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

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

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

Even more upset is Mavis Merrill:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, sort of:

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

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

No, his mistake is being closed minded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. They do list "sex."


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

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

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

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

So they weren't being weasels.

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

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

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

ESPN finally picks up on this story.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is the Rockie Press Release retraction.

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

Here's what the press release says:

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

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

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

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

Todd Jones was asked to comment:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Craig Damon writes with this interesting observation:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And if that's not bad enough:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mets struck out 27 times in the two games.

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

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

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

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

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

He needs 1 strike for the no-hitter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Doug Purdie writes in response to this post:

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

Thanks, Doug!

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

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

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

Update: Fixed typo in Binghamton.

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

Tom Holmer writes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Given those parameters, here is our first baseball question:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Steve Bonner writes:

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I think focusing on Thome misses the bigger picture.

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

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

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

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

Thanks for pointing this out, Matt!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Only Baseball Matters prints a letter from Steve Shelby:

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

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

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

But the efficient way to calculate the quantity is:

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

OR

Hits/AB + ExtraBases/AB

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Team, 2003	Runs Scored
Tigers	34
Diamondbacks	68
Mets	69

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

``Things will even out.''

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A big cushion does give you a lot of flexibility.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And Joe Duellman writes about security and the improved Brewers:

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

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

Thanks very much!

William Canby points out an error in this post:

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

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

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

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

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

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

"This is pathetic," she said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Craig Damon writes in response to this post:

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

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

I was waiting for this to happen.

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That is what the media goliaths are trying to do.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some observations from the data:

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

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

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

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

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

Here's the spreadsheet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The A's have drawn 5 walks in 3.1 innings vs. Colby Lewis. The Rangers staff walks 4.37 per 9 innings, 2nd highest in the AL. Given Beane's love of hitters who walk, this is a matchup made in heaven for the A's. They've now drawn 14 walks in 2 1/3 games vs. the Rangers and have scored 18 runs.

Update: Colby Lewis goes 3.2, gives up 4 hits and 8 walks. A's have scored one run in each inning today. That gives them 17 walks, 19 runs in 2 games and 4 innings against the Rangers.

Excellent pitching by the starters in the Milwaukee-Pittsburgh game today. Both Suppan and Sheets were finding the strike zone. Sheets threw 66% of his pitches for strikes, going 8 innings. Suppan was even better, throwing 70% of his pitches for strikes. All the runs off the starters were scored in the first inning. Simon had a three-run homer off Sheets in the first, while Suppan gave up his run on singles and groundouts. After that, it was lights out for the hitters.

The Atlanta Braves have signed Shane Reynolds. Reynolds has not pitched that well for 3 years. His strikeouts have fallen off over 2 per 9 innings from the 1992 through 1999 period (7.8 through 1999, 5.6 since). I'm not optimistic about his success with the Braves.

Wells is perfect through 3 IP. He's being extremely efficient; 9 batters, 27 pitches, only 1 strikeout. His ball-strike count is 11-16 which means that he's not so sharp, but the Twins are putting anything good they see into play rather than letting Wells get himself into trouble falling behind in the count.

Rob Neyer was nice enough to make Baseball Musings co "Link of the Week." Thanks Rob!

You should also check out the other link of the week, Doug's Business of Baseball Weblog.

Greg Maddux blames poor location for his drubbings:

"I'm fine," he said. "I feel good. I'm just not throwing it where I want to, and they're not missing. My location is terrible, and when your location is terrible, it's tough to pitch.

"It doesn't do you any good to know how to pitch when you don't know where the ball is going."

At least he's honest. It also confirms in my mind this post. It's most likely some subtle mechanical movement that is off. I bet Mazzone is working overtime trying to figure it out.

In his first start of the year, Todd Ritchie walked four and hit two batters. Tonight, no one reached by base on balls or HBP, he allowed only 2 runs and got the win.

Two additions to the Marlins, Juan Pierre and Ivan Rodriguez are paying off. Pierre is getting on base and scoring (8 runs in 9 games) and Rodriguez is hitting and driving runs in (12 RBI in 8 games). Set the table and clean it off. :-)

Some found a way to shut down the Yankees offense. Kyle Lohse allowed only 3 hits and 2 runs over 7 innings, while striking out 5. But the problem with playing the Yankees is that they have numerous ways to beat you. Two of the three hits they got off Lohse were HR. And Mussina pitched a great game, striking out 8 in 8 innings, and for a change, he was tough with runners in scoring position (the Twins were 1 for 7).

Eric Gagne is off to a near perfect start with the LA Dodgers; 6 IP, 1 hit, 1 BB, 9 strikeouts and 2 saves. He's throw 64 pitches, 48 for strikes, 75%.

Thanks to everyone who came by to visit today. This has been my highest day for unique visitors ever. I even got a generous PayPal donation!

Dennis Tankersley will not be confused with Dennis Eckersley. Tank has the line of the day so far:

San Diego                    IP    H  R ER BB  K #Pit   ERA
Tankersley (L,0-1)            0    3  7  7  4  0  33      ∞

Don't you hate it when you have an infinite ERA?

Greg Maddux is having another bad outing. Three of the six runs scored against him have been unearned, thanks to three errors (including one of his own), but he hasn't pitched well. Through five innings, he's given up eight hits and three walks, and another HR. That's not Greg Maddux. Through last year, for his career, hitters had a .242 BA against Maddux. This year it's .373, including tonight through 5. Something he did that used to fool batters is no longer working. Couple this with the injuries to Byrd and Hampton, and the Braves staff is looking very weak.

Update: Maddux finished the game with 7 ER in 5.2 IP. His ERA for the season is now 11.05. He's still striking people out (7 tonight), but when players get their bat on the ball, they seem to be finding the holes (or the stands).

Ramiro Mendoza just gave up a grand slam to Vernon Wells. Another reason to complain about the bullpen by committee.

Craig Stambaugh points out the great pitching lines in the Expos-Cubs game. Vazquez has 14 K through 7 innings and Prior has 11 K through 8. Neither has walked a batter. Now I'm going to have to find most K in a game without a walk, both teams combined.

Update: I've search back to 1987, and on 7/14/1989, John Smoltz (16), Joe Boever (1) and Sid Fernandez (7) combined to strike out 24 while walking none. The Braves beat the Mets that day 3-2.

Update: The games over. 27 K, 0 BB. Cubs win 3-0. Now that's pitching!

Update: I've now searched back to 1974, which is as far as the STATS/Retrosheet data goes. Twenty seven K with no walks is still the highest I've found.

It seems that the pitchers were given the day off in San Francisco. The score in 5-4 Giants in the bottom of the first, and the Giants have only made one out.

Tigers have now scored six runs in today's game. That equals their output for the season coming into today. And they are threatening to score more.

Jay Jaffe of Futility Infielder fame has written about his spring training trip to Florida, complete with pictures. If, like me, you see snow falling outside your window, this is a nice escape.

Go take a look at this boxscore of the Royals-Tigers game. Compare the two offenses. Go down the OBA and Slugging columns. It's Goofus and Gallant.

There is a discussion about the Bill James interview going on over at Baseball Primer if you'd like to join in.

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.

If you go to msnbc.com, they have a live video feed of Iraqis trying to topple the statue of Saddam in Baghdad. It reminds us all of how lucky we are that our main form of aggression against each other is through our sports teams.

Update: The statue is down! Looks like an American tank support vehicle helped pull it off the pedestal.

The Cubs offense is in high gear. The G-men, Grudzielanek and Gonzalez are nearly unstoppable getting on base. Gonzalez already has eight doubles! It's a great start, but I don't think it will last. Grudzielanek has a career .326 OBA, and Alex S. Gonzalez is at .307, both with long enough careers that those numbers are meaningful. The Cubs need to ride this hot streak as long as possible, because if they revert to the mean, Sammy Sosa isn't going to have many runners to drive in.

In looking at the boxscore for the White Sox-Indians game, I notice that the only two starters who are hitting are Bradley and Vizquel. As of the end of the game, the other seven starters all have batting averages under .200. They now have the 2nd lowest BA in the majors at .196, with only the Tigers at .133 being lower. They have the third lowest runs per game in the majors at 2.83. The Indians had numerous opportunities with runners in scoring position today, but were only 2 for 13 in those situations. The table setters are getting the job done, but no one is picking them up.

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

Bill James was kind enough to answer a few of my e-mail queries. Bill is the reason I was able to spend 10 years working on Baseball Tonight. Twenty years ago his Abstracts clarified ideas that had been percolating in my mind for years. Now, as a consultant for the Red Sox, his methods are having a serious influence on the game. Enjoy.

Baseball Musings: In the years since you've started publishing, what's the biggest change you've seen in the game?

Bill James: Wow. The game is very, very different from the game of 1977. . .it's almost hard to put a finger on any one thing. But probably the easiest thing to SEE is the change from a speed game to a power game, with the consequent change in the pace of the game and in the appearance of the game. The players of today simply don't LOOK like the players of the 1970s. They are much heavier, much thicker, much slower.

Baseball Musings: There have been a number of articles published recently about GM's using OBA or Sabremetrics to evaluate players. Is this really a new trend, or have the good GMs always implicitly done this?

Bill James: Well, two questions there:

1. Is it new? and


2. Have GMs always implicitly done this.

The second question is easy to answer: NO. General Managers of 20, 25 years ago, for the most part, did NO analysis of any kind; they based decisions on seat-of-the-pants analysis. This certainly was true of many general managers as recently as five years ago.

As to whether it is NEW. . .that's harder. I don't know what everybody is doing, don't know what everybody was doing 10 years ago or 20 years ago. So. . .some of it is new; the rest of it is just old stuff that is spreading.

Baseball Musings: What should the Rockies strategy be for Coors field? What kind of hitters and pitchers should they sign?

Bill James: Whitey Herzog had a good take on that in "You're Missin' a Great Game". His theory was that you want sinker-ball pitchers there, because you can't rely on the curve ball, and you need hitters who make contact, because you make contact there, good things happen. But I'll add one thing: you need a manager who makes liberal use of the phrase "You're going to have to pitch through it." Don Baylor's theory there was that you need lots and lots of pitchers, because you're going to have to make a lot of pitching changes. But I think that's just destructive of your pitching staff, to be jerking pitchers out of the game because bad things happen to good pitchers. I think you have to tell your pitchers, "Look, things are going to happen here. You're going to throw a decent pitch, and somebody's going to slap it 420 feet. That's just going to happen. Get over it; keep pitching." That way you build your pitchers up, whereas if you overreact every time you give up a couple of runs, you tear your pitchers down.

Baseball Musings: Given what we now know about the relationship to balls put into play and hits allowed, doesn't this strategy also require a very good infield defense? Would a better strategy be to have fireballers who can strikeout 9 a game?

Bill James: This assumes that fastballs get strikeouts. This is untrue. Breaking pitches get strikeouts. Breaking pitches are difficult to throw at high altitudes (a fact, incidentally, which has been known by baseball pitchers at least since the 1920s. In the 1920s there are published comments about how hard it is to throw a breaking pitch in Salt Lake City.) But there is a valid point in there--which is, that if the value of offense increases per ball in play, then the value of fielding skill also increases.

Baseball Musings: There are a number of players who are having phenomenal success late in their careers. Barry Bonds and Randy Johnson stand out. Do players still peak at 27 has the peak age gone up? If not, do peak years stretch longer than the 25-27 year time frame?

Bill James: It was 25-29, not 25-27. Players still peak at 27, and are declining with the same frequency that they always did (actually, there is some slight evidence that the rate of decline from aging is INCREASING.) Bonds was born in 1964--but so was Will Clark, Jose Canseco, Dwight Gooden, Bret Saberhagen, Ozzie Guillen, Roberto Kelly, Luis Polonia, Jeff King, Pete Incaviglia, Mike McFarlane, Bobby Witt, Jose Lind, Mitch Williams, Rob Dibble, Joe Magrane, Billy Ripken, Greg Hibbard, Kevin Reimer and Doug Strange. Bonds is simply not typical of the group.

Randy Johnson was born in 1963, but so were Paul O'Neill, Ken Caminiti, Lenny Dykstra, Cecil Fielder, Lance Johnson, Mike Greenwell, Mariano Duncan, Kal Daniels, Shane Mack, Chris Bosio, Mike Devereaux, Eric Plunk, Matt Nokes, Norm Charlton, Jim Leyritz, Bruce Ruffin, Bobby Thigpen, Daryl Boston, Jose Guzman, Pat Borders, Jeff Treadway, Scott Bankhead, Mark Carreon, Dale Sveum, John Cangelosi, Doug Henry, Felix Fermin, Dwight Smith, Damon Berryhill, Todd Benzinger and Sam Horn. The fact that ONE of them is still playing the best ball of his career does not make this in any way representative of the group.

Baseball Musings: What's next after Win Shares? Do you have any new formulas that you are working on?

Bill James: Many. But the Red Sox own some of them, and the others aren't quite ready to bust out.

Baseball Musings: Of the moves the Red Sox made this winter, which do you think will pleasently surprise the fans the most?

Bill James: Todd Walker? Walker has a reputation as a poor defensive second baseman, which is unfair; he is actually a very good second baseman. Plus he can hit.

Baseball Musings: How do you like working on the inside of baseball? What was the most unexpected thing for you?

Bill James: It's been fun so far. The most unexpected thing is the Red Sox organization, the internal view of it. The guys I work with are mostly young, extremely sharp, very focused. But you walk around the offices. . .the office is very diverse, extremely competent. It is unusual to see an organization with so many quality people.

Baseball Musings: Last question, how many games are the Royals going to win?

Bill James: 66

Thanks to Bill for taking time out of his busy schedule and for his thoughtful answers.

I'm listening to the Yankees game, and Andy Pettitte did what he does so well, get the double play after allowing a runner to reach first. Between the DPs he induces and his high number of pickoffs, Pettitte can tolerate a higher OBA against than most pitchers.

Darryl Strawberry was released from prison today. Looks like he's gone totally gray. He's lucky to be alive, and he's equally lucky to have an intelligent wife who has put up with all his shortcomings.

I always liked Darryl as a player, and I'm still disappointed that we didn't get to see his career fulfilled to its potential. I hope that he remains clean and his cancer stays in remission. And I hope he serves as a living lesson to others who might be tempted down the self destructive path he followed.

Actually, I'm going to pick a contest between two teams likely to be also rans. The Orioles travel to Tampa Bay. The Orioles have relatively better pitching, and the DRays have relatively better offense. I think this series will be a test to see if we are going to have a switch in the order of the 4th and 5th teams in this division.

For teams that are going in different directions, two games come to mind. KC travels to Detroit to take on the youngest player in the majors, Jeremy Bonderman. And Milwaukee takes on Pittsburgh in PNC Park. The Royals and Pirates are off to good starts, and facing two teams off to bad starts gives them the chance to extend their streaks.

Finally, Atlanta plays Philadelphia in a battle of the old champs vs. the wannabee champs. Watch for Thursday's game where Kevin Millwood pitches against his former team. He thinks the series is important.

The Yankees have an OPS (on base average + slugging percentage) of 1.060. If an individual player has that kind of OPS, he's a superstar. And of course, they're doing this without Jeter. For a team to put up that number, even over six games, is very impressive. The Cubs (.907) and the Cardinals (.901) are also off to great offensive starts. The Yankees, of course, go outside for the first time today, and it's cold. They'll be facing a good pitcher in Joe Mays, so that lofty number may be deflated some.

I just finished Mike Carminati's post on the DH. I'm glad he brought in Bill James Historical Abstract Article. I've tried to explain that article to anti-DH people over the years, and they just don't get it. They really think that managers do have choices in situations where you have to bunt with or pinch-hit for the pitcher.

Having the pitcher bat doesn't increase strategy, it increases the amount of work a manager has to do. Managers have to manage their benches more carefully in the NL, but that's not really strategy. It's work. And if that's what you want to see more of, that's fine.

Personally, I'm pretty agnostic on the subject. I wouldn't mind seeing both leagues have the same rule, but I really don't care which way it goes. I've had fun watching pitchers bat. I was at Three Rivers Stadium for the last series between the Pirates and the Giants there. Barry Bonds hit his last HR in one game, setting a record for most HR at Three Rivers. In the second game I saw, Rueter was pitching for the Giants. In his first two AB, he had a double and a single and two RBI. When he came up for the third time, I stood up and yelled at the top of my lungs, "Walk him!" Given that there were about 5000 people in the stands, I'm sure I was heard. Sure enough, Rueter drops in a double for two more RBI. I get up again and yell, "I told you you should have walked him!" which drew a laugh from the fans in our section. You just can't get that with the DH unless you have Rey Ordonez on your team. :-)

So if the AL wants to get rid of it, fine. If the NL wants to adopt it, fine. If there's no change, well, I can live with that, too. In the meantime, I'll enjoy the hitting of Edgar Martinez and Greg Maddux. :-)

The Cub Reporter takes the snow day to review the Cubs first week.

Kevin Brown is having a good outing for the Dodgers, making them look like a strong contender this year. Through 5 innings he's struck out 3, walked none, and only allowed 3 hits. He's averaging 14 pitches an inning, so he should be able to go 7 easily. Two of three hits off Brown are by Luis Gonzalez, who came into the game batting .340 in his career against Brown (16/47). Now batting .367 against Brown, that would be the highest BA Gonzalez has against any pitcher, minimum of 45 PA.

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.

Mike's Baseball Rant has a post on the 30th anniversary of the DH. I'm off to class, so I don't have time to read and comment right now. I'll get to it tonight.

Doesn't look like there will be much of a schedule today. I assume Milwaukee at Pittsburgh will be snowed out as well. The DBacks at the Dodgers looks like the best contest, with Dessens going against Kevin Brown in his Dodger Stadium return. The DBacks have to be a little worried. They've had four starts by Johnson and Schilling and lost all four. And it's not like Pedro, who's pitching well with his team losing. Johnson's ERA is over 4.00 and Schilling's is over 6.00. The DBacks winning is predicated on those two being invincible.

I just wanted to thank everyone who came by to visit last week. The site had over 5500 unique visits, the best week since starting Baseball Musings. I hope you continue to enjoy the site.

Armando Benitez blew a save today. He gave up 4 runs in 1 inning. Now, that's fine, because Benitez is a closer. So it's not Art Howe's fault if Benitez stinks, because he's the closer. But if Art Howe brought in the the pitcher who he thought was the best, or took Benitez out when he thought he was not doing well, that would be terrible. Winning or losing with a closer just gives the manager cover. Grady Little should get the credit for taking those decisions on himself.

Tim Hudson isn't having a typical Oakland game. He's walked 5 and struck out none in 4 innings. In his career, Hudson has over a 2 to 1 K/BB ratio. The Angels have taken advantage of this loss of control for 4 runs tonight.

I'm off to the season opener for the New Haven Ravens. My good friend Jim Storer is a season ticket holder, and we're going to brave the cold together. Enjoy the games this afternoon!

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.

The Reds allowed three unearned runs in the Cubs four run first. That's 8 unearned runs the Reds have allowed in 6 games. That's creating more work for their pitchers, and for their offense.

It's the Braves who are doing the damage early today. Penny has been wild, walking three so far, and only throwing half of his pitches for strikes. It's 4-0, and the Braves are still batting.

Nick Johnson went to first on an apparent HBP, but Lou Piniella appealed and another ump said it was a foul ball. Nick continued batting a hit a HR.

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.

Terence Moore of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution thinks he knows what happened to Greg Maddux last night. Aliens:

Here was the first clue that maybe a group of aliens kidnapped the real Greg Maddux, the Braves' starter. Marlins center fielder Juan Pierre, with the power of a dead lightning bug, slammed the second pitch of the game toward the base of the right-field warning track. It quickly got worse for the Braves when they played slopball around more jumbo blasts off Maddux.

Ivan Rodriguez's rocket still is soaring toward the planet of those aliens. Mike Lowell and Alex Gonzalez also homered. Like Rodriguez, they did so in the second inning, when the Marlins scored six times against Maddux after they clobbered the guy for three runs in the first.

These are the same Marlins who've built their present and their future around pitching, defense and speed instead of power.

Needless to say, Maddux was yanked early enough to have the choice of watching most of the Final Four from the clubhouse TV sets. If you add that to the pounding he suffered on opening day against the Montreal Expos, his ERA is 11.00.

The rest of the article is very upbeat about the Braves chances, arguing that they got off to a bad start last year, and they still have a very good pitching staff. I don't know. Maddux needs to be invincible on this team. If he's lost some movement on his pitches, if he's lost some speed on his fast ball, if he's tipping his pitches, he could be in trouble. My guess is that he will find the problem and fix it. But he turns 37 on the 14th, and some decline is inevitable. We may be seeing the start of that.

Or maybe he misses his batting practice buddy, Tom Glavine.

I saw that NBC reporter David Bloom died today in Iraq of a pulmonary embolism. I had really enjoyed his reporting over the last three weeks. I saw a report of his on Friday night, eastern time. His skin was a deep mocha tan. He had dirt caked on his face. His hair was gray from all the sand and dust in it. I said to my wife, "He looks like he's been through hell." He also looked like he was enjoying the work he was doing.

My condolences go out to his family, friends and co-workers. I will miss his reports.

I found another Cubs blog today, and have added it to the blog roll on the right. It's called The Clark & Addison Chronicle. The lead story right now is that Sammy Sosa is headed for free agency. Check it out and say hi.

Joe Moore didn't like Tony La Russa's lineup yesterday:

Aaron & David--
I was surprised that neither of you mentioned TLR's ridiculous lineup for Saturday's Astros game:

Vina (2B)
Renteria (SS)
Orlando Palmeiro (RF)
Miguel Cairo (LF)
Rolen (3B)
Tino Martinez (1B)
Matheny (C)
Kerry Robinson (CF)
Morris (P)

You probably noticed a couple of interesting things about that lineup. First, Orlando Palmeiro (career OPS .714) was hitting third and Miguel Cairo (career OPS .679!!!) hitting cleanup.

Next, you probably noticed that TLR has a left fielder (Robinson) playing CF, a second baseman (Cairo) playing LF, and a left fielder (Palmeiro) playing RF.

So, in one mesmerizing moment, TLR managed to cheat MattyMo out of a win by putting a sub-sub-standard defense in the outfield, while practically guaranteeing that the Cards wouldn't score more than a single run with his choice of lineup.

I understand that JD Drew is injured. I understand that Marrero, Pujols and Edmonds are hurting. However, the Cards have Monday off--couldn't they have waited 2 more days? Both Pujols and Edmonds eventually made it into the game (AP as a pinch-hitter and Edmonds as a defensive replacement in the 9th inning), so they obviously were available. Hell, Eduardo Perez is a hack in the OF, but at least he can swing the lumber.

How about this, from ESPN's GAMELOG:
(Bottom of the sixth inning in a scoreless game)
>>Tim Redding pitches to Edgar Renteria

>> E Renteria doubled to deep right.
>> O Palmeiro sacrificed to third, E Renteria to third.
>> M Cairo grounded out to pitcher.
>> S Rolen flied out to left.

>>0 runs, 1 hit, 0 errors
>>Houston 0, St. Louis 0

That's right, after Renteria hit a leadoff double, TLR showed so much confidence in HIS CHOICE of #3 hitter that he sacrificed (no danger of a double play with first base empty). And he was so comfortable with his choice of cleanup hitter that... Well forget the sarcasm: TLR apparently had no confidence in Cairo's ability to get a runner from second home with only one out (assuming Palmeiro couldn't get a hit or advance the runner by any method other than sacrifice bunt).

Plus, TLR pulled Morris after eight innings, although Morris had thrown only 103 pitches and Houston's right-handed murderers row was due up. And who, pray tell, did TLR bring in to face the Astros righties (Bagwell, Kent, Hidalgo, Berkman (switch-hitter))? The one and only 69-year old LEFTHANDER Fassero.

TLR cost Morris a win today, pure and simple. Complete buffoonery. I have no idea why TLR is so revered in baseball circles when the man should be collecting unemployement checks.

There are two question here; why did La Russa go with a weak lineup, and having made that decision, why did he use this batting order? I think the answer to the first question is that Matt Morris was pitching. Remember, La Russa's job is to maximize the number of wins the Cardinals earn during the season. Tony figured his stars needed a day off, so he was going to end up with a day where his offense was going to be bad. The best day to put up a bad offense is when you expect your opponent to have a hard time scoring runs. That's the day your best pitcher throws. And that was yesterday with Matt Morris.

As for the lineup selection, I have to agree with Joe on this one. I would have moved Rolen to third and Martinez to 4th with that arrangement of hitters. I know why La Russa didn't do that. There is this perception that batters like to know where they are hitting, and they don't want to change on a whim. John McNamara was famous for this. Boggs would leadoff for the Red Sox, but when Boggs got a day off, Ed Romero batted first. A better lineup then would have been for Barrett to lead off, move Dwight Evans into the two hole, and everyone behind Evans up a spot, then bat Romero 9th. But the players liked a set lineup, so runs were sacrificed to make everyone happy. I think that's a ludicrious way to run a team. If you can't convince players that a lineup change is best for the team, you shouldn't be managing.

La Russa's star has fallen a lot since he's left Oakland. Yesterday's lineup does nothing to change that.

Randy Johnson now has made two starts and has not picked up a win. His ERA is astronomical for him, 4.26. He only gave up 2 hits today, but both were home runs.

The DBacks are not hitting yet. I've wondered for a couple of years why this team hit as well as it did. Maybe luck and age are finally catching up with them. However, it probably just a small sample of games.

Ken Griffey, Jr. became the 2nd star player this year to succumb to a dislocated shoulder. This is a huge blow to the Reds, and to Griffey's chances of breaking Aaron's home run record.

When he left Seattle, Griffey seemed a shoe in to threaten 755 HR. But injuries have cost him a lot of playing time over the last few years. Just goes to show how difficult it is to predict who will break a record.

Update: Ben Jacobs reminds me that Phil Nevin also had a dislocated shoulder. I guess that would have been the trade that hurt both clubs. :-)

Bernie Williams and Travis Lee robbed each other. In the bottom of the third, Lee hit a high fly ball to deep center. Bernie ran back to the wall, and doing his best Willie Mays, caught the ball over his shoulder as he crashed into the dead centerfield barrier.

In the top of the fourth, Bernie came up and hit a hard grounder right inside the first base line. Lee dived to his left to snare the ball, then tossed to an alert Joe Kennedy covering to take away an extra-base hit from Williams. It's 2-1 Devil Rays after 4.

Today's Astros-Cardinals game featured a pitching duel in contrasts. Matt Morris was blowing the ball by the Houston hitters. He had ten strikeouts in 8 innings while only allowing 3 hits and 2 walks. Meanwhile, Tim Redding was letting the Cardinals put the ball in play. He allowed 7 hits and 1 ER over 7 innings, but only allowed 1 hit with runners in scoring position. Redding was in line to lose the game when he left, but his offense finally came through to give the win to the bullpen.

In general, I'd rather have Morris' outing, but if the defense is good, pitcher like Redding can be effective.

The Tigers were 3 for 29 today, and were shutout for the 2nd time in 5 games. In the other three game, they've score 1 run twice and 2 runs once. They have 16 hits in 147 AB, a .109 BA. The team OBA and Slugging Pct. are both under .200.

I wrote kiddingly in my AL Central Preview that I thought the Tigers coaching staff could outhit the current team. I didn't think I would be right.

Update: Just doing a little checking. I'm back to 1987, and this is the fewest runs (4) scored in the first five games in that time span.

Team	Year	Runs, First Five Games
Tigers	2003	4
Orioles	1988	5
Padres	1988	7
Rangers	1988	7

I don't mind turn back the clock games, but why are you doing it the 2nd game in a new stadium? Shouldn't the Phillies be emphasizing the new? And of all the eras, why the late 70's where the Pirates have to wear the "We Are Fam-il-y" ugly yellow uniforms?

Update: Well that's what I get for not checking my facts. The Phillies aren't in the new stadium yet. Mark sets me straight:

This is the last year of Veterans Stadium not the first year in a new stadium. That's next year. They are wearing the 1971 uniforms because that is what they wore the year the Vet opened. And it's not the second game, it's the entire series with the Pirates.

Thanks, Mark. All winter I kept hearing about the Eagles playing their last season at the Vet, and it stuck in the wrong part of my brain.

Jerry Hairston, Jr. triples vs. Martinez and scores on a grounder to first with the infield in. Hairston was 6 for 15 with 2 doubles and 2 walks vs. Martinez coming into the game.

Jason Johnson is having a fine outing against the Red Sox and Pedro Martinez. He's only allowed 1 hit, but has walked 3. He hasn't been as efficient as Pedro, but the result is the same so far, 0 runs allowed.

Tom Glavine had a much better outing today than he had on opening day. All the hits he gave up save one were singles, and he didn't walk any batters. The double he allowed was Vlad driving in a run, which chased him from the game. He had thrown 96 pitches at that point, and wasn't out of the 6th. With bullpen help, he should get the win.

Pedro Martinez is taking no prisoners today. Through three innings, he's thrown 38 pitches, 28 for strikes and has four K. At 13 pitches an inning, you would think he could go eight innings today.

I haven't been blogging much this morning. We have a new addition to the household. Her name is Phoebe, and you can see her and my daughter Melinda here.

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.

Steve Parris is out of the game after throwing 101 pitches to the Yankees through 5. One thing that make teams like the Yankees dangerous is by using a lot of pitches, they force the starters out early, and then the offense can really tee off on the weak middle relief of most teams. We'll see how McClung does.

Update: Not good for McClung. Two batters, two hits, 1 run.

It's cold in the East tonight. David Cone, in this weather, is making his return to the majors. So far, so good. He's gone 5 innings and thrown a lot of pitches (84, 51 for strikes). He's only given up 2 hits, both to the opposing pitcher Tomo Ohka.

A rare pitching duel at Coors today. I was eyeballing the winning scores of the Rockies at Coors, and I only noticed 2 other games where the Rockies won when scoring no more than 2 runs. Shawn Cachon pitched 7 brilliant innings, retiring the first 16 batters, striking out 8 and walking no one.

Kim, in his first start, threw 93 pitches in five innings. He's going to have to learn to be more efficient if he's going to be successful as a starter.

The Brewers out homered the Giants 4-2 today, but lost the game 7 to 5. All four of the Milwaukee HRs were solo shots (as were the Giants HR). The Brewers only drew one walk in the game. If they had been able to put a few more people on base, they might have scored more runs on those homers.

The Giants had 12 hits and 6 walks, the Brewers 10 hits and 1 walk. Milwaukee was 1 for 4 with runners in scoring position, the Giants 2 for 12. So even though the Giants had a worse BA in that situation, having more men on base gave them lots more opportunities.

After not having pitched in the majors since 1997, Salomon Torres was called up last September by the Pirates. He paid dividends today, pitching 3 hitless innings in relief. He did walk three, so I won't call it a stellar performance, but if he can be succesful as a long reliever, he'll be another piece in an improving picture for the Pirates.

The Rangers were unable to convert a good outing by Ismael Valdes into a win. The Rangers' offense isn't quite in sync yet; Glanville and Blalock are fine at the top, but A-Rod and Palmeiro aren't hitting their weight yet. Texas is going to get very few good outings out of their starters. They have to win the few they get.

Looking at the Phillies boxscore, I'm impressed by two things:

1. Jim Thome's torrid start (he has a triple today).
   
2. The lack of OBA from the 1-2-3 hitters.
   

Thome is slugging over .900 in four games, but has only 1 RBI. He's knocing the cover off the ball, but there's no one to drive in. Abreu will get on; his career OBA is very good. But Polanco is at best okay, and Rollins is poor. So if you start to see "Why isn't Thome driving in runs" articles, you'll know the reason.

Reggie Sanders continues to pound the opposition. His grand slam gives him 4 HR in four games. On top of that, he's hit for the HR cycle; solo, 2 run, 3 run and a grand slam. I don't know if it will last, but the Pirates outfield right now is significantly better than last year.

The Twins will have a video linkup with Kuwait, and Minnesotans Army Reservists will throw out the first pitch for the home opener.

Peter Gammons has more on the friendship that developed between Barry Bonds and David Eckstein. It certainly a different take from what you got from the Bonds-Kent relationship.

Daniel Miller, the managing editor of the ZDNet AnchorDesk, lists his favorite baseball sites today. Baseball Musings and Only Baseball Matters get a prominent mentions! Thanks, Daniel!

Daniel Shamah writes:

Bobby Valentine made possibly the most intelligent comment I've heard in a long time on Baseball Tonight this evening.

Discussing Trachsel's two pickoffs against the Cubs, Valentine noted that he felt that baserunning has gotten poorer recently. He then proceeded to say that until sabermetricians (his word!!) figure out a metric to analyze the offensive value of someone moving from first to third on a single, or someone advancing on a groundout, we'll never REALLY know how valuable good baserunning is. He described it, hesistently, as a fundamental (he even said that he hates the phrase "baseball fundamentals") part of baseball, and there are too many teams that just run themselves out of rallies, and that it was nothing more than his baseball instincts that suggested to him that too many teams are guilty of bad baserunning.

I literally watched my television agape. Valentine?! You know, the first few times I saw I figured ESPN hired him because he's a recognizable name and he's very personable on the air. But after that bit, I don't know...sabermetrics?! WOW.

Valentine is a smart guy. I always thought his weakness as a manager was his own ego. That actually works for television; you have to have supreme confidence in yourself to put your thoughts in front of millions of people every night.

As for baserunning, I don't know if it's any worse than it's ever been. Certainly, defenses have adjusted with pitchers going to slide steps. The running game has also degraded because in eras of high power, the SB becomes less valuable, and therefore, it's not used as much. Why risk stealing 2nd if the guy at the plate can jack the ball out of the park?

As for Sabrmetricians putting a value on going from first to third, Bobby's a bit behind the times here. I'd point him to The Hidden Game of Baseball by Thorn and Palmer, published in the 1980's. They have a chart in that book showing the run potential for each base/out situation. You can use that to calculate the value of any advancement or any 1-run strategy. In general, not making an out is much more important than gaining a base.

Great play by Orlando Cabrera. Marcus Giles hit one up the middle. Cabrera dove for the grounder to stop it, then threw from his knees to nail Giles. Expos lead 4-0.

So far, the Braves have scored 2 runs vs. the Expos. Is it the Braves offense or the Expos pitching? I might suggest it's the Expos defense. As I'm listening to Skip Caray, he's talking about all the great defensive plays the Expos have made in this series. Expos pitchers have only struck out 13 in the three game through 8 innings tonight. So a lot of balls have been put in play. None have gone out of the park (good pitching), but the Braves were only batting .215 coming into the game. That's probably the defense. We'll see how this holds up against other opponents.

Update: Cabrera made another great play stopping a grounder up the middle to end the game. According to the broadcast, it's the first time the Braves were shutout in consecutive games since 1992.

In looking at the St. Louis boxscore, I see Cal Eldred pitched in relief. I thought he was out of baseball. I remember when he was a promising young pitcher for the Brewers, starting his career 13-2, with an 11-2 record and 1.79 ERA in 100.1 innings in 1991. In each of the next four seasons, he would have a .500 record, and in 1995 injuries would start eating at his career. He had not pitched since 2001, and the way he pitched today, he may not last long this year. Either that, or he's a mole for his former team. :-)

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.

Sorry, Tigers is just too strong a word for this team. The Tigers, after 3 games, have 10 hits in 90 AB. They drawn 2 walks. They tried one steal but were thrown out. They have two extra base hits, a solo HR by Eric Munson and a double by Infante. That's a .111 BA, a .130 OBA and a .156 slugging pct. This team would make Mario Mendoza look like Babe Ruth.

Tiger fans, it won't be that bad all year. These players have made a major league team, after all. But it sure doesn't give you any hope for an improvement this year.

The Padres are wearing camouflage shirts today to honor military personnel. I'm waiting to see them take the field to see if the outfielders disappear. :-) It's a nice gesture by the team. Before the game, supports of the troops got together and formed a giant yellow ribbon in the parking lot.

He's perfect so far through 4 for the Twins. And he really is coming close to perfection. He's being efficient, throwing 46 pitches, 32 for strikes. He's shown a little power with 3 strikeouts. The Tiger team is batting .117 coming into this game, and no Tiger has more than 1 hit. And you thought they started badly last year when they lost 11 in a row.

Unfortunately, work sometimes gets in the way of blogging, but I need to ask the question, what was Clint Hurdle thinking in the 9th inning last night? Did he think the Jimenez was going to settle down and actually get someone out? Isn't the job of the closer to get the big guns in the lineup? Someone tell Clint his job is to win ballgames, not live or die with his closer.

This won't give Colorado fans much confidence:

That looked like the back-breaking hit of the game. It actually came later when Jimenez gave up hard-hit balls early in counts as Rockies manager Clint Hurdle watched almost helplessly from the dugout.

"Things seemed to happen quickly," Hurdle said.

Funny, as I was driving into work this morning, I was listening to Anne Garrels of NPR talk about how the Iraqi troops were surprised at how fast the US troops moved. Just shows how important preparation is, in the dugout and on the battlefield.

Edward Cossette of Bambino's Curse opines on Jason Varitek and MLB TV on the net. Jason is my daughter's player. She doesn't remember his name, but in the first game I took her to at Fenway, he was the guy she focused on. He had two doubles that day, and then went on a hot streak. Sometimes she comes up to me and says, "How did my player do today?"

I'm going to send her the link to the post, but there is one bit that might upset her:

I know I'm flogging this already dead horse by going on and on about this for 3 consecutive days, but it's eating me up is all.

For some reason, the phrase "beat a dead horse" sets her off. Marilyn and I often accuse Melinda of doing this, but she doesn't get the metaphor and thinks the image is just cruel. Of course, now it's a great way for me to get a rise out of her. The joys of fatherhood. :-)

Also, while you're at Bambino's Curse, scroll down and read the aptly titled, "These Aren't the Devil Rays We War Gamed Against". That's for sure. Lou has already done wonders with the offense.

Jimmy Golen of the AP got to sit in the new Monster seats at Fenway, and discusses other improvements to the park.

This SF Gate recap points out that the Giants offense is scoring very well despite Bonds not hitting much against the Padres.

Interesting quote in this Seattle-Oakland recap (emphasis added):

Tejada said before the game he would not be distracted by his contract situation, and he showed it. He can become a free agent after the season and wants a new deal from the A's before the end of the season if he's going to stay. But the club has said it can't afford to offer him a multiyear deal.

"I wasn't looking for a home run,'' the 26-year-old shortstop said. "I just want to get on base for my team. It's nice to have the first one.''

Notice he didn't say, I just wanted to get a hit. Great stuff! I can just imagine Billy Beane saying to himself, "You will be assimilated. " :-)

A's are dominating a good Seattle team. Oakland fans are in for another fun summer.

Kevin Brown is wasting no effort in putting down the DBacks today. He's thrown 66 pitches through 6 innings while striking out four. Dodgers fans have to be extremely happy to see Brown back and pitching well.

The Pirate bullpen keeps the Bucs in the game with 3 one-hit innings. The Pirates were able to score 4 in the 8th to win their 2nd game of the year.

Red Sox bullpen looked strong tonight. Timlin threw two no-hit innings, and Fox got the save in the ninth with little trouble. Lowe gets the win despite a poor outing.

Update: On the other hand, the Yankees pen continues to be a problem. A 9-4 lead is now down to 9-7 after Contreras gave up 3 runs in 2/3 of an inning.

Updating this post, the game is over and the Orioles lost 4-2. The 1-4 hitters went 0 for 15 with 1 walk. The O's did manage 2 HR, but no one was on.

"Ricky" Ricardo Rodriguez pitched a nice game, going 7 innings and allowing 4 hits for the Indians.

Travis Harper is keeping the Devil Rays in the game. In three innings of relief, he's K'd 5 and and allowed 1 hit and no walks. An effective long reliever, or future starter?

Williams pitching extremely well through 5. He hasn't given up a hit, has 5 K's and 1 BB. Cardinals up 4-0.

Yankees have 15 hits through 6 innings, 9 for extra bases (7 doubles, 2 HR).

He's up in the 6th. He's walked twice tonight. Men on 1st and 2nd, Cubs down 3-1. Seems like the Mets have to pitch to him.

Update: It was high enough, but not deep enough. Fly out to deep left, with the wind knocking it down.

Kevin Brown had a nice return, with a 1-2-3 first and two strikeouts. Green has gone deep to give the Dodgers an early 1-0 lead.

Randy Wolf has a gem going for the Phillies tonight. The Marlins are hitting the ball, but usually at someone. The Marlins also helped Wolf by hitting into a double play and having a runner removed with a CS.

Orioles offense performing more like I thought they would. 1-4 hitters are 0 for 9 with a walk. Cleveland leads 2-1 in the 6th.

Bonderman only lasted 4 innings, giving up 9 hits and 6 runs. On the positive side, he K'd 5 and only walked 1.

Horacio Ramirez has settled down and is pitching well. He's walked 1 and struck out 5 through 4.1 IP, and hasn't given up another run. But the Braves hitters can't figure out Zach Daywho's given up 1 hit and 2 walks with 0 K. It's still 2-0 Expos.

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.

Pirates are getting on base. They've had 6 men on in the first two innings, and hacker Randall Simon connected for a 3 run HR. Austin Kearns has gone deep for the Reds to make the score 3-2. I expect the Griffey-Kearns-Dunn heart of the order to put up big numbers this year.

Update: Griffey goes deep, too. 3-3.

Bonderman is not off to an auspicious start. In two innings he's given up 3 runs, including a HR to Jacque Jones. Joe Mays, his opponent, looks sharp with four strikeouts through 2 innings on only 26 pitches.

Derek Lowe is having control problems in the first inning. He's given up 2 walks, a wild pitch and 3 runs so far, and has not looked sharp. He's throwing as many balls as strikes.

Cliff Floyd has hit his first Mets HR. Home team up 2-1 at Shea.

With the Blue Jays pitching lefty Mark Hendrickson, Torre has inserted Zeile and Trammell for Ventura and Johnson. Zeile is batting 2nd; although you don't think of him as a #2 hitter, Zeile's OBA has been in the .350's or higher in every season since 1997. It's not Jeter's OBA, but it's not bad in front of Giambi. And of course, he homers in the first inning to give the Yankees a 1-0 lead.

I just heard on the Red Sox broadcast that the Devil Rays have signed Damion Easley, removing him from the ranks of the idle rich.

Horacio Ramirez is making his major league debut as the Braves #2 starter. He received a rude welcome. Chavez singled, and Vidro followed with a HR. Braves down 2-0.

The KC Royals are off to a good start. One thing they've been doing is throwing strikes. In two games they've thrown 259 pitches, 172 for strikes, 66.4%. That's very good for a team number. It appears to be something they were emphasising this spring, as this article about Miguel Asencio indicates:

"First year in the big leagues, I'm sure he was nervous," Cumberland said. "But for him to make the club, he's going to be like everybody else. He's going to have to throw strikes.

"Get ahead and put the hitter away. His pitches are good enough to do that."

Strikes, strikes, strikes. The Royals never cease hammering that message at Asencio.

It appears they have hammered this message into everyone.

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.

Although the focus of this game was going to be Bartolo Colon, Jeremy Affeldt is pitching a good game through five innings. He's averaging 14 pitches per inning (that's low) and 69% of them are for strikes. He's struck out 4 and walked one. I don't know how his endurance is, but KC fans have to be happy with the outing so far.

Maybe Miguel Tejada might stay in Oakland. It seems management might sign him to a short term contract.

"I never intended to slam the door on Miguel Tejada," Schott told the newspaper. "He's a wonderful person. One thing I never wanted to do was hurt his feelings, because I'd like to keep Miguel. There's no question he'd be a great player for us down the road. The door's never closed.

"If the opportunity arises and his agents want to talk to us again about a shorter-term contract than what we heard he was looking for, we're always ready to listen."

I actually think a long term contract at a reduced price is better, but I understand wanting to avoid the risk of a long term injury or production fall off. Here's my original post on the subject.

Yesterday we had "Loser by committee." Today, Dave van Dyck of Foxsports.com gives us "bullpen-by-combustion".

"Before it's all over, they're going to have to make one of them the closer. That's just the way it works," said a third former manager and front-office guy.

Well, that's the way it always has worked. But new Boston general manager Theo Epstein and his hired hand, statistical guru Bill James, have reinvented the idea that is time-tested.

James' theory, strongly supported by Epstein, is that the "save" statistic is overrated, that the seventh inning is as important as the ninth inning, that a bullpen-by-committee contains interchangeable parts to be used as necessary.

Boston isn't the first team to go with bullpen-by-committee, just the first to do it by design rather than by necessity.

Well, the bullpen has flunked two tests, getting two blown saves in its first two games, despite Tuesday's game being a victory.

What gets me is that most of the anti-Epstein quotes are from unnamed former managers. I assume they are former managers and former front office people because they didn't do a very good job when they were current managers and front office people. And why the secrecy? If they are right, and are looking for a job, correctly criticizing a system that doesn't work can only enhance their reputations. Dave van Dyck, who are these former managers? If it's Davey Johnson and Whitey Herzog, then the statements have a lot of credibility. If it's Dallas Green or Tony Muser, I would not put a lot of stock in them.

I felt that through natural selection the Sox would settle on a closer, or at least a stopper; the pitcher you go to in the tough situtation. That process is happening now. Two games is not enough to know if it works or not, but I'm rooting for Theo and James.

Minnesota at Detroit features Jeremy Bonderman starting for the Tigers. Jeremy is the youngest player in the majors right now. He's also the first player ML player I'm aware of that was born after I graduated from college. :(

Also, Colon debuts for the White Sox, Kevin Brown returns from his injury and Sosa and A-Rod go for a round number of HR.

Update: The no longer aptly named Will Young writes:

I had just told my friend earlier today that I have been waiting all my life for this day. Today I officially become older than a Major League Baseball player. Since I was born Jan. 13, 1982, I was still barely younger (6 days) than Francisco Rodriguez, but all that changes today. Just out of curiousity, do you remember the first player who was younger than you?

I remember being aware of it at the time, but I don't remember who it was. I'll have to try to look that up this evening.

As a general rule, I don't talk about Fantasy baseball because I no longer play the game. But I know a lot of people do, so here's a site to check out from ESPN. It's called Out of the Box, and has some fun insights, like this one about Cory Lidle's outing:

Cory Lidle's first start of the season was straight out of Seinfeld's Bizzaro episode. A fantasy sleeper the last two seasons, Lidle survives without a lot strikeouts by keeping the ball in the park. While he struck out just 111 in 192 innings last season, Lidle posted a 3.89 ERA in part by allowing just 17 home runs. So what happens in his first start for the Blue Jays. Lidle struck out seven Yankees in six innings but allowed three home runs. Talk about a bad exchange rate.

Sean Horgan of the Dallas Morning news spells out the problem that is Chan Ho Park:

So now what do the Rangers do for Chan Ho Park? Petition to have all their games played in Korea? Have a night-light installed on the mound for those games Park pitches?

The Rangers have to be running out of ideas for ways to get Park back into his comfort zone, or maybe that comfort zone no longer exists – and there's a less-than-comforting notion to the Rangers less than two years into Park's five-year, $65 million contract.

Whatever the Rangers plan to do, they'd better hurry. Forget Park's psyche; the team's psyche might not withstand many more starts like Tuesday night.

People complain about A-Rod's contract, but at least he's more than lived up to his end of the bargain. But $13 million a year for Park is money down the drain. And the Rangers should have seen it coming. Park is a Dodger Stadium pitcher. In his eight year there, he had a 2.98 ERA at home, 4.74 on the road. With Texas, he has a 6.84 ERA at home, 5.21 on the road. If this keeps up, Park will join Damion Easley in the no work and pay category.

I thought this was telling, from last night's Giants recap:

Jose Cruz Jr. singled and Rich Aurilia walked ahead of Bonds' homer.

It's hard to pitch around Bonds with men on base (although some managers have done that). The best way to keep the bat in Barry's hands is to get someone on first base.

Dan Lewis revives the Bonds Tracker, although I believe game streak records don't cross seasons.

After a hiatus due to technical problems, the excellent Only Baseball Matters is back and blogging. Stop by and welcome John Perricone back to the blogoshpere!

Schmidt is throwing a gem for the Giants tonight. Seven innings, 7 K, no walks and only 85 pitches, 61 for strikes. Very efficient for so many strikeouts. Three shutsouts on the west coast as I write this.

Spivey singles with the bases loaded in the 10th to give Arizona it's first win of the year. Shuey gets the loss.

The Angels are all over Chan Ho Park tonight. He's in the third, and he's already given up 6 hits and 3 walks. Fifty one pitches, only twenty seven for strikes so far.

Rey Ordonez is up with a man on and a chance to win the game.

Update: Woodard strikes out Ordonez.

Great play in the Red Sox game. Lee on 2nd, two outs, line drive single into the outfield. Lee running hard, Damian Jackson makes a great throw to the plate, Mirabelli gets run over but holds on to the ball to tag Lee out.

The stadium is empty in Tampa Bay. After last night's exciting win and this edge of your seat game, Tampa fans are missing some fun baseball. Get out and support your team!

Damian Jackson pinch ran for Manny Ramirez in the top of the 12th after Ramirez singled. He then stole 2nd, and went to third on a deep fly ball. He's not at third with 1 out, giving the Red Sox a good chance to take the lead.

Update: Red Sox hitters are not able to deliver, going to the bottom of 12th still tied at 8.

Santiago has another HR, to go along with one from Jose Cruz, Jr. Schmidt is perfect through 3, and has thrown only 35 pitches so far. Of course, that game isn't on DirecTV. :(

Durazo pulls a Jeff Kent and homers in his first AB for his new team. A's up 2-0 early.

Schilling, who had pitched a superb game through 7, fell apart in the 8th. He gave up a single and a walk, then a HR to Dave Roberts. Schilling gives up a lot of HR, but usually there's no one on base. After he left the game, Green drove in the tying run. Schilling will not get a decision.

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.

You don't see this too often. Barajas on 2nd for the DBacks, Womack hits a hard ground ball to the 2nd baseman Cora, who fires to third to get Barajas trying to advance. A great play, but costly if it fails.

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.

Travis Lee has homered to bring the DRays back within 1 of the Red Sox. I'm keeping my eye on Lee this year, and so far, so good.

A walk and two singles set up the first Diamondbacks run of the season. Odalis Perez having a rough first inning.

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.

Victor Zambrano loaded the bases in the fourth with one out, then struck out Mirabelli and got Damon to ground out. Nice pitching in a jam. Sox are now 2 for 7 with runners in scoring position in the game.

Wakefield is throwing the knuckler for strikes, 32 of 49 pitches for strikes through 3.

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.

The Yankees have moved Nick Johnson into the #2 slot and are batting Wilson 9th today. We'll see if that remains true when Almonte starts.

I like the move because I think Johnson has the potential to have a great OBA, although he hasn't reached that potential yet. When I've seen him play, he does work the count well. It's a big opportunity for Johnson to prove that he's a hitter to respect.

Should C.C. Sabathia's nickname be Milliliter?

Elliot Ness and the Twins at the Twins Geek.

Travis Nelson takes Joe Morgan to task. Lots of photos of Joe, by the way.

Joe Morgan really is very intelligent when it comes to baseball. It's just that he has to be challenged properly to bring out his knowledge. I don't think a column is the best vehicle for Joe.

Aaron Gleeman has a summary of his baseball watching yesterday, with an emphasis on the Twins at Aaron's Baseball Blog.

Ben Jacobs writes:

I just wanted to give you my two cents on the Boston media's reaction to the Red Sox bullpen. The story you linked to (Case Isn't Closed) opens with a very amusing paragraph about how they can't succeed without an "established" closer. Maybe Bob Hohler has amnesia or maybe he just goes to too many Red Sox games every year to remember all of them, but I do not have amnesia and I only get to go to a few Sox games a year. So I remember Tuesday, August 23, 2002 very well.

I was in Massachusetts for a few days and my dad and I decided to go up to Boston for the first game of a doubleheader against the Devil Rays. The Red Sox blew out Tampa Bay 22-4 in that game. Since Derek Lowe was pitching the nightcap, I decided to stay and watch the Sox move right behind the Yankees in the standings. Lowe was masterful (as he often was last year) and left after seven innings with a 4-0 lead (similar to Pedro leaving after seven innings with a 4-1 lead). Chris Haney came on and got the side in order in the eighth (similar to Mendoza retiring the side in order in the eighth last night). However, Haney ran into trouble in the ninth and left after he loaded the bases with no outs.

Enter "Established Closer" Ugueth Urbina. Urbina gives up a double and a homer before retiring the next three batters and the Red Sox lose. It would be a month before the Red Sox won three games in a row (I should point out that this was just two days after the Red Sox and their established closer twice blew late leads to lose 9-8 to the Yankees). As you know, the Red Sox did not make the playoffs with their "Established Closer" last year.

I guess my point is that the Boston media hates being happy. If Embree had retired the side in order in the ninth, the Boston media would have written that the new OBP offense is a flop because it could only score four runs. If the offense had scored more than four runs, the writers would have written that it was only the Devil Rays so it wasn't important. If it had been the Yankees and the Red Sox had won 25-0 with Pedro pitching a perfect game, they would have written that it's just the first day and they'll still blow it.

New York may be the media capital, but no writers love saying bad things about their team more than the Boston writers.

Meanwhile, Bambino's Curse isn't worried.

Two games to watch today are the fought by the four teams yet to open. Seattle visits Oakland with a great pitching matchup, as Garcia takes on Hudson. Instead of being the first teams to open the season (in Japan) they'll be the last. In the NL, the Rockies travel to Houston to take on the Astros. We'll see the debut of Jeff Kent in an Astros uniform, as well as new centerfielder Craig Biggio. Also keep an eye on the Yankees game to see how they adjust to the loss of Derek Jeter.

Pitching wasn't evident in the Cardinals-Brewers game yesterday, but there were some interesting stories, as Joe Strauss points out in this game recap.

Not suprisingly, the Boston News Media is piling on the Red Sox bullpen. We start with the Globe, which has two articles on the subject. The first is the game summary, titled "Case Isn't Closed:"