As of 10am, Aug 9th, 2007, only 2 mlb teams are being out-scored by their opponents by 100 runs or more.  One, of course, is Tampa Bay.  The other?  The other has a better winning percentage than 10 other mlb teams and is only 4 games out of the division lead in the loss column.  I'm afraid it's us.  

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This is another one of those incredible series of baseball anomalies that happened this past month.

Ø      In a one month period, between the morning of June 22 & the morning of July 21, one major league baseball team played in 6 series (16 total games because 1 series was still in progress) against the top 6 teams in all of baseball (ranked according to overall record the morning of July 21):

1. Detroit  2. Boston  3. Cleveland  4. LA-Anaheim  5. Seattle  6. Milwakee (tied w/ NYM)

Ø      The only series that was played on THIS team's home field was with Seattle .  So of the 16 games played against the top 6 teams, 13 were on the road.

Ø      Even more impressive was the position of each opponent when entering their respective series against THIS team (overall MLB record rank and last 10 games record):

LAA - #1(t) ; 8-2
BOS - #1     ; 5-5
DET - #1     ; 7-3
CLE - #4     ; 6-4
MIL - #5(t) ; 8-2
SEA - #7(t) ; 8-2

Ø      THIS teams' record in those 16 games against the 6 best teams with 84% of the games on the road?  

10 wins, 6 losses.

Ø      THIS team out-scored the 6 best teams in baseball by 21 runs, had single game outbursts of 9, 10, 12, and 17 runs, and recorded a shut out on the road against the team tied with the best record in baseball at the time.

Ø      Four of THIS teams' top eight salaried players, including the top salaried player, were on the DL during part or all of these series.

Do you want to really top off this incredible stretch of baseball anomaly?  Do you want to know what team could have pulled off such a feat?  Only the baseball gods could have created this (with a wink, of course)...

...THIS team is none other than the Kansas City Royals.

Other related interesting occurrences -

Only 2 regularly starting position players during this stretch have `07 salaries over $1 Million - David DeJesus and Emil Brown.  Five of the other position players with the most playing time during this stretch have a combined salary of $2,039,000 - Alex Gordon, Tony Pena Jr., Mark Teahen, Esteban German, & John Buck.  Joey Gathright, the other instrumental position player during this stretch, was sent back to minors late in the streak so that the Royals could showcase Reggie Sanders for a potential trade.

In a 3 game stretch between July 17 & 20, the Royals outscored the top 2 teams in baseball, Boston and Detroit, on the road, no less, by a 25-9 margin.