Speaking of streaks of good game scores, here are Josh Beckett's longest streaks with Game Scores of at least 71:

He's on a 3-game streak right now and has easily been the Red Sox's best starting pitcher this season (most IP, lowest ERA, fewest HR yielded, most K...)

Yesterday Kyle Lohse pitched a 2-hit shutout and it yielded the best game score of his career:

He's got 3 straight games with a Game Score of at least 63, which ties for his longest career streak:

I tend to love guys like Lohse. He's no star, but he's shown he can be a fairly consistent average major-league starter. His ERA+ has been between 86 and 113 in all of his full seasons and he occasionally throws a gem like he did last night.

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Through Wednesday, J. P. Arencibia had played 23 games in the big leagues.

In his 12th career game (Opening Day of this past season) he hit a triple and two homers. Check out the catchers since 1919 to triple and homer in any of their first 23 career games:

It hasn't happened at all since Josh Paul in 2000, and not with 2 homers since Sammy Holbrook in 1935.

In Arencibia's first career game, he also hit 2 homers. Here are the catchers to do that in their first 23 career games:

Arencibia's the only guy since 1919 to do it in his first career game and the only guy to do it twice in his first 23 career games (not to mention first 12 career games.)

Mets Get Little Bang for Their Bucks - NYTimes.com

A brief review of the Mets' perpetually bad marginal dollars-to-marginal wins ratio.

Here's the details via Newswire -

Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig expects the playoffs to expand from eight teams to 10 for the 2012 season.

Selig went public last fall with his support for expanded playoffs, and the matter is subject to collective bargaining with the players' association.

"I would say we're moving to expanding the playoffs, but there's a myriad of details to work out," Selig said Thursday in New York at his annual meeting with the Associated Press Sports Editors. "Ten is a fair number."

Selig said scheduling is the major issue of discussion, including how many games the new wild-card round would be. The two wild-card teams in each league would meet, and the winners would advance to the following round against division winners.

"The more we've talked about it, I think we're moving inexorably to that," he said.

So, as a baseball fan, what are your thoughts on this change?

Using the new two-tiered search feature, I generated a list of players who have had at least one season with a batting average under .210 as well as at least one season with a batting average over .290. In each season, the player had to have enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title.

This particular question has been asked by a lot of readers over the years. I think many folks noticed that Mark McGwire did it by hitting .201 in 1991 and .312 in 1996.

Anyway, now it's easy to answer, and here are the 30 guys since 1901 to do it:

The additional columns are number of qualified seasons with a batting average over .290 and the most recent season that was achieved.

Eagle-eyed readers will notice that Mike Schmidt's name is missing from this list. He hit .196 in 1973 but must have just barely missed the cutoff to qualify for the batting title.

So I made a second list. Click here to see guys who have batted both under .200 and over .280 in seasons with at least 400 plate appearances. It includes Carlos Pena, Mike Pagliarulo, Mike Schmidt, and Reggie Jackson as recent entries.

Through Wednesday's games, Jed Lowrie has a career BA of .268 and a SLG of .448.

Doesn't sound like much, does it?

But in his 620 career plate appearances, he's already accumulated 4.0 WAR.

Here are the last 20 times a shortstop to accumulate at least 4.0 WAR in no more than 620 plate appearances.

Now of course these guys all did it in one season while Lowrie's performance is spread over 4 seasons.

Thanks to a reader identifying himself or herself as "fajita" for this little nugget.

Through 18 games, the Cubs have yet to ever be more than 1 game above or below .500:

That means that they haven't had any losing or winning streaks of more than 2 games, also means that they have had records of 1-1, 2-2, 3-3, 4-4, 5-5, 6-6, 7-7, 8-8, and 9-9 so far this season.

I have no idea what teams holds the record for this although I can't imagine it's many more games than the 18 the Cubs have already gone. Anybody have any idea?

Reader Tony C. wrote in to ask for this old favorite.

Let's ease in. First here are the lowest RBI totals for a player with 30 HR in a season:

Read the rest of this entry »