carp wins, ho hum -- now 19-4, and 34-9 over the last two seasons. pretty good pitcher.
mark bellhorn's going to the yankees, we learn from fox's ken rosenthal. i'm sorry to hear it; the more i thought it over, the more i saw to like in bellhorn. from 2002-2004 his obps were .374, .353, and .373. he also murders left-handers: since 2002 he's slugged .535 against them with a .283 avg and .369 obp. injuries have slowed him this year, but even hitting .216 he has an obp roughly equal to taguchi's and better than mabry's. who knows, maybe jocketty inquired; he'd have been a no-cost acquisition. . . . fyi, the poll came out roughly 50-50 -- 25 people voted what the hell let's take a flyer on him, 24 voted not on a bet.
my latest crush is on milwaukee's wes helms, who somebody (brock20?) has been touting lately in these pages. i looked him up: since 2002 (which encompasses most of his career) he has hit .285 against left-handers -- .370 obp, .491 slugging avg. he has cleared waivers, he's a third baseman, right-handed hitter . . . . . might as well add, while we're on this subject, that abe nunez appears to be falling back into some bad old habits. somewhere on the web (can't find the link now) it was noted that he cut his strikeout rate in half earlier this season, lifting all his offensive numbers accordingly. alas, in august his strikeouts have reverted to form -- and so too has his overall performance. see for yourself:
| k's per plate appearance |
avg | obp | slg | ops | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| career thru 04 | .17 | .238 | .306 | .316 | .626 |
| apr thru jul 05 | .09 | .324 | .390 | .446 | .836 |
| aug 05 | .19 | .250 | .301 | .292 | .593 |
jock professes to be working on it (scroll on down) but continues to sound pessimistic that a deal will go down.
minor matters: john sickels files this terse scouting report at Minor League Ball -- "Saw Mark McCormick, Cardinals supplemental first-round pick tonight. 91-94 fastball, touched 96. Excellent curve. Command was mediocre." see ya in 2008, dude.