Baseball Flotsam and Jetsam

Miscellaneous baseball thoughts and observations.

So far this year there has been 1 HR for every 34.6 at bats in the American League. Last year there was 1 HR for every 30.8 AB in the AL. That's a decrease of about 11% in the frequency of HR league-wide. I bring this up because people keep bringing up the fact that Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz haven't shown as much power this year as last year. Same is true for many players in the AL like Travis Hafner for example... I am more concerned with Manny's "power outage" that I am with David Ortiz's. So far this season Manny has an OPS+ of just 124. While still being well above league average (100) - this is a guy who hasn't had an OPS+ lower than 143 in 12 years (that was in 1997 when he batted .328 with 26 HR and just 88 RBI in 150 games). Ortiz has an OPS+ of 160 so far this season which isn't far off last year's 164 or 2005's 161. I still think Manny will have a hot spell this summer that will surge his numbers up to levels we've come to expect... Not for nothing but knuckleballer Tim Wakefield is just 3 strikeouts behind Joe Niekro of the all-time list. Niekro is at 88th place on the all-time list with 1,747. I have to think that given the special bond that has developed over the years between Tim Wakefield and Phil and Joe Niekro that tying Joe on the all-time list has to have some special meaning for Wakefield who probably will never catch Phil Niekro who is at 10th place on the all-time list with 3,342 K's...