FanHouse AbrahamNunez

I have no statistical metric to back up the following assertion but I believe Abraham Nunez is the best fielding third baseman in the history of baseball. Actually, that's not true, I do have a statistical metric to back that up. It's just that the metric I'll be using has nothing to do with his skill at nabbing balls roped down the foul line or with charging slow rollers and gunning fleet runners at first.

No, it's our old friend OPS+ that I'll be using as my evidence. Over parts of 12 seasons, now that he's been called up by the Mets, Nunez has posted a career OPS+ of 62, well below the league average figure of 100. For a guy to keep getting chances at the big league level despite hitting like the worst kid on a little league team, his glove simply must be so much better than everyone else that his bat just doesn't matter.

I'm afraid no one is that good with the glove, though. The guy who replaced Nunez with the Phillies, Pedro Feliz, probably comes closest but even he provides some power to go with his sparkling glove in balance of his otherwise putrid offensive skills. How Nunez continues to get jobs in the big leagues, he was hitting .133 in AAA, is one of the great mysteries of modern baseball.

In '07, "Who's on Third, I Don't Know" was more than just an Abbott and Costello routine in Philadelphia, but a way of life as Greg Dobbs, Wes Helms, and Abraham Nunez manned third base for the Phillies. Today, they hope that former Giant Pedro Feliz will provide the answer to the age old question, as the Phillies have signed him to a two-year, $8.5 million dollar deal.

Feliz batted .253 with 20 homers and 72 RBIs for San Francisco last season. He's an upgrade over the trio of Greg Dobbs, Wes Helms and Abraham Nunez. Philadelphia's third basemen batted .255 with 11 homers and 76 RBIs last year. Dobbs and Helms remain on the roster.

Feliz had spent his entire eight-year career with the Giants. He's been a full-time starter since 2004, averaging 21 homers and 84 RBIs. Feliz, who turns 33 on April 27, is a career .252 hitter with a .288 on-base percentage.

How much of an upgrade is this? The Phillies can hope that the change in home parks from 3-Com in San Francisco to the shoebox known as Citizens Bank will help those power numbers along. And Feliz, with only 11 errors last season should provide an upgrade in the field from the trip of Helms, Dobbs, and Nunez (25 errors between them in '07). But a .288 career on-base percentage tells me that if he can't work a walk in San Francisco, he can't take a walk in Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles, or the North Pole.

On Tuesday, we saw the beginnings of hate between the Phillies and the Marlins. There was Scott Olsen yelling at Chase Utley, and there was Utley and Cole Hamels telling us how many people hated Olsen.

Wednesday night, act II, saw three Marlins get hit by pitches. And after Thursday night, the hate has been kicked up another notch, thanks to Dontrelle Willis and Jon Lieber.

In the first inning of Thursday's 85-minute rain-delayed game, Marlins catcher Miguel Olivo caught Abraham Nunez with a right to the jaw on the follow through of a throw to second base. Nunez swung and missed, and his momentum took him in front of the plate and in the path of Olivo's concussion-inducing haymaker.

In the second inning, Aaron Boone got hit by a pitch for the second straight game. Three batters later, Lieber inexplicably threw a pitch behind Willis that just missed his backside. "The guy hasn't hit anybody the whole year and he didn't hit anybody the rest of the game," Willis said. "I have to defend myself...I'm not going to sit down and back down from anything."

Willis returned the favor in the fourth, throwing a pitch well behind Lieber. After the inning ended, Willis began jawing at the Phillies dugout. Said Phillies catcher Rod Barajas: "There's no need for you to walk off the field and taunt the other dugout. It's something you don't do in this game and tempers are going to flare when that happens."

Both teams spilled onto the infield between home and third base, but it appeared the situation would defuse quickly. The more talking that went on, the closer the two groups got and some shoving ensued. Willis, Olsen and Mitre were among those who had to be restrained. Nobody was ejected and game resumed without further incident.

Usually, when an incident happens such as Olsen yelling at Utley, everyone expects something to happen the next game. Almost always, that next level of aggression never happens and everyone goes home disappointed. Well this time, not only did we get two straight games with tensions, we got three. And that makes this rivalry official. Will something else happen the next time these two rivals meet? Don't bet on it ... they'll have until August 7th to cool down for their next meeting.

Previously on the Fanhouse:
Who hates Scott Olsen? Everyone hates Scott Olsen.

Reds broadcaster Jeff Brantley mentioned during tonight's Phillies/Reds game that your chance of witnessing a triple play on a grounder to third base is about .0006%. This must mean that if you were at the Great American Ballpark on Saturday night, you should probably go ahead and play powerball.

David Ross, who is having a tough season at the dish, came up in the bottom of the fifth inning with runners on first and second with nobody out. When his turn at bat was done, it was already the top of the sixth as he grounded into the aforementioned rare 5-4-3 triple play during the Phillies 4-1 victory (Abraham Nunez, to Chase Utley, to Wes Helms).

Charlie Manuel shook up the lineup, batting Shane Victorino in the leadoff spot, and dropping Jimmy Rollins down to the third hole. It worked as the Phillies opened up the game with a two spot, then got some insurance with solo home runs from cleanup hitter Chase Utley (in the continued absence of Ryan Howard), and Aaron Rowand.

But let's face it: Manuel could draw the lineup out of a hat as long as Cole Hamels pitches like he did tonight, striking out 15 batters in his first ever complete game victory, striking out every lineup spot at least once. Hamels fell one strikeout shy of the Phillies' club record for a lefthander, a record held by none other than Steve Carlton. Of Hamels' 115 pitches, 82 were strikes. The young man is filthy.