Baseball

Through Sunday 53 of the 74 outs he had gotten were by groundout or strikeout, opponents were hitting .160 against him, and he'd held righthanded batters to a .136 average. The 17 hitters he'd faced with runners in scoring position had gotten only one hit, a single by the Angels' Adam Kennedy on April 9. "He's one of the best ground ball pitchers in the game, so it usually takes three hits to score a run off him," says Kerrigan. "Combine that with few walks [five in 22? innings], and it's tough to score."

Lowe's sinkerball style also helps keep his extended outings from limiting his availability. Ground ball outs generally mean lower pitch counts, and he'd thrown an economical average of 3.3 pitches per batter faced. "Plus my arm bounces back faster than guys who throw a lot of splitters and sliders," says Lowe, who had pitched on consecutive days three times this season. "I'll never say I'm not ready to pitch."

Celebration Time
Marlins Not Letting It Slide

Pitchers aren't winning many battles these days, so a little celebration when they do might be understandable. Well, not to the Marlins. Florida centerfielder Preston Wilson, who pumped his fists and danced around the bases after his grand slam off the Mets' Armando Benitez on May 6—a direct response, he says, to Benitez's emotional displays after strikeouts—cited the Astros' Jose Lima, the Dodgers' Carlos Perez and the Expos' Ugueth Urbina as other pitchers he wouldn't mind showing up.

Wilson has the support of his teammates. "If Lima says anything," says Marlins leftfielder Cliff Floyd, "I'll send over the tape of him doing the Electric Slide after he struck me out last year."

Trachsel Takes Off
What Beats a Pair of Aces?

Even if Devil Rays righthander Steve Trachsel hadn't outdueled aces Pedro Martinez and Orlando Hernandez to earn the wins, his back-to-back 1-0 victories over the Red Sox and Yankees would have been remarkable. Trachsel, whose 18 losses for the Cubs last year were the most in the majors, is the first American League pitcher since Bert Blyleven in 1976 to win consecutive 1-0 games, and he carried a 17-inning scoreless streak into his scheduled start against the Rangers on Tuesday. So, Trachsel was asked last weekend, what has come over him? "Why does something have to have come over me?" he said. "I don't have a new pitch. I'm not doing anything different."

Trachsel's recent dominance had its roots in last season. Though he went 8-18 in 1999, he finished strong, winning four of his final seven starts. "Last August I decided not to put too much pressure on myself," said Trachsel, who began the '99 season as the Cubs' ace after going 15-8 in '98. In Trachsel's 34 starts last year, Chicago averaged 4.1 runs, the third-worst run support in the National League. "I decided to trust my stuff."

That trust is paying off. Trachsel befuddled Boston and New York hitters with a game plan straight out of Pitching 101, spotting his modest fastball well on both sides of the plate and getting ahead in the count He threw first-pitch strikes to 39 of the 60 batters he faced in the two whitewashes. "Steve's not overpowering, so he often falls into a rut of throwing a lot of breaking balls," says Tampa Bay catcher John Flaherty. 'When he pitches off his fastball, the other stuff looks that much better."

Mixing that other stuff—curveballs, splitters, changeups and sinkers—around the fastball, Trachsel struck out 11, walked three and gave up only three singles in a complete game against Martinez on May 6. Against Hernandez five days later he allowed three hits and struck out five in seven innings. Trachsel became the first visiting pitcher to win 1-0 games at Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium in the same season.