April 6, 2000

The Daily Prospectus

It's Early, But...

by Joe Sheehan

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• in just three days, nine players have had two-homer games. There's no one completely ridiculous performance on the list, and I'd like to think the big days by Tony Batista and Shannon Stewart herald the arrival of the Blue Jays as a force in the AL East.

• the Martinez brothers are struggling, combining to allow seven runs in just 8 1/3 innings so far. That's a bad sign for the Red Sox.

  OK, I'm not entirely serious, but you have to wonder why the team has so much faith in Martinez the Elder. He's got a ton of mileage on him, is still working his way back from major surgery and may be older than his listed age of 32. (Then again, Pedro looks 12, so what do I know?) Off four late-season outings, Boston made him their #3 starter in the playoffs and their #2 to start this year. It seems more wishful thinking than anything else.

• it doesn't look like we're moving back to 1992 anytime soon. In 15 games on Wednesday, eight teams cracked double figures in runs and six teams scored six runs or more and lost.

  I'm not complaining--baseball is baseball in any era, and I have no patience for whining about how players don't do the little things anymore--but the longer this era of offense lasts, the more difficult it is to keep the achievements of the players who played in the 1980s in perspective. This came up in the Tim Raines discussions, and may impact the Hall of Fame voting for the next ten years or so.

• every team in the American League has at least one win and one loss. There are three undefeated teams and two winless teams in the NL, all 0-2 or 2-0. I wonder if any season has ever started with no team having a three-game winning or losing streak.

• the Yankees are showing some of their depth problems. Bernie Williams's shoulder owie forced Ricky Ledee, an average left fielder, to patrol center field for two days in Anaheim. Scott Brosius's ribcage injury makes Clay Bellinger and Wilson Delgado the third-base platoon. Bellinger's last full-season OBP over .300 came in 1997, while Delgado couldn't hit enough to win a backup infielder job with the Giants.

Joe Sheehan can be reached at jsheehan@baseballprospectus.com.

Joe Sheehan is an author of Baseball Prospectus. 
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