April 30, 2001

The Daily Prospectus

Mmmm...Newsprint

by Joe Sheehan

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One of the things that unifies baseball fans is poring over boxscores, a tradition that goes back more than 100 years. In the past decade, that poring tends to occur less with a newspaper and more online, but the tradition remains.

I'm on Day 2 of what will be eight days of sharing a single phone line among three people, with a dialup Internet connection that makes loading 2001's graphics-heavy, Java-heavy Web pages a nightmare. So when I got up this morning after a weekend spent mostly in the dark baseball-wise, I got my hands dirty with the San Gabriel Valley Tribune. It's not the best sports page in the world--or even the county--but it does have expanded boxscores. For someone two days removed from their last baseball fix, it was like manna from heaven. Well, a good roast beef on rye, anyway.

Scan with me...

• Without Gary Sheffield and Mark Grudzielanek, the Dodgers' top three hitters were Tom Goodwin, Jeff Reboulet and Marquis Grissom. If it gets worse than that, I'm not sure I want to see it. Naturally, they won again.

• After this weekend, I don't believe people will confuse Geoff Jenkins and Brett Favre in the state of Wisconsin. Fight on, Geoff.

• Yes, the Mariners are 20-5, but they have an offense built to the extreme on high batting averages. I'm in the minority on Ichiro Suzuki--good player, but not a superstar as a corner OF without walks or substantial power--but surely no one thinks Mark McLemore or Bret Boone or Tom Lampkin will maintain their current high averages. When reality sets in, the Mariners will come back to the pack.

• Free Erubiel Durazo Now!

• It's common for the troubles of Jose Lima to be blamed on Enron Field, but this is a pitcher who gave up shots and didn't strike out many hitters even when he was good. The change in venues has merely exacerbated what would have been a decline from his 1998-99 peak.

  Lima relieved yesterday, so it appears he's begun the slow decline toward irrelevance. I believe the steps are starter, reliever, releasee, Oriole, Baseball Tonight analyst.

• Jeff Weaver, who has one of the bigger career platoon splits of any major-league starting pitcher and whose delivery is difficult on right-handed hitters, started for the Tigers yesterday against the Devil Rays. Despite this, Hal McRae couldn't find a spot in the lineup for Aubrey Huff or Steve Cox, instead playing Vinny Castilla and Jose Guillen.

  You know who could improve this organization? The Rev. Jim Jones.

• Oh, my god...Alfonso Soriano WALKED! Did any of you see this? How did it happen?

Joe Sheehan is an author of Baseball Prospectus. Contact him by clicking here.

Joe Sheehan is an author of Baseball Prospectus. 
Click here to see Joe's other articles. You can contact Joe by clicking here