Facts and Stuff
August 21st, 2009 | by Ray Flowers |
There were a few odd stories in the world of baseball today, as well as a few milestones that have almost been reached. Given that I love numbers and that I have always been considered a bit of an odd bird, it seemed only natural for me to touch on a handful of those storylines.
Justin Duchscherer will miss the rest of the season after being diagnosed with depression. “Justin has been battling this for quite some time, and it’s kind of reached the apex where he made a really tough decision and owned up to the problem,” agent Damon Lapa said. A year after posting a 2.54 ERA in 141.2 innings Justin’s follow up effort this season consisted of all of zero innings in the bigs.
Prince Fielder went deep again on Friday and now has 33 bombs and 110 RBI, the second figure leads the majors. He won’t hit 50-homers again, but he is almost a lock to best his pervious career best of 119 RBI.
There is no reason for the John Daly picture above other than the fact that I just really love the pants.
Aaron Hill hit his 29th home run on Friday night leaving him one short of a magical 30-HR season. Since 1980 only two other second basemen in the AL have hit that many and they are Alfonso Soriano (three times) and Brett Boone (twice). By the way, over Hill’s first 1,720 career at bats want to take a guess how many times he went deep? Try 28.
Jesus made an appearance in Washington D.C. today. Oops, my bad, that was just Stephen Strasburg.
Nick Johnson and the Marlins hope that his injured hamstring won’t place him on the DL. My thoughts? I think that Johnson has about as much chance of not ending on the DL as I do of not getting pretty well blitzed on Friday night. Did I mention I’m already three and a half beers in to what will almost certainly be a 12-pack night?
Garret Jones decided to start hitting again and has two homers in his last four games. Don’t look now but he has 14 homers and seven steals in 43 games meaning he is on a Mark Reynolds-esque pace of better than 40 homers and 25 steals. Who knew?
Jake Peavy will have his minor league start moved back from Sunday to Monday. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – do NOT expect Peavy to be a difference maker until 2010.
Freddy Sanchez was out of the starting lineup for the eighth time in 21 games since joining the Giants. He is hitting .304 as a member of the club, but this certainly isn’t what the club had hoped for when they brought him into the mix.
Billy Wagner, whom I wrote of in my most recent Weekly Mailbag piece, has apparently been claimed off waivers by the Red Sox. That leaves the Mets with three choices. (1) They can simply dump Wagner and let the Sox have him (the Sox would be responsible for his salary). (2) They can work out a deal with the BoSox sending something to the Mets in exchange for Wagner. (3) The Mets can simply pull Wagner back off waivers and keep him – no harm no foul. Seems odd that the Mets want so desperately to move him, but it also seems odd to me that every team with a worse record than the Red Sox didn’t bother to put in a waiver-wire claim on Wagner. Maybe I should start circulating my articles to major league front offices?
By Ray Flowers
Tags: Aaron Hill, Billy Wagner, Freddy Sanchez, Garret Jones, Jake Peavy, Jesus, Prince Fielder, Stephen Strasburg
