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ESPN.com – MLB – BOXSCORE

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Randy Perfect

Without Rafael Furcal and Marcus Giles, with a bruised Andrew Jones and a barely back Chipper Jones, with the oft-injured JD Drew and the positively ancient Julio Franco in the lineup, along with some lesser names, Big Unit didn’t vanguish Murderer’s Row.

But that’s usually the case with no hitters. There are always big hitters missing from the lineup, or bad teams on the field. And it doesn’t diminish the achievement one bit.

One wonders about sending Eddie Perez to hit for Mike Hampton (and one also says: This is the best right-handed pinch hitter you’ve got?). Career wise Perez’s OPS has been .79 of league average, while Hampton’s has been .68. I guess I’m with Bobby Cox on that one.

Baseball America Online – Player Finder [KELLY, MIKE]

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Baseball America Online – Player Finder [KELLY, MIKE]

I don’t like that he ended up in the Yankees organization (and I wonder about the stumbling All Star Stats, who still show him as KC property, but playing in Columbus), but he’s showing all the good signs (apart from his average) that I liked about him in the preseason.

That means he’s taking walks and hitting for power. The AVG isn’t there, but this is a guy who spent most of the past three years watching TV when he wasn’t playing softball.

A star? Not hardly, but a good reason to read the transaction lists. If the Royals still had him he’s be a better addition (except defensively) than Adrian Brown. And I like Adrian Brown, too.

ESPN.com – MLB – Schwarz: Calculated maneuvers

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ESPN.com – MLB – Schwarz: Calculated maneuvers

Two really interesting things in this survey. Evidence that average 9 inning pitch counts in the 1930s were 115. And Leo Mazzone saying he didn’t pay any attention to pitch counts.

And I’m reminded of a third interesting thing. Rany Jazayerli and Keith Woolner’s evidence that a high pitch count today means more ineffectiveness next time out. It isn’t a universal effect, but the correlation seems strong enough it’s worth considering when making pitching moves.

Yahoo! News – W. Va. Women Symbolize War’s Glory, Shame

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Yahoo! News – W. Va. Women Symbolize War’s Glory, Shame

I can’t help myself. This is the ripest sexist bs you can imagine. The notion that these two women symbolize anything is an indictment of the the press and it’s ability to parse anything but the most generalized, self-serving hoo-hah (or as my daughter now calls it, horse hockey).

Thanks, grandma.

What we know is that Jessica Lynch wasn’t the Rambo like hero she was made out at first to be. And reading the stories it’s hard not to be uncomfortable with the fact that the only American torturer with a face is this apparently dim paper-pusher.

Maybe she makes a better story, but doesn’t she also deflect a lot of attention from the horrors that went down? After all, she was surely no mastermind.

Horrors, I can’t emphasize enough because I can’t stop thinking about this nightmare, that were ignored by the administration for four months after they were initially reported. That’s the thoroughly awful thing about William Saletan’s list of quotes linked to earlier.

It is impossible to spin the sequence of events in any but the worst possible way.

Major League Baseball : Fantasy : Fantasy

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Major League Baseball : Fantasy : Ask Rotoman

The latest column has some fun with the songs of Lieber and Stoller, the names of Jake Peavy and Brad Hawpe, and perhaps an incomplete explanation why getting off to a bad start in the ERA doesn’t have to be the end of the world.

I failed to point out that improvement in ERA often comes with improvement in Ratio, so progress (while costly) can be more dramatic than you might think.