Baseball Flotsam and Jetsam

Miscellaneous bseball thoughts and observations.

If the Cy Young Awards were given out today - I think you'd have to give the AL award to Josh Beckett while in the NL Jake Peavy narrowly beats out Tim Hudson... People like to talk about the storied history of the Boston Red Sox but the Braves have a pretty good story to tell as well. A very good argument could be make over who had the better hitter - Ted Williams or Hank Aaron or even second best hitter - Carl Yastrzemski or Eddie Matthews (this goes to Yaz but the Williams vs Aaron is an interesting argument). As far as pitching is concerned - Boston had both Cy Young and Roger Clemens (not to mention Pedro in his prime) but the franchise record 192 wins both Clemens and Cy Young had in a Boston uniform pale in comparison to Warren Spahn's 356 wins for the Braves. In fact the Braves franchise has 7 pitchers who can top the 192 wins Clemens and Cy Young had for the Red Sox (Spahn, Kid Nichols, Phil Niekro, Tom Glavine, Al Spalding, John Smoltz and Greg Maddux)... If the "Yips" were recognized as a true ailment - then Ted Lilly would be in contention for comeback player of the year... As bad as Jeff Weaver has been for the Mariners this year - Edwin Jackson has been equally bad for the Devil Rays. I can remember when Jackson was an untouchable prospect for the Dodgers... In the first day of Interleague play - the Pirates defeated the Diamondbacks. What no AL team wanted to play one of these fan favorite franchises?... If the Blue Jays get swept by the Phillies - does John Gibbons have a job on Monday?... Ryan Zimmerman is hitting just .247 for the Nationals. There was hope he'd be the next George Brett for the Nationals but he's coming closer to being the next Eric Hinske... A while back I wondered if Paul LoDuca was finished. Considering the fact that LoDuca has been hitting an even .400 in May to raise his season batting average to.298 - I think it is safe to say that I was premature in saying he was done...