Baseball Flotsam and Jetsam

Miscellaneous baseball thoughts and observations.

He may be going under the radar of most but Tiger 2nd baseman Placido Polanco is having a heck of the season. He's currently 4th in the AL in batting average at .360 and tied for first for hits with 31. What's really amazing is the fact that he's only struck out twice in 86 at bats. He's by far been the hardest player to strikeout this season in the AL... The hardest player to strikeout in all of baseball has been David Eckstein - who has only struck out once in 75 at bats... The bloody sock crap that has been in the news has been the biggest non-story that I can recall in a long time. And if we are honest with ourselves - then we have to say that Gary Thorne comes out of this looking like a moron. A moron not to catch the humor in Mirabelli's comment in the first place, a moron to invent from whole cloth that it was paint and not blood and a moron for saying this all on a major league broadcast... John Smoltz has signed a contract extension that should keep him in Atlanta for his whole career. He'll need those extra years if he is to catch Tom Glavine for 4th place in wins all-time for the Braves. Smoltz has 195 wins for the Braves while Glavine had 242. There is no way Smoltz moves any further up the list than 4th since Phil Niekro is 3rd with 268 wins (I guess if Smoltz turned into Nolan Ryan and pitched till he was 45-years old he'd have a chance), Kid Nichols is 2nd with 329 and Warren Spahn is 1st with 356. Smoltz should take over the all-time lead in strikeouts this season though since he's just 112 behind Niekro for the top honor in Braves history...