Paul Konerko and Jose Bautista are outslugging several of the most prominent sluggers in major league baseball this season, with 14 home runs each entering Monday night’s game between the White Sox and the Indians.
Alex Rodriguez (6), Chipper Jones (2), Todd Helton (1), Manny Ramirez (2) and Ken Griffey Jr. (0) have combined to hit only 11 home runs between them this season. It is strange that Rodriguez and Ramirez both were found to have used steroids during 2009 and now all of a sudden they are not hitting home runs, with Rodriguez having 6 in 192 plate appearances and Ramirez having 2 in 100 plate appearances.
This was going to be the year Rodriguez passed Sammy Sosa who has 609 home runs,but instead he still needs 20 more with the season being a third over next week.
Just When You Think You Have Seen It All Department
I thought there is no possible way anyone could come up with a new stat (new to me at least) and that stat is the time it takes for a player to run the bases after hitting a home run.
There is a chart keeping track of the slowest and fastest home run trots of the season. It is called the Tater Trot Tracker.
David Ortiz has the slowest home run trot of the season, timing out at 29.81 seconds and the fastest home run trot was by Angel Pagan when he hit an inside the park home run on May 19.
Adam Rosales has rounded the bases faster on a non-inside park home run than four of the players who hit inside the park home runs.
Around the Infield
Carlos Silva of the Chicago Cubs is the favorite to be the NL Comeback Player of the Year. He is the only pitcher in the majors with at least six wins who has not lost a game.
Albert Pujols has hit only one home run in May after going deep seven times in April. He slugged .655 in April but is slugging only .385 in May. He started the month of May hitting .345 but his average is down to .303 after going hitless against the Los Angeles Dodgers over the weekend.
The Philadelphia Phillies were the first team to draw 1 million fans in 2010 with a total of 1,037,638 fans while the Cleveland Indians have drawn the least fans with 299,722 fans this season.
Rafael Soriano with 13 saves and Matt Lindstrom with 10 saves are the only closers with at least 10 saves to not have blown a save in 2010.
Carlos Marmol of the Cubs has struck out an amazing 17.5 batters per 9 innings. The most strikeouts per 9 innings by a starter is Randy Johnson when he struck out 13.4 batters per 9 innings in 2001.
Kelly Johnson has matched his entire home run output of 2008 when he hit his 12th home run of the 2010 season. It took only 152 at bats this season while it took 547 at bats in 2008. He hit a home run every 45.6 at bats in 2008 and homered every 12.7 at bats in 2010.
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