Baseball Etcetera...Buehrle Pitches No-Hitter
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by user Niteowl049
Baseball Notebook
Buehrle Pitches First No-Hitter Of 2007 Season
Mark Buehrle pitched the first no-hitter of the 2007 season by defeating the Texas Rangers 6-0 for the first no-hitter since Anibal Sanchez pitched a no-hitter against the Diamondbacks on the 6th of September last year.
Jim Thome hit two homers giving him three homers in the last two games. Jermaine Dye hit a grand slam so a sign the White Sox may be ready to make their move in the AL Central now that the sluggers are starting to wake up. Buehrle has allowed only 7 hits in 17 innings and the win last night was his first win of the season after two no decisions.
Baseball Daily Digest
Dan Haren pitched the second best game of the day defeating the Angels 3-0 picking up his first win of the season. Haren showed you don't need to get a lot of strikeouts to win striking out only 3 batters. He has only 12 strikeouts in his first 25 innings this season despite being known for being a strikeout pitcher having struck out 176 last season but is on a pace to strike out 108 this season assuming he gets 36 starts.
Haren has allowed only four runs for a 1.44 ERA in his four starts. With Mike Piazza in a 1 for 16 slump it was good to see Nick Swisher and Eric Chavez drive all the runs in yesterday. Shannon Stewart is now hitting over .200 for the first time since the 8th of April. Gary Matthews, Jr. continues to slump as his average drops to .232 after having a .313 average on the 11th of April. He has 3 hits in his last 24 at bats.
Alex Rodriguez hits his 9th homer and drives in his 22nd and 23rd run of the season in the 9-2 win by the Yankees over the Indians. At the end of April last season Rodriguez had 5 homers and 16 RBI's so with 11 more games for Yankees this month Rodriguez should exceed by far those numbers of last year. Rodriguez has hit his 9 homers in only 52 at bats hitting a homer in less than every 6 at bats. Kei Igawa picked up his first win as a Yankee allowing only two runs in six innings.
Tim Wakefield allowed one run in seven innings while defeating the division rival Blue Jays 4-1. Wakefield has a 1.35 ERA after the contest. David Ortiz hit his third homer in last four games giving him five on the season....Felix Hernandez only got one out while allowing three runs before leaving the game with elbow stiffness. Carlos Silva took the 5-4 win for the Twins over the Mariners and is pitching much better than last season. Last season he had an ERA of 5.94 and so far this season has a 2.00 ERA. He needs to have a good season with the fourth starter Boof Bonser with a 6.89 ERA and the fifth starter Sidney Ponson with a 8.18 ERA not pitching well. Decision may have to made soon whether to let Ponson go and bring up Matt Garza and insert him into the starting rotation.
John Maine silenced the Marlins bats as the Mets defeated the Marlins 9-2. Carlos Beltran hit his third homer of the season and now has 15 RBI's. David Wright had a hit in his 25th consecutive game dating back to last season....Astros defeat the Reds 7-2 as the Reds bullpen wasted a great pitching performance by Aaron Harang who allowed one run in six innings and struck out eight batters. Harang saw his 2-0 victory turn into a 7-2 defeat as the bullpen allowed 6 runs in the last two innings. Carlos Lee added to his NL leading RBI total giving him a total of 17.
Braves took a 8-6 win over the Cubs despite blowing a 4-1 lead and falling behind 6-5 in the seventh inning then scoring three runs in bottom of the inning to take a 8-6 lead and eventually winning the game by that score. Carlos Zambrano didn't take the loss but pitched another bad game giving up two more homers and is on a pace to allow 54 homers this season. His ERA stands at 7.77. This is not the same Zambrano of last season when he won 16 games. Control is a problem for Zambrano having as many walks as strikeouts with 16. Jeff Francoeur homered giving him 3 homers and 15 RBI's this season. He is tied with Carlos Beltran for second in runs batted in in NL.
Brewers move back into first place in NL Central with their 7-3 win over the Pirates. Brewers had three players with three hits including Kevin Mench, Corey Hart, and Bill Hall to lead a 15 hit attack. Claudio Vargas notched his first win of the season allowing two runs in six innings while striking out eleven. Vargas has struck out 20 batters in last 11 innings....Brandon Webb pitched the Diamondbacks to a 5-2 win over the Padres while allowing one run in eight innings and striking out thirteen.
Barry "Balco" Bonds hit his fourth homer of the season and 738th of his career leaving him 18 homers short of passing Hank Aaron's 755 career homers. In a questionable move by Tony LaRussa he had Scott Spiezio and Albert Pujols attempt a double steal in the top of the twelfth inning but Pujols was tagged out at home by Benjie Molina. There is a better chance of Yadier Molina driving in Pujols than there was of a big man like Pujols stealing home. To me it was a monumental blunder by LaRussa to attempt this since he is one of the winningest managers in the history of baseball and should have known better. I assume he thought the element of surprise was in his favor but stealing home for a faster player is a huge gamble and is a bigger gamble sending a slow runner like Pujols to attempt the steal.
Stats Corner
Kenji Johjima is leading all major league hitters with a .414 average and is 25 points ahead of second place Derrek Lee who is hitting .389. After hitting his 9th homer of the season Alex Rodriguez moved two homers ahead of second place Ian Kinsler with 7....Rodriguez leads in runs batted in with 23 with Carlos Lee second with 17.
Rodriguez leads in total bases with an incredible 51 in only 13 games. He is on a pace to have over 500 total bases which would break the record of Babe Ruth with 457. With the season not even ten percent over Rodriguez is on pace to have over 90 homers and 230 runs batted in. While it is not realistic to believe he will actually finish with these numbers it gives an ideal of how great the start of the season is going. Of course no matter what he does during the season Yankee fans will remember better what he does during October.
Rodriguez leads in slugging percentage with .981 percentage with Ian Kinsler second with .857. Kinsler has to be the biggest surprise of the season so far. It took him 423 at bats to hit 14 homers last season and has hit 7 in only 42 at bats this year in less than ten percent of season. Rodriguez also leads in extra base hits with 14 in 13 games. Babe Ruth has the single season record of 119. The previous best for Rodriguez is 91 which he should pass barring injury.
Nine pitchers have posted three wins this season. C.C. Sabathia will be the first pitcher to attempt to win his fourth game when he starts on Friday against the Devil Rays....Brandon Webb leads in strikeouts with 28 with Johan Santana and Eric Bedard next with 25....Four pitchers have ERA's under 1.00 this season. They are Rich Hill with 0.64, Tim Hudson with 0.86, Brad Penny with 0.89 and Jake Peavy with 0.90....Dontrelle Willis has allowed the most hits this season allowing 32. Tomo Ohka and Carlos Zambrano have each given up 6 homers to lead in that category. Zambrano also leads in walks with 16 in only 22 innings.
Red Sox are averaging 12.50 runs per 9 innings when Josh Beckett starts to lead the AL and the best in NL is Rich Hill with Cubs scoring 10.29. It is ironic that Hill leads in ERA with 0.64 so really only needs 1 run to win. Cubs need to spread those runs around to help the less effective starters.
Jason Kendall is leading AL catchers in throwing out base stealers throwing out 60 percent with 6 thrown out of 10 attempts. The worst in AL is Mike Napoli throwing out 7.7 percent throwing out 1 in 13 attempts....NL leaders are Ronnie Paulino and Paul Lo Duca both throwing out 50 percent of the runners while in last place is Brian Schneider has not thrown out a runner in 11 attempts.
