Base Hits: 6/26/2007

It's rough to be an Oriole fan these days but according to The Hardball Times, Baltimore isn't even close to being the worst team in the league. Small consolation but it could be worse...

The New York papers are filled with stories like this one, questioning Joe Torre and calling for his ouster after last night's 3-2 O's win. It's nice to be on the other side of one of these losses and I'm loving watching Yankee fans try to eat one of their own.

It looks like Leo Mazzone will be sticking around, at least for now, which is a good thing. The only reservation I had about firing Perlozzo was the potential loss of Leo. His work with the pitching staff (even with the struggles of some bullpen personnel) has been enormously successful.

The usually completely insipid Amber Theoharis writes a decent enough column in Press Box this month. (I give Nestor a lot of crap about inane, misinformed rantings but as far as the inane and misinformed, Amber gives him a run for his money...) I think Alyssa Milano writes better.

On the other Hand, I am really finding myself enjoying Phil Jackman's Press Box column called...well, On The Other Hand. Good stuff.

I have posted WPA graphs before and The Hardball Times have assessed some of the biggest hits of the year in terms of WPA. Jay Payton has the biggest hit of the year for Baltimore this far....so stop pinch hitting for him in the 9th!

Base Hits: Non-Orioles Edition

The O's are far too depressing these days so a special Base Hits with no examination of the O's whatsoever! It's cathartic for me...

An interesting article at The Bronx Block on Yankees AAA pitcher, Colter Bean. Bean has been called up to the big club since the article and has posted a 0.00 ERA over 3 innings.

My latest guilty pleasure is over at MLBlogs where Alyssa Milano is posting a baseball blog. Maybe I am blinded by her pure hotness but it seems quite genuine and...quite a good read.

Remember that Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game? On Baseball-Reference.com, there is a feature called the Oracle of Baseball in which you can find a link between any two major league players by a shortest possible list of teammates. For example, you can get from Lou Gehrig to Cal Ripken through three players (Joe DiMaggio-Lew Burdette-Aurelio Rodriguez). A good time waster.

Turn a historical pennant race into a graphical horse race over at BaseballRace.com where you can watch, for example, the 1983 AL East pennant race "live".

On Baseball Reference, the sponsor of the Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown page delivers this message: "Thumbs up for being a great Cub." That's funny. Thumbs up for Three Finger? Get it?

The Braves Jarrod Saltalamacchia breaks the 100+ year old record for the longest last name in the majors. This fact and more over at the Bullpen on Baseball-Reference.com

Wow. It's unusually hard for me to find non-Orioles items to get too excited about. Here's to hoping the Cleveland series goes our way...