Tim Wakefield Records 2,000th Red Sox Strikeout

To show that I'm not completely insensitive to round numbers, I will now attempt to write more words about Tim Wakefield striking out 2,000 hitters as a Red Sock than I wrote about Derek Jeter's 3,000th hit. And that should do it. See, my 40-ish word summation of Jeter's accomplishment was less about hating on him or the Yankees and more about our weird pedestaling of round numbers.

Well, obviously, 3,000 hits is more significant than 2,000 strikeouts with one team but the fans of round numbers were on their feet and clapping like circus seals Sunday night after Wakefield struck out Matt Carp (Adam Dunn struck out watching the highlight). Wake joins Roger Clemens as the only two pitchers to record 2,000 strikeouts as Red Sox. It only took the knuckelballer four more seasons (17-13) in Beantown to get to that meaningless number.

Much like Clemens, Wakefield also racked up some K numbers outside of Boston. He recorded 210 in Pittsburgh for 2,210 so far in his career. Clemens dabbled in a few more cities and finished with 4,672 strikeouts so you can see the similarities between the two.

Boston manager Terry Francona wasn't even sure how to handle such a monumental milestone...

“So not quite sure how to react to that,’’ Francona said. “I was thrilled people were showing their appreciation. I just kind of sit there and say, ‘I’ll shake his hand when he comes out.’ ’’

That happened in the seventh, when Wakefield gave up four consecutive hits, capped by Ryan’s second career slam. Still, it didn’t stop the crowd from treating Wakefield to another standing ovation.

“I’d like to have that seventh inning back,’’ said Wakefield, who acknowledged it was difficult to collect himself after all the adulation over the 2,000th strikeout. “I was very fortunate that we were able to score 12 runs today, which made it a lot easier."

Not exactly the dominant performance you'd expect from such a highly skilled strikeout artist. Oh well. Wakefield will have a chance for another standing ovation soon as he's sitting at 199 career wins. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to attempt my 200th nap of the season, joining other legends Connie Mack, Garfield and Andy Capp.

Ozzie Guillen Won't Protect Adam Dunn

White Sox manager/crazy person Ozzie Guillen doesn't need or use stats to fill out a lineup card and, for that, Juan Pierre thanks him. Guillen also doesn't care if a player might break the single season strikeout mark as long as that player isn't hurting the team. So Guillen won't sit Adam Dunn and his .160/.290/.302 line. Wait, what?

"I will sit him down if he's not helping the ballclub, but not because of a mark," Guillen said Sunday. "Not at all, no. (If) we need him to take a break and give somebody a chance, I will do it.

snip

"(But) I just worry about putting the best guys out there every time," Guillen said.

"Every time Dunn or (Alex) Rios is there, I feel like they have a chance. But it's not what I feel. It's how they feel."

Dunn has crossed the Godfather III threshold into the "made a donation in your name present" territory on the chart of disappointment this season. Dunn is having the worst year of his career and it's not even close. His strikeout rate is the highest of his career at 36.4% and his .274 wOBA is 79 points worse than his previous low. Even removing most of his atrocious defense by DHing and playing a little fist base, Dunn is still putting up a -1.6 WAR which, by definition, means he's worse than a replacement level player.

But, Ozzie keeps running him out there and hoping for the best. So far this season, the "best" is 1-4 with three strikeouts. The strikeouts are piling up (122 in 335 plate appearances) but he is still a long way from Mark Reynolds magical 223 strikeout record season of 2009. Fangraphs ZiPS is projecting 81 strikeouts for the rest of the season leaving Dunn with a mere 203. Of course, those projections don't have Dunn accumulating over 600 plate appearances so maybe they were nervous about Guillen pulling the plug on Dunn's terribleness. Silly projections.

Off Base NL West Preview

Offbase editors Derwood Morris and MTD haven't had much luck previewing things lately-MTD incorrectly predicted Gary Discarcina would come out of retirement to help the Angels win the 2009 World Series and Derwood thought Teen Wolf 3 would be the 2010 summer blockbuster. But here are division previews anyway.

In this post, I look at the NL West. The West is of course home to the defending strikeout kings of baseball, the Arizona Diamondbacks. And some team that won some series.

San Fransisco (2010: 92-70)
The Giants just barely got past the Padres to make the playoffs. Once they got into the postseason, Cody Ross homered them to the World Series Championship. Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain and Brian Wilson also contributed. The Giants return just about everybody except they swapped out a couple of old short stops. They'll get a full season from blog favorite and 2010 NL ROY Buster Posey. Perhaps the Giants learned their lesson by almost missing the playoffs and won't mess around this season with top prospect Brandon Belt's service time. Pablo Sandoval reportedly lost 300 pounds after cutting entire deep fried pigs out of his diet and looks to rebound from a poor 2010 season. And hopefully, we'll get more of this...



Obviously, I mean Brian Wilson and not George Lopez who I'm trying to get deported for crimes against comedy.

Colorado (83-79)
The Rox rewarded their young stars by locking up Troy Tulowitzki and Carlos Gonzalez to monster contracts. CarGo displayed some uncanny home/road splits in 2010 to the tune of .380/.425/.737 and .289/.322/.453 but those home stats still count. Tulo is a fantastic player by all accounts but hasn't displayed a knack for staying healthy. But I'm not on the hook for any of that cash so the next few years look like pretty good deals. PECOTA thinks Ubaldo Jiminez comes back down to his 2009 stats but a tad worse and I'm inclined to believe that based on my scientific whimsy.

Los Angeles (80-82)
I think the Dodgers have a better rotation than the Rockies but they did let Russell Martin walk just when it looked like he was poised to give Jeff Mathis some competition for most incompetent LA catcher at the plate. So Mathis can go ahead and get that 2011 acceptance speech ready. Matt Kemp should have a better season unless having dated Rihanna turns out to be some kind of career killer. Which is why I have rejected her many advances. You know, for the sake of the blog.

San Diego (90-72)
I hear the weather is nice. And a zoo, right? So, that's cool.

Arizona (65-97)
The Diamondbacks struck out an impressive 1,529 times last year. The Marlins were the next closest with 1,375. The D-Backs shipped off Mark Reynolds who struck out over 200 times for the past three season in an effort to make me stop watching them altogether. Good job, Arizona. You just became less interesting.

Brady Anderson Teaching Mark Reynolds To Not Strikeout

Well, well. It looks like former Orioles star outfielder Brady Anderson has found a nice secondary career as a trainer/hitting instructor in Southern California. Working out in the sun all day sounds like a nightmare to me but I'm Irish and the most extensive lifting I do is moving a laptop around. I do some solid reps with six ounce adult beverages but that's just for tone not bulk.

Anyway, Anderson recently had a little Q&A with The Arizona Republic's Nick Piecoro and he spoke specifically about one of my favorite players...

Q: What have you been working on with Reynolds?

A: He gets himself in a situation where he's late, he waits until the last second and swings as hard as he can. That's a mechanical flaw - not him being stubborn. When you're late and you don't have proper rhythm and timing, you chase high fastballs with two strikes, you check swing and strike out on sliders in the dirt. ... It doesn't really matter that he strikes out. Sure, you'd like to eliminate them. You don't have to take them from 200 down to 100. Ideally with him, the difference in a tiny little incremental improvement, if he went from 215 (strikeouts) to 185 ... then the whole season changes.

I love Mark Reynolds but this is scary news for me. I spend way too much time during the season watching Reynolds' box scores awaiting just one more strikeout to crown him with another Golden Sombrero. He even won our first annual Golden Sombrero of the Year Award but, for some reason, still has not contacted me for his Off Base t-shirt prize.

Now, Reynolds is taking his Ks to Baltimore and has turned to Anderson for help. This is very disconcerting for me as I was fully expecting a 437 strikeout season against the power arms in the AL East. I'm no scout but in the 30 seconds that I took to skim this interview, it sounds like Anderson knows what he's talking about. Rhythm, timing and not striking out all sound like keys to not striking out.

I'm sure I've thrown around some perfectly unfounded opinions on Anderson's silly (steroidy?) 50 home run season but he only struck out over 100 times in just five seasons and his watermark was 111. Anderson was a 18.3% strikeout rate guy compared to Reynolds' fantastic (for me) 38.7% rate.

I'm not happy about this and will be monitoring the situation closely.

Andre Ethier's Golden Sombrero

A golden sombrero is awarded to a player who manages to strike out four times in a single game (real golden sombrero not included). It's quite the feat unless you're Ryan Howard or Mark Reynolds. Unfortunately, cycles and no-hitters are all the rage nowadays. Not for me, though. I will pour over the box scores to bring you the finest at swinging and missing.

Baseball gave me a quick day off between Golden Sombreros to focus on my fantasy football draft. I think it went pretty good. I have Mike Vick, Rae Carruth and OJ Simpson. We have a very unique scoring system. Andre Ethier put up a criminal performance at the dish today (best segue I ever wrote) going 0-5 with 4 strikeouts. Ethier is having a good offensive season with his .298/.362/.513 line while his defense continues to get worse in the outfield over the past 3 years according to UZR (-15.1 currently). I'm not sure what to make of Ethier because I've never owned him in a fantasy league and I pretend there's only one team in Los Angeles (even though it's in Anaheim).

Let's take a look at Andre's strikeouts while I petition for an In 'N Out Burger in New Orleans...

Top 1st: Ethier struck out swinging against Jason Hammel. What's up Jason Hammel, did you get my email?

Top 5th: Ethier struck out swinging against Jason Hammel. Turns out I had the wrong Jason Hammel.

Top 7th: Ethier struck out looking against Matt Reynolds. First glance, I thought it was Mark Reynold and was going to take this post in a different direction. Hilarity did not ensue.

Top 8th: Ethier struck out swinging against Matt Belisle, I think.

Shot Of The Night

Shot Of The Night is Off Base Percentage's toast to a player who had an exceptionally good or bad night. There's always a reason to drink.

I apologize for getting the shot of the night up so late. But I did make it in time for happy hour so last night's shot of the night will just kick start tonight's drinking. Last night's shot of the night is a San Diego: 1.5 oz light rum, 1.5 oz orange juice, 1.5 oz cranberry juice. That actually sounds quite refreshing, just like San Diego's weather. It's 209 degrees in Louisiana today. Anyway, the shot of the night is in honor of the Padres but specifically Chris Denorfia.

Yeah, I had to look up Denorfia's position. For some reason, I don't pay much attention to the Padres. The Padres are now 54-37 and 4 games up in the NL West. Bud Black comes from the Mike Scioscia managing tree and just inked an extension with The Fathers. They produce relief pitchers like they have a factory built under Petco. I should pay more attention. But I digress. Chris Denorfia went 4-4 with 2 home runs. The 2 homers doubled his season total which earned him his first and probably last shot of the night.

Honorable Mention: Rickie Weeks
I have a soft spot for Rickie Weeks. Last year, he started to put it all together before getting hurt and missing the rest of the season. Weeks is off to another pretty nice start this year and went 3-4 with 2 home runs last night. The Brew Crew still got manhandled by the Braves 11-6 thanks to All Star extraordinaire Omar Infante's 4-5 night.

Honorable Mention Part Dos: Paul Maholm
A little bonus action. You should know by now that I love strikeouts. I can't explain it but a Golden Sombrero beats a cycle for me every time. That's what makes Maholm's 3-hit shutout so improbable. He only struck out 1 batter. A 3-hit, complete game shut out and he only struck out 1 batter. Weird.