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ShareThisNews and notes (Friday edition)
- The Rick Ankiel Story got a lot more interesting yesterday. In addition to his 2-HR, 7-RBI performance in yesterday's game, word came out that he allegedly received HGH shipments but stopped them before the hormone was officially banned by baseball. Time will tell whether this puts a permanent tarnish on Ankiel's reputation, and whether MLB takes any disciplinary action against him.Meanwhile, Ankiel now has 9 HR and 29 RBI in his first 23 games as an outfielder. If we ignore the batting that Ankiel did in his previous career as a pitcher, we note that he's already had 2 different 2-HR games in his first 23. Only 6 other players since 1957 have had 2 different games with at least 2 HR in their first 23:
Games Link to Individual Games +-----------------+-----+-------------------------+ Shane Spencer 2 Ind. Games George Scott 2 Ind. Games Mark Quinn 2 Ind. Games Carlos May 2 Ind. Games J.D. Drew 2 Ind. Games Russell Branyan 2 Ind. Games
Ankiel's season so far looks pretty similar to Spencer's performance in September of 1998. And, yes, Red Sox fans, read it and weep: JD Drew was once a power hitter.
Ankiel's day yesterday also gives him 5 different games with at least 3 RBI in his first 23. Only two players have done at least that well since 1957:
Games Link to Individual Games +-----------------+-----+-------------------------+ Albert Pujols 6 Ind. Games Alvin Davis 5 Ind. Games
Can you imagine if Ankiel continues to hit as well as Albert Pujols?
- Tim Wakefield got his first no-decision of the season last night! But he kept alive his streak of either pitching masterfully or getting bombed, giving up 6 ER in less than 4 innings. That's 11 starts with 0 or 1 ER, 12 starts with 4 or more ER, and just 4 starts with 3 ER (and 0 starts with 2 ER, oddly enough.)I heard some talk this morning that the BoSox need to drop Wakefield from the rotation and replace him with Clay Buchholz. How quickly we forget that Wakefield just had 3 consecutive starts, covering 22 innings, with 0 ER.
- Jayson Stark points out that Joe Borowski has 40 saves and a 5.50 ERA. He's going to finish by far with the highest ERA for a 40+ save season. The current leader is Antonio Alfonseca with 45 saves and a 4.24 ERA for the 2000 Marlins. The only other player as high as 4.00 was Bobby Jenks last year with 41 / 4.00. Amazingly, Borowski is going to become the only 40+ save guy to finish with an ERA+ under 100.
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This entry was posted on Friday, September 7th, 2007 at 7:35 am and is filed under Game Finders, Season Finders. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
