I have no idea what it is about April 30, but the Birthday Team is laughably bad. Mike Barlow is third on the team in career starts...with two. Mark Saccomanno is by far the best first baseman born on April 30; he had ten career at-bats. The relief ace, Ryan Hawblitzel, appeared in eight MLB games.

Awful team.

C: Ken Retzer
1B: Mark Saccomanno
2B/Manager: Phil Garner
3B: Randy Kutcher
SS: Jeff Reboulet
LF: Charley Jones
CF: Dave Eggler
RF: Chet Laabs

SP: Bob Hendley
SP: Jumbo Brown
SP: Mike Barlow
SP: Neal Baker
SP: John Cahill
RP: Ryan Hawblitzel

Pitching Coach: Ray Miller
Ballboy: Ernie Tyler
Beat Writer: Tracy Ringolsby

New article up at THT: Evaluating Charlie Manuel. A look at a manager I didn't put in my book.

Also, a historical piece notes that today is the 10th anniversary of the first pitcher to beat all 30 franchises. To date, nine pitchers have beaten all 30 teams. Can you name any? (Click on the link to find out the answer. I won't be around to tell you if you're right/wrong).

my one guess -- Moyer.

I checked the link and he has. Need 8 more.

"the ball grounds"

I'm sure Javy Vazquez has done it. He shows up on lots of lists like that.

Randy Johnson seems like a candidate to have beaten all 30.

Curt Schilling would seem to be another possibility, off the top of my head.

Clemens probably. Hudson? Halladay(He'll be on the list soon if he isn't already)?

My guess is Dennis Martinez, as it is for most career-length accomplishments that could be accomplished by an incredibly uninteresting pitcher. Was he still active 10 years ago?

Edit: Dennis Martinez beat 27 of the 30 franchises. He was never on an NL team other than the Expos until his last season, which was 1998. In 1998 he had his first appearances against the Diamondbacks, Devil Rays and Expos but did not beat any of them.

Hudson?

That would seem to depend on whether he's beaten the Braves/A's. There probably hasn't been a lot of interleague games between them.

Kevin Brown and Kenny Rogers?

Ted Lilly has lost to every MLB team and beaten every team except the Cubs.

Game of the day (yesterday): Mets 6, Rockies 5 (11). This one provides kind of a template for building an excellent game that's still a bit overrated... The Mets struck early, with David Wright doubling in two runs, stealing third, and scoring on Scott Hairston's single in the top of the first. New York added a fourth run in the fifth on Josh Thole's solo home run. Meanwhile, the Rockies put a few runners on base, but only had more than one in the sixth, and that was first and second with two outs; given the margin of the game, those aren't serious threats. The bottom of the eighth, on the other hand, was one, as they loaded the bases on a hit and a pair of walks, and Todd Helton tied things up on a pinch hit grand slam. In the ninth, the Mets put the go-ahead run at third on a walk, a groundout, and a balk, but left it there; they did rather better in the tenth, with Kirk Niewenhuis doubling home Mike Baxter, only to see Carlos Gonzalez tie the game in the bottom of the inning with a home run. Colorado left a pair of runners on to finish the tenth, allowing the Mets the chance to score on three singles in the next inning. And the Rockies had apparently used up all of their rallies at this point, going down 1-2-3 in the bottom of the eleventh.

It's a very, very good game, #10 so far this year. But you'd figure on better things for a game featuring an extra-inning comeback. The issue is with innings 1-7, during which the Mets appeared to be progressing toward a routine win. Throw in a lead change or a couple of serious rallies during that span, and the game sprints up the list.

Seasonal note: After an excellent game yesterday against the Brewers, the Cardinals have finally moved out of last in terms of overall excitement for the year, being replaced by the Phillies. On the other end of the spectrum, Washington has moved into a tie for the top spot with the Blue Jays, making them the first team to break into the 1-2 combo that collaborated on the 16-inning Opening Day game (Cleveland is still in third so far).

Game of the day (last year): Cardinals 5, Braves 3 (11). Jason Heyward opened the scoring in the bottom of the first with a home run, and the Braves added a second run on a Dan Uggla RBI double. St. Louis rallied to tie in the fourth with four singles grouped around a sac fly. Both teams put runners on first and second with one out in the sixth, and both shortstops (Ryan Theriot and Alex Gonzalez, respectively) snuffed out the rallies by hitting into double plays. Atlanta recaptured the advantage in the seventh as Nate McLouth went deep, and they maintained the one-run advantage until Craig Kimbrel entered in the ninth. Back-to-back singles by Yadier Molina and Theriot put the tying run at third (in the person of pinch-runner Tyler Greene, because... come on), and it was driven in on a Daniel Descalso sac fly. McLouth reached to lead off the bottom of the ninth, but was doubled up, and both teams went in order in the tenth. In the eleventh, the Cardinals put a pair of runners on with a walk and an HBP, then picked up a two-out, two-run triple from Nick Punto. (You'd figure that would be the most important two-out, two-run triple of the year for most teams... in this case, not so much). A leadoff walk to Uggla brought the tying run to the plate in the bottom of the inning, but two strikeouts and a flyout later, Jason Motte and Trever Miller had earned the hold and the save, respectively.

Eric - I'm loving the GotD feature. It seems like you've got a methodology on this but I didn't see it when you first posted it (if you did at all). Is it available somewhere?

Vazquez, Johnson, Schilling, Brown are correct.

Clemens, Hudson, Halladay, Rogers are incorrect.

4 left, including the first one.

Re: the question in post #2.

Lot of good guesses. Several names given are in fact correct: Moyer, Schilling, Randy Johnson, Kevin Brown, and Vazquez.

If you were to fill in a leaderboard based on when guys beat their 30th team, the answers given so far would look like this:

1.
2. Kevin Brown
3.
4. Curt Schilling
5. Jamie Moyer
6. Randy Johnson
7.
8. Javier Vazquez
9.

The guy who did it 10 years ago today hasn't been named yet. He beat 29 teams in his first 69 victories and then had to wait a few/couple years for his 30th franchise victory

#3 was a longtime lefty who began as a starter but ended up in the bullpen.

#7 has only played for two teams (1 in the NL, 1 in the AL), but thanks to interleague play beat his AL team when in the NL and vice versa.

#9 was once traded for one of the other guys on the list. (It wasn't a straight up trade, but he was traded in the opposite direction of one of the other guys).

Tim Hudson has beaten 28 teams. Never topped the Braves or A's.

Roy Halladay has beaten 29 teams. He's never topped the Phillies.

Roger Clemens never topped the Braves or Dodgers.

Kenny Rogers never beat several NL teams.

Dennis Martinez and Ted Lilly, as noted by others, topped 27 and 29 teams respectively.

#9 was once traded for one of the other guys on the list. (It wasn't a straight up trade, but he was traded in the opposite direction of one of the other guys).

AJ Burnett? He's been on enough teams.

Todd Stottlemyre? David Wells?

Eric - I'm loving the GotD feature. It seems like you've got a methodology on this but I didn't see it when you first posted it (if you did at all). Is it available somewhere?

I've occasionally posted a little bit about it, going back to the playoff chatters last year when I was first working on it. The method is to add up the magnitude of the WPA of every play in the game, which would be kind of a pain except that B-R does most of the work for me, so I can just enter four numbers into the spreadsheet from the boxscore there (WPA+ and WPA- team totals from each team's hitting). The best description I've come up with is that I'm measuring the amount of ink it takes to draw the game's win expectancy graph.

It's not a flawless method; the main issue is that it ignores the excitement of the actual plays themselves, so a bases-loaded walk grades out the same as a bases-loaded infield single, even though one of those things is probably going to be more interesting to watch. But it does the job pretty well for the most part.

If anyone's interested, I can actually start posting scores for the games. The theoretical minimum is .5, which would be the road team scoring about 15 runs before recording an out and then having their starting pitcher throw a perfect game (actually, this works for the home team as well). Anything below 1 is a really dull game; between 1-2 will have some redeeming value, but be pretty bland. 2.5 is roughly the median; over 3 is a good game, and over 4 is going to be the best game of the day more often than not.

It goes on from there... anything over 6 is a tremendous game. There have only been three of those so far this year - the 13-12 Tigers-Red Sox game, the 16-inning Opening Day game between the Indians and Blue Jays, and the 14-inning come-from-behind A's win over the White Sox last week, which, at 7.23, is the game of the year so far. April 2011 had a couple of games that broke 8, which is actually higher than any of the 1349 postseason/end-of-year playoff games that B-R has numbers for (it's only missing the 2 games of the 1946 NL playoff between the Dodgers and Cardinals, which were not classic games).

I can probably ramble about this all day if there's any interest, but I figure that's enough detail for a first post on the topic.

Burnett, Stottlemyre & Wells are all incorrect.

Burnett still needs to beat Miami. Wells missed PIT & COL. Stottlmeyre missed three teams.

#3 sounds like Terry Mulholland.

Derek Lowe?

...every team but the Red Sox. He should have two opportunities this year!

El Duque was once traded for Javy Vazquez, but he didn't have a particularly long career in the NL...

Carl Pavano?

I count Carl Pavano at 28.....never beaten the Reds or Cards. Rick Reed is at 29....never beet the Yankees. Johan Santana is also at 29...he has never beaten the Twins.

Pedro Martinez?

Rick Reed - missing only the Yankees. In 10 regular-season starts against the Yankees he was 0-5 and gave up 46 runs in 49 innings. Then in the World Series he pitched a very good game but the Mets still lost.

Carl Pavano - missing the Reds and Cardinals
Kevin Millwood - missing the Braves, Twins, and Rangers
Jon Garland - missing the Phillies and White Sox
Octavio Dotel - missing the Red Sox, White Sox, Rockies, Tigers, Padres, Blue Jays, and Nationals. Still pretty good for someone with only 55 career wins.

Wow, two of us simultaneously thought of Rick Reed. One of these pitchers has to be someone like him or Steve Trachsel or Kevin Tapani. The latter of which beat all 28 teams he faced, but never faced the Devil Rays or Cubs.

Zito? He probably doesn't have enough NL wins, but the rivalry situation should give him the requisite wins against the AL and NL teams he's also pitched for.

Mulholland and Zito are correct.

Leiter?

John Burkett?

John Burkett? Missing the Yankees and Rangers.
Mark Clark? missing the Yankees, Mets and Dbacks.
Al Leiter? There we go!
Woody Williams? Bingo again! Including 8 shutout innings in his only game against Toronto. Guessing itinerant white guys is the way to go.

Never would have guessed the traded player. Forgot he was part of that trade.

Dag's list does not included Woody Williams, so I guess there's one more.

I'm still trying to understand why Doug Eddings is allowed to continue to exist. He was embarrassing yesterday.

What about the original Mr. Twelve Teams, Mike Morgan?

Nope -- because the only years he could have faced the Diamondbacks, he was playing for them.

small hint - he's still active although not starting anymore.

Darren Oliver?

Darren Oliver is one of the few pitchers never to have beaten the Mets.

he's still active although not starting anymore.

Freddy Garcia?

Not Garcia.

This guy is #9, which Dag mentions in post 15 was traded for one of the other guys on the list (not a one for one trade).

I have no idea what it is about April 30, but the Birthday Team is laughably bad

But January 31 is awesome (Jackie, Ernie, Nolan, Josh Johnson). So apparently people are busy doing something else around April 30 that leads to baseball players nine months later.

Have we talked about Raph Rhymes yet? Cut as a true walkon at LSU his freshamn year, was D2 Juco POTY for LSU-Eunice the next season, got a LSU scholarship and hit .360 in an injury plagued soph season - all as a precursor to...
Dude is hitting .500 this year (88-156). It's an empty .500 (/.534/.628), he's not a base stealer, he's a poor outfielder... but he's hitting .500 in the SEC with BBCOR bats.

<ichiro>He could hit 30 home runs if he wanted to.</ichiro>

And what of Trenton Moses? Prospect or no prospect? He's a senior in the OVC, which screams "no prospect", but he leads the nation in OBP/SLG/OPS/HR, is fifth in AVG, second in TB. I know nothing about him, other than the kid can clearly hit the holy living crap out of baseballs.

Quick question:

If I pay for MLB.TV, do I get access to the shows on MLB Network? Like Prime 9, Clubhouse Confidential, etc?

Also, Rob Neyer does a video mailbag now. I find it jarring because I've "known" him for so long, and while I've seen pictures of him, and heard his voice, I've never seen video of him and its nothing like I expected.

"Trenton Moses" is a great name. I'd much rather have him as 3B for the Clearwater Threshers than someone named "Cody Asche", despite the latter's amusing Twitter feed.

Dag's list does not included Woody Williams, so I guess there's one more.

Whoah! Nice catch. Thanks for noting that one.

It's shocking how many of these names are guys who have played for the Twins in the past 10-15 year: Muholland, Santana, Morgan, Pavano and Rick Reed. To that list I'll add a guess that Jesse Orosco might be one of these guys.

Moses: Suspect (org guy). Draftable and he can hit, but he's already 23 and has been beating up on less experienced kids.

...was D2 Juco POTY for LSU-Eunice

Charityslave matriculated at this fine institution of higher learning, gaining his Associate of Nursing at age 19.

My home town.