Carlos Pena who had been slumping hit a home run in his fifth consecutive game and he has hit six home runs in those five games.
Carlos Pena hit a home run in his fifth consecutive game while breaking a Rays franchise home run record of 129 home runs, which had been held by Aubrey Huff until last night.
Pena has hit more home runs than Alex Rodriguez in the last four years but had been slumping until recently. As recently as June 5 he had hit only eight homers in his first 55 games, but now he has hit six in his last five games for a total of 14.
Pena had experienced an anemic month of May with three home runs and nine runs batted in, while hitting .120 and slugging .250 during the month.
He is currently hitting .196 but is hitting .313 for the month of June while slugging .885. The home run was the 216th of his career.
Around the Diamond
The White Sox won their third game in a row for only the second time this season as they defeated the Chicago Cubs 10-5 behind the pitching of Jake Peavy, who evened his record at 5-5 allowing two runs in seven innings.
Peavy had pitched well in his last start while allowing two runs in seven innings in that start against the Indians but still took the loss. In his previous four games he had given up 21 runs and 33 hits in 25 innings.
A.J. Pierzynski and Alex Rios each had four hit games combining for eight of the 16 White Sox hits and combined to drive in half of the ten runs scored by the White Sox in their 10-5 victory.
When Mark Teahen returns the White Sox may decide to keep Brent Lillibridge on the roster since Jayson Nix has only one hit in his last 20 at bats hitting .050 in his last 10 games, while so far Lillibridge has doubled and homered in two pinch hit at bats.
Adrian Beltre hit his eighth home run of the 2010 season in the 12-2 runaway win by the Red Sox over the Phillies. He has eight home runs in 234 at bats while hitting the same number of home runs for the Mariners in 449 at bats in 2009.
David Ortiz entered the game in a 3-for-29 slump but his 3-for-5 night while driving in four runs raised his average ten points to .247.
The Brewers put it all together last night with a well-pitched game from Chris Narveson, while their four sluggers each hit home runs with Casey McGehee, Ryan Braun, Prince Fielder, and NL leader Corey Hart homering in the contest for a 6-2 win.
Ichiro Suzuki is experiencing a rare slump with only two hits in his last 20 trips to the plate, dropping his average from .358 to .337. Ubaldo Jimenez pitched his worst game of the season, but he still notched win No.12 of the season with one loss. He gave up three runs in a rain shortened 5-3 win over the Blue Jays.
Tim Lincecum won for only the second time in his last nine starts while defeating the A’s 6-2 and improving his record to 6-2. Lincecum has little chance of taking his third Cy Young award with Ubaldo Jimenez having six more wins than Lincecum.
All five AL Central teams won their games yesterday and all the teams are 5-5 in their last 10 games. The Twins were the only first place team in the majors to record a win yesterday.
Carlos Silva 8-0 will try to tie the record of Ken Holtzman who started his 1967 season with a 9-0 record which is the Cubs record. He will be facing Mark Buehrle of the White Sox at 4:10 ET.
The other five Cubs who have started a game in 2010 are a combined 12-24. It is not saying much for the rest of the starters to have only four more wins than Silva among five starters.
Stephen Strasburg will take the mound again tomorrow in Cleveland against David Huff at 1:05 ET.
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