Scott Kazmir, fresh of a 3 years, $28.5m extension, is back on the mound against the Yankees. So far, he held them scoreless through five innings despite having not nearly has best stuff, collecting only three strikeouts while walking three, too.

Edit: He leaves after the 6th inning with a nice line: 3 H, 3 BB, 3 K, 0 R

Meanwhile, his Rays have scored four five runs off Kennedy, who seems to fall behind a hitter every time I turn my eyes to the TV.

Edit: Kennedy goes five and allows one runs per inning. Despite his good outings in the minors, it seems he has yet to righten his ship.

If Kazmir is that good when he is bad, the Rays might really make some noise this year.

Vegas Watch wonders what the odds are of Brandon Webb pitching a 30-wins season.

Brandon Webb is off to another great start- 8-0, with a 2.41 ERA. His insane ground ball rate (63.2%) has allowed him to give up only 2 homers over 56 innings.

On the surface, this is very similar to 2006, when he started off 8-0 with a 2.18 ERA. In terms of his chances of winning some ridiculous number of games though, two things are different this year.

The first is that this year he’s gone 8-0 in 8 starts, while two years ago it took him 11 to reach that mark. This means, assuming he makes 34 starts, he’s "on pace" to go 34-0, rather than 25-0. More relevantly, he has 8 wins with 26 starts left, rather than with 23.

The second is Arizona’s offense. In ‘06, they averaged 4.77 R/G. So far this year they’ve scored 216 runs in 39 games, which works out to 5.54 R/G. They are unlikely to keep up that pace, but the offense is certainly better than it has been in years past. PECOTA had them at 5.07 R/G before the season started, and AEQR has them at 5.03 R/G so far. So, going forward, PECOTA’s 5.07 is probably as good a guess as any.

I am not telling you exactly how great (or rather small) the odds are. Take a guess and then go over to there and find out. Let me tease you by saying Webb will reach 20 wins with a 89% probability and Vegas Watch’s calculations are rather conservative, I’d say.

Link: What Are The Odds: 30 Wins

Manny Ramirez catches, high fives, and turns two to end the inning for the Sox

I was away over the weekend and could not follow baseball at all. And just like that my team (Angels) lost 4 in a row. Now I’m back and they have won two. Usually, it’s the other way around.

Anyway, ESPN’s Jim Caple has written a long and very interesting piece about the next Japanese pitching phenom and what the exodus of stars means to Japanese baseball.

Darvish progressed quickly and steadily with the Fighters. He lowered his ERA from 3.53 as a rookie in 2005 to 2.89 in 2006 to 1.81 last year. But the 2007 season ended on a down note. Despite allowing only one run in the final game of the Japan Series, Darvish took the loss when the opposing team pitched a perfect game. He is 5-1 with a 1.46 ERA so far this season. "Yu is tremendously gifted, and he’s developed a great work ethic," Hillman says. "I didn’t have a lot of conversations with Yu, because there wasn’t a need for it. He understood that he needed to start working harder. Actually, after the 2006 season, he was so dedicated and committed to his workout program that he [chose] to forgo the team trip to New Zealand."

"I don’t need much motivation," Darvish says through an interpreter. "I’m never satisfied until I win all the games and have an ERA of 0.00. I want to throw a faster fastball. I want a sharper curve. I want to improve all my pitches."

Most observers feel he either is already as good as Matsuzaka or soon will be. "I think his numbers in Japan are going to be equally as phenomenal as he continues to move on, barring injury, as Dice-K’s were in Japan," Hillman says. "He’s got a different type of frame. Dice-K’s got a more powerful frame, but Darvish has looser levers and a taller frame with more whip, and I think that gives him an opportunity to have more powerful and more electric secondary pitches as well as a fastball.

"The curveball is just not fair. Honestly, it’s just not a fair pitch."

Baseball is so popular in Japan there are entire museums dedicated to individual players (the Ichiro museum is so comprehensive it includes the player’s junior-high dental retainer), but Robert Whiting author of the authoritative English book on Japanese ball, "You Gotta Have Wa," worries about the effect of the migration on fans. "Since 2001, Japan has lost its best hitter, its best home run hitter, its best catcher, its two best infielders and its best pitcher," Whiting says. "And this year they lost a couple other all-stars. Three of the guys that were named to the all-time all-star team in Japan are now playing in the United States, so that’s a very big hit. If you’re a fan, it’s very depressing. You develop an attachment to a team because of its star player, and then he leaves."

"A lot of people are worried about it," Hillman adds. "They’re worried about losing their best players and continually having to follow their best players from their homeland with their players being on the other side of the world. It was said more than once to me, ‘Help us keep our players.’"

Valentine likens it to what happened to the Negro Leagues. "Jackie Robinson went and other [stars] followed and then they took the medium-level players away. What eventually happened was there was no Negro League. A league that had full stadiums, a league that had many teams in different cities, that league, in fact, collapsed. I don’t know that the same thing will happen here, but there’s definitely the same possibility.

Link: Dice-K 2.0

The Indians Cabrera turns an unassisted Triple Play

A high fastball triggers some reaction from Richie Sexson

Julio Lugo, who has already committed 10 errors this season, got a little shirty:

“I don’t care, but sometimes it would be nice to say something positive,” he said. “But all the time it’s negative things, you know? Sometimes, you know, people should say something that’s positive. But every time it’s something negative . . . bring it up, bring it up, bring it up. Why?

“I understand you (the media) are going to write whatever you want . . . but I come here every day and bust my ass . . . if things don’t work out sometimes, that’s the way it’s going to be. You understand? But sometimes you bring up the same things . . . You get tired of that.”

There are a lot of ways to go with this one. The easy way, the time-honored way, is simply to remind Lugo that it was his decision to sign a four-year, $36 million contract to play for the Red Sox. It’s like that line from the film “Airplane!” in which a Jack Kirkpatrick-like character says, “They bought their tickets. They knew what they were getting into. I say, let ’em crash!”

On the one hand, I agree that a multimillionaire should be able to handle a critical journalist or two, on the other hand, I hate it to be critized by others when I’m already hard on myself, so I feel some sympathy for Julio Lugo. And seriously, what do the journalists expect him to say, really? Aren’t they asking their stupid questions just in order to have someone loose his self-control? Because Lugo’s outburst is certainly a better story than his errors, right?

Link: Julio Lugo lets it go

Jonathan Mayo makes a case for a minor league hall of fame:

Sure, players — especially in today’s game — don’t want to be known as career Minor Leaguers. But I think if you ask those who have experienced that fate, they look back at their careers with joy and pride. I would think that most of them, particularly the old-timers, would be thrilled to be enshrined in a Minor League Baseball Hall of Fame.

There are certainly plenty of variables to consider. Who gets in? What are the criteria for entrance? Do players with Major League experience qualify? What about those enshrined in Cooperstown who did something noteworthy while in the Minors?

All of those things can be ironed out if this conversation were to continue. For now, though, I think I’ll stick to guys who spent all or most of their careers in the Minors and can be found on the leaderboards. I’ll include some executives and make one large exception to the "Major League" rule I just set. After discussing it with my MiLB.com colleagues (a special shout out goes to Jason Ratliff and our resident historian Kevin Czerwinski. If you haven’t been reading his Cracked Bats series, you’re missing out), here’s a worthy inaugural class for the Minor League Baseball Hall of Fame:

[…]

Jigger Statz: Playing his entire career for the Los Angeles Angels, one of the best Minor League teams of all-time, Statz holds Pacific Coast League records for games (2,790), hits (3,356), doubles (595), triples (137) and runs (1996). He finished his career with a .315 batting average over 18 seasons and won league MVP honors in 1932. The 1934 Angels were voted the best Minor League squad of all time, with Statz as their center fielder.

Personally, I really like the idea. Maybe change the name from hall of fame to something a little different to get all the traditionalists of your back, but in itself, remembering those who played (mostly) for the love of the game instead of the big bucks has a nice touch to it.

Link: Perspectives: A Minors Hall of Fame?

Carlos Gomez hit for the cycle against the White Sox

There are only two teams in Major League Baseball with 10,000 wins: the San Francisco Giants and Chicago Cubs. That is an incredible mark for any professional sport team. No other team has reached that figure. Of course, the reason for that is that MLB teams play more games.

The importance of 10,000 wins may go relatively unnoticed and brushed off. However, just take a look at how many teams have been around just as long as these two franchises and see how far away they are from the 10K win mark.

The Phillies are the exact opposite of the Cubs. They have reached the 10K loss mark and are counting. The Cubs may be the definition of hapless, but the Phillies have them beat in terms of franchises Ls.

The San Francisco Giants have the most wins in MLB history, but only a .538 winning percentage. The Yankees have the highest winning percentage at .557, but are still 605 victories from the 10K mark. Surprisingly, the Pirates, Reds, Dodgers, Cardinals, and Braves are closer to that figure than the Bronx Bombers and will likely reach that mark first.

Teams should be promoting this mark more as teams get closer. History is very important, and fans should realize just how far the history of their favorite team extends. Players may not take too much stock in the record, but for fans, this could be exciting. After all, the Pirates can’t really beat the Yankees at anything right now, so they might as well reach the 10K mark first.

I love it when what appears to be "common knowledge" gets challenged. Steve Caimano does that with the "closers don’t have the same intensity in non-save situations" claim:

Nationally televised game against the Yankees. The Mets led 4-0 going into the ninth and Willie Randolph decided to make sure nothing strange was going to happen, so he brought in his newly acquired toy, Billy Wagner. The next fifteen minutes or so must have played out in front of Willie like a car accident. The squeal of the tires (Giambi, single), the crunch of metal (ARod, walk), the shattering of glass (Cano, RBI single), a moment of eerie silence (Cairo, fly out) and then the repeated blaring of the oncoming sirens (Cabrera, walk – Stinnett, walk and run – Williams, HBP and run). He pulled Wagner from the game, but that didn’t stop the ensuing groundout from scoring the tying run in a game the Mets would go on to lose 5-4. Wagner’s line? 1/3 IP, 2 H, 3 BB, HBP, 4 ER.

Anybody who watched that game would undoubtedly agree with Rob that closers just don’t pitch with the same intensity when they enter in non-save situations, and as a result they don’t pitch as well. The problem is that one well chronicled national television meltdown does not a point prove. In fact, it’s exactly the kind of anecdotal evidence that allows the observer to assume that a piece of “conventional wisdom” must be true without bothering to actually check the facts. Fortunately, I’m just the kind of guy who likes to test the “conventional wisdom”.

Here is Billy Wagner’s career pitching statistics broken down into save and non-save situations:

	Innings	ERA	K/9	WHIP
Save	438.2	2.36	11.97	1.00
Non-Save	344.1	2.38	11.59	1.01

Well would you look at that? It turns out that over his career Billy Wagner is EXACTLY the same pitcher regardless of what the game situation is when he enters. […] Maybe the reason Billy Wagner is a great closer is simply that he’s very good at hurling a baseball at frightening speeds toward home plate

You have to love this stuff. Caimano goes on and presents the numbers of some other big name closers, too, so check out the whole article.

Link: Is There Really A “Closer’s Mentality”?

An argument between Red Sox and Yankee fans led to tragedy.

Bartender Tanya Moran said the argument spilled outside, and at least one person in a group that included Beaudoin began chanting "Yankees suck!" when they saw a Yankees sticker on Hernandez’s car.

Hernandez, 43, allegedly gunned her car and struck Beaudoin and his friend Maria Hughes, 21. Hughes had only minor injuries, which Beaudoin’s sister Faith said was because her brother shielded his friend.

Hernandez, of Nashua, was arrested at the scene. She acknowledged she had been drinking and refused to take a breath-alcohol test, said Morrell, a senior assistant attorney general. Hernandez said she had been in an argument with the group.

"She indicated to police that she wanted to scare this group of people. She thought they would get out of the way," Morrell said.

Dan Lamothe of the Red Sox Monster blog petitions the Red Sox to conmemorate the late fan.

Given Beaudoin’s rooting for the Boston Red Sox and his apparent heroic actions before death, we ask that the Red Sox consider honoring Beaudoin’s memory with — at the very least — a day in his honor. It seems like a fitting, honorable tribute, and one that would give Beoudoin’s fellow Red Sox fans and baseball fans in general a chance to mourn one of their own.

Links: Yankees fan accused of running down and killing Red Sox heckler, A move to honor the life of Matthew Beaudoin, late Red Sox fan, Sign the petition