Tigers 5, @Rays 2: Huzzah! For the AL strikeout leader finally got his ERA below 5! It’s been a slow, careful descent for Max Scherzer, who gave up 7 runs in 2.2 IP in his first start. Austin Jackson and Miguel Cabrera each rapped out 4 hits, and all 3 Detroit relievers pitched a scoreless inning, not an everyday event for the team ranked 11th in AL bullpen ERA. James Shields allowed 14 hits, tying a Tampa club record done thrice before (most lately by Edwin Jackson, who coincidentally got knocked around last night).

• Detroit is the only team that has not been blanked in 2012. Their scoring streak of 144 games is the longest since 2001.
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@Yankees 5, Indians 4: On a day that left a big hole in the pinstriped rotation, Freddy Garcia and Robinson Cano made sure that the Wins column, at least, got filled. Garcia cleaned up the last of a mess made by 3 pitchers in the 5th, when Cleveland grabbed the lead, and retired all 7 men he faced through the 7th. Cano got the lead back with his 10th June HR, a 2-run drive in the 6th on a 1-and-2 pitch from Ubaldo Jimenez.

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Mets 17, @Cubs 1: All the Mets’ runs were batted in by just 4 men, distributed 4, 4, 4 and 5. Never before did the Mets have more than 2 players with 4+ RBI in a game, and just once had 4 players with 3+ RBI.

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Of major league history’s five longest hit streaks (that is, sequences of consecutive games with at least one hit), three have come with the hitter hitting zero homers through the entire streak.

The five longest hit streaks in the majors have been:
Joe DiMaggio (1941), 56 games, 15 homers
Willie Keeler (1896-97), 45 games, 0 home runs
Pete Rose (1978), 44 games, 0 homers
Bill Dahlen (1894), 42 games, 4 home runs
George Sisler (1922), 41 games, 0 home runs

More on homerless hit streaks after the jump. Continue reading →

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@Reds 4, Brewers 3: While Bronson Arroyo was holding Milwaukee hitless through 7, winless Marco Estrada was racking up 12 strikeouts through 6 innings. But Estrada was bitten again by his pet varmint, the gopher — a 3-run shot by Jay Bruce in Estrada’s final stanza. It was Bruce’s 3rd HR (and second 3-run job) in 11 ABs off Estrada, who has now allowed 10 HRs in 42 IP. His rate of 2.14 HR/9 IP is so high that a 1-HR stint actually lowered his average, but it’s still the highest among those with at least 40 IP.

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As if crafting the first double-complete-game in almost a calendar year wasn’t enough, Luke Hochevar and Alex Cobb enhanced the oddity by taking opposite paths to that end: no runs, 7 singles, 8 Ks for Luke; 8 runs, 13 hits, 1 K for Alex. It was the first CG since 1998-07-05 allowing that many runs, and the first with that many hits since 2010-06-30. For Hochevar, it was his 2nd shutout and 4th CG in 111 career starts, and his first-ever consecutive scoreless starts. Both hurlers used 113 pitches, and Cobb (no walks; first CG) threw one more strike than Hochevar (74-73).

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In Monday’s action, Carlos Ruiz was a major contributor to the Phillies attack in an 8-3 romp over the Pirates, going 3 for 5 with 3 runs scored and a stolen base. That performance pushed Ruiz’s batting average back above the .350 mark, just 4 points behind current NL leader David Wright.

So far this year, Ruiz is having one of the best seasons ever for catchers aged 33 or older. Ruiz was last batting below .300 on Apr 27 and, since racing past .350 with a 4 for 5 game on May 17, has been above the .350 mark on all but 5 days, and never lower than .344. Yet, it seems hardly anyone outside Philly has noticed.

After the break, I’ll take a closer look on what is so far a quite remarkable season.

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Sunday

@Rangers 4, Rockies 2: An otherwise humdrum Colorado loss (their 14th in 17 games) was jazzed up by a 9th-inning rally that self-destructed in a baserunning/fielding blooper reel with compound gaffes by both sides. It’s not often you get one play that can illustrate four separate Little League teaching points, but here we go: Marco Scutaro, (1) Always watch the runner ahead of you, and (2) Never give yourself up until the umpire says you’re out; and as for you, Mike Napoli, (3) Don’t throw the ball until the runner fully commits towards a base, and you, Michael Young, (4) Don’t chase a runner towards the next base, and especially not the trail runner. What a sorry display by both sides; it’s a shame either team had to come out ahead.

• Oh, yeah — that comic rundown registered as the game’s top play on the WPA scale.
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On June 6th 2007, just over five years ago, I wrote a short blog entry titled “A-rod’s 9th inning performance“. That was my first contribution to the now-defunct Baseball-Reference.com blog.

More than 2,000 posts later (between the B-R blog, the temporary home of High  Heat Stats over at Blogspot, and its permanent home right here) I have decided to hang it up and retire from baseball writing. Even as I write that–it’s not a full retirement. See below for more information.

Over the last 5 years, I’ve gotten to do some really fun things. Aside from working with the great folks who run Sports Reference (Sean and Neil mainly) and the numerous fantastic writers I’ve rubbed shoulders with for each blog, I’ve had the opportunity to write pieces for the New York Times, USA Today’s baseball preview issue, and appear on a local ESPN radio affiliate. I got to visit MLB Network’s headquarters and studios.

Perhaps the thing that has brought me the most joy is the gradual development of a loyal audience. My fellow writers each deserve as much credit for that as I do. If you go back and look at that A-rod post, it received zero user comments. Most of the posts from the first couple of years received fewer than 5 comments, and more often than not, it was Raphy or me commenting on each other’s posts. Flash forward, and now most posts on this blog get quite a few responses, with just about all of them containing some useful information or opinion. That’s an amazing and wonderful thing. And while I love sharing this space with so many like-minded people, it’s actually our differences that make this place so great. (After all, we can agree on how much Joe Carter sucks for only so long…)

Going forward:

• This blog will remain open and all the other authors will continue to publish on whatever schedule they choose. I will keep footing the bill to keep the blog open even though we don’t get nearly enough in the way of donations to cover costs or pay our writers.
• You can still reach me at my email addressed (posted in the right sidebar) for any issues–admin, contributions, etc.
• I will be keeping a Twitter presence (@HighHeatStats) although at a lower volume than before. You can still expect to see daily tweets there.
• I will finish off the Mount Rushmore post series, so those are still coming and will be published here.
• I will continue to write the occasional odd post, but I don’t expect that to be even as often as 1 post per week.
• I will also continue to do some outside work with other publications, as well as book reviews. I remain available to do guest spots in print and live media.

So this isn’t really goodbye. I’m just taking myself out of the lineup and moving to the end of the bench. I’ll be like Pete Rose as a player-manager, overseeing things and on rare occasions inserting myself into the action…only I have a much better haircut, and I don’t plan to bet on any of the action here.