Random Notes for 7/12

-- With Greg Maddux's stolen base against the Braves tonight, he's become the oldest pitcher (42 years and 80 days old) in the last fifty years to swipe a bag. The previous oldest was Orlando Hernandez last July, at 41 years and 279 days old. An interesting note is of the ten stolen bases by pitchers over 40 years old since 1958, four of them are by Maddux and three are by Hernandez. The other three were by Jim Kaat, Danny Darwin and Orel Hershiser.

-- With Gregor Blanco currently sporting a .363 OBP and .321 SLG, he's coming close to entering some rare territory. There have been only been only six players since 1995 who have sported an OBP over .350 and SLG under .325 while getting over 400 plate appearances.

Walt Weiss, 1995 - .403/.321
Brett Butler, 1997 - .363/.324
Mark McLemore, 1998 - .369/.317
Rickey Henderson, 2000 - .368/.305
Mark McLemore, 2000 - .353/.316
Desi Relaford, 2000 - .351/.300

The interesting thing is, obviously, none have sported an OPS+ over 90.

-- An interesting "Did You Know?" here: The 2003 Mariners only used five starting pitchers for the entire season. The five? Jaime Moyer, Freddy Garcia, Joel Piniero, Gil Meche and Ryan Franklin. Of course, Piniero and Franklin are teammates this season with the Cardinals and Garcia and Moyer were teammates with the Phillies last season. Also of note, the Phillies and White Sox this season are the current leaders with the least number of starters used with six.

-- On the flipside of that, the '96 Pirates used an incredible 18 different starters, with seven getting ten or more starts. With September call-ups still to come, the Rangers could make a run at that number, as they have already used twelve different starters. To take it a step further, there have been seven teams over the past fifty years who have had nine different pitchers make ten or more starts. The '02 Cardinals were the most recent.

-- The Marlins could become the first team in ML history to see everyone in their starting infield (Mike Jacobs, Dan Uggla, Hanley Ramirez and Jorge Cantu) end the season with thirty or more homeruns. The '01 Athletics saw Jason Giambi, Miguel Tejada and Eric Chavez all hit thirty, but no other team has saw more than two accomplish the task. Uggla, Ramirez and Miguel Cabrera came close last season, with Ramirez falling one short. The highest homer mark reached by all four infielders was by the '05 Rangers, who saw Mark Teixeira, Alfonso Soriano, Michael Young and Hank Blalock all hit more than 24 homers.

-- Which teams have wasted the most starts where their pitcher posted a Gamescore of 70 or more? The Jays, Padres, Phillies, Indians and BoSox have all dropped four. And which have made the most out of starts where their pitcher posted a GS less than 50? Not surprising it's been the Rangers (23), Tigers (22) and Phillies (21).

-- Barry Zito, Ubaldo Jimenez and A.J. Burnett each have four starts this season where they have gone five innings or less and thrown over 100 pitches.