ESPN is reporting that Bonds will be taken to the hospital and kept over night to monitor his irregular heartbeat.

Darren Oliver and Odalis Perez are locked in a scoreless tie in the 7th inning at Dodger Stadium. Oliver has tried to help his own cause with 2 hits of his own, which represents one more than he's allowed to the Dodgers. Perez is already over 100 pitches, but with the LA bullpen, that shouldn't be a problem. Jolbert Cabrera has the only hit for the Dodgers.

Update: A Juan Uribe error opens the flood gates, and Oliver allowed three unearned runs in the 7th to put the Rockies down 3-0.

Miguel Tejada appears to have figured out that he's a free agent, and if he's going to get a big contract he's going to have to earn it with big numbers. After hitting 1 HR and driving in 9 runs in July, he hit 8 HR in August with 25 RBI. That's more like an MVP shortstop.

As you probably know, Barry Bonds was removed from yesterday's game after hitting the go-ahead home run due to an accelerated heart beat. He's not in today's game for the same reason. No one seems to be too concerned about it now, but hearts are tricky things. I hope it's just stress over his father's death, and not something more serious. However, I will remind you of this post, saying we would not see the end of Bonds career coming.

Alex Rodriguez hit a two-run HR in the first inning against Brad Radke. It was his 40th of the year, and the sixth straight year he'd hit 40 HR. Four of his seven career hits off Radke have been for HR. The Rangers lead the Twins 3-1 in the 2nd.

The Braves have three HR today as they rout the Pirates 8-2 in the sixth. That gives them 206 HR on the year, tieing their third best total of all time. They are nine HR away from tieing the franchise record of 215 set in 1998.

Jake Peavy is outpitching Ron Villone, but is losing 1-0. Peavy through four innings has given up 1 hit and struck out 7, but that one hits was a HR by Morgan Ensberg. Villone has allowed 3 hits and struck out three through four.

The Cardinals got another good outing from Sterling Hitchcock today. He shut out the Reds for six innings, throwing 56 of 85 pitches for strikes while walking only 1. His ERA since joining the Cardinals is 0.75. Albert Pujols provided the offense with his 36th HR of the year. The Cardinals lead 2-0 in the 8th.

The Phillies have finally found a team they can beat. Not only are they leading 4-0 in the 7th, but Vincente Padilla is throwing a no hitter. His only mistake today was hitting Ty Wigginton. Stay tuned.

Update: Reyes breaks up the no-hitter with a single leading off the 7th.

Nate Cornejo is skating through the White Sox lineup so far. He's retired the first six batters he's faced on 18 pitches, 12 of them strikes.

Actually, this one will be the game of the night. In the best pitching matchup of this last day of August, Jason Schmidt of the Giants faces Brandon Webb of the Diamondbacks. Schmidt is slightly behind Kevin Brown in the ERA race (Brown, 2.2626, Schmidt 2.2631). Webb is fourth and is looking more and more like the rookie of the year in the NL. It's the Sunday Night Baseball game on ESPN.

Over in the AL, the game of the day is between the Yankees and the Red Sox. Roger Clemens is making his last regular season appearance in Fenway Park as he takes on knuckleballer Tim Wakefield. Clemens is 7-4 against Boston since leaving his original team.

The Wild Card game of the day is Montreal at Florida. A good matchup here as well, with Zach Day taking on Mark Redman. Florida is without Mike Lowell for the next four weeks, as his hand was broken yesterday. I'm sure how much he'll be missed; he was in a huge slump in August, hitting only .224, although he managed to drive in 18 runs in 26 games with that average. Needless to say, his slump probably played in a role in the Marlins 13-14 August record.

I'm back from our trip to the Berkshires. Had lots of fun with my old college roommates. I'll be blogging this afternoon.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	2011	2014
Attendance	28081	28537

I'm off for a long weekend with some of my college buddies. Enjoy the pennant races and have a wonderful labor day weekend! Blogging will likely be non-existant until Sunday.

The Expos sweep the Phillies. And it wasn't even close. The Expos outscored the Phillies 39-17. If the Expos make the playoffs, this will go down with the 1978 Boston Massacare as one of the great comebacks of all time. Good for the Expos. If the Marlins lose and the Cardinals win, there will be a four way tie for the wild card.

Update: 20,030 in Montreal this afternoon. That's a wow!

John Flaherty of the Yankees has two RBI without a hit today. He has one on a sacrifice fly, the other on a squeeze play. An RBI on each kind of sacrifice. Pretty cool.

Javier Vazquez has thrown 114 innings through seven innings, but he's hitting in the bottom of the 7th, which means it looks like he'll come out for the 8th. He's up 4-0, so I don't know if I agree with this move. He's struck out 10 through 7 and walked only 2.

Update: Vazquez came into the game with 18 consecutive scoreless innings, which he's now extended to 25.

Dan Wright is doing a great job in relief for the White Sox. He's gone 3 2/3 innings so far allowing only one hit. He's giving the White Sox a chance to get back into the game, and they scored in the fourth to cut the lead to 5-3.

The Yankees have a field day against Neal Cotts in the first. He last 1/3 of an inning and gave up three hits and four walks. The Yankees are still batting and lead 4-2. Dan Wright is in with the bases loaded.

Vlad Guerrero just hit his third HR of the series in the bottom of the first inning, a two run shot. The Expos had already scored one with the first two batters, so they are up 3-0 in the first. The Phillies pen as already gone 13 1/3 innings in this game, so if Telemaco doesn't last long, they could be in real trouble.

The White Sox plate two of their own in the first on three singles, a walk and a SB. Long ball yesterday, little ball today.

The White Sox and Yankees finish up the battle of first place teams today, and the White Sox have to be happy no matter what the outcome. They showed the Yankees they are not push overs. The White Sox have the best record in the 2nd half this year; they pulled a page out of the A's playbook and traded for a couple of offensive players with high OBA's, Alomar and Everett. It's worked for them. Mark Buehrle faces Mike Mussina. Neither walks a lot of men, but Mussina strikes out many more, leading to a lower ERA.

In the NL, the Expos go for the sweep as the Phillies send Amaury Telemaco against Javier Vazquez. Telemaco has had a good start and a bad start so far. Vazquez has been on fire, posting a 1.38 ERA over his last five starts and striking out 35 in his last 39 innings.

The Cubs and Cardinals play the rubber game of their series tonight. Red hot Carlos Zambrano (1.85 ERA over his last five games) faces nominal staff ace Matt Morris. The Astros have to be pretty happy with this; if they can beat the Dodgers again tonight, they will have gained on both teams for the division lead.

Enjoy!

Every year, it seems, the A's come alive in the 2nd half. There weren't many deals this year, but the A's are playing .600 ball since the All-Star break. That's fourth in the AL, but it's not too shabby. The offense, which seemed to lay dormant all year, has sprung to life recently. Through 8/15, the A's were scoring 4.52 runs per game. Since then, they are 9-2 and are scoring 6.91 runs per game. I believe what you are seeing is a team that was in a collective slump break out of it together. Miguel Tejada, for example, has an eight game hit streak in which he's batting .529 with six HR and 13 RBI. Remember, it's about process with the A's. The luck will usually even out over a season. And it's evening out in favor of their offense right now.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	1969	1973
Attendance	28073	28564

Sidney Ponson is pitching an excellent game in Coors tonight. Through five innings, he's only allowed 1 hit and 1 walk. He's thrown 63 pitches, 44 for strikes. We'll see how long he holds up.

The Expos win, the Phillies and Marlins lose. The Expos are now 1 game out of the wild card. The Cardinals win, also pulling within 1 of the Marlins and Phllies. That big tie comes closer to reality every day.

The Cubs Kerry Wood left after 7 with a 2-0 lead. Dusty Baker used three relief pitchers to face the first three batters, and they loaded the bases. He stuck with Farnsworth at that point, and he gave up a 2-run single to Tino Martinez. He then threw a wild pitch to plate the go-ahead run. Cards lead 3-2 with a man on and none out in the 8th.

The Phillies, down 5 lengths to the Expos race back to pull even at six all in the 7th. But the Expos nose ahead with 1 in the bottom of the 7th. It's a real horse race as they come into the last turn.

:-)

Jeff Bagwell has a three-run HR tonight to help the Astros to a 4-1 lead over Hideo Nomo and the Dodgers. Including tonight's shot, here's a breakdown of Bagwell's 410 career HR by men on base:

Men On	Home Runs
0	229
1	110
2	66
3	5

Rondell White paid an immediate dividend for the Royals, getting a hit and driving in two runs in his first Royal AB. KC leads Texas 5-0 in the 2nd.

The Milwaukee Brewers are leading the Cincinnati Reds 3-2 tonight in the 6th inning, trying to pick up their 9th straight win. They've outscored their opponents 58-31 during the streak, and have scored 10 or more runs 3 times.

Jason Varitek continues to show why he's the best #9 hitter in baseball. He's two for 3 with a HR and three RBI. That gives him a .322 BA in the 9th slot with 16 HR and 61 RBI, all the best in baseball. The Red Sox and Blue Jays are tied at 3 in the 7th.

The Marlins have appeared to hit a wall at the same time as the Phillies. They are 1-6 over their last seven games, and have been outscored 41-25. They are losing 4-1 to the Pirates tonight. Lee, Castillo and Cabrera have hit well during this streak, but I-Rod, Pierre and Lowell have been awful. Lowell is 1 for his last 26, through five innings tonight.

The Expos are taking off. Everyone in the lineup has a hit except Wil Cordero. Vlad has another HR, and Ohka is pitching another great game against the Phillies. This time, however, he's getting the support he needs. Todd Zeile has 2 hits to bring his NL average this year up to .320. The Expos lead 5-1 in the 6th.

Kerry Wood and Woody Williams are locked in a scoreless duel in the fifth. Both have allowed three htits, but Wood has walked three, continuing his control problems. However, he's balanced the three walks with nine K through four innings.

The White Sox have seven hits off David Wells, all for extra-bases. They just scored seven runs in the fourth inning to take a 7-2 lead, capped by Roberto Alomar's 2-run shot. That's two games in a row where the White Sox pounded the old men of the Yankees rotation.

Devon Young writes:

Is it just me, or has Toronto really gone downhill since they traded away Shannon Stewart. I also just noticed Delgado has 117 RBI's. Which means he's really slowed down in the past month or so. Since Stewart was traded maybe? At the same time, it seems the Twins have been better since they aquired him. I'm thinking Stewart was a bigger peice of that offensive puzzle than the Blue Jays realized.

Stewart last played for the Blue Jays before the All-Star break, so that's a convinent point to look at Delgado and the Blue Jays 1-2 hitters. Before the All-Star break, Delgado had 97 RBI in 94 games. The 1-2 hitters for the Jays had a .351 OBA. Coming into today, Delgado had 20 RBI in 37 games post break, and the 1-2 hitters have a .327 OBA. The interesting thing is that Stewart was injured late May to late June, and the Blue Jays did just fine. I think the loss of Stewart has hurt the Jays, but Delgado's power has disappeared, also. His pre-break slugging percentage was .629, post .471. My guess is that Delgado has become the Barry Bonds of the AL, where they just walk him all the time.

I was wondering what would happen if there was a massive tie for the NL Central/Wild Card. That is, what would happen if you had a three way tie for the NL Central, and simultaneously have two or more clubs in the other divisions also tied with those three teams, and all of them tied for the wild card. I know if there are two teams tied for the division and one team tied with them for the wild card, the two division teams playoff, and the loser goes home. But this is different, since their has to be a three team single elimination tournament to decide the division winner. The rules do cover such a contingency.

What happens is that the division winner is decided first. Two of the teams play on day 1, and the winner plays the third team on day 2. The winner of day 2 is the division winner. At that point, the two teams that lost go back into the wild card pool, and you have a playoff with all those teams. The rules cover up to four teams, but can be easily extended to cover more. So the division losers would not be automatically eliminated from the post-season, as is the case of two teams tied for the division and another tied with them for the wild card.

A good candidate for "high-run game of the night" is Texas at KC. The Rangers send Colby Lewis to the mound with his 7.59 ERA, and the Royals counter with Paul Abbott and his 8.80 ERA. A-Rod needs just three HR for his sixth straight season with 40 HR.

On the West Coast, Pat Hentgen continues his comeback to respectability in Oakland against Barry Zito. Hentgen has only walked seven batters over his last five starts (35 2/3 innings) and has a 3.03 ERA over that time. Zito has a 2.17 career ERA against the Orioles.

In the NL, the wild series between the Phillies and the Expos continues with Brett Myers against Tomo Ohka. Ohka has pitched well against the Phillies this year with a 2.57 ERA, but an 0-1 record. His run support per 9 in those games is 1.71. For his career, Ohka is 4-2 with a 1.83 ERA against the Phillies.

It's the battle of the woodsmen tonight in St. Louis as Kerry Wood of the Cubs faces Woody Williams of the Cardinals. Will the runners be lumbering around the bases? Will the batters be chopping at the ball? Will there be more than tree runs scored? Will Cliff Branch and Tree Rollins be at the game? No doubt each team wants to stick it to the other.

Enjoy!

Phillip Michaels of Idiots Write About Sports pens a post criticizing SI's John Donovan's assessment of the A's making the playoffs.

From my own point of view, the A's offense was underperforming most of the year. Tejada isn't this bad a player. I think what is happening is that the A's offense is regressing to the mean, and in this case it means it's getting better. Tejada has a seven game hit streak with 10 RBI for example. So, if Mulder had to get injured, this was a good time for it, since the offense appears to be returning to normal. I think the A's, Mariners and Red Sox are very evenly matched in this race, and I can't really see calling any of them the favorite or underdog at this point.

This should be a day of celebration in Detroit. The Tigers no longer have the worst offense in the majors.

Team	Runs	Runs per Game
Dodgers	452	3.477
Tigers	453	3.484

The Tigers have fielded a minor league team. What's the Dodgers' excuse?

Just want to wish Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit a happy birthday. Instapundit is one of the reasons I became interested in writing my own web log. Many happy returns!

A big night for the Expos, Cubs and Astros. They won, and the other five teams competing for the two remaining NL playoff spots all lost. This gives the Astros a 1/2 game lead in the NL Central, and puts the other 7 teams within 2 1/2 games of each other for the wild card. I'm hoping for an eight-way tie.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	1954	1958
Attendance	28087	28612

Two messages tonight in the White Sox 13-2 defeat of the Yankees. First, Esteban Loaiza put himself squarely in the Cy Young race. He pitched seven scoreless innings against a strong Yankees lineup, striking out nine. He's lowered his ERA to 2.51.

Second, the White Sox hit six HR, the 2nd most the Yankees have given up in a game (the Red Sox hit 7 on July 4th). The White Sox remain in first place, and showed they can play with the best in the league.

Coors Field doesn't seem to be bothering Jason Schmidt tonight. He has a 1-hitter through four innings, and has only thrown 53 pitches. Coming into tonight, Schmidt had a 7.56 ERA at Coors.

Mark Prior has made one mistake tonight, a solo HR to Albert Pujols. He's gone seven innings and given up only three hits. Although Garrett Stephenson got knocked around, Sterling Hitchcock as kept the Cardinals in the game, allowing just one run in five innings.

Moyer gives up hits to the first three Devil Rays batters, the last being a three-run HR by Aubrey Huff.

Down 8-0, the Expos have fought back to take an 11-10 lead over the Phillies. Zeile and Wilkerson both have three hits, and Vidro has three RBI. The Philadelphia bullpen gave up seven earned runs in their first 2/3 of an inning. The Marlins have already lost, so if the Expos hold on, they'll be within 2 games of both Philadelphia and Florida.

Fred McGriff goes deep for the first time since June 5th. It's the 489th of his career. It looks like at this point he won't get to 500 this year. He hasn't played well, and I really wonder if he'll be back to try to get the milestone. Astros lead 4-3 in the 4th.

The Tiger offense continues to sizzle. They lead the Indians 5-4 tonight; it's the 5th straight game in which they have scored at least five runs.

Kenny Lofton doubles in Alex S. Gonzalez to give the Cubs a 1-0 lead in the third. Prior has allowed only 1 hit through 2, but has not struck out a batter.

Update: Ramon Martinez drives in Lofton. The Cubs are getting offense up the middle tonight.

Update: Cubs still batting in the third, now up 6-0. Randall Simon had a three run double for the big hit in the inning.

The Royals waste no time getting Brian Anderson into a game, and he's perfect through three. He's thrown 39 pitches with a perfect 2-1 strike/ball ratio.

Down 7-1, the Red Sox have scored five runs in the fifth before making an out. The inning isn't over, they have two runs on and the score is 7-6.

Frank Thomas hits the third HR of the night off Clemens, a grand slam. Ordonez followed with another, to give the White Sox a 9-0 lead over the Yankees in the 5th.

The Phillies are returning the favor. They were blown out last night, and are blowing the Expos out tonight. It's 8-0 in the 5th. Zach Day went 3 2/3 and gave up six runs. Day has a 2.14 ERA during the day, 4.82 at night.

I was wondering how the Padres were going to make room for Brian Giles. They've sent Rondell White to the Royals, getting two pitching prospects in return. White gives the Royals more depth in the outfield, but he's not that different than the outfielders they already have.

Roger Clemens has only given up two hits through three innings, but both those hits were home runs. Loaiza has walked 2 and struck out four through three, but has thrown 62 pitches to Clemens' 39. White Sox lead 2-0.

Brian Giles was traded from the Pittsburgh Pirates to the San Diego Padres today. This give the Padres a legitmate number three hitter as they move into their new ballpark next year. The question is, who is going to go? Rondell White has been playing left most of the year for the Padres. Matthews is the most expendable. We'll see what happens when Giles arrives. Nothing on the SD Union site right now.

The Pirates get Oliver Perez, and minor leaguer and a player to be determined. Perez does one thing really well; strike out batters. He has 211 K in 193 2/3 big league innings. However, he walks a lot of batters, and this year he's giving up a lot of HR. He's young, but if he can cut down on the walks like Randy Johnson did about 10 years ago, he'll be a #1 starter.

I think it's a worthwhile trade for the Pirates. It's better to trade a veteran too soon than too late. While Giles is an excellent player, we've already seen his upside. Perez could be very good for a long time.

For the Padres, Giles will give them an offensive boost going into the new stadium. I doubt he'll give them enough to make the team a contender, even with the return of Phil Nevin.

You just have to read the first paragraph of this article.

There's no maybe about it. :-)

One big game in the AL today pits the Chicago White Sox against the NY Yankees. The White Sox have fought back to take the lead in the AL Central, while the Yankees in recent days have extended their leads in the both the AL East and the best record races. It's a great pitching matchup, too, with Cy Young candidate Esteban Loaiza facing multi-time winner Roger Clemens. Both have shown great control over their last five starts, Clemens walking 7 in 35 2/3 innings and Loaiza walking 5 in 32 innings. This is going to be a big test for the White Sox; if the Red Sox are the wild card and the White Sox win the Central, they will be playing the Yankees in the first round. It's the first meeting between the two clubs this year, and it's a chance for the White Sox to prove they are a serious pennant contender.

Too good contests in the NL tonight. In the battle for the NL Central, the Cubs visit St. Louis and send Mark Prior to the mound to battle Garrett Stephenson. Prior has never beaten the Cardinals although he's pitched well against them. Both have been pitching well over their last five starts; like Clemens and Loaiza, they are not walking batters. Expect a tight, low-scoring game here.

In Montreal, the Expos continue to battle Philadelphia for the wild card. And did you know the Expos drew 30,501 last night? It was their third biggest crowd of the year and only the third above 30,000. Why to go, Expos fans! Vincente Padilla will face Zach Day tonight. Day has had a great August, posting a 1.69 ERA in four starts (note: Mark Prior at 0.69 has the best ERA in the majors in August). In fact the Expos are 2nd only to the Dodgers in August ERA at 3.04. (The Phillies are 22nd at 4.88, which may explain their 10-13 record in the month.

The Royals picked up Brian Anderson in a trade with the Cleveland Indians. What I find interesting about Anderson is that he's posted almost identical numbers to last year, but has allowed 20 fewer earned runs. I thought it might be that he's doing better with runners in scoring position, but that's not true. He has taken more men off base than last year (17 DP vs. 13 DPs, 7 CS instead of 4 CS), but that' not much. I wonder if he's just had a better bullpen behind him this year? The Indians have been better at stopping inherited runners from scoring than the DBacks were last year. The Royals, however, are last in this category this year, with 46.1% of inherited runners scoring. I'll have to do more research later to see if this was really the difference with Anderson.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	1939	1943
Attendance	28108	28668

Quite a day. The Red Sox beat the Mariners this afternoon, and the A's hang on to beat the Blue Jays 8-6. There is now a three way tie for first place/wild card between the two AL West teams and the Red Sox. This is actually very good for the Red Sox. If the season were to end today, the Sox would be the wild card, and the Mariners and A's would play a one game winner take all for the other playoff spot (this happened in 1995 with the Mariners and Angels). The biggest beneficiary of this is the Yankees, who now have a big lead for home field advantage in the playoffs.

It looks like Livan Hernandez is back to his great post-season form. He shut the Phillies down tonight, pitching a complete game, allowing 1 run, 8 hits and 9 strikeouts. In his last 10 starts, he's given up 1 run or less 8 times. Not only did he rest the Expos bullpen, but the Expos offense forced the Phillies pen to work 6 1/3 innings. Expos now three games out of the wild card, and the Marlins move into a tie with the Phillies. There will be seven teams within 3 games of the wild card tomorrow morning.

Terrance Long is hitting much in August, but his hits are going a long way. He only has 21 hits in 83 AB, but 11 of those 21 hits have been for extra bases. That's helped him to 13 RBI in the month.

Bill Hall of the Milwaukee Brewers is three for three tonight with two doubles. He's now five for eight against the Reds this season with four extra-base hits.

Livan Hernandez is starting the fifth inning. He's thrown 46 pitches so far, or less than 12 per inning. He should be able to go the distance at this rate.

Damien Moss is indeed wild tonight. Through two, he's thrown 35 pitches, 18 for balls. The Yankees have 2 walks and 3 hits, but have only been able to plate one run.

Update: Nice catch by Jay Gibbions in the right field corner to rob Jeter of an opposite field triple.

Vlad Guerrero rises to the occasion and takes Randy Wolf deep in the first to give the Expos a three run lead. He's up again in the 2nd with the bases loaded and two out.

Update: Guerrero walks to drive in his fourth run of the game. In 1 2/3 innings, Wolf has walked 3 and allowed four hits.

Update: Wil Cordero hits his 2nd doube of the night to drive in three and extend the score to 7-0. If this holds up, it will be a big win for the Expos. The game's not on TV here; I wonder what the crowd is like.

I'm throwing out a question and I don't know the answer. Pedro is likely to lead the league in ERA and strikeouts, since he's in the lead in those two categories. His lead in strikeouts is pretty amazing considering how few innings he's pitched this year. It's hard for me to imagine at this point that he'll have more than 15 wins, and like last year, he'll probably fall short of 200 innings. Yet, at the moment, he's clearly the best pitcher in the AL. How much should his fragility cost him? As of August 19, Pedro was six win shares behind Hudson, or 2 team wins. It will be interesting to see how much he can make up between now and the end of the season. At this point, you give it to Hudson or Loaiza, but if it's down to 1 or 2 win shares, I think you give it to Pedro.

It looks like Pedro is done for today. He goes six innings, giving up 1 run. The Mariners had their chances against him; they were 1 for 7 with runners in scoring position. From the radio broadcast, there were a number of good plays in the outfield, and a ball that missed the foul poll by inches. Seattle's offense has been in a funk, but it's probably more of an unlucky streak that something wrong with the team. Sox lead 7-1 in the bottom of the 6th.

David Ortiz goes deep to extend the Red Sox lead to 3-0. Oritz becomes the sixth Red Sox player to have 20 HR, most in the majors according to the broadcast. I still wonder why the Twins let him go. They could use a players with a .566 slugging percentage.

Pedro's gone two innings so far, throwing 29 pitches, 20 for strikes. However, he has yet to strikeout a batter. The announcers say he looks like he lost weight; I wonder if he's not as strong as usual. If the Mariners keep putting balls in play, eventually they are going to drop in for more hits.

However, the Mariners batters are not making Pedro work. They should be a little more patient and try to wear him out quickly today.

Only six games today, and five of them will have an effect on the pennant or wild card races. In the getaway day game, the Boston Red Sox attempt to sweep the Seattle Mariners, and they are expected to send Pedro Martinez to the mound. He'll face Gil Meche. The Mariners have lost five in a row, and from what I've seen this weekend, their offense looks pretty lackluster. Boone especially seemed to be pressing when I watched him bat. He's 4 for 20 during the losing streak. Pedro is 11-0 vs. Seattle in his career. That's his best record against any team.

A battle of lefties in NY as the Orioles finish up their four game series with the Yankees. Andy Pettitte will face recently acquired Damien Moss. Moss has walked 15 in 24 1/3 innings since joining the Orioles, but his 3.70 ERA isn't bad for that. The Yankees are a very selective team, so I would think they would take full advantage if this wildness shows up tonight.

Oakland has taken advantage of Seattle's losing streak to pull within a game of the Mariners in the AL West. No matter what the outcome of the afternoon game, the A's will know that a win will either put them in a tie for first place in the West, or alone in first place for the Wild Card.

The Montreal Expos have the most teams to pass for the NL wild card, sitting four game back with six or seven teams in front of them (depends on how you count the tie in the NL Central). But they are hosting the Phillies for four games in Montreal starting tonight. A sweep would bring them into a tie with the Phillies, although probably not into first place. Neither team is coming off a very good road trip. The Expos were 2-4 on the West Coast, while the Phillies were 1-5 in their swing through the midwest, yet maintained first place in the wild card race. Livan Hernandez will face Randy Wolf, and the pitchers are going in opposite directions. Wolf has a 6.99 ERA over his last five starts, while Hernandez is 3-1 with a 1.10 ERA over his last five. Since the all-star break, his opposition OBA is .238, the lowest in the NL (Tim Hudson leads the majors at .232).

Finally, the Padres visit the Diamondbacks, and the Arizona is hoping for an Expos victory so they can inch closer in the Wild Card race as well. Jake Peavy will face Randy Johnson. Johnson is 11-2 career vs. SD with a 1.96 ERA, while Peavy is 1-4 vs. the Diamondbacks with an 11.10 ERA. But Peavy has pitched well lately, allowing no runs in three of his last four starts (on 8/8, he pitched nine scoreless innings against the Reds, but did not get a decision). And Johnson, while still striking out batters, is getting hit and has a 4.99 ERA over his last five starts.

Enjoy!

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	1933	1935
Attendance	28102	28675

Rick Lederer has a nice tribute to Bobby Bonds at his web log. He takes a thorough statistical look at his career.

Dr. Manhattan at Blissful Knowledge writes a post about the recent study by Tom Tippett at Diamond Mind Baseball on the Voros McCracken's DIPS theory. He's not sure about something:

McCracken’s theory had value beyond what it said about pitchers’ performance. By largely removing the influence of pitchers from the results of balls put into play, it also provided the justification for the foundation of Bill James’ and Baseball Prospectus’ methods of measuring fielding performance. But now, it seems like we have taken several steps backward. To use an example cited in the Diamond Mind study, in measuring the defensive performance of the Seattle Mariners over the last several years, don’t you have to adjust for the influence of Jamie Moyer? And again, doesn’t that merely reopen the “Hibernian Problem” of distinguishing pitching from defense?
Maybe I’m missing something here, but I’m not sure what it is.

I meant to talk about this at the time of the Diamond Mind article, but something else took my attention and I never got back to it. I think the most interesting part of the Tippett article is this section entitled, "Year-to-year variations, part two."

It goes without saying that one cannot prove or disprove the idea that "there is little correlation between what a pitcher does one year in the stat and what he will do the next" by examining only ten or twelve careers.

To get a better handle on this phenomenon, I compiled a database consisting of all pairs of consecutive seasons in which a pitcher faced at least 400 batters in each season. Using this sample of 7,486 season-pairs, I computed the correlation coefficient for the net HBP rate, BB rate, K rate, HR rate, and in-play hit rate.

I found the highest correlation (.73) for strikeout rates. Walk rates (.66) were also highly correlated. The correlation coefficients dropped to .36 for hit batsmen, .29 for homeruns, and .16 for in-play batting average relative to the league. The lowest correlation (.09) was seen for in-play batting average relative to the team.

It may appear to be contradictory to say that certain pitchers appear to be consistently good while the overall correlation rate is quite low. But that's not necessarily so.

If McCracken is right, the difference between a pitcher's IPAvg and that of his team should vary randomly around zero as he moves through his career, and the correlation would be quite weak.

But if pitchers do have some influence over these outcomes, they could still exhibit a weak correlation by varying around some value other than zero that reflects the ability of the pitcher.

(Emphasis added by me.)

What Tippett is saying here is that you can predict strikeout rates pretty well just by looking at the previous season of the pitcher, but you can't predict -play batting average relative to the team well at all. That's what correlation means. Correlation goes on a scale of -1 to 1, where 1 is perfect correlation (the best at one will be the best at the other), -1 is perfect opposite correlation (the best at one will be the worst at the other) and 0 means no correlation at all; in other words, being the best at one will tell us nothing about how you do at the other. The statistican I learned from used to tell me that if he sees .5 correlation, he assumes the data is random. Seeing a .09 correlation tells me the data is very random. It's not 0, but it's very close to 0.

So, as to Dr. Manhattan's question; yes, you are missing something. The effect Tippett is showing is small, so small that DIPS is still valid. Bill James knew about this when he wrote win shares, but for the aggregate I think it works really well. We don't have to reopen the “Hibernian Problem”; we just have to understand that the solution is just an approximation.

Correction: The Hibernian Problem is a typo in the original Blissful Knowledge entry. Here's what the problem is:

I've just fixed my post. Sorry - my BP2K is in storage so I couldn't double-check it. the correct term is "Hibert" problems. Those problems were a list of 23 fundamental mathematical problems propounded around the turn of the century by a mathemetician nmaed Hibert. In BP2K, Keith Woolner tried his hand at setting out a list of parallel questions, and a primary one was the distinction of pitching and defense. The piece helped inspire Voros McCracken.

Correction II: The name of the mathematician is Hilbert, not Hibert. Thanks to Mike Malloy for catching this.

Tom Glavine is perfect through 3, and he's only thrown 30 pitches. The Mets are beating Kevin Brown 2-0 in the fourth.

As I watched the Cubs-Diamondbacks game, it struck me that Dusty Baker did not do a good job of preparing for things going wrong. He brought in Kyle Farnsworth, but Farnsworth was wild. After he had gotten in trouble, Dusty started the bullpen working. But why didn't he have someone up right away? The DBacks are a good offensive team at home; in this day and age, when few teams can trust their relievers, Dusty needs to have someone ready when his pitcher is in trouble. He wasn't prepared today, but he was lucky it didn't cost him.

The Phillies lost, and so far every team that was trailing them for the wild card, with the exception of Arizona has won. No matter what the outcome of the Mets-Dodgers game, there will be 7 teams within 4 games of the Phillies for the wild card come tomorrow morning.

Twice in the bottom of the 8th innings, the Cubs had appeals go their way on strikes, the second time to end the inning on a strikeout. The first base ump is definitely liberal when it comes to calling the swing a strike. Brenly has been tossed; it's the third one of the game that went against him. Cubs lead 5-2 in the top of the 9th. Replays seemed to show the calls were good.

The Colorado Rockies are getting beat 12-4 by the Atlanta Braves. It's the 22nd time the Braves have scored 10 runs or more this year, tied with the Cardinals for most in the majors. Chipper Jones is 4 for 4 with 2 doubles. Four of his seven hits at Coors this year have been for doubles.

A big game for Miguel Cabrera so far, he's three for four with a HR and three RBI. He's brought his slugging percentage up over .500. Marlins lead 7-1 in the 7th.

Johan Santana showed why he's been the best starter for the Twins this year. He struck out 10 in six innings, while only walking two. He brought his ERA down to 2.85. The Twins win and the White Sox loss brings the three competing Central teams within 1.5 games of each other.

The Athletics scored 17 runs today in their defeat of the Toronto Blue Jays. It was their 8 game scoring ten runs or more. That's low. Only the Tigers (who had their 2nd 10-run game today), the DRays and the Indians have scored 10 less often in the AL.

Brandon Webb got hit on 1 arm with a batted ball, ended up with the bases loaded and no one out, and pitched out of the jam. He struck out Miller and Clement, and got Lofton to pop out. DBacks lead 1-0.

The Tigers pulled out a wild one in Detroit to end their 11 game losing streak. They've scored 32 runs in their last four games, but lost 3 of them. If there offense can stay at this level, however, I suspect they'll do better than .250.

Good pitching by Tomko and Kline for the Cardinals. The Phillies had the bases loaded in the 6th and 7th inning and failed to score. Phillies are 1 for 7 with men in scoring position, but have not scored. The Cardinals are 0 for 10 with runners in scoring position, but scored on two sacrifice flys.

Jose Contreras has earned his salary today. He went seven innings, and allowed only 3 hits and 1 walk, and the walk was on his going to his mouth with a 3-2 count. He struck out 5 and only threw 93 pitches. That's as good as the Yankees could expect, and strengthens their rotation for the stretch drive.

That's what Mike Maroth must be thinking right now. Chone Figgins is two for two with two RBI today, extend the Angels lead to 5-2 in the 2nd.

Update: Figgins is now 3 for 3, but five different Tigers have 2 hits, and Detroit now leads 7-6. Maroth comes out of the game after five with the lead, replaced by Schmack. Maroth will not get his 19th loss today. We'll see if Schmack get smacked around.

A good day for catchers so far. Hernandez had the slam in the first for Oakland, and Jorge Posada hit a three run homer in the bottom of the first for the Yankees. Contreras has struck out four through two.

Dmitri Young hits a HR of his own in the bottom of the first to bring the Tigers back within 1 run of the Angels. Looks like they won't go down without a fight.

Ramon Hernandez hits a grand slam in the first off Kelvim Escobar in the first. It's his first slam this year and only the 2nd of his career.

Mike Maroth is leaving nothing to chance in going for his 19th loss. He gave up singles to the first two Angel hitters, then Garret Anderson launched one for a three-run HR. Angels lead 3-0 after the top of the first.

Brian Kingman of the 1980 Athletics was the last person to lose 20 games in a season. Since then, there have been 10 nineteen loss seasons posted by pitchers. Albie Lopez was the last to accomplish this in 2001, but he did it for two teams in different leagues. The last to lose 19 games for one team was Bobby J. Jones, who lost 19 for San Diego in 2001. Jose DeLeon is the only pitcher to lose 19 twice in that time frame. Today, Mike Maroth goes for his 19th loss as the Tigers host the Angels. The Tigers have now lost 11 in a row, the longest streak in the majors this year. Maroth should have no problem getting the loss, as Scott Shields has an ERA three run lower than Mike.

Jose Contreras returns to the Yankees rotation today against Eric DuBose of the Baltimore Orioles. The Orioles are 3-1 in NY this year, but 1-5 against the Yankees in Baltimore.

The Twins will try to salvage a split with the Royals today as they send their best starter, Johan Santana, against Kevin Appier. Santana has a 1.20 ERA over his last four starts.

In the NL, two of the top three leaders in ERA are pitching this evening. Brandon Webb, third with a 2.50 ERA will face Matt Clement in an important wild card game. Webb is looking more and more like the NL rookie of the year.

In LA, NL leader Kevin Brown faces Tom Glavine. Glavine has been great lately, posting a 2.10 ERA over his last five games. Brown has struck out 33 over his last 32 2/3 innings.

Enjoy.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	1918	1920
Attendance	28059	28649

Remember when I said the Tigers were horrible? Today, they have blown leads of 5-0, 6-4 and 8-7. The score is 8-8, tied with the Angels in the 10th.

Freddy Garica walked six Red Sox batters today, but left with a 1 run lead in the 6th. It's the fifth time in his career he's walked 6, the 2nd time this year.

Manny Ramirez was running on a 3-2 pitch. It was ball four, but the catcher threw to 2nd. Manny's helmet fell off and he walked toward third to retrieve it, and was tagged out. I guess he thought time had been called.

Craign Monroe hit a three-run shot to give the Tigers a 3-0 lead over the Angels. Ten of Monroe's 15 HR have come with men on base.

Matt Morris is showing no ill effects from his injury. So far, he's thrown 40 pitches through three innings, 31 for strikes. And he picked up a single, too.

Fox is reporting that Bobby Bonds died. I remember Bonds the year he played with the Yankees. Great speed and power. I had him on my 1979 strato-matic team as a leadoff hitter. My condolences go out to his family.

Update: Here's the AP story.

Burkett is throwing strikes on the mound today. A six pitch, 1-2-3, first inning, all strikes.

Minnesota returns Joe Mays to the mound again. He'll face the Royals in the third game of final head-to-head series between the two teams. Mays has had a 6.51 ERA as a starter this year, 3.93 in relief. He'll face Jose Lima, who was hammered in his first start back from the DL.

A nice pitching matchup in St. Louis this afternoon. Amaury Telemaco returned to the majors against the Cardinals last week, and pitched seven good innings for the victory. He's opposed by Matt Morris, fresh off the DL himself. The Phillies are 4-0 against St. Louis this year, and have outscored them 27 to 16.

Even though he's in Arizona, the heat should not bother Shawn Estes today, since they'll be playing indoors. Maybe the Diamondbacks should open the roof so they can wilt the Cubs starter. He'll face Miguel Batista who has a career 8.91 ERA against the Cubs in 32 1/3 innings.

Josh Beckett of the Marlins faces Dustin Hermanson in San Francisco. Hermanson has posted a 2.55 ERA since joining the Giants. The Marlins have lost all four games on this road trip and now trail the Phillies by 1 1/2 games for the wild card.

Tim Redding will try to get Houston back on the winning track today against Paul Wilson and the Cincinnati Reds. Redding has cut way down on his walks lately, issuing only 7 in his last five starts. He has a 3.66 ERA overall, but it's only 2.03 over the last five.

Enjoy!

The NL Central got a little tighter, and the NL Wild Card got a little wider. The Cubs beat Curt Schilling on the combination of Zambrano's pitching and Sosa's hitting. The two shots gave Sosa 30 for the season, the 9th straight year he's had at least 30 HR. Zambrano threw a one-hitter, but lost the no-no on what appeared to be a bad call by the umpire. The Cubs handled it exactly right:

"I saw the play on the field and I thought it was out,'' Zambrano said. "But he's a human. Anybody can make a mistake.''

Zambrano had allowed one baserunner before Hillenbrand singled. He walked Raul Mondesi in the fifth. Baker explained why he didn't argue Miller's call.

"They are not going to change it,'' Baker said. "I have seen many times where a guy gives up a no-hitter late and ends up losing focus. I didn't want to take away from his concentration. That's why we didn't say anything. We were more conscious of winning the game.''

Classy guys.

Meanwhile, both the Astros and Cardinals were losing, moving the Cubs into 2nd place, 1/2 game behind the Astros. And the Cardinals loss was a big one for them, since it was against the wild card leading Phillies who were reeling from a sweep in Milwaukee. Even having Albert Pujols return to the lineup didn't help. Pujols went 0 for 5 to end his 30 game hitting streak. The game made it evident why the Cardinals were looking for bullpen help, as the pen, over the last three innings, turned a 4-2 lead into a 9-4 defeat.

The Phillies closest wild card competitor, the Marlins, lost to the Giants 6-4. Rookie Dontrelle Willis pitched 5 good innings, but did not get a batter out in the 6th and reliever Chad Fox gave up a walk, single and a walk to allowe all of Willis' runners to score and pin the loss on him. Willis has lost 3 of his last 4 starts.

In the AL, KC played another close game against the Twins, getting a good performance out of Darrell May, out dueling a good performance by Kyle Lohse. The Royals are 7-2 in one and two run games against the Twins this year.

Roy Halladay beat Barry Zito last night to pick up his 17th win. He did give up eight hits, six for extra bases, but Oakland couldn't follow up the hits. They were 1 for 10 with runners in scoring position last night. Nor could those long hits drive in much, since Halladay didn't walk a batter. Meanwhile, the Jays had six hits with men in scoring position, giving them a 6-3 victory.

This opened the door for the Red Sox who posted a 6-4 win. Jeff Suppan got the job done last night. He limited the Mariners to six hits over 6 2/3 innings, and more importantly, 2 runs. Only two of the six hits were for extra bases. The bullpen was a little shaky, giving up 5 hits in 2 1/3 innings, but they did not break. Sox and A's are tied for the wild card.

The St. Louis Cardinals added two pitchers to their staff last night. They picked up reliever Mike DeJean from the Brewers and left-hander Sterling Hitchcock from the Yankees. The Yankees got two prospects in return, and the Brewers will decide on a player later.

The first thing I notice about DeJean is that he's given up 12 HR in 64 2/3 innings. Doesn't look like the parks a big factor. I would be wary of bringing him in with men on base.

Hitchcock has bee good against lefties this year, but poor against righties. RHB are hitting .304 with a .356 OBA against Sterling. And five of the six HR he's allowed have been hit by righties. The Cardinals are talking about putting him in the rotation, but he may be better suited to designated lefty killer at this point.

The Yankees get prospects for a change. Ben Julianel was being groomed as a closer at A ball this year. He has the strikeout pitch; 77 in 50 2/3 innings at Peoria this year. He's really pitched well his three years in A ball, making me wonder why he still was there. In his minor league career, he's given up 11 HR in 236 1/3 innings. I'm less impressed with Justin Pope. His first two years were pretty good, but in 2003 his strikeouts are down and his walks and HR are up. He's another one that had two good years at A ball, but was not promoted. Are the Cardinals just flush with pitchers at the AA and AAA level? If so, why aren't they bringing them up to the majors instead of trading for marginal major leaguers?

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	1903	1904
Attendance	28003	28602

Albert Pujols is back in the Cardinals lineup, trying to extend his hit streak to 31 games.

Update: Pujols 0 for 2 so far.

Update: Pujols 0 for 3.

Update: Pujols 0 for 4. Cards leading 4-3 in the 7th.

This is bad news.

Oakland Athletics pitcher Mark Mulder has a stress fracture in his right hip, putting the rest of his season in jeopardy.

"Mark is not going to be here for awhile," Athletics manager Ken Macha said Friday.

Macha and trainer Larry Davis would not speculate on how long the ace left-hander would be sidelined.

"I'm not going to even put a number on it," Davis said.

I guess we are going to find out just how good Billy Beane has been at drafting and developing pitchers. This has to give Red Sox fans more hope for a wild card.

Aaron Gleeman finally generates some buzz about the AL Central. :-) I love this part:

Sure, if these three teams were racing for 100 wins instead of 85 wins, it would probably be a lot more exciting. On the other hand, if they were better teams, this would stop being a true pennant-race, because the teams that lost out on the division title would still have a chance at the Wild Card.

For good or for bad, there will be no Wild Card winner from this division. If one of these teams wants to make the playoffs, they are going to have to beat the other two. Personally, I love that, although it would be nice if it didn't have to be a division with lousy, non Wild Card-contending teams for a true pennant-race to take place.

That's the thing I really don't like about the wild card. It's a lot harder to get pennant races between great teams.

Seattle at Boston gives Jeff Suppan another chance to prove that the trade was worth it. So far with Boston, he's given up 20 hits, 16 for extra-bases. He's also allowed 16 ER in 16 1/3 innings. He'll face Joel Pineiro, who has not been great since the All-Star break, allowing a 4.86 ERA vs. 3.28 in the first half.

In Detroit, the Angels try to pin loss number 17 on Jeremy Bonderman. I guess the question is, who will get to 20 losses first for Detroit?

In Minnesota, the Royals send Darrell May against Kyle Lohse. Lohse is 4-0 in August with a 4.33 ERA. The Twins have scored 32 runs in his 27 innings pitched in those games.

A few big wild card games tonight in the NL. Philadephia swept the Cardinals last weekend, and invades St. Louis tonight. Brett Myers faces Danny Haren. Albert Pujols may return tonight to bolster the Cards and try to continue his 30 game hitting streak.

Two really hot pitchers face each other in really hot Arizona. Carlos Zambrano will twirl for the Cubs, while Curt Schilling takes the mound for the Diamondbacks. Zambrano has a 1.64 ERA over his last five starts, while Schilling can top that with a 1.00 ERA and a 17 consecutive inning scoreless streak.

Finally, rookie sensation Dontrelle Willis faces trade dissapointment Sidney Ponson as the Marlins face the Giants in San Francisco. Ponson is 0-3 for the Giants, while Willis has been hit lately, allowing a 4.66 ERA over his last five starts.

Looks like an enjoyable evening of baseball around the country!

The White Sox acquired Scott Sullivan from the Cincinnati Reds last night. I think this leaves the Reds' bullpen completely empty. Sullivan walks a lot of batters and strikes out a lot of batters. Only the Yankees and A's have had fewer innings pitched by their pens. Maybe with the addition of Sullivan, Manuel can use his pen more. He should be one of the top three relievers on the White Sox.

The Cubs were playing Houston. Atlanta was playing San Francisco. The Phillies and Marlins were playing weaker teams. So what happened? The Eastern contenders got swept. No change there. The Giants were able to pick up a game on the DBacks and Dodgers. The Astros increased their lead to 1 game from 1/2 a game. The real action was in the wild card. There are now seven teams within four games of capturing the wild card. So who has the advantage down the stretch? The Central teams have the easiset schedule:

Team	Remaining Opponents Avg. WPct
Marlins	.529
Phillies	.520
Expos	.515
Dodgers	.502
Diamondbacks	.502
Cardinals	.487
Cubs	.469

There has been the possibility of a massive wild card tie in the past. With so many teams in it, and with the schedule strength almost the inverse of the current standings, we could see three, four or five teams tied at the end of the season. Won't that be fun to sort out!

Update: The Giants also moved within four of the Braves for home field advantage in the NL playoffs. My opinion has been for a while that the Braves have been playing a bit over their heads, and I expect them to come back to the pack a bit before the season is over. The Giants now have a chance to catch them for the home field in the NLCS.

Alex Belth is on a roll this week, publishing an interview with former player and author Jim Bouton. Here's a part I especially like:

BB: There was an amusing exchange with you and Moose Skowron at the Yankees Old-Timer’s Game in 2001 where he took exception with your feeling that the modern players are superior to the one’s you played with. What makes the current generation of players better?

JB: In terms of the quality of play, the players are just better than we were. They’re bigger, they’re stronger, they’re faster. They are better trained, they have weight training, and personal coaches, they have computers, they have videotapes now to help them with their motions and their batting swings. There are just all sorts of advances that are way ahead of us. But Moose believes, still, that the 1960s were better. I said, “Moose, don’t you remember the Old Timer’s days in Yankee Stadium when we would sit there, in 1962, for example, and Bill Dickey would come in from the 1930s and tell us how much better they were back in the ‘30s. We used to think the guy was an old nut.” I said, “That’s what you look like to player’s today.” There is no way that Bill Dickey was better than Yogi and Mickey and Whitey, and there’s no way that guys today aren’t better than Mickey and Whitey.

BB: What about the argument that is usually put forth by the old guys that the modern players have terrible fundamentals and can’t do the little things to help their team win?

JB: Well, the game has changed. It’s not a bunting game. It’s a home run game. So they have big, strong guys who hit home runs. That’s the way it is. The games are now 14-10. You don’t have as many 2-1 ballgames. So if we walked off the field in 1962 and onto a baseball field today, 40 years later, we would probably be able to score three or four runs by bunting, and hitting and running, and hitting the cut-off man, and moving the runner over, and then we’d lose 14-3.

It's a great interview.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	1888	1889
Attendance	27979	28552

Guardado gets the Royals 1-2-3 in the 9th for the save. The Twins win, and move 1/2 a game ahead of KC. TheWhite Sox are winning 7-3 in the bottom of the 8th, so it looks like the Royals will go from 1st to 3rd in one night.

Shannon Stewart singles in the go-ahead run in the bottom of the 7th. He has driven in all four Minnesota runs tonight. Not bad for a leadoff man. The 7-8-9 hitters for the Twins are two for six with two walks.

The Red Sox put a hurtin' on the Oakland A's tonight. The A's bullpen could not handle the load three days in a row as the Sox won 14-5. Tonight, the Red Sox bullpen gave up 1 hit and 0 runs in 3 2/3 innings. The win keeps them in the wild card race at one game back.

The A's have to be happy, however, to have taken 2 out of 3 and claimed first place in the WC race for themselves.

Paul Abbott had a no-hitter through five innings. In the sixth, however, the Twins strike back. An infield single and a walk set up a three-run HR by Shannon Stewart to tie the game. It's his 6th HR in 34 games for the Twins; he had 7 in 71 games for the Blue Jays. It's 3-3 in the bottom of the 6th.

Kerry Wood got hit hard tonight. He gave up six hits in four innings, one a 2-run HR by Craig Biggio. Wood has now given up 26 runs (all earned) in his last 32 innings.

Dave Veres relieved him and did even worse, allowing hits to the first five batters to face him. The Astros lead 8-1.

The Oakland A's bullpen has pitched 11 2/3 innings in the last two games against the Red Sox, allowing no runs. They needed a good outing from Rich Harden tonight, and didn't get it. Harden left after 2 2/3 innings and eight runs; the pen is going to have to go another 6 1/3 tonight. Mike Wood is in, and so far he's gone 2 1/3 scoreless.

The Royals draw first blood against the Twin with a single by Guiel and a double by Randa.

Pedro Martinez did not start for the Red Sox tonight. He has a sore throat and a stomach ache. Part of me wants to say, "Suck it up, Pedro! This is the biggest game of the year!" but I know that's not fair. Still, I have to believe that a sick Pedro is better than a healthy Casey Fossum.

The Dodgers didn't score much, but they scored enough. Two Cesar Izturis doubles drove in the two runs the boys in blue needed to win. The Expos out hit them 9 to 5, but were 0 for 5 with runners in scoring position. With Philadelphia losing, it was a big game for both teams.

Adrian Beltre breaks up the no-hitter in the fifth with a single. That's all the Dodgers have gotten so far. The Expos lead 1-0 batting in the sixth.

Update: Dodgers tie it at one on an Izturis double. That raises Izzy's slugging percentage to .299.

The Phillies are losing 3-2 today, and are in danger of being swept by the Brewers. The Pillies are an underperforming team this year; based on their runs scored and allowed, they should have a .583 winning percentage instead of a .552 winning percentage. I blame Larry Bowa.

I don't like Larry Bowa as a manager. The main reason I don't like him is that he's one of the people who drove Scott Rolen out of Philadelphia. Rolen didn't fit his firey brand of baseball. Forget for a minute that Rolen is one of the best third basemen in the game; he had to go because he didn't mesh with Larry. Now, this year, since I've heard little complaint from Bowa about individuals on the team, I assume everyone is with the program. Bowa has the kind of players he wants. And he's not winning as much as he should.

So Bowa's strategy doesn't work. They can sweep the Cardinals, but can't carry the energy over to beat the Brewers. Why? Shouldn't they be just as fired up for this series? Doesn't Bowa require nothing less? This team should be running away with the wild card. Bowa can't blame his players this year. Their failure rests squarely on his shoulders.

I was just looking at the Expos-Dodgers boxscore. Is the Dodgers lineup one of the worst you've ever seen? Not counting the pitcher, there are four batters with OBA's under .300. I could stomach that if they were batting 5-8, but two of them are in the #2 and #4 slots! They're going to be lucky to score to today.

Update: Zach Day perfect through three. Expos up 1-0 on a Vlad HR.

Update Day perfect through four.

I don't know how much notice he'll get for rookie of the year with all the good, young pitching in the NL, but Scott Podsednik deserves some attention. He has the highest OBA of any rookie in the majors who qualifies for the batting title. He's does what a lead off man is supposed to do; get on base. He has almost no power, but he has stolen 25 bases in 32 attempts, a 78% clip. He's the kind of player the Brewers need.

Those of you old enough might remember a 70's TV series called Kung Fu. This was a famous scene. A young Caine wants to know when he'll be able to leave the temple. His master instructs him:

"As quickly as you can...snatch the pebble from my hand." [Caine tries and fails]
"When you can take the pebble from my hand, it will be time for you to leave."

Do you get the feeling Billy Beane is doing that to Theo Epstein this week?

"Snatch a victory from my team." [Espstein tries and fails] "When you can beat this team, then you can go to the playoffs."

Maybe Theo should shave his head. :-)

Jon e-mailed me with a link to this story:

Major League Baseball, owners of the Montreal Expos, signed veteran third baseman Todd Zeile to a contract for the remainder of the season.

It was erroneously thought that Zeile, who went 1 for 3 with a walk in his debut with his new organization Wednesday night against the Los Angeles Dodgers, would spend the rest of 2003 with the Expos. However, baseball announced that the UCLA graduate had instead been signed to play for visiting teams to Dodger Stadium.

Zeile will suit up for Montreal in today's afternoon game against the Dodgers. Then, while the Expos head down to San Diego, Zeile will stay in his hometown and put on the uniform of the New York Mets for a three-game weekend series at Chavez Ravine.

I was actually surprised the Yankees let Zeile go. I assumed at this point you had to be a bad hitter to play third for the Bronx Bombers. I really thought Weaver would be the first to go.

On a more serious note, has anyone noticed that Gagne needs the game to be on the line? In save situations, his ERA is 0.44 and has allowed a .096 BA. In non-save situations, his ERA is 3.47 and has allowed a .190 BA. (40 2/3 innings in save situations, 23 1/3 innings non-save situations.)

The Kansas City Royals go into Minnesota tonight tied for first place with the Chicago White Sox and half a game ahead of the Twins. The Royals have lost five of their last six; the Twins have won four of their last five. The pitching matchup is not great; the Royals will depend on Paul Abbott, who has given up 12 earned runs in 9 2/3 innings. The Twins will send ageless left-hander Kenny Rogers. I'd look for a lot of runs tonight.

The Red Sox try to stop their slide out of the wild card. Oakland rookie Rich Harden faces his toughest test of the year as he goes against Pedro Martinez. An injury to Tim Hudson kept this from being a matchup of the top two leaders in AL ERA.

In the rubber game of their series, the Cubs send Kerry Wood to the mound against Houston's Ron Villone. Wood continues to walk too many, and has a 6.75 ERA over his last five starts. Villone has had the same problem. The Astros are a bit more selective than the Cubs (they've drawn more walks), so this matchup should favor them. Enjoy!

Former baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth is running for governor of California. Ueberroth has been very successful at fixing things in his career. I wonder if he'll solve the budget crisis is California by selling corporate sponsorships? Look for the Only Baseball Matters Golden Gate Bridge soon!

The Cincinnati Reds have to be happy with the Guillen trade today, as Aaron Harang wins his third straight game and beats Randy Johnson 2-0. Aaron went seven shutout innings, walking none and striking out 6. He has a 2.37 ERA since joining the Reds. Given the state of the Reds pitching before the trade, this is a tremendous improvement.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	1874	1875
Attendance	27993	28561

Darren Oliver was hit by a batted ball in the first, and had to be removed after pitching 2/3 of an inning. Cory Vance is on in relief, and is matching Mark Redman in shutout innings in the 5th. The Marlins have 2 hits, the Rockies 4, and neither team has drawn a walk so far. Florida has not had an AB with a runner in scoring position, while the Rockies are 0 for 4.

Update: The Red Sox get the first two batters of the 8th on base, but leave them there as Ricon gets a strike out, and fly out and a line out to end the inning.

Kim came on in the 8th, and he's allowed two runs so far, and is now feeling the wrath of the Fenway fans. The Sox had a 5-1 and 6-2 advantage, but they have left 14 people on base tonight. The had timely hitting early, going 5 for their first 11 with runners in scoring position, but are 0 for 6 since then.

Update: With men on first and third, Mueller throws the ball away as he tries to get the runner going from third to home. Oakland now has the lead and runners on 2nd and 3rd with 1 out. Kim is out of the game. With Seattle losing to Toronto, the A's can now gain on both the Sox and the Mariners.

Prior is pitching close to perfect tonight. He's only allowed one hit and one walk through six. He's struck out 9, and only thrown 76 pitches. The Cubs lead Houston 6-0.

The Twins have beaten the Indians 4-3 to reduce their deficit in the AL Central to 1/2 game. They open a four game series against KC tomorrow, and need three wins to overtake them. They are 6-9 against the Royals this season.

The Milwaukee Brewers are up 5-0 on Randy Wolfe and the Phillies. The big blow came off the bat of Brady Clark, a three run HR in the 5-run third. All three of Clark's HR this year have come in Milwaukee.

The Pirates have a 9-0 lead on the Cardinals in the fifth. They've hit five HR, the most they've had in a game this season. They've been on a power tear lately, having averaged .94 HR per game through their first 116 games, 2.65 per game in their last 8.

The White Sox are up 3-1 on the Anaheim Angels in the fifth inning. Esteban Loaiza is pitching another fine games, allowing one run so far and striking out seven through five innings. Fifty three of his 74 pitches have been for strikes.

The Texas Rangers beat the Detroit Tigers 6-0 tonight. It's the 13th time the Tigers have been shutout this year, which leads the majors. The Rangers had only one shutout coming into tonight, the fewest in the majors. They are now tied with four other teams with 2.

Pitcher Jeff D'Amico gives himself the the Pirates a 1-0 lead with his first HR of the year and only the 2nd of his career. It's the 2nd HR by a Pirate pitcher this year.

Mark Prior has struck out the first four batters on 15 pitches.

Update: Five in a row.

Update: Blum flies out to end the streak. But Prior is perfect through two with five strikeouts. Twenty of his 27 pitches have been for strikes.

Hank Blalock is two for three tonight to raise his overall batting average to .317. Interestingly almost all of that comes against right-handed pitching. Entering tonight, Blalock was batting .196 vs. lefties, but .350 vs. righties. Only 2 of his 19 hits against lefties are for extra bases, while about 40% of hits are for extra bases against righties.

There are two ways to look at this. One, maybe he should be platooned. Two, he's still young, and if he learns to hit lefties, he's going to awesome.

Baseball uniforms have certainly become more stylish over the years, but the basic white with black the Tigers wear is a classic. However, I do like the colorfulness of the Diamondbacks.

Jay Gibbons of the Baltimore Orioles is one of the improved players on the team this year. He's two for two tonight with a double and a HR. He raised his BA and OBA about 50 points, although his slugging percentage is the same. So he's trading power for fewer outs. All-in-all, a pretty good trade. Orioles are up 6-0 on the Devil Rays.

The Royals have scored two in the 9th and have the tieing run at the plate with 1 out. Rivera is on and has already given up an RBI single.

Update: Rivera gives up another RBI single to make it 8-6. Now that he has given up all of Hitchcock's runs, maybe he'll get down to business. :-)

Update: Another single. Luckily for the Yankees, Beltran made a bone-head running play, taking too big a turn around 2nd and got thrown out. It's 8-7 with 2 outs.

Update: Rivera strikes out Relaford, but if Beltran hadn't made his mistake this game would have been tied. Rivera gave up four hits, all singles in 2/3 of an inning.

Juan Rivera returned to the Yankees today, and it looks like he wants to stay this time. He's three for four with a single, double and home run. He's scored 2 and driven in 2. The Yankees lead 8-3 in the 8th.

The Yankees are up 8-2 in the fifth inning. The Royals lost two out of three to the Twins are they look like they are going to be swept by the Yankees. They have not set themselves up for the four game series against the Twins. It will be make or break for Kansas City over the weekend.

Alex Belth lands another great interview, this time with Jane Leavy, the author of Koufax. I thought this passage was interesting:

BB: Jane Gross said she felt more sympathetic towards men after working the beat.

JL: Well, I never felt unsympathetic to men. I should re-read that piece. But it is true that women ask different questions. One example that I’ve always used is, if a reporter says to a player, “Well, where was the pitch?” And the pitcher would say, “It was on the outside corner.” And a male reporter would interrupt, “No, I was up in the press box, it wasn’t on the outside corner, it was right down the middle.” And the pitcher would look at him like, “What planet are you on? How could you possibly be arguing with me about where the pitch was?” This would go on endlessly. Finally one day I heard Jim Palmer—or maybe it was Scott McGregor—say: “Where was the pitch? It was over the godamned fence.” That’s all you need to know. I’ve witnessed debates where guys would be sitting there, insisting to an athlete, that they know more about what happened on a particular play, and the players would sit there rolling their eyes. A female reporter is much more likely to say: “Tell me what happened.” Or in the case of a trade: “How do you feel?” That question has become ubiquitous today, and it wasn’t when Jane Gross or I started reporting. But it’s the idea of seeing the person as a complete human being and not just a piece of chattel, or a page of statistics. Sure. “How about your kids? When was the last time you tucked your kid in?”

I have to admit that I hate the "How do you feel?" question. I want the where was the pitch question. I want the why did you use that strategy question. I know how they feel. They feel good if they win, they feel bad if they lose. I want to know why they won or lost.

Roger Clemens starts off the game with a 1-2-3 inning with two strikeouts. I wonder if he knows about the record?

In a bit of fun, ESPN ran a computerized series between the '62 Mets and the 2002 Tigers. It wasn't pretty. I have my doubts about the simulation, because way too many runs were scored. But it makes a good story.

This afternoon the Royals and the Yankees finish up their three game series, and KC will send rookie Jimmy Gobble to the mound to face Roger Clemens. Clemens has struck out 262 Royals in his career; only Blyleven (263) and Ryan (278) have struck out more Royals. Watch to see if Roger K's 17 in his last start against the Royals.

The Red Sox try to rebound from their fall from a wild card tie as Tim Wakefield takes on Ted Lilly. The Red Sox are only 19-21 when the opposition starts a lefty against them.

In the National League, the Cubs-Astros series continues with the Cubs sending their best pitcher, Mark Prior to the mound to face Jared Fernandez. Fernandez has made three starts this year, averaging a little over four innings per start. He hasn't allowed a HR, but he walks about one every other inning. The Cubs have a good chance of getting a win back tonight.

The best pitching matchup of the day is out in LA, where the resurgent Livan Hernandez faces the equally resurgent Wilson Alvarez. Both have ERA's in the 1.30's over their last five starts. An important wild card game, also.

Enjoy!

Bambino's Curse is trying to keep a brave face in the wake of the Red Sox slump. Interestingly, he has a quoute from a Herald article about the intensity of the booing of Scott Williamson after giving up the HR. I would suggest the Red Sox are booing the wrong part of the team.

The Sox who were running away with the team lead in runs scored, have score 42 runs in their last 12 games. That's 3 1/2 runs a game. That's Detroit Tiger territory. And the truth is you don't win many games scoring 3 1/2 runs unless you have the Dodgers pitching staff. So who should they be booing? How about the August slump of Manny Ramirez. Manny hit into two double plays last night, giving him 20 for the year; a new career high. Is he turning into Jim Rice? Manny has hit into a DP every 11 AB this month; he had only 1 DP the entire month of July. Compared to July, his BA is down 90 points, his OBA down 80 points and his slugging percentage is down 230 points! He's the nexus; he drives in the runners ahead of him and simultaneously sets the table for the players lower in the order.

Manny had a similar slump in May. In May and August combined, the Red Sox are 21-24. The rest of the year they are 50-30. The Red Sox need to address Manny's slump. Maybe it's similar to the one Matsui went through earlier in the year when he was hitting everything on the ground. There's some evidence that this is true. Up through July, 38% of Manny's balls in play were grounders. This month, 42%. Manny needs to start hitting doubles with men on base, not into double plays.

Adam Gilbert thinks that Brandon Webb should win the NL Rookie of the Year award over Dontrelle Willis, and I have to agree.

The Montreal Expos are very much in the wild card hunt. They're in fourth place, four games back of the Phillies and 3 1/2 behind the Marlins. And their destiny is in their own hands as they play 13 in a row vs. the Phillies and Marlins when they return from the west coast.

The real beneficiary of this NL East battle for the wild card might be the Diamondbacks, however. If they can put together a nice winning streak while the NL East teams are beating each other, they could pass them all.

Quite the game in San Francisco last night. Gary Sheffield extended his hitting streak to 23 games with another HR; three times the Braves took the lead and three times the Giants fought back to tie it. Then, in the bottom of the tenth, Bonds led off the inning and the Braves chose to pitch to him. Lefty Ray King fell behind 2-1, and Bonds crushed the next pitch into the bay to win the game.

Bonds not only won a game Tuesday night, he lifted the spirits of a team that had lost six in a row, its longest skid since May, 2000. Before the game, he called a team meeting to update his teammates on the condition of his father, who is fighting cancer and recently underwent open-heart surgery.

As soon as Bonds completed his swing in the 10th, he stood at the plate for a moment, raising both arms into the air followed by a unassuming fist-pump. He used both hands to point skyward as he crossed home plate, where his sympathetic teammates waited to congratulate him.

After the game, Bonds, who usually deals with the media as a necessary evil, waved over a throng of reporters to get something off his chest. Apparently, he thought he may have offended the Braves with his antics following the home run, although he's done the same or worse before.

"That early celebration, I hope it didn't offend them," Bonds said. "I hope they understand I just have a lot of emotion for my dad right now."

I think we can probably cut Bonds some slack for that one.

My question is, why wasn't Smoltz in? Yes, King is a lefty, and hadn't allowed a HR to a lefty in 77 AB all season. But Smoltz has not allowed a HR to a lefty in 100 AB this season. I think it's a case of managers depending on a small sample size of batter vs. pitcher data. Bonds has hit .300 with 8 HR against Smoltz in 60 AB. He was 0 for 6 against King previously. Somehow, in that situation, I'd still rather have Smoltz.

The game has to be a big lift for the Giants, and having Bonds win it like that will just add to his legend.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	1859	1860
Attendance	28003	28560

Brandon Webb continues to impress. Through four innings tonight, he's allowed only 1 hit by the Reds, while striking out 7. His ERA is down to 2.48, and has been one of the steadiest rookies in the NL this year.

Mike Maroth lost his 18th game of the year tonight. The question I'm sure we'll be hearing is, "Should he be allowed to lose 20?" In the case of Maroth I would have to answer that question no. If someone is pitching well and losing 20 because the team is bad, let him pitch. But what has Maroth done well this year? He's walked a little over two per 9 innings, which is good, but he's given up a lot of HR, and he doesn't strike batters out. His ERA is 5.25. If the Tigers have no one better in their farm system, I guess they have to keep putting him out there. But most teams would have sent him down before this.

Marcus Giles takes Williams deep in the first for a 1-0 Braves lead. It's only the 5th HR Williams has allowed this year.

The Oakland A's weathered Mulder's early departure with six one-hit innings. They did walk four, but none of them scored. Keith Foulke picked up his AL leading 32^nd save.

Bonds takes the field for the Giants, as does Rich Aurilia.

A bases loaded double by Carlos Lee and a single by Frank Thomas plate three runs in the 7th to give the White Sox a 4-1 lead. They could be a game out if this holds up.

The Yankees beat KC 6-3. With the Twins winning, that takes KC's lead down to 1 1/2 games over both Minnesota and Chicago. The White Sox are tied with the Angels 1-1 in the 7th, as Garland and Sheilds are involved in a good pitching duel.

Houston has come back and retaken the lead 8-5 after four innings. Kent has a HR and four RBI for the 'Stros. Looks like they'll be going for a combined 20 runs tonight. Robertson is gone, but Clement remains in despite allowing eight earned runs.

Johan Santana gave the Twins a gift tonight, an eight inning, ten strikeout win against the Inidans. He threw 100 pitches, 73 for strikes and got eight runs in support. The poorly named Grant Balfour (any relation to Bob Walk?) finished the game, retiring the side in order in the 9th with two strikeouts of his own.

Todd Helton hit his 40th double of the year as part of a big first inning for the Rockies against the Marlins. It's his third time breaking the 40 double barrier in a season. In his six full seasons in the majors, he's never had last than 37 doubles. Since 1998, he leads the majors with 268 doubles (he has 270 overall).

Tino Martinez hit a solo shot tonight, the 298th of his career. That moves him ahead of Rickey Henderson for 98th on the all-time list. The Cardinals lead the Pirates 2-1, and they have to be hoping the Cubs take two out of three from Houston while the Cards sweep the Pirates, so St. Louis can gain on both teams.

Update: Of course, as I wrote that, Craig Wilson hit a three-run HR to give the Pirates a 4-2 lead.

Moises Alou adds a two-run HR to give the Cubs a 5-4 lead over the Astros in the third. In looking at Alou's career, the first thing I notice is that he's a career .500 slugger. Makes you wonder what his career totals would be like if he could have avoided those two major injuries.

The Royals always seem to fight back, also. Down 6-0 in the 7th, they've chased Andy Pettitte with three runs of their own. Anything can happen when you get in the Yankees bullpen lately.

The Devil Rays answer the Orioles two runs in the 6th with two runs of their own in the 8th. Lou should be proud. :-)

Derek Lowe's blister has really hurt more than his finger. Williamson gives up a three-run HR to Ramon Hernandez to give Oakland the lead and cast a pall over the Fenway crowd.

Derek Lowe went six shutout innings, then developed a blister and had to come out. Scott Sauerbeck started the 7th, got an out but left two on. Williamson is on to get him out of the jam.

The blister was a piece of bad luck. Lowe had only thrown 78 pitches through six and could have easily finished the game otherwise.

Edgar Martinez has driven in all four runs for the Seattle Mariners tonight with a single and a three-run HR. Edgar is now only five HR away from 300.

Even though he had been efficient, the Twins got to Jason Davis in the 6th. The big blow was Matthew LeCroy's three run HR in a four run 6th. The Twins have added another in the 7th for a 5-2 lead. They are looking to pick up a game on the Royals who are losing to the Yankees 5-0.

The Orioles stopped putting up 0's in the 6th. An error by pitcher Jeremi Gonzalez leads to an extra run and gives Balitmore a 2-0 lead over the Devil Rays.

Not to be outdone, the Astros come back with four in the first so far to take back the lead from the clubs. After Biggio led off with an out, the last five Astros have reached base against Clement, the last being a 2-run double by Blum. This game has slugfest written all over it.

Aramis Ramirez goes deep in the first to give the Cubs a 3-0 lead on Jeriome Robertson and the Houston Astros. It's his 5th HR in 25 games for the Cubs.

Mulder is out of the game after three innings. They haven't said what the problem is, but it appears to be some kind of injury. Chad Harville is on in relief.

A-Rod now has half a cycle on the night, as he homered in his 2nd AB to drive in three runs. That takes his slugging percentage to .601.

The Minnesota Twins appear to be swinging at the first good pitch they see from Jason Davis tonight. He's pitched four shut out innings, but has only thrown 36 pitches. He faced 13 batters, and is averaging 1 ball per batter.

Alfonso Soriano gives the Yankees a 2-0 lead in the 3rd with his 26th HR of the year. It's his 2nd HR in five games after going 20 games without a long ball. Pettitte is pitching well so far, allowing only 1 hit and 31 of his 44 pitches have been for strikes.

Carl Crawford is 2 for 2 from the leadoff spot tonight, and has scored the first run of the game on a double by rookie partner Rocco Baldelli. TB up 1-0.

Derek Lowe is keeping the ball down tonight, getting a number of ground ball outs. He's being very efficient, too, having thrown only 37 pitches through three innings. That's much better than his last outing where he was over 90 in the fifth and had to come out of the game.

Meanwhile, the Red Sox have had the leadoff man on against Mulder in each of the first three innings and lead 2-0.

In the bottom half of the first, Alex Sanchez led off with a single. Alex had attempted 56 steals this year, and has only been successful 36 times, a 64% SB rate. That's not good enough. Sanchez is costing the Tigers runs, and it happened tonight. Rather than staying on first, he got caught for the 21st time this year. Ben Petrick then followed with a HR. If you are going to run that much, you have to be successful more than 2/3 of the time to make it worth while. The Tigers offense is so bad, they can't afford the outs, yet the team's success rate at stealing is only 55% now. They'd do a lot better standing pat at first.

Alex Rodriguez tripled in his first AB tonight and scored on a Palmeiro single against the Tigers. A-Rod has three consecutive years of slugging .600, and he's approaching that mark again. Fourteen of his 24 hits in August have been for extra bases, and he's slugging .594 after the triple.

Peter Gammons has an interview with Lou Piniella. I've been cheerleading for the Devil Rays lately, and the Rays winnings ways are having an impact on the media:

The Devil Rays have played so hard and so competitively in close games that Piniella says newspaper and talk-show coverage has turned to positive. Oh, sure, there are realities: they're last in homers, their pitchers lead the league in walks and have a dreadful 5.46/4.08 K/BB per 9 IP ratio.

It's important for fans to know their team is trying hard to win. Piniella instills that in his players, and the media is catching on. I hope the fans will, too.

An odd choice today is Tampa Bay at Baltimore. I would really like to see Tampa Bay make a run at fourth place in the AL East. They are seven games behind the Orioles, and this three game series in Baltimore is the last these two teams will see of each other this year. They also have very similar schedules down the stretch. The Orioles are reeling after the Yankee series, so it's a good time for Tampa to go for the sweep. And tonight's game is a pretty good pitching matchup, as Jeremi Gonzalez faces Eric DuBose.

Of course, a much more important game will be Oakland at Boston. These two sabermetrically run teams are tied for the AL wild card. Each team is looking to take at least two out of three. One of the A's Cy Young candidates, Mark Mulder faces Derek Lowe. Lowe won the same matchup in Oakland last Wednesday, although he could only go five innings as the selective Oakland hitters forced him to use 92 pitches. Lowe is 8-2 against the A's in his career.

The Royals continue their series against the Yankees, sending Kevin Appier to the mound against lefty Andy Pettitte. Appier is coming off six impressive shutout innings against the Yankees last Wednesday, and Pettitte has been pitching well as of late, although his win had more to do with his offensive support. Royals have a two game lead on the White Sox, 2 1/2 on the Twins.

The Cubs visit Houston is one of two big games in the NL tonight. Matt Clement faces Jeriome Robertson. Robertson has not fared well against the Cubs in his brief career, posting a 1-2 record with a 7.71 ERA. However, he has only walked 1 Cub in 11 2/3 innings against them. We could see first place in the NL Central shift a few times over the next three days.

Finally, former Giant Russ Ortiz faces his old team for the first time tonight as the Braves visit San Francisco in a battle of the teams with the two best records in the NL. Rookie Jerome Williams will take the mound for San Francisco. The Giants have lost six in a row; they've been outscored 30-10, so while the offense is mostly to blame, you the pitching hasn't been super. With the Braves offense, that could be deadly. Both Bonds are Aurilia should return tonight, which should give the offense a boost.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	1844	1845
Attendance	28004	28549

For the 2nd day in a row, the Tampa Bay took the lead in extra innings against Cleveland, and allowed the Indians to tie it in the bottom of the inning.

Frank Thomas was the offense for the White Sox tonight. He hit his 2nd two-run HR of the night to beat Jarrod Washburn in the ninth. That raises Thomas' slugging percentage to .543, and brings the White Sox a game closer to the Royals. They lost to the Yankees 11-6, and their lead is down to two games.

I just saw Dmitri Young bat left-handed vs. a left-handed pitcher, Erasmo Ramirez. Ramirez has allowed a .282 BA to lefties, .154 to righties. Young singled.

There are a lot of lefties like this (Tom Glavine) whose pitches are harder for righties to hit. I don't know why more switch hitters don't look out for this and bat lefty against them.

Roberto Alomar breaks up Washburn's no-hitter leading off the 7th.

Update: The Big Hurt follows up with a long 2-run HR to centerfield to tie the game.

Shane Halter kept Nate Robertson from getting a loss by homering in the bottom of the 9th. The Rangers and Tigers are now in extra innings.

The Royals were down but not out. The Royal were able to get two in the 6th and two in the 7th vs. Weaver and Antonio Osuna. Jeff Nelson came on to quelch the rally, but at 9-6, with the way the Yankees pen has been pitching, the Royals are in this game.

Jarrod Washburn has a no hitter through five. His only mistake was hitting Carl Everett with a pitch (although, I suppose, a lot of people might think that's okay). He's being very efficient, throwing only 60 pitches, or 12 an inning.

Update: A five pitch 6th for Washburn, three up and three down.

Jose Lima did not fare well in his return from the DL tonight. He only lasted four innings and gave up six runs, all earned. The Yankees also got to reliever Paul Abbott, and lead 9-2 in the 6th.

Jeff Weaver has gone five good innings, although he did manage to walk three. It will be hard for him to lose this game. Every Yankee has a hit except Aaron Boone. Boone is now hitting .161 after his 0-3; the Yankees could have kept Ventura, gotten the same BA, more walks, and better defense.

The Tigers are losing to the Rangers 2-1 in the 7th innings. This could turn out to be another depressing loss for a depressing team. However, they can take away something positive from this game; the pitching of Nate Robertson.

Robertson pitched briefly (and badly) for Florida last year. His minor league numbers, however, are pretty good. And he's making his mark tonight against a good offensive team. Through seven innings he's allowed 2 runs on 7 hits. He has not walked a batter, he's thrown strikes (63 or 90 pitches) and he's K'd 7. Over a career, that kind of performance will win a lot of games.

The losing teams in the NL this afternoon combined for 1 run. Vazquez and Trachsel each had complete game shutouts. Hampton pitched 8 great innings, and continues to improve. AL action starts at 7 PM EDT.

The Expos, leading the Giants 1-0 in the 7th, had men on 1st and 3rd with one out and the pitcher, Javier Vazquez batting. This surprised me; I figured you'd pinch hit for Vazquez in this situation. But Robinson obviously wanted Javier to finish the game. So Robinson called for a hit and run. Vazquez made contact and hit a chopper. With the runner moving, the Giants had no chance at a DP, and the ball was hit too slowly to get the runner at home. So Vazquez grounds out, gets an RBI, extends his lead, and he's still in to finish the game. Robinson must have a lot of confidence in Vazquez's ability to put the ball in play. He's only struck out 4 times in 48 AB this year.

Gary Sheffield also has a decent hitting streak, which he extended to 22 games today with a solo HR. He now has 7 HR and 22 RBI during the hit streak.

Steve Trachsel is rolling over the Rockies today. He's being efficient (76 pitches through 7 innings), he's throwing strikes (53 pitches for strikes), he hasn't walked a batter, and the only hit he's allowed was to the opposing pitcher. Mets are up 8-0 and continue to be on a roll. Reyes has extended his hitting streak to 17 games. He's two for three with three runs scored.

Dustin Hermanson continues to be impressive as a starter. He's matched Vazquez's five scoreless innings so far. Each has walked one batter. Hermanson has allowed two hits, Vazquez three. Both teams are 0 for 4 with runners in scoring position.

The Language Maven has more on the booing of Scott Rolen last night.

Maybe Mike Piazza just needed a sabbatical. He's in his 4th game since returning from the DL, and has hit a 2-run HR in the first inning. He's now 6 for 13 with 2 HR and 8 RBI since his return.

I'm listening to the Giants-Expos game, and the Giants announcers noticed an Expos fan who is walking around with a mop. As they pointed out, it's supposed to be a broom. :-)

I like the way Jeff Bagwell thinks:

The Astros are still in first place, but only a game separates them, the Cubs and the Cardinals in the NL's weakest division. Chicago lost to the Dodgers on Sunday, remaining a half-game out.

"This is not what you want it to come down to -- you lose, they lose," said Jeff Bagwell, who hit a solo homer. "You want to win and take care of yourself. To succeed in the playoffs, you've got to be a pretty good team. The way we've been doing the last week, that's not going to get it done."

I often heard people talk about players attittudes. This is the one I would want for the members of my team.

Even though the battle between Texas and Detroit tonight is pitting two last place teams against each other, they are going in different directions. Texas has the best record in August (12-4) while the Tigers have the worst (3-13). It's hard to believe that the Tigers, at this point in the season, could be playing worse than they did during the first four months. Most teams, when playing badly, will make some moves to improve themselves, like Texas has. Another last place team, the Mets, have the best NL record in August, 9-5. Nothing has worked for the Tigers.

One of my favorite quotes from the movie Annie Hall:

I feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. That's the two categories. The horrible be like, I don't know, terminal cases, you know, and blind people, crippled. I don't know how they get through life. It's amazing to me. And the miserable is everyone else. So you should be thankful that you're miserable, because that's very lucky, to be miserable.

The Tigers are horrible.

Getaway day afternoon action in the NL today with three games all starting at around 1 PM EDT. The best pitching matchup is in Atlanta, as Arizona's Miguel Batista faces the Braves Mike Hampton. Hampton's ERA is 4.21 overall, but in his last five starts he's posted a 3.44, to go with a 4-0 record. Batista has been equally effective in preventing runs during that period (a 3.19 ERA), but the DBacks offense hasn't helped, as he has an 0-2 record (the Diamondbacks won the three no-decisions).

San Francisco tries to end its five-game losing streak in Montreal today, but they have to deal with Javier Vazquez. Vazquez went through a rough period in May and June (3-5, 4.89 ERA) but has recovered in July and August (4-2, 2.75 ERA). Dustin Hermanson will take the mound for the Giants. He's pitched well as a starter in his two trys, holding the opposition to a .255 OBA.

The big game in the AL is the battle between division leaders in NY. Jose Lima returns from the DL to face Jeff Weaver. Weaver just seems to be getting worse. He has an 8.04 ERA over his last five starts, and everytime I see him take the mound I'm surprised the Yankees haven't made a move to replace him. The Royals will be happy to get Lima back; the Royals were 8-2 in his absence, plus they've had to demote Runelvys Hernandez, who got off to such a promising start for them. And, for those of you Derek Jeter fans out there, he's now third in the AL batting average race with a .322 mark.

Enjoy!

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	1837	1835
Attendance	28019	28596

Amaury Telemaco made a successful debut tonight. He went seven innings, allowing four hits and two runs. The good control he showed in the minors was also in evidence tonight, as he walked none. Seventy of his 104 pitches were thrown for strikes. The Phillies have to be extremely encouraged with this performance.

Everytime I get up to do something, a Philly hits a HR. Thome and Burrell have gone deep to give the Phillies a 6-2 lead in the third. Burrell hasn't hit much this year, but he has hit for power. He has 82 hits, 44 for extra bases.

The Philly Phans roundly booed Scott Rolen when he came to the plate tonight. It seems they blame him for leaving. I see it more as Bowa and Green handling him poorly. Those are the two who should be booed.

The Tigers are losing 11-5 to the Anaheim Angels in the 8th inning. If the score holds up, the Tigers record will be 31-91. That will be one game ahead of the 1962 Mets, who were 30-92 after 122 games.

The Mariners pick up a win against the Red Sox this afternoon. Freddy Garica, who has struggled this year pitches a great game, allowing one run and striking out eight over 7 2/3 innings. Hasegawa pitched the ninth inning for the save. He's now pitched 28 2/3 consecutive scoreless innings, currently the longest streak in the majors.

As part of this site, my host provides me with a chat room. I thought I'd open it up for a while and see if people enjoy it.

Update: When you get into the room, type /nick followed by your name. If you want to be Jim, you would type "/nick Jim"

Update: Chat is closed. Had three people drop by, good baseball talk. I'll do it again soon.

Well, the A's are doing their best to knock Roy Halladay out of the Cy Young running. Through three innings the A's offens has scored seven runs, five earned and knocked out 10 hits. Halladay has already thrown 72 pitches. His ERA has gone up 18 points already.

Josh Beckett pitched a terrific game, allowing five hits and two runs over 8 innings. With an 11-2 lead in the 9th, Nate Bump came in to relieve Beckett, and did his best to blow the game. He walked four and allowed three hits before Michael Tejera arrived to get the last out. All in all, five runs scored in the 9th, making it an 11-7 final.

The Royals managed to pull one win out of their weekend series with the Twins. They got out to a 5-1 lead, but let the Twins get close, winning 5-4. It gives the Royals a bit of breathing room before they face the Twins next weekend in Minnesota. It will be make or break for Minnesota, since it will be the last head-to-head games between the two clubs this year.

With two out and a man on 2nd, Lou Piniella decided to pitch to Ryan Ludwick, who is batting cleanup for Cleveland today. He singled in the tieing run. I'm not a big proponent of the IBB, but this is one situation where I would have used it. While Ludwick is not a great hitter, he's much better than Alex Escobar. Yes, you would be putting the winning run on base, but you would be greatly reducing the chance of tying the game. As it turned out, Sosa struck out Escobar to end the inning.

Mike Mussina is certainly in the Cy Young running, especially after today's performance He's gone eight innings allowing only three singles and striking out nine. He's on in the ninth (only 109 pitches so far) to go for the shutout.

Update: Mussina compeletes the game, a 3-hit, 9-K shutout. He faced 30 batters, threw 121 pitches, 82 for strikes.

Travis Lee just hit a solo HR in the 10th to give the DRays a 4-3 lead over the Indians. Jorge Sosa has pitched 4 1/3 hitless innings in relief. He deserves the win, and he may get it now.

It looked like Ponson was cruising along until the ninth inning. He then loade the bases with one out, and Tim Worrell was brought in to face Wil Cordero with a 2-0 lead. This would qualify as a tough save. Worrell had given up only 3 HR in 58 1/3 innings. Cordero struck out, but Brad Wilkerson lofted a grand slam to give the Expos a 4-2 lead and send the Giants to their 5th straight loss. Did Alou stick with Ponson too long? He allowed him to throw 120 pitches. Worrell should have been fresh. He pitched yesterday, but hadn't pitched since the 10th before that. And he only threw 10 pitches yesterday. Worrell probably should have come in at the first sign of trouble.

Curt Schilling struck out 12 in eight innings. He threw 106 pitches, 80 for strikes. He pitched like wasn't going to lose this game. He's allowed four earned runs in his last five starts, and thrown 17 straight scoreless innings.

I was remiss in leaving the Dodgers-Cubs game out of games of the day. Nomo and Carlos Zambrano are pitching well against each other, with the Dodgers holding a two run lead in the 5th. There have been eight hits in the game, all singles.

Mike Mussina has faced the minimum number of batters through three innings without allowing a hit. Brian Roberts reached on an error leading off the first, but he was caught stealing. Yankees lead 4-0 in the bottom of the fourth.

Update: Brian Roberts gets the hit this time. Mussina is throwing 75% of his pitches for strikes.

Sidney Ponson is trying to single handedly trying to stop the Giants losing streak. He's allowed three singles through six innings; that's it. He's thrown 79 pitches, 57 for strikes. He's winning 1-0. The Giants offense hasn't been great today, going 0 for 7 with runners in scoring position. Ohka has not struck out a batter, but he's spread the seven hits and 2 walks out.

Curt Schilling now has 10 K through five innings. He's still allowed only one hit. Maddux, however, still hasn't allowed a run. Schilling may only get a win if he hits a HR off Maddux. :-) Sheffield and Furcal are the only Braves who have not struck out against Schilling. They're going to the bottom of the 6th.

Update: Maddux is being very efficient today, only throwing 70 pitches through six innings. I was wondering about Maddux after his last start against the Padres, but it seems to have served as a wake-up call to Greg. He's pitching like the old Maddux today.

Update II: Alex Cintron goes deep off Maddux to give Schilling a 1-0 lead. The way he's pitching, that might be all he needs.

Luis Rivas hits his sixth HR of the season in the first inning to give the Twins a 1-0 lead. But the Royals peck back with three singles to tie the game.

Every time I've looked at the scoreboard lately, the Mets have been scoring runs. They are up 5-0 on the Rockies in the 4th, and it's the fifth game in a row where they've scored five runs. It's not just Piazza; he came back in the 2nd game of the streak and he's not playing today. A big part is Jose Reyes, who is two for two today and is now batting .317. Reyes now has a 16 game hit streak and is hitting .439 during the streak (including the 2 for 2). For the first time in a long time, the Mets have a shortstop who can hit.

Schilling and Maddux are hooked up in a shutout through the first three innings. Schilling has allowed only 1 hit and struck out five. Maddux was in a bit of trouble in the fourth, but got of it unscathed thanks to his defense. Gonzalez was thrown out at the plate, and Giles made a great play up the middle to end the inning. Maddux has allowed four hits and a walk through four.

Successful ballplayers adjust their games to the situation. Batters will move around the plate to try to get at what they think a pitcher will throw. Pitchers will show hitters different series of pitches in different AB. Fielders will move their positions based on what pitch they see the catcher call. Yogi Berra would notice the change in the position of a batter's feet, and call for pitches accordingly. Pedro Martinez can change his grip mid-motion so he can throw two different changeups, and not even the catcher knows what's coming. Cal Ripken would sit in on the pitcher-catcher meetings so he could know how to best position himself for each batter. Constant adjustments.

Managers have to do this also. The team which starts the season is going to look very different come July. For a new manager, the task is doubled, his you have to learn what your players can do, as well as adjust to their changes during the year.

I think we are seeing two of the better managers making adjustments with new teams. The Texas Rangers and Tampa Bay Devil Rays had horrible Junes. The DRays were 5-21; the Rangers 7-20. But they have two managers that know what they are doing. Lou Piniella is a motivator. He said he'd dye his hair blonde if the Rays won three in a row. They both kept their side of the bargain. Since the start of the three game winning streak, Tampa Bay is 22-17. He's turned around the offense, taking them from 4.2 runs per game to 4.9 runs per game. Piniella has learned what his offense can do, figured out a lineup that works, and he has the team winning.

Buck Showalter is a strategist. His forte is putting players into situations where they have the best chance of succeeding. The Rangers have made two huge adjustments since the end of June. They increased their scoring by almost a run per games 5.0 to 5.9) and they've lowered their ERA almost as much (from 6.12 to 5.30). Their ERA is even better in August, 4.77, and they are 11-4 in the month, giving them the best record in the majors. Nice to see two masters at work.

The Twins go for a sweep of the Royals. The pitching matchup of Rick Reed vs. Darrell May would seem to favor the Royals. By winning the first two, however, the Twins have set themselves up to be able to take KC for the lead next week at home.

Roy Halladay and the Blue Jays face Barry Zito and the Athletics in Oakland this afternoon. The A's have a couple of Cy Young candidates of their own, so we'll see if they can do any damage to Halladay's quest.

If you want to see some offense tonight, you might try to want to keep your eye on the White Sox-Rangers game. Neal Cotts starts for the Sox and Juan Dominguez starts for the Rangers. Combined, they have 7 big lead innings pitched. Cotts has walked six in 2 1/3 innings. Dominguez has given up two HR in his 4 2/3. The both have ERAs of 7.71. However, Cotts has had success in the minor leagues. He was blasting through AA Birmingham this year, where he had 131 K in 106 1/3 innings (along with 56 walks) and only 2 HR allowed. Dominguez had not lost a game this year until he came to the majors. He was 4-0 at A ball, 5-0 at AA and 1-0 in AAA. In 261 2/3 minor league innings, he has 267 K and has only allowed 15 HR. They may be struggling now, but it looks like they are two pitchers who are worth watching.

The old men go at each other in Atlanta as Curt Schilling faces Greg Maddux. They've been at different ends of the luck spectrum lately. Maddux is 3-1 in his last five with a 4.03 ERA. Schilling is 1-2 with a 1.80 ERA. Should be fun.

Tonight's high definition game will be a wild card matchup with the St. Louis Cardinals visiting the Philadelphia Phillies. It's the 2003 premier of Amaury Telemaco. (As far as I know, Telemaco is the only player to have a Chris Berman double nickname, "That's Amary Telemaco Maco Man.") Telemaco has not pitched in the bigs since 2001. He was recovering from shoulder surgery last year. At AAA Scranton, he's shown terrific control, walking 22 in 155 1/3 innings while striking out 116. Looks like he's earned the call back tot he majors.

Enjoy!

The White Sox have picked an inopportune time to go into a slump. They've lost four in a row, which happens, but their two best pitchers, Loaiza and Colon just got hammered the last two games. They've missed a chance to gain ground on Kansas City, and have allowed the Twins to catch them.

Talk about Twins buzz, I just went over to Aaron's Baseball Blog and the Twins Geek, expecting to read about this team's great push toward first place. Nothing. You might think that this series was exciting enough for them to put up a rare weekend post. :-) But surely it's the big sports story in the Star Tribune? No! A Vikings exhibition loss is much more important than a baseball pennant race. The Pioneer Press isn't any better. Try to find the Twins headline on this page.

Okay, it hasn't been the greatest Twins season, but it's been a lot better than Detroit or Milwaukee. Tom Powers was ready to give up on them two days ago.

After a humiliating 8-3 loss to the Cleveland Indians on Thursday, Twins manager Ron Gardenhire cut short his postgame analysis. Angry at his team, his season and the world — in no particular order — Gardenhire announced he was "tired of *&%$ talking."

Good, because I'm tired of *&%$ listening.

I'm tired of hearing about the lack of leadership. I'm tired of hearing about the lack of enthusiasm. I'm tired of hearing about the dimwitted mistakes.

What I never hear are answers.

One of the few holdouts who still believed the Twins had a chance to turn around their season and win the American League Central Division, I am about to capitulate. This team apparently does not have the fortitude to be successful. It is too soft, too easily discouraged. It has no sense of urgency.

It's time for a mid-August reality check. These are not the lovable overachievers, the potential contraction victims, who stunned the baseball world in 2002. The 2003 Twins are underachievers, wallowing quietly in third place in a lousy division.

If I were Gardenhire, that column's posted in the clubhouse the next day. Maybe it woke the team up. KC comes to town next weekend. Twins fans, you know the power of a sold-out Metrodome. The Twins will be pleased as punch if you all show up and shout really loudly.

The AL Central may not have the best teams in the league, but it's division race has been a lot of fun, with more twists and turns than a steel roller coaster.

Mike Carminati continues his role as ESPN.com's harshest critic, this time taking on Jayson Stark's column about the chances of Barry Bonds breaking Aaron's career HR record.

One thing that I find fascinating about the column is the sudden acceptance of seasonal age:

Exactly one man in the history of the sport ever hit 40 home runs at age 39. (And, if we use the universally accepted July 1 age cutoff date, next season would count as Bonds' 39-year-old season, even though he'll play almost 40 percent of it at age 40.) That's Aaron, who did it in 1973.

I don't remember Elias ever accepting this. One of their percieved strengths is their game logs, which allow them to calculate stats by exact age. The problem, of course, is what do you want to do when you're looking for the best season by a 40 year old? You have to decide what a 40 year old is. And seasonal age does that well. It's interesting that Stark seems to imply that if you spend 40% of a season at age 40, you're 40, even though you spent 60% of the season at age 39!

Stark also goes down the path of most HR by old ballplayers, to show how hard it will be for Bonds to break the record:

Then would come Bonds' 40-year-old season. Just one 40-year-old man in history has ever hit 30 homers in a season. That's Darrell Evans, who hit 34 in 1987 for a Tigers team that played in the perfect left-handed hitter's park, Tiger Stadium. We remind you that Bonds plays in the hardest ballpark in baseball for a left-handed hitter (besides himself, that is) to hit a home run.

OK, let's keep going. Most home runs by a 41-year-old: 29, by Ted Williams in 1961. Most by a 42-year-old: 18, by Carlton Fisk, in 1990. Most by a 43-year-old: 18, also by Fisk, in 1991. And after that, it isn't even worth counting anymore.

But he might want to go backward as well:

• At age 38 (Bonds current age), the HR record is 40 by Darrell Evans. Bonds has 37, which would be third if he didn't hit a HR the rest of the year. It's a good bet he'll have the 38-year-old record by the end of the season.


• At age 37, the record is held by Henry Aaron, with 47. Bonds is 2nd with 46.


• At age 36, the record is the all-time record 73 hit by Barry Bonds.


• At age 35, the record is 65, by Mark McGwire. Bonds hit 49 at age 35, tieing for 2nd place at that age with Babe Ruth.

Bonds is a great aged HR hitter. Now let's be real conservative and say that Bonds hits five more HR the rest of the year. That would give him 655, exactly 100 away from Aaron. Let's also say that he keeps playing, and he misses the age record by 2 each year. That would give him 38, 32 and 27 over the next three seasons, leaving him 3 short of the record.

It really comes down to, will Bonds play, or, will he stay healthy enough to play. I don't remember people thinking Aaron would keep hitting 40 HR a year (well, maybe Selig did when he brought him back to Milwaukee), but I do remember people thinking McGwire was going to break Aaron's record. And McGwire was gone from the scene in a blink of an eye. Bonds has not preserved his body, he's pushed his body to the limit. This has allowed him to become the best hitter ever, but I wonder how long it will last. He's had great training, but he still has nagging injuries and can't play everyday. My guess is that we won't see it coming; Bonds won't slowly fade like Aaron and Ruth did. We'll see lace a ball into the corner for a sure double, scream with excitement as he rounds first, turn our head to see if the outfielder has the ball, then look back to see Barry limping into 2nd base. And like that, the quest will be over. The bill for his glory will have come due.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	1822	1820
Attendance	28000	28577

Attendance is coming back. When I started tracking this (here's the first one I can find) attendance was trailing last year by about 1300 a game. That's been cut in half, and average attendance for this year finally has hit the 28,000 mark (right on the nose). This August is averaging 30,623, while last year averaged 29,161. That's, of course, when all the strike talk was going on.

The other difference is that you have pennant races this year. And you have small market teams like KC and Florida involved. The fans in KC have gotten it; they are averaging 33,838 fans a game this month. The fans in Florida haven't quite caught on yet. They are up to 18,612 in July-August after averaging 12,977 through June (a huge percentage rise), but they can do so much more. Twenty of the Marlins next 26 games are against teams with worse records than they have, most not very good. (They have three games with the Giants in their). But then they have a stretch of 13 games vs. Atlanta and Philladelphia. They should still be in contention when those two teams come to town in September, and the Pro Player should be rocking.

And it's just a short plane ride to Atlanta from Miami. Yesterday, it seemed that Yankee fans outnumbered Oriole fans in Baltimore. Braves fans are known for being very quiet. If a couple of thousand Marlins fans made the trek north, they could turn Turner Field into a home park for the Fish. Get behind your team, south Florida!

Jason Giambi just hit a monster HR to straight-away center to give the Yankees a 5-4 lead in the 12th.

Update: Yankees just won on one of the strangest plays I've ever seen. On a base hit to the outfield, Jack Cust falls down rounding third. Soriano throws behind him, and gets him in a rundown between third and home. A throw is made to Posada, who runs Cust back to third, throws the ball, but it leaves Cust with no one between him and home plate. He starts running for home, falls down again, and Boone tags him out to end the game. I can't believe what I just saw!

The Giants best pitcher was beaten the Montreal Expos tonight, 4-1. The Giants have now lost four in a row. Granted, Bonds has not been in the lineup for the last two games, but you have to wonder how many losses do the Giants suffer before you start to worry if they are sliding. The Giants have won four more games than predicted by their runs scored and allowed; these things tend to even out over time. If you look at predicted winning percentages, the DBacks should only be four games behind the Giants instead of 9 they are (DBacks losing 10-6 to Atlanta in the 8th). Don't be surprised if that race gets a lot closer before the end of the season. It's a good thing the Giants have built up a very good lead. But ten years ago, they had a 9 1/2 game lead as late as August 7th and did not make the playoffs.

The Marlins beat the Padres tonight 6-3. It came down to performance with men in scoring position. The Padres were 0 for 10; the Marlins 6 for 12. The Padres entered today with the 2nd lowest NL average with runners in scoring position.

The Phillies lead the Cardinals by one in the top of the 9th, but Pujols is on base with 2 outs. Pujols extended his hitting streak to 30 today. At thirty, you should really start paying attention to a hit streak. He's now only 14 away from the NL record.

Listening to the Yankees game on the way home, it appeared that the Orioles batted out of order in the first inning. However, the announcers weren't exactly sure what happened, but as best I can tell Batista batted out of order, hit a sac fly, but the Yankees failed to appeal, and the sac fly stood. Until I read the game summary, however, I'm not 100% sure that it's the correct story.

Big game for the substitute battery of Hitchcock and Flaherty. Hitchcock pitched six solid innings, while Flaherty hit two HR. I guess that was his birthday present to Jorge Posada. :-)

Update: Rivera just blew another save, giving up a game tieing solo HR to Matos leading off the 9th. Rivera looks tired to me. It strikes me that the Yankees might want to consider giving him a few days off.

About five minutes before the Navigators game was going to start, it started raining. After standing around for an hour and a quarter, it was obvious to us that the game was going to start very late if at all, so we left. The evening was not a total loss, however, as Bill Lee was there promoting his new book and signing autographs. I now have a Navigators score card with the signature of the Space Man.

Despite the current rain in this area, it looks like it's clear in Norwich, CT, so I'm off to see the Navigators take on intra-state rival, the New Haven Ravens. I hope the New Haven mascot, Rally Raven shows up to take on Tater the Gator. :-)

David Ortiz, batting third while Garciaparra is out, doubles in two runs in the third. Ortiz is now slugging .551, and the first seven hitters in the Red Sox order today all have slugging percentages over .500.

I can hear thunder not too far away, but it's not raining here. However, channel 22 in Springfield now has a digital channel with 24-hour live doppler radar, so I can see that the rain is only a few blocks from my house. Way cool.

The A's are off to a 1-0 lead over the Blue Jays on Jose Guillen's third HR since joining Oakland. He's now hitting .300 for the A's with a .483 slugging percentage.

Update: Mark Ellis goes deep in the 2nd to give Oakland a 5-1 lead. The three run shot was Ellis' 6^th of the year. Hendrickson of Toronto has now given up 20 HR. I guess they could have used him during the blackout. :-)

Nomar Garciaparra has been scratched from today's game with back spasms. With Damon also out, the top of the Boston order is Nixon, Mueller and Ortiz.

The Minnesota Twins just keep pouring it on the KC Royals. It's now 13-3 in the 7th inning. The Twins have 15 hits, 12 of them singles. They are 9 for 18 with runners in scoring position.

Carlos Beltran has two HR for the Royals, accounting for all three runs.

Morgan Ensberg has two hits today as the Astros are beating the Reds 5-2 in the 7th. If you look at Ensberg's batting average by month, you'd say he's having a better August (.320) than July (.244). But both his OBA and Slugging Percentage are down from July. Morgan's hitting fine, but it's a very hollow .320. He's only drawn one walk, and he's only had three extra-base hits, all doubles. Given what he was doing in May and June, this is a serious slump.

Kerry Wood got into trouble with walks again today. He only lasted 2 2/3 innings, walking four and giving up five hits. Dodgers are up 8-5 in the fifth.

Odalis Perez is pitching great himself, but he hasn't walked anybody, although he given up two HR to Aramis Ramirez.

Runelvys Hernandez did not have his good stuff today. He allowed 4 runs in the first, 2 in the second 1 in the third and two with one out in the fourth. He's threw 81 pitches before he was replaced by D.J. Carrasco. The Twins are making a statement in the first two games of this series. The score is now 9-2, same as last night's final.

Seth Etherton, who has not pitched in the majors since the 2000 season (with the Angels) retired the Astros in order in the first. More importantly, he only used six pitches. Wade Miller has already used nine to get the first two Reds.

Kerry Wood starts off the game with a walk of Dave Roberts.

Scott Podsednik is leading off for Milwaukee today, and he's done a very good job in the leadoff spot for the Brewers. Already today he's 2 for 2 with a run scored. He had a .378 OBA in the leadoff spot entering today. In 9 of the last 14 years the Brewers have been under .350 in the leadoff spot (including this year), so Podsednik's performace is a welcome sight.

Lots of good pitchers going today, but the best pitching matchup takes place in Seattle where Pedro Martinez challenges Joel Pineiro. Pineiro has the best ERA on a starting staff where the top four starters all have ERAs between 3.48 and 3.82. Pedro has been lights out against the Mariners in his career, compiling a 10-0 record and a 0.94 ERA in 77 innings. He's gotten a win in every game he's pitched against Seattle, including one relief appearance. Its' the lowest ERA he has against any team, regardless of the number of innings pitched. Just how good is that ERA against the Mariners?

Career Vs. Mariners, 70 IP	IP	ERA
Pedro Martinez	77	0.94
Tommy John	134	2.28
Dave Rozema	104 2/3	2.41
Steve Stone	104 1/3	2.50
Mike Norris	95	2.56

Four of the top five pitched when the Mariners were a new and struggling ballclub. Pedro has faced them during a time period (1998-2003) when they are 4th in the majors in runs scored.

In other AL games, Tim Hudson, Bartolo Colon and Runelvys Hernandez are all on the mound trying to help their teams gain or hold ground in various pennant races. Hernandez will try to stop the Twins after they trounced the Royals last night. He'll be up against Kyle Lohse; both are 3-1 over their last five games despite ERAs well above five. Expect a lot of runs in that game (which I believe Fox is carrying). Who would have thought that in April Minnesota-KC would be a game of the week? Way to go, KC.

Jason Schmidt will try to stop the Giants three game losing streak as he faces Zach Day in Montreal. The Expos are hanging in the wild card race, but Day has not been pitching well lately. Schmidt should be just what the Bonds-less Giants need.

Finally, let's see if Kerry Wood can get his control back against the Dodgers this afternoon. He's walked 19 in his last 34 1/3 innings. The Dodgers have drawn the fewest walks in the majors this year (304), so there's no excuse today.

Esteban Loaiza had a bad outing against Texas last night, giving up 7 runs in 5 innings, raising his ERA to 2.55. That lowers his standing to third in the league, and makes the Cy Young race even more interesting. Pedro Martinez has the lowest ERA right now, but he does not have the wins or the innings pitched. Tim Hudson is 2nd in ERA, but only has 11 wins. Loaiza, at 15-6 and a 2.55 ERA still has the best combination of wins and ERA. You have Halladay sitting 8th in ERA but with 16 wins, and Mulder and Mussina are sitting there just above 3.00, and a strong finish could propel them to the favorite spot. A month and a half to go in the season, and there's not clear favorite.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	1808	1805
Attendance	27948	28547

Jeff Suppan has given up seven hits so far tonight, six of them for extra bases. Since joining the Red Sox, 16 or the 20 hits he's allowed have been for extra bases. (Throught 4 innings tonight). He's given up four earned runs in 4 2/3 innings so far, giving him an ERA of an even 9.00 since joining the Red Sox.

It was a perfect night to be at home in the National League. Eight games, eight home team wins. You had shutouts (Mets and Braves), blowouts (Marlins and Braves), and squeakers (Cubs and Reds). The losses by Houston and St. Louis on the road propel the Cubs into first place in the Central by 1/2 a game. Still tight in the Central and the Wild Card.

This start is much more important for Kida than I thought. He was seriously injured in a car accident in spring training, along with his interpreter. Nice to see him back on the mound in the majors.

He did just give up a hit to Mark Prior, however. He's given up 1 run in two innings so far and didn't look very sharp in the first inning. Cubs lead 1-0 in the third.

One of the best games in the AL tonight pits the Minnesota Twins against the KC Royals in Kansas City. The Twins send Kenny Rogers to the mound against rookie Jimmy Gobble. The Twins are four games back, and play KC three times this weekend and four times next weekend, and need to win five of those games to pull close to KC. Gobble has allowed 1 ER and 1 BB in 12 1/3 innings so far this season.

The other AL Central team in the running, the White Sox, visit Texas and send Esteban Loiaza and his 2.24 ERA to the mound. As the White Sox surge and Esteban keeps winning, he's looking more and more like the leading Cy Young candidate. He'll take on Colby Lewis, who's ERA is over 5 1/2 runs higher than Loiaza's.

In the AL East/West/Wild Card race, the Red Sox visit Seattle, with Jeff Suppan going against Jamie Moyer. Suppan has a 9.53 ERA since joining the Red Sox, while Moyer is 3-0 in his last five starts despite a 5.52 ERA. Could be a lot of runs in this game tonight.

Former Tiger Masao Kida makes his first major league start this afternoon for the Dodgers against the Cubs. He has not pitched in the majors since 2000, and Wrigley has to be a tough place to debut with a new team. On top of that, he's facing Mark Prior, who is 10-5 with a 2.76 ERA and who dominated the Dodgers in his one start against them earlier this year, a five-hit, one-run complete game.

Finally, St. Louis visits Philadelphia as Woody Williams faces Vinente Padilla. Both teams are trying to hold onto leads, the Cardinals in the NL Central and the Phillies for the wild card. Pujols is halfway to DiMaggio with a 28 game hit streak.

Enjoy.

Iain Cash writes me about his new blog, The Baseball Desert.

As an English guy living 4,000 miles away from the nearest major league club, I hardly qualify as an expert, but, just as you seem to, I enjoy throwing my stuff out there into cyberspace.

It's always interesting to see a non-American view of the game. It's a well written blog and worth the time to check out.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	1793	1790
Attendance	27931	28541

The Brewers threaten, but the Phillies hang on for a 4-3 victory. They are once again at the top of the NL wild card race. The Phillies have the 2nd highest run differential in the NL, suggesting that they should be much closer to the Braves in the NL East race, and that they should be running away with the wild card.

I don't get much of a chance to write about good defense on the Yankees, but Matsui just made a fantastic catch. With a one run lead, two on and two out Bigbi hits one the opposite way, deep. Matsui sprinted toward the left field corner and warning track, reached out, caught the ball, and crashed into the wall. He hung on, looked dazed, but ended the inning.

Peter Gammons has a good column on a theme I've been hitting this year; the development of good, young pitchers.

But there's a second level to all this. "Five years ago, all we heard about were home run records, steroids, corked bats and the strike zone," one assistant GM said. "But there's a very good generation of young pitchers being developed throughout the game, starting with Oakland and Houston. Look around the minors and I think you'll see there is a trend." Next June's draft may have as much college pitching talent as any in many years.

Jake Peavy of the Padres is pitching a pretty good game vs. the powerful Braves. He's given up three hits (a double and two HR), but he's also struck out six through five. He's keeping the score close (2-1); if the Padres could generate some offense off Russ Ortiz, they'd have a shot at winning this game.

Update: Of course, as I posted this, Gary Sheffield goes deep to make the score 3-1.

Bobby Higginson and Matt Roney have made errors for Detroit tonight, leading to two unearned runs. Detroit now has made 105 errors this year, most in the AL. When you can't score, you sure better be able to field, because lack of offense puts enough pressure on a pitching staff. It's no surprise that entering today, the Tigers 71 unearned runs allowed led the majors.

The Braves have two more HR tonight, as Chipper Jones and Javy Lopez go deep. That gives the Braves 180 HR on the year; if they didn't hit any the rest of the season this team would rank 11th all-time among Braves teams, going all the way back to Boston. The Braves record for home runs is 215 by the 1998 team. Andres Galarraga led that team with 44, and Chipper Andruw and Javy all had totals in the 30's.

Andy Pettitte gave up four runs in the fourth to give the Orioles a 4-2 lead. The announcers are speculating that it's so humid, and Pettitte is sweating so much that he can't keep his hand dry and therefore can't get a good grip on the ball. They took a close-up of his arm, and it looked like he was dripping.

The Phillies are being fooled by Wes Obermueller tonight. Through three innings they have eight hits and have scored three runs. An important game for them tonight, as a win will put them back in the lead for the wild card.

Bernie Williams seems to have finally recovered from his injury. He's one for one tonight, making him 8 for 16 since 8/10 with four walks, three runs scored and three rbi.

The Red Sox bullpen had another good game. Four innings, 2 hits, no runs as Boston scored 1 in the ninth and 2 in the tenth to pull out a split with the A's. They leave Oakland as the entered it, with a one game lead in the wild card.

Jim Mecir got the loss. Mecir has the highest ERA on the team, so it's not too surprising he gave up 2 runs in 2/3 of an inning.

In the top of the 9th, the Cubs are up 7-1 on the Astros, and it looks like they'll take three of four from Houston. This will take the NL Central race to three teams within 1 game of each other. The Central is where the action is in the NL this year.

The NE power outage missed us here in Western Massachusetts. This makes me two-for-two in missing big NE blackouts. In 1965, when most of the northeast went black, Bridgeport was somehow spared. I remember the TV going snowy becuase nothing was coming out of NY, but somehow, Bridgeport got off the grid before the circuit breakers tripped and knocked out the power. Just lucky, I guess.

Eric Gagne was as unhittable as you can be in the ninth for the Dodgers. He struck out the side on 11 pitches, nine strikes and 2 balls. It's his 40th save of the year. Phillies can take the wild card back with a win against the Brewers tonight. Could be 3 1/2 games separating the top six wild card contenders by the end of the day.

The Cubs Matt Clement has been strong so far, striking out five through four innings. He's only allowed 2 hits and 2 walks, and the Astros have had only two AB with men in scoring position. Cubs lead 4-0 in the fifth.

Update: Clement allows the first two batters to reach in the fifth, but then comes back with K's of Porter and Biggio, and gets Merced to ground out to end the inning. He has 7 K through five, and is averaging 16 pitches per inning.

I pointed out earlier that Wakefield had not walked many lately. He's walked two of the first three batters today.

Travis Hafner followed up his early solo HR with a single, double and triple today.
It's the first Indians cycle in 25 years. Andre Thornton cycled April 22, 1978 in Boston against four different pitchers.

The Cardinals win, although Jason Isringhausen did his best to blow the save. He came into the game with a 4-1 lead, and he need that cushion to preserve the victory. Jose Hernandez had a 2-run double with two out in the ninth, but was left on base. Cards are now hoping the Cubs lead holds up so there will be an Astros-Cardinals tie for first.

Adrian Beltre goes deep in the fifth on Mark Redman's 110th pitch. Rickey Henderson was a big reason Redman's count is so high; he's seen 22 pitches in his first three plate appearances. The Dodgers now lead 4-3.

Mark Redman is well over 70 pitches in the fourth inning. He has five strikeouts and one walk, and appears to be going deep into counts against a lot of batters. So far, it hasn't hurt him too much, just one run allowed.

Brad Radke is getting beat 2-0 by the Indians this afternoon. One of the two runs came on a Travis Hafner HR. It was the 26th HR allowed by Brad this season, and the 17th at home. Entering today, he had a 6.39 ERA at home, 3.48 on the road.

Albert Pujols is for three so far today to extend his hit streak to 28 games. All he has to do now is repeat that feat and he'll tie Joe DiMaggio's record.

The Cardinals are up 4-1 in the 7th. They are pecking away at the Pirates, with 10 hits, 9 of them singles.

Miguel Cabrera just took Kevin Brown deep to give the Marlins a 3-1 lead in the 2nd. It was the eighth HR Brown has allowed this year, but only the 2nd with men on base. Cabrera has 41 hits now, 20 for extra bases.

Looks like the best games are all this afternoon. The Red Sox go for a split and the wild card lead in Oakland, as Tim Wakefield faces Ted Lilly. Both have had their walks under control lately; Wakefield has walked 8 in his last 33 1/3 innings, while Lilly has walked five in his last 24 1/3 innings.

In a great pitching matchup, Kevin Brown goes against Mark Redman. Both have great ERAs and both have been hot lately. Amazingly (well, maybe not for the Dodgers), Brown is 1-2 over his last five starts, despite a 1.87 ERA.

Finally, Houston and Chicago finish up their four game series with Jared Fernandez facing Matt Clement. The separation in the NL Central is now only 1 1/2 games first to third.

Some big wins last night. The Marlins Carl Pavano pitched seven strong innings, but Urbina blew the save to send the game into extra innings against the Dodgers. (Why did Red Sox fans want to keep him as the closer?) Fox and Bump pitched two no-hit innings, giving time for Mike Mordecai, who had run for Lowell, to win the game with a 2-out HR in the 11th. With the Phillies winning, the Marlins maintained their 1/2 game lead in the wild card race.

The Royals pounded the Yankees and Jeff Weaver 11-0. I've been waiting for Weaver to go, and I can't believe his departure from NY is far off. One reader wrote to me last night about what a mistake the Yankees made letting Claussen go instead of having him replace Weaver, and I have to think he's right. Kansas City, on the other hand, proved to itself it can play with the big boys. It has to be a huge confidence builder for them and their fans. On top of that, the White Sox and the Twins both lost, extending KC's lead.

The Red Sox got back into a tie with the A's, winning 7-3. Lowe pitched okay, but used 92 pitches through five innings and was finished. This time, the bullpen did it's job, allowing only 1 run over four innings.

Finally, the Mets got Mike Piazza back, and he had three hits and five RBI in a 9-2 rout of the Giants. Piazza, Floyd and Phillips now give the Mets a little punch in the middle of the order.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	1781	1779
Attendance	27929	28562

The Cardinals tried to use a double intentional walk last night to win the game. With a man on 2nd and two out, La Russa walked the next two batters so left Pedro Borbon could face lefty Randall Simon. McClendon did not pinch hit, and Simon singled. I saw Borbon pitch against Bridgeport in the Atlantic League earlier this year, and while he did fine that day, he hasn't been fooling ML hitters. Opposition batters are 12 for 20 against him this year, and lefties 3 for 7.

I have never seen this strategy work. I blogged about it last year when the Royals tried it against the A's. Thanks to Karl Ravech for alerting me to this.

A-Rod's HR tonight was the 330th of his career. He's twenty-eight and halfway to Willie Mays' total.

Bobby Abreu is doing it all tonight. He has three hits, a double, three runs scored and three RBI. He setting the table and clearing it off.

Mike Maroth is off to a bad start, giving up a two-run HR to Alex Rodriguez in the first. He's on his way to his 17th loss of the year. Tigers Maroth (16), Bonderman (15) and Bernero (12) are 1-2-3 in the AL in losses.

Looks like a number of pitchers are being efficient tonight. Brian Meadows of the Pirates has just started the fourth, and has thrown 38 pitches, 28 for strikes. His opponent, Jeff Fassero of the Cardinals has thrown only 43 pitches through three.

Wilson Alvarez of the Dodgers, pitching against the Marlins, is doing as well as Hampton. Through two, he's faced the minimum and has three strikeouts. He's thrown 26 pitches, 17 for strikes. It's 0-0 after two.

Update: Wilson Alvarez leads off the third with a single, giving him more hits than the Marlins tonight.

Mike Hampton is off to about as perfect a start as you can be. Through two innings, he's retired all six batters, striking out three, and has thrown only 21 pitches. The first three Braves had hits, leading to a 2-0 lead over the Padres.

Rob Neyer has an excellent opinion piece on Pete Rose over at ESPN.com.

Pete Rose is, by most measures, a truly awful person. I know a lot of people think he's admirable because he hustled for 24 seasons, but I think that admirable quality is more than balanced by the credible allegations that he gulped amphetamines, went through money like it was water, cheated on his wives with something like obsessive abandon, and was generally a lousy father. Oh, and for his entire career as a player and manager, 26 years' worth, Rose consorted with a variety of shady characters involved with illegal gambling. And those are just the highlights.

I'm glad Rob said this, and I agree. I never really liked Pete Rose. There are a few players that don't hustle, but most ballplayers I've watched do hustle, and the ones that don't never hear the end of it. So what's so special about Rose's hustle? Rose made us notice his hustle. It wasn't enough to just hustle, he had to define himself by it.

And I also wonder, with the uppers he took, if the hustle was just the result of nervous energy? He ran to first after ball four because he was too hyped up to walk. That takes a little shine off the hustle.

The Cubs bullpen gets credit along with Alou for the win today. Five pitchers combined for four and two thirds innings, 3 hits and six strikeouts. They walked none and allowed no runs. Since 7/25, the Cubs pen has a 2.47 ERA.

After allowing the game to be tied in the 9th, Travis Lee doubles in the winning run from first in the 10th. The DRays continue to play well, and have one of the best records in baseball since the All-Star break. Travis Lee just missed the cycle by a triple.

They're saying, "Alou." Moises goes deep with his 18th of the year, a three-run shot to take back the lead 6-4 over the Astros. Twelve of his 18 HR have come at home.

The managers went to the bullpen early in this one. Robertson only lasted four, and Estes was gone after 4 1/3. Robertson, from the line score, didn't seem to be pitching that badly, but that's how important this game is.

Rick Helling gave up two HR in the first inning to give Tampa Bay a 3-1 lead against Baltimore. That's 29 allowed by Helling this year, most in the AL and tied for the major league lead.

Update: Helling gave up another today, making him the first pitcher to allow 30 HR this year.

Chicago hosts Houston this afternoon in game three of their four game series. Jeriome Robertson takes on Shawn Estes. What gets me is that if Dusty think Estes can't pitch in the heat of the daytime, why does he keep starting him in afternoon games? It's not that hard to juggle your rotation to have Estes under the lights. Estes has made 15 starts in day games and has a 6.27 ERA; he's made eight starts at night for a 4.31 ERA. Maybe Dusty just wants to make the white guy suffer, but he's supposed to be trying to make the playoffs. I suspect there will be more scoring in this game than the previous two combined.

Another potential slugfest is NY at Kansas City. With Weaver and Appier on the mound, anything could happen. KC had opportunities to score last night and didn't connect. Weaver allows lots of hits with no one on (.300 BA against) and it gets worse with men in scoring position (.333). Appier's not much better, allowing a .319 BA with men in scoring position. KC needs a win to fend off the surging White Sox.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	1766	1764
Attendance	27946	28601

Jon at Dodger Thoughts has his view of the Baseball Prospectus Pete Rose story and the denial by MLB, and when you should and shouldn't use unnamed sources.

Eric Gagne is on for his 2nd inning of work. He's seldom gone more than one inning this year, and hasn't gone two full since April.

A great eight innings so far for Carlos Zambrano tonight. Just when the Cubs needed a big game against the Astros, Zambrano has shut them down, allowing four hits, two walks and striking out 10. The Cubs lead 3-0 in the top of the ninth, and it looks like Zambrano will be out to finish the game. He's thrown 113 pitches so far, 73 for strikes.

Eric Chavez is off to a great start in August. He hit his third HR of the month, a two run shot in the first. He's 15 for 41, with seven of his hits for extra bases in the month. Terrance Long has just gone long to increase the A's lead to 5-0. These look like the A's of last year.

The Dodgers and Marlins are tied going into the tenth. After each starter allowed four runs each, the bullpens have been nearly unhittable. Each has given up just one hit in relief, the Dodgers in four innings and the Marlins in three. The Phillies have lost to the Brewers, so it's an important game for each team to win in order to gain ground in the wild card race.

Only two doubles so far tonight, as the Yankees behind the battery of Posada and Mussina are beating the Royals 4-0 in the 7th. Posada has a double and a HR, while Mussina has allowed four hits and four walks through six. The four walks is surprising. The Royals don't walk much, and Mussina usually has great control. The Royals offense hasn't been able to take advantage of Mussina's wildness.

The Devil Rays win another from the Orioles. I picked Tampa Bay to finish ahead of Baltimore this year. I don't think that will happen now, but Tampa Bay is now 9-6 against the Orioles, so at least head-to-head the DRays have been better. The Devil Rays are now 15-11 since the All-Star break.

A great seven inning duel in Cincinnati tonight between Curt Schilling and Paul Wilson. Schilling gave up six hits but struck out 11 without allowing a run in his seven innings. Wilson only allowed three hits, but Steve Finley took him deep for the only run of the game. Both bullpens are on, and neither has allowed a hit through their first inning of work.

Barry Bonds has gone deep tonight for his 649th career HR and his 36th this season. It's his 9th season hitting at least 36 HR. The only two players with more seasons of at least 36 HR are Ruth and Aaron, who each had 11. Despite the long ball, the Giants are losing to the Mets 5-3 as Sidney Ponson is having a less than stellar outing.

The Astros and Cubs score hasn't changed. It's 2-0 Cubs in the fifth. Redding has only allowed one hit since the first, and Zambrano has now struck out 7 as he pitches in the fifth.

Albert Pujols has two hits, a HR and three RBI tonight. His seasonal age is 23. Just how good has he been through this seasonal age? He now has 104 HR, and is one of 17 players to have 100 HR through age 23. He now has 362 RBI; he's the 26th player to reach the 360 plateau by age 23. He's put down a great start; it's not going to take many more years like this to make him a sure hall of famer.

I'm really starting to wonder if Maddux is going to last long enough to get 300 wins. He's pitching against the San Diego Padres tonight, the team with the third fewest runs scored in the majors, and they are hitting him. Maddux has gone four innings, and given up 12 hits and five runs. Ten of those hits were singles, but the Padres aren't being fooled. Maddux is throwing strikes (35 of 53 pitches), but they are strikes the Padres can handle.

The Cubs struck early against the Astros tonight. Lofton led off with a single and Alex Gonzalez followed with a HR to give the Cubs a 2-0 lead. Meanwhile, Carlos Zambrano has struck out five of the six batters he's faced.

Good pitching matchup in Tampa Bay tonight, despite both starting pitchers having ERA over 5.50. Rodrigo Lopez has allowed 1 run on five hits in four innings. Rob Bell is shutting out the Orioles with two out in the fifth. Bell has a 1 hitter, but he has walked three.

Mike Lowell has driven in two Flordia runs tonight to bring his RBI total to 98. Two more and he'll tie his career high and reach the century mark. One of the nice stories of the last few years.

With last night's double vision game, the Yankees at Royals becomes one of tonight's games of the day. Mike Mussina goes against Darrell May. They have similar innings pitched, hits allowed and ERAs, but May is only 5-5. Since 6/27, however, Mayis 5-1 with a 2.92 ERA. He has not allowed an unearned run in that time, but he has allowed 11 HR although 9 of them have been solo shots. 13 of his 20 runs allowed in that time frame have come on HR.

The wild card race continues in Oakland as Boston's John Burkett faces the all-or-nothing Barry Zito. The Red Sox are hoping this is one of Zito's low run support nights. A win puts the A's into the lead in the AL wild card race.

The Dodgers are only three games out of the wild card as they try to hook the Marlins again. They send one of their Cy Young candidates to the mound in the person of Hideo Nomo. Nomo, Smoltz and Brown are all tied with 15 wins shares, most by NL pitchers. (Through August 2nd).

Finally, the Astros face the Cubs, with two good pitchers on the mound again. Tim Redding goes against Carlos Zambrano. Redding is 3-1 over his last 5; Zambrano 4-1. The Cubs are only 1 game over .500 within their division; they need to start pounding the Central if they are going to make the playoffs. That's what has put the Astros in first place.

Enjoy!

According to ESPN.com, Bob DuPay, the COO of MLB, says the Baseball Prospectus story written about in the previous post isn't true.

Major League Baseball's chief operating officer, Bob DuPuy, shot down a Baseball Prospectus report Tuesday that claimed Pete Rose already has signed an agreement to be reinstated in 2004, calling it "totally unfounded, totally unsubstantiated" and "journalistically irresponsible."

DuPuy, who spoke to ESPN.com's Jayson Stark, said there has been "no decision, no agreement, no nothing" clearing the way for Rose to return to the game next year.

Baseball Prospectus, in a statement in response to DuPuy's denial, stood by its story, saying the report "was compiled using reliable sources. We believe that, in the end, our report will be found to be accurate."

So who do you believe? Here's a rule of thumb; don't trust unnamed sources. It's not that unnamed sources are wrong or untrustworthy per se, but there is no way for you and me to check their stories. ESPN quotes Bob DuPuy. I can call up the commissioner's office and check the veracity of DuPuy's quotes. I can't do that with the BP article. I don't know who gave them the story. Could it be someone with an agenda against the commissioner's office, or against Pete Rose? What are the biases of the source? Are there multiple sources? I don't know.

I personally hope that Zumsteg and Carroll have this story right on. It will be a feather in their cap, and a great day for internet reporting. But until the story proves to be true, or I can know and trust their sources, I can't put my full faith behind that story.

Mike Carminati responds to this scoop at Baseball Prospectus. From the BP article:

Pete Rose and Major League Baseball have reached an agreement that would allow him to return to baseball in 2004, and includes no admission of wrongdoing by Rose, Baseball Prospectus has learned. According to several sources, Rose signed the agreement after a series of pre-season meetings between Rose, Hall of Fame member Mike Schmidt, and at different times, high-level representatives of Major League Baseball, including Bob DuPuy, Major League Baseball's Chief Operating Officer, and Allan H. "Bud" Selig, Commissioner of Major League Baseball.

The agreement includes removal of Rose from baseball's permanently ineligible list. This would allow Rose to appear on ballots for baseball's Hall of Fame, which bars such banned players from consideration. The agreement allows Rose to be employed by a team in the 2004 season, as long as that position does not involve the day to day operations. That employment restriction would be removed after a year, allowing Rose to return to managing a team as early as the 2005 season if a position is offered to him.

What surprises me is the "no wrongdoing" section. If he didn't do anything wrong, why was he suspended for over a decade? I don't believe there was no wrong doing. That should not be swept under the table.

Although Mike is a defender of Rose, he doesn't think he should manage:

Would I hire Pete Rose to run my ballclub? I have been championing his cause for some time. I think he got shafted by baseball and the martyrization of Bart Giamatti. Rose should have been suspended one year, been reinstated and soon gone into the Hall of Fame. That said, if he were to come over to my house for dinner, I would count the silverware after he left. Rose has every right to manage. However, if I were an owner I wouldn't hire him on a bet.

I hope the rest of major league baseball agrees with that.

Here's the team attendance report from the point of view of the road teams. The problem, with the unbalanced schedules and interleague play, is that the comparisons may be apples and oranges.

	2002		2003
Through Same Period	Games	Avg. Attendance	Games	Avg. Attendance	Pct. Change
Rangers	56	26373	59	30135	14.3
Expos	60	24364	57	27707	13.7
Angels	57	25281	58	27607	9.2
Cubs	58	32564	59	34103	4.7
Blue Jays	55	26395	60	27325	3.5
Indians	57	25475	59	26245	3.0
Pirates	58	28731	58	29468	2.6
Orioles	62	25028	57	25666	2.5
Brewers	58	26056	56	26591	2.1
Giants	58	34153	58	34487	1.0
Astros	58	27286	59	27263	-0.1
Mariners	58	27432	57	27385	-0.2
Devil Rays	58	26975	56	26177	-3.0
Mets	59	29008	59	28108	-3.1
White Sox	60	26246	59	25408	-3.2
Phillies	59	28965	58	27881	-3.7
Marlins	58	26833	59	25698	-4.2
Braves	58	28339	60	27065	-4.5
Tigers	60	25549	60	24379	-4.6
Dodgers	58	30443	57	28992	-4.8
Cardinals	57	29500	59	27988	-5.1
Red Sox	57	30681	59	28974	-5.6
Yankees	60	37785	59	35398	-6.3
Padres	56	30726	58	28750	-6.4
Twins	59	27491	58	25646	-6.7
Royals	60	27789	58	25043	-9.9
Rockies	60	29326	60	26294	-10.3
Athletics	58	30148	58	26592	-11.8
Reds	59	30085	59	26422	-12.2
Diamondbacks	58	34577	58	30040	-13.1

At some point, the buzz had to happen. At some point, fans had to stop thinking that the Royals season was more than a pleasant bit of luck. After last night, I think the fans are there, and they are going to be there the rest of the year.

Joe Posnanski of the KC Star certainly enjoyed the game, and he's starting to believe:

They had no chance. You understand that, right? No chance. The Royals started a pitcher, Paul Abbott, who had not thrown in the major leagues since May. That's last May. Carlos Beltran could not play. Ken Harvey could not play. Michael Tucker could not play. That's almost one-third of the Royals' RBIs this season.

They were facing the New York Yankees.

Payroll difference: $110 million. And growing.

So, naturally, there were an American League record 19 doubles hit on Monday — the Royals banged out a team-record 11 of them — and Kansas City beat the Yankees 12-9.

You know what? Don't go trying to figure out this team.

“I am not surprised at all,” manager Tony Pena said. “I have seen this team do this all year. That right there is what this team is all about. This team has a heart.”

That's Tony Pena doing his best Sparky Anderson impersonation. It's all about heart and character. Maybe that's what luck is all about. The Royals have been outscored by their opponents by 1 run this year. That means they should be around .500 instead of nine games over. With luck, you can usually identify where the luck is happening; great records in close games, bad record in blowouts or winning late. The Royals haven't done anything there. They are five games over in 1 & 2 run games, but it's all in the two runs games (7 over). They have poor records holding leads late in the game or coming back late in the game. They do have the best BA with runners in scoring position, .308, but that just means their offense is lucky to be only 1 run behind their opponents.

So I'm at a loss. I won't stop trying to figure out this team, but I'm more willing to accept Joe's assertion that you may not be able to figure them out. And in the meantime, I'll enjoy a low payroll team bucking the odds to stay in first place.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	1751	1749
Attendance	27963	28651

And with the Royals having their largest gate of the year last night, here's the team report:

	2002		2003
Through Same Period	Games	Avg. Attendance	Games	Avg. Attendance	Pct. Change
Marlins	60	10227	58	14831	45.0
Angels	60	27056	60	37629	39.1
Royals	54	17874	57	23145	29.5
Reds	57	23554	58	30118	27.9
Phillies	58	21145	56	26313	24.4
Expos	57	10061	59	11956	18.8
Blue Jays	62	19905	58	23006	15.6
Athletics	61	24589	59	27075	10.1
Cubs	56	35294	58	36463	3.3
Red Sox	58	32948	58	33393	1.4
White Sox	59	22362	59	22565	0.9
Giants	59	40210	59	40034	-0.4
Dodgers	59	38390	60	38185	-0.5
Twins	60	23020	60	22396	-2.7
Cardinals	58	38290	59	37120	-3.1
Yankees	56	44685	57	43306	-3.1
Tigers	58	19109	55	18452	-3.4
Braves	59	33429	56	31306	-6.3
Devil Rays	59	13523	61	12637	-6.6
Astros	59	31679	59	29498	-6.9
Pirates	58	23639	56	21626	-8.5
Mariners	60	43746	60	39524	-9.7
Diamondbacks	59	39644	58	34761	-12.3
Rangers	58	30980	59	27069	-12.6
Orioles	53	34699	58	30287	-12.7
Padres	60	29168	60	25227	-13.5
Rockies	58	36219	60	29639	-18.2
Brewers	59	24828	60	20283	-18.3
Mets	57	37178	55	29016	-22.0
Indians	58	33282	59	21928	-34.1

Looks like if you win, the fans will come.

In his last three starts, Pedro Martinez has thrown 128, 111 and 128 pitches. He's in the bottom of the 5th, and is nearing 100 pitches, and he's losing control. He's walked two men in a row to load the bases, but comes back to strike out Tejada on a high 2-2 pitch. It's not clear if he will come out for the sixth; Casey Fossum is warming up.

Meanwhile, Hudson has only thrown 54 pitches and has allowed only one hit.

The White Sox are up 3-2 on the Angels in the top of the 5th. The White Sox have the best record in the majors since the All-Star break, 17-6, while the Angels have the worst at 5-20. Lee has two runs scored, Everett has 2 RBI and Thomas and Ordonez have two hits each. Seems like the White Sox are going to be the A's of 2003.

The Blue Jays are up 5-1 on the Mariners in the top of the fifth. Wells and Delgado have three RBI combined, giving them 210 combined for the year.

The Yankees bullpen is got hammered tonight. Over the last 8 games in which the pen has appeared, they are 1-4 with an 8.84 ERA. They have two saves and have blown three. In 18 1/3 innings, they have allowed 23 hits and 11 walks. The trades they have made have not helped. NY is going to have to have their starters go deep.

Giambi just hit the 19th double of the game, a new record for teams combined in the AL. The Royals lead 12-9 in the ninth, but the Yankees have scored twice and no one's out.

Dan Lewis of dlewis.net now is offering a number of storefronts. I'm going to buy the "Recall Selig Next" shirt.

The A's got to Pedro Martinez in the bottom of the third. After retiring the first seven batters, Ellis and Singleton hit back-to-back doubles to score the first run, then with two out, Guillen singled in the 2nd. Hudson is being very efficient, having tossed 40 pitches through four innings, 28 for strikes.

A nice 3-1 win for the Astros over the Cubs to maintain their lead over the Cardinals and extend it over the Cubs. The Cubs had their chances, going 2 for 10 with runners in scoring position. Dotel and Wagner made sure the Cubs stayed down once Miller tired, going 3 innings, allowing two hits and striking out three. The Astros are now 36-22 against the Central, but have losing records against the East and the West.

Kyle Lohse picked up his 9th win tonight with a solid eight inning performance. He's won his last three starts. The Twins have won 4 in a row and 10 of their last 13.

They are in the top of the 7th, and the Yankees and Royals have now combined for 12 doubles. The AL record is 18 set on July 13, 1996 as Cleveland beat Minnesota 12-6. KC Leads NY in this one 8-6.

A great pitching matchup between Wade Miller and Kerry Wood in Chicago tonight. The Astros have broken through first in the fifth with a two-rbi double by Jeff Kent. Miller and Wood are matching K's; Wood has 8 through five, Miller has 8 through five. Miller has only allowed two singles and 2 walks. Wood has been touched for five hits and 2 walks.

Update: Wood's next strikeout will be his 1000th.

A reader from NY writes:

You might want to say something about the Yankee baserunning tonight. It's only the 4th inning and Jorge Posada has been thrown out foolishly trying to stretch a double, Williams didn't score from third on a weak bouncer, Nick Johson and Soriano have been caught in rundowns and Soriano was thrown out on an ill-advised steal of third with Johnson hitting with a 2-0 count.

I didn't see much of this, but I saw the end of the Johnson run down, and didn't think it was his fault, and he did stay in it long enough for Jeter to reach second. Soriano is fast, but he's never impressed me with his intelligence on the basepaths.

The double barrage continues in KC. Now in the top of the fourth, the Yankees and Royals have combined for nine doubles. And KC has hit enough to tie the Yankees at five. The Royals are not disappointing a sell out crowd tonight; despite falling behind early, they have fought back against David Wells, who has walked two tonight. He's walked eight in his last four games, after walking six all season previous to that. And it's only the third time this year he's walked 2 or more. And he won't continue in the 4th. Hitchcock comes on to try to stop the double frenzy.

Update: The broadcasters are reporting Wells left the game with back pain.

Out of the park, that is. The Cardinals have four HR against the Pirates tonight, by their 1, 3, 5 and 7 hitters. Pujols had his 32nd of the year, and has raised his slugging percentage to .680. Rolen, Cairo and Hart have also added shots for the Cardinals.

Danny Haren, who batted ninth, had an odd outing as well. He went only 5 1/3 innings, allowed 10 hits and one walk, struck out none, but only allowed 1 run. The Pirates are 1 for 8 with runners in scoring position in the game.

The teams are doubling in Kansas City tonight. Both the Yankees and the Royals have three doubles each in the bottom of the third. The difference is that the Yankees have three other hits and two walks to go with the 2-baggers for a 5-1 lead. Seems Paul Abbott picked up where he left off last year.

Not a good outing for Dontrelle Willis. He last two innings, gives up seven runs, and walks Rickey Henderson twice. Adrian Beltre has the tough half of the cycle with a HR, triple and three RBI. Willis pitched into the third, where the first seven batters reached before he was lifted for Michael Tejera.

The weak Dodger offense hits much better against lefties. Thirty points better in BA and OBA, and 80 points better in slugging percentage. The Dodgers are 17-9, a .654 winning percentage, when the opposition starts a left-handed pitcher, fourth best in the majors.

Poor Paul Abbott. He has not pitched in the majors since May 2002, and hasn't started a game since April 2002, and he was awful in 2002 when he did pitch. So he makes his first appearance of 2003, and it's against the Yankees and David Wells. It should be noted that he has pitched well in triple-A, posting 50 strikeouts in 54 2/3 innings while walking only 12 and giving up only 3 HR. He had a 3.95 ERA.

Alex Belth has been corresponding with Will Carroll about Mariano Rivera's mechanics. It's an interesting read, and something to watch the next time you see Rivera pitch.

Yes, singular. I know that the Cubs and Astros are playing in a fight for the Central, and that Kansas City will get another big test hosting the Yankees, but sometimes you have a game that just outshines all others. Today, Pedro Martinez faces Tim Hudson in Oakland.

Hudson appeared on the scene in 1999. During his career, three pitchers have a winning percentage over .700:

Pitcher	Record	Winning Percentage
Pedro Martinez	76-19	.800
Randy Johnson	84-31	.730
Tim Hudson	74-30	.712

Two pitchers who don't lose going head-to-head. Hudson has faced Pedro before, early in his career. They split those first two contests, with Pedro pitching much better, but they haven't squared off since April 15, 2000.

They are 2-3 in ERA. They are 1-2 in batting average allowed. They are 3-4 in opponents OBA, and 1-2 in opponents slugging percentage allowed. And on top of all that, these teams are separated by one game in the wild card standings! Take a nap this evening, and stay up to watch or listen to this one.

Bryan Smith has a new baseball blog which premiers today. It's called Wait 'til Next Year, and he has an interesting twist. He's looking at how moves today will effect the team in the future. His first post analyzes the deadline trades to see what the teams will get out of their moves next year.

The Clark and Addison Chronicle is upset that Dusty set a pitch limit for Mark Prior yesterday and didn't adhere to it. Here were my thoughts on the game, before I knew there was a pre-set limit.

The commentors disagree with the Chonicle on this one. I'm not sure how I feel. Jason Steffens has an excellent point:

But if Baker thinks before the game that it's necessary to limit Prior's pitches such that he tells everyone that's what he's going to do, he should stick to that plan. The reasons for limiting a pitcher's pitch count don't disappear after he's thrown 8 innings.

On the other hand, Baker's primary job is to win. The Cubs are in the thick of a pennant race, and why trust the last three outs to a pitcher who probably isn't as good as the one on the mound. The game was close at that point, Prior wasn't quite at 100 pitches yet, and I can see Baker sending him out, pulling him if he got in any trouble. Looking at the play by play, I'm surprised he wasn't pulled after the Green single with two outs. But Burnitz was 0-3 with 2 K, and Prior struck him out to end the game.

Personally, I would have let him face one batter in the ninth. I definitely would have pulled him after the Green single. But I can't fault Baker here. It's nice to see a Cubs manager who wants to win this year.

Of course, now that I look at the news story, it was Prior who wanted to stay in. Dusty did go out to the mound after Prior gave up the single:

Prior had just given up a two-out single to Shawn Green, and tough left-handed hitter Jeromy Burnitz was coming to the plate with the Cubs leading the Los Angeles Dodgers 3-1.

What did Prior think as Baker approached?

"That I was done," Prior said. "I had success against Burnitz all day. Basically, I told him (Baker) it was my game to lose and I want to at least have a shot."

Baker gave Prior his shot, and the 22-year-old right-hander didn't miss. He struck out Burnitz, and the Cubs had their victory and a 4-2 record on the West Coast trip as they snapped a two-game losing skid.

"I really didn't know what I was going to do when I went out there," said Baker, whose team is 60-56. "I wanted to look into his eyes and see if I saw fatigue or anything. He said, 'I feel good. It's my ballgame.' Damian Miller (the Cubs' catcher) convinced me. He said, 'He's throwing better now than he was before.' I said, 'Let's go.'"

Hey, I'm link of the day over at Aaron's Baseball Blog. (Unfortunately, Aaron is still using Blogger, so the permalink doesn't work. Scroll down to the 8/11 article.) Aaron has everything you need to know about the Twins, and writes for Baseball Primer as well. He even has head shots! He should be one of your daily reads.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	1740	1744
Attendance	27969	28679

Jason Isringhausen does his job and pitches a perfect 9th for his 11th save in 12 opportunities. He has not pitched 22 innings, given up 16 hits and struck out 23. Nice comeback after the injury.

With Houston, St. Louis and Chicago all winning, 2.5 games still separate the three teams.

With two out in the 8th, Ramirez was approaching 90 pitches. Number 90 went out of the park off the bat of Eduardo Perez. The game is tied at 2.

Update: John Smoltz comes in and immediately gives up the go-ahead HR to Albert Pujols. Pujols had been kept off balance in his first three AB by Ramirez, but he smashes the ball into deep center field off Smoltz. Cardinals lead 3-2 on three solo HR.

It figures. I take the dog out and I miss an unassisted triple play! Congrats to Furcal. You don't see those very often.

Update: As Jon Miller just pointed out, the HD picture gave you a much better view of the triple play. There have been a couple of times that I noticed the HD picture was giving you a better view of the defense. You can see more defenders moving at once, so you get a better idea of what's going on.

Williams continues to have high pitch counts. He's thrown 97 pitches through five innings, while Ramirez has thrown 48 through four. Williams just worked out of a bases loaded jam to leave the score tied at 1. The Braves are 0 for 3 with runners in scoring position.

The Braves are working Woody Williams. He threw 56 pitches through three innings, and on the 2nd pitch of the fourth, Gary Sheffield took him deep to tie the game at one. Meanwhile, Horacio Ramirez is being very efficient, throwing 34 pitches through 3 innings. His only mistake was a HR pitch to Mike Matheny.

Mark Prior pitched as good a game as you can expect from someone going up against Kevin Brown. Prior went nine, throwing only 116 pitches, 84 for strikes. He gave up 5 hits, walked 1 and struck out 9. It's his thrid complete game victory of the year, but the first since 4/19.

Kevin Correia of the Giants was called on to make an emergency start and did an excellent job. He allowed 7 hits over six innings, and only one run. He threw seventy two of his 110 pitches for strikes. A great job in his first start as a big leaguer.

A few years ago, people were lamenting the quality of pitching in the majors. I tried to convince people this all went in cycles, and eventually, pitching would come around again. What I thought would really drive it is that pitchers would become more valuable than hitters. I'm not sure that has happened yet, but there were seven pitchers making over $10,000,000 last year. Whatever the reason, I think this crop of young pitchers is start of the tide turning away from offense and back to a more neutral game.

Philip Michaels disagrees with the notion that Bowie Kuhn acted in the best interest of baseball by disallowing the Oakland A's sale of players to the Yankees and Red Sox in the mid 70's. I commented on this here and here.

All the AL games are over, and not much has changed. All three Central teams won, the Yankees and Red Sox lost, and Seattle picked up a game on the A's. Rich Harden faced a tough offensive team and only went five after throwing 109 pitches. He allowed two runs, but the bullpen gave up three the rest of the way. The races stay tight.

They set the table for Nomar. With the bases loaded and 2 out, Garciaparra strikes out to end the game. Jeff Suppan's ERA is now 9.53 since joining the Red Sox.

The Yankees bullpen was horrible today. Four different pitchers went 3 innings and allowed five earned runs, six hits and four walks. Meanwhile, Rafael Soriano and Hasegawa combined for 2 1/3 no hit innings to get the win and the save.

Jason Schmidt was scratched from today's start against the Phillies. The Giants would do well to try to let his elbow heal, especially with a big lead in the West.

Arthur Rhodes was brought in to face the lefties in the heart of the Yankees order with a man on second. He walked Giambi, got Matsui on a deep fly ball for the 2nd out, then faced Posada to keep him from batting lefty. Posada drove a double into the deep power alley in left center, and even Giambi could score from first on it. It's 6-6 in the bottom of the 7th, and Posada's on third.

The Indians beat the Angels 3-1 today. It's the third straight game they've won scoring only three runs. Over their last five, they've scored 3 four times, won all four, scored two once and lost. The pitchers threw strikes again today, 99 of 145 pitches, 68%. This year, teams have won only 36% of games in which they scored exactly three runs. This was Cleveland's 12th win in which they scored exactly three runs, the most in the majors.

Jeff Suppan is once again supplying the opposition with power. He's losing 5-1 in the sixth, and has allowed four doubles, a triple and a HR. That's six hits he's allowed today, all for extra bases. Ten of the thirteen hits he's allowed since joining the Red Sox have been for extra bases.

The Yankees recent bullpen pickups did not pan out today. Orosco came in to get one batter, and gave up a hit. Nelson came in to get out of the inning and gave up 2 hits and 2 walks, and the Mariners went from down 4-1 to up 6-4. To the bottom of the 7th.

The game got difficult for Rich Harden in the 5th. With two outs, he gave up a single to Robby Alomar and a triple to the hot Carlos Lee. Frank Thomas then followed up with a double to make it 2-0. They just need Ordonez to hit a HR for the four batter cycle. :-)

Bret Boone singles in two runs to tie the Yankees at 4. Boone's been in a slump, with only 3 RBI in his previous ten games. He was batting .216 over that period.

Rich Harden and Esteban Loaiza are both doing well through three so far. Two hits off Loaiza, one off Harden. Each has walked one. Harden has five K, Loaiza four.

Richie Sexon hit his 32nd HR to give the Brewers a 3-0 lead over the Marlins. It was a two run blast. The shot also moves Sexon out of a tie for 2nd in the NL home run race. Only 12 of his 32 HR have come with men on.

David Dellucci hits his first HR as a Yankee to give the New Yorkers a 4-1 lead.

Derek Jeter hit his ninth HR of the year to tie the game at 1-1. Although it's his 9th HR, it's only the third one he's pulled this year.

The Royals get to Jorge Sosa early today. With one out in the first, they've had five hits, 1 walks and three runs scored.

Update:Matos singles in 2 to make it 5-0 and chase Sosa out of the game.

Clemens throws 31 pitches in the first inning, and gives up a run despite striking out 2. Three singles got him, two with two out to Edgar Martinez and John Olerud.

A-Rod homered in the first inning after a leadoff triple and a sacrifice fly. Texas leads Toronto 2-0 in the first. That's seven HR in 10 games for A-Rod, and the Rangers are 6-3 in those games.

The Twins break on top early against Detroit. Koskie drives in Stewart and Hocking with a double. Koskie is 12 for his last 29 with 4 doubles.

Some really good pitching matchups today in some big games. In the category of "Old Guys Who Can Still Pitch," we have Jamie Moyer taking on Roger Clemens at Yankee Stadium. Both post ERAs in the mid 3's, despite each being over 40 years old. Moyer is 4-0 over his last five starts despite a 4.88 ERA. And at 41, Roger Clemens is still striking out nearly a batter an inning. I wondered when the last time two 40-year-olds with ERA's under 4.00 faced each other in a game. I couldn't do it exactly, so I found pitchers with ERA's under 4.00 for the season. The last time this happened was June 15, 1945, when Mike Ryba of the Boston Red Sox faced Johnny Niggeling of the Washington Senators in Washington. If you discount the war years, the last time was 6/18/1933, when Dazzy Vance of the Cardinals faced Eppa Rixey of the Cincinnati Reds. They were both 42 at that point, and had hooked up two years earlier on 7/26/31 at age 40. It's a rare event, be sure to tune in.

Another "old" matchup takes place in Arizona where Al Leiter faces Randy Johnson. Niether lefty is having his best year, but both have pitched better lately, posting ERA's under 3.00 in their last five starts.

On the younger side, A's rookie Rich Harden takes on AL ERA leader Esteban Loaiza. Harden has made four good starts against KC, Anaheim, Cleveland and Detroit. The last two were not much of a test, but this game will be. Loaiza continues to be consistent, with a 2.30 overall ERA and a 2.36 ERA over his last five starts.

The West Coast serves up two good matchups as well. Brett Myers hurls against Jason Schmidt as the Phillies face the Giants in a possible NLDS preview. The Giants are 2-3 vs. the Phillies, but 3-0 vs. the Marlins, so the Giants may want to knock the Phillies out of the wild card race.

In LA, the Cubs Mark Prior goes against the Dodgers Kevin Brown. Prior is 6th and Brown #1 in the NL ERA race. Both have great control and strikeout a lot of batters. The LA fans should keep cool in the breeze.

Lots of great action today. Enjoy!

Yesterday, I was talking to a friend, and told him, "If anyone asks you a pitching trivia question, and you don't know the aswer, say 'Warren Spahn.'" This morning, I get an e-mail from James Joyner of Outside the Beltway with an exceprt from an ajc.com about Warren Spahn. James thought the following passage was interesting:

"I don't think Warren Spahn will ever get into the Hall of Fame," Stan Musial once said. "He'll never stop pitching."

"I'm proud of the fact that I pitched as long as I did, and I was a consistent 20-game winner," Spahn said. "I always felt I had to win to keep my job. I felt I had a bad year if I didn't win 20.

"The ballclub never offered me a raise," said Spahn, who pitched during the age of one-year contracts and never made more than $87,500 in salary. "I had to fight for every damn dollar I made. I always felt I had to have a good year or I was going to lose my job because I was that old. And when Greg came along [in 1950], I had another mouth to feed. I couldn't fail."

Spahn led the NL in victories eight times. His 63 career shutouts are the most by a left-hander. He threw an NL-record 5,246 innings, pitching every fourth day in a four-man rotation. His first no-hitter came at the age of 39, a 4-0 victory over Philadelphia on Sept. 16, 1960. The following April, five starts later, Spahn no-hit San Francisco, 1-0.

But his most remarkable start may have come in 1963, when Spahn, 43, dueled the Giants' Juan Marichal for 15 scoreless innings. In the 16th, on his 201st pitch that night, Spahn hung a screwball to Willie Mays, whose homer won it 1-0.

"It became rhythmic that one out followed another," Spahn recalled. "I thought I had to get ahead of Mays and I hung that screwball. Afterward, I was beat. Oh, man. Gangrene set in after I got in the clubhouse. Marichal was 25, and said the only reason he stayed in was he didn't want an old guy to beat him.

"Today, everybody's afraid they're gonna hurt a guy's arm," Spahn said. "A guy gets a hangnail and they're out for a week. I had aches and pains, but I never had an arm I couldn't throw with. Now, guys are on the disabled list forever. I don't think we had a disabled list."

Well, plenty of arms got hurt back then, too. Old ballplayers have a habit of not remembering that. I think a reason is that often pitchers did not come back from injuries.

Spahn was born in 1921. Forty seven other ML pitchers were born that year. If you look at that group of 48, 29, or 60% had their careers end before 1951, when they would have been 30.

Go forward 40 years, and look at pitchers born in 1961. There were 55 ML pitchers born in that year. Twenty six of then had their careers end before 1991, or 47%. Why? I can site a number of reasons:

1. More jobs due to expansion.


2. Bigger money means the pitchers want to hang around longer.


3. When they are hurt, they are allowed to heal.

Spahn, like Nolan Ryan, Roger Clemens and Randy Johnson was a physical freak who could pitch forever. Guys like these are rare.

What I also found interesting in the article was Spahn's evaluation of today's Braves, and how spot on it is:

After Tuesday's statue unveiling, Spahn is eager to watch the Braves play in person that night. "You look at that lineup, there's so many new guys and where did they come from?" asked Spahn, who watches the Braves religiously on TV. "And they're all doing well. Their pitching isn't quite there this year, but the offense has taken over. What amazes me is, where did [Marcus] Giles come from? And [Rafael] Furcal? I didn't think he'd be as good as he is. And the first baseman?

"Who's the third baseman now?" Spahn asked of Vinny Castilla. "He's strong, but nobody changes up speeds on him. I had an instinct for pitching, for changing speeds. The hitters had to [adapt to] my game. With Chipper, everybody tries to pitch him inside. If they make a mistake, he hurts them. The raw talent is in centerfield, that son of a gun. But he doesn't have discipline. He chases balls in the dirt a lot. [Greg] Maddux has had his problems, but he'll get there. And [John] Smoltz has been amazing. He's added pitches, and been able to go out there every day. It seems like the Braves have a dead spot right at the time of the playoffs, but maybe this year will be different."

Congratulations to Warren Spahn on getting a statue honoring him in front of Turner Field!

Rich Lederer follows up on his Cy Williams piece of last week with one where he adjusts for park effects. Williams still rates very highly as compared to the league.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	1725	1729
Attendance	27928	28626

A big win for the Phillies today, after having the Marlins tie them for the wild card lead yesterday. Down 4-0 and 5-2, the Phillies fought back to tie the game and send it into extra innings. The won it in the 10th with three runs, including a two run HR by Pat Burrell.

Burrell had three hits today. It's only his third three-hit game of the season, and his first since April 19.

Kevin Millar just homered in the bottom of the eighth, after the Red Sox had taken the lead on a wild pitch. The two run shot gave the Sox a 6-3 lead. It also was the 10,000th regular season HR hit at Fenway. A lucky fan in the green monster seats has the ball.

KC bounced back today with the 2nd good outing by rookie Jimmy Gobble. He threw 62 of his 89 pitches for strikes today, as he allowed 1 earned run over 6 1/3 innings. His ERA now stands at 0.73.

Beltran had two hits and three RBI, including a two run HR. He has 9 RBI in 9 games in August.

Gil Meche has had an excellent year against the Yankees. In two starts, including this afternoon's 2-1 victory, Meche has gone 15 2/3 innings, struckout 11, walked three and has an 0.57 ERA. Not a bad year against a potent offense. With Pineiro, Moyer, Franklin and Meche, the Mariners post four starters with ERA's under 4.00 (and all with over 20 starts). They are the only AL team with four 20 game starters with that low an ERA. In the NL, Philadelphia and the Chicago Cubs also boast that good a starting staff.

The Angels and Indians are playing a day-night double header. Cleveland won the first game in 13 innings, 3-2. What's impressive in looking at the boxscore is the percentage of strikes the Cleveland staff tossed in the game. One hundred twenty three of the one hundred eighty seven pitches thrown by the Tribe went for strikes, 66%.

And just to show that this afternoon wasn't a fluke, they are tied at 2 again, now playing in the top of the 6th in the night cap.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	1709	1714
Attendance	27865	28552

The Baltimore Orioles finish the sweep with a 4-2 victory over the Red Sox. If the Yankees maintain their lead, the Sox will be 4 games out come tomorrow morning.

Update: Yankees win 9-7. The AL East lead is four, and they pick up ground on all the team that are vying for best AL record.

Jesus Colome pitches the ninth to preserve a 4-0 victory for Jeremi Gonzalez. The DRays are now 5-3 in August with a team ERA of 3.68. The win against the Royals, combined with the White Sox win against Oakland puts Chicago in first place in the AL Central.

The battle of the Marks goes into the ninth with Buehrle leading Mulder 3-2. Mulder has given up 10 hits to Buehrle's five, and each has allowed a HR.

More good defense in this game. Ichiro makes a catch sliding on his behind in shallow right center. Amazing body control and hand-eye coordination.

Jason Davis took his 1-0 lead into the ninth. He got into a little trouble with 2 on and 2 out in the ninth, but they let him face Garret Anderson, who smacked his 26th HR of the season. One batter too many. The Angels scored two more to make it a 5-1 game in the bottom of the ninth.

Tampa Bay keeps improving. Jeremi Gonzalez has pitched seven strong innings, shutting out the Royals on three hits. He's thrown 105 pitches, so we'll see if he comes out for the 8th, but a good start nonetheless. He only threw 56 of his 105 pitches for strikes, however, so he still has a way to go. TB leads 3-0 after 7.

Franklin lasts 95 pitches for the Mariners. On the 95th, Nick Johnson hit his first career grand slam. It's 8-5 NY.

I've heard some complaints about the Yankees doing poorly with the bases loaded, but that was their 7th grand slam of the year, which leads the majors.

Rafael Soriano is on in relief. I hope he last long enough to face Alfonso. (He's 0 for 1 vs. Rafael career.)

David Dellucci, with the bases loaded and two out, makes a terrific catch to end the inning. In RF, Delllucci had to run far to his left, nearly to the foul line, to make a diving catch of a Ben Davis pop. Jeff Weaver owes him a dinner for that one. (The runs would have been Weaver's; the ball was hit off Hitchcock.)

Jeff Weaver is over 90 pitches in the 5th, and he's getting hit. He's given up four runs and the lead, including two hits with two outs to drive in three runs.

In a fast moving game (it's already in the 7th), Jarrod Washburn and Jason Davis are locked in a 1-0 duel, with Davis taking the shutout into the 7th in Cleveland. Davis has given up 3 hits and no walks; Washburn two hits and two walks. The lone run came on a single by Travis Hafner after a double by Casey Blake. (Casey and Blake were the names of two of the characters in Casey at the Bat. I wonder if his middle name is Flynn?)

The Orioles are leading the Red Sox 4-1 in the 4th inning, threatening to sweep the double header from the Beantown Boys. Casey Fossum was the victim of a Bill Mueller error, which led to four unearned runs. Eric DuBose is being very efficient for the O's, having thrown 62 pitches through four innings. With the Blue Jays losing, the Orioles could end up 1/2 game out of third place by the time the night is over.

Ryan Franklin, staked to a 1-0 lead in the 2nd, has given it back with more in the bottom of the inning. Matsui hit a rope inside the foul pole to tie the game, then, having returned to the leadoff spot, Alfonso Soriano drove in two with a single. Yankees up 3-1 after 2.

Robert Tagorda compares the two closers, and likes Gagne better.

With all the criticism I give the Yankees middle infielders, Soriano just made a nice play to save a run. With a man on third and the infield in, Soriano dove to his right to knock down a ball, froze the runner at third and threw out the batter. The Yankees get out of the inning as McLemore flies out to right. It's 1-0 Seattle in the 2nd.

Mike Sweeney is back and batting 5th in the Royals lineup. Unfortunately, he hasn't had a chance to bat yet as the once and present Royal Kevin Appier is getting knocked around in the bottom of the first. He gave up two hits and three runs, but got out of it with a double play.

Corey Thurman is had a rough first inning. He faced nine batters, and gave up HR to Blalock, Teixeira and Nix. It's 5-0 Rangers. The Blue Jay pitcher had not given up a HR in 12 innings before tonight. He's pulled after only 2/3 of an inning.

Scott Williamson, the erstwhile closer for the Cincinnati Reds, was brought into a tight situation for the Boston Red Sox today. Lowe entered the inning leading by one, and gave up a single, walk and double to leave the game tied and men on 2nd and 3rd. Enter Williamson. This is a situation that begs for a closer; and since the Red Sox have two now (Kim being the other one), you would think this is a perfect situation to use one, and still have one for the ninth. Williamson struck out Conine, but after an IBB, the flood gates opened. Williamson gave up three straight singles to resulting in four runs. Sauerbeck came in and made sure the remainder of the runners Williamson left on base scored. All in all, a seven run seventh for the Orioles.

Sometimes I think these closers can't pitch unless they come on in the ninth with the bases empty.

Seattle at NY offers a matchup between the teams with the two best records in the American League. Not a great pitching matchup as Franklin faces Weaver. Something else to think about as these two teams face off, however, is that we have a chance at an interesting four-way tie at the end of the season between NY, Boston, Seattle and Oakland. Let's assume that happen and all finish ahead of the Central winner. Normally, when two teams tie for the division lead and either would be the wild card, the one with the better head-to-head record gets the division. But in this case, that wouldn't be true. So you'd have to have a 1-game playoff for the division. Then the losers (because they would still be tied) would have to have a one game playoff for the wild card! That would be so cool.

The A's visit the windy city to take on the surging White Sox. It's the battle of the lefty Marks as Mulder faces Buehrle. Mulder has never lost to the A's, and Buehrle is 1-5 vs. the A's.

In San Francisco, a potential first round playoff preview as the Phillies send Randy Wolf vs. the Giants Jesse Foppert. Foppert is 3-1 over his last five games, but has not pitched well, posting a 6.20 ERA. Foppert gets hit hard by lefties, and the Phillies show a lot of power vs. righties, so I don't expect his ERA to go down much tonight.

Darren Viola points out this article by Eli Saslow of the Newark Star-Ledger. It's about math professor Michael Hoban and his quest to devise a formula that rated shortstops. What surprised Hoban was that his formula rated Jeter the worst defender:

Desperate to discover the worst shortstop in major league baseball, Hoban spent day after day perfecting a complicated equation. He lived behind a 2,696-page baseball statistics guide, typing out numbers until his fingers hurt and pondering decimal points until his head spun.

Now, he had come just a few keystrokes away from unveiling the worst fielding shortstop in the game. He punched the last key:

Derek Jeter.

Wait. That couldn't be right. Hoban reevaluated statistics and double-checked his equation and plugged in more numbers and punched the key again. Still Jeter.

Uh-oh.

"I was surprised, very surprised," Hoban said recently."I didn't think I'd see his name at the bottom of the list, but it's there. And these numbers don't lie."

Jeter doesn't believe it.

"I'm the worst?" Jeter said when confronted with the numbers. "I don't think I would say that. But I couldn't really care less what some mathematical equation comes out with."

Later, Jeter makes an intelligent argument:

"How to you rank defensive shortstops?" Jeter said. "I don't see how a formula can evaluate how somebody plays.

"You get a strikeout pitcher on the mound as opposed to a ground-ball pitcher, it's going to affect the statistics you use to evaluate defense. So I don't really think you can."

Now, Jeter has a point with the strikeouts. And from the way the article describes the formula, I don't trust it that much myself. For example, the most heavily weighted factor is fielding percentage, and frankly, MLB shortstop fielding percentages are not all that different. What gets Jeter in the formula is his range, and range will be effected by the handedness of the pitchers on your team and their propensity for strikeouts.

But these have been adjusted for. In looking at this article, I wondered if Hoban had read Win Shares. That formula does take into account all of the things Jeter was refering to in his point about strikeouts. Here's Jeter's win shares per 162 games by year:

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	1693	1699
Attendance	27824	28496

I'm just looking at the Astros lineup, and hitters 2-5 tonight all have slugging percentages over .500. I know the ball park has something to do with it. The Astros runs scored at home (5.2 per game) is better than 1/2 more than on the road (4.5). Still, an impressive group of hitters, and Jeff Kent is not in the lineup.

Darrell May, Jason Grimsley and Curtis Leskanic had combined for eight four-hit innings and a shutout of the DRays. On comes closer Mike MacDougal to allow three runs, blow his 7th save to tie for the league lead, and lose the game for the Royals. The White Sox make up one in the loss column.

Billy Traber pitched a nice game for the Indians tonight to even his record at 6-6. Traber, Riske and Baez combined for a seven-hit shutout of the Mariners. They bent, but did not break as the Mariners managed only 1 hit in 8 AB with runners in scoring position. The Indians offense didn't do much better in that situation, going 0 for 6, but they did hit two solo HR.

That's the score of the Marlins-Cardinals game, with the Cardinals leading. It's also the number of hits Tomko has tonight compared to the the number of hits the Marlins have through four. Tomko has retired twelve in a row.

Albert Pujols drives in Luis Jim Edmonds from first with his 41st double of the year.

The other day, when I was researching Nomar Garciaparra's RBI, I ran a program to figure out the percent of runners driven in by players. The formula I use is (RBI-HR)/Men on base. One thing I like about this stat is that it shows the two things you need for a lot of RBI; men on base, and the ability to drive them around. Power hitters are better at this, because they can drive in men from first more easily than singles hitters. Albert Pujols (entering today) has the highest percentage of runners driven in:

Hitter             Men On   DI   Pct
Albert Pujols         288   69   0.240
Carlos Delgado        340   77   0.226
Preston Wilson        389   81   0.208
Bengie Molina         204   42   0.206
Gary Sheffield        301   61   0.203
Chris Stynes          232   47   0.203
Todd Helton           341   69   0.202
Garret Anderson       324   65   0.201

you can see, the reason Preston Wilson's lead in RBI doesn't come from Wilson, but from the 100 extra runners he's had on base. If the Cardinals got better table setters on in front of Pujols, he'd be leading the league in RBI by a lot.

The Royals strike first in their battle with Tampa Bay. Ken Harvey's double drives in one, and then he scores on a single by Angel Berroa. Darrell May has been strong through three, allowing one hit and three strikeouts.

In a effort to make Vin Scully proud, the Red Sox scored half a dozen runs in the 2nd inning. The Red Sox continue to play great at Fenway. What I find interesting, however, is why:

Boston, 2003	Home	Road
Record	37-16	29-30
Runs Scored Per Game	6.94	5.41
Runs Allowed Per Game	4.81	5.56

Usually, the runs go the same way when you leave the park. But every part of this team appears to have built for Fenway park. Which brings up an interesting point; it's going to be really important for the Red Sox to earn home field advantage in the playoffs. They would have it for the World Series, but as the wild card, they would have to play the majority of their games on the road to get there. It's not enough for them to make the playoffs. They really need the best record.

Kevin Millwood pitched a eight inning complete game loss. He only allowed six hits, but also three walks. Two of the hits were solo HR, and Colorado took advantage of the few scoring opportunities they had, going 2 for 5 with runners in scoring position. The Colorado pen pitched brilliantly, going 3.2 innings, allowing only 1 hit and 1 walk. Marlins can tie for the wild card lead with a win tonight.

The Yankees win, the A's and Twins lose. These are tough losses for the A's and Twins, but really tough for the A's. You have to beat up on a team like the Tigers when you have the chance. The amazing thing is that Bonderman walked six A's in five innings, but still allowed only two runs and got the win. Once again, Zito gets hurt by poor run support.

The Atlanta Braves machine keeps rolling. They are up 3-0 on the Brewers today in the 4th, thanks to 1/2 a cycle for Vinny Castilla. Vinny has driven in 2 with a triple and one with a solo HR. It's the tough half of the cycle.

Jason Steffens of The Clark and Addison Chronicle comments on my Kerry Wood post of last night. He's believes a comparison to Nolan Ryan is more appropriate than a comparison to Bobby Witt.

Alex Rodriguez homered to tie the Rangers-Yankees game at 4. The-Rod has now homered in six of his last seven games.

The Baseball Crank wonders who has had the most win shares, all of them coming from defense. The answer is Billy Hunter, who in 1953 had 11 win shares, all from defense. Hunter came up in 1953 and played with the St. Louis Browns in their last season. He played 154 games, batting .219 with a .253 OBA and a .259 slugging percentage. That's pretty worthless. But he must have been a great fielder.

Enrique Wilson just hit his 2nd HR of the year, a grand slam. He now has 3 career grand slams in 24 AB with the bases loaded. Yankees lead 4-3 in the 2nd. The two walks come back to haunt Benoit.

Corey and Torii have combined to give the Twins an early 2-1 lead over the Orioles. Koskie doubled and Hunter homered.

I'm listening to the Rangers radio broadcast of the Rangers-Yankees game for a change, and the announcers are talking about the excellent OBA's of Jeter and Johnson. Nice to hear some intelligent radio personalities!

Rafael Palmeiro hits a three-run HR off Mike Mussina in the first inning. It's his 4th career HR against Mussina in 45 AB. He's hit 7 against Bobby Witt, six against Radke, and five against Chuck Finley.

The Royals, in the last week and a half, have lost five of six games to the Chicago White Sox, and now lead by one game. They travel to Tampa Bay to start a four game series with one of the AL's worse teams, although the DRays had a decent July. KC needs an easy opponent to get the wind back in their sails. They'll send Darrell May against Rob Bell.

The Cubs go for a sweep in San Diego this afternoon, sending Carlos Zambrano against Kevin Jarvis. The Cubs have been playing very well lately. On the morning of July 25th, the Cubs had a record of 50-51, 5 1/2 games out first place. They've gone 8-3 since then, outscoring their opponent 41-29.

Florida continues their important wild card series with St. Louis. The Marlins are now only one back of the Phillies for the wild card, and the two losses to Florida have dropped the red birds 5 games out. Beckett faces Tomko. Tomko has posted a 6.21 ERA over his last five outings. Since the Phillies are playing in Colorado this afternoon, the Marlins will go into the game knowing if they can tie tonight.

Enjoy!

Kerry Wood pitched a good game last night, striking out 10 and allowing two runs in 7 1/3 innings. However, he walked four. In his first 107 IP this year, he walked 43, or 3.6 per 9. In his last 47 1/3 innings, he's walked 32, or 6.1 per 9. He's not going to be successful putting that many runners on base. His ERA for the first period was 2.94; since then, it's been 4.56. Wood strikes out a tremendous number of batters, which is a great strength, but he needs to go back toward being the pitcher who struck out 20 and walked none, or he'll end up with a Bobby Witt career.

Sidney Ponson pitched well enough, allowing two runs in 7 1/3 innings, but Josh Fogg and Julian Tavarez combined for a three hit shutout to beat the Giants 3-0. Ponson wasn't striking out people (3 last night), but Pittsburgh couldn't string their hits together, going 1 for 8 overall with runners in scoring position. Former Giant Reggie Sanders delivered two doubles and two RBI.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	1679	1684
Attendance	27807	28467

A big night for Marcus Giles, three for five with a double and two HR. His four RBI breaks a six game streak without batting in a run.

Another blown save for Mariano Rivera, his fifth of the year. Blalock had the big hit, driving in two in the 9th after a Rivera throwing error on a bunt. Mariano has had only two season with more than five blown saves.

The Marlins one through five hitters are having an excellent night. Each has at least two hits, and the five are a combined 11 for 17 with seven runs and five RBI. Willis has thrown 92 pitches through six innings, and has a 7-2 lead.

Martinez has loaded the bases with Angels with two out in the bottom of the ninth. He's thrown over 120 pitches, and they are letting him face Salmon.

Update: Pedro strikes out Salmon looking to end the game.

Eric Chavez hit two HR and a double tonight to lead the A's to a 9-3 victory. After a slow start, Chavez has been playing like a start since June 1.

Chavez, 2003	Through May	June On
Batting Average	.241	.309
On-Base Average	.319	.370
Slugging Percentage	.440	.594

He's really on fire to start August, going 11 for 21 with six extra base hits.

Pedro Martinez has pitched a very efficient eight innings tonight. Despite striking out 10, he's only thrown 108 pitches, 77 of them for strikes. There is no action in the Boston bullpen, so it looks like Pedro is going for the complete game victory with the Sox up 3-1. If he does finish the game, it will be his 2nd CG of the year.

The Yankees traded recently acquired reliever Armando Benitez to the Seattle Mariners for former Yankee Jeff Nelson. I think after Nelson blasted the Seattle management, they decided to get rid of him, and my guess is that the Yankees would much rather have Jeff than Benitez. It's a pretty even deal, but I think Jeff has the better head.

Colon continues to make the 2-0 lead stand up. Through seven, he's allowed one hit and struck out seven. Only one walk, to Joe Randa.

The White Sox got off to the early lead, scoring two in the third off Kris Wilson. The runs came on back-to-back HR by Robbie Alomar and Lee. Colon still hasn't allowed a hit through four.

Both afternoon games are in the third inning, and there has only been one hit in either game so far (way to go, Damien Rolls). It might just be a matter of time with Kris Wilson, however. He's already walked three, and has thrown 21 balls and only 18 strikes through two innings.

Kansas City and Chicago finish up their three game series this afternoon. By winning game one, KC assured itself of leaving the Windy City in first place. They then take on Tampa Bay while the White Sox face the Angels. Kris Wilson takes on Bartolo Colon, and both have been pitching well lately.

The other Missouri team, the St. Louis Cardinals are also in the playoff hunt and host Dontrelle Willis and the Flordia Marlins tonight. The Cardinals trot their own rookie to the mound, Danny Haren. Haren has been especially effective against lefty batters so far, allowing a .226 BA to lefties while righties are hitting .300 against him. He's a righty, and there haven't been many AB against him yet. I wouldn't take the numbers seriously, but it's something to watch for tonight.

Finally, Sidney Ponson makes his NL debut against Josh Fogg of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Fogg has allowed 20 ER in his last 21 1/3 innings.

Last night, Jason Schmidt pitched about as well as someone can pitch. He went seven shutout innings, allowing four hits and no walks while striking out three. He threw 80 pitches, 60 for strikes. He came out after only 80 pitches because he's experienced tightness in his right forearm:

Still, Schmidt's case is as good as anybody's right now. He didn't have his dominating stuff -- Schmidt only fanned three against the Pirates -- and still shut down his one-time team before leaving after 80 pitches.

Schmidt had an 11-day layoff because of tightness in his right forearm before returning to the rotation last Wednesday but said his arm is fine.

"We've got a good bullpen, so why not let them take over?" Schmidt said. "This is the time of year you've got to be careful. I want to make sure what I had happen in the past doesn't reoccur."

One of the advantages of a huge lead in a division race is that you can afford to rest your front line players and make sure the team is healthy for the playoffs. I suspect they'll treat Schmidt with kid gloves the rest of the way.

Edward Cossette of Bambino's Curse is on vacation today. Edward was kind enough to ask me to fill in today. The subject is Nomar and RBI.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	1664	1669
Attendance	27798	28441

The Royals scored two unearned runs in the 9th, but it was not enough as the White Sox hold on for a 5-4 win. Loaiza pitched another good game, going six innings and striking out seven. His ERA is now 2.30, still good enough to lead the AL.

A nice comeback victory for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays tonight. They scored two in the ninth to tie, then Travis Lee singled in the winning run in the 10th. Lee had a big game, going 3 for 5 with a HR, double and 2 RBI. From July 8th on, he's 36 for 90 (.400) with 16 extra base hits and 23 RBI. He's also drawn 16 walks, putting his OBA near .500. The Rays are 13-12 in that time.

Randy Johnson seems to be all or nothing tonight. Four of his six outs have been via the K, but three of the five balls put into play have gone for hits.

The Mets are pounding the Astros 10-1 in the sixth inning. Everyone but Floyd has scored a run, and everyone but Raul Gonzalez has had a hit. Al Leiter has six K through six, although he has walked four. Ron Villone's ERA went from 2.25 to 3.12.

The Moyer-Sabathia matchup worked out to be the pitching duel that was expected. Moyer allowed one run through seven, and Sabathia gave up two in six innings. Both bullpens have been near perfect so far as the Indians try to keep CC from getting an L as they trail 2-1 in the bottom of the 9th.

The Phillies are taking advantage of Coors field and Shawn Chacon so far tonight. Through three innings, they have five hits, including a HR and a double in addition to two walks to take a 4-0 lead on the Rockies.

The Phillies have a terrific 1-5 offense. Byrd, Polanco, Thome, Abreu and Lieberthal all have OBA's over .370, Abreu leading the way with a .407 OBA through three tonight.

The Orioles beat the Twins 3-2, the difference being a run as a result of a Corey Koskie error. They had Fordyce caught stealing, but Koskie failed to get him. A tough loss for the Twins as the Royals are losing to the White Sox.

Brad Penny is shutting down the Cardinals so far tonight. Through four, he's allowed one hit and struck out five, although he has walked three. Meanwhile, his teammates have gotten seven singles and 2 walks off Woody Williams, good for a 4-0 lead in the bottom of the fifth. Penny had a 2.38 ERA in July after a horrible 6.88 in June. So far, the July improvement seems to be carrying over.

Another good outing from A's rookie Rich Harden. Six inning, two runs, six strikeouts. His ERA is now 1.33. The A's are leading 7-2 in the 9th, so it looks like Harden will pick up his third win in four starts. A great start to a major league career.

Frank Thomas capped off a five run 2nd against Kyle Snyder with a two run HR. He's been relatively quiet during the Sox surge, batting .250 since July 18th, but 9 of his 17 hits have been for extra bases. If the White Sox get Thomas hot to go with Lee, Ordonez and Alomar, the White Sox offense will be among the best in the league.

Okay, I have to refer you to this part of this post:

Suppan, like Jose Guillen, is having a career year. Prior to this year, his lowest ERA in a year in which he pitched 100 innings was 4.37. He's never been a strikeout pitcher and he ususally gives up a good number of HR. His walks are usually between 2.5 and 3.0 per 9 IP. This year, he's gotten those down to 2.0. He's also reduced his HR rate by 45%. Is it real? There's a good chance it's the park in Pittsburgh. He had a 2.88 ERA in Pittsburgh and a 4.36 ERA on the road. He's probably better than Mendoza, but I would not be surprised to see him get pounded at Fenway.

(Emphasis added)
Suppan gave up two HR in the 2nd inning, solo shots by Spiezio and Kennedy.

The Yankees still have Williams batting 2nd tonight. Soriano is 8th. Until his power comes back, that's right. I just hope that when his power does come back, the Yankees realize he's a better #4 hitter than a #1 hitter.

Students Sean and Sumit have started Sports Blotter, a blog mostly about baseball. Stop by and welcome them to the blogosphere!

A pitching matchup between twins today in Cleveland. Seattle's Jamie Moyer has pitched 138.2 innings, given up 13 HR, 45 BB and struck out 88. "Milliliter" Sabathia has pitched 136.1 innings, given up 11 HR, 46 BB and struck out 87. Moyer's ERA is 3.50; Sabathia 3.63. The difference in their records is due to their run support per 9 IP, 5.65 for Moyer, 4.82 for CC.

Kansas City tries to make it two in a row vs. Chicago tonight as Kyle Snyder faces Esteban Loaiza. Neither walk many, but Snyder is almost twice as likely to give up a HR. Given the way the White Sox have been hitting lately, he might be watching a few go out tonight.

A wild card matchup in the NL, as the Marlins visit St. Louis. Florida is two behind the Phillies, and the Cardinals are two back of Florida, and also two back of the Astros for first place in the NL Central. Penny faces Williams.

Enjoy!

Giants shortstop Rich Aurilia underwent an emergency appendectomy yesterday and will be on the DL for three weeks. That surprises me a bit. I thought laparoscopic procedures were pretty non-invasive and you healed pretty quickly. I guess the strain of athletic competition is too much for that.

He'll likely be replaced by Neifi Perez. I thought that would be a down grade, but Aurilia hasn't been setting the league on fire:

2003	Aurilia	Perez
Games	97	83
Batting Avg.	.269	.246
Games	.319	.295
Games	.402	.350

The Royals held on last night for a 13-9 victory over the White Sox. Here's why Sweeney did not return last night:

Dee Brown delivered a career-high four hits Monday night and helped the Royals outlast the Chicago White Sox 13-9 in a rousing battle between the top two teams in the American League Central Division.

Brown wasn't even supposed to start. But Mike Sweeney's return from the disabled list hit a new hurdle when he awoke early Monday with pain again throbbing at the base of his neck.

That's not good news. There's more on the injury here. This makes me wonder, if the Royals finish over .500 and Sweeney doesn't play most of the season, does his contract option still kick in? :-)

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	1649	1654
Attendance	27779	28415

Chicago scores two in the bottom of the sixth. At 10-8 KC, it's officially a slugfest. :-)

The White Sox used four pitchers to allow seven runs in the Royals half of the sixth. Aaron Guiel and Angel Berroa each have three RBI tonight. A good offensive performance, and Sweeney still isn't in the lineup.

The Royals come right back in the 6th. They've scored a run and have the bases loaded with no out. A wild one on the south side tonight.

Update: Guiel delivers a bases clearing double! KC up 7-6, still with no outs.

Not a good night for Brian Roberts. He makes an error that allows two runs to score, then goes 0 for 5, poping out with the tieing run on first and the count in his favor 3-1.

The best thing for the Twins would be to sweep the Orioles and have Chicago take two out of three from KC. That way, they gain on both.

With four in the fifth, the White Sox have taken a 6-3 lead vs. Runelvys Hernandez. Joe Crede hit a three-run HR to give Chicago the lead. There's no excuse for giving up a HR to Crede in that situation. Crede has the 9th lowest On-Base + Slugging in the majors. He should be an easy out. Interestingly enough, however, he does hit best in the 2 out/runners in scoring position situation.

This may be the definition of winning ugly. Victor Zambrano pitched out of trouble for seven innings, shutting out the Blue Jays in that time. He allowed seven hits and four walks, but Toronto only managed one hit with runners in scoring position. Chad Gaudin allowed a run in the ninth, but that was it for the Blue Jays, and TB wins 10-1.

The Royals sent eight men to the plate in the 4th and pushed four runs across. Each team has four hits, all singles. It's 3-2 KC in the 4th.

Julio Lugo has five RBI tonight. It's his 2nd five RBI game of the year, having never had one before. The DRays lead Toronto 8-0 in the 7th.

Not a good start for Runelvys Hernandez. Through two innings, he's given up three walks and three hits, yielding two runs. The White Sox offensive machine looks like it's working again.

Toronto and Tampa Bay are putting up zeros in their game so far. Lidle pitching great, but Victor Zambrano has been pitching out of trouble. He's allowed 5 hits and 1 walk through three, and has added a wild pitch. But Toronto is 1 for 6 with runners in scoring position and has not been able to push a run across the plate. Of course, it would be dangerous for Zambrano to keep giving the Blue Jays the opportunity to score.

This looks like good news for the business of baseball:

Major League Baseball officials announced on Monday that the league and its 30 teams will be guaranteed at least $500 million from 2005-2009, thanks to signing new contracts with its licensing partners.

Commissioner Bud Selig called the agreement "a manifestation as to how strong this sport really is."

The guaranteed licensing money will be at least 70 percent more than MLB's current deal, said Tim Brosnan, baseball's executive vice president for business.

That's a little over $3 million per year per team. Enough to pay for a few good young players.

Idiots Who write about Sports agree that there should not be a cap on buying and selling contracts. They may be idiots, but they're no fools. :-) (Thanks to John Cleese for that one.)

Richard Lederer has an interesting article in which he argues that Cy and Ken Williams are two of the most over looked HR hitters of all time. My biggest problem with the article is one that Rich dismisses, Cy Williams home-road numbers. For his career, Cy hit 161 at home, 90 on the road. That's a 79% increase at home. Just to compare, Ruth hit 347 HR in his home stadiums, 367 on the road. Aaron was pretty even, too (385 home, 370 road) and he split his career between a very good HR park and a very bad HR park. I think if you take that into consideration, Williams would not rank as high as Lederer has him.

Just three games tonight, all in the AL, but two of them have a direct impact on the AL Central race. At this point there really are two races in the AL. The first is between the Yankees, Red Sox, Mariners and A's for two division spots and the wild card. Four games separate these four teams. But the A's, 1/2 game out of the wild card, are ahead of the White Sox by six games for that spot.

Which brings us to the AL Central where the Royals lead by two games over the White Sox (three in the AFILC) and 4 1/2 over the Twins, who have just returned to the .500 level. The Royals open a three game series in Chicago tonight. Runelvys Hernandez faces Jon Garland. These two met last week during the White Sox sweep of the Royals, and Garland won in a 7-4 game.

Luck has a big part in any season. Through games of June 18th, the Royals were 36-32. That was the last day Mike Sweeney played. Since then the Royals have a better record, 23-18, despite not playing better. Since Sweeney has been out, the Royals have been outscored by 9 runs, 222-213, which would suggest a 20-21 record. The Royals have won the close ones, going 8-2 in one and two run games in that time. The Royals were unlucky losing Sweeney, but they were lucky in winning three more games than expected during his absence. And he's coming back tonight. However, his being in the lineup doesn't seem to make that much of a difference in terms of KC's offense; they scored 5.18 runs per game when he's played, 5.19 runs per game when he hasn't. Raul Ibanez has really stepped it up during Sweeney's injury:

Ibanez, 2003	Through 6/18	Since
Batting Average	.278	.331
On-base Average	.330	.372
Slugging Percentage	.437	.547

In other matchup important to this race, the Minnesota Twins visit the Baltimore Orioles. The Twins are 11-6 since the All-Star break, and they are averaging 5.6 runs per game during that time. They will send an improving Brad Radke (2-1, 3.15 ERA over his last five starts) against newly acquired Damian Moss. Moss is one of only three ERA qualifiers who has walked more batters than he has struck out.

Jose from Spain writes in regards to this post on Selig preventing a $3 million transfer from the Yankees to the Reds:

Selling players is a great way of transfering cash between teams, and Bud should do a way with a limit that was put in place to spite Finley.

This is totally correct. Here in Europe transfers of soccer players between clubs are always done through money. Real Madrid buys Beckham off Man U for 25 million. Barcelona buys Ronaldinho off Paris Saint Germain for 30 million. Then the team goes and uses the money for what it sees fit, usually to buy itself two or three smaller players. Transfers almost never involve other players, sometimes you hear of a team offering one of its players in the deal "to cheapen the transfer", but it's all together very rare. Money rules.

I must say I was very intrigued at the beginning when I saw that baseball players moved through teams by trades or free agency and never by pure sale, until I learned of the $1 million restriction. I was very surprised by that. Here in European soccer, small teams are encouraged to have a good farm system because if they groom good players they can sell them for a huge profit to a cash-rich powerful team. I don't see why that couldn't work in baseball.

There was a time when things did work like this. The minor leagues were not always vassels of the major league teams. The minor league teams could often make money by selling their best players to the majors. Even major league teams did this. Connie Mack was famous for building up a winner in Philadelphia, then selling the players when they became too expensive for him to support. Of course, the most famous sale may be of Babe Ruth to the NY Yankees for $100,000.

One problems with sales has been that the owners haven't always put the money back into the club. Some argue this was true with the sale of Babe Ruth, others do not agree. It all came to a head in the 1970's, when faced with losing players to free agency, Charlie Finley put together deals to sell some of his best players to NY and Boston for millions of dollars. Finley realized that he was going to lose players to free agency, and he was going to need cash to rebuild. But commissioner Bowie Kuhn hated Finley, and invoked his powers in the best interest of baseball to nix the deal. Kuhn also put a cap on how much you could get for selling a player, which was recently raised to $1 million. However, I would argue that there should be no cap, and that the market should decide what the cap is. According to Jose, that's what happens in Europe.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	1646	1648
Attendance	27777	28434

A big win for the A's today. Mulder and Pettitte pitched close to a draw, with Pettitte leaving in the 9th with a 1-0 lead after walking the leadoff batter. Oh those base on balls. In comes Rivera, who strikes out Guillen, but the struggling stars Chavez and Tejada come through. Chavez singles, and Tejada doubles in the two runners to win the game for the A's. Three hits all day, and the A's win 2-1. Mulder gave up five hits and struck out seven to win his 15th and lower his ERA to 2.92.

Rod Beck is quietly having an excellent year for a poor team. He picked up his 15th save today, and is currently posting a 1.99 ERA and a .188 opponents batting average. He has not blown a save this year. The Padres finally have a replacement for Hoffman, but it's too late in the season to make a difference this year.

Mulder and Pettitte are pretty even and pretty good through three in Oakland. Mulder has retired the Yankees nine-up and nine-down, with three strikeouts. Pettitte has allowed 1 hit, a single to new A Jose Guillen. He's K'd 2. Both are throwing strikes.

Jeremy Griffiths had an impressive second start against a good offensive team, the Cardinals. Griffiths pitched seven innings, allowing two runs, only one earned. He threw over 65% of his pitches for strikes. The Mets need any good news they can find at this point.

Shannon Stewart continues to be impressive for the Twins. He's 2 for 2 today, and 30 for 68 since joining the Twins. He's also hitting for power, with 7 doubles and 3 HR, including a solo shot today. The Twins are 10-6 since he joined them on 7/17, and are winning today 5-2 in the 6th.

Jimmy Gobble is pitching about as good as you would want for someone in their MLB debut. Through five innings, he's allowed only 4 hits, 1 walk and he's K'd 3. Forty five of his sixty six pitches have been for strikes. Being efficient like that, he should be able to gobble up some innings. KC leads 2-0.

The Red Sox have broken out of their four game offensive slump. Trot Nixon just hit the fourth HR of the game of the Sox and all five of their runs have come on HR. Damon, Ortiz and Mirabelli have also gone deep. It's 5-1 Sox in the 5th.

Sheets and Hernandez did not disappoint in their game north of the border. Ben went six innings for Milwuakee, allowing 2 runs, Livan went seven, allowing only 1 run and striking out seven. He only threwn 101 pitches. Unfortunately for Sheets, the Brewer bullpen has not been good, and the score is now Montreal 4, Milwaukee 1 in the bottom of the 7th.

The KC Royals will be talking turkey today as they send rookie Jimmy Gobble to the mound for his major league debut. The 22 year old has had a good minor league career, and is 12-8 with a 3.19 ERA at Wichita this year. Royals fans will be giving thanks if he doesn't get stuffed by the DRays. The DRays counter with Jeremi Gonzalez, who has the lowest ERA of any starter on the staff.

In a battle of lefties, Andy Pettitte takes on Mark Mulder in the rubber game of the Yankees-Athletics series. Both are seven games over .500 and both have been pitching great lately.

The best pitching matchup in the NL today looks to be between the Brewers and the Expos as Ben Sheets faces Livan Hernandez. Both are 10-7, but recently they've been of fire. Sheets is 4-1 with a 2.48 ERA over his last five starts (2 walks in 32 2/3 innings), while Hernandez is 3-1 with a 1.71 ERA (8 walks in 42 innings) during his last five.

Enjoy!

A wild one in KC yesterday. Royals up 7-2, give up a six spot in the 7th, thanks to the pitching of May and Leskanic and an error by Mayne, but they come right back off Mark Malaska and wind up winning 10-8. What was impressive to me, however was the attendance total, 38,709. If you told anyone at the beginning of the season that a TB-KC game in August would draw 38,000, they'd think you were nuts. Way to go, KC fans!

The Royals retake the lead in the Central as the Mariners bleach the White Sox 10-0.

John Perricone has moved to a new host and has a MovableType blog. Good to see! Check out his excellent observations on the Giants at www.onlybaseballmatters.com.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	1631	1633
Attendance	27747	28430

Looks like a surge in attendance this weekend. This year's average is now only 700 behind last year's.

Peter Gammons has an article on ESPN.com about Bud Selig interfering in the Yankees-Reds deal for Aaron Boone.

That afternoon, Finley had extracted $2 million from the Boston Red Sox for Joe Rudi and Rollie Fingers, and $1.5 million from the New York Yankees for Vida Blue. In Boston -- courtesy of then-general manager Dick O'Connell's notes, provided by the Yawkey Foundation -- the Red Sox had tried several combinations of trades involving players and money ranging from a 5-for-5 involving some of Boston's potential free agents (including reigning MVP/Rookie of the year Fred Lynn) to a 3-for-2 that would have sent $2 million, catcher Andy Merchant, outfielder Rick Miller and pitcher Jim Willoughby for Rudi and Fingers.

"Finley says forget the damn players," O'Connell noted on June 14.

That night 27 years ago flashed across Selig's mind when he heard at 12:30 a.m. ET on Thursday that the Reds had shipped Aaron Boone and Gabe White to the Yankees for Brandon Claussen and $3 million. He talked to Sandy Alderson and told him that he would not approve it.

Alderson called Selig at 9:30 a.m. ET on Thursday to tell him that both the Yankees and Reds asked that he reconsider. "No way," Selig said. "There's no way that they're going to exceed the $1 million limit."

Selig did agree to talk to Reds owner Carl Lindner and Yankees president Randy Levine. "They made their cases, but I made mine in pretty strong terms," says Selig. "I told them that they'd have to restructure the deals with prospects and do it with Sandy. They weren't happy about it, and I probably used some choice language, but this is all part of a competitive balance problem that this industry faces."

Okay, the Yankees were going to transfer three million dollars to a small market team, and that money can pay for a lot of young players. Why is that worse than prospects? My guess is the Reds, like Charlie Finley three decades ago, needed the money more than the players. Selling players is a great way of transfering cash between teams, and Bud should do a way with a limit that was put in place to spite Finely.

Bo Hart just hit his 2nd HR of the year, a grand slam. Drew followed that with a solo shot. It's 7-1 Cardinals in the 4th. Hart's been a great replacement at 2nd base. He has a .364 OBA, a respectable number in the leadoff spot.

McCarver noted that La Russa started seven righties vs. Seo today, and noted that was unusual. What McCarver didn't point out is that righties have done better against Seo this year than lefties have.

Seo, 2003	Vs. LHB	Vs. RHB
BA against	.238	.303
OBA against	.303	.333
Slug against	.357	.465

Tom Glavine was like this from the left side, and I always wondered why managers didn't start more lefties against him. Kudos to La Russa for this move. They're up 1-0 in the first on a Pujols HR.

No really impressive pitching matchups today. The west coast offers the most interesting games in the AL again today. Barry Zito goes for the A's today; he should be better than his 8-8 record. Since overall run support is 4.2 per 9, but there have been six starts where the A's failed to score while he was in the game. So his median run support is 3, which in this case is the better indicator. He's been very effective against RHB this year; that should help with the Yankee lineup.

The White Sox try to continue their hot offensive streak tonight against the Mariners. Since 7/11 (inclusive), the Mariners are 15-4 and have scored 7.3 runs per game. The interesting thing is that while Roberto Alomar and Carl Everett have played fine, the real boost has come from Ordonez, Konerko and Lee.

July 11 On	BA	OBA	Slug
Ordonez	.447	.517	.776
Konerko	.371	.392	.714
Lee	.337	.337	.733

A powerful trio. And Tony Graffanino is right there with them in about 1/2 the AB. The Phillies play a double header against the Padres today. Double headers are dangerous things. If they go right, you end up gaining 1 1/2 games. If they go wrong, you lose 1 1/2 games. Against the Padres, the Phillies should have a much better chance of things going right.

BronxBanter guest columnist Christopher DeRosa asks if Derek Jeter is really overrated.

Brushback is a baseball blog I just found. I like the writing and I like the attitude. Give him a look.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	1616	1618
Attendance	27648	28395

The Reds beat the Giants 5-3 tonight. For all the complaining about the trades, the Reds are now 4-1 since Bowden and Boone were fired.

A huge comeback by the Pirates tonight. Trailing 11-6 in the bottom of the ninth, the Pirates scored six runs to win the game. That's about a 1 in 100 comeback. The big hit of the innings was Tike Redman's 2nd triple of the game, which drove in the winning run.

The Cubs came back and scored 2 in the bottom of the 11th to keep the game alive. This one started in the middle of the afternoon, and Cubs are facing the DBacks pitchers in the bottom of the 14th. Thirty eight players have been used so far.

Freddy Garcia continues to pitch poorly for the Mariners. The White Sox knocked him out of the game in the 2nd. Garcia allowed seven runs and is responsible for two more. With the Royals losing to the DRays in the 8th, it's looking like the White Sox will be tied for first come tomorrow morning.

Joe Torre has dropped Soriano to 8th in the lineup. He's swinging at everything, especially pitches off the outside corner of the plate. At the end of last year, Soriano was trying to hit his 40th HR, and got into the bad habit of trying to kill the ball instead of meeting it, and that carried over into the playoffs. This year, he was having luck for a while hitting low, outside pitches. But now the pitchers appear to be moving the ball farther out, and Soriano is still swinging at them.

Jeter-Williams is a better pair of table setters. When Soriano's swing comes back, Torre should move him to the four or five spot.

The DBacks needed extra innings, but they've scored 2 in the top of the 11th to break the streak of 9 games in which they scored 2 or fewer runs. It's 3-1 in the top of the 11th.

Kevin Millwood used only 105 pitches to shut down the Padres. The Phillies got him six runs, but the one in the first was all he needed. Three hits, one walk and nine K for the shutout.

I was going to write that I'm surprised Hentgen came out for the ninth. Hentgen had thrown 111 pitches, and why put strain on an arm that has just recovered from surgery? But before I could write that, Johnny Damon hit the second pitch of the inning for a solo HR to bring the Red Sox within one of a tie. Jorge Julio is on to try for the save.

Update: Julio does his job and gets Walker, Garciaparra and Ramirez to earn the save. It's nice that the Red Sox now have a good bullpen, but you have to give them leads to protect.

Five different Rangers have hit six home runs tonight vs. the Indians. And they have five innings to go. Mark Teixeira has a pair of them and four rbi. It's 9-1 Rangers.

The Diamondbacks and Cubs ended nine innings tied at one. This could turn out to be the 10th straight game that Arizona scored 2 or fewer runs. They are 2-7 in the previous nine.

Pat Hentgen has just finished eight shutout innings against the Red Sox. You know, the highest scoring team in the league. He's now made four good starts in a row. He's made them against Oakland, Texas, Toronto and Boston, none of which are pushovers. He's only throwng 87 mph, but he has good movement -- he's struck out 6. It looks like he's finally recovered from the Tommy John surgery.

Kevin Millwood appears to have returned to normal after two poor starts. He's shutting out the Padres tonight on 2 hits and seven strikeouts. He's being extremely efficient as well, having only thrown 75 pitches.

It's nice to see that Jimmy Rollins has moved down in the Phillies lineup and Marlon Byrd is doing a good job at the top of the order. Byrd is 3 for 4 tonight with 2 runs scored. Rollins hasn't batted at the top of the order since 7/11.

The Twins hitters are having no problem with Jeremy Bonderman, and Kyle Lohse is having no trouble with the Tiger hitters. The Twins lead 5-1 in the third, and are likely sending Bonderman to his 15th loss. With Maroth with 15 losses already, there's a shot here at double 20 game losers. That last happened thirty years ago, when Wilbur Wood and Stan Bahnsen lost 20 and 21 respectively.

Tomo Ohka has been staked to a 6-0 lead by the Expos hitters. He's pitching well, having struck out seven through 5 1/3. Jose Macias is the only Expos not to have a hit or reach base tonight.

It's starting out to be a slugfest in KC. The DRays put a four spot on the board in the first off Jose Lima, including a three-run HR by Travis Lee. The Royals stormed back with two HR of their own and tied it off the patricarch, Joe Kennedy. It's 4-4 after one.

It was worth it for the Pirates to trade Kenny Lofton just to see Tike Redman in the boxscore. He tripled in his first AB of the season. Salomon Torres however, has given up five runs so far, and he's not out of the second.

The Diamondbacks and Cubs are stuck in the rain, tied at one in the top of the 7th. Once again, a good outing by an Arizona stater is being wasted because the offense can't get any runs, this time off a mediocre pitcher. Juan Cruz looked like a star, striking out seven and walking none in his six innings. Schilling had seven K in his six innings, but it's unlikely with the long delay that he'll be back.

Two interesting games in the AL, both on the west coast. The White Sox visit the Seattle Mariners, and send AL ERA leader Esteban Loaiza against Freddy Garcia. Garcia has been horrible of late; his last win was June 24th, and over his last five starts he has a 9.45 ERA. Nonetheless, with Chicago facing a tough opponent and the Twins facing the Tigers and KC facing TB, Chicago has a real chance of losing ground on both teams. If they can beat Seattle, however, it will likely be a huge confidence booster to the South Siders.

The Yankees are in Oakland, with Mike Mussina pitching against Tim Hudson. Hudson's been great lately, with a 1.40 ERA over his last five starts. The A's need some wins to stay in the race with Seattle, and the Yankees have some breathing room with the sweep of the Angels and Boston losing two of three to Texas.

The matchup of the night in the NL pits Tim Redding of Houston vs. Josh Beckett of Florida. Beckett has one more K than Redding in 50 fewer innings. Redding has the better control, however. The Marlins 3.11 ERA at home is 3rd in the majors.

From time-to-time, people ask where they can find Win Shares on the web. I've been posting top short form win share leaders from time to time here. But I found a site that does a much more complete calculation (I'm not sure it's if they have all the info STATS, Inc. does for the calculation, but I'll try to find out.) Check it out.

One thing I see is that Ventura is a much better defensive third baseman than Boone. I was actually surprised that the Yankees traded Ventura. I thought they would get rid of Zeile and use Robin as a pinch hitter defensive replacement.

The people of Cincinnati are none too happy with what went on this last week. John Erardi and John Fay cover it for the Enquirer:

"I'm so disgusted," said fan Alfred Joseph, 47, of Oxford, who attended Thursday's game. "They take taxpayer money with the assumption that they are building a competitive team, and that doesn't seem to be the case."

The Reds players weren't any happier than the fans.

"It's a joke," Reds pitcher Ryan Dempster said. He said Reds chief operating officer John Allen "came down here (to the clubhouse after the firing of Boone and Bowden) and told us they were not going to throw in the towel. I guess the best way to do that is to go out and trade your two best players and your closer."

Said team captain Barry Larkin: "It's a salary dump. We've been told it's not, but they got rid of two salaries."

I think John Allen has lost the trust of his players, and that's a real bad thing. However, I don't think trading Boone and Guillen is a long term disaster. Guillen's season could be a fluke, and Boone is past his prime. They still have Kearns, Dunn, Casey and Griffey, which if all are healthy would be a solid nucleus of an offense. They have Claussen, who could turn out to be their ace this year. And they have a little more money for the GM to work with next year. Obviously, they aren't trying to win this year, but I don't think they are in all that bad shape for next year, especially if they get a GM who knows what he's doing. Short term this is bad; long term it could be okay.

Here are the top players in short form win shares through the end of July:

Player	Win Shares
Barry Bonds	28.7
Albert Pujols	27.0
Todd Helton	25.9
Carlos Delgado	25.4
Gary Sheffield	23.8
John Smoltz	22.7
Preston Wilson	21.6
Jason Giambi	21.0
Manny Ramirez	20.6
Nomar Garciaparra	20.3
Javy Lopez	19.8
Bret Boone	19.8
Bobby Abreu	19.3
Ivan Rodriguez	19.0
Mike Lowell	19.0
Luis Gonzalez	18.9
Lance Berkman	18.9
Marcus Giles	18.8
Esteban Loaiza	18.7
Jim Thome	18.7
Garret Anderson	18.7
Magglio Ordonez	18.5

It's pretty clear why the Braves are #1. They put four players on this list. Barry Bonds is still a little better than Albert Pujols, and although Carlos Delgado has fallen from first overall, he's still dominating the American League. It's also clear that the Rockies have the best 3-4 hitting combination in baseball. Nice to see Mike Lowell in the top 20 as well.

Correction: Brian Carusi reminds me that Preston Wilson is a Rockie, making Helton/Wilson the best 3-4 hitting combination in baseball. I had the Garciapparra there. They're the best in the AL.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	1601	1604
Attendance	27631	28418

The four AL night games all went extra innings last night, and all matter in the pennant races. The White Sox completed a sweep of the Royals to pull within one game of first place in the AL Central. Loaiza pitched seven strong innings, allowing three runs, but the Royals hit up relievers in the 8th and the 9th for one run each and tied the game at five. Things started out poorly for the White Sox in the 11th, as Harris walked but was caught stealing. Konerko then singled, but a fly out left PR Graffanino on first with two out. But Crede walked, and after a PH-Relief-PH move, Graeme Lloyd was facing right-hander Sandy Alomar Jr. who doubled in the winning runs.

The Twins have been gaining on the Royals as well, taking advantage of Chicago sweep. The Twins came back late to win a 10-9 slugfest against the Orioles in 10 innings. They scored two in the 9th to tie it, then Jacque Jones singled in the winning run with the bases loaded in the 10th. The Twins are one game under .500, but only 4 1/2 games out of first place.

Texas had an unusual combination last night, scoing off Pedro Martinez and getting good pitching from a starter. But Trot Nixon tied it in the top of the 9th at three with a solo HR. Kim pitched three no-hit innings for the Red Sox, but the offense took a couple of days off after Tuesday's blow out, and could not score. In the bottom of the 11th, Todd Jones allowd two walks and two hits, the final one a grand slam by A-Rod to win the game for the Rangers.

Meanwhile, on the west coast, David Wells, Aaron Sele and the bullpens were involved in a pitcher's duel. The Angels scored one in the 2nd, the Yankees one in the 3rd, and that was it until the top of the tenth. With men on 1st and 2nd and two out, Nick Johnson singled in Bernie Williams to put the Yankees ahead 2-1. Mariano River pitched a perfect ninth for the save. The lead in the AL East is now 3 1/2 games.