Baseball Flotsam and Jetsam

Miscellaneous baseball thoughts and observations.

Roger Clemens makes his first start for the Yankees today against the Pirates in Pittsburgh. I'm thinking Roger will be lucky to make it to the 5th inning... Willy Taveras is an example of how you have to look a bit deeper into the numbers. In the "old" days you would see a guy hitting .324 with 13 stolen bases and automatically think the guy is having a very good year. However, when you look closer at the numbers you see that Taveras only has an OBP of .378 despite the high batting average. That OBP sounds high but its not even in the top 3 on his own team. The 13 stolen bases seem a lot but consider he's been caught stealing 8 times. Then throw in the fact that his slugging percentage (.376) is less than his OBP and now that .324 batting average doesn't look as good as you might think... Don't get me wrong though - this could be a career year for Taveras but as the guy who sponsors his Baseball-Reference.com page puts it "Infield single anyone?"... Kevin Hench has a column up at Fox Sports where he wonders why nobody asks Roger Clemens about steroids. I give Hench points for asking about the elephant in the middle of the room but I have to take away points because he never even mentions Jason Grimsley (who has supposedly named Roger Clemens as a steroids user)... Maybe the most amazing thing about yesterday's game between the Rockies and the Orioles is the fact that a game started by Steve Traschel went less than 3 hours (2:48)... Tonight will be an interesting game in San Diego which features David Wells against Jeff Weaver. If Wells wins - then he moves into a tie with Tommy Bond for 59th place all-time with 234 wins (just 2 behind Yankee lefty legend Whitey Ford). Weaver meanwhile has been awful this season - sporting a 0-6 record with a 14.32 ERA. Everyone was saying that Weaver should have stayed in the NL with St. Louis where he seemed comfortable. This game can give us a window to see if its the AL that's the problem or if Weaver just sucks (I'm guessing that Weaver just sucks). Just saying but Weaver is 0-6 and the Mariners are just 5.5 games behind the Angels in the AL West. The Mariners are also just 1.5 games back in the AL Wildcard race. If they had just an average pitcher taking Weaver's starts they probably would be leading the Wildcard race. Just saying...