A-Rod Hits 30th HR...12 of 15 Home Teams Win
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by user Niteowl049
Baseball Notebook July 9, 2007
Note: There will be no post tomorrow since there are no games being played today and due to moving to Knoxville, Tennessee next week may be offline for a couple of weeks until can get back online in Tennessee and may have to skip some posts before leaving Louisiana so we can pack. Am leaving due to my son in law getting a job in Knoxville managing a local Dominos Pizza store and my 92 year old dad lives in Greeneville, Tennessee about 75 miles away. Thank you for your patience at this time of transition. Not to mention will get to see my grandson play baseball in Tennessee. Last season I took him to every practice and every game and enjoyed every minute of it as much as he did since he not only plays well but enjoys playing the game.
Around the Bases
There were 15 games played in the major leagues yesterday and only three visiting teams won who were the Phillies, Braves and the Mariners....Yankees and Blue Jays won their last game before the All Star break and moved to within ten games of the first place Red Sox in the AL East. Alex Rodriguez hit his 30th home run and goes into the break with 86 runs batted in. A lot of players would consider his numbers good numbers for an entire year but A-Rod may have from 45-50 homers and 150 runs batted in by the end of the season and has a good chance of winning his third MVP award.
Chien-Ming Wang 9-4 the ace of the Yankees staff outpitched the weak link of the Angels starting rotation Ervin Santana 5-10 as the Yankees hammered the Angels 12-0. Santana found out you can't make 80 pitches in only three innings and expect to win the game. Wang who was 4-0 in June is 2-0 in July and has not given up a run in his last two starts. Red Sox lost to Tigers as Daisuke Matsuzaka 10-6 had his first bad start since the 30th of May and in the previous six starts had allowed four runs to cross the plate in 35 innings yet yesterday allowed six runs in five innings. Strange to see David Ortiz with only 14 home runs at the All Star break and is tied with some of these lesser known players with 14 home runs including...Casey Blake, Carlos Guillen, Ian Kinsler, Jhonny Peralta and Brad Wilkerson. Even more amazing is the fact that Carlos Pena with 20 homers is six homers ahead of Ortiz and Jack Cust and John Buck have 15 homers.
Josh Towers pitched his best game of the season and still lost even though giving up no runs and three hits in eight innings. Blue Jays won the game the next inning to take a 1-0 win....Paul Konerko homered for the third straight game as he and Jim Thome who also homered seem to be ready for a better second half for the White Sox who defeated the Twins 6-3.
After allowing eight earned runs in six starts in July, Joe Blanton 8-5 gave up five unearned runs in six innings to the Mariners as the Mariners distanced themselves from the A's stretching their lead over the third place A's to six and a half games. A's are a much better team than this but after winning the first game of this series on Thursday have lost the last three games being outscored 18-4. A's will need a long winning streak to get back in the AL West race now and they can't even think about overtaking the Angels but have to first catch up with the Mariners. Starting the 23rd of July the A's play 11 of 14 games against the Angels and Mariners so will have their chance then to gain some ground on the front runners.
Scott Hatteberg drove in the winning run in the bottom of the eleventh inning to give the Reds a 4-3 win over the Diamondbacks. Pete Mackanin is now 5-1 as the Reds manager and they have won four straight games and won six of their last eight games. David Ross hit his 14th homer and he leads all NL catchers in home runs with Russell Martin next with 11. Ross hit 21 homers last season in only 247 at bats so should have 25-30 homers by end of the season this year. Reds are only 2 and a half games behind the 5th place Astros and 4 games behind the 4th place Pirates....Shane Youman 2-0 outpitched Carlos Zambrano 10-7 as the Pirates defeated the Cubs 6-2 winning their seventh of their last ten games. Youman making only his second start this season gave up 2 runs in 6 innings identical to his stats in his first win.
Brewers finished their road trip 3-7 and are 19-26 on the road. They will be negotiating during the All Star break with schedule makers to see if they can turn some of their road games into home games where they are 30-13. Unless the Brewers can start winning on the road they will probably sink into oblivion by the end of the season. Chris Capuano 5-6 lost his sixth straight game and hasn't won since the 7th of May. To make the loss even more demeaning Tim Redding 1-1 who hadn't won since 2004 was the winning pitcher. Ryan Braun had three of the six hits by the Brewers raising his average to .350 and leading all rookies in hitting and only Alex Rodriguez has a better slugging percentage outslugging Braun .665 to .663.
Hunter Pence had a double and triple yesterday to increase his slugging percentage in .589. Only Ryan Braun, Prince Fielder and Chipper Jones have higher slugging percentage in NL than Pence. It should be an interesting second half to see how Braun and Pence hit the rest of the season....After 85 games Albert Pujols has 16 homers with 13 less than NL leader Fielder and has less than a third of the 49 homers he hit last season. He slugged .671 last season but only is slugging .516 this season but still has a chance of having his seventh straight season of over 30 homers and 100 runs batted in. He has 266 homers in 6 and a half seasons and 810 runs batted in at the age of 27.
Barry Zito 6-9 is trying to win the bust of the year award as he is not coming close to earning his $10 million salary. In civilian life you get fired for bad performance but in major league baseball you continue to draw your paycheck no matter how bad you stink up the joint. Yesterday he gave up twice as many hits as innings pitched giving up 8 hits in 4 innings and walked 4 batters and has walked 10 in his last 9 innings. Lefthanders are hitting .306 against the uncrafty lefty. Last season he had 52 more strikeouts than walks but this season only has 14 more strikeouts than walks. His ERA this year of 4.90 is over a run worse than his 3.83 of last season.
Pat Burrell hit his 11th homer of the season in the 8-4 Philies win over the Rockies. Burrell is hitting .304 in his last ten games and has hit 3 homers over his last 5 games. If Burrell can continue to hit like this the Phillies will be even tougher if they can get their starting rotation set and will have to address the problem of finding a fifth starter to be ready for second half of season. Shane Victorino also hit his 11th homer in the 15 hit attack and hit only 6 in 415 at bats last season yet has 11 in 336 at bats this season. Phillies lead NL in runs scored with 456 with the Brewers next with 430. Phillies are third in hits, home runs and batting average in the NL.
All Star Break Stats
Hitting
Leading qualifiers in hitting are Magglio Ordonez leading with .367 average while in second is Ichiro Suzuki at .359 and in third and leading the NL is rookie Hunter Pence hitting .342....Alex Rodriguez hit his 30th home run on the last day before the break leaving him one ahead of Prince Fielder with 29....Rodriguez leads in runs batted in with 86 with Vladimir Guerrero next with 75. Suzuki leads in hits with 128 to 122 for Matt Holliday....Ordonez leads in doubles 35-34 over Chase Utley....Rodriguez leads in total bases 212 to 205 by Matt Holliday.
Barry Bonds leads in walks with 91 with Todd Helton next with 73....Adam Dunn leads in strikeouts with 105 and has a chance to pass his personal best 195 strikeouts....Ryan Howard has surged into a tie with Dan Uggla for second most strikeouts with 96 and Grady Sizemore leads the AL with 91....Shane Victorino, Jimmy Rollins and Michael Bourn have combined to have 55 stolen bases and have only been caught stealing 6 times....Chase Utley leads the majors in extra base hits with 52 with four players next with 51.
Pitching
Josh Beckett and C.C. Sabathia lead majors at All Star break with 12 wins with John Lackey the only 11 game winner. Twelve pitchers have 12 wins....Erik Bedard with 149 strikeouts leads all major league pitchers with Johan Santana and Jake Peavy having 125 strikeouts....Chris Young leads in ERA with 2.00 and Jake Peavy is second with a 2.19 mark....Twenty one major league pitchers pitched shutouts before the break but none of them had more than one....Francisco Cordero leads majors in saves with 27 but hasn't registered a save since the 20th of June. Jose Valverde is second with 26....Roy Oswalt leads in hits allowed with 142 with Zach Duke next with 141....Ervin Santana leads in earned runs allowed with 69 with Daniel Cabrera next with 68.
Santana also leads in home runs allowed with 23 with Woody Williams next with 21....Cabrera leads in walks with 61 to 59 by second place Doug Davis.
Relation of Winning to Attendance
Five of the top 13 teams in average attendance are leading their division. Rankings in attendance by division leaders: 3rd Mets...5th Angels...10th Red Sox...11th Tigers...12th Padres...13th Brewers. Among the last place teams in each division the Giants are 7th...Rangers are 16th...Reds are 21st...Nationals are 26th...Royals are 28th and Rays are 30th so looks like there is a direct correlation to winning and attendance since only one last place team is higher than 16th in attendance while no division leader is lower than 13th place in attendance.
In the AL Yankees are averaging over 51,000 a game while second place Angels are averaging 10,000 less with over 41,000 fans per game. Dodgers lead NL with over 46,000 fans a game with Mets next with over 44,000 per game.
In total attendance Yankees have the most fans with 2,279,507 with the Rays having the least total attendance of 611,914.
Indians have had a huge dropoff in attendance and were ranked fourth in 2001 with 39,694 average attendance and now six years later they are ranked 25th with 24,327 a game losing 15,000 fans per game. Anyone knowing the reason for this dropoff in attendance is welcome to comment. This is same team that sold out 455 straight home games shortly after Jacobs Field was opened. Maybe the fans are tiring of the incessant drumming at their games.
