Article:Baseball Notebook: Around the Bases May 5th

Around the Bases May 5th

Chase Utley and Lance Berkman lead majors in home runs with 13 and 10 respectively. The AL leader Carlos Quentin with 8 home runs is listed 8th in the majors at mlb.com. Quentin only hit 5 homers last season in 81 games but has 8 this season in 28 games....Hunter Pence had gone 0 for 5 before hitting a walkoff homer in the 12th for the Astros as Eric Gagne blew his fifth save of the season in the 9th inning for the Brewers. Going back to his 3 blown saves in 3 save opportunities for the Red Sox last season Gagne has blown 8 saves in his last 17 save opportunities.

The early front runners for MVP award in NL are Chase Utley and Chipper Jones. Utley has 5 more homers than any American Leaguer and Jones is hitting .425 and has been hitting over .400 since the 13th of April. In April Jones had 4 hits once, 3 hits five times and 2 hits five times. Jones has gone hitless only 3 times in 28 games. Jones is 56 points ahead of second place Rafael Furcal and is 78 points ahead of AL leader Victor Martinez.

Steve Trachsel 1-4 may not be in the starting rotation much longer for the Orioles. In his last two starts he has given up 10 runs, 12 hits and 7 walks in 6 innings and his ERA is 7.43. He hasn't won a game since his first start on the 4th of April....Darrell Rasner 1-0 did something that disabled Phillip Hughes or now minor leaguer Ian Kennedy have failed to do all season. He won yesterday and has one more win than those two had combined.

What a difference a year makes....On May 5th of last season Alex Rodriguez had 14 homers and 37 RBI's. One year later he has 4 homers and 11 RBI's and with him on the disabled list he can only get further behind last year's pace. His on base percentage has dropped from .422 to .343...slugging has dropped from .645 to .495 while his OPS was 1.067 in 2007 but is .838 in 2008 and his batting average was .314 in 2007 but only .286 this year. All four of these numbers are lower than his lifetime averages.

It is not surprising to see Brandon Webb 7-0 with the best record in baseball but is surprising that Joe Saunders 6-0 is tied with Chien-Ming Wang 6-0 for the second best record in the major leagues.

Rays and Orioles are one percentage point ahead of Yankees for second place in AL East....Blue Jays have allowed 3 or less runs in 10 of their last 11 games. Twins with their 16-14 record have the longest current winning streak of 5 games and have the only winning record in the AL Central. Reds, White Sox and Mariners have the longest current losing streak with 5 game losing streaks.

Dodgers and surprisingly the Nationals have the best record in the last 10 games with 8-2 records and the Nationals are only 2 games behind next to last Atlanta in the NL East. Red Sox have best home record of 14-5 while the best road teams are the Angels and A's with 10-5 records on the road. While the Brewers have lost 3 in a row the Astros have won 3 in a row and are only a half game behind the third place Brewers who are only one game over .500.

Yankees are the only team averaging over 50,000 fans a game in 2008 with an average attendance of 50,902 at home games while the worst average attendance is by the Marlins with 15,653 and the Pirates second worst with 15,761 fans a game at home.

Victor Martinez has the longest current hitting streak this season with a 15 game streak....Joe Nathan has the most saves this season without a blown save having 11 saves.

Ervin Santana tries to extend his record to 6-0 this season today with Daisuke Matsuzaka and Ryan Dempster trying for perfect 5-0 records. If Santana wins that would give him a 6-0 record like his teammate Joe Saunders.

What is going on with Tom Glavine 0-1 this season? Glavine has made 5 starts and has failed to win a game. He has 12 walks and 11 strikeouts which is very troubling to Braves fans like me. When Bobby Cox pulled him out of the game yesterday with a 8-6 lead and Glavine needing one more out to be the possible winner of the game had to be a bitter pill for Glavine to swallow.

Tim Hudson, John Smoltz and Jair Jurjjens have a combined 10-6 record. Chuck James is the only other starter to have won two games but is back in the minors now. The other three starters still on the team Glavine, Jeff Bennett and Jo-Jo Reyes are a combined 1-2. Unless the Braves can start getting wins from their fourth and fifth starters they won't contend this season since Hudson, Smoltz and Jurjjens are not going to win every game they start.