Baseball Flotsam and Jetsam

Miscellaneous baseball thoughts and observations.

I can't believe the Red Sox lost 5 straight before last night's 1-0 win over the Blue Jays. They won't use it as an excuse but the flu really knocked that team flat for the past week.... The record for RBI in April is 31 set by Joe Carter in 1994. Josh Hamilton of the Rangers has a shot of tying or breaking that mark if he has a big game tonight against the Royals. Hamilton has 28 RBI so far in April with that one game left to go... Today is Phil Garner's 59th birthday. Garner makes me wonder about a three-strikes and you're out unwritten rule for managers. Do managers get three chances to win it all before getting tossed on the scrap heap? Of course some guys are so bad that they only get one or two strikes (like Kevin Kennedy) but I think guys with any talent at all for managing seem to get three shots - like Garner and like Dusty Baker who I'm guessing won't get another shot if he doesn't succeed with Cincinnati... Geovany Soto and Jacoby Ellsbury are the early leaders for NL and AL Rookies of the Year... Go figure. The AL has the DH but the NL still has the higher overall slugging percentage - .404 for the NL to .397 for the AL... People always knock Mike Mussina for the fact that he never had a 20-win season. The same is true of Kenny Rogers who just won his 212th game - to tie Chief Bender for 85th place on the all-time wins list. Chief Bender is in the Hall of Fame in part because he had two 20-win seasons but also because he had a great winning percentage (.625) but also because he was a money pitcher in the playoffs. Bender had a 2.44 ERA in 10 post season starts and helped the Philadelphia A's win 3 World Series. Kenny Rogers, on the other hand, is a guy who always seemed to come up smallest when the pressure was on. That's one of the reasons he couldn't hack it with the Yankees. If Kenny Rogers gets one vote for the Hall of Fame when he's done - it will be one vote too many...