Well, the 2008 Major League Baseball season is, for all intents and purposes, one week old. I could give my thoughts on the games I watched today — I caught bits and pieces of about half of them — but seeing as how I posted a 6-9 record in my predictions for today’s games, I’m not quite sure my expertise is what people would be looking for at the moment.
So instead, I figured I’d take a look at the current league leaders and perhaps reveal a few fantasy baseball sleepers to the unsuspecting public. There’s no arguing with numbers, after all. They’re not known to lie.
A.J. Pierzynski, C — Chicago White Sox
Who better to start with than the man who’s leading the world in hitting and on-base percentage for the first-place Chicago White Sox? Pierzynski has been a man possessed early in the 2008 campaign, posting a batting average of .500 and an almost Bondseque on-base percentage of .565 through Sunday night’s 13-2 thrashing of the Tigers.
Obviously, whenever you see anyone put up numbers like that, it raises some suspicions. I alluded to Bonds no more than a sentence ago when trying to find a comparison for how dominating Pierzynski has been. Clearly, we all know the story by now with Bonds, and all of the allegations that have been levied against the all-time home run champion.
So why, then, are people turning a blind eye to A.J. Pierzynski’s reign of terror? It’s not like Pierzynski is a beloved figure around the league. In fact, he seems to be almost universally hated. And yet he can put up a .565 OBP and nobody bats an eyelash? We’re talking about a guy who, to be kind, is a dirty player, and at his worst is an out-and-out cheater. Are we to believe he’s suddenly broken through at age 31 without some kind of assistance? It seems unlikely to me.
I think the question we all have to be asking ourselves is, is this an issue of race? I say yes. Major League Baseball has been starved for a bona fide Polish-American superstar ever since the retirement of Carl Yastrzemski in 1983. Sure, there have been the Frank Tananas, Alan Trammells and John Kruks of the world trying to fill that void, but at his best, Kruk was more of a cult hero than a national superstar.
Though a divisive figure, Pierzynski represents the best chance for Major League Baseball to tap into a disillusioned Polish market that has turned its collective back on baseball in favor the NFL, where the Dan Marinos, Mike Ditkas, Bill Romanowskis and Stephen Gostkowskis are all revered for their recent and long-standing contributions to the game. Still others have flocked to the sport of basketball, where prominent Poles like Mike Krzyzewski and Joel Przybilla rule the roost on and off the floor.
So how is baseball to compete with this? Well, an informal anointment of Pierzynski as one of the faces of the sports seems like as a good starting place as any.
Xavier Nady, OF — Pittsburgh Pirates
Guess what, this is a one-joke column, and the one joke wasn’t even that funny.
So I’ll just recognize Nady for yet another ridiculous start to the season. His opening week stat line of three home runs, nine runs batted in, and six runs scored along with an OPS of 1.217, a .385 batting average and even a stolen base deserves to be immortalized here. It’s my gift to Nady, who can look back fondly on this hot start when he has fully regressed to the mean and is incapable of buying a hit by the time early August rolls around.
Brad Wilkerson, OF — Seattle Mariners
I can tie this in to the column by stating that Wilkerson is tied for the league lead in caught stealing, as he’s been gunned out twice in three attempts. Okay, that’s pretty bad, but it’s still early, right?
Well, he’s been on base six times in twenty plate appearances in the first week, and in two of those cases he’s negated his effort by promptly creating an out on the basepaths. So you could, if you wanted to be a dick, slash his on-base percentage to .133, which is more in line with his .067 slugging percentage anyway.
He also struck out in five of his plate appearances and has yet to produce a run.
For the record, the other guys who share the league lead in caught stealing — Brian Roberts, Chone Figgins and San Francisco Giants rookie Brian Bocock — have had the decency to at least break even in their base-stealing efforts.
Brad Wilkerson, everybody. Once traded for Alfonso Soriano (who’s not doing so hot himself, now that I think about it.)
Ben Sheets, SP — Milwaukee Brewers
Sheets isn’t hurt yet, and is therefore pitching freaking brilliantly. He notched the first complete-game shutout of the 2008 season on Sunday afternoon when he mowed through the light-hitting San Francisco Giants lineup. Sheets now leads the world in earned-run average (0.00), is tied for the Major League in strikeouts (15, with Rich Harden and Daisuke Matsuzaka) and complete games (1, with Jake Peavy and Kevin Millwood) and, obviously, is the only hurler with to this point with a shutout to his name. He’s also only walked two batters in his 15 1/3 innings of work.
I’m not going to qualify this praise with anything about, well, you know, because I’d actually like to see him have a chance to win the Cy Young Award (I guess this is something of a spin-off of the old “don’t talk about a no-hitter during a no-hitter” tradition). The guy is a ridiculous pitcher.
The National League Central Is Kicking My Ass:
St. Louis Cardinals (5-1) .833
Milwaukee Brewers (5-1) .833
Cincinnati Reds (4-2) .667
Merrill Park Superstar (49-43 [6-9 Sunday]) .533
Chicago Cubs (3-3) .500
Pittsburgh Pirates (3-3) .500
Houston Astros (2-5) .286
SUNDAY’S BOX SCORES:
New York Yankees 2, Tampa Bay Rays 0
Toronto Blue Jays 7, Boston Red Sox 4
Pittsburgh Pirates 9, Florida Marlins 2
Cincinnati Reds 8, Philadelphia Phillies 2
Baltimore Orioles 3, Seattle Mariners 2
Atlanta Braves 3, New York Mets 1
Milwaukee Brewers 7, San Francisco 0
Kansas City Royals 3, Minnesota Twins 1
St. Louis Cardinals 3, Washington Nationals 0
Chicago Cubs 3, Houston Astros 2
Arizona Diamondbacks 5, Colorado Rockies 2 (10 innings)
Texas Rangers 10, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim 4
Cleveland Indians 2, Oakland Athletics 1
Los Angeles Dodgers 3, San Diego Padres 2
Chicago White Sox 13, Detroit Tigers 2
MONDAY’S PICKS:
Philadelphia Phillies over Cincinnati Reds
Chicago Cubs over Pittsburgh Pirates
Seattle Mariners over Baltimore Orioles
San Francisco Giants over San Diego Padres
Minnesota Twins over Chicago White Sox
New York Yankees over Tampa Bay Rays
St. Louis Cardinals over Houston Astros
Florida Marlins over Washington Nationals
Atlanta Braves over Colorado Rockies
Arizona Diamondbacks over Los Angeles Dodgers
Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim over Cleveland Indians
