn displayed all his talents. He hit two homers and drove in five to help the Reds to a 7-5 victory over the Phillies. He also walked and struck out. You may be aware that Adam has many more strikeouts than hits in his career; 596 K, 458 hits. Given his plate discipline (375 walks, an OBA 135 points above his BA), it's amazing he strikes out as much as he does. But when he swings, he swings hard, so when he makes contact the results are good. He's hitting .370 for his career when not striking out.

So I'll raise the question, should Dunn try to strike out less? He has a .905 career OPS, which is nothing to sneeze at. But if he's this good putting the ball in play, couldn't those numbers be even higher if he struck out less?

The downside would be that while his batting average might go up putting more balls in play, his power might go down. Since he strikes out swinging more than twice as often as he's caught looking, shortening his swing with two strikes might pay dividends.

But how much power might he lose? From 2002-2004, Dunn hit 99 homers. He hit 31 of them with two strikes. And while a shorter swing wouldn't eliminate all of those, that is a good chunk of his power. Again, is it worth it? Let's do a calculation. We'll take Dunn's career number and reduce his home runs by 31%, taking the extreme view that he won't hit any two strike homers if he's not swinging hard. Let's then assume that he has 400 swining strikeouts for his career, and we'll eliminate 1/2 of those with a shorter swing. Of those .200 balls in play, we'll also assume a .370 BA. That's 74 extra hits, and again, to be conservative, we'll call them all singles. So now if you do the math (same number of AB), you get Dunn with a .290 BA, a .410 OBA (approximate) and a .495 slugging percentage. In other words, you get an OPS of .905, just what Dunn has now.

That's the floor. It would likely be higher than that since some of the added hits would be doubles, triples and home runs. But the gain is just not that great; it doesn't seem worth tinkering a swing that works for a few points of OPS.

Tino Martinez hits his 9th homer of the year and now has a streak of five straight games with a dinger. The record is 8, held by Tino's former teammate Ken Griffey Jr., the man he replaced at first base, Don Mattingly and the immortal Dale Long.

Manny Ramirez continues to be a home homer. He hit his 8th of the season this afternoon, the 7th at Fenway. It was also his first against a lefty this season.

The amazing thing to me about this Red Sox season is the depth of the club. Two fifths of the rotation has spent most of the season recovering from injury. But the staff doesn't walk many, so they keep the damage low. Manny Ramirez is having an "off" year in that he's not hitting for average. But everyone around him is so good he's scored 27 runs and has driven in 29 in 33 games. It all adds up to the Red Sox having outscored their oppponents by over 40 runs so far.

Ryan Klesko hit his 9th home run of the year this afternoon against the Reds. The three run shot gave the Padres a 4-2 lead. Klesko has five on the road and four at home, but he's had almost twice as many at bats on the road. If Klesko has PETCO measured, we could see him stay with the league leaders all season.

Mike Sweeney continues his hot hitting tonight vs. the Blue Jays. He hits his ninth homer of the year to extend his hitting streak to ten games and give the Royals a 1-0 lead. It's his 7th home run during the streak. In the 10 games so far, his driven in and scored 12 runs.

Mike Piazza hits a three run homer in the first inning to give the Mets a 3-0 lead. Of his six home runs, five have come on the road this season.

Miguel Tejada has a single, double and just homered against Carlos Silva. Silva has walked none and struck out just two as he faces his third batter in the sixth. The 22 balls in play against him have produced eight hits.

Meanwhile, Cabrera is having his best game of the year, having struck out 7 and walked 1 through six innings. The Orioles lead 3-0.

Choi and Kent have each hit two run homers off Paul Wilson in the first inning to give the Dodgers a 4-0 lead over the Cincinnati Reds. Cincinnati pitchers have allowed 37 earned runs over their last five games, and it's not getting any better tonight.

Choi's home run brings his slugging percentage up to .486. At that level, he's hitting well enough for a first baseman. If he continues to improve, he'll make DePodesta look very good.

Mets fans had a rare treat tonight, two home runs by the home town team at Shea. Coming into tonight, the Mets had hit 8 home homers, but 20 on the road (14 games at home, 13 on the road). Victor Diaz became the 2nd Met to hit multiple home runs at home. Floyd, with his fifth in Flushing this season continues to have half the Metropolitans home total.

Floyd extended his hit streak to 20 games. He's making up for Piazza's slump. If Mike can come out of it, the Mets are going to have a powerful middle of the lineup.

An interesting piece in the Arizona Republic about three run homers, and how Vazquez and Halsey are happy to be away from the division that thrives on them Good charts at the end of the piece as well.

"I think a lot of it has to do with the success of the Yankees," said Diamondbacks first baseman Tony Clark, who spent last year with New York.

"They're a team predicated on hitting the ball out of the ballpark.

"So a lot of teams in the division have adopted that same profile of trying to be able to hit the ball out of the ballpark and keep up."

That's not exactly a dream scenario for a pitcher.

So heading west and leaving a league where designated hitters come to the plate in place of weak-hitting pitchers wasn't a bad move for Vazquez or Halsey. And it sure wasn't a bad one for the Diamondbacks.

General kudos to the Arizona Republic baseball coverage. I always find something interesting on their pages.

It's time to switch Beltre and Sexson in the Mariners order. Richie hit his seventh home run tonight; he now has 20 hits with 11 of them for extra bases. He's not hitting much, but he is driving the ball when he's successful.

Adrian Beltre is not hitting at all and is creating a void between the table setters and Sexson's power. Suzuki and Reed are doing a good job of getting on base. Getting Sexson closer to them should make the offense work a little better.

After a fast start, Pat Burrell came into today with no homers in his last 10 games and only two RBI. He's gone deep tonight, giving the Phillies a 3-0 lead in the first with his 6th homer of the season. Abreu added two RBI in the second to extend that lead to 5-0 over the Mets. Tom Glavine is doing nothing to help his ERA this evening.

The Orioles have two hitters with OPS over 1.150, and one of them is not Sammy Sosa. Tejada and Roberts both have OBAs over .400 and slugging percentage over .700. The Orioles are looking like winners; not only are they beating up on weak teams like the Blue Jays, but their winning against the favorites as well. They've now outscored their opponents 144-113. That's better than a run per game. Fourteen of their seventeen wins have been by three runs or more. Good teams may win the close ones, but great teams with big.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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's now 10 for 20 with men on base with 8 extra-base hits. He's only 1 for 19 with the bases empty with three walks.

Adam Dunn knocked two home runs tonight, both solo shots. They're his first home runs since opening day, when he also launched a pair of dingers. He now has eight RBI in eleven games, but seven came in the first and current game of the season.

For the second game in a row, Vinny Castilla has 3/4 of a cycle. Tonight, he singled, doubled and homered, driving in four runs and raising his slugging percentage to .955. I'm sure he's fast becoming a D.C. favorite.

On the other side of the ball, John Patterson is shutting down his former team. The Diamondbacks have managed only four hits and a walk against the 6' 5" righty. Washington leads 9-0 in the eighth.

Manny Ramirez hits home runs in consecutive innings to drive in all six Red Sox runs. He had a two run shot over the Monster seats in the 3rd, then followed with a grand slam in the fourth. That's 18 career slams for Manny, putting him only five behind Lou Gehrig's record of 23. Manny's only 33; given his ability and the number of runners the Red Sox put on base, it's conceivable that he has a real shot at passing Gehrig.

Torii Hunter had a double and homer today as he colleted three hits and three RBI to help Minnesota to a 6-4 win over Cleveland. Torii's not hitting very often (11 hits) but six of them have been for extra bases, giving him 12 RBI in 11 games. He's in the perfect part of the batting order for his skill set; he doesn't get on much, but he hits for power. It's the Joe Carter combination, and when you have great OBA guys in front of you, the RBIs are there for the taking.

Brian Roberts hits his fifth HR of the season to bring the Orioles back from a 6-2 deficit and give them a 7-6 lead over the Yankees. Sturtze and Gordon combine the blow the lead in the bottom of the 7th.

Roberts has now equaled his career high in home runs, set in 2003 in 112 games. Is he the new Brady Anderson? He's 27, the age when many players hit their peak.

I just finished my radio show, and there's lots of good action tonight. Clemens and Ishii are involved in a great pitcher's duel in New York; Cleveland and Chicago are tied at 4, Tampa and Baltimore and Texas and LAA are tied at 1.

The Yankees and Red Sox were tied at 2 when Schilling made a mistake to Giambi, and Jason uppercutted a sinking pitch into the right field seats for a 4-2 lead. Bernie Williams follows up with a home run over the Red Sox bullpen to extend the lead to 5-2.

Schilling pitched very well, but started running out of gas in the fifth. Still the Red Sox faithful have to be happy that Curt pitched that well vs. a team with as powerful a lineup as New York. He'll get his stamina back as the year progresses. Everything else was there.

Troy Glaus doubled in the first Arizona run. He now has eight hits on the season, all for extra bases.

Russell Branyan has a pair of two-run homers against the Pirates today. He's now 4 for 7 vs. the Bucs this season. The Brewers lead 5-2 as they continue their domination of Pittsburgh.

Pat Burrell added three RBI today to bring his major league leading total to 15. He's been the heart of the order up to this point, and Thome and Abreu only had three combined RBI entering today. Jim and Bobby combined for five RBI today; those three hitting on all cylinders makes the Phillies a very dangerous lineup.

Juan Encarnacion has eight RBI this season, all on grand slams. The Marlins will take eight a week from Juan, no matter how few hits are needed to get them.

Dmitri Young legged out his second triple of the season today, matching last year's total. Given Young's girth, I thought that was pretty impressive, and wondered about his career high. That was actually the 26th of his career! That's very impressive for someone that big. Just for example, both Garrett Anderson and Young entered today with 25 triples since the start of 1997, and Anderson has played more games. Young can run.

Carlos Lee is paying off for the Brewers early. He got his second hit, second double and first two RBI for the Brewers in the first inning today. Russel Branyan also added a two RBI double as the Brewer continue to pound the Pirates. It's 4-0 in the 2nd.

Update: Lee has added a solo home run and two more RBI.

A healthy Luis Gonzalez means a lot to the Diamondbacks, and he's looking good tonight. He's hit two home runs off Greg Maddux. As Maddux ages, his long balls allowed have gone way up, from 14 in 2002 to 24 in 2003 to 35 last year. The game is now tied at 3 due to that weakness.

Derek Lee doubles in top of the 8th. One more base on that hit and he would have hit for the cycle. I'm sure he'll take the 4 for 5 with 5 RBI game.

The balls are flying out of the GAB today. Carlos Beltran get his first as a Met, a two run shot to tie the game. It's 3-3 in the third.

Dmitri Young does it again. Two AB and two HR. He's dancing in the dugout and the Tigers lead 5-0.

Andruw Jones credits his spring power boost to going back to his minor league stance:

After hitting 29 homers last season, his fewest since 1999, Jones spent part of the offseason watching film of when he played in the minor leagues. He noticed that his feet were closer together in the batter's box.

So, when camp opened, Jones widened his stance and the result has been baseballs sailing higher and farther than ever before.

Mays was the one who first approached Jones about widening his base, which allows him to stay back on the ball and cover more of the plate with his swing.

"He's a Hall of Famer," Jones said. "I took it [his advice] but I didn't use it right away."

Baseball players have to constantly adjust to stay at the top of their game. Longtime greats like Yaz and Ripken were always tinkering with their stances. Jones seems to have found an adjustment that works for him. We'll see how the opposition pitching adjusts to counter that.

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Here's another in a continuing series of If You Have a Problem at First Base, There's an Easy Solution series. Walter Young is a big slugger in the Orioles system (formerly in the Pirates system). He's 25, so he's past the point of being a prospect. The Orioles could have brought him up last year for the league minimum; instead, they spent four million on Palmeiro.

In the 1985 Bill James Baseball Handbook, major league equlivancies are introduced using that method with a slight modification in the adjustment for competition from .82 to .81, here's how Walter Young's numbers look compared to Palmeiro.

2004	Young's MLE	Palmeiro Actual
AB	482	550
Hits	128	142
Doubles	24	29
Triples	0	0
Home Runs	32	23
BB	42	86
K	143	61
Batting Avg	.266	.258
OBA	.324 (approx.)	.359
Slug.	.515	.436
OPS	.839	.795

Young's OBA wouldn't be as good, but he makes up for it with his slugging percentage. If nothing else, it's pretty clear that Palmeiro wasn't worth 13 times the money. The cheap solution eluded the Orioles. And with Palmeiro back for another year, the mistake is repeated.

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With his 2nd HR of the evening, Jeff Kent passes Ryne Sandberg for most HR by a 2nd baseman. I missed the number, but for his career he now has 302 HR. Don't know how many came at 2nd base. Houston is cruising 7-1 in the fifth.

Hideki Matsui hit another HR tonight to tie the Twins-Yankees at 4. He's making his push for the MVP at the expense of the Twins.

Two players that have greatly surprised me are Adrian Beltre and Melvin Mora. Mora, in 2003 at age 31 turned in a partial season that was way beyond expectations. It was easy to pass that off as a fluke, since he only played 96 games. But it's more difficult to categorize his combined 2003-2004 seasons as a fluke. At a very late age, there was a significant shift in his batting ability.

Adrian Beltre is on the edge of becoming the first Dodger ever to hit 50 HR. Like Mora, his success is out of line with his previous history. However, Beltre has one positive that makes me less surprised at his season; he was a regular at a very young age. Someone who is a regular at 19 and stays a regular usually turns out to be a very good ballplayer. (I did a study of this about then years ago; 2000 PA before seasonal age 24 made your chance of getting into the Hall of Fame very high.) Beltre, however, rather than a gradual rise to greatness made the jump all at once. Why?

The Dodgers had been waiting patiently for Adrian Beltre to develop into a big-time hitter ever since they signed him as a 15-year-old out of the Dominican Republic in 1994. That the breakout has occurred in 2004, Beltre's seventh big- league season, is primarily because he finally is waiting patiently at the plate.

"It's kind of scary watching him," said Mets reliever Ricky Bottalico, who gave up one of the five hits Beltre collected yesterday in the Dodgers' 4-2 victory. "I remember when you used to be able to slider Sammy Sosa to death. A few years later he got patient and started waiting for his pitch. That's what Beltre has done. He picks his spots to go deep."

Once again, being selective at the plate pays off big time for a hitter. His walks are higher than his last two seasons, and his hits are much higher than his last two seasons. This, again, goes against the arguments that increasing walks somehow decreases hits, and suggests that someone like Ichrio would improve if he were more selective.

Mora's improvement may also be due to greater selectivity at the plate. Mora had a big jump in walks from 2001 to 2002. His power numbers (HR especially) went up with the walks, and his batting average followed suit the next year. I don't know how many more examples of this we need until all players and managers and GMs start to realize that selective hitters are good hitters.

Barry Bonds hit his 40th HR tonight, bringing him within two of 700. It's his 8th 40 HR season, and his 5th in a row. Like Ruth and Aaron, Bonds is having a great finish to his career. The three 700 hitters will have incredible runs from age 35 to 39 to their credit, with Bonds having the best of them all.

A couple of weeks ago I noticed a comment by a reader wondering why Manny Ramirez wasn't doing better in win shares. To attempt to explain this, I'll use a comparison with Vlad Guerrero.

The latest win share data published at the Hardball Times is from August 26. As of that date, Guerrero was tied for third in win shares with 23, Manny was tied for 6th with 22. Yet Manny clearly had better batting statistics; both his OBA and slugging percentages are ahead of Vlad, and he's created 105 runs to Vald's 198. Yet offensively, Manny only leads Vlad 19.6 to 19.1 in offensive win shares (Vlad, the superior defensive player pulls ahead of Ramirez based on his outfield play).

One thing that win shares does is correct for offensive context. Think of it as supply and demand for runs. If situations where there is a high amount of scoring, runs are easy to come by and therefore cheaper. Preventing runs becomes more valuable that scoring runs. In low run situations, the opposite is true. Runs are scarce and expensive, so offense is valued over defense. On 8/26, Boston's run context was 10.6 runs per game (runs allowed + runs scored). Anaheim's was 9.6, a run lower. What we are looking at in a roundabout way is ballpark effects. Runs are easier to score in Fenway than away from Fenway; they are harder to score in Anaheim than away from Anaheim. When you factor in the run context, the difference between Vlad's offense and Manny's is negligible. Another reason the Angels got the bargain of the year signing Guerrero.

Beltran, Bagwell and Berkman go back-to-back-to-back in the 5th inning against the Reds to give the Astros a 4-0 lead. All four runs have scored on solo homers. With the Cubs down 5-0 in the 5th at Montreal, Houston's playoff hopes are very much alive.

J.D. Drew has given the Braves a 3-0 lead with his 29th HR of the year. Looking at his stats for the season, there's nothing wrong with his offensive game. He hits for average, (BA over .300), gets on base (OBA over .400) and hits for power (slugging in the high .500's). He works anywhere in the offense as he both scores runs and drives them in. J.D. is a good percentage base stealer, swiping 10 in 12 attempts. And he's only grounded into 6 double plays all year. Atlanta could not have gotten a better replacement for Gary Sheffield.

I was wondering in July if Bonds was going to reach 700 HR this year. He had slowed greatly after his 660 barrage and his injury, hitting only 17 HR from May through July. He's gotten his HR swing back in August, however, with the two tonight giving him 11 for the month and leaving him just 4 short of the 700 mark. He'll still need a pretty good month of September to catch Ruth this season, but if anyone can hit 18 in 30 games Bonds can.

Travis Hafner had another near cycle today, accumulating a single, double and triple as the Indians defeated the White Sox 9-0. Hafner now has 63 extra base hits, in the top 10 of the AL, and in the top five depending on what other players do today. He's on a pace for 77 extra-base hits. It's a good number, but not as impressive as it used to be. For example, in the 1980's, (1980-1989), only 15 players exceeded 77 long hits in a season. That number ballooned to 55 in the 1990's and there have been 58 such seasons through 2003 in the aughties.

Decade	>77 EXBH
1920's	34
1930's	51
1940's	18
1950's	18
1960's	14
1970's	13
1980's	15
1990's	55
2000's	58

Alou and Sosa go back-to-back in the first inning to give Chicago a 3-0 lead. It's Sosa's third HR in four games after having only 3 the rest of the month.

This article surprised me a bit:

Sosa certainly noticed over the weekend when he was booed as he was announced during pre-game introductions, as well as every time he came to bat after making an out. His swing seems to get longer, if not harder, the louder the fans go after him.

"You can't tune them out because you hear them, unless he's deaf, which he's not," says Cubs manager Dusty Baker. "It's a different situation. He was held in such high esteem and adoration, and now it seems it's going the other way."

Sosa no longer can count on unconditional love from the fans he thrilled time and time again during his unprecedented run of 243 home runs in four seasons, including three seasons with at least 63. His approval rating has dropped as the price for scalped Cubs' tickets has skyrocketed.

Tim McCarver, working last Saturday's game against the Dodgers, says it is a shame that Chicago fans have become fickle toward Sosa. But these fans would say it's a shame that the aging Sosa has gone into a steep decline at the time when the emergence of a loaded starting rotation, a deep lineup and a winning manager have raised the stakes exponentially for the lovable losers.

I find it strange that fans would start booing Sosa because he's in a slump. While he's not having an MVP season, in no way, shape or form is it a bad season. He has 13 win shares already, tied for 4th on the team. He's having a lousy August, but anything can happen in 50 AB. What gives? Is it that he's not perceived as a team player? Is it that he hasn't built up all that much good will over the years?

Something I'm more interested in, however, is Sosa's assault on Aaron's home run record. My guess is he'll finish the season with between 35 and 40 HR, leaving him about 180 shy of Hammerin' Hank. At age 35, with his number declining, that's not a trivial number of HR to hit. It's four years of 40 HR, and then some. Sure Sosa can do it, but another year of decline and I'd say the odds are going to get a lot longer.

Ben Broussard is having quite a 2nd half. His pinch-hit grand slam tonight was his fifth HR in 64 AB since the All-Star break. He has 25 hits, 11 for extra bases. His game winner tonight sets up the big weekend series with the Twins. A sweep by the Indians puts them into a tie for first place.

Travis Hafner needs a triple for the cycle. He's ten days from the anniversary of his 1st cycle on 8/14/2003.

Update: Hafner didn't get the triple, but he did get his 2nd HR. They're only in the 6th, so he should get another shot at the cycle.

Albert Pujols hit his 30th HR of the year in the 1st inning for the Cardinals. It's his 4th straight season of 30 HR, every year he's played in the majors. With two months to go, Pujols now has 144 HR and 458 RBI over his first four seasons. He's laying down a great foundation to a Hall of Fame career.

All those years of talking to Eric Chavez about process appear to have finally paid off. Chavez has a .406 OBA this year, after a double, HR and a walk today. His batting average, .272, is just a hair below his lifetme mark. But his OBA is 50 points higher. Chavez has found the sweet spot where he's still producing power and hits, but making a lot fewer outs doing so. He's made the jump from star to super star.

Is it just me, or is the media not making a big deal about Gary Sheffield reaching the 400 HR mark? Wasn't it just a few weeks ago that it was big news that Thome reached 400? I remember ESPN had a big picture of Jim and a headline that had the word "historic" in it. The link to the game story on the ESPN basebal page says "Posada HR rallies Yankees." Is it because Sheffield is two years older than Thome? Is it because it happened in Canada? I mean, where's the front page story about Sheffield and the Hall of Fame?

On a related note, the Hardball Times has Sheffield #1 in the AL in Win Shares Above Average. MVP, anyone?

A happy 40th birthday to Barry Bonds. In looking at Bonds career, I can't find any examples of a bad season. His rookie year of 1986 was his poorest, yet he still showed his great eye for the strikezone, drawing 65 in 413 AB. It's also the only year he struck out 100 times in a season. A nineteen year career, and his worst season was his first. That's pretty good.

I sometimes wonder what Bonds' career would have been like if the Pirates hadn't taken him to arbitration after the 1989 season. Bonds spent most of his first four seasons as a lead-off man, scoring 72, 99, 97 and 96 runs in those seasons. He was developing into Rickey Henderson with more power. Somehow, the Pirates didn't realize what they had. Instead of signing him to a long term contract (at the time, they probably could have locked Barry up for 10 years at $10 to $20 million for the length of the contract), they went to arbitration and won after using his lack of RBI against him. (How Bonds' agent failed to convince an arbitrator that RBI are pretty meaningless to a leadoff hitter is beyond me.) Bonds' response was to ask to bat in a spot where he could drive in runs. They moved him to 5th, and Bonds had his first Barry Bonds season, driving in 114 runs while scoring 104, batting over .300 with a .406 OBA and a .565 slugging percentage. He's only had 1 season with his OBA under .400 since, and his slugging has stayed over .500, often way over .500.

But what would have happened if the Pirates had not gone the arbitration route? If Bonds had stayed a leadoff man, would he have concentrated on developing his power? Would he have concentrated on speed, and spent his time going for the steals and runs records? My guess is that at some point, a manager would have realized that Bonds was more valuable in the middle of the order and moved him there. But the Pirates winning three arbitration cases in a row against Barry certainly seemed to drive him, and ultimately it drove him to big money in San Francisco.

Travis Hafner joins Albert Pujols with a three HR game.

The Indians offense is great, but it will be interesting to see if they can make any moves to shore up the pitching staff.

Fred McGriff's shot at 500 HR has come to an end. Good. I love McGriff; he's been a favorite of mine for a long time. He was a selective hitter who hit for power. But he didn't make it to 500 HR. So be it. Please tell me how 7 more HR make him more or less worthy of the Hall of Fame?

McGriff won't get in because he didn't take advantage of the offensive explosion of 1993. While players like Palmeiro took their games to a whole new level, McGriff's career leveled off. His number through 1992 were great numbers; since, they've just been good. But those 7 HR don't change that.

Talking Baseball posts on Manny Ramirez going for the triple crown.

A number of years ago Bill James wrote a piece about the difficulty of winning a triple crown. As he pointed out in that piece, it's very difficult to win a triple crown on your own team! Manny, as of this point, is trailing David Ortiz in RBI, so Manny doesn't have the crown on his own team either.

Adam makes the following comment with respect to this post:

There's something of the fallacy in the analysis that says that because Bonds is scoring and the Giants are winning games that the strategy is necessarily backfiring. Opponents aren't necessarily expecting to see Bonds completely nullified by walking him--- they know what happens when you put men on base. But they look at what happens when you do pitch to him, and they figure that they've got a better chance of beating the Giants with a man on for Pedro Feliz than with Bonds swinging away. In other words, sure, Bonds is scoring and the Gints are winning. But if he weren't being walked so much--- at least in the (subconscious?) analysis of the opposing managers--- Bonds would be creating even more runs and the Giants would be winning even more games.

We actually can figure this out with a little math. The Runs Created formula tells us approximately how many runs a player generates. I'll use the 1984 formula, because it's simple and I know there are no restrictions on it's use. The formula is (hits+bb+hbp-gdp-cs)*(TB + .26*(bb-ibb+hbp) + .52*(sh+sf+sb)/(ab+bb+hbp+sf+sh). If we remove all Bonds 71 intentional walks, and assume he produces at the same rate if he's being pitched to in those 71 plate apperances, we should be able to compare runs created. Here it is in table format, and please feel free to check my math.

Bonds 2004	Actual	Without IBB
Hits	69	88
Walks	131	77
HBP	4	4
Total Bases	150	190
IBB	71	0
SB	3	4
SH	0	0
SF	1	1
GIDP	3	4
CS	0	0
AB	189	243
Outs	123	160
Runs Created	104.3	108.5
RC per Game (27 outs)	22.9	18.3

Seventy one intentional walks to save four freakin' runs. And it's worse than that. Although Bonds creates more runs, he uses up 37 more outs to do so. Those 37 outs come out of the team. Since the team score about 5.1 runs per game, those 37 outs costs the team 7 runs!

Let me make this clear; Bonds creates fewer runs because of the strategy, but the team creates more. Opposing managers are expanding the Giants offense to the point that the Giants are going to win 1 to 2 more games beacuse of Bonds intentional walks. In a division where the Giants are a half-game out, and in a wild card race where the Giants lead by 1 game, opposing managers are putting San Francisco in the playoffs. It's a poor strategy, and opposing managers should save it for game situations only.

John Perricone at Only Baseball Matters is very concerned about all the intentional walks Barry Bonds is receiving:

This is a disgrace to baseball. It is an insult to the spirit of competition. This situation has gotten completely out of hand, as National League managers have decided that they would rather cover their asses than accept the challenge of getting Bonds out. They have become quitters, en masse. In doing so, they are making a mockery of the game.

John goes on the blame the commissioner. As much as I like to bash Bud, I can't agree with Perricone here. John says:

In the history of baseball there have been perhaps five players so great that they have bent the game, distorted the way it is played. Never before has there been such a universal response to such a player. Never before has a whole league decided to quit, to take a pass on facing the challenge.

I don't know if this is true, for the simple fact that we don't know how many times Babe Ruth was intentionally walked at the height of his career. In 1923, when Ruth walked 170 times, were teams just afraid to pitch to Ruth? Did they try walking him all the time? And did they abandon that strategy because the Yankees won the World Series that year? In other words, the strategy didn't work.

And that's my biggest complaint about John's article. The strategy doesn't work. The Giants aren't losing because Bonds is being walked. They are winning. Bonds has a perfectly reasonable number of HR. He has a very high number of runs scored given his games played. He's helping his team win. If John wants to see Barry get more of a chance to hit, then the Giants need to find a Lou Gehrig to bat behind him. Of course, Gehrig had 23 grand slams in his career; I wonder how many times Ruth was intentionally put on because teams would rather pitch to Lou with the bases loaded.

Team should pitch to Bonds, not because of some appeal to bravery or manhood, but because walking him doesn't work.

Bobby Abreu beat the Mets tonight with four hits, two doubles, and a walk-off HR in the 9th. He's putting together a very impressive season, and a very impressive career. I look at his numbers and think Rickey Henderson with more power. In a lower scoring era he would have had a lot more stolen bases; his percentage is very good (74%). If he can maintain the .300/.400/.500 averages, we may need to start talking about the Hall of Fame for Mr. Abreu.

It was a very good day in Pittsburgh for the Brian Giles trade. As noted yesterday, Oliver Perez had a terrific outing in the opener. Then in the night cap, Jason Bay drove in eight runs. Now RBI have something to do with your teammates setting you up, but Bay's stats so far indicate that if the Pirates get on base in front of him, he'll keep driving them in. He only has 134 AB this season, but he has a .619 slugging percentage. That will drive plenty of runners around the bases, as he demonstrated last night with 3 doubles and a homer. Of his 40 hits, 22 have been for extra bases.

I like the attitude of both players toward their work:

Bay, who drove in eight runs against the Chicago Cubs in the first game of a doubleheader Sept. 19, 2003, battered the Brewers with three two-run doubles and a two-run home run in the second game after getting one RBI in the opener.

"The damndest thing I've ever seen -- eight [RBIs] in a game," manager Lloyd McClendon said. "That's awfully hard to do. I didn't think we'd see that again. Pretty impressive."

"I thought I set the bar kind of high last year," Bay said. "I thought that would be safe for a while. I have to give credit to my teammates for giving me a chance."

It's good Bay realizes that he doesn't get the RBI all by himself. As for Perez:

Perez squared his record at 4-4 with his first victory since May 13. He allowed five hits, a walk and a run in seven innings and has struck out 24 in his past 14 innings.

"I'm not concerned with strikeouts," Perez said. "I'm more concerned with throwing strikes and going deep into the game. Strikeouts will come now and then."

Strikeouts seem to come far more often than that for Perez, whose 113 strikeouts tie him with Milwaukee's Ben Sheets for second in the league behind another pretty good left-hander -- Randy Johnson.

"I don't want him to get caught up in the strikeouts," McClendon said. "If they come, that's fine, but his pitch count is much more important than strikeouts."

They seem to have their heads screwed on right in Pittsburgh, and that's a very good sign.

Nomar Garciaparra hits his first home run of the year, a grand slam to give the Red Sox an 8-1 lead in the 7th. Ortiz, Ramirez and Garciaparra, the 3-4-5 hitters, all homer driving in 8. You can't ask for more from the heart of the order.

Jim Thome hit a HR tonight, which would be his 400th. However, it's raining in Philadelphia, and the game is delayed in the 3rd. If the game should be postponed (it's already the makeup of a previous rainout), Thome loses the HR. Stay tuned to see if he really got it, or if it never existed.

Ken Griffey hit his 16th HR of the year today, the 497th of his career. This is Griffey's 53rd game of the year, matching the number of games he played in his injury plagued 2003 season. His stats are very similar to last year, and it's becoming clear he's lost a dimension of his offensive game; he's not getting as many hits as he used to. Is this serious? He still hits for power; 28 of his 48 hits have been for extra bases. He still draws walks. But his OBA and his batting average are down. He's still valuable, but he's not the great player he once was. However, if you had to lose one dimension of your game, the ability to hit singles isn't a bad one to go.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• A triple crown.


• A single season HR record.


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


• A .400 season.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hee Seop Choi just hit a three-run HR in the top of the 9th to give the Marlins a decent cushion in Coors field, 9-4. Choi is doing exactly what you want a first baseman to do. He's getting on base (.409 OBA), and he's hitting for power (.673 slugging pct). He's been almost exclusively platooned against righties, but his ninth inning shot was off Brian Fuentes, a lefty.

Mike Piazza tied Carlton Fisk last night for most HR as a catcher. Appropriately, he did it in the place where he became famous, Dodger Stadium, against a former battery mate, Hideo Nomo. And more importantly, the HR gave the Mets a lead they would not relinquish. Congratulations to Piazza on the milestone!

There was a dearth of offensive catchers in the 1980's. That seemed to change with the arrival of Benito Santiago in San Diego, Ivan Rodriguez in Texas and Mike Piazza in Los Angeles. Piazza has been the best hitter of the lot, and helped restore catcher offense to a level not seen since the 1930's.

The Marlins bring in lefty Tom Phelps to face lefty J.D. Drew. It should be a good matchup, but Drew smacks the ball to dead center for a bases clearing triple, then scores when Castillo boots the relay throw. Drew puts the Braves up 6-2 in the 7th.

As someone pointed out in the comments today, lost in Barry Bond's HR barrage is one by Scott Rolen. He hit his 8th tonight to give the Cardinals an early 3-0 lead. That gives him an .831 slugging percentage.

As you know, Bonds has homered in seven straight games. Sort of. On April 14, having hit HR in two straight games, Bonds pinch hit and walked. After DiMaggio's hit streak, a rule was adopted for counting hit streaks that being walked or hit by a pitch would not be grounds for ending a streak. They wanted to prevent a team from stopping a streak simply by walking a batter four times in a game. So even though Bonds has not homered in every game he's played during this streak, the HR streak is still alive.

What is being glossed over at the moment is that the Giants, despite Bonds, are losing. During this streak, the Giants are 3-5, and they've falled 3 1/2 games behind the Dodgers. They've only been outscored 37-32 during this streak, however. Bonds has 51 of the team's 192 total bases; if you take Bonds out of the lineup, the team slugging percentage falls from a good .410 to an anemic .327. The Giants have offensive problems that they need to address, and a pitching staff that has an ERA about 1/2 a run too high. If they don't find a way to improve this team outside Bonds, they'll end up like the McGwire Cardinals, a losing team with a great slugger to bring in the fans.

As a post script, when Griffey was on his HR streak, I figured the chance of HR in nine straight games was about the same as the odds DiMaggio faced when he hit in 56 straight games.

Update: Roy points out in the comments that Barry and Bobby Bonds have now combined for 999 HR.

The Royals 3-4-5 hitters had a great night, driving in 10 runs with seven hits, two doubles and a HR. The Royals are blowing away the Indians 15-4.

After hitting only eight HR in their first eight games, the Phillies have phound their stroke, blasting two yesterday and phour more today. They've now won three in a row.

Congratulations to Barry Bonds who tied Willie Mays today for 3rd on the all-time HR list. I sure he was glad to accomplish the feat in front of his home town fans.

On to Ruth!

Travis Hafner is off to a great start. In five games he has six hits, five for extra bases, including his third HR today. That gives him a .333 BA, but a .944 slugging percentage. He's yet to draw a walk, however, and because he has a sac fly, his OBA is lower than his batting average (.316 vs. .333).

Ken Griffey Jr. hit his 2nd HR of the season tonight. He's also drawn a walk and scored. With 483 HR, Griffey isn't out of the Aaron record derby. He needs a monster year this year (50+ HR), and then he needs to stay healthy until he's forty. He laid down a great foundation for reaching 755 in his teens and twenties. But he's spent that capital now, and will have to have an Aaron like finish to his career to catch Hammerin' Hank.

The acquistions continue to do well. Hee Seop Choi goes deep for the Marlins in his first AB to score Mike Lowell and give the Fish a 2-0 lead.

Beckett has only thrown 15 pitches in two innings, 13 for strikes.

Update: The broadcast was just interviewing a Korean reporter, who said Choi's HR would be front page news tomorrow (which, I guess, it already is over there). The reporter described Choi as their Barry Bonds.

Last night I was scoring the Twins game for work and didn't get to see the Giants game (or the UConn win, either). However, I bought a Tivo over the weekend, and it automatically recorded the rebroadcast of the Giants game. So I just got to watch the replay of the Bonds HR.

Man Bonds is strong. That had to be one of the worst HR swings I have seen from Bonds. The ball was a bit out of his strikezone, he was leaning into the plate and he had a lousy follow through. But he still managed to hit the ball square, and with his strength, that was enough to get it over the fence. Only one more to go to catch Wille Mays.

I guess he's done everything else, so Barry might as well try to have a perfect season. He was 3 for 3 with a walk against Oswalt, and the three hits included his 659th HR. So, after one game, he has a 1.000 BA, a 1.000 OBA, and a 2.667 slugging percentage. I suppose he has to make an out sometime.

(The title refers to an inside joke of the 13th floor strat-o-matic league.)

Bonds is 2 for 2 with two doubles tonight. He's now faced Oswalt 3 times, and has a walk in addition to the two-baggers.

Jorge Posada just hit his 2nd three-run homerun of the game. He's also homered from both sides of the plate. The ESPN research in me wonders if anyone has hit three-run homers lefty and righty in the same game before.

Update: From David Vincent at SABR:

Most RBI in SHHR Game
Chili Davis         09/15/1993   6 RBI 3 3
Chili Davis         07/30/1994   6 RBI 4 2
Eddie Murray        08/29/1979   7 RBI 3 2 2
Eddie Murray        08/16/1981   6 RBI 4 2
Eddie Murray        08/26/1985   8 RBI 3 1 4
Ted Simmons         06/11/1979   6 RBI 4 2
Ted Simmons         05/02/1982   6 RBI 3 3
Roy Smalley         09/05/1982   6 RBI 3 3
Dale Sveum          07/17/1987   6 RBI 1 2 3
U L Washington      09/21/1979   6 RBI 3 3
Roy White           05/07/1970   6 RBI 3 3
Willie Wilson       06/15/1979   6 RBI 3 3
Todd Hundley        05/18/1996   6 RBI 3 3
Bernie Williams     06/06/1994   6 RBI 2 4
Bernie Williams     09/12/1996   7 RBI 3 4
Bill Mueller        07/29/2003   9 RBI 1 4 4

Note that Roy White was on the bench for this game. I'm surprised Mantle never did it. Update: Yes, I forgot Mueller hit two grand slams last year. That's the sort of thing I used to know when I was 17, but over the last 15 years or so I've stored less in my brain and more on my computer. It's a lot easier (and more accurate, I find) to look things up than remember them.

Just got up and am listening to the game on MLB audio. With Jeter on, Hideki Matsui just delivered a two-run HR to send the crowd into a tizzy. Godzilla also drove in the Yankees first run in the third. It's 5-1 Yankees in the 5th.

Hee Seop Choi is having a good exhibition season, having hit his third HR of the spring today. He came into the day with five of his eight hits for extra bases and a slugging percentage over .600. The Choi-Lee deal, I suspect, will serve both clubs very well. The Cubs needed a proven slugger at first base, and the Marlins wanted someone who could be great and cost a lot less. So far, so good.

Vlad Guerrero and Jose Guillen just went back-to-back to give the Angels a 3-1 lead over the Mariners in the fifth. You could see on the replay of Vlad's HR that he got great extension on a low pitch, just a perfect swing. Afterward, they had a shot of Moreno on his cell phone with a big smile on his face.

Tyler Kepner has a very interesting article on Gary Sheffield today. I knew Sheffield and Gooden were close relatives, but I guess I hadn't realized how much Dwight had worked with Gary when they were young:

Sheffield has always been a supremely confident hitter. He grew up in the same Tampa house as his uncle Dwight Gooden, who is four years older. Gooden would rouse Sheffield before 8 a.m., eager to get outside and play "strikeout." Gooden, who would become a phenom with the Mets at 19, would fire tennis balls at Sheffield from close range, trying to strike him out so he could get a turn at bat.

Gooden said he never held back, zipping fastballs or spinning curves to Sheffield when he was 8 or 9 years old. It was often futile.

"I would hit him, knock him down, do everything I could," Gooden said. "But he still would hit it on top of the house. It got to the point where I would make him go on top of the house and get the ball. And once I got the lead, I quit."

Gooden was a merciless teacher, Sheffield said, hitting him grounders on rocky infields and making sure Sheffield stayed in front of the ball. For neighborhood pickup games, Gooden would bring Sheffield along because Sheffield was the only player who could catch for him. Sheffield did not wear a mask.

"You'd get foul tips and get hit right in the face with a rubber ball," Sheffield said. "Right in the face. That's what made me not scared of the baseball. Making it to the big leagues was like life or death with me: either I'll get hit in the nose with this ball or I'll be poor the rest of my life."

If you could hit a young Doc Gooden, you can probably hit anybody. It reminds me of the stories of Ken Griffey Jr taking batting practice against his father. Dad was a lefty thrower, so Griffey has no problems against lefties.

There is one thing in the article that I find confusing:

Jason Giambi, who will probably bat fourth this season, one spot in front of Sheffield, struck out 140 times last season and marvels at Sheffield's approach. Giambi is a vastly different hitter, taking pitches, waiting for a pitcher to make a mistake. Sheffield is so aggressive, Giambi said, that he essentially makes his own mistakes.

Darren Bragg, a Yankees outfielder who played with Sheffield in Atlanta, illustrated that point. Asked about Sheffield's strike zone, Bragg moved his hand above his head, down by his shoetops, far out in front of him and in toward his chest.

"He doesn't miss any fastball," Bragg said. "You can put it anywhere, and he'll get to it."

Unfortunately, that flies in the face of Sheffield's walk totals and his .401 career OBA. Yes, he may go after fastballs outside of the strikezone, but he must be taking something to draw 1110 walks in 6729 career AB. If that's aggressive, it's exactly the type of aggressive hitter I would want on my team.

The Bench Coach really likes James Loney. In the same post, he's also impressed with Tim Wallach's approach as a batting coach.

Tomas Perez goes ddep for the Phillies to put them on the board, a two run shot.

Jorge Posada gets his 2nd hit of the game, a solo HR in the 4th. The Yankees have scored all seven of their runs on HR. We're going to be seeing a lot of that this year.

Victor Alvarez comes in to get Giambi. He falls behind and Jason takes a fastball over the fence in right for a grand slam. It was a hard line shot. Some of the swings Giambi has taken today remind me of how bad he looked at the end of last season. But the HR was hit about as perfectly as you can. It's was one fat pitch, but Giambi did showed he can still muscle the ball out of the park.

Correction: Spring training for me, too. It was Victor Alvarez, not Wilson Alvarez.

A-Rod is batting third in the Yankees lineup. 3-4-5 is Rodriguez, Giambi and Sheffield, which I think is right (not that it really matters). A-Rod grounds out to shortstop in his first AB as the Yankees go 1-2-3 in the first against Millwood.

Vladimir Guerrero made a good impression on the Angels and batting practice balls yesterday in the Angels first full workout.

Showing no sign of the back injury that limited him to 112 games with Montreal last season, Guerrero was swinging the bat smoothly and mostly making solid contact Wednesday as he joined his new teammates for their first full-squad drills.

"It feels good. I've been working on my back, so everything's OK," the 28-year-old Guerrero said through an interpreter.

What a steal for the Angels.

I guess this makes the car a hot-rod. :-)

The Cubs haves scored 12 runs through six innings, and are slugging .967 for the game.

Update: Alex Gonzalez of the Cubs hit his 2nd HR of the game and third of the series to make the score 12-2.

After a single bySoriano and a walk by Jeter, Giambi strikes out to end the 5th.

Giambi looks horrible at the plate. His discipline is gone, his timing is gone. Is he thinking too much? That seems to be a property of athletes who choke.

Marcus Giles makes up for his error with a solo HR in the third. It was the first hit allowed by Kerry Wood. Braves lead 1-0.

Javy Lopez hit his 43rd HR of the year today. What an amazing season, conserding that he looked like his career was over last year. He's set or tied his career highs in runs, hits, doubles, HR and RBI. He's a big reason the Braves have such a great offense this year. It's his 42nd HR as a catcher, which breaks Todd Hundley's record for HR in a season by a catcher.

Carlos Delgado added to his earlier total by hitting his fourth HR of the game. A nice way to end a superb season.

Carlos Delgado has five RBI tonight to set a new career high at 140. He's gotten them on three HR. It's the fifth 3-HR game of Delgado's career, but his first since April of 2001.

Unfortunately, the Blue Jays pitchers aren't matching his performance. Up 5-1 in the 6th, the never say die DRays now lead 7-6.

Sosa homers again to pass Mickey Mantle and put himself alone in 10th place on the all-time HR list. It's been a relatively quiet year for Sammy, with his OBA down 40 points and his slugging down 50 points from last year. Now would be a good time for Sammy to get hot. It's the first time he's hit HR in consecutive games since Aug. 6-7th. Cubs lead 4-2 in the 6th.

Just to put an exclamation point on the evening, Jason Giambi hits a grand slam to give the Yankees a 7-0 lead in the ninth. The gives Giambi 40 HR for the 3rd time in his career. It's the first slam of the year for Jason, and the 10th of his career.

Update: Yankees win 7-0, with Rivera finishing the game. Contreras pitched eight strong innings, allowing four hits and striking out nine. The White Sox have been eliminated; it was a good run, they just ran out of gas. The Royals are down to their last out, losing 15-6. If that gets recorded, the Twins win the Central.

Soriano hit his 2nd HR of the game to give the Yankees a 2-1 lead. Last year, Alfonso was trying to join the 40-40 club, and went into a slump after his 39th HR. Over his last 11 games, Soriano went 11 for 47 (.234) with three doubles and 12 strikeouts, and his slump carried over into the post season. There's no pressure on him this season, as he came into the last week at 34 HR and 34 steals. But he's now hit 7 HR in his last eight games with one steal (including tonight) and now has 36 HR. It's not a stretch to think that he can hit four more HR this week and reach 40. The the problem will be the steals. But I'm sure the Yankees are happy he's going into the post season on a hot streak.

Benton McCune points out this article on Baseball Primer which concers itself with predicting future HR totals. It's starts with the Favorite Toy as a model and improves the prediction accuracy. I have not had time to digest the article yet, but I'm looking forward to reading it more thoroughly.

Mike Hampton hit his 2nd HR of the year in the Braves 14-4 rout of the Montreal Expos. Hampton never hit a HR until he arrived in Colorado in 2001, but in last three years he's hit 12, twice as many as any active pitcher.

Barry Bonds hit his 42nd HR of the year tonight, a solo shot in the first. More importantly, it was the 655th HR of his career, putting him exactly 100 behind Hank Aaron. The question now is, will he last?

Vladimir Guerrero has hit for the cycle against the Mets. It's the first cycle of his career and the 4th in the majors this year. Expos teammate Brad Wilkerson had on June 24th.

The Yankees pretty much had their way with Victor Zambrano tonight. They knocked him around for 11 hits in less than five innings. Jason Giambi is 4 for 4 tonight with his 37th HR and 20th double. Looks like the slump is over. And despite the slump, when I looked at win shares today, he's still in the top five.

Jordan Ellel writes about this post:

I agree with the argument that win shares can be used in order to determine who has been more valuable, but I think a part of this argument must also go to the fact of the VALUE of the player. I am usually the last to make an argument like this (I’m a superior stats kind of MVP voter), but in terms of Bonds, it might be informative to look up the record of the Giants with Bonds in the line-up as opposed to without Bonds in the line-up.

The Giants are 75-41 with Bonds, 13-15 without him. I consider any game Bonds plays, even if it's only a pinch hitting assignment. The Cardinals are 74-68 with Pujols, 2-3 without him. I'm not sure it really advances the argument; I've never bought into the most valuable to the team theory of MVPs. There's no doubt that Bonds is the better hitter, but you have to play to win. And Pujols has contributed more to his teams wins than Bonds has.

I was just looking at the NL win share leaders, updated through Sept. 10, and see that Pujols has taken a clear lead over Bonds. It's a perfect example of how win shares can help clarify an MVP argument. Bond is clearly having a superior offensive season based on the averages. But Pujols has been there every day. Even without his father's death, Bonds missed a lot of playing time this year. Before, there was no clear way of measuring if Bonds, playing 26 fewer games, could be more valuable than Pujols playing every day. Now we know.

Pujols leads Bonds 39.14 to 37.20. Which just goes to show how amazing Bonds' season is. He's created almost as many wins in 26 fewer games. But I really believe you have to play to win. That was my argument against Pedro Martinez in 1999; he just didn't pitch enough to win the award (however, no one should have left him off the ballot, either). And it's the same this year. Bonds is the best hitter in the league, but Pujols is damn close and plays everyday. Bonds can catch up in two weeks, but right now, I'd vote for Albert.

Albert Pujols hit his 40th HR tonight, tieing him with Barry Bonds for the NL lead. It's his first 40 HR season, but hit probably won't be his last. Should be a good HR race down the stretch.

Jeff Bagwell has gone deep tonight, a two-run shot to give the Astros a 5-0 lead over the Brewers. It's his 5th HR in ten game against the Brewers this year, the most HR he has against any club in 2003.

Alex Rodriguez is giving Colby Lewis some support today with his 42nd HR of the year. It's also his 340th of his career, tying him with Jack Clark for 72 on the all-time list. He's one behind Manny Ramirez.

Albert Pujols hit his 38th HR of the year in the first to give the Cardinals a 2-0 lead over the Reds. That's a new career high, breaking the mark of 37 he set his rookie year.

David Ortiz takes Tom Gordon deep for his 2nd HR of the game. Once again, he gives the Red Sox a 1 run lead. It's five-four Red Sox in the 10th.

Update: The Red Sox win. Mariners,A's and Yankees all lose. Still a great four way race in the AL.

I just turned on the Yankees-Blue Jays game, and saw Jason Giambi coming to the plate. He made an out in his first AB to extend his hitless slump to 25 AB. There was a severe shift on, with the third baseman playing near 2nd. Play-by-play man Michael Kay asked Bobby Murcer and Ken Singleton if they would drop a bunt down the third base line to break the slump. Both agreed they would. On the next pitch, Giambi hit a wicked line drive into the 2nd deck in right field. A much more impressive way to break out of a slump!

Jim Edmonds hit his 35th HR of the year today to give the Cardinals a 2-0 lead. Edmonds, with a .398 OBA and .634 slugging percentage would be in the running for MVP in most years, but he's not even the best hitter on his team! Combined with Pujols and Rolen, he helps give the Cardinals one of the most fearsome 3-4-5 slots in baseball.

Vlad Guerrero has a solo HR today to help the Expos to a 2-1 lead in the 7th. It's his 15th HR in 39 games since the All-Star break. Previous to the break, he had 8 HR in 50 games.

Miguel Tejada appears to have figured out that he's a free agent, and if he's going to get a big contract he's going to have to earn it with big numbers. After hitting 1 HR and driving in 9 runs in July, he hit 8 HR in August with 25 RBI. That's more like an MVP shortstop.

Jeff Bagwell has a three-run HR tonight to help the Astros to a 4-1 lead over Hideo Nomo and the Dodgers. Including tonight's shot, here's a breakdown of Bagwell's 410 career HR by men on base:

Men On	Home Runs
0	229
1	110
2	66
3	5

Fred McGriff goes deep for the first time since June 5th. It's the 489th of his career. It looks like at this point he won't get to 500 this year. He hasn't played well, and I really wonder if he'll be back to try to get the milestone. Astros lead 4-3 in the 4th.

Todd Helton hit his 40th double of the year as part of a big first inning for the Rockies against the Marlins. It's his third time breaking the 40 double barrier in a season. In his six full seasons in the majors, he's never had last than 37 doubles. Since 1998, he leads the majors with 268 doubles (he has 270 overall).

Maybe Mike Piazza just needed a sabbatical. He's in his 4th game since returning from the DL, and has hit a 2-run HR in the first inning. He's now 6 for 13 with 2 HR and 8 RBI since his return.

A-Rod's HR tonight was the 330th of his career. He's twenty-eight and halfway to Willie Mays' total.

Eric Chavez is off to a great start in August. He hit his third HR of the month, a two run shot in the first. He's 15 for 41, with seven of his hits for extra bases in the month. Terrance Long has just gone long to increase the A's lead to 5-0. These look like the A's of last year.

Barry Bonds has gone deep tonight for his 649th career HR and his 36th this season. It's his 9th season hitting at least 36 HR. The only two players with more seasons of at least 36 HR are Ruth and Aaron, who each had 11. Despite the long ball, the Giants are losing to the Mets 5-3 as Sidney Ponson is having a less than stellar outing.

Albert Pujols has two hits, a HR and three RBI tonight. His seasonal age is 23. Just how good has he been through this seasonal age? He now has 104 HR, and is one of 17 players to have 100 HR through age 23. He now has 362 RBI; he's the 26th player to reach the 360 plateau by age 23. He's put down a great start; it's not going to take many more years like this to make him a sure hall of famer.

Richie Sexon hit his 32nd HR to give the Brewers a 3-0 lead over the Marlins. It was a two run blast. The shot also moves Sexon out of a tie for 2nd in the NL home run race. Only 12 of his 32 HR have come with men on.

A-Rod homered in the first inning after a leadoff triple and a sacrifice fly. Texas leads Toronto 2-0 in the first. That's seven HR in 10 games for A-Rod, and the Rangers are 6-3 in those games.

Rich Lederer follows up on his Cy Williams piece of last week with one where he adjusts for park effects. Williams still rates very highly as compared to the league.

Mike Sweeney is back and batting 5th in the Royals lineup. Unfortunately, he hasn't had a chance to bat yet as the once and present Royal Kevin Appier is getting knocked around in the bottom of the first. He gave up two hits and three runs, but got out of it with a double play.

Albert Pujols drives in Luis Jim Edmonds from first with his 41st double of the year.

The other day, when I was researching Nomar Garciaparra's RBI, I ran a program to figure out the percent of runners driven in by players. The formula I use is (RBI-HR)/Men on base. One thing I like about this stat is that it shows the two things you need for a lot of RBI; men on base, and the ability to drive them around. Power hitters are better at this, because they can drive in men from first more easily than singles hitters. Albert Pujols (entering today) has the highest percentage of runners driven in:

Hitter             Men On   DI   Pct
Albert Pujols         288   69   0.240
Carlos Delgado        340   77   0.226
Preston Wilson        389   81   0.208
Bengie Molina         204   42   0.206
Gary Sheffield        301   61   0.203
Chris Stynes          232   47   0.203
Todd Helton           341   69   0.202
Garret Anderson       324   65   0.201

you can see, the reason Preston Wilson's lead in RBI doesn't come from Wilson, but from the 100 extra runners he's had on base. If the Cardinals got better table setters on in front of Pujols, he'd be leading the league in RBI by a lot.

Alex Rodriguez homered to tie the Rangers-Yankees game at 4. The-Rod has now homered in six of his last seven games.

Richard Lederer has an interesting article in which he argues that Cy and Ken Williams are two of the most over looked HR hitters of all time. My biggest problem with the article is one that Rich dismisses, Cy Williams home-road numbers. For his career, Cy hit 161 at home, 90 on the road. That's a 79% increase at home. Just to compare, Ruth hit 347 HR in his home stadiums, 367 on the road. Aaron was pretty even, too (385 home, 370 road) and he split his career between a very good HR park and a very bad HR park. I think if you take that into consideration, Williams would not rank as high as Lederer has him.

The Red Sox have broken out of their four game offensive slump. Trot Nixon just hit the fourth HR of the game of the Sox and all five of their runs have come on HR. Damon, Ortiz and Mirabelli have also gone deep. It's 5-1 Sox in the 5th.

Carlos Lee has two HR tonight, solo shots that account for both runs in the 2-2 White Sox/Royals game. Over his previous 13 games, Lee has hit .310, with 10 of his 18 hits being for extra bases, including six HR. He's slugging .690 in those games, and the White Sox record is 11-2. Interestingly, he's only had 1 walk and 2 SF, so his OBA is only one point higher than his BA. With the two HR tonight, he has 18 RBI in his last 14 games.

Michael Blake of View from the 700 Level comments on my Rolen post:

I have been imagining a team with Rolen and Thome at the corners all season. More so when David Bell comes to the plate. But the fact of the matter is this: had the Phillies kept Rolen, and had he signed for the $140 million or so they were said to have offered him, they probably would not have had the money to sign a guy like Thome. Now, the possibility exists that ownership may have opened the pursestrings a bit more, but I doubt it.

So while I can dream of an infield with Rolen and Thome, it probably would have never been more than that: a dream.

Mike is probably right. However, a third baseman who can hit and field is a rare commodity. The Phillies would be better off in the long term if they had kept Rolen, and found a cheap slugger for first base.

One of the things I loved about my time working at ESPN was every day baseball gave you something new to talk about, often something that had never been done before. Last night, Bill Mueller became the first person to hit two grand slams in one game from opposite sides of the plate. Now, to do something like that requires a bit of luck, but on the bench for the Red Sox is Tony Cloninger, the only pitcher ever to hit two grand slams in a game. Nice coincidence. Mueller added a solo shot for good measure.

The team raised its slugging percentage to .504 from .501 last night. Pretty amazing.

Scott Rolen hit a solo HR to give the St. Louis Cardinals their only run tonight. Rolen now has a .390 OBA and a .550 slugging percentage. Philadelphia third basemen have a .313 OBA and a .327 slugging percentage. The Phillies drove away one of the best players in game with their criticisms when they should have been finding a way to make him happy. Imagine that team with Rolen and Thome at the corners.

Richie Sexson is 3 for 3 tonght with a single, double and home run. Just a triple away from the cycle. Richie has only one triple this year. He's also driven in both runs in the game.

Larry Walker had a good night at Coors last night, going 2 for 2 with a SF and a HBP, and his 10th HR of the year. What caught my eye was 10 HR for the year for Walker. For the last nine years, Larry has managed a slugging percentage of .500, usually over .600. But this year he is at .390. The fall off really shows up in his road numbers:

Larry Walker, Road Stats	2003	Career
Batting Average	.229	.280
On Base Average	.369	.370
Slugging Percentage	.399	.494

I think the OBA/BA tells the story. Walker can't hit the way he used to, so he's compensating with walks. He has 67 walks over all right now, and his career high is 82 (30 on the road, career high 49). He has a good number of doubles and triples, but that's mostly the Coors effect. As long as he keeps the OBA up, he's effective, but on the road at least, he's more of a table setter than a #5 hitter.

Frank Thomas hit his 24th HR of the year, giving him 400 for his career. He's 36th on the all-time HR list.

Carlos Delgado hit a three-run HR in the 4th inning to give the Blue Jays a 3-0 over the Orioles in the battle of the birds. With the 3 RBI, Delgado cracks the 100 RBI mark this year (102). There had been talk of him having 100 by the All-Star break, but he only had 2 since the break before tonight.

Frank Thomas hit his 23rd HR of the year today. Despite all the talk I heard of his demise over the last few years, Thomas still is an offensive force. His OPS is .970; any team would take that from first base or DH. He's 1 HR away from 400 now, which would match his twin, Jeff Bagwell (born on the exact same day). And just think, over the winter any team could have had him cheap.

Thomas and Griffey make for interesting Hall of Fame discussions. They pushed a lot of greatness into the early parts of their careers, and may hang around long enough, despite injuries, to reach HOF milestones. It will be an interesting vote when they retire. How much does the first half of your career count?

Looks like Arizona got the best of the Hillenbrand-Kim deal yesterday. Hillenbrand hit HR in three consecutive innings to tie a record yesterday.

After a terrific June, Brian Giles has taken it up a notch in July. He hit his 10th HR of the year today, and third of the month. So far, in six games, he's batting .409 with a .480 OBA and a .954 slugging percentage. He has 9 hits, and six of them are for extra bases.

Mike Lowell continues to impress. Three for three in a blow out of the Braves tonight, with two doubles and three RBI. His has an OBA of .362 and a slugging percentage of .609.

The Braves are 3-5 over their last 8 games, while being outscored 47-28. As I pointed out earlier, the Braves had been somewhat lucky and the Phillies somewhat unlucky. We may be seeing that luck even out.

Jim Thome hit his 21st HR tonight, and it was a big one. With 2 out and 1 on in the 7th, Thome's HR gave the Phillies a 4-3 lead.

I just saw Jason Giambi take Al Leiter deep to the opposite field. This is the second time in recent weeks where I saw Giambi homer into the monuments. Last year, Giambi hit five of his 41 HR to the left of second base. This year, he's hit 7 of 22 there. I wonder if the eye problem or the shift has caused him to make an adjustment to take outside pitches the other way? If so, he may have become an even more dangerous hitter, as he now showing power as well to the opposite field.

Matsui and Posada also homered in the inning, giving the Yankees a 5-3 lead.

Congratulations to Barry Bonds on reaching 500 SB. I'm not a huge fan of the SB, and Barry would be going into the Hall of Fame without them. However, Barry is the kind of player you want stealing bases, because he steals for quality. In other words, he steals at a high enough percentage to actually help his team.

For his career, Barry is 500 for 640 on steal attempts, a 78.1 percentage. Breakeven is around 67%. (See Pete Palmer's Hidden Game of Baseball.) Over the last five years, he's become even more opportunistic, stealing 55 of 65, and he's 7-0 this year. Just another example of how Barry Bonds does offense right.

Damien Rolls had three hits and two HR tonight to help the DRays beat the Yankees and Roger Clemens 4-2. Both HR were off Clemens. They were Rolls first HR of the year, and the first he's hit since 2001. In fact, the two long flys doubled Rolls career HR total! Coming into the game, Rolls had 14 hits, 13 for singles (1 double). An unlikely hero, but that's what makes baseball different from other major sports. The worst hitter on the team can win a game for you.

Gary Sheffield hit his 360th career HR today, tieing him with Gary Gaetti for 57th on the all-time list. Next at 361 is Joe DiMaggio.

I really don't write enough about Albert Pujols. Offensively, there is nothing missing from his game. He hits for average. He hits for power. He gets on base. He scores and drives in runs. And he doesn't strike out much. With 19 HR and 25 K, there's a chance that he could finish with more HR than K.

I just wonder about his age. He's supposed to be 23. But these stats are more consistent with someone in his mid-20s. Still, he's at a point that if he falls off 20% he'd still be a great player.

John Olerud just got his 2000th hit in style. He hit a 2-run HR to tie the game at 3. Congrats to John Olerud on reaching this milestone!

Nomar Garciaparra set a career high today with his 12th triple of the season. It's his 7th triple this June. STATS, Inc. has monthly splits back to 1974, and he's one shy of the most in June in that time frame. Rod Carew had 8 in June, 1977. Five others have had 6.

What happened to Shawn Green? He's getting hits, but his walks are way down, and so is his BA, OBA and Slugging Percentage. His strikeouts are up, too. Seems like either he's either swinging at pitches he shouldn't, or the strikezone has changed and pitches he used to take for balls are called for strikes. Would any Dodger fans care to send me their thoughts?

Jeff Bagwell got a double in his first AB at Fenway Park. The Astros did not score, however.

Adam Dunn hit his 21st HR of the season tonight. He's now batting .202 with a .329 OBA and a .524 slugging percentage. My question is, why is he leading off? His strength this year is clearly power. And power is best lower in the lineup. Is Boone trying a strange one-run strategy, where he tries to get a HR to leadoff the game? If not, what is he thinking?

Frank Thomas is 1 for 1 off Kirk Rueter tonight with a walk and a two-run HR. That make Frank 25 for 60 (.417) with 16 walks and six HR vs. lefties. He's only hitting .233 vs. righties, although he does have a .374 OBA. For his career, he's hit .341 vs. lefties, .304 vs. righties. Is it time to make Thomas a platoon DH?

Corey Patterson just hit a solo HR off David Wells with 2-out in the bottom of the eighth. Patterson now has 12 HR, 2 fewer than he had all last year. He's raised his slugging percentage nearly 200 points. At age 23, he's coming into his own.

Giambi just homered to give the Yankees a 2-0 lead in the first. At lot of ink has been spilled over Giambi's slump, but over his previous eight games, Giambi has hit .393 with four HR, eight RBI and eleven runs scored.

Hank Blalock has now played about as many games as he did all last year. He has twice the hits, twice the runs, twice the RBI and three times the HR. He had two rbi in the 2nd inning today to give Texas a 3-1 lead.

Has anyone else noticed how much Jeff Bagwell has fallen off? His BA is only 20 points lower than his career average, but his OBA is almost 60 points lower, and his slugging percentage is 80 points lower. Certainly voters for the all-star game haven't noticed, as Bagwell is leading the balloting at first base in the NL.

Michele at A Small Victory is not happy about Sammy Sosa, and puts her feelings in song.

The Cub Reporter has a lengthy post on the Sosa affair, including a lengthy reprint from the Physics of Baseball. I'm going to have to talk to my physics friends about this.

I haven't been staying up late watching the west coast games, but I just had the Giants game on and Barry Bonds went deep for number 627. He has such amazing concentration on the ball; you can see it in his eyes that he's going to hit it out before he makes contact.

I just went upstairs to get some peanuts, and told my wife and daughter (who are not real big baseball fans) about the Sosa corked bat incident. My wife's comment:

Corked bats are so 80's.

My daughter had the comment:

Why does he need a corked bat? He's so good!

Why indeed? My daughter also thought I said quark. A quark filled bat would certainly be light...

It sounds like Sammy Sosa has been caught with a corked bat. He's out of the game. I wonder how long he's been using an illegal bat? This certainly takes some of the luster off his 500 HR.

Update: Here's the ESPN.com story. Seems the Cubs lost a run when the runner was sent back to third after the groundout.

Update: Looking at Sosa's career, you'd have to pick 1998 for the start of the corked bats. He hit 137 in the four previous seasons, and 243 from 1998 to 2001.

Bret Boone has gone deep off Kevin Millwood. In his last 15 games (including tonight), he has 9 HR and 24 RBI. The Mariners are 11-3 in those game, and lead the Phillies 2-0 in the bottom of the 3rd.

In case you haven't noticed, Barry Bonds is back in the Giants lineup tonight.

Edgar Martinez has two HRs tonight, a two-run and a three-run shot, giving him five RBI. If he can hit a solo and a slam tonight, he'll hit the for the cycle in HRs. :-) An impressive season for a 40-year-old, or for any age.

Todd Zeile breaks the solo HR streak with a 2-run shot for the Yankees.

I find it interesting that in late May neither Sammy Sosa nor Barry Bonds are in the top five in NL HR. Bonds is one off the list, and Sosa isn't in the top 25.

Entering this season, Bonds needed 142 HR to tie Aaron. He's on a pace to hit 42 this season. Three years of 42 doesn't do it. At the end of 2005, Bonds will have passed his 41st birthday. It will be interesting to see how close Bonds is at that point. If he's a couple of dozen away, I assume he'll hang on someplace. But if he's 30 or more away, it would mean his HR have fallen off, and I'm not sure he'll make it at that point. His OBA remains historically high; and as long as that's true, he'll have a place to play.

Sosa, so far, has only six HR on the season and is exactly 250 away from tieing Aaron. He's out with a foot injury, but at age 34 he probably can stand one bad year and still reach Aaron.

The interesting thing about the leader board is that there are three Reds in the top six, and none of them are named Griffey. The Reds are only 2 1/2 games out in the Central, and if Griffey starts to hit, that gives the Reds four serious HR threats. The real interesting thing about the Reds is that they have climbed back into the race mostly on luck. From April 23rd on they are 18-9, but have only outscored their opponents 151-147. They are 11-1 in one and two runs games in that period.

Aubrey Huff is having a nice season for the Devil Rays. He's driven in a run tonight with a double; that gives him 46 hits for the season, and 24 of them are for extra-bases. He's in the top 10 in both doubles and HR.

Congratulations to Rafael Palmeiro on joining the 500 HR club.

There's a good debate between Rob Neyer and Jayson Stark about Paleiro's HOF credentials. Jayson makes the typical arguments about his stats; he's the only player to hit this many HR this many years in a row; he has the most hits over this time period, etc. Neyer argue that while he has great stats, he's never been a dominant player, even among players at his position. I don't think Rob's argument will carry the day, but I think it's an important argument to make. In an era of inflated batting stats, writers need to rethink what is a Hall of Famer.

An update on this post, Jeff Bennett at ESPN tells me that it's the first 2 triple, 2 HR game since Willie Mays did it on May 13, 1958 at the LA Coliseum vs. the Dodgers. The Coliseum strikes me as the kind of park where this could happen, with the funny shape it presented for baseball.

So Young does it almost 45 years to the day after the Say Hey Kid. I guess when he retires, Young can use this to campaign for the Hall of Fame. :-)

Hee Seop Choi just doubled and scored the Cubs first run of the day. After the double, he's batting .250. It's interesting to compare him to the highly touted Matsui:

2003 Stats, through 4 PM EDT, 5/2	Choi	Matsui
Batting Average	.250	.254
On Base Average	.438	.317
Slugging Average	.567	.360

Despite the higher BA, Matsui is not producing. Choi has more hits than walks, but when he does get hits, they are for extra bases (9 of 15 hits for extra bases). Get on and hit for power. At the moment, Choi is the import of the year.

Andrew Godfrey points out what a great series Juan Gonzalez had in Toronto. He was 7 for 14 with five HR and 10 RBI. He's never had particularly good numbers in Toronto. Maybe he got more rest than usual trying to avoid SARS. :-)

One way to be a good team is to be really good on one side of the ball (pitching or offense), and at least average on the other. That's what the Expos are doing this year. The Rangers are near the top of the league in runs scored, but much closer to the bottom in terms of runs allowed. The Expos are at the top in terms of ERA, and in the middle of the pack in runs scored. The Rangers don't need to lower their ERA much to be a winning team. But they need to find those average pitchers.

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

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

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

I think focusing on Thome misses the bigger picture.

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

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

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

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

Thanks for pointing this out, Matt!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jan from Wellesley pointed out this quote by Hideki Matsui, describing his grand slam:

"When I hit the ball, I kind of figured it was going to be a homer," Matsui said. "But, when I hit it, it didn't feel like I had actually hit it on my own. It felt like there were other energies, other powers, that helped me."

What a great quote. I swung, but the fans helped me. What a way to endear yourself to the Yankees fans.

I've watched him play a bit now, and he seems to be a total professional. Everything looks fundamentally right about him; his hitting, his base running, his fielding. Looks like the Yankees made a superb pickup.

I just love the MLB extra-innings package. I just came home, and I have the DBacks-Dodgers on one channel and the Padres-Giants on another. I turn on the Giants game, and they are showing highlights of Jose Cruz. He had a HR in the first inning, and they also show a great catch. Then they go to the live AB, and he hits another HR! Rich Aurilia follows him, and he drives the ball out of the park. Of course, Bonds is up next, and I'm expecting another back-to-back-to-back, but Oliver Perez strikes out Bonds! Great stuff.

I am of the opinion that Jose Cruz should not be batting 2nd. So far, he's off to an excellent start. This is the way I like to see my predicitions go wrong. I'd much rather have a player exceed my expectations than have someone I think is going to have a good year go in the tank. It's still early, but I hope his success continues.

Sheffield, Jones and Jones hit consecutive HR's in the 6th inning to give the Braves a 3-0 lead. I still feel with those three in the lineup the Braves will have a decent offense as the year wears on. Oritz is pitching well but not spectacularly.

Back-to-back doubles by this pair give the Sox a 1-0 lead in the first. It's hard to imagine any team having a bad offense with these two in the middle.

It's a great count for sluggers. Zambrano just found that out when he went 2-0 on Soriano, and Alfonso took the next pitch deep.

The Yankees announcers are saying that for any other team, Soriano would be hitting 3rd or 4th. I have to agree.

Jeffrey Rushing writes:

In regards to your post about Sosa breaking Aaron's record, I have a feeling the Overall HR race could have a situation close to the individual record.

Just as McGwire blew past 62 to 70, followed by Bonds a few years later, I think Bonds will eke past Aaron, but two years later Sosa will pass him. After that, it's doubtful anyone will come close to the record for another thirty years, no matter how good Raul Ibanez should be!

An interesting suggestion. I still think Bonds is at the age where his HR totals could fall off suddenly. A few years ago people were talking about McGwire breaking Aaron's record, and he didn't even reach 600 HR. So I have to agree with Mr. Rushing that if Bonds breaks the record, he's likely to just get past it.

As for Sosa blowing by it, that also seems a reasonable assumption. Sammy, if he plays through age 40 (2009 season) needs to average a little over 36 HR a year during that time frame. If over the next three years he can average 50 HR, he'll have knocked more than a year off that quest. But again, Sammy is in the decline phase of his career, so while he looks really good right now, in two years we might not think so. However, I do agree that the chance of Sammy Sosa leaving 755 in the dust looks better every day.

However, I don't agree that no one will threaten the record for a long time after that. You can't discount THE-Rod. Alex Rodriguez is ahead of Griffey and Sosa at the same seasonal age. He's the youngest player ever to 300 HR, and it wasn't even close. Alex's seasonal age is 27, meaning he's at the peak of his career, so we might expect him to have his best year this year. If he can play through age 40 (2016 season), he'll only have to average 32 HR a year to break Aaron's record. And I expect that average number to go down for A-Rod over the next few seasons. So I believe, even if Sosa reaches 800, A-Rod will come close to that.

Bonds and Sosa have to have monster ends to their careers to break the record. A-Rod just needs a long career.

Sammy Sosa hit his 500th carreer HR tonight, in a slugfest 10-9 loss to the Cincinnati Reds. It was a solo shot in the 7th off Scott Sullivan.

In his pursuit of Aaron, Sosa now needs five seasons of 51 HR. At any age, that would be a tremendous five year span. Of course, he's more than done that over the previous five. If he averages 40 HR a year, however, he will need over 6 years of that production. He's got a good shot. The key is how quickly he ages.

Mike Sweeney had a neat line today.

3 AB, 3 Runs, 3 Hits, 3 RBI, 3 BB

One of the hits was a solo HR, so he had 2*3 total bases. :-)

KC has to be really happy with this start, especially taking the series from one of the division favorites.

Erick Almonte is so far filling Jeter's shoes very well. He's had two hits, a HR and three rbi. And just like Jeter, he hit the HR to the opposite field. Yankees up 9-1 in the third.

Cliff Floyd has hit his first Mets HR. Home team up 2-1 at Shea.

A-Rod went deep against the Angels, and became the youngest player to reach the 300 HR level. He beats Foxx by a wide margin.

Durazo pulls a Jeff Kent and homers in his first AB for his new team. A's up 2-0 early.

Rey Ordonez goes deep off Howry to tie the game at 8. Rey has 3 hits and 4 RBI tonight. The Red Sox have to be embarassed to have Ordonez hitting them like this. Fun times in Tampa.

Geoff Blum joins the Jeff/Geoff Jacks with his first HR of the year. 10-2 Astros in the bottom of the 7th.

Oswalt is pitching a good game, but has only 1 strikeout. Very unusual for him.

Not to be outdone by the Jeffs, the Giambis now have three HR today. Jeremy just added one to Jason's two for the Yankees. Red Sox now up 6-3 in the fifth. And Zambrano is gone.

Just to show who's the head Jeff, Bagwell has gone deep again. Astros up 8-2. Lugo is the only starter who hasn't reached base yet.

Update: Bagwell now has 382 career HR tieing Jim Rice and Frank Howard for 43rd on the all-time list.

Update: Not to be left out, Geoff Blum has a double and 2 RBI. And Julio Lugo has joined the club with a hit and an RBI.

Jeff Bagwell has joined Jeff Kent in the HR column for the Astros. Houston is now up 7-2.

Jason Jennings is not having a good night. Eight hits so far through three innings. Even Roy Oswalt has a hit.

Jeff Kent homers in his first AB as an Astro. Astros are down, 2-1 however.

Yankees have now scored 13 runs this season, 10 on HR. Giambi has two today, and Posada hit one off the glass of the resturant in Skydome.

Alfonzo didn't get it done, but Santiago and Snow stormed the barricades. Back-to-back home runs leading off the ninth give the Giants a 4-2 lead.

Bonds comes up with men on 2nd and 3rd and the game tied. Bonds gets his 2nd intentional walk of the game. We'll see if Alfonzo can make them pay.

Update: Alfonzo hits into a DP on the first pitch.

Jordan hits a two-run homer off Johnson to give the Dodgers a 3-0 lead. Jordan has driven in all three runs.

This is wrong, see Mea Culpa!
Jim Thome has homered in his first game for the Phillies, no doubt endearing himself to the fans early. In fact, the Phillies are doing a job on the Marlins with an early 7-0 lead.

Mea Culpa: I misread the box score. Thome's doubled, not homered. The score is now 8-0.

Sosa didn't homer, but Patterson hit two today. Cubs fans have had high hopes for Patterson, and today's game is going to bring those back up. A nice way to start the season.

The whole Cubs team was on today, drawing 12 walks and knocking out 15 hits. That gives the Cubs a .509 OBA for the season.

Greg Vaughn was released by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Vaughn made a lot of money after having two great seasons late in his career. His demise should act as a warning to other clubs who would sign an inconsistent performer to a big contract late in his career.