Baseball Flotsam and Jetsam

Some miscellaneous baseball thoughts and observations:

- The Red Sox are now the top road draw in baseball. So far this season the Sox have averaged 37,470 in road attendance. The Padres are surprisingly second with 36,522 to edge out the Yankees who have averaged 35,767 in road attendance.

- The top three pitchers in the AL in terms of strikeout / walk ratio are all on the Minnesota Twins. Radke is first with a 13.33 ratio, Santana is second with his 10.38 and Silva is third with his 9.50. For comparison - Javier Vazquez leads the NL with his 7.88 ratio. Rick Anderson is the pitching coach in Minnesota and he must be doing something right.

- A warning sign for the Yankees has to be the fact that they are fifth in MLB in runs allowed with 225. The teams above them are the Devil Rays, Reds, Rockies and Royals.

- The Twins are first in MLB is terms of pitching staff WHIP (Walks and hits / innings pitched) with a 1.14 mark. Again Rick Anderson must be doing something right out there in Minnesota. Interestingly, the top 3 teams in WHIP in MLB are all from the AL Central with the Twins first, the Indians second (1.22) and the White Sox third (1.23).

- Since becoming the starting shortstop for the Dodgers in 2002 - Caesar Izturis has hit .232, 251, .288 and is now hitting .346. That an increase of 19, 37, and now 58 points in batting average year over year. With this pace - Izturis should hit over .400 next year.

- Look for Mark Redman of the Pirates to become a hot commodity in the coming weeks. He's 3-3 with a 2.48 ERA so far this year in 9 starts. He would be a perfect pickup for say the Braves or the Cubs. The Braves could use an innings eating starter with Hampton and Thomson on the DL and the Cubs could use Redman to take Zambrano's starting slot so he can become their closer. Redman struggled in the AL last year with the A's (11-12 with a 4.71 ERA) - so I would look for him to stay in the NL. Redman is signed through 2006 at $4 million per year - so he doesn't break the bank either.

- Wins shares are a pretty good barometer for the post season awards in my opinion. So far this year, according to Win Shares, Brian Roberts deserves to be the AL MVP and Jon Garland the AL Cy Young. The NL MVP would between Carlos Lee and Bobby Abreu while Roger Clemens would get the NY Cy Young. Tough to argue with those choices.

- So far this year Keith Foulke has 0 win shares for the Boston Red Sox. Last year he had 15.

- Not sure what to make of this but when I spell check the word "Padres" - my spell check wants me to replace it with "faders". We shall see.