Baseball Flotsam and Jetsam

Miscellaneous baseball thoughts and observations.

- I've been saying this for a while but I think the AL Wild Card goes to Cleveland. The Indians have the best schedule by far and they are already 1 game up on the Yankees with 2 games in hand. I do think that the Indians young team is being set up for a first round loss though. But just getting to the playoffs will be a major step for the Indians.

- Yes A-Rod is having a great year for the Yankees but I don't think that the Rangers would take him back (and I think that says alot). His replacement, Michael Young is leading the AL in batting at .330, he has 22 HR, 101 runs and 81 RBI. Not too shabby. I'm not sure if I'm trying to take a shot at A-Rod here or just pointing out how good a player Young is - so I'll just move along.

- Shea Hillenbrand leads the AL in HBP with 22. I think pitchers just don't like Shea and I don't know why.

- Hardball Times had an interesting look at how inept Jason Kendall has been this year. Two things to add to this fine work - Aaron Gleeman should have also mentioned the fact that even though Kendall has some speed - he has also led the AL in number of times grounding into a double plays this year (22 - tied with Tejada to be more precise). That makes him even worse. In Kendall's defense I should note that I had him on one of my fantasy baseball teams and I thought about dropping him a number of times but the truth is there just isn't anyone doing that much better than Kendall so I ended up keeping him all season.

- Maybe we have the idea of what steroids will do for you all backwards. In 2000 Jason Giambi hit 43 HR (an average of 1 HR per 11.9 AB) and had an OBP of .476 and Giambi has admitted to steroid use that year. This year when he's supposedly steroid free, he's hitting a HR every 12.6 AB and has an OBP of .444 - both very close to his averages from 2000. However, his batting average is down by 49 points. So maybe steroids actually help you hit singles or maybe Giambi isn't as drug free as he says. Just sayin'.