FanHouse

From the Windup is FanHouse's daily, extended look at a particular portion of America's pastime.

A few weeks ago I was approaching a football field, en route to officiating a middle school football game. As I walked through the parking lot, I noticed an older gentleman kneeling down to pick up his keys. Only he was struggling. Every time he'd pick up his keys, he'd drop his sunglasses. Every time he'd pick up his sunglasses, he'd drop his keys, and so on. I noticed about ten people just walk by him without saying a word or even giving him a second look. There was a car waiting on him to clear the way, and the people sitting inside were visibly annoyed with the poor guy. I went over and helped him to his feet, and then leaned over and got his keys and sunglasses for him. It wasn't that I thought I was some sort of hero. I just don't understand why so many people didn't care to help.

He was thankful, but most of all you could tell he was disgusted with himself for needing my help. He did need it, he just didn't want it. I'm glad I was there, because most people couldn't have cared less.

Mark Reynolds of the Arizona Diamondbacks struck out for the 200th time in 2008 yesterday, breaking the previous record of 199, set last year by Ryan Howard (of Philly, not Scranton). Luckily for fans of Reynolds', the milestone K wasn't his last at-bat of the game ... because he was able to add another to his total. The record now stands at 201 strikeouts.

To grasp the enormity of the situation when it comes to Reynolds and his strikeout rate, consider that he only has appeared at the plate 601 times this season. He strikes out just over one third of the time he digs in. You can try to console yourself, if a Diamondbacks fan, with the 28 jacks and 96 RBI if you want ... but Reynolds OPS+ is 98, which means he's a below average hitter. He also has committed 33 errors in the field. You guessed it, that leads the majors ... and it ain't close (Edwin Encarnacion is second with 23).

We should point out that Reynolds himself recognizes the problem:

With ten games to go, Mark Reynolds has struck out 191 times. The major league record, set last season by Ryan Howard, is 199. With Reynolds receiving the night off Thursday, there were questions about whether the manager would start holding him out in order to avoid the dubious distinction. Not the case, as we found out today.

Manager Bob Melvin said he isn't going to manage the rest of the season any differently with Reynolds in hopes of preventing him from breaking the record. Reynolds was out of the lineup Thursday, Melvin said, because he thought Augie Ojeda would give scrappier at-bats against Tim Lincecum.

Sarcastic rants about "scrappiness" aside, I'm not sure I believe Melvin. Lincecum leads the NL in Ks, and it ain't close. He currently houses a 46 punch-out lead on his closest competitor (Edinson Volquez). That had a four-strikeout night written all over it for Reynolds. C'mon Melvin, why deprive his fans -- of which I most certainly am one -- of that night?

Moving forward, though, Reynolds should be able to accomplish the infamous feat of being the first person to whiff 200 times in one season. Nine times in 10 games? Puh-leez.

He could do that with his eyes open.

From the Windup is FanHouse's daily, extended look at a particular portion of America's pastime.

One Cubs-related drought ended in 2008, so why not another?

Yeah, yeah ... I know. Lame. I couldn't resist.

Still, Carlos Zambrano threw a no-hitter on Sunday. The Cubs hadn't had one since 1972, when Milt Pappas did it. If we can sift through the emotions involved with such an exciting circumstance -- and a weird one, considering the game was full of Cubs fans at Miller Park even though it was an Astros home game -- there was something extremely significant about this outing ... even if Darin Erstad had dribbled a grounder through a hole in that last at-bat. What was it?

Big Z is back.

The burly right-hander anchors the Cubs rotation. He is the heart and soul of the team from an emotional leader standpoint. The team is now 19-9 in his starts. So he's the staff ace, and we all knew that. The problem was, the Cubs were on the verge of hitting the panic button with Big Z. He hadn't started a game since September 2. In his five previous starts before the no-no, dating back to August 9th, he was quite poor. In 26 2/3 innings, the ERA was 8.10. The 33 hits and 17 walks made the WHIP dangerously close to 2.00.

When they rescheduled two games of the Astros/Cubs series for Milwaukee, there was some grumbling that those games would be much more like home games for the visiting Cubs than the temporarily displaced Astros. That's a big deal with the Astros in the heat of a wild-card race and the Cubs having the NL Central all but locked up. Apparently, it was a huge deal because the weary Astros were just no-hit by Carlos Zambrano in front of a very Cub-friendly crowd at Miller Park.

It's certainly a sign that Zambrano's over his apparent shoulder problems that made go 12 days between starts. Tonight he only allowed two base runners, a walk to Michael Bourn in the fourth and a HBP to Hunter Pence in the fifth, en route to his ten strikeout masterpiece. The final out was a flailing strikeout of Darin Erstad quickly followed by a huge celebration on the mound with his teammates.

Perhaps most importantly, the 5-0 win gives the Cubs a seven game lead in the NL Central with 15 games to go. If you're counting at home, that's a magic number of eight. All of the worries about Zambrano's health are out the window and he only took 110 pitches to get through his no-no tonight. With the Brewers collapsing, is there anyone that wants to see this Cub team in the playoffs?

Francisco Rodriguez is, as our own Prez noted recently, going to be very rich after this season. That is, of course, assuming his arm doesn't fall off between now and whenever the Angels finish their season. Actually, I kid -- he's on pace for less innings than in previous years, although he's never had a major injury.

Regardless, neither injury nor a new team nor a lack of arm muscles will be able to take away (at least until next year, I suppose) Rodriguez' single season saves record, which he now holds all to his lonesome.

With fans on their feet, Rodriguez struck out Raul Ibanez swinging with two on for the final out. K-Rod immediately lifted his arms and looked skyward in his traditional salute to his late grandfather, then sank to his knees.

The Angels' No. 57 had a new number: 58.

[...]"It's unbelievable," Rodriguez said. "Finally I did it.

"It's been an amazing year," he said, praising his fellow relievers. "Without them I couldn't have done this."

Truer words have never been spoken -- the very nature of the save statistic depends on getting a ton of help from the rest of your team, much of it lucky. That's not take away from K-Rod's record breaking season, but at least the guy knows it.

The inevitable finally happened, as Francisco Rodriguez has just tied the single season saves record with his 57th save against the Seattle Mariners. Bobby Thigpen had held the saves record alone since 1990, and since then John Smoltz and Eric Gagne had come close in 2002 and 2003, but now Rodriguez has caught Thigpen and is getting ready to pass him with about two and a half weeks to go.

It was a strange save in that the Angels were up 7-0 in the eighth inning, and Frankie was seemingly headed for a rest tonight. But Justin Speier gave up three in the eighth, and Scot Shields let a couple of runners on in the ninth to give Rodriguez the save opportunity. And after inducing Ichiro Suzuki into a double play, the task seemed easy. But K-Rod still had to endure a couple of base hits (the first of which brought in a run) before getting Raul Ibanez to ground out to first to gain a seat at Thigpen's table.

Stat oddity: Rodriguez's 57th save came against the Mariners ... who have 57 wins.

With only 16 home runs this season, the 2008 season hasn't been the most productive year for Gary Sheffield. In fact, his 2008 total is on pace to be his lowest since 1993 (well, in a season he stayed healthy anyway) when he hit 20 for the Padres and Marlins. It also leaves Gary four homers shy of 500 in his career, so odds are he's going to have to wait until 2009 to get there.

Still, he did make Major League history on Monday night. It wasn't a personal milestone, but it has to feel pretty cool to know that you just hit the 250,000th home run in MLB history.

When Sheffield went deep off Oakland starter Gio Gonzalez in the second inning of Monday's 14-8 Tigers victory, he hit the 250,000th home run in big league history. The statistic comes courtesy of Sean Forman at Baseball-Reference.com, which has been conducting a countdown toward the milestone event on his site with research from David Vincent with the Society for American Baseball Research.

No doubt the steroids boom of the 90's and this decade helped the number along. MLB's 100,000th homer came in 1970, and it took 29 years for the total to hit 200,000 back in 1999. Since then the pace has doubled as 50,000 homers have been hit in the nine seasons since.

Five years ago, Houston native Mark Saccomanno was the 23rd round draft pick of the Astros. For five years, he's slowly crawled through the minors, taking two tours of duty in both Double-A and Triple-A. Earlier today, he got called up to the big leagues for the first time at the age of 28, finally getting the chance to play for his hometown team.

In the fifth inning tonight, he was asked to pinch-hit against Ian Snell for his major league debut. He didn't waste any time, as he promptly hammered the first pitch he saw the other way for a solo home run to break a 0-0 tie in the fifth inning of tonight's eventual 4-3 Astros win. According to the Astros' team site, he's the 24th (or 25th, the story is a bit confusingly worded) player to begin his career in such a fashion and the first to do it since Kevin Kouzmanoff in 2006.

Suddenly, Saccomanno is a long way from a guy who looked like a career minor-leaguer when this season started. His previous career highlight was probably playing for Italy in the WBC, now he's got a home run on the first big league pitch he saw to add to the memory bank. Even if he doesn't stick with the Astros, that's one hell of a memory he made for himself tonight.

Maybe you glanced at the box scores this afternoon and saw the Giants beat the Pirates 11-6. Chances are good that if you looked at a scoreboard, you didn't even think twice about that result. But there was something special that happened this afternoon in San Francisco. It wasn't the Giants ten-run third inning that made the game special. Instead, it was the number in the Pirates' loss column when the game ended: 82.

With today's loss, the Pirates clinched a losing season. That seems unimportant because the Pirates do that every year, but that's EXACTLY why it is important. With this loss today, the Pirates clinched their sixteenth consecutive losing season, tying the record for an American sports franchise set by the 1933-1948 Philadelphia Phillies, a team so bad that they changed their name to the Blue Jays for two years in the middle of the streak.

The tough news for Pirates' fans is that there's a very good chance that while their new front office works on rebuilding the minor league system, losing season number 17 is looming pretty large right now. Few people under the age of 20 remember the Pirates being any good, and starting in October, teenagers will get driver's permits without ever having been alive during a time that the Pirates were any good. That's depressing.