Baseball Flotsam and Jetsam

Miscellaneous thoughts and observations.

The Indians have Jhonny Peralta hitting third in a very powerful lineup. That's saying something. The Indians have one of the top 5 offenses in baseball and Peralta batting third shows lots of confidence by manager Eric Wedge. The problem is - Jhonny may be prone to slow starts. This year he's hitting just .222 with a .250 OBP and just a .278 slugging percentage. Last April Peralta also hit .222 in April with a .734 OPS. You have to wonder if Peralta is just a slow starter... You know just a thought but if Frank Robinson and the Nationals really wanted to teach future Hall of Famer Pedro Martinez a "lesson" - the next time they play against him they could make a double switch when Pedro comes to bat with Jose Guillen coming into pitch and the pitcher going out to the outfield for a batter. Guillen could then drill Pedro to make his statement. Of course if he did this both Robinson and Guillen would be looking at 10 game suspensions (at minimum). It would probably be better to just have the pitcher nail Pedro (all that would get would be warnings to both benches). Of course the second option would do nothing for Guillen's machismo... Greg Maddux just got his 319th win in his career. He needs 10 more to move into a tie for 10th place all-time with Steve Carlton (currently he's in 15th place). Roger Clemens is in 9th place with 341 (technically that makes Maddux the winningest "active" pitcher - at least until Roger gets his $10 million from the Astros)... Yikes! Philly has yet to win a game and their starters have yet to pitch 6 innings into a start... I wonder if there has ever been a pitcher with more than 100 strikeouts that still had more walks than K's? If there hasn't - I bet Russ Ortiz of the Diamondbacks becomes the first to turn the trick this year...