Last Week in Baseball! - Mediocrity Lives

If you are like us, you grew up on Mel Allen and “This Week in Baseball.” Here at WCT, we have “Last Week in Baseball!” Please don't sue us Fox!

Its dangerous to make any sort of conclusions based on records or standings at this point in the season, but it is still interesting to see who fast out of the gates, and we are through almost a month of baseball so its really no longer that early in the season.

Can you believe that 20 of the 30 teams in baseball are no better than one game over .500? We were never really big believers in the idea that there was parody in baseball, but maybe this year there will be. By our estimation, at least three whole divisions (NL Central, NL and AL West) are no better than mediocre, with the AL West having no teams over .500. It will be interesting to see how long it takes teams like the Angels, the Cardinals, the Yankees, and the Blue Jays, supposed playoff contenders who are currently at of below .500, to right themselves.

Now, on to our LWIB notes!

- Maybe the Cubs finally have the 1-2 punch that they have needed in their pitching rotation. And those pitchers are... Jason Marquis and Rich Hill of course! Last week the two were a combined 3-0 with an ERA of 0.43. Hill has been especially strong, leading the NL in WHIP (0.68) and has a 16 inning scoreless streak working. Look for one of these guys' throwing arm to fall off and the other to get struck by lightning in the next few weeks, because after all, its the Cubs.

- How about the Orioles? We thought this would be a last-place team (and they still might be) but at least so far they have been a pleasant surprise. The O’s took two of three from the Devil Rays, then swept the Blue Jays over the weekend to leapfrog the Yankees into second place in the division. We'll have a better idea about this team this time next week after they have played the A's, the Red Sox, and the Indians.

- Brad Lidge has officially lost it, and Phil Garner has completely lost confidence in him. On Sunday, he came in, gave up a leadoff double, and was taken out of the game. On Friday, he walked two batters, gave up a three-run bomb, and gave up a double after getting two outs. Thats seven batters faced over the weekend, two walks, three hits, and three runs.

- There appears to be some negative karma associated with this blog. Both Jason Schmidt, whom we picked to win the Cy Young this year, and Felix Hernandez, whom we highlighted last week, landed on the DL this past week. Oops.

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Its our blog dammit, so we are going to talk about our team every week - Ideally we would like to just forget that whole mid-week series against the Yankees ever happend. And we know that Josh Barfield was acquired in the offseason mainly for his glove, and so far he has played a good second base, but would it be too much to ask for him to hit his weight? Or even slug his weight? He is listed at 190 lbs, and is slugging .245 so its close. We'll keep an eye on this. By the way Barfield has seven hits this year, including one in the last calendar week. He started every game but one last week.

The Tribe has the Twins, the Rangers and the Orioles this week.

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How ‘bout tha... er, I mean, I'll be goddamned! - Everyone knows that Alex Rodriguez has 12 home runs so far this year (its only the lead story on SportsCenter every night), but did you know that Ian Kinsler has 7 home runs? Ian Kinsler?