This Day In Baseball: 23 August 2005

Tuesday, August 23 2005 @ 12:05 PM EDT

Contributed by: Magpie

Unicorns and cannonballs, palaces and piers,
trumpets, towers and tenements
wide oceans full of tears
flags, rags, ferryboats, scimitars and scarves
every precious dream and vision underneath the stars

People lead the leagues in all kinds of things, and some of them they'd rather you didn't know about. Some of them you just don't care about, but let's look anyway:


Hit By Pitch
AL
Hillenbrand, Tor     20
Giambi, NYY          16
Kendall, Oak         14
Ford, Min            14

NL
Jenkins, Mil         16
Delgado, Fla         15
Biggio, Hou          14
Guillen, Was         14

Grounded Into Double Play
AL
Tejada, Bal          21
Cantu, TB            19
Hillenbrand, Tor     18
Hatteburg, Oak       18

NL
Casey, Cin           24
Bell, Phi            20
Feliz, SF            17

Sacrifice Flies
AL
Monroe, Det          12
Uribe, CWS           10
Everett, CWS          9

NL
Green, Ari            8
Griffey, Cin          7
Guillen, Was          7
LoDuca, Fla           7
Lowell, Fla           7

Sacrifice Hits
AL
Logan, Det           12
Castro, Min           8
Berroa, KC            8
Iguchi, CWS           8

NL
Castillo, Fla        16
Vizquel, SF          12
Pettite, Hou         12

Caught Stealing
AL
Podsednik, Chi       18
Figgins, LAA         12
Reed, Sea            10

NL
Pierre, Fla          14
Clark, Mil           11
Reyes, NYM           11
Taveras, Hou         11
OK, here's an Intelligence Test. Ready? Let's suppose you had a ball player on your team who had been hitting like this for the last three months:

SPLIT 	AB  R  H 2B 3B HR RBI BB HBP SO SB CS  AVG  OBP  SLG  OPS
June 	86  5  9  1  0  0   0  4   1 11  1  0 .105 .154 .116 .270
July 	69  6 17  3  0  1   7  2   0  6  2  1 .246 .264 .333 .597
August 	67  4 12  3  0  0   4  4   1 10  1  1 .179 .236 .224 .460

What would you do with him? Besides seeing if you've got a pitcher sitting around that you could send up to hit for this stiff.

Well, if you were Jim Tracy of the Los Angeles Dodgers, you'd keep that man right at the top of your batting order, hitting leadoff every day. Cesar Izturis has 444 at bats this season, and 398 of them came hitting first in the order.

Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain.

This is just another reason the Dodgers have no chance whatsoever of catching the Padres,. If you're going to hit Cesar Izturis leadoff, you simply don't have a clue. You are not even qualified to manage a major league team.

The games:

AL
Los Angeles (Washburn 6-7, 3.38) at Baltimore (DuBose 1-0, 5.19)
Oakland (Haren 10-9, 4.00) at Detroit (Robertson 5-10, 4.00)
Toronto (Towers 10-9, 4.12) at New York (Leiter 6-10, 6.09)
Cleveland (Westbrook 11-13, 4.75) at Tampa Bay (Hendrickson 7-7, 6.75)
Seattle (Moyer 10-4, 4.20) at Texas (Young 10-7, 4.62)
Boston (Wells 9-6, 4.70) at Kansas City (Greinke 3-14, 6.02)
Chicago (Garcia 11-5, 3.65) at Minnesota (Santana 12-6, 3.37)

NL
Cincinnati (Hudson 4-6, 7.35) at Washington (Armas 7-6, 4.29)
St.Louis (Marquis 9-12, 4.36) at Pittsburgh (Duke 6-0, 1.87)
Florida (Beckett 12-6, 3.15) at Milwaukee (Capuano 13-8, 3.61)
Atlanta (Thomson 3-3, 4.53)at Chicago (Williams 3-6, 5.13)
New York (Zambrano 6-10, 4.24) at Arizona (Vargas 7-6, 4.47)
Houston (Clemens 11-5, 1.53) at San Diego (Peavy 10-6, 3.14)
Colorado (Wright 6-14, 5.69) at Los Angeles (Weaver 11-8, 4.52)
Philadelphia (Padilla 6-11, 4.47) at San Francisco (Tomko 7-13, 4.72)

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