Paul Konerko is putting together yet another great season, following his career-best 2010 at age 34 with a season nearly every bit as good at age 35.

During the steroids era, we became accustomed to guys putting up huge numbers at age 35. However, one of the nice things about OPS+ is that it normalizes to league strength and scoring, so an OPS+ of 150 is impressive regardless of era.

Konerko has now put up 2 straight seasons (where he qualified for the batting title) with an OPS+ of at least 150. There are not so many players to have done that in their age 34 and 35 seasons:

That's a damn impressive group he joins including not only mostly Hall of Famers, but some inner-circle HOFers at that.

Light schedule today. Let's see how long we can ignore the White Elephant in the Stadium....

-- Pop quiz: For 2010-11 combined, name the 2 CFs with at least 9 Wins Above Replacement (B-R formula). You have 30 seconds after reading the hints: (a) One leads the other by more than 50 HRs; (b) both are in the same league; (c) one has changed teams at some point. Ready ... go! (Answer below.)

-- The surging D-backs dispatched the Nats, 8-1, behind HRs from Chris Young and Paul Goldschmidt and 6 shutout frames from Wade Miley, who earned his first big-league win in his 2nd game.

• Goldschmidt has 5 HRs and 13 RBI in 70 PAs. An 8th-round pick just 2 years ago, he blasted his way to the majors with a 1.026 OPS in 3 minor-league seasons, at least .990 each year. He was leading the AA Southern League in OBP, SLG and OPS before getting the call this month. He singled in his first big-league AB, and the next day, August 2, he hit a go-ahead 2-run HR off Tim Lincecum, boosting the D-backs into 1st place for the first time since June.

Such sad news with the sudden passing of Mike Flanagan.

I'll leave the formal obituaries to others and just say that I'm sorry for his family, friends, and Orioles fans.

In 1979, Flanagan won the AL Cy Young in a landslide. Here is the voting:

Flanagan finished first in wins in the AL with 23, followed by John with 21, Koosman with 20, and Guidry with 18. Interestingly, though, not only does he have the lowest WAR of the pitchers receiving votes, he wasn't even in the top 10 in the AL that year. Would you believe that, in fact, across MLB, Flanagan was just 29th in WAR among pitchers?

It's a strong indication of how voting has changed, especially considering recent AL winners Zack Greinke and Felix Hernandez, who both won with less-than-stellar W-L records.

That being said, I don't begrudge the voters from giving Flanagan the crown. The Orioles won 102 games and he was their best starting pitcher that season:

Anyway--it's an incredibly sad day. Flanagan completed the rare triple of being a player, front-office executive, and broadcaster all for the same team. He was a big part of the Orioles and I'm sure their entire organization and fan base is really hurting today.

-- Mark Teixeira drilled a solo HR that tied the game in the 8th. It's the first of his 35 HRs this year that tied the game or put the Yankees ahead after the 6th inning; he has just 2 other tying or go-ahead HRs after the 3rd inning. In fairness, I haven't counted his opportunities.

• Coco Crisp broke up a tie game in the 10th with a 3-run shot off Rafael Soriano, his 2nd HR of the game -- his first multi-HR game since 2007.
• Derek Jeter went 2 for 5 and saw his August BA fall to .417. He's hitting .353 since the start of July. Pass me my hat and the ketchup, would you?

Brandon Allen of the Athletics launched a home run deep into the third deck of Yankee Stadium last night.

If you didn't see it, check out the video first.

When I saw it land, I thought it was absolutely crushed. But then a few things about it seemed sort of weird. First, his teammates didn't actually have a very strong reaction. Second, on the replay, it doesn't really look like he got all of it.

Enter ESPN Home Run Tracker for the explanation. The home run went only 428 feet, just the fifth longest hit on August 23, 2011. The speed off the bat was 108.7 MPH, towards the higher end but nothing particularly special. How the hell did it appear to go so far, then? The answer is in the elevation angle which, at 34.8 degrees, was the second highest of yesterday's homers.

Simply--he golfed it. At its apex it reached 139 feet, the highest of all of yesterday's homers. Basically, he hit it hard and at just the right angle to land in the upper deck, even though many other lower-angle homers would ultimately go farther.

In the same game, Eric Sogard hit his first career homer and also golfed it. It was yesterday's only homer at a higher angle than Allen's, but it was slower off the bat, had a lower apex, and just got over the wall.

Thanks to everybody's favorite blog administrator, Neil, for some helpful discussions about this post topic.

JA mentioned this briefly in his wrap-up, but here's a little more detail.

Bruce Chen struck out 9 batters last night, matching a career high. Here are his three 9K games:

That was the first time Chen won a 9-strikeout game, and he did it throwing more innings but fewer pitches than the previous 2 occasions.

Here are Chen's last 3 seasons, all with KC. He's having a decent year in 2011 with a 96 ERA+, but it's not trending the right way.

However, given that he's "only" 34 and has had two seasons with more than 100 IP (woo hoo!) and an ERA+ around 100, I fully expect the Royals to give him a 3-year, $18 million contract this off-season.

-- Ian Kennedy and Clayton Kershaw each won his 16th and remained tied for the NL lead, one ahead of Roy Halladay. Kennedy (16-4, 3.09) threw 7 shutout innings as Arizona snapped their 6-game skid with a 2-0 win in Washington.

• Sean Burroughs handled the D-backs' scoring with a 2-run HR in the 7th, his 1st big-league HR since 2005 and just the 12th of his career in almost 1,800 PAs. His dad hit 12 HRs in 29 games from July 29 to August 27, 1977.
• AZ will lead by 2 games if the Giants don't rally late against the Padres.
• As if the Snakes don't have enough offensive trouble, Justin Upton left the game in the 5th after being hit on the arm by a pitch.

-- Kershaw left after 6 scoreless IP, cracking 200 Ks again in a laugher in St. Louis. The Cards trailed 3-0 before the 1st out: Justin Sellers singled, James Loney walked on 4 pitches, and Matt Kemp slugged a 3-run HR, his career-high 29th roundtripper. LA added 4 in the 2nd, and the Cards never showed a pulse. They've lost 7 of 10, all to losing teams, falling from 4 to 10 games behind.

• Skip Schumaker made his professional pitching debut in the 9th, notching 2 Ks but allowing a 2-run HR to Aaron Miles.

ESPN.com is reporting that Arizona has dealt Kelly Johnson to the Blue Jays for 2B Aaron Hill and UT John McDonald. No financial terms were reported.

Can you remember a 1st-place team trading a starting middle infielder at this stage of the season?

Johnson isn't having a good season, but neither are the players AZ got back. Hill slumped badly last year after hitting 36 HRs in '09; and although his absurd .196 BAbip last year suggested a rebound might be expected, he's actually been worse this year, losing virtually all his power.

Toronto GM Alex Anthopoulos seems to have been on a mission of picking off other teams' undervalued and/or younger assets lately. But Johnson and Hill will both be 30 next year, and Johnson has been down more than up in the last 3 years. He does have legitimate power -- more than half his career HRs have come in road games -- and he'll take a walk, unlike Hill. But Johnson's strikeouts have skyrocketed in the past 2 seasons, to more than 1 per game. Still, I guess Johnson is a marginal improvement over Hill, and gives the Jays a little more lefty/righty balance. So, pending financial disclosures, I like Toronto's end.

What do you think about this deal?

Cliff Lee's dominance of the Mets last night was the ninth time this season he has pitched at least 7 shutout innings in a start.

With a little over a month to play in the season, Lee has a chance to become the first pitcher since Dwight Gooden and John Tudor in 1985 to accomplish this 10 times in one season. Here are the pitchers who put up at least 8 such games in a season in the past 35 years:

Oh wow--I love this card.