Since 1919, there have been 96 pitchers to allow 7 earned runs or more in their first major league game.  Of those 96, how many went on to have a big league career with a lifetime ERA+ of 100 or better?

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Former Cardinals minor-league Randy Poffo has died, according to TMZ.

He was better known by his professional name, Macho Man Randy Savage.

Keeping Score: Posada Put Off Decline for Years – NYTimes.com

In this week's NY Times piece, I look at how impressive it is that Jorge Posada managed to last this long before finally showing his age.

This is an interesting thought...

Jason Giambi homered in his first 3 at bats last night and then struck out in each of his final two. He had a shot at 4 homers but didn't do it.

But what if he had?

I wonder what sort of long-term impact that would have had on his reputation. I don't mean with our community necessarily, given that we know that there are some guys who hit 4 homers in a game who weren't particularly great HR hitters otherwise (see Mark Whiten and Mike Cameron, for example.) I don't think Giambi hitting 4 HR would have changed our opinions much.

But Giambi was once one of the top HR hitters in the game. His performance tailed off significantly right around the time he admitted use of banned substances. While that may have been coincidence, it seems to many more likely that his use of steroids improved his performance significantly, and when he stopped, his performance dropped too.

But many would also assume that Giambi is now clean, and if he had made the front page by hitting 4 HR in a game, it might have changed a lot of people's opinions about his capabilities and what his number even from past seasons truly meant.

Thoughts?

There were 29 players in 2010 to have at least 300 PA's and an OPS+ no better than 80.

Of those guys, here are the ones with the best OPS+ so far this season:

We can ignore Morgan due to lack of PAs so far this year. But check out Avila---his SLG this year is .525, compared to .340 last season. Brantley is one reason for Cleveland's turnaround. And Maybin got bounced to his third team but might stick this time.

Maybe more interesting is the reverse. There were 66 players last year to have at least 300 PAs and an OPS+ of 120 or better. Here are the ones not doing as well in 2011:

I used 100 PAs as a cutoff in 2011, otherwise we'd see names like Manny Ramirez, Rafael Furcal, Joe Mauer, etc--guys who haven't played all that much.

Damn straight, I wrote about how long it took for a 3-HR game in the majors this year, and now they are coming in rapid-fire fashion.

Jason Giambi already has 3 homers against the Phillies tonight. He'll have a shot at 4.

Going back to 1919, the oldest players to hit 3 homers in a game are:

Today Giambi is 40 years, 131 days old, making him the second-oldest to accomplish the feat (at least since 1919).

Last night, Hector Noesi made his major league debut, pitching the last 4 innings of the Yankees' win over the Orioles. (Those were innings 12 through 15 after Mariano Rivera blew another save in the 9th inning.)

I thought it would be exceptionally rare for a pitcher to make his debut with at least 4 innings in relief, but it's not all that uncommon:

He's not even the first guy to do it this year.

Some other notables in recent years were Sidney Ponson in 1998, Kelvim Escobar and Keith Foulke in 1997, Russ Springer in 1992, Kevin Tapani in 1989, and Doug Drabek, Eric King, and Eric Plunk in 1986.

Here's a neat little thing I've just played around with.

First I made a list of the 21 pitchers who pitched at least 150 innings in 2010 and had an ERA+ of 90 or worse.

And here, among those guys, are the ones who are qualified for the ERA title in 2011 with an ERA+ of at least 100:

These are guys experiencing some degree of a turnaround so far in 2011.

Of course, this list doesn't catch Bartolo Colon or Kyle Lohse, neither of which who had enough innings in 2010 to qualify for my original list.

Among players with at least 3 career post-season homers, here are the players with the fewest regular-season homers:

Quite a list, huh? A lot of these guys hit memorable playoff homers but many of them had fairly disappointing careers otherwise.

This morning, I heard Nat's manager Jim Riggleman being interviewed on WFAN (Radio in NYC).   He brought up an interesting point regarding managing baseball compared to other sports. And, it was that there's no free substitution in baseball like there is in football, basketball, hockey, soccer, etc. Related, in baseball, when you take a player out of the game, it's a final decision. Whereas, in a sport like hoops, you can take a shooter out of the game early if he's cold - and then put him back in the game later (where he might score 35 points). Same thing with a QB or RB in football, etc.

At first blush, when I thought about this, and wondered what would happen in baseball if they allowed free substitution, I envisioned a game where you had specialists like pinch runners, defensive wizards, and left-handed pitchers flying in and out of the game every inning.  And, that seems like it would be chaotic.  For sure, it would lead to longer games and scorecard nightmares.

In any event, I thought it might be a fun topic for the baseball fanatics here to discuss.  What do you think?  Should baseball allow free substitution like the other sports?  Why?