Baseball is Poop

We are roughly a third of the way (some teams have played 60 games) through the baseball season and I thought it might be cool to check out which players are having remarkable seasons that you may not have heard about. For the sake of this post I'm eliminating all statistics achieved before 1900, and discounting those before 1950 which is actually an arbitrary date, the modern era of baseball really began with Babe Ruth and the offensive explosion of the 1930s, but humor me.

Curtis Granderson

Granderson already has 12 triples, amazingly he'd have to pick up his pace to break Chief Wilson's mark of 36 set in 1912. He'd need 15 more to finish second. But if he gets to 22, which seems reasonable at this point, he'd have the highest mark in almost 60 years. Willie Wilson and Lance Johnson had 21, Johnson did it in 1996 for the Mets.



Magglio Ordonez

Ordonez is having probably the best statistical season of anyone so far, with the possible exception of A-Rod (Mags has a higher OPS). He also has 29 doubles, which puts him on pace to hit 80, he's averaging about 1 double in every two games so far. The record is 67 set by Earl Webb in 1931. I've been following this record for years and every season someone gets real hot early then goes through a stretch of a month or so with no doubles. Several recent players have made a run including Carlos Delgado (57 in 2000) and Todd Helton, the post-war leader with 59, also in 2000. I predict 51 for Magglio.

Alex Rodriguez

With 22 home runs in 59 games (and three of those are game winners, so lay off Yankees fans), A-Rod is on pace to tie the record for most home runs by a non-steroid user.

Prince Fielder
The pudgy son of Cecil has 21 homers, giving him a real shot to pass his father's Fielder family record of 51.

Pitching
It's a lot harder to approach some of pitching's all-time records but there are some great performance so far this year.

Dynamics Duos
10 of the top 14 pitchers in ERA are on the same team making up 5 strong duos.

Dan Haren and Chad Gaudin - Oakland: 12-3, 2.01 ERA
Jake Peavy and Chris Young - San Diego: 13-4, 2.07 ERA
John Lackey and Kelvim Escobar - Los Angeles: 16-7, 2.67 ERA
John Maine and Oliver Perez - New York: 12-7, 2.79 ERA
Jason Marquis and Rich Hill - Chicago: 10-6, 2.78 ERA

But my favorite duo going right now is Cleveland's combination of CC Sabathia and Fausto Carmona.
They are a combined 16-2, with a 3.27 ERA. Fausto and CC!




Still Undfeated
Three pitchers remain undefeated, Josh Beckett is 8-0, Jeremy Bonderman is 5-0 and James Shields of the Devil Rays is also 5-0. Amazing about Shields, he started off with three bad starts, and since then he has a 2.42 ERA. He could have even more wins but he was no decisioned in three tough games (8 innings, 2 hits, 2 runs and 12 Ks plus no runs and 3 hits in 9 innings, and also 1 run in 7 innings). But in fairness a more accurate record for him would be 8-2 as he got no decisions in a couple of his bad starts also. Shields also has the second lowest WHIP in the majors, after Haren.



The Closer
If Francisco Cordero can keep this up (nearly impossible) he'll have the best season any closer has ever had. He has 22 saves and a 0.36 ERA, one run in 24 innings.