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THT Daily: Thank Goodness That’s Over

by Matthew Carruth
June 25, 2007

Major League News for June 25
Today’s Links
Player News
Yesterday’s Results
Today’s Games
Standings
Top Minor League Performances

You can always find the most recent THT Daily at http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/content/thtdaily/

THT Links

Rebuilding - Ian Kinsler's scorching hot start and subsequent fall back to Earth has left many people calling him out as part of the Rangers problems. He was ridiculously overrated during April, but Kinsler is nowhere near a problem for the Rangers.

More Buehrle - A closer examination of the varying teams expressing interest in Mark Buehrle.

Done - Meanwhile on the south side, as the calender marches towards July, some fans come to grips with the reality of the season.

On the Other Side - No, not the north side, but the successful side, Jeff Sackmann looks at what the Brewers could do at the deadline to improve the team.

The Office -Jonesing for the next new episodes of The Office? Well, never fear, apparently, they took in a baseball game recently, in Minnesota for some reason.

THT Links represents the best efforts of our editors in scouring the various tubes of the interweb for both relevant and irrelevant news items. If you have happened upon a story that we have overlooked or wish to give feedback of any sort, please notify us at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Player News
Player Headlines are courtesy of Rotoworld

Rod Beck passed away Saturday in Phoenix at age 38. Beck saved 286 games over 13 big-league seasons before his career ended when the Padres released him in 2004. He had 51 saves for the Cubs in 1998, but his best season came in 1992, when he had a 1.76 ERA and 17 saves in 92 innings for the Giants.

Ken Griffey Jr. tied and then passed Mark McGwire for seventh place on the career list with two homers Sunday against the Mariners. Griffey was pressing a bit recently, striking out seven times in his last three games, before coming up big Sunday in the final game of his return to Seattle. He has 584 career homers, including 21 this year. Griffey also singled in the contest, giving him half of the Reds' six hits in the 3-2 loss.

Dustin McGowan had his no-hitter broken up in the ninth, but he still managed a complete-game shutout Sunday against the Rockies. Jeff Baker singled to lead off the top of the ninth, giving the Rockies their only hit in a 5-0 loss. McGowan, coming off an outing in which he gave up six runs in 1 2/3 innings, struck out seven, walked one and threw 109 pitches in his first career complete game. He remains a risky play in AL-only leagues, but he has to be active until he turns in a couple of bad outings in a row.

In his second ever regular-season relief appearance, Roger Clemens allowed a run in an inning Sunday in the loss to the Giants. The other relief appearance came as a rookie in 1984. Clemens also warmed up in Saturday's 13-inning game. It's amazing that the Yankees are taking such a chance with him, even if he's perfectly willing to go along with the idea. Sure, they were short of relief help today, but they weren't desperate. Mariano Rivera didn't pitch Saturday and Ron Villone has barely seen any action at all.

Josh Beckett became the league's first 11-game winner by prevailing in a rare matchup of pitchers with .900 winning percentages Sunday against the Padres. Beckett allowed two runs in eight innings to outduel Jake Peavy, who was removed after surrendering three runs in five innings and fell to 9-2. Both pitchers dealt well with a very small strike zone from Dana Demuth, but the Red Sox were able to string together some singles and the Padres just couldn't. Beckett has given up one run in 14 innings since taking his only loss of the season on June 14.

Joe Mauer hit his second and third homers of the year off Byung-Hyun Kim to help the Twins beat the Marlins 7-4 on Sunday. He shouldn't have gotten a chance to hit the second one. With Michael Cuddyer getting tossed in the fourth and Lew Ford going into the lineup as the cleanup hitter, Mauer never should have been thrown a fastball down the middle with a man on third in the sixth inning. It was Mauer's second straight three-RBI game. He has six extra-base hits and nine RBI in his last five games.

A second chest X-ray taken Sunday showed no broken bones in Justin Morneau's chest. The Twins hope he'll be able to fly back to Minnesota on Monday. Morneau is scheduled to spend a third night in the hospital first. "They don’t want to have any complications when he gets on an airplane," GM Terry Ryan said. "They’re thinking probably tomorrow. They didn’t want him to go today. They wanted to make sure everything is in order so there’s no possibility of complications." The Twins still hope to have Morneau back in the lineup before the end of the week.

Yesterday’s Results
Inter-League
TB      9  LAN     4    (Recap and Boxscore)
TOR     5  COL     0    (Recap and Boxscore)
CHN     3  CHA     0    (Recap and Boxscore)
LAA     4  PIT     3    (Recap and Boxscore) 10 innings
SEA     3  CIN     2    (Recap and Boxscore)
HOU    12  TEX     9    (Recap and Boxscore) 10 innings
DET     5  ATL     0    (Recap and Boxscore)
MIN     7  FLA     4    (Recap and Boxscore)
NYN    10  OAK     2    (Recap and Boxscore)
WAS     3  CLE     1    (Recap and Boxscore)
KC      4  MIL     3    (Recap and Boxscore)
ARI     8  BAL     3    (Recap and Boxscore)
BOS     4  SD      2    (Recap and Boxscore)
SF      7  NYA     2    (Recap and Boxscore)

National League
PHI     5  STL     1    (Recap and Boxscore)
First Inning's Major and Minor League Daily Reports:

Today’s Games
 National League
 ---------------
 Washington Nationals at Atlanta Braves, 7:05 PM
  (R) Jason Bergmann (1-3) vs. (R) Tim Hudson (6-5)
 St. Louis Cardinals at New York Mets, 7:10 PM
  (L) Mike Maroth (0-0) vs. (R) Jorge Sosa (6-3)
 Colorado Rockies at Chicago Cubs, 8:05 PM
  (L) Jeff Francis (7-5) vs. (R) Jason Marquis (5-4)
 Houston Astros at Milwaukee Brewers, 8:05 PM
  (R) Jason Jennings (1-1) vs. (R) Ben Sheets (8-3)
 Los Angeles Dodgers at Arizona Diamondbacks, 9:40 PM
  (R) Brad Penny (9-1) vs. (R) Micah Owings (5-1)
 San Diego Padres at San Francisco Giants, 10:15 PM
  (R) Justin Germano (5-1) vs. (R) Tim Lincecum (2-2)
 
 American League
 ---------------
 Texas Rangers at Detroit Tigers, 7:05 PM
  (R) Kameron Loe (3-6) vs. (R) Jeremy Bonderman (8-0)
 Oakland Athletics at Cleveland Indians, 7:05 PM
  (R) Chad Gaudin (6-2) vs. (L) Cliff Lee (4-4)
 Chicago White Sox at Tampa Bay Devil Rays, 7:10 PM
  (L) John Danks (3-6) vs. (L) JP Howell (1-1)
 Toronto Blue Jays at Minnesota Twins, 8:10 PM
  (R) Roy Halladay (8-2) vs. (R) Kevin Slowey (2-0)
 Boston Red Sox at Seattle Mariners, 10:05 PM
  (R) Julian Tavarez (5-4) vs. (R) Jeff Weaver (1-6)
 Kansas City Royals at LA Angels of Anaheim, 10:05 PM
  (R) John Thomson (0-0) vs. (R) John Lackey (10-4)

Standings
The graphics next to each team are called "sparklines.” They depict each team’s performance over the last month. Each "up" bar is a victory and a "down" bar is a loss. There are horizontal lines for home games and red bars represent games decided by two runs or less. "PWins" is short for Projected Wins, based on each team’s Run Differential, and is often a better measure of a team’s true strength. Other team graphs and stats can be found on our Team Page.
American League East        Pwins  Diff
BOS     48  26 .649    0.0   46     2    sparkline graph
TOR     37  37 .500   11.0   39    -2    sparkline graph
NYA     36  37 .493   11.5   42    -6    sparkline graph
TB      33  40 .452   14.5   29     4    sparkline graph
BAL     32  43 .427   16.5   36    -4    sparkline graph
American League Central     
DET     45  29 .608    0.0   46    -1    sparkline graph
CLE     43  31 .581    2.0   42     1    sparkline graph
MIN     38  35 .521    6.5   39    -1    sparkline graph
CHA     29  42 .408   14.5   28     1    sparkline graph
KC      30  46 .395   16.0   31    -1    sparkline graph
American League West        
LAA     49  27 .645    0.0   46     3    sparkline graph
SEA     39  33 .542    8.0   36     3    sparkline graph
OAK     39  35 .527    9.0   41    -2    sparkline graph
TEX     30  45 .400   18.5   33    -3    sparkline graph


National League East        Pwins  Diff
NYN     41  32 .562    0.0   41     0    sparkline graph
PHI     39  36 .520    3.0   37     2    sparkline graph
ATL     38  38 .500    4.5   35     3    sparkline graph
FLA     36  40 .474    6.5   36     0    sparkline graph
WAS     32  43 .427   10.0   29     3    sparkline graph
National League Central     
MIL     43  32 .573    0.0   40     3    sparkline graph
CHN     35  39 .473    7.5   40    -5    sparkline graph
STL     33  39 .458    8.5   29     4    sparkline graph
HOU     32  43 .427   11.0   34    -2    sparkline graph
PIT     31  44 .413   12.0   30     1    sparkline graph
CIN     29  47 .382   14.5   34    -5    sparkline graph
National League West        
ARI     44  32 .579    0.0   39     5    sparkline graph
SD      42  32 .568    1.0   46    -4    sparkline graph
LAN     42  33 .560    1.5   40     2    sparkline graph
COL     38  37 .507    5.5   36     2    sparkline graph
SF      32  42 .432   11.0   37    -5    sparkline graph

Top Minor League Games
The following list, provided by First Inning, includes the top minor league batting (based on Runs Created) and pitching (based on Game Score) performances from yesterday, with a focus on each team’s top prospects.
ORG LVL PLAYER            AB  H 2B 3B HR BB SO  Notes
LAA AAA Brandon Wood...... 4  2  0  0  1  0  1  
ATL A+  Eric Campbell..... 5  3  0  0  2  0  0  4 RBI
OAK AAA Daric Barton...... 5  4  1  0  0  0  1  
COL AAA Joseph Koshansky.. 4  2  0  0  1  1  1  
SEA AAA Jeff Clement...... 4  3  2  0  0  1  0  
STL AA  Colby Rasmus...... 3  1  0  0  1  2  1  
CIN AA  Jay Bruce......... 3  1  0  0  0  1  1  
TB  AA  Evan Longoria..... 4  3  1  0  0  0  0  
NYY A+  Jose Tabata....... 5  3  0  0  0  1  0  
DET A   Scott Sizemore.... 3  3  2  0  0  1  0  3 LD
CHC A+  Brian Dopirak..... 5  3  1  0  1  0  1  
TEX AAA Jason Botts....... 4  2  2  0  0  0  1  

ORG LVL PLAYER            IP  H  R ER SO BB HR  Notes
BOS A-  Jose Capellan..... 5  2  0  0  9  0  0  
MIN A+  Yohan Pino........ 7  5  1  0  6  0  0  
BAL A+  Brandon Erbe...... 6  4  0  0  7  3  0  
OAK A   Trevor Cahill..... 6  7  3  3  5  2  0  12 GB
TB  AAA Jeff Niemann...... 6  6  1  1  3  1  0  11 GB
CHC AAA Sean Gallagher.... 5  1  0  0  4  2  0  
KC  AA  Jarod Plummer..... 4  1  0  0  5  1  0  
BOS A+  Justin Masterson.. 7  3  2  2  4  0  1  
SF  A+  Darren Sack....... 5  4  0  0  4  0  0  10 GB
ATL AA  Matt Harrison..... 7  7  3  3  2  0  0  14 GB
MIN AAA Jason Miller...... 5  5  3  3  5  1  0  
LAA A+  Stephen Marek..... 6  3  2  2  8  4  1  

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Matthew Carruth is an editor for The Hardball Times. He welcomes any and all sorts of communication at his email.


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