Surprisingly offensive catcher

Quick, name the three best-hitting catchers in the National League this season.

If you said Javy Lopez, Ivan Rodriguez and Mike Lieberthal, you're right. Sort of.

Those are the top three on the OPS list among catchers who have played enough to qualify for the batting title. If you reduce the standards a bit, however, then Lieberthal gets bumped to fourth. And you'll probably never guess who is doing the bumping.

Jason LaRue came into this season hitting .239/.312/.404 (.716) in 301 games in the major leagues. Heck, he had only managed to hit .251/.308/.448 (.756) in 167 games at Class AAA.

This season, however, LaRue is hitting .247/.347/.494 (.841) with 14 homers in 76 games. LaRue generally displayed a little bit of power in the minor leagues, but he never showed any patience at the plate. That hasn't really changed this year, though. He may have an OBP 100 points higher than his batting average, but he only has 24 walks.

What's his secret then?

He's been hit by 16 pitches in 76 games. Not only is he tied for the NL lead in getting plunked (with Craig Biggio), but only one other NL player who has been hit at least 10 times has played in fewer than 100 games (Mike Kinkade has been hit 11 times in 68 games).

While he's not walking much and he's not really getting hit (or hits) enough to make him an OBP machine, he is doing better than last year. Last year, he drew 27 walks (he already has 24 this year) and got hit 13 times (which he's already surpassed this season).

The real surprising thing this year, is just how much more power he's showing.

Last year, LaRue hit 17 doubles and 12 home runs. He already has 17 doubles and 14 homers this year. Three of those 14 home runs have come in his last four games.

On Tuesday, LaRue led off the bottom of the ninth inning with a home run that forced extra innings, where the Reds defeated the Rockies. On Wednesday, he led off the bottom of the 10th inning with a home run to win the game for the Reds. And yesterday, LaRue tried to get Cincinnati back into the game by homering in the sixth inning to cut San Francisco's lead to 6-2.

Impressively, LaRue has gotten better every single month this season.

In his one game in March, LaRue hit .000/.250/.000 (.250) by going 0-for-3 with a walk.

In April, LaRue hit .234/.367/.422 (.789) in 64 at-bats. He got 64 at-bats again in May, but improved to .266/.356/.469 (.825). In June, he hit .247/.304/.534 (.838) in 73 at-bats. He got just 37 at-bats last month, but still hit .216/.333/.541 (.874). This month (two games), he's hitting .500/.750/.500 (1.250).

Everything I've read about him indicates that LaRue is, first and foremost, a defensive catcher. However, he is 29 years old, and some catchers just taking longer to develop their offense.

If LaRue can maintain (or even build upon) this newfound success, then he will be an important part of Cincinnati's rebuilding project -- along with a couple outfielders and some new, young pitchers. Who better to help develop those young pitchers than a catcher whose calling card is defense, especially one who can also give his pitchers some much-needed run support.

Another Day Off

I know I said yesterday that I would try to make my "State of the Red Sox" post today, but I'm too depressed by their four-game losing streak. Also, my girlfriend and I are moving into a new apartment, which is taking up a lot of time. I should be able to blog every day this week, but some days I may get started later than others. Thanks for stopping by this weekend, and sorry I didn't have anything new to say.

Rumble in the Jungle

I was going to make a "State of the Red Sox" post today before I go out for the rest of the day, but ESPN has sidelined those plans. They're currently airing "The Rumble in the Jungle" and, since I've never seen it before, I think I owe it to myself to watch. I'll try to make the Red Sox post tomorrow.

Red Sox improve pitching staff

As you all probably know, the Red Sox made a trade yesterday with the Pittsburgh Pirates that was linked to their other trade with the Pirates. Essentially, Boston traded middle infielder Freddy Sanchez for starting pitcher Jeff Suppan and relief pitcher Scott Sauerbeck.

I talked about Sauerbeck when the initial trade was made and decided that he's a decent pitcher, but not likely to make a huge difference. So, today I'll just focus on Sanchez and Suppan.

Suppan has a 3.57 ERA, 1.26 WHIP, 78 strikeouts (4.98 K/9IP), 31 walks (1.98 BB/9IP) and 11 homers allowed (0.7 HR/9IP) in 141 innings (6.7 IP/GS). He doesn't strike many people out, but he doesn't walk many people or allow many home runs and he gives a team a good number of innings.

Suppan's ERA will almost certainly go up a bit with Boston. ESPN.com's Fantasy Spin notes that games at Fenway feature the fourth-most runs while games at Pittsburgh feature the 23rd-most runs. That's a little misleading because Boston's offense is very good and Pittsburgh's offense, well, isn't, but there have been 6.2-percent more runs scored in Boston home games than Boston road games and there have been 21-percent fewer runs scored in Pittsburgh home games than Pittsburgh road games. It's probably not a coincidence that Suppan has a 2.88 ERA at home and a 4.36 ERA on the road this year.

So, he won't be quite as good as he has been, but he will be a lot better than Ramiro Mendoza. Even if we just count his starts, Mendoza has a 7.03 ERA, 1.60 WHIP, 14 strikeouts, seven walks and five homers allowed in 24.1 innings. He never went past the fifth inning, averaging 4.87 innings per start.

Sanchez was absolutely tearing the cover off the ball with Class AAA Pawtucket before being called up to Boston (where he hardly played) for awhile. He's cooled off some, but is still hitting .341/.430/.493 (.923) in 58 games. He has decent patience and decent power, and could very well be Pittsburgh's starting second baseman for the next five years.

In fact, the general belief was that he would be the starter at second for Boston next year, so his departure is somewhat of a surprise. It's not a bad thing that he's gone, however, because he was never going to be a star and he got Boston some valuable pitching help.

My one other thought regarding this trade is what does it mean for Casey Fossum. Fossum is currently with Pawtucket "stretching out" and I'm sure you heard it reported (incorrectly) several times that he was the pitcher the Red Sox would not part with to get Bartolo Colon (I've said it before, but I may as well say it again -- the Expos wanted more than just Fossum, and Boston wanted Javier Vazquez).

Anyway, I assumed that Fossum would take Mendoza's spot in the rotation once he was done "stretching out," but now Suppan will take that spot. I suppose Fossum could take John Burkett's spot, but Burkett hasn't been all that terrible.

Another thought occured to me today, and I was hoping someone could help me clarify the rules. How exactly do waiver trades work regarding minor-league players. I know any major league player needs to clear waivers in order to be traded after July 31, but do minor leaguers need to as well?

You can probably tell where I'm going with this. I'm thinking maybe the Red Sox sent Fossum down to Pawtucket so that they could still trade him after July 31 if a good trade presents itself. Obviously, that's not the case if minor leaguers also need to clear waivers, but it was just a thought I had. If anybody knows the answer to this, please let me know.

Also, to recap: good trade for the Pirates because they got a cheap, young player who can start for them for several years and good trade for the Red Sox because they improved on their biggest weakness (the rotation) without giving up their most exciting prospect (Kevin Youkilis, at least in my eyes).

Giants Beane Orioles

As you all probably know, the San Francisco Giants traded for starting pitcher Sidney Ponson, sending the Orioles pitchers Kurt Ainsworth, Damian Moss and Ryan Hannaman.

Did Billy Beane suddenly take over the Giants or something? No disrespect to Brian Sabean, who is a very good GM, but this is exactly the type of trade Beane always makes. You have a good team, you trade for a free-agent-to-be who can help the team (see Damon, Johnny and Durham, Ray), offer him arbitration at the end of the year and take two draft picks when another team signs him.

Is Ponson a great pitcher? No, but he's better than most of San Francisco's current rotation, and he's especially better than the rotation member who just got sent to Baltimore (Moss).

Ponson has a 3.77 ERA, 1.28 WHIP, 100 strikeouts (6.08 K/9IP), 43 walks (2.61 BB/9IP) and 10 homers allowed (0.61 HR/9IP) in 148 innings (7.05 IP/GS). Moss has a 4.70 ERA, 1.60 WHIP, 57 strikeouts (4.46 K/9IP), 63 walks (4.93 BB/9IP) and 12 homers allowed (0.94 HR/9IP) in 115 innings (5.67 IP/GS).

There's no way to look at those numbers and think that Ponson won't help the Giants. There's also no way (as far as I can see) to look at those numbers and think that Moss will help the Orioles. Sure, he's only 26 and he had a 3.42 ERA last year, but he also struck out 111 batters (5.58 K/9IP) and walked 89 batters (4.47 BB/9IP).

Fortunately for the Orioles, they also got two other pitchers.

Ainsworth is 24 years old and had a 3.82 ERA, 1.39 WHIP, 48 strikeouts (6.55 K/9IP), 26 walks (3.55 BB/9IP) and seven homers allowed (0.95 HR/9IP) in 66 innings before suffering a freak shoulder injury. He always showed excellent strikeout rates and fine walk rates in the minors, so he is a very good prospect. However, not many pitchers have broken the shoulder blade on their throwing side, so we don't really now what to expect from him coming back from that injury.

Hannaman is 21 year old (will be 22 at the end of this month) and was San Francisco's fourth-round pick in 2000. He had a 4.71 ERA, 77 strikeouts (11 K/9IP), 32 walks (4.57 BB/9IP) and seven homers allowed (1 HR/9IP) in 63 innings at Class A San Jose. Last year, he had a 2.80 ERA, 145 strikeouts (9.91 K/9IP), 46 walks (3.14 BB/9IP) and nine homers allowed (0.62 HR/9IP) in 131.2 innings at Class A Hagerstown. He walks too many people and he's still at a low level, but he strikes out a lot of guys and doesn't give up a lot of home runs, so he's certainly a worthwhile prospect.

For the Giants, I'm going to assume that they will not resign Ponson. With that assumption, this is a great trade for them. They traded two good prospects (Ainsworth and Hannaman) and one nobody (Moss) for a three-month (people always say two-month, but October is a month and it's probably the most important month) rental of Ponson AND two high draft picks. You can't even necessarily say they're mortgaging their future, because the guys they draft could certainly end up being better than Ainsworth and Hannaman.

For the Orioles, this trade his more difficult to evaluate.

Before they traded Ponson, there were four possibilities. First, they could sign him. Second, they could let him go and receive draft picks in return. Third, they could trade him and then resign him, losing draft picks to the team they trade him to. Fourth, they could trade and then not resign him.

In the first option, there is obviously no change. They keep Ponson, they don't get anything else and they don't give anything up. They obviously wuold have to pay him a decent bit of money.

In the second option, they lose Ponson and get two draft picks. They obviously would not have to pay Ponson anything.

Those two options are now out the window.

In the third option (which is now only possible in one specific way), they essentially trade two high draft picks and two months (they won't be playing in October, so they wouldn't have gotten that month) of Ponson for Ainsworth, Hannaman and Moss. The two months doesn't matter to them, so they must have thought Ainsworth and Hannaman are worth more than two draft picks. And they're probably right. Those two players have already had their signing bonuses paid by the Giants and have already been developed at least a little bit by the Giants. In this situation, they would also obviously have to pay Ponson whatever he agrees to sign for.

In the fourth option, they simply trade Ponson for Ainsworth, Hannaman and Moss. However, they are also trading away the potentiality of receiving two draft picks as compensation when Ponson signs elsewhere had they kept him. As I said before, it's probably better to have Ainsworth and Hannaman than two have two extra high draft picks.

To recap, here are the various sets of things they could have had:

First, they could have simply had Ponson and their own draft picks.

Second, they could have had their own draft picks, plus two more high picks, but no Ponson and no prospects.

Third, they could have had Ponson and the prospects, but no extra draft picks and two less of their own draft picks.

Fourth, they could have had the prospects and their own draft picks, but no Ponson and no extra draft picks.

In summary, this is a great trade for the Giants and simple a good trade for the Orioles. Of course, we've yet to see what this trade actually is for the Orioles. If they sign Ponson this offseason, the essential dynamics of the trade will change, but I think the overall quality will be about the same.

Thank you

I'd like to thank everybody who stopped by to read this blog in July. You may or may not recall, but I wasn't sure I would get more visitors in July than I got in June because I was taking two vacations. Well, I got almost as many visitors this month as I got in the previous two months combined. I was blown away by getting 3,125 visitors this month after getting 3,230 in May and June combined. Thank you everybody and keep on coming back. I really do appreciate.

Since I didn't write anything here yesterday, I figure I should at least link to the story that I wrote for the newspaper. It's my first story about one of the four major leagues -- a story on Buffalo Bills backup running back Olandis Gary.

Rested and ready, Gary's on the go

This is especially exciting for me, because I was able to go to ESPN Insider, click on My Headlines and (since I've got the Bills chosen as one of the teams I get headlines for) see my name on ESPN.com. Definitely a first for me, and very cool.

As for today, I plan on writing about the various trades that have been made recently. I do have some errands to run, but I'll try to discuss as many of the trades as I can.

Day off

I apologize, but I'm going to take today off. I spent this morning writing a story for the paper and then I had to run an errand to try and get paperwork done for an apartment application. Now I'm tired and only have an hour and a half or so before my girlfriend and I go shopping. Enjoy all trades and I'll be back tomorrow.

Is Mulder's recent dominance good?

As good as Mulder has been all season for the A's, he's been even better in his last two starts. In each of those starts, he went seven innings and allowed seven hits and a walk while striking out 11. The only difference is that he didn't allow any runs in the first start and two of the seven hits were solo homers in the second start (last night).

You may be asking yourself how these last two starts could possibly not be a good thing.

After all, those numbers work out to a 1.29 ERA, 1.14 WHIP, 14.14 K/9IP and 11 K/BB in 14 innings. Even during his excellent first 20 starts, Mulder had a 3.32 ERA, 1.16 WHIP, 5.47 K/9IP and 2.78 K/BB in 146.1 innings.

So, how could improving from good to dominant be anything but great?

Well, in his first 20 starts, Mulder threw an average of 100.65 pitches and only threw more than 110 pitches twice. In these two starts, Mulder has averaged 115 pitches (114 in the first start and 116 in the second).

The increase in pitches isn't because he's throwing more innings either. Obviously, Mulder has pitched an average of seven innings in these two starts. In his first 20 starts, Mulder pitched an average of seven and a third innings.

The difference is that Mulder threw 3.83 pitches per batter in these two most recent starts. In his first 20 starts, he threw 3.48 pitches per batter. That may not seem like that big a difference, but it's 10-percent more pitches per batter. That means you either need to throw 10-percent more pitches or face 10-percent fewer hitters (or some combination of more pitches and fewer batters).

Yesterday, Aaron Gleeman wrote that Mulder and some other good pitchers can throw so many innings because they limit their pitches to each hitter.

Oakland A's fans may love the fact that Mulder is suddenly striking out everybody in sight, but be careful what you wish for. Mulder's newfound propensity for the strikeout may ultimately not be a good thing.

Surprise offensive achievements

The teams with the best offense in each league have the best offense in part because they've each gotten totally unexpected production from one infielder. Those infielders have recently each done some amazing things offensively.

Boston leads the AL with 658 runs scored and 6.27 runs/game. Toronto is second in both categories with 615 runs scored and 5.8 runs/game. The average AL team has scored 512.3 runs and 4.88 runs/game. Boston has scored about 28.5-percent more runs than the average AL team and 8 percent more runs than the second-best AL offense (using runs/game).

As I'm sure most of you know, Bill Mueller his three home runs last night and became the first player in history to hit a grand slam from each side of the plate in the same game. Even more impressively (although it's all luck), the grand slams came in consecutive innings.

Theo Epstein has gotten a lot of credit for building an amazing Red Sox offense partly with low-cost pieces that other teams didn't want, and deservedly so. However, giving Epstein credit for what Mueller has done this season is like giving George Washington credit for what America has become. He was part of a group of people that had a great idea, but he couldn't have foreseen it working out this well.

Coming into this season, Mueller was a career .286/.370/.399 hitter. The Red Sox liked him because of that career .370 OBP. After last night, Mueller is hitting .330/.403/.584 (.987), ranking 2nd/10th/5th (4th) in the AL, and would have to be a prime contender for the AL MVP award if the season ended today.

Coming into this season, Mueller had 41 homers in 2,674 at-bats (65.2 at-bats/homer). This year, he has 13 homers in 327 at-bats (25.2 at-bats/homer).

Coming into this season, Mueller had 152 doubles in 2,674 at-bats (17.6 at-bats/double). This year, he has 34 doubles in 327 at-bats (9.6 at-bats/double).

Mueller is having a career year of immense proportions. Strangely, he's actually drawing walks (which is what the Red Sox got him to do) less often than he did in the past. Coming into this season, he had 357 walks or one every 7.5 at-bats. This year, he has 36 walks or one every 9.1 at-bats. I guess there's no need to take walks when you're suddenly the best-hitting third baseman in baseball.

Atlanta leads the AL with 610 runs scored and 5.75 runs/game. St. Louis is second in both categories with 592 runs scored and 5.58 runs/game. The average NL team has scored 497.8 runs and 4.69 runs/game. Atlanta has scored about 22.5-percent more runs than the average NL team and 3-percent more runs than the second-best NL offense (using runs/game).

As with the Red Sox, there have been several people responsible for Atlanta's high-scoring ways. The Braves probably have the best offensive outfield in baseball and their catcher is having one of the most improbable seasons ever. However, they only have one great offensive infielder right now, and that's more than a lot of people thought they might have.

Marcus Giles was a great hitter in the minor leagues, but he played just 68 games in the majors in each of the last two seasons and was below average offensively in both seasons.

This year, he's hitting .320/.387/.514 (.901) with 35 doubles, 11 home runs and nine steals in 10 attempts (90-percent success rate). Recently, however, Giles has been especially hot.

First, he's riding a 10-game hitting streak during which he's gone 25-for-44 (.568) with six doubles and three home runs (.909 SLG).

Second, his last three games have been among the most amazing ever. On Sunday, Giles doubled in each of his first four at-bats, tying the major-league record for doubles in consecutive at-bats. Giles struck out in his last at-bat and they made an out in his first at-bat on Monday. He then picked up two singles and two homers in his final four at-bats Monday. Yesterday, Giles had five at-bats and singled in each one of them.

With hits in his last nine at-bats, Giles is one shy of the NL record. He's also currently the best offensive second baseman in the NL and has a chance to become every bit the offensive star that his brother is.

Speed racers

When the Florida Marlins added Juan Pierre to a lineup that already included Luis Castillo this offseason, I wondered (like a lot of people, I'm sure) how many bases the two of them would steal together. I also wondered how much Pierre's addition would really help the offense, regardless of his lofty stolen base totals.

Pierre had burst onto the baseball scene in 2001 with the Rockies, hitting .327/.378/.415 (.793) with 202 hits and 46 steals. However, even Coors Field could only help him hit two home runs, he only drew 41 walks and he was caught stealing 17 times (73-percent success rate). Last year was even worse, as he hit .287/.332/.343 (.675) with 170 hits, 31 walks and one homer, although he did steal 47 bases in 59 attempts (79.7-percent success rate).

Oddly enough, moving from the best offensive park in baseball to one of the worst offensive parks in baseball has helped Pierre. He's hitting .305/.363/.362 (.725) with 51 steals in 62 attempts (82.3-percent success rate). He doesn't have any home runs, but he's on pace for 204 hits, 58 walks and 77 steals, all of which would be career highs. In fact, if he stole 77 bases, it would be the most since Marquis Grissom stole 78 in 1992.

While Pierre ranks 68th in the NL in OPS, he ranks 53rd with 5.43 RC/27 outs. His .274 EqA is around the middle of the pack for NL centerfielders, and his 62.5 EqR ranks third among the Marlins. So, Pierre's addition certainly has helped Florida's offense, and he's racking up the gaudy stolen base totals that I thought he would.

Then there's Castillo, who is having a very strange season by his standards. First, he's hitting .316/.380/.409 (.789), which is very nice production from a second baseman in that park. The strange thing about that line is that his SLG is higher than his OBP. Castillo has never had a season with a higher SLG than OBP.

There are two reasons why Castillo has never had a higher SLG than OBP. First, he usually draws a decent amount of walks, which he is doing again this season. Second, he hardly hit any home runs, until this season. This year, Castillo has six home runs, which is exactly as many as he had in his previous four seasons combined. He's on pace for nine home runs, which would be more in one season than he had hit (8) in his 2,749 career games before this year.

The other strange thing about this season for Castillo is that he's only stolen 14 bases, which puts him on pace to steal 21. In his four full seasons, his lowest stolen base total is 33. Castillo has not stolen a base this year since June 25 and he has not attempted to steal a base in his last nine games. In fact, he's only attempted one steal this month.

The other surprise regarding his basestealing is that he's been caught stealing 10 times this season. That means he's only been successful 58.3-percent of the time. Coming into this season, Castillo was successful on 73.2-percent of his 313 career attempts (229 steals).

So, let's see how accurate my thoughts on Pierre and Castillo were before this season.

First, I thought they each my steal 50 bases this year.

Wrong. Pierre is already there, but Castillo has completely lost the ability to steal.

Second, I didn't think Pierre would help the offense at all.

Wrong. He's certainly not an All-Star, but he's been at least average offensively in center field and he's only costing them $1-million.

Oh well, if I was right all the time, life wouldn't be very interesting.

A call to bloggers

I'm trying to find out if there are any other bloggers out there who live in the Rochester, NY area or are from the Rochester, NY area (or maybe even went to school in the Rochester, NY area).

As most of you know, I work in the sports department for the newspaper in Rochester. I'm trying to sell my editor on a story about baseball blogs, and it is something that he would be more interested in if I could write about a local person (I obviously can't write about myself). He said he would think about it, which is a start, but he is worried that it would be like us promoting our competition (which I can kind of understand).

Anyway, let me know if you write a blog and have any connections to the Rochester, NY area or if you know any bloggers who do. Otherwise, just cross your fingers and hope he lets me write the story.

Palmeiro wakes up

At the beginning of the season, all of the talk regarding Rafael Palmeiro was about the fact that he needed just 10 more home runs to join the 500-homer club.

Well, he started the season well enough and was hitting .269/.382/.544 (.926) at the end of May. He had joined the 500-homer club and had 13 homers, 11 doubles, 37 RBI, 31 walks and 25 strikeouts on the season.

Then, he started to slump. He hit just .247/.369/.471 (.840) in June, although he did hit six homers, drive in 15 runs, draw 17 walks and strike out just 11 times. In July, he was even worse.

Heading into Monday's game against the Mariners, Palmeiro was hitting just .171/.239/.280 (.520) with three home runs, eight walks and 13 strikeouts in the month. For the season, that dropped him to .241/.347/.464 (.811).

Apparently, he just now remembered that he is a great hitter, going 2-for-4 with two home runs and seven RBI against Seattle. He is now hitting .244/.349/.476 (.825) with 24 home runs and 69 RBI.

Allow me to give you an idea of how unusual those numbers are for him.

In the 10 seasons before this one, Palmeiro only had one with an OPS below .925 -- when he had an .814 OPS in 1997. 1997 was also the only time in the 10 seasons prior to this one that he had an OBP below .350 (.329) or an SLG below .545 (.485). Before 1997, his only sub-.350 OBP in a year with more than 250 plate appearances came in 1988, when he posted a .349 OBP in his first year with more than 250 plate appearances.

When people talk about Palmeiro, they probably mention that he has had eight straight seasons with at least 38 home runs and 100 RBI. That streak is not in grave danger, as he is on pace for 37 homers and 106 RBI. He's already on pace to keep the RBI streak alive and he has a definite chance to keep the home run streak alive, especially if Monday was an indication that he is getting back on track.

However, Palmeiro has also had five straight seasons in which he has hit at least 29 doubles, four straight seasons in which he has drawn at least 97 walks and seven straight seasons in which he has played at least 155 games. All of those streaks are in danger, as he is on pace for 19 doubles, 86 walks and 153 games played. To keep those streaks alive, he would need to miss just one more game, quadruple his doubles output and increase his walk rate by about a third.

Earlier this season, Aaron Gleeman wrote that he thought Palmeiro had done enough to merit induction into the Hall of Fame. However, he cautioned, Palmeiro was (and is) still active, and had not experienced the decline in skills that most players go through before retiring. The severity of (and length of) Palmeiro's decline, he said, could determine whether or not Palmeiro ultimately deserves to be in the Hall.

Hopefully, last night was an indication that Palmeiro's skills have not yet begun to seriously decline. If he has begun to seriously decline AND he decides to continue playing past this season, he could damage his rate stats to the point where he becomes an even more borderline Hall-of-Fame candidate than some people already feel he is.

Somebody get ESPN under control

Have you all seen this story?

Apparently ESPN is running a two-hour show about the making of SportsCenter. This is just the latest in a long trend of ESPN thinking that it is a part of the sporting world -- rather than a reporter of the sporting world -- and something that deserves to be reported on itself.

First, there were anniversary shows. Then, there was Kenny Mayne "reporting" from four different sporting events in one day (note: he did not do any reporting. He took part in each event and was filmed being "funny."). Recently, I saw a commercial for Stuart Scott advertising tylenol. Now, ESPN is moving its own show to its lesser channel in order to report on said show.

Enough is enough, people.

There are sporting events every day. People watch ESPN because they want to know what happened in those events. They don't care if Kenny Mayne can fly around the country in a day and not go crazy. They don't care if Chris Berman can make up a nickname for every athlete in history (in fact, they'd prefer if he didn't).

All the posturing, the catch phrases, the games for the "experts" and so on and so forth just takes away from what ESPN should really be doing -- reporting what happened. Giving intelligent insight into various sports would also be nice, but that insight should be accurate. Otherwise it's just crap. Which is what ESPN is becoming.

It's funny. I loveESPN.com, but I can't stand ESPN anymore. The only time I watch ESPN is when there's a game on that I want to see or I'm really, really bored.

It's probably because on ESPN.com, I can just avoid the stuff that's like what they do on ESPN. If I read a column by Joe Morgan or a chat with Rob Dibble, I've got nobody to blame but myself. On ESPN, however, I'll be innocently watching a highlight of a game when, before I know it, Stuart Scott is running all over the place shouting, "Boo Yah" and Chris Berman is flirting with his reflection in the camera lense.

Al Bethke is right. Somebody should start an all-sports station that just gives it to you straight. I know there are a lot of people out there who are fed up with almost all of ESPN's personalities.

Who leads AL Cy Young race?

Almost every night before I go to bed, I look through that night's baseball box scores and jot down notes to myself about things I may want to blog about the following day. Last night, one of the notes I wrote to myself was the following:

Roy Halladay for Cy Young

Today, I saw David Pinto's post taking the Baseball Tonight crew to task for saying that Halladay is the clear choice for the AL Cy Young right now. David correctly points out that wins and losses should not be the driving force behind any argument for the Cy Young award.

First, it is definitely not an obvious thing that Halladay is frontrunner for the AL Cy Young Award. Second, the reason I was going to write that I think Halladay is the frontrunner is because he's thrown so many innings. However, I quickly noticed that Tim Hudson has only pitched nine fewer innings this season.

Not only is it unclear who definitely leads the pack of pitchers in the AL right now, it is clear that at least five pitchers need to be considered when discussing the AL Cy Young Award at the moment. Aside from Halladay and Hudson, you also need to think about Esteban Loaiza, Pedro Martinez and Mark Mulder (all of whom David mentions).

Halladay has pitched 175 innings with a 3.29 ERA and a 1.10 WHIP. He's struck out 6.53 hitters per 9 innings, walked 1.18 hitters per 9 innings and allowed 1.08 home runs per 9 innings. He's allowed batters to hit .277 off him when they put the ball in play. Coming into this season, he had allowed a .299 batting average on balls in play for his career.

Hudson has pitched 166 innings with a 2.60 ERA and a 1.05 WHIP. He's struck out 5.69 batters per 9 innings, walked 2.28 batters per 9 innings and allowed 0.54 home runs per 9 innings. He's allowed batters to hit .246 off him when they put the ball in play. Coming into this season, he had allowed a .282 batting average on balls in play for his career.

Loaiza has pitched 143.2 innings with a 2.19 ERA and a 1.06 WHIP. He's struck out 7.20 batters per 9 innings, walked 2.07 batters per 9 innings and allowed 0.69 homers per 9 innings. He's allowed batters to hit .266 off him when they put the ball in play. Coming into this season,h e had allowed a .314 batting average on balls in play for his career.

Martinez has pitched 116.2 innings with a 2.31 ERA and a 1.02 WHIP. He's struck out 10.03 hitters per 9 innings, walked 2.31 hitters per 9 innings and allowed 0.46 home runs per 9 innings. He's allowed batters to hit .281 off him when they put the ball in play. Coming into this season, he had allowed a .277 batting average on balls in play for his career.

Mulder has pitched 152.2 innings with a 3.07 ERA and a 1.15 WHIP. He's struck out 5.90 hitters per 9 innings, walked 1.95 hitters per 9 innings and allowed 0.65 home runs per 9 innings. He's allowed batters to hit .285 off him when they put the ball in play. Coming into this season, he had allowed a .287 batting average on balls in play for his career.

There are several things that become apparent to me when looking at all of those numbers.

First, Martinez is, without a doubt, the most dominant pitcher of the group. However, as much as I love him, there's no way he can be the best pitcher in the AL this season if another top AL pitcher has thrown half again as many innings as he has.

Second, Hudson is a better choice for the AL Cy Young than Mulder. He strikes out fewer batters and walks more batters, but he allows fewer home runs and has pitched 13.1 more innings. Also, he has been much better at preventing hits on balls in play this season.

If you find yourself saying, "Who the hell took over Ben's body and made him say something like that?" allow me to explain. I know Voros McCracken argued that, counterintuitive though it may be, pitchers do not have much to do with whether or not balls in play are turned into outs. I mostly agreed with him, but Tom Tippett has just released a study that says that pitchers have more control than we thought.

I do think Hudson is getting more than his fair share of luck this season, but the evidence (his career batting average allowed on balls in play is also lower than Mulder's) suggests that even without luck he has more ability to prevent hits on balls in play than Mulder does.

Third, it is very difficult to pick between Loaiza and Halladay at this point. Halladay has pitched 31.1 more innings and walks many fewer batters. Loaiza has allowed many fewer runs and home runs and strikes out more batters. Loaiza has shown an excellent ability to prevent hits on balls in play, but his career numbers suggest that he's getting lucky and/or receiving a lot of help from his park and/or defense. Halladay's career numbers also suggest that he may be benefitting from luck and/or help, but not to the same extent as Loaiza.

So, the best I can do without really forcing myself to just make a gut call is narrow it down to a top three - Halladay, Hudson and Loaiza. If the season ended today, I would not be upset about any of them winning the Cy Young award.

David is definitely correct, though, Baseball Tonight owes it to their viewers to do a better job of explaining why they think there is no question that Halladay is the Cy Young award frontrunner. If they did, maybe they'd make themselves realize that it's not such an open-and-shut case.

Of course, if they are determined to look at wins as the first and biggest factor in whether or not a pitcher deserves the Cy Young award, then there's no escaping Halladay as the choice. At 15-2, he blows away Loaiza (13-5), Mulder (13-7), Hudson (9-4) and Martinez (7-2).

And when somebody is convinced that wins and losses are the most important thing about a pitcher, it's very difficult to convince them otherwise. I remember arguing with one of the columnists at the newspaper I work for two years ago about whether Roger Clemens or Mike Mussina was having the better season.

He said it was clearly Clemens, who finished 20-3 with a 3.51 ERA and did win the Cy Young award. I said it might be Mussina, who finished 17-11 with a 3.15 ERA placed fifth in the Cy Young voting.

His main argument was something like, "What's more important than winning games?"

I replied with something like, "For a team, nothing. For a pitcher, giving his team the best chance to win every game is more important. Whether or not they actually do win it isn't really up to him."

He said something like, "Bah," and that was the end of the argument, which he of course thinks he won.

It seems to me that ranking pitchers by how many games they win is a little like ranking movies by how much money they make. Sure, the better the quality of the movie the more likely it is to make a lot of money, but a lot depends on how it is advertised, when it is released, what demographic it appeals to most, etc.

Of course, anybody who thinks Titanic is the best movie of all-time is free to try and defend themselves. Just ignore all the laughter.

Lima Time looks better than is it

Jose Lima is now 7-0 with a 2.17 ERA and a 1.05 WHIP in 49.2 innings. Last year, he went 4-6 with a 7.77 ERA and 1.57 WHIP in 68.1 innings.

The staggering difference between those two sets of numbers has led to the use of numerous adjectives in front of the word "comeback" when talking about Lima this year. It has also led many people to say that the Royals have gotten very lucky because they couldn't possibly have expected Lima to pitch the way he has.

I don't mean to be contrarian here (well, maybe a little), but the Royals should have expected Lima to pitch almost exactly the way he has so far.

Huh?

I repeat, the Royals should have expected Lima to pitch almost exactly the way he has so far.

What they should not have expected (here comes the explanation for why I would say such a silly thing) is for him to have as much success as he has so far.

What's the difference? The difference is that he's leaving things up to the fielders about as often as he did last year.

This year, Lima has 23 strikeouts (4.17 K/9IP), 17 walks (3.08 BB/9IP) and three home runs allowed (0.54 HR/9IP). Last year, he had 33 strikeouts (4.35 K/9IP), 21 walks (2.77 BB/9IP) and 12 homers allowed (1.58 HR/9IP). So, he's striking out slightly fewer batters, walking slightly more batters and allowing a lot less home runs.

This year, batters have put the ball in play (i.e. have not struck out, walked, gotten hit by the pitch or hit a home run) 76.6 percent of the time against Lima and have hit just .182 when they have done so. Last year, batters put the ball in play 77.6 percent of the time against Lima and hit .314 when they did.

Even with Tom Tippett's recent findings that pitchers have more control over balls in play than Voros McCracken thought, there is nothing to account for Lima holding batters to a .182 average on balls in play after letting them hit .314 on balls in play last year besides excellent defense or excellent luck.

Put more simply, Lima has been lucky or helped by his defense. He has not really pitched all that well. Since the batting averages allowed on balls in play by the five most-used Kansas City pitchers are (from lowest to highest) .231, .243, .287, .294 and .316, I'd say Lima is being aided mostly by luck.

How do this year and last year compare to other seasons in Lima's career?

Well, in 2001, pitching for Houston and Detroit, Lima had 84 strikeouts (4.56 K/9IP), 38 walks (2.06 BB/9IP) and 35 homers allowed (1.9 HR/9IP). He allowed 76.9 percent of the batters he faced to put the ball in play, and they hit .293 off him when they did.

In 2000, pitching for Houston, Lima had 124 strikeouts (5.68 K/9IP), 68 walks (3.12 BB/9IP) and 48 homers allowed (2.2 HR/9IP). He only allowed 73 percent of the batters he faced to put the ball in play, but they hit .311 off him when they did.

The last time Lima was good, in 1999 with Houston, he had 187 strikeouts (6.83 K/9IP), 44 walks (1.61 BB/9IP) and 30 homers allowed (1.1 HR/9IP). He allowed 74.3 percent of the batters he faced to put the ball in play, and they hit .297 off him.

In 1998, Lima allowed a .275 average on balls in play. In 1997, he allowed a .307 average on balls in play. In 1996, he allowed a .322 average on balls in play. In 1995, he allowed a .299 average on balls in play.

So, Lima has never, even when he was good, shown an ability to prevent hits on balls in play to anywhere near the extent that he has done so this season.

Keep that in mind the next time you hear somebody talk about how lucky the Royals have been to find Lima. It's really Lima who has been lucky to pitch as poorly as he has and not get chased out of the league by a barrage of runs.

Update - Right after I finished writing this post, I went over to Aaron Gleeman's blog. I know that Aaron almost always makes his daily post after midnight before he goes to sleep for the day and I figured I'd read his Monday post before hitting the sack. Sure enough, Aaron also wrote about Lima, but much more extensively than I did (there's a reason many people consider him the best baseball blogger around). Anyway, if you want to read even more about Lima, click here and see what Aaron has to say.

I'm exhausted

I don't think I've ever cheered through a more emotionally draining regular season series in my time as a baseball fan. This series had everything you could possibly want -- an intense rivalry, teams battling for first place, surprises, great pitching, clutch hitting, stellar defense, late rallies, arguments, questionable calls, questionable decisions and more.

If I were to say that I never doubted that the Red Sox would win two of the three games, it would be the biggest lie of my life. To channel Yogi Berra, the only sure thing about this series was that nothing would be over until it was over.

One impressive thing about this series is that the umpires seemed to realize how important it was and, while they made some questionable calls here and there, they let the players play the game. In Friday's affair, both David Wells and Pedro Martinez (Pedro more egregiously) questoined umpire Dana Demuth's strike zone and neither one got tossed.

In Sunday's game, Jeff Weaver hit Nomar Garciaparra in the first inning. In the next inning, Derek Lowe threw two pitches way inside to Hideki Matsui (one was even behind him) and both teams were warned. Later, a pitch got away from Lowe and hit Jason Giambi in the foot, but Lowe was not tossed because it was obviously not intentional. Even later, Weaver hit Bill Mueller but was not tossed because it also was obviously not intentional.

Good job by the umps. In a series this important, do everything you can to make sure the main players decide the outcome.

Who would have thought Weaver and John Burkett would put up the two best starting pitching performances of the series?

Who would have thought Jeremy Giambi would "steal" his first career base?

Who would have thought lefty David Ortiz would triple (the fourth of his career) off lefty-killer Jesse Orosco?

Who would have thought David Wells would walk almost as many batters (5) on Friday as he had walked all season (6)?

Who would have thought Chris Hammond would allow back-to-back home runs after allowing just one homer in 41.2 innings this season?

Who would have thought Enrique Wilson would have two hits and a walk, two steals and two runs on Friday?

Who would have thought both Byung-Hyun Kim and Armando Benitez would pitch in all three games and allow either runs or inherited runners to score each time?

Who would have thought the series would end with Manny Ramirez making a diving, sliding, rolling, snow-cone catch to prevent the go-ahead run from coming to the plate?

Quite simply, it was just an amazing series. After Friday's game, people said there was no way Saturday's game would match it. After Saturday's game, people said there was no way Sunday's game would match the first two. After Sunday's game, ESPN Classic probably just said, "Hell, let's run all three games one after the other every day this week."

I'll finish by saying one more thing that you can either believe or not as you see fit. I was a complete mess during this series, unable to stay seated for more than five minutes at a time during any of the games. However, something strange happened when Hammond came in to face Jason Varitek. I just knew Varitek was going to hit a home run. I wasn't sure the Red Sox would be able to win the game, but I just had a feeling V-Tek would come through.

It was the only calm moment I had in the series, and I just smiled when the ball sailed over the Green Monster. No reason to gloat because I hadn't called it out loud, and no reason to cheer because it was still just a tie game and one with plenty of time left at that.

I'm glad the Red Sox have Monday off, because I need a day to regroup. Check back throughout the day Monday to see what I have to say about other stuff once my brain has cleared enough to think about anything besides how happy I am that the Red Sox won the series.

Thank God

That's all I have to say.

Blah

I was going to write about how great a game it was tonight.

I was going to write about how you could tell how important it was because Pedro threw 128 pitches, the most this season and his most since May 1, 2001.

I was going to write about how David Wells, who came into the game with six walks, walked five batters. He's now walked eight Red Sox hitters this season and only three hitters from all other teams.

I was going to write about how three of those walks came consecutively with two outs in the sixth and then the Yankees brought in Jesse Orosco and Grady Little for some reason did not pinch-hit for Johnny Damon.

I was going to write about all those things, but I'm too depressed by that loss. I was at work covering the Rochester Red Wings off the radio, but I don't think I sat down for more than half an hour during the game. I was just too nerve-wracked.

Anyway, since I'm not going to write about the game (well, anything more about the game anyway), there is something else I wanted to write about.

I was watching the "Mike and the Mad Dog Show," which is sans Mad Dog while Chris is on vacation, on the YES Network this afternoon. Mike Francesa was broadcasting from the Green Monster seats at Fenway Park and he was talking to Mike Barnicle for part of it. Francesa said something like the following to Barnicle:

"I always say that the worst thing for Boston fans would be for the Red Sox to win the World Series. There would be nothing left for them after that. They haven't won in so long that they almost root for losing at this point. They see being heartbroken every year as their right."

That's not exactly what he said, but it's the general idea. I don't swear on this blog often, so I hope you'll excuse my language when I say:
BULL-SHIT

I absolutely hate it when the Red Sox lose. Drives me nuts. I've been known to punch walls, throw things, curse up a storm, etc. after Red Sox losses.

There is almost nothing I would like more than for the Red Sox to win the World Series. When the Patriots won the Super Bowl, I'm not ashamed to admit that I shed tears of joy for more than an hour. If the Red Sox won the World Series, I can't even imagine the level of my elation.

To say that we like losing just because some (most?) Red Sox fans are paranoid and pessimistic is just stupid. Next time somebody tells me I wouldn't know what to do with myself if the Red Sox win the World Series, I may punch him/her in the face.

Just so you know if you ever see me.

Done for the day

So, I know I promised two long posts today, but I started talking to people online and now I don't have enough time to make another post. I was going write about the Red Sox and Yankees heading into their big three-game series this weekend, but you don't need me to tell you that both of these teams are very good and that this series is hugely important (more to the red sox and their fans than the yankees).

Pedro vs. Wells tonight. Burkett vs. Mussina tomorrow. Lowe vs. Weaver on Sunday night baseball. Strap in and enjoy the ride.

A call to arms

Sorry for the lateness of posting today. I slept later than I had intended to. To make it up to you, I will make two long posts today.

First, there were, by my count, 14 excellent performances by starting pitchers yesterday. Since there were 14 games yesterday, that's exactly half of all the starting pitchers who were used. It was quite an interesting mix of pitchers, from aces down to hangers on.

Darrell May

May allowed to runs on three hits (two home runs) and three walks with two strikeouts in seven innings to lower his ERA to 3.33, seventh in the AL.

May is just 5-4 with a 1.19 WHIP, 69 strikeouts (4.89 K/9IP), 36 walks (2.55 BB/9IP) and 17 home runs allowed. I don't know exactly how May is having so much success, but the Royals certainly aren't complaining. He doesn't walk that many people, but he hardly strikes anybody out and he allows a lot of home runs.

I wrote awhile ago that May had yet to allow more than four runs in a start, which is something almost no other pitcher (with a significant number of innings pitched) could say. Well, he still has yet to allow more than four runs in a start and he hasn't allowed more than two runs in any of his last six starts. Over that stretch, he's 5-0 with a 1.67 ERA, 0.95 WHIP, 18 strikeouts, 13 walks and seven home runs allowed (which is amazing since he's only allowed eight runs).

Actually, now I can tell you how May has succeeded. With the bases empty, batters are hitting .250/.303/.480 (.783) off May. With runners on, batters are hitting just .217/.266/.332 (.598) off May. Of the 17 home runs May has allowed, 14 have been solo shots.

Many people, myself inlcuded, don't think that pitching better with men on base is a skill. Unless May actually does bear down and pitch better out of the stretch, his good luck is unlikely to continue.

Brad Radke

Radke allowed two runs on five hits and no walks with four strikeouts in seven innings to lower his ERA to 5.33, which would still be the worst of his career (he had a 5.32 ERA in 181 innings as a rookie).

Going by his career trend, this should have been one of Radke's good seasons. In 1996, 1998, 2000 and 2002, Radke had an ERA somewhere between 4.30 and 4.72. In 1997, 1999 and 2001, Radke had an ERA below 4.00 (but not below 3.75).

Actually, despite his usually unimpressive ERA's and his 108-109 record, Radke has had a very nice career. Last year was the first time since his rookie season that he had an ERA+ below 100 (or below 109 actually). His ERA+ numbers from 1996 through 2001 were 115, 121, 109, 135, 118, 115 (an ERA+ of 100 is average, below 100 is below average and above 100 is above average). His career ERA+ before this season was 113. For comparison, Nolan Ryan's career ERA+ was 112 (which says as much about how overrated Ryan has been as it does about how underrated Radke has been).

The reason Radke has struggled this season isn't a lack of strikeouts (he's struck out 5.26 batters per 9IP, which isn't significantly worse than his 5.44 career average) and it isn't too many walks (his 1.5 BB/9IP is the second best mark of his career). He's struggled because he's allowing too many home runs.

Radke has allowed 23 home runs in 131.2 innings, which is 1.57 HR/9IP. Radke was susceptible to the long ball at the beginning of his career as well, allowing 1.59 HR/9IP in 1995 and 1.55 HR/9IP in 1996. From 1997 through last year, however, Radke allowed just 1.03 HR/9IP and never more than 1.15 HR/9IP in a season.

If Radke can just start to keep the ball in the park, he could turn his season around in a hurry. And if he can turn his season around, it would go a long way toward helping the Twins turn their season around.

Sidney Ponson

Ponson allowed three runs on six hits and three walks with five strikeouts ni 8.2 innings to improve to 14-5 and lower his ERA to 3.64. He was maybe one bad bounce away from pitching a complete game at Yankee Stadium.

Everybody knows that Ponson is apple of the eye of several GM's at the trading deadline, and yesterday did nothing to hurt that. Ponson now has a 1.28 WHIP, 97 strikeouts (6.19 K/9IP), 40 walks (2.55 BB/9IP) and just 10 home runs allowed (0.64 HR/9IP) in 141 innings. With 20 starts under his belt, he's averaging more than seven innings (7.05) per trip to the mound.

Unfortunately for the Braves, Cardinals, Red Sox, Giants and others, it's looking more and more like Ponson might not be leaving Baltimore just yet. The Orioles made Ponson an offer of $15-million over three years with a lot of incentives. Ponson didn't like the offer and has yet to make a counter offer. It sounds like the Orioles may keep negotiating with Ponson for the rest of the season and then just take draft picks if they cannot reach an agreement.

I completely agree with that plan, which is not something I often say about anything the Orioles do. If Baltimore cannot get a good enough package (which will admittedly be tough with Ponson just two months away from free agency and not guaranteed to stay with the team that trades for him), then the Orioles should just offer him arbitration and take two first-round picks if he leaves (I'm pretty sure he'll be a Type A free agent).

I wouldn't even make that much of an effort to meet Ponson's demands, because I'm not sure he's worth more than $5-million a year. The Orioles have several players they should trade in the next week because those players will never be able to get Baltimore more in return than they can right now. That's not necessarily true with Ponson, however.

Russ Ortiz

Ortiz allowed two runs on seven hits and two walks with five strikeouts in six innings to improve to 14-4 and lower his ERA to 3.55.

Ortiz has a 1.29 WHIP, 89 strikeouts (5.75 K/9IP), 65 walks (4.20 BB/9IP) and nine homers allowed (0.58 HR/9IP) in 139.1 innings. It's a good thing he doesn't allow many home runs, because he doesn't strike out enough hitters and he walks way too many hitters. He's also either been very lucky or the recipient of very good defense, as batters are hitting just .268 off him when they put the ball in play.

Ortiz is not a bad pitcher, but he has benefited from his environments. Despite a 4.01 career ERA, he has just a 101 career ERA+. He did have a 122 ERA+ in 2001, when he went 17-9 with a 3.29 ERA, 1.27 WHIP, 169 strikeouts (6.96 K/9IP) and 91 walks (3.75 BB/9IP) in 218.2 innings pitched. Last year, he had a 105 ERA+ because a 3.61 ERA for San Francisco isn't really that great.

Shawn Chacon

Chacon pitched seven shutout innings, allowing three hits and striking out six, to improve his ERA to 4.17.

Chacon had a 4.27 ERA at the All-Star break, but that's somewhat deceiving. He had a 1.04 ERA in 34.2 innings in April, a 5.66 ERA in 35 innings in May and a 6.06 ERA in 35.2 innings in June, at the end of which he went on the disabled list and it looked like his amazing season might be fading away.

Chacon came off the DL and started on July 19, allowing four runs in 4.1 innings to put his ERA at a season-high 4.43. However, he came back strong yesterday and still has a chance to become the first pitcher in Rockies history to have an ERA below 4.00 while pitching enough to qualify for the ERA title (one IP per team game is the mark to qualify).

Chacon has a 1.27 WHIP, 84 strikeouts (6.48 K/9IP), 43 walks (3.32 BB/9IP) and 10 home runs allowed (0.77 HR/9IP) in 116.2 innings, and he finally has a better ERA on the road than at home (yesterday's start was on the road). Chacon is 7-1 with a 4.21 ERA in 62 innings at home and 4-4 with a 4.12 ERA in 54.2 innings on the road. The reason for the much better record at home is obviously that the Rockies have a much better offense at home.

Kevin Brown

Brown pitched eight shutout innings, allowing three hits and two walks and striking out six, to improve his ERA to 2.12, the best in the NL.

Brown has simply been phenomenal this season, with a 1.06 WHIP, 115 strikeouts (7.88 K/9IP), 29 walks (1.99 BB/9IP) and five homers allowed (0.34 HR/9IP) in 131.1 innings. In 20 trips to the mound, he has made 16 quality starts. However, all 16 of those would still be quality starts even if you changed the definition of a quality start to, "at least six innings pitched and no more than two runs allowed." He's allowed either one or zero runs in 11 of his 20 starts.

Unfortunately, LA's offense is so bad that not only is Brown just 10-5, but the Dodgers are just 12-8 when he starts. Also, Brown now had a career ERA+ of 129 before this season and five seasons with an ERA+ of at least 150. This year will probably make it six seasons and will get that career ERA+ up over 130 (and then some). So, why don't I ever here people considering Brown's qualifications for the Hall of Fame?

Brandon Webb

Webb allowed two runs on four hits (two home runs) and two walks with eight strikeouts in eight innings to improve his ERA to 2.43, third in the NL.

Webb has been better than Arizona ever could have dreamed. He has a 1.03 WHIP, 97 strikeouts (7.86 K/9IP), 31 walks (2.51 BB/9IP) and 10 home runs allowed (0.81 HR/9IP) in 111 innings.

He's had a quality start in 15 of his 16 starts this year. In his only non-quality start, he allowed four runs in six innings on six hits and two walks with eight strikeouts. That's his worst start of the year!

Since that game had a game score of 50, he has yet to have a game score below 50 in his major league career. To put that in perspective, only 30 qualified NL pitchers this season have an average game score above 50. Webb is second in the NL with an AGS of 62.4.

Jon Garland

Garland allowed two runs on four hits and three walks with two strikeouts in seven innings to improve his ERA to 4.40.

He's been touted as an ace of the future for the White Sox for so long, that it's easy to forget that Garland is still just 23 years old. Garland was good in the minor leagues, but he never struck out many batters and he always issues a lot of walks. Those problems have continued into his major league career.

This year, Garland has a 1.34 WHIP, 69 strikeouts (5.23 K/9IP), 43 walks (3.26 BB/9IP) and 19 homers allowed (1.44 HR/9IP) in 118.2 innings. Garland had a 3.69 ERA in 2001, but he struck out only 61 and walked 55. Predictably, he slumped to a 4.58 ERA last year.

Garland has actually pitched very well recently, allowing two runs in seven innings in four of his last five starts. Over that time, he has a 3.31 ERA in 32.2 innings, with a 1.19 WHIP, 22 strikeouts, 12 walks and six home runs allowed. Still not a great recipe for success, but he's made it work recently.

Actually, in his last nine starts, Garland has a 3.19 ERA and a 1.25 WHIP in 59.1 innings. The White Sox are now just four games behind the Royals and could be very dangerous if they have four starters pitching well for the rest of the season.

Kelvim Escobar

Escobar allowed two runs on five hits and five walks with seven strikeouts in seven innings to improve his ERA to 4.34.

Since moving into the rotation, Escobar has made 14 starts. Half of them have been what I would classify as good starts. In those seven starts, he has a 1.93 ERA, 1.19 WHIP, 44 strikeouts and 15 walks in 51.1 innings. In his other seven starts, Escobar has a 6.27 ERA, 1.73 WHIP, 28 strikeouts and 21 walks.

For the season, including his time as a reliever, Escobar has a 1.50 WHIP, 95 strikeouts (8.41 K/9IP) and 44 walks (3.90 BB/9IP) in 101.2 innings.

Escobar is 27 and has a right arm that people absolutely love. He has always struck out a lot of hitters and he has always walked a lot of hitters. The Blue Jays supposedly want to keep him and a lot of teams supposedly want to trade for him. It will be interesting to see what actually happens.

Livan Hernandez

Hernandez allowed one run on seven hits and a walk with five strikeouts in 7.2 innings to improve to 10-6 and lower his ERA to 3.50.

Hernandez has been around forever, so it's easy to forget that he's still just 28 years old (if his birthdate is really 2/20/75). It's also somewhat surprising that this is just his third good season.

In 1997, he was 9-3 with a 3.18 ERA in 96.3 innings as a starter in his rookie year for the Marlins. He then won four games in the playoffs with a 3.18 ERA in 28.1 innings as Florida won the World Series.

In 2000, he went 17-11 with a 3.75 ERA in 240 innings in his first full season with the Giants. He won his only start in the playoffs, allowing one run on five hits and five walks with five strikeouts in 7.2 innings, but the Giants lost in the first round.

This year, in his first season with the Expos, he has a 1.29 WHIP, 98 strikeouts (6.13 K/9IP) and 35 walks (2.19 BB/9IP) in 144 innings.

Apparently, Hernandez just has to change teams every season and he can be good for the rest of his career. Another interesting note is that (barring a trade or a tremendous resurgence by the Expos) this will be the first time since 1996 that neither Hernandez nor his half-brother Orlando have been in the World Series.

Ron Villone

Villone allowed two runs (one earned) on four hits and six walks with four strikeouts in seven innings to improve his ERA to 2.30.

I was barely even consious of the fact that the Astros had picked up Villone, but he has been amazing for them. In seven starts, he has yet to allow more than three runs in a start and he's only even allowed three runs once. His only non-quality start came when he allowed two runs in just 5.2 innings.

He has a 1.14 WHIP, 36 strikeouts (7.53 K/9IP), 18 walks (3.77 BB/9IP) and five homers allowed (1.05 HR/9IP) in 43 innings. The only other time Villone has been anywhere near this good was in 1996, when he pitched 43 innings in relief playing for Milwaukee and San Diego and had a 3.14 ERA, 1.30 WHIP, 38 strikeouts (7.95 K/9IP), 25 walks (5.23 BB/9IP) and six homers allowed (1.26 HR/9IP).

Villone's newfound ability to not allow runs has helped the Astros take a 3.5-game lead in the NL Central, but they better not rely on him too much in the playoffs (assuming they make it that far).

Ben Sheets

Sheets allowed one run on five hits and a walk with three strikeouts in seven innings to improve to 9-7 and lower his ERA to 3.87.

At 25 years old, Sheets is starting to live up to his potential. He's not striking out as many people as he did last year when he had a 4.15 ERA, but he's not walking nearly as many either. Last year, he had 170 strikeouts (7.06 K/9IP) and 70 walks (2.91 BB/9IP) in 216.2 innings. This year, he has 115 strikeouts (6.65 K/9IP) and 30 walks (1.73 BB/9IP) in 155.2 innings.

In fact, the only reason he's not having even more success this year is that he's allowing so many home runs. He allowed 21 homers (0.87 HR/9IP) last year and has already allowed 25 homers (1.45 HR/9IP) this year.

If Sheets can continue to keep his walk totals down and get his home run totals back down to a more reasonable number, he could become a legitimate staff ace for the Brewers.

Kevin Appier

Appier allowed two runs on four hits and a walk with two strikeouts in six innings to improve to 7-6 and lower his ERA to 5.28.

Appier's only 35 years old and he was pretty good the last two years, posting an ERA+ of 115 in 206.2 innings in 2001 for the Mets and an ERA+ of 111 in 188.1 innings last year for the Angels. For his career, he has a 124 ERA+ in 2,479.2 and he is one of the more underrated pitchers you could ever find.

However, he just doesn't have it this year. He has a 1.47 WHIP, 49 strikeouts (4.79 K/9IP), 35 walks (3.42 BB/9IP) and 17 homers (1.66 HR/9IP) allowed in 92 innings. That is just not going to get it done.

Maybe he'll be able to get things back together and have another good year or two, but he'll retire as one of the better pitchers in baseball hitters (maybe one of the top 100) regardless. Unless he pitches until he's 40 and is absolutely awful the whole time.

Mark Mulder

Mulder pitched seven shutout innings, allowing seven hits and a walk while striking out 11, to improve to 13-7 and lower his ERA to 3.07, fourth in the AL. That was Mulder's first double-digit strikeout game since he struck out 12 last September 17th in a complete game shutout with five hits and no walks.

Mulder has a 1.15 WHIP, 100 strikeouts (5.90 K/9IP), 33 walks (1.95 BB/9IP) and 11 homers allowed (0.65 HR/9IP) in 152.2 innings. Like the rest of the Big Three, Mulder doesn't strike out many batters. But he also doesn't allow many walks or home runs. He is probably aided by his home ballpark and his defense, but he is still a very nice pitcher.

The remarkable thing about Mulder is how deep he pitches into games. For his career, which consists of 112 starts, he averages six and two-thirds innings pitched per start. That's amazing, especially when you consider that he averaged just 5.7 innings pitched per start his rookie season, which still accounts for more than 20 percent of his career. This year, he's averaging 7.27 innings pitched per start and leads the league with seven complete games.

So those are the 14 starting pitchers who pitched very well yesterday. They combined for a 1.79 ERA, 0.97 WHIP, 70 strikeouts and 30 walks in 100.1 innings.

As an exercise to show you how overrated wins and losses are, guess how many of those 14 guys got wins. The answer is six, and one of them got a loss. If a guy was 6-1 after 14 starts (say almost halfway through the season), he might not even make the All-Star team (Pedro Martinez's 6-2 record and 2.53 ERA after 14 starts this year comes to mind). But the fact that the team's for which these pitchers pitch went 10-4 (.714 winning percentage) yesterday, shows you just how valuable it is to have a 1.79 ERA in 100.1 innings over 14 starts.

Good game, good announcers

It's been nice not working during the day anymore, but today's the first time I realized how nice. Today, there are a lot of baseball games being played in the afternoon. Three of them (Kansas City at Minnesota, Baltimore at New York and Philadelphia at Chicago) are available on TV for me to watch, and I've been watching parts of all three.

The most interesting, in my opinion, is the game between the Royals and the Twins. As everybody knows, the Twins were one of the favorites to win the AL Central, along with the Chicago White Sox. The Royals lost 100 games last year.

But the Royals got off to a hot start while the Twins started slowly and it took awhile before the Twins worked their way into first place. After they did, they went into a magnificent slump and the Royals resumed their winning ways. Now, the Royals lead the Twins by 6.5 games and the White Sox are in second place in the division (five games behind Kansas City).

The Royals defeated the Twins last night, and I'm sure the Twins don't want to lose again tonight to fall 7.5 games out with 61 games to play. They also don't want to fall to 3-9 against the Royals this season. So, I've been watching that game more than the other two and it has been very enjoyable.

Minnesota just took a 4-2 lead in the eighth inning on a single into center field by pinch-hitter A.J. Pierzynski and a wild pitch by Jason Grimsley. Denny Hocking singled to lead off the inning and went to second on a sacrifice bunt by Shannon Stewart. Stewart avoided being tagged by Ken Harvey and went to second (with Hocking going to third) when Harvey threw the ball into right field.

Hocking scored on Pierzynski's single and Stewart scored on the wild pitch.

Kansas City took an early 1-0 lead in the first inning when Aaron Guiel singled to lead off the game and scored on a "triple" by Raul Ibanez with two outs. Ibanez hit a shallow fly ball to right field that Stewart couldn't get in quickly enough to catch. Stewart decided to half dive for it, missed it and had the ball bounce off him and roll away. Ibanez, knowing how bad Stewart's arm is, steamrolled into third and Stewart bounced his throw to the cutoff man.

Minnesota starting pitch Brad Radke really only made one mistake -- a home run to Ibanez in the seventh inning. Radke went seven innings, allowing two runs on five hits and no walks with four striekouts.

His opponent, Darrell May, made just two mistakes -- solo home runs by Jacque Jones and Torii Hunter. May also went seven innings, allowing two runs on three hits and three walks with two strikeouts.

The Twins just added two more runs on a double from Jones to take a 6-2 lead, which leaves the Royals with a lot of work to do in the ninth inning.

Not only has the game been good, the announcing has also been good. Normally, I hate baseball announcers. Almost all of them say so many things that just are not correct that it is mind-boggling. And most of them don't have much of interest to say.

This game, however, has been very enjoyable. Gary Thorn is the play-by-play guy and Jeff Brantley is the color guy and they have been having a lot of fun.

Early in the game, Brantley made a reference to Sampson and Thorn came right back with Delilah, Sampson's wife. I don't think Dennis Miller even made many references to the Old Testament when he was doing Monday Night Football.

Later on in the game, Thorn and Brantley had this exchange:

GT - It's a little nippy, but you have a few nips to keep you warm.
JB - And Radke has been nipping the corner all day long.

Sure, they've made some points that aren't correct, but it's too much to ask announcers (especially play-by-play guys) not too. If you look around at all the wonderful baseball blogs around and some of the "new" thinking being used by certain GMs, you can tell that the baseball world is changing, slowly, but surely.

However, I think the broadcast booth will be the final frontier as far as changes in the way the game is thought about. The problem is that most casual baseball fans don't want to here about too many stats other than those of the Triple Crown variaty. So, TV stations would be stupid to hire broadcasters who will talk about such stats and alienate their fan base.

Therefore, you can't blame Thorn and Brantley too much for saying things like (paraphrasing something Brantley said), "On this team (the Royals), it's okay to give up an out to move a player into scoring position, because they're so good at coming through in the clutch and driving in runners in scoring position."

All announcers say things like that, but some say that type of thing a lot more frequently. And few are as interesting as Thorn and Brantley.

So this game has been very enjoyable to watch (the Royals tried to make a comeback, with runners on first and third and one out, but couldn't score) and Thorn and Brantley have made it even more enjoyable.

Unexpected help

San Francisco's biggest problem this season is the starting rotation. The Giants have gotten a 4.07 ERA from their starters, which ranks seventh in the NL, but that doesn't even get at the whole of their problems.

The Giants have had six different pitchers make at least 10 starts this season. The best of them has obviously been Jason Schmidt, who is 10-4 with a 2.41 ERA, 0.98 WHIP, 143 strikeouts (9.33 K/9IP) and 34 walks (2.22 BB/9IP) in 138 innings (19 starts). He's obviously a candidate for the NL Cy Young Award, but he's had a couple nagging injuries this season and is expected to miss his next start (which would have been today) because of tendonitis in his right arm.

Two other starters have each made 19 starts and thrown over 100 innings, but it's not necessarily a good thing for them.

Kirk Rueter has a slightly bad 4.46 ERA, a very bad 1.55 WHIP and an inexplicably bad 2.60 K/9IP. In 105 innings, he's walked 36 batters and only struck out 28. However, he's been on the disabled list since July 9, so he's been unable to go through the implosion that his numbers suggest is surely coming.

Unfortunately for the Giants, with eight more walks than strikeouts, Rueter is not even the absolute worst on the team in that category. Damian Moss has walked 62 batters (5.17 BB/9IP) and struck out just 54 (4.5 K/9IP). He has a 4.75 ERA, he has a 1.65 WHIP and he has no business being in the starting rotation of a good team.

The other three pitchers who have started at least 10 games for the Giants this year are all rookies who have been highly touted as great prospects.

Jesse Foppert was probably the most highly regarded of the three and he has shown good stuff in the majors, striking out 81 batters in 84.2 innings (8.61 K/9IP). Unfortunately, he's also shown that he doesn't really know where that stuff is going most of the time. He has walked 54 batters (5.74 BB/9IP) and has a 5.53 ERA and 1.56 WHIP.

Kurt Ainsworth had a 3.82 ERA, 1.39 WHIP, 48 strikeouts (6.55 K/9IP) and 26 walks (3.55 BB/9IP) in 66 innings before fracturing his shoulder. He is likely out for the season.

Lastly, Jerome Williams has a very nice 2.83 ERA and a pretty good 1.24 WHIP. However, he only has 44 strikeouts (6.22 K/9IP) and he's walked 30 batters (4.24 BB/9IP) in 63.2 innings. He could continue to be successful this season, but having that kind of strikeout and walk rate combination is not usually conducive to doing so.

So, it's clear that the Giants need another good starting pitcher, even if Williams does continue to pitch as well as he has. So far, they've either been unable or unwilling to go out and get somebody.

Fortunately, somebody who is already on the team has recently stepped up and decidedly to help the situation.

Jim Brower came into this season with a 4.60 ERA in 297.1 innings over four seasons. That ERA was good for an ERA+ of 98, meaning he has been just below average over his career. He had 201 strikeouts (6.08 K/9IP) and 133 walks (4.03 BB/9IP) in 124 career games, 23 of which were starts.

At 30 years old at the beginning of this season, this was surely not somebody the Giants were relying on to be great.

He got off on the wrong foot in San Francisco, posting a 6.23 ERA in April. He was better in May, but still had a 5.40 ERA in 30 innings at the end of the month. A 1.35 ERA in June brought his ERA down to 4.15, but he had just 30 strikeouts and 22 walks in 43.1 innings.

Then, on July 1, he made his first start of the season, allowing one run on five hits and a walk with two strikeouts in six innings. He went back to the bullpen for two appearances after that (5.2 innings, 1 run, 3 hits, 2 strikeouts) before getting another start. He lasted just 1.1 innings this time, allowing six runs on four hits and three walks with one strikeout in San Francisco's last game before the All-Star break.

In two starts since the break, including last night, Brower has been outstanding. He went six scoreless innings in each game, allowing seven hits and one walk and striking out 10 in the 12 innings.

If you are looking for a sign that Brower can keep this up (maybe he has always had better success as a starter?), you are going to be disappointed. I mentioned that he had made 23 starts before this year. Well, 21 of them came from 2000-2002.

In those starts, Brower had a 6.10 ERA and 1.68 WHIP with 59 strikeouts (5.29 K/9IP) and 44 walks (3.95 BB/9IP) in 100.1 innings.

Brower has certainly helped the Giants recently, but he will probably not be able to help them when they will really need it -- the playoffs.

The Giants now lead the NL West by 10 games with just over two months to play. The can almost certainly coast into the playoffs without changing a thing. If they want to get back to the World Series, however, they need to add another starting pitcher and a good one at that. Otherwise, they better start preparing Schmidt to pitch every other game.

Tuesday's trades

Yesterday was the first of what should be several busy days leading up to the trading deadline. There were three trades made and I thought I'd give my thoughts on all three, from most important to least important.

Pittsburgh trades Kenny Lofton and Aramis Ramirez to the Chicago Cubs for Jose Hernandez, minor-league pitcher Matt Bruback and a player to be named later.

Since this trade was made, people have been up in arms about how bad it is for the Pirates. Well, I don't agree. I'd like to make a few points about the trade before I get into evaluating the trade.

First, neither player that the Pirates gave up is really that good. They're better than players the Cubs have at their respective positions, but they're not anything to get excited about otherwise.

Second, neither player was likely to be with the Pirates whenever they're ready to compete for a playoff spot, be that in two years or 10 years.

Third, we don't know what the market was like. One would think that the Pirates might have been able to get more than they did, but maybe the Cubs were the only team that was interested. If so, then this was a good move, because there was really no reason for Pittsburgh to keep Lofton and Ramirez.

Fourth, we don't know who the PTBNL is. If he's anybody really promising, then this deal could shift so that it's decidedly in Pittsburgh's favor. Okay, now on to the evaluation of the players.

Ramirez is the most interesting player in the deal because he's only 25 years old and he was very good two years ago, when he hit .300/.350/.536 (.886) with 34 homers and 112 RBI. However, he was awful last year (.666 OPS) and has only hit .280/.330/.448 (.780) this season.

Still, he's had an OPS above .800 in every month besides April (.687) and he's a ton better than what the Cubs have been running out to third base this season. So far this season, Chicago's third basemen have hit .212/.298/.305 (.603). In the National League, only Montreal and Los Angeles have gotten worse OBPs from their third basemen. Only Montreal has gotten a worse SLG from its third basemen and Montreal is the only team with a worse OPS from its third basemen.

So, even if Ramirez just keeps doing what he's been doing this season, he'll get on base about 10-percent more often than Chicago's other third basemen and he'll provide a ton more power (almost 50-percent more). If he can get back to what he did in 2001, he would turn Chicago's third base situation from the second-worst in the league to the third-best.

Ramirez is certainly an above average player and, at 25, he has a chance to get back to the star level he showed in 2001. However, he makes $3 million this year and is due $6 million next year. Even if the Pirates kept him for the rest of this season and all of next year, does anybody think he would have been back in 2005? I certainly don't.

To replace Ramirez at third base, the Pirates got Hernandez. Basically, they just took him because the Cubs didn't want to keep him for the rest of the year and the Pirates do need somebody to play third the rest of the season. He was pretty good last year, hitting .288/.356/.478 (.834) in 152 games for the Brewers before sitting out a lot at the end of the season so that he wouldn't set the single-season record for strikeouts.

This year, however, he's been a complete waste. He managed the difficult task of hitting .237/.308/.362 (.670) while playing for the Rockies and then got even worse in his time with the Cubs. For the season, he's hitting .227/.291/.359 (.649) and with 121 strikeouts so far, he'll have another shot at breaking the strikeout record (189).

The other player the Cubs got to improve their offense was Lofton, who is hitting .277/.333/.437 (.770) in 83 games at age 36. I don't know if I would expect a .770 OPS from him the rest of the way, however. The big reason his OPS is that high right now is that he had an amazing May, posting a 1.048 OPS (he had more walks in May than any two other months combined. same with hits and home runs).

However, as long as Lofton can provide an OPS above .700 or so, he'll be better than Tom Goodwin, who had been Chicago's primary centerfielder since Corey Patterson got hurt. Goodwin, who is now hurt himself, is hitting .291/.326/.358 (.684) in 63 games this year. For his career, he's hit .269/.334/.340 (.674) in 1,187 games.

The last player in the deal that we know about is Bruback, a 24-year-old who the Cubs drafted in the 47th round in 1998. This year, Bruback had a 3.96 ERA, 90 strikeouts (6.48 K/9IP), 33 walks (2.38 BB/9IP) and 10 homers allowed in 125 innings pitched at Class AAA Iowa (he also had hit 15 batters). The walks and homers aren't terrible, but that's not a lot of strikeouts.

Last year, he had a 3.16 ERA, 158 strikeouts (8.17 K/9IP), 48 walks (2.48 BB/9IP) and nine homers allowed in 174 innings at Class AA West Tennessee. In 2001, he had a 4.87 ERA, 130 strikeouts (9.59 K/9IP), 41 walks (3.20 BB/9IP) and six homers allowed in 122 innings pitched between Class A and AA.

So, Bruback has shown the ability to strike people out before and he's shown decent control and a decent ability to keep the ball inside the park. There's certainly a chance he'll become a useful pitcher in the major leagues. For right now, I'd say this trade helps both teams, but it will be easier to judge once we see who the PTBNL is.

Pittsburgh trades Scott Sauerbeck and minor-league pitcher Mike Gonzalez to Boston for Brandon Lyon and minor-league pitcher Anastacio Martinez.

I've been going back and forth on whether or not I like this trade for the Red Sox since I heard about it. I think Sauerbeck will be more useful for the rest of this season, but I like Lyon's long-term potential a lot more. I had thought Martinez was the better prospect, but I've now seen a lot of people who are excited about Gonzalez. I guess I'll just go through the players and give my thoughts on each one.

For a team like the Pirates, this is a good move just because Sauerbeck is 31 years old, making $1,566,667 and likely to command even more (maybe $2.5 million) next year. Meanwhile, Lyon is 23 yeard ols, majing $309,500 and able to be signed cheaply for the next two or three years I believe.

This year, Sauerbeck has a 4.05 ERA, 1.38 WHIP, 32 strikeouts (7.2 K/9IP) and 25 walks (5.63 BB/9IP) in 40 innings. That's not a great ERA and that's an awful lot of walks, but the Red Sox got him specifically because they say he's very tough on lefties. Let's take a look.

This year, lefties are hitting .211/.313/.366 (.679) off him in 71 at-bats. From 2000-2002, lefties hit .214/.286/.316 (.602) off him in 304 at-bats. That does look pretty nice, but how bad is he against righties.

This year, righties are hitting .203/.333/.311 (.644) off him in 74 at-bats. From 2000-2002, righties hit .277/.407/.392 (.799) off him in 411 at-bats. I would guess that his success against righties this year is something of a fluke (or because he's only being allowed to face bad righties this year) and that he's really not very good against them.

Lyon has a 3.93 ERA, 1.41 WHIP, 45 strikeouts (7.69 K/9IP), 17 walks (2.91 BB/9IP) and six homers allowed in 52.2 innings. I think Lyon has mostly been hurt by bad luck and/or bad defense this season. Batters are hitting .345 off him when they put the ball in play. Batters are hitting just .273 off Sauerbeck when they put the ball in play this season.

Martinez is 22 years old and was signed by the Red Sox as an undrafted free agent out of the Dominican Republic in 1998. This year, he has a 2.25 ERA, 37 strikeouts (8.33 K/9IP), 24 walks (5.4 BB/9IP) and three homers allowed in 40 innings as a reliever at Class AA Portland.

Last year, he had a 5.31 ERA, 127 strikeouts (8.22 K/9IP), 75 walks (4.86 BB/9IP) and 12 home runs allowed in136 innings as a starter at Class AA. In 2001, he had a 3.35 ERA, 123 strikeouts (7.63 K/9IP), 39 walks (2.42 BB/9IP) and 12 home runs allowed in 145 innings as a starter at Class A.

So, Martinez improved his strikeout rate but worsened his walk rate when he moved up from Class A to Class AA. Now that he's switched from a starter to a reliever, he's still striking out a lot of people and walking a lot of people. He's not a top prospect, but he could certainly become a nice reliever or maybe a back-of-the-rotation starter.

Gonzalez is 25 years old and was drafted by the Pirates in the 30th round in 1997. He's only pitched 6.1 innings this year due to injury. Last year, he had a 3.80 ERA, 82 strikeouts (8.65 K/9IP), 47 walks (4.96 BB/9IP) and four home runs allowed in 85.1 innings as a starter at Class AA. In 2001, he has a 2.93 ERA, 32 strikeouts (9.39 K/9IP), seven walks (2.05 BB/9IP) and three homers allowed in 30.2 innings primarily as a reliever at Class A and then had a 3.71 ERA, 66 strikeouts (6.80 K/9IP), 36 walks (3.71 BB/9IP) and five homers allowed in 87.1 innings as a starter at Class AA.

So, he has nice strikeout and walk rates as a reliever in Class A. When he switched to starting and went up a level, his strikeout rate dropped and his walk rate went up. When he repeated the level last year, his strikeout rate went back up and his walk rate went up even more. Basically, I'd say the same thing about him as I said about Martinez. He's not a top prospect, but he could certainly become a nice reliever or maybe a back-of-the-rotation starter.

Ultimately, I think this is the sort of trade that almost nobody remembers in a few years.

San Diego trades Jesse Orosco to the New York Yankees for a PTBNL.

Apparently, the Yankees didn't want the Dodgers to have the honor of being the team to acquire the oldest player this season. Orosco is 46 years old and making $800,000. If that PTBNL ever even plays a single inning in the majors, then this trade is a success for the Padres.

Orosco has a 7.56 ERA, 1.72 WHIP, 22 strikeouts (7.92 K/9IP), 10 walks (3.6 BB/9IP) and four homers allowed in 25 innings this year, but his reputation is as a pitcher who is death to left-handers.

This year, lefties are hitting .228/.290/.351 (.641) off him in 57 at-bats, which isn't bad. However, righties are hitting .426/.482/.660 (1.142) off him in 47 at-bats. He's turning every right-handed hitter into Albert Pujols. This is a problem, since he's often brought in specifically to face a lefty. If the other team counters with a right-handed pinch-hitter, Orosco has to stay in to face him.

However, it could just be a fluke. From 2000-2002, righties hit .211/.328/.351 (.679) off him in 57 at-bats. Strangely, lefties hit .267/.336/.450 (.786) off him in 120 at-bats from 2000-2002.

Whatever, I don't think Orosco will help the Yankees at all, but he probably won't hurt them too much either. Everybody knew the Yankees would do something to improve their mediocre bullpen. Now that they've made their moves and those moves have turned out to be Orosco and Armando Benitez, I am not worried at all.

For those of you who want to know what your team should do before the trading deadline, that's the subject of Rob Neyer's column today.

Who is this guy?

With the Mets in full-fledged rebuilding mode and trying to figure out which young players will be a part of their future, we are seeing a lot of new names putting on a Mets uniform. One of those names has started making waves with his performance at the plate. That player would be Jeff Duncan, New York's new 24-year-old centerfielder.

Duncan was originally called up when Jeromy Burnitz was injured and went 2-for-5 with no walks and two strikeouts in three games in May.

Since being recalled, Duncan has gone 11-for-27 with a triple, a double, 11 walks and six strikeouts in 10 games. No, that's not a typo, he has really drawn 11 walks in 10 games. That 10-game performance works out to a .407/.579/.593 (1.172) line.

I don't want to rain on the already drenched hopes of Mets fans, but don't get too worked up over those 10 games. If he still has an OBP over .400 (nevermind a batting average over .400) at the end of August, I'll eat any New York Mets hats I may have (I don't have any). Seriously, his performance will come way down.

I had never even heard of Duncan until a week ago, so the first question I want to ask is, "Who the hell is this guy?"

Well, Duncan was drafted by the Mets in the seventh round in 2000 at age 21 out of Arizona State University. That season, he had hit .347/.468/.453 (.921) in 58 games for the Sun Devils. The Mets then sent Duncan to Pittsfield of the short season New York-Penn league, where he hit just .242. However, he did have an OBP of around .360 or higher (I don't have HBP or sac fly numbers) thanks to 34 walks in 53 games.

In 2001, Duncan went to Class A Capital City, where he hit a paltry .217. Again, however, his OBP was 100 points or more higher than that, thanks to 46 walks in 88 games.

Last year, Duncan tore things up for two Class A teams, hitting .393/.468/.600 (1.068) for Columbia and .343/.472/.457 (.923) for St. Lucie. A couple disclaimers, however, are that he was 23 years old and in Class A and that he played just 69 games combined for the two teams.

This year, when Duncan hasn't been in the major leagues, he has been playing for Class AA Binghamton. In 76 games for Binghamton, Duncan hit .288/.376/.406 (.782).

I had training today for the new system we are switching to at the newspaper I work for and one of the guys in my training class is a big Mets fan. While we were on our break, I was checking the scores of the afternoon games and noticed that Duncan's average was up to .406 in the big leagues.

So, I asked my coworker, "Who is Jeff Duncan?"

"He's one of their new young kids," he replied.

To which I answered, "He's not that young -- 24. That's two years older than me."

"Was he playing in Triple A?" he asked.

"I would assume so," I said.

Well, I assumed wrong. Duncan was toiling in Double A at age 24 after barely playing last year and not hitting at all in the pros his first two years. Naturally, he can't be kept off base at the moment.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that Duncan won't be a good player for the Mets. He showed a ton of patience in the minor leagues, drawing 158 walks in his 286 games. However, he did not show an ability to hit above .300 and he showed almost no power. He may very well become an excellent player in the major leagues, but don't expect him to be the savior of the franchise.

Then again, Mets fans are probably ready to give him a ticker-tape parade just because he's not Roger Cedeno (who has just twice as many walks in seven times as many plate appearances).

New Blogs

I've added some new blogs to my list of links on the right. Some of them I've just learned about and others I've been meaning to add for awhile. In the team-related blog section, I added The Detroit Tigers Weblog, Mariner's Musings and Replacement Level Yankees Weblog. In the more good blogs section, I added For Rich or Sporer, Julien's Baseball Blog and Rich's Weekend Baseball BEAT.

Stop by and check them all out. Let me know if any of the links don't work.