Baseball Flotsam and Jetsam

Miscellaneous baseball thoughts and observations.

Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Zito - Barry Zito pitched six innings of one-hit ball last night against the Mariners and his effort still only dropped his ERA to 8.59 (that's how bad his first start against the Yankees was)... I thought Alphonso Soriano would plummet to earth this year but so far Soriano is having a a very good season at the plate hitting .333 with a .400 OBP (and yes I know - small sample size)... Last night while watching Baseball Tonight on ESPN - Tim K. threw out the question of if Omar Vizquel is a Hall of Famer. I really had not considered that before and will take a look at the numbers later (my gut says '"no")... FWIW - Cleveland and Cincinnati currently lead the race for the Wild Card spots (what would you do without that nugget of information?)... To me - the most impressive thing about Detroit's 5-0 start has been the fact that all the games have been on the road... Very quietly the Toronto Blue Jays have started out as the best hitting team in baseball (their .339 team average edges the Reds who have hit .333 so far). No team has more HR than the Tigers - who have hit 17 (thanks largely to RA Dickey)... File under "No Coincidence" - the Tigers and Brewers are both undefeated and they also both lead their leages in team ERA (the Tigers with a 2.40 team ERA and the Brewers with a 2.60 ERA)... Craig Biggio needs 33 more at bats to pass Reggie Jackson for 28th place on the all-time list. Biggio has some work ahead of him to catch Jackson in strikeouts though. As it stands today - Jackson leads Biggio in strikeouts by 1,039 in roughly the same number of at bats...