SportTicker: Keppinger suffers fractured patella

Cincinnati Reds shortstop Jeff Keppinger suffered a fractured patella in his right knee on a foul ball in the second inning in Tuesday night’s game against the Florida Marlins.

Keppinger underwent an X-ray which revealed the fracture. He will undergo more extensive MRI tests on Wednesday.

The 28-year-old Keppinger - who was leading the Reds in hits, batting average and RBI - was in the midst of a breakout season, was hitting .324 with three homers and 21 RBI.

ESPN: Superseding indictment adds perjury counts to Bonds

The U.S. attorney’s office filed 14 counts of perjury and one count of obstruction against Barry Bonds on Tuesday, sources told ESPN’s T.J. Quinn. The counts were filed in what’s known as a superseding indictment that added 10 more counts to the four baseball’s all-time home run king was charged with in November.

In March, the perjury case against Bonds was put on hold for three months, with prosecutors telling a federal judge they plan to obtain a new indictment against him.

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston had told prosecutors on Feb. 29 to fix their original indictment because it lumped multiple allegations into too few counts. Illston said that prosecutors needed to drop some of the allegations from the indictment or add more charges.

Milwaukee J-S blog: Capuano headed for another Tommy John

It appears Brewers left-hander Chris Capuano is headed for the second “Tommy John” reconstructive elbow surgery of his career.

Assistant general manager Gord Ash told me that Capuano began experiencing discomfort in his elbow during throwing drills Monday in Phoenix. He will visit orthopedic surgeon James Andrews tomorrow and could have the surgery as soon as Thursday, which would knock him out of surgery for approximately a year.

Capuano began experiencing discomfort in the elbow in spring training and an MRI revealed at least a partial tear of the ligament.

Newsday blog: Nelson Figueroa designated for assignment

And Fernando Tatis is back in the majors!

Nelson Figueroa won’t have to worry about the “softball girl” antics of the Nationals anymore. Figueroa was designated for assignment by the Mets on Tuesday as part of a flurry of moves.
...
In other moves, Jorge Sosa was also designated for assignment, and Angel Pagan was placed on the disabled list. Claudio Vargas and Fernando Tatis were called up, and Matt Wise was activated from the disabled list.

Vargas will start Wednesday against the Nationals.

Rosenthal: Win-now focus in Cincy could mean heavy action

And other superdroid Robothalicks…

--Derek Jeter, who missed five games with a strained left quadriceps in early April, again ranks near the bottom of AL shortstops in range factor and zone rating. Jeter, however, says that he improved his explosiveness and first-step quickness by altering his offseason training regimen, and bench coach Rob Thomson says he notices a difference. “I say to (third base coach) Bobby Meacham every day, it’s unbelievable how much better he’s moving than last year,” Thomson says. ...

--Twins catcher Joe Mauer has no home runs in 119 at-bats. “He’s playing like Wade Boggs, he’s that style hitter,” one scout says. “I don’t think Gardy (Ron Gardenhire) will say something. But privately, I think he wants him to start hitting the ball out of the park.” Of course, Gardenhire can’t complain too much—Mauer has nine doubles, one triple and a .419 OBP. Left fielder Delmon Young: 140 at-bats, zero homers, three doubles, one triple, a .315 OBP.

--The Red Sox appear stuck with shortstop Julio Lugo, who is earning $9 million per season through 2010, but they inquired about the Astros’ Mark Loretta in spring training, evidently viewing him as possible infield insurance. A trade for the Giants’ Omar Vizquel might be something for the Sox to consider: Vizquel would offer steady and at times spectacular defense, and offense that would be no worse than Lugo’s ...

Ike’s Baseball Blog: PITCHf/x summit

Out-geeking all other Saber-geeks!...A look inside the 1st Annual PITCHf/x Summit.

The purpose of my visit was to attend the 1st Annual PITCHf/x Summit, an event where sabermetricians, Sportvision, MLBAM, and team reps gathered to discuss the uses of this great new data set, and potential future data sets. I gave a talk largely centered around my previous post on corrections, and how measurements of C_d can be an indicator of data quality and a quantity from which we might be able to derive corrections, perhaps even on a game-to-game basis. I was really impressed with the willingness of Sportvision to discuss every aspect and gave us the chance to see it in action, which was really key for me in understanding how things work.

...HITf/x, a potential new system to track batted ball trajectories was also discussed, at great length. This would be another giant leap forward in available quantitative baseball data. Being a former pitcher, I’m philosophically less interested in such a system as I am in pitched ball trajectories, but as a physicist, it is highly intriguing. Having such a system as a compliment to PITCHf/x would be an enormous boon to the field of Sabermetrics.

Thanks to Rob Neyer

Morning Call: Schuler: Swindle using all the angles to swipe spot on major-league roster

So far in his career it seems the better R.J. Swindle does, the worse his chance of keeping his job.

Swindle was 5-1 with a 1.94 ERA in his first pro season after Boston took him in the 14th round of the 2004 draft. The following spring the Red Sox let Swindle go, unwilling to deal with a back injury he developed late in the season.

Two years later, after surgery repaired his herniated disc and the Yankees signed him out of the independent Northern League, the left hander was 4-2 with an 0.61 ERA in 21 appearances at Class A Charleston, then earned a save for Triple-A Columbus with two scoreless innings on the last day of the season at Toledo.

Swindle’s ERAs have been consistently impressive in the minors, and his K/BB ratios have been off the charts.

So far he has 309 K’s and 56 walks in five professional seasons.  If you count just the affiliated minors, it’s 186 K’s and 18 walks.

In two years with the Phillies, Swindle, who comes at you anywhere from sidearm to straight over the top, has risen up four levels, from low-A Lakewood to Lehigh Valley. And despite his less than overpowering stuff, all he’s done is get people out—he has a 1.72 ERA in 621/3 innings, allowing only 41 hits in his two seasons in the Phillies system.

...

Swindle’s secret, besides his unorthodox pitching style, is control. He’s walked one—intentionally—all year, eight in 44 innings last year, and only 18 in 1592/3 innings in affiliated ball. But despite his success so far, Swindle realizes he has little margin of error.

‘’I know if I didn’t get people out I’d be released pretty quick, so I know I’ve got to keep changing speeds and hitting corners because I know if I don’t perform, throwing like I do, I wouldn’t last very long,’’ Swindle said. ‘’But I’ve done that every step of the way, from high school to college to here.’’

Seeking another lefty in their bullpen, the Phillies recently shifted Double-A starters Fabio Castro and Josh Outman to the Reading bullpen, a move Swindle could have interpreted as another lack of confidence in his abilities.

His ability to befuddle minor leaguers without throwing above the low 80s may not translate to the NL, but I’d like to see a Bastardo-Swindle bullpen in Philadelphia one of these days.

He would be the first player from Charleston Southern University to make it to the major leagues.

Crosscut: Comcast’s high-definition baseball asterisk

Great Truby’s Ghost! Are these Hi-D moments happening elsewhere?

Those Comcast high-def customers who flipped to Mojo (Channel 664) Monday night, May 12, after Kenji Johjima smacked a game-tying, three-run homer in the ninth instead saw George C. Scott starring in The Exorcist III.

While it could be true that only an exorcism will save the M’s season, it was frustrating to discover that Mojo had shut down its super-clear broadcast of last night’s slugfest against the Rangers. The extra-frame affair was still available on normal cable, but only via FSN Channel 30, a big letdown for high-deinition baseball addicts. [....]

An amiable rep explained the facts of life: Comcast leases a four-hour window from Mojo to air each M’s game. Usually that’s sufficient. But last night, for the second time this season, it wasn’t.

MLB: Reds’ Draft plans unchanged

Uhh...draft players and then bury them sorta like a Jay Bruce LaBruce undieground film?

Upheaval in the general manager’s office isn’t expected to shake up how the Reds approach their Draft selection decisions.

Shortly after Wayne Krivsky was let go as GM on April 23, new GM and president of baseball operations Walt Jocketty held several days of meetings with the baseball department. That included senior director of scouting Chris Buckley, who was one of Krivsky’s first hires in February 2006.

The overall Draft mantra: talent rules. The Reds have the seventh overall selection in the 2008 First-Year Player Draft.

“Walt’s philosophy is pretty similar to Wayne’s,” Buckley said. “They’re both baseball guys that want us to get the best talent out there. I have not been told to select anybody or stay away from a certain guy. Everybody is in play. We’ll go get the best people we can.”

BPro: Burke and Sheehan: Chillin’ in the American League

A look at why the NL is outscoring the AL and even more chasmous...the massivo disparity between truth and Buster Olney!

Speculation inside the game, as Buster Olney referenced in his blog Saturday, centers on the theoretical eradication of performance-enhancing drugs from the game in the wake of the Mitchell Report. Personally, I dismiss this out of hand. Since 2003, when survey testing kicked off a series of regimes and punishment mechanisms, offensive levels, and specifically power, have jumped around from year to year independent of what rules were in place. There has been no correlation between increated testing and greater penalties, and offensive levels and power, over the five-year period.

This makes sense when you think about it. Both from the players who have been suspended for failing tests and the ones named in the Mitchell Report, we learned that PED use was not something confined to power hitters, nor even hitters. Even if PED use has been affected by the rules changes, there’s little reason to think that it would show itself in lowered offense.

The biggest reason to dismiss this claim, though, is the league split. Runs per game, slugging, and XBH/FB are all up in the National League, whose players are subject to the same testing program as the ones in the AL. To assert that the overall falloff is due to the Mitchell Report and the impact of PED testing is to imply that all the juicers were American League hitters. That doesn’t strain credulity; it causes credulity to laugh at you, smack you upside the head, and go find your best friend to smack him, too. The one explanation that I can safely rule out is some kind of Mitchell Report/testing effect.

BPro: Seidman: Furcal En Fuego

Or Furcaliente…

Furcalysis

Furcal has missed the last several games with back spasms, and it comes as no surprise that the Dodgers have gone 1-4 in that span. Though Furcal’s absence cannot be directly linked to the team’s recent struggles, he has been one of the top offensive players in the league, let alone his own team. He should be back in the lineup soon, and it will be very interesting to see if his injury lingers throughout the season or has any sort of effect on his production. His offensive output may suffer from the time off as well, as a hot streak likely to regress as the season goes on may do so more quickly when it’s being resumed by a player iced by injury and/or inactivity.

Though everything still suffers from small sample size syndrome, it is definitely clear Furcal has been able to hit pitchers of all qualities and all handedness; he has also been able to produce whether ahead or behind in the count, and against any type of pitch. This may not last all year, but Furcal is currently in the midst of arguably the best stretch of his career. If the Dodgers want to be serious about contending this year, Raffy will need to be back on the field and continue to produce at an All-Star level, even if that level is slightly worse than the torrid MVP-worthy level he’s produced in the early going.

Tigers’ Jacque Jones would like to head south

...much like his game.

Given the opportunity to decide, outfielder Jacque Jones’ first choice might be to join the Marlins. That’s what Jones, who the Tigers designated for assignment last week, told an associate.

For now, Jones has no control over his next destination. The Tigers have until Friday to trade or release him. Either way, they are on the hook for what’s left of his $5.5 million salary (about $4.05 million). Any team that acquires him would make the Tigers pay much of the remaining money.

Jones probably wouldn’t cost the Marlins much more than a low level minor-leaguer and/or the pro-rated major league minimum (about $290,000).

“It would probably be his top destination,” the associate said. “Last year he was really excited about the opportunity to go down there. It was something that almost came to fruition.”

ESPN: Dice K 2.0

The important questions, then, are not just whether Darvish will pitch in the majors or when he might pitch in the majors. The equally important issue is whether this wave of emigrants is good for pro baseball in Japan. The answer is complicated, though Chiba Lotte manager Bobby Valentine, as usual, has his own view.

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.”

Zell Rejects IFSA Offer. Will Sell Wrigley With Team

The plan to sell off Wrigley Field separate from the Cubs, Comcast SportsNet Chicago, and Wrigleyville Premium Tickets in no more. Zell has rejected the offer from Illinois Sports Facilities Authority, thus placing the bid for prospective owners of the Cubs will get a complete package. As reported by the Chicago Sun-Times:

[S]ources said Zell has rejected the state’s proposed terms because it relies on a novel and untested financing plan: the sale of individual seats at Wrigley as if they were condominiums. The idea is called equity seat rights and has been advanced by Chicago area business executive Lou Weisbach, who has applied for patent rights on it.

Zell, Cubs Chairman Crane Kenney and their advisers have concluded that the equity plan and its tax ramifications would violate both the Internal Revenue Service code and the rules of Major League Baseball, the sources said.

Norwell grad Jarrod Parker’s working his way up

I get up at seven, yeah
And I go to work at nine
I got no time for livin’
Yes, I’m workin all the time

Professional pitching stats: 6 starts, 3-1, 1.05 ERA, 25 2/3 IP, 22 hits, 3 ER, 4 BB, 21 K

Cubs expected to sign Edmonds

The Cubs appear poised to sign veteran center fielder Jim Edmonds soon after he clears waivers Wednesday.

That would mean a demotion to the minors for touted prospect Felix Pie, who entered Monday with a .222 average and strikeouts in one-third of his plate appearances. The lefty-hitting Edmonds and right-handed Reed Johnson would share center-field duties.

Sherwin: Ichiro, like everyone else, is fair game

You can’t have Sherwin Shares without having Sherloss Shares!

But does that excuse him from not wearing his jersey like everyone else? Did he have to sit there as if it was the last place in the world he wanted to be? Did he think the kids could not read his body language?

It all gives life to the perception that Ichiro plays and acts for himself. Is he more concerned about his stats than assimilating more into the clubhouse? He’s the last remaining member here from the record-setting 2001 team, shouldn’t be more of a forceful leader in the clubhouse? Why does he still not do English interviews?

He’s clearly comfortable in his own routine. He doesn’t like to divert from that. But with this team struggling as it has, is it too much to ask more from him? It’s not all about him; it’s about team. There are things he can and should do outside the white lines. He can make a difference if he would simply leave his cocoon.

How the Japanese will view this criticism is uncertain. They idolize him and most don’t want to hear anything negative. But there is a segment that appreciates telling it like it is. As I said, the way things have been going, there are no sacred cows.

Ask 14: Rice: Manny the Greatest?

Jim Rice on Manny’s defense...and is prolly really ticked about the nifty new Roy White bio at the SABR Baseball Biography Project!

Manny said in an article in the Boston Herald today that he is the greatest left fielder ever to play Fenway.  Actually, you like to see this type of attitude in a player, because to be a successful professional athlete, you have to be confident in your abilities.  It’s this type of attitude that leads to the success that Manny has had in the game of baseball.

I don’t take this to be a personal insult on my play as a leftfielder; I like and respect Manny and we talk regularly at the ballpark.  I do disagree with him though.  Manny is a great hitter (one of the best of his era) but it is unfair to compare him to Me or Yaz or Williams because we all played in different eras.  As a fielder, someone needs to let Manny know that this is a new wall that he’s playing.  We used to have a different wall in left field when I played and it was much more difficult to play.

Stat of the Day: Jaffe: Memory Checking the Goose

Goose Gossage is a big, fat, fu manchooch wearin’ liar who smells like Oscar Beregi’s joyless trousers...there, I said it!

In a new article, Goose Gossage talks about intentionally hitting batters.  The article states:

“Gossage, that famous mustache now gray, claims to have hit only three batters intentionally in his major league career: Ron Gant, Al Bumbry and Andres Galarraga.

‘They had it coming,’ he said.”

Perhaps so, but there’s one problem.  Going by the PI features, Goose Gossage never hit Al Bumbry.  He nailed Gant & Galaragga the same summer, but never Bumbry in the majors.

Was he thinking of some other Oriole?  Well, he only hit six of them, and the last two occasions came after Bumbry was gone.

One was Mark Belanger.  Who the hell intentionally hits Mark Belanger.  That’s going hunting with hope of offing Bambi’s mom…

THT: Treder: Daddy Wags

Buy Your Wags at The Hardball Rag...as Steve Treder looks back at Leon Wagner.

Deployed in a strict platoon role (fewer than 10 percent of his 241 plate appearances were against left-handed pitching) in left field by the Giants for the rest of the season, Wagner hit a blistering .317 with 13 homers. But the impression he made as a defender was less positive. Here was the summary report on Wagner in that year’s Dell Sports Baseball annual: “Raw, crude and deficient afield but has such tremendous power that he’s sure to get further examination.”

Along with ragged defense, the “raw and crude” impression may have been a function of Wagner’s approach at the plate, which featured an exaggerated high front-leg kick, á la Mel Ott or Sadaharu Oh. Such a hitting style always has been extremely unusual. I’d like to be able to give younger fans who never saw Wagner play a comparison to a modern-day hitter with a similar approach, but I can’t think of one, and in an informal poll of the THT staff, no one else can either. Both Darryl Strawberry and Kirby Puckett (not all that modern-day anymore, I know, I know) had big kicks, but not as big as Wagner’s. It was a singular style, to be sure.

Houston Chronicle: Hiring Wade looks like right move

Wail, Eddie, wail! Wade might be out of his tree...but he still can’t see the forest, or something like that.

Short end of some stats

Keep in mind, the Astros have done all that despite having a lower on-base percentage (.337 to .319) and slugging percentage (.455 to .421) than their opponents.

The Astros have outscored the opposition anyway, which means one of two things. Either they’re rabbit’s-foot-stacked-on-a-shamrock lucky or they’re doing a lot of other things right.

...Oh, and the Astros were outhitting their opponents by 45 points with men on base (.301 to .256).

“Sometimes it runs beyond a statistical line,” Wade said. “All of those things, I think, speak beyond just the ability of the club. They speak to the character of the club.”

After Mets’ loss, Nelson Figueroa calls Nationals ‘bunch of softball girls’

Hey...Don’t piss off Natalie Titcume!

Nelson Figueroa knows about bush league baseball. After all, he’s toured the world trying to resurrect his major league career. But not until Monday night did Figueroa witness a truly amateurish display, the Mets pitcher suggested. Incensed at the chants emanating from the Washington dugout during the Mets’ 10-4 loss Monday night at Shea, Figueroa ripped the Nationals afterward.

“They were cheerleading in the dugout like a bunch of softball girls,” Figueroa said. “I’m a professional, just like anybody else. I take huge offense to that. If that’s what a last-place team needs to do to fire themselves up, so be it. I think you need to show a little bit more class, a little bit more professionalism. They won tonight, but again, in the long run, they are who they are.”

Figueroa couldn’t pinpoint the culprits, but suggested the serenading peaked during the third inning, when the Nats loaded the bases and he forced in a run by walking Nick Johnson.

“Don’t care,” Figueroa said about learning the names of the perpetrators. “Truly unprofessional. “That’s why they are who they are.”

Conlin: Suddenly there are more experts than strikeouts in Ryan Howard’s slump (RR)

The Sweet Science of the Swing Era with Coach Conlin.

Most of these former line-drive machines correctly state that Howard stands too far off the plate with a stance that is much too open. For the record, he is setting up in just about the same stance he brought to the majors in 2005, when he was rookie of the year. The difference, of course, is what he does with the stance once it unfurls into the various components of a swing.

Charlie Manuel has explained it in a peanut shell. Howard is trying to pull everything. He is trying to hit “an 11-run homer” with every swing. He is swinging so early on everything he no longer lets the ball get deep into the strike zone the way he did during his flaming hot streaks in 2006 and ‘07.

My personal theory - hey, I was a high-school gap hitter - is that like a lot of tall hitters, he doesn’t have a good knowledge of his very large strike zone. I’d like to see Manuel and batting coach Milt Thompson set up a simple drill that former Dodgers GM Branch Rickey devised to teach a flailing young outfielder named Duke Snider the strike zone. In “We Would Have Played For Nothing,” Snider tells about Rickey bringing him to Vero Beach in 1948 for special instruction. There would be a pitcher, a catcher, an umpire, Rickey and several coaches, including the great George Sisler. Snider would be in the cage without a bat. His job was to call each pitch. Then the umpire would call it.

THT: Is Clayton Kershaw Worth the Hype?

Breaking down the mechanics, injury risk, stuff, and numbers of Clayton Kershaw…

“Clayton Kershaw’s curveball scares children”

“Clayton Kershaw’s curveball is public enemy number one”

“Clayton Kershaw is straight filth”

Just a couple of the high heaps of praise that surround Dodgers pitching prospect Clayton Kershaw, known by many to be the best pitching prospect in all of baseball.

I suppose one is worthy of such praise when his curveball looks like this…

St. Pete Times: Rays rout Yankees to move half-game out of first

After Monday’s 7-1 win, they are six games over .500 for the first time in franchise history at 22-16, have the majors’ best record (14-5) over the past three weeks, extended their winning streak to five and their major-league-best home streak to 10, are a half-game out of first place and are leading the AL wild-card race.

But there’s another measure of their success that will never get old: beating the Yankees.

“Always, beating the Evil Empire is awesome,” Jonny Gomes said… “Anyone in the AL East, we’ll take our wins. But beating those guys is always a little more fun.”
...
About the only thing that wasn’t good: a crowd of 13,932. Since the Yankees were last at the Trop, April 14-15, the Rays have gone from 6-8 to 22-16 and moved from fifth place to second in the AL East, yet they drew fewer fans — the April games, on a Monday and Tuesday, drew 18,872 and 20,923.

“It’s a little disappointing right now,” Maddon said. “I think we’re playing a pretty good brand of baseball. But I also believe it’s still school, it’s a Monday night, I get all that. I’ve been through that before in other places. But I want the people to understand, our fan base, that it really does make a difference to us when they’re out there and you hear, ‘Let’s go, Rays,’ as opposed to ‘Let’s go, whomever.’ “

Carmi Times: Keegan Dennis throws 172 pitches in Logan win

Hey, Coach Halstead...F you and the peppenhorst you rode in on!

“That’s obviously the most pitches I’ve ever thrown,” said Dennis. “I’ve hit 120 to 125 before, but it got to the point that my adrenaline was going so much. This is probably the best game I’ve been in intensity-wise, both teams playing well and people hitting.”

Dennis (5-6) scattered 10 hits, including four home runs, allowed nine runs and walked five batters, but the righty struck out 14 during his complete-game effort.

While most pitchers would have been pulled at some point, Logan’s veteran head coach Jerry Halstead had his own philosophy in this situation.

“What happens is you get to a point where you say ‘OK, it’s the second game of the tournament, and you’re not very good today,’” Halstead said. “‘Are we going to quit at 30 pitches so we can bring you back in a couple of days, or are we going to burn you?’ The next thing we know he’s at 70 pitches, so we’re going to burn you now.”

..."It’s about as gutty and competitive while not being close to being his best. As far as competing, that’s about as gutty a performance as I’ve seen in 25 years of coaching,” Halstead said. “He got knocked down two or three times and continued to pick himself up. That’s a true sign of a competitor. He didn’t go duck and hide. He got right back up.”

PIT Post-Gazette: Pirates’ split foils streak, bid for .500

And the Pirates… fell just short of finding the franchise’s holy grail of a .500 record, settling for a doubleheader split yesterday with the Atlanta Braves, a 5-0 shutout and an 8-1 loss.

The opener, highlighted by another quality start from Zach Duke and a bases-clearing double by Freddy Sanchez, brought a six-game winning streak, the Pirates’ longest in four years.
...
Will another chance [at .500] come? To be quite sure, this group sounded optimistic, partly because of the 6-1 homestand just completed, partly because they had taken three of four from an Atlanta team that carried its own six-game winning streak into this series ...

“Things are really different,” center fielder Nate McLouth said. “Not to look at the past, but how many times around here have we looked back at that one point where we could have gone above .500 and didn’t? That’s not going to be the case here. We’re right there. Look at where we were a week ago and how we’ve played since then.”

The Pirates came home from Washington 12-17.

Celizic: Guys like Pujols, Ortiz are good, but not memorable like Bonds, McGwire

As that old Pedro Felizean proverb goes..."Don’t hang your hat higher than you can BLEEECCH!!

But it’s teams we’re watching more than individuals. The individuals are either not compelling personalities or overpowering at what they do. It’s not their fault. I love watching guys like Justin Mourneau and Pujols and Manny and Big Papi hit, but I don’t think most fans plan their evenings around those at-bats.

Does anyone want to watch Maddux pitch six cagey innings for the pathetic Padres? Maybe Pujols is great, but we don’t watch his every at-bat. Same goes for Manny. After all, 500 homers, like the dollar, aren’t what they used to be. The same goes for Griffey. He’s worth watching, but he’s playing for Cincinnati, and nobody’s showing their games. Besides, 600 homers is also a devalued currency. He may have done it the right way — that’s the perception, at least — but there are five guys with that many ahead of him. When Aaron got to 600, just two had been there before him.

...But there aren’t any superhumans out there — at least not yet. The great pitchers don’t strike out 20 a game, or even 15. And even if someone hits 50 home runs, it’s no longer special. If Ryan Howard or Prince Fielder wants to try a run at 61, we’ll watch the chase, but that’s months — or years — away.

FOX Sports: Perry: Many surprises in the 25 Percent Awards

Lee. Perry scratches his name all over the place!

AL MVP — Cliff Lee, Indians

Before we get busy justifying this one, a few words on MVP criteria ... Some fans and voters get hung up on the inane idea that an MVP must come from a contending team. The ballot instructions specifically say that this isn’t the case, and common sense will tell you that, too. After all, dismissing the superior player because his team isn’t successful is, in essence, penalizing him because his teammates aren’t doing their jobs. The only objective stand is to give the MVP to, you know, the best player. Importing any other standard to the process is silly and illogical. Moving on ...

As you might surmise, Lee has been the best pitcher in the American League this season, and he’s also been the best overall player (thus far, it’s been a down year for individual offensive performances in the AL). Sure, position players are generally more valuable than pitchers, but on occasion that’s not the case. The 2008 season to date is just such an occasion. Consider Lee’s numbers: he’s got an RA (runs allowed per nine innings) of 1.01 (!), he’s struck out 39 against only two walks (!!), and he’s given up only one home run in 44.2 innings of work. Certainly, he’s not going to be able to keep runs off the board at such an amazing clip, but it’s quite possible that Lee’s long-awaited breakout season is upon us.

AL Cy Young — Cliff Lee, Indians

Obviously, Lee’s the choice here, for reasons stated above. Wins and losses are a terrible way to evaluate pitchers, but by any standard you’re having a dominant season when you’re on pace for more wins than runs allowed. That’s Lee in 2008.

NY Times (RR): Indian Teenagers Chase American Dream

Two Indian teenagers are chasing an American dream as baseball professionals and their promoters hope they can stir up interest in the game in their cricket-mad homeland.

Rinku Singh, 18, and fellow javelin thrower Dinesh Patel began a year-long training stint in Los Angeles last week after winning an India-wide pitching contest, “The Million-Dollar Arm.”

I’m looking forward to an Indian post game interview:  “What i was pitching, they were not hitting.”