Brandon Webb Pitches Third Straight Shutout
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by Niteowl049
Baseball Notebook
Brandon Webb Pitches 42 Scoreless Innings
Brandon Webb 13-8 pitched his third consecutive shutout defeating the Braves 4-0 and extended his scoreless inning streak to 42 innings. He needs to pitch 18 more scoreless innings to pass Hersheiser who has 59 and have the longest scoreless inning streak.
The win gave the Diamondbacks a four game lead in the NL West over the second place Padres. Rookie Chris Young hit two home runs giving him 24 for the season one more than [Ryan Braun]] but Braun is hitting 104 points higher than Young and outslugging Young .662 to .468. Incidentally there are now two Ryan Brauns in majors as the Royals have a pitcher with that name.
In the amazing fact department Young had 13 home runs and 31 RBI's before the All Star break but since then has 11 home runs and only 14 RBI's. Young is 9th in majors in home runs but 152nd in RBI's. Chone Figgins has hit only two home runs to have 45 RBI's for the season.
Around the Bases
Cubs took advantage of another Brewers loss as they defeated the Cardinals 2-1 to gain sole possession of first place in NL Central. Brewers lost their fifth straight game at home 8-3 as the Reds pounded out thirteen hits enroute to their win over the tanking Brewers. Corey Hart had two fielding errors in centerfield after having only one error in his first 91 games but this is what happens when a team unravels and there were a total of four Brewers errors as Jeff Suppan 8-10 who has not won since the 22nd of June and only has two wins since May 21st took the loss. Cardinals fell back to three games back with their loss. Brewers are 4-11 for the month of August.
Clay Buchholz won his major league debut for Red Sox and it looked like the Red Sox were going to win a game for Josh Beckett when he left the second game with a 2-1 lead over the Angels but the bullpen let the Angels back into the game and Eric Gagne allowed three ninth inning runs as the Angels won 7-5 blowing his second save for the Red Sox. Gagne had allowed 23 hits in 33 innings for the Rangers but since coming to the Red Sox has allowed 14 hits in 6 innings and has 15.00 ERA.
Yankees moved to within five games of the Red Sox in AL East behind Andy Pettitte 10-7 who has now won six of his last seven decisions and has a 2.25 ERA in August after posting a 6.96 ERA in July. Jason Giambi hit two home runs giving him 11 for the season. Roger Clemens 4-5 starts today for the first time in eleven days after serving his five game suspension.
Tom Glavine 11-6 posted his 301st major league win as the Mets defeated the Nationals 6-2....Pat Burrell who hit .179 in May and .129 in June has hit .435 in July and .308 in August and has hit 10 home runs over July and seventeen days into August after hitting only 8 the first three months of the season. His home runs less night were part of the 16 hit attack against the Pirates and J.D. Durbin 5-2 won his fifth straight decision. On July 3rd his ERA was 8.10 but now is 3.98 and has a 3.05 ERA in his last ten games. The win left the Phillies three games behind the Mets and a game and a half ahead of the third place Braves who lost yesterday.
White Sox fell into a last place tie with Royals who won their game with both teams being 13 games behind the Indians....Barry Zito 9-11 must have read what I wrote about his dismal season yesterday as he allowed one hit in seven innings to take a 3-0 win over the Marlins....Ryan Howard needs two runs batted in to join Alex Rodriguez and Magglio Ordonez in the 100 RBI's club.
Teams ten or more games out of first place in their division:
AL East: Blue Jays 10.5...Orioles 16.0...Rays 26.5 AL Central: White Sox and Royals 13.0 AL West: A's 12.0...Rangers 18
NL East: Marlins 12.5...Nationals 13.5 NL Central: Pirates 11.5 NL West: Giants 17.5
So it is almost safe to say that these eleven teams can forget about winning their division this season. Of these eleven teams only the A's being 9 games behind in AL wild card and Marlins 9 and a half games behind in NL wild card are less than 10 games behind in wild card races.
Mariners are leading the Yankees by a half game in AL wild card race while Phillies and Padres are tied for NL wild card lead with a game and a half lead over the Braves.
