Diamondbacks pitching prospect Max Scherzer made his major league debut last night, relieving in the third inning of Arizona's 6-4 loss to the Astros. He retired all 13 batters to face him, seven by strikeout.

Going back to 1956, Scherzer's debut outing is the longest without allowing a baserunner. Here is the list of those retiring at least seven batters:

2007 AL Cy Young award winner C.C. Sabathia has begun 2008 with four horrendous starts, yielding 46 baserunners (32 hits including 5 homers, plus 14 walks) in only 18 innings. He managed to escape with a no decision in his first outing, but got pegged with the loss in each of the last three. He now stands at 0-3, 13.50 ERA ... in his free agent walk year.

Sabathia got knocked around for nine earned runs for the 2nd consecutive start on Wednesday, losing 13-2 to the Tigers.

Since 1956, there have been only six instances of a pitcher giving up at least nine earned runs in consecutive starts (and Sabathia is of course the only one following up on a Cy Young award from the prior year):

Of course, one must give some credit (or blame?) to Eric Wedge for allowing Sabathia to stay in there long enough in each of those games to cough up nine earned runs.

Much has been already written about the Tigers awful start. How no team starting 0-7 has made the playoffs and the like.

But let's look at the larger picture. Just about ANY team can have a 7-game losing streak at ANY point in the season. The Tigers added a starting pitcher and all-star third baseman to, and lost a couple of relievers from, the 88-win team of 2007. Its not like they turned into the '62 Mets.

I took a look at every non-strike, non-lockout season since the 162-game schedule was implemented in 1961. There were 337 instances in which a team had a 7-game losing streak at SOME point in the season.

Yes, the '62 Mets made the list, as well as the '03 Tigers. But there were four teams that still played .600 ball for the year:

TEAM / YR	W	L	PCT
OAK 2001	102	60	.630
CHW 2005	99	63	.611
BAL 1983	98	64	.605
BOS 1977	97	64	.602

Another 26 teams won at least 90 games and 81 more played at least .500 ball.

[But the composite won-loss record of those 337 teams was 75-87 (.464). So maybe the Tigers ARE in a bit of trouble, from a historical perspective.]

Chase Utley, who led the majors in being hit by pitches last year (25) despite missing a month .... as a result of one of those HBPs, has tied a Major League record this afternoon.

Utley got plunked, to paraphrase Monty Burns in the "Homer at the Bat" episode, "not once, not twice, but thrice" by the Mets in the Phils 5-2 win.

Here are the prior instances of a batter being hit three times in the same game (from 1956 to present).

Reds phenom Johnny Cueto lived up to the hype in his first major league start this past Thursday, tossing 7 innings of 1-hit ball.

Using Bill James' "Game Score" calculation:

Start with 50 points. Add 1 point for each out recorded, (or 3 points per inning). Add 2 points for each inning completed after the 4th. Add 1 point for each strikeout. Subtract 2 points for each hit allowed. Subtract 4 points for each earned run allowed. Subtract 2 points for each unearned run allowed. Subtract 1 point for each walk.

We find that Cueto's 1-hit, no walk, 10 K, 1 ER performance translates to a game score of 81.

Here are the best game scores in a pitcher's debut (since 1956), for pitchers going seven innings or less (you'll note the lack of quality in the careers of these hurlers)

If we don't limit the starts to 7 innings or less, here are the top game scores (again, note the lack of career success for most of these pitchers):

Some go bananas.
Some need to go bananas.
Life balances out.

A new season is upon us, and with it comes a new opportunity to integrate my twin loves of Scrabble and baseball. The immortal Jimmy Gobble generates the highest score in Scrabble (based upon his name consisting of two Scrabble-acceptable words). Here's the top scoring players whose first AND last names are each acceptable in Scrabble.

** 30 points **
JIMMY (19) GOBBLE (11)

** 29 points **
JOHN (14) LACKEY (15), KELLY (12) JOHNSON (17)

** 28 points **
ROCKY (14) CHERRY (14), CHIPPER (16) JONES (12), JAKE (15) PEAVY (13)

** 27 points **
NICK (10) JOHNSON (17)

** 26 points **
JOHN (14) BUCK (12), RANDY (9) JOHNSON (17), JOE (10) THATCHER (16)

** 24 points **
FRANKLIN (15) MORALES (9)

** 23 points **
NICK (10) SWISHER (13), MIKE (10) SWEENEY (13), MARK (10) SWEENEY (13)

** 22 points **
CORKY (14) MILLER (8), REED (5) JOHNSON (17)

** 21 points **
CURT (6) SCHILLING (15), DAN (4) JOHNSON (17), PRINCE (10) FIELDER (11), JOSH (14) BARD (7)

** 20 points **
JOHN (14) BALE (6), KERRY (12) WOOD (8), JOE (10) SMITH (10)

** 19 points **
RICH (9) HARDEN (10), BUCK (12) COATS (7), RANDY (9) WOLF (10)

** 18 points **
BILLY (10) BUTLER (8), MIKE (10) LAMB (8), HUNTER (9) PENCE (9), MATT (6) KEMP (12),
SHAWN (11) HILL (7), MATT (6) CHICO (12)

** 17 points **
SCOT (6) SHIELDS (11), COCO (8) CRISP (9), NICK (10) PUNTO (7), MIKE (10) MORSE (7),
MARK (10) LOWE (7), DAN (4) WHEELER (13), RANDY (9) WELLS (8), KIP (9) WELLS (8), BRAD (7) PENNY (10), MARK (10) PRIOR (7), HEATH (11) BELL (6), MATT (6) CLEMENT (11)

** 16 points **
CLIFF (13) LEE (3), TOBY (9) HALL (7), RICH (9) HILL (7)

** 15 points **
RAY (6) KING (9)

** 14 points **
TORII (5) HUNTER (9), BEN (5) SHEETS (9), ANGEL (6) PAGAN (8), MATT (6) MORRIS (8)

** 13 points **
BILL (6) HALL (7), MATT (6) WISE (7)

** 12 points **
MATT (6) STAIRS (6), MATT (6) CAIN (6)

(My thanks to my friend Seth Lipkin for help with this project)

In words that resonate throughout the sport
The long-awaited message sounds. "Today
Pitchers and catchers finally report."
Was it so long ago they went away?

Each year, the rush to melt the snow with heat
Of our anticipation, and to bring
The taste of not minding when you've been beat
Because it's meaningless-to force the spring-

Seems earlier and earlier, despite
The hot stove league's now searing blaze of heat.
The game is on our tongues, but it's a blight.
Our suppressed warmth melted the snow to rain.

So it's the winds of change we seek. The chill
May sting, but distracts from a greater ill.

"Has Johan been traded?" "Not yet."
"A Yankee? A Red Sox?" "A Met!"
"Who'd the Twins get?"
"Some kids we'll forget,
But to pay, Shea's gone way into debt."

No matter where I go, baseball is always on my mind. Time again to demonstrate this with another slideshow: Score Bard's 2007 Top 25 Baseball Player Names and Vacation Photos.

Note for low bandwidthers: this slideshow is a 1.5MB Flash file.

Continue reading "Score Bard's 2007 Top 25 Baseball Player Names and Vacation Photos"...

I'm not gone, just on hiatus.

Meanwhile, I have updated the Periodic Table of Blogs (a fact which is apparently worthy of news status on Baseball Think Factory), as well as fed the latest rosters to the Random Diamond Note Generator.

Some milestones were etched last year, and some
Could rise without an end in sight. We'll wait
And see the end result. The total sum
Of the glories that we'll see in oh-eight

Is, as it must be, unknown now, if not
Forever. Could we sum up the past year?
The ephemeral moments we forgot
Are blurred by what, repeatedly, we hear.

But some numbers have shone for centuries
And hearing them again will bring to mind
Unwritten, unknown anniversaries-
"Remember when?" "Yes, that was-" And we'll find

A past that into our new present blends.
It is as if the season never ends.

Interest is not meant to be sustained
By trickling awards. In leaps and bounds
It peaks and stagnates. As a new king reigned
We watched despite raging, dissonant sounds

That complicated everything. A streak,
No matter how glorious, is defined
By how and when it ends. The bright mystique
Of record rallies fails to bring to mind

The subsequent anticlimax, once myth
Has swallowed actuality at times.
Only the future will tell us if with
Or without coda these melodic chimes

Will echo. We can never know what plot
Will pique our interest-or what will not.

One-sixty-two games. What fool could condense
Them into only one? Each half-inning
Would be nine games, if ratios make sense
In strict proportion. So fluid a thing

Such as this undulating game, though bound
By rigid numbers, nine and three like squares
Is named after a ball that's mostly round.
No one diminishing value compares

One game to many. When we tried, the game
Defied us, stretching onward to include
The post-"season". Extra innings name
The playoffs in this code simple and rude

And broken. But it is enough to pick
A winner, and so the format will stick.

You may remember my post a few weeks ago detailing the Orioles 16-game death march of pitching.

Well, they decided that 16 games of self-flagellation wasn't enough, and continued the downward spiral through season's end, to the tune of 308 runs surrendered over their last 39 games:

You have to go back to the 1996 Detroit Tigers (the 53-109, 6.38 season ERA guys) to find the last time a team relinquished that many runs in a 39-game span.

In their last 39 games. the O's surrendered ten or more runs 11 times. (There were 8 teams that had fewer than 11 such games all season.)

The 11-28 finish has become commonplace for the Orioles, as they've managed to hang around the vicinity of .500 for anywhere from two to four months before crashing and burning in the past few years: