The season's first three months have been plenty odd
Posted: Wednesday July 02, 2003 11:44 AM
The Tampa Bay Devil Rays played an entire game this year without recording a single assist. That's just plain weird.
Nomar Garciaparra has as many triples (12) as homers. Strange.
The Boston Red Sox scored 10 runs before the Florida Marlins managed to get one out in the first inning. That's definitely on the odd side.
There have been some oddities in the first half of this baseball season, for sure. The tag-team no-hitter. That ump getting attacked by a fan. The corked bat.
It's been offbeat. Wild. Even wacky sometimes.
Here's our list of some first-half happenings no one could have predicted:
The resurgence of the Royals -- We were all a little surprised by the 16-3 start, of course, and those 11 straight wins at home at the season's beginning. That was really off. But then the Royals stumbled, slipping under .500 by early June, and the know-it-alls (I'm sorry already!) all figured everything was back to normal. But … whoops! What do you know? Somebody forgot to tell the Royals that they were cooked. They went 12-3 through one June stretch, winning consecutive series against the Giants, Twins and Cardinals, then capped it off by sweeping the Indians. K.C. strutted into July a mere half-game back of Minnesota in the American League Central, with its next 12 games before the All-Star break against teams without winning records. It's downright spooky. One thing is certain. I'm not counting them out again. Not yet, anyway.
The Braves' flip flop -- During their decade-plus reign atop the National League, the famed Atlanta pitching staff has finished first or second in ERA in every year. But this season, the Braves roll into July with a 4.13 ERA, eighth in the league. How out of whack is that? The Braves haven't finished a season with a team earned run average that high since 1990, when they lost 97 games and had a 4.58 ERA. On the other hand, this year's Braves have 123 home runs, the most in the majors. The NL record is 249 (Houston, 2000), while the major league record is 264 (Seattle, 1997). The Braves have never hit more than 215 in a season (1998). And to top that off, the Braves are also batting .277 as a team, second in the league. They haven't finished a season with a batting average that high since 1930. A lot of things have changed in Atlanta. One thing that hasn't: The Braves are still in first place. At least for now.
The success of Esteban Loaiza -- Entering the 2003 season, Loaiza had a career 4.88 ERA. He was 69-73. Yeah, you could have found a less likely pitcher to be leading the league in ERA and to be a strong candidate to start for Mike Scioscia's American League team at the All-Star Game on July 15. But it wouldn't have been easy. White Sox manager Jerry Manuel credits an improved changeup and a cut fastball for the success of his ace. Whatever it is, Loaiza (11-3, 2.18 ERA and a .219 batting average against) has been nasty. Surprise!
The emergence of Melvin Mora -- Who? The wisp of a Venezuelan was a career .249 hitter entering the season, but Orioles manager Mike Hargrove has given him the chance to play most every day, at a number of positions, and he's responded with a .350 average (best in the American League), 12 homers and 39 RBIs. He has a bad hand now, after being hit by a pitch in mid-June, but he's still hitting. Who knew?
The miraculous appearance of Dontrelle Willis -- Besides the surprising stellar record (8-1) and stunningly minuscule ERA (2.26), Florida's rookie left-hander is responsible for the single biggest oddity of the first half -- the innumerable and inexplicably bad "Whatchoo Talkin' About …" headlines.
The resiliency of the Diamondbacks -- Curt Schilling. Randy Johnson. Matt Mantei. Craig Counsell. Tony Womack. Danny Bautista. Junior Spivey. Bret Prinz. Down and out. Then Robby Hammock, Matt Kata, Lyle Overbay, Brandon Webb, Jose Valverde. And others. Up and coming. The 2001 World Series champs were 10 games out at one point. Then the young guys took over, and the D'backs churned into July on a 12-game winning streak, just four games behind San Francisco. Yeah, like someone figured on that.
The roller-coasting Yankees -- You get used to seeing the Yankees traipsing along, with their high-priced roster and their ultra-unflappable manager, destroying everything in their path. So, after their 23-6 start, you figured it was the same old thing for the Yanks. And then … from May 3 through June 11, when they were ignominiously no-hit by a half-dozen Houston Astros, they went 13-22. They looked wounded. They looked mortal. They looked really, really bad. George Steinbrenner was going wacky, and Joe Torre's job even seemed to be in the balance. Just as things were starting to look interesting, the Yanks turned things around. Going into July, they had won 15 of their 17 games following that no-no. The Yankees are the Yankees again. Arrrrrgh.
The return of Kevin Brown -- Many figured Brown was finished after struggling with an assortment of injuries and surgeries over the past couple of years. The 38-year-old right-hander had thrown only 180 innings over the past two years, going on the disabled list six times since joining Los Angeles before the 1999 season. But Brown has resurrected his career with a 10-3 first half (to go with a nice 2.24 ERA), which may be good enough for a start in the All-Star Game.
Those head-spinning cycles -- Hitting for the cycle is pretty rare. It's happened only 260 times in major-league history. But Montreal's Brad Wilkerson and Oakland's Eric Byrnes both did it inside of a week. Even weirder, Wilkerson hit his in sequence (single, double, triple, home run) and Byrnes did probably the hardest part of it in his last at-bat (getting a triple when the center fielder slipped). You won't see it done quite like that again anytime soon.
A steady David Wells -- After the brouhaha that followed the release of his tell-tale book earlier this year, the Yankees left-hander has given up only four walks in more than 113 innings pitched. He's well on his way to setting a record for fewest walks per nine innings pitched. And folks said he was out of control.
The downright awfulness of the Tigers -- The question everybody was asking Detroit manager Alan Trammell before the season was "Do you know what you're getting into?" Everyone knew the Tigers were going to be awful. But with 19 wins through June and comparisons to the 1962 Mets popping up almost daily, it's a good bet Trammell had no idea his team would be this bad.
