Interesting Odds and Ends

- Over the last three years, only four American League pitchers have won at least 14 games. Can you name them? The first two are pretty easy, and the last two will surprise you. I have an idea that the surprising ones have that many wins due to the great offense their team has had. Over the last three seasons, their AL rank in runs scored has been #5, #4, and #2.

- The Devil Rays have one of the oddest records in baseball. It's a record of their record, actually. They are the only 100 loss team in Major League history to have a winning record at home. Their home/road records look like this:

Home: 41-40

Road: 20-61

- The Brewers were the only team this year to not do something Travis Hafner did 5 times all by himself. The were unable to hit a grand slam. Perhaps it's due to their team's 26th best on-base percentage, and 24th highest slugging percentage. That seems like a recipe for no grand slams...

- Consider this list of the players with 200 hits in the most consecutive seasons:

8 -- Willie Keeler -- 1894-1901 (219-213-210-239-216-216-204-202)

7 -- Wade Boggs -- 1983-89 (210-203-240-207-200-214-205)

6 -- Ichiro Suzuki -- 2001-06 (242-208-212-262-206-224)

Ichiro has moved from being a controversial Rookie of the Year selection to looking like a Hall of Famer. If he keeps this up for a few more years, he's a first ballot selection. Amazing.

- As I read the paper today, I saw that the AP ran a story about the lack of 20 game winners this year, and how historic it was. Funny, I seem to recall writing about that almost two weeks ago...