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Stephen Strasburg is about to make his third major league start and you can bet that everyone around baseball will have their eyes glued to it much the same way they have the previous two.

Strasburg is getting attention of the home town fans in DC much the way Dontrelle Willis, Tommy Hanson and Rick Porcello did in their rookie seasons. Aside from good gate numbers Strasburg, much like the others mentioned, is also putting it together on the field thusfar.

While one could find comparable Triple-A lineups to those the 21-year-old has faced thus far the fact is Strasburg has been composed on the mound. In his two starts against Cleveland and Pittsburgh he’s picked up two wins to go with a 2.19 ERA and a 0.89 WHIP. Oh yea did I mention he also has 22 strike outs in 12.1 innings.

While outs may be outs there’s no doubt a majority get excited about large strike out numbers on the scoreboard. Thus far the number one pick of 2009 is giving those people what they desire. So are those numbers going to continue tomorrow night?

In Strasburg’s first outing against Pittsburgh he picked up 14 in 7 innings of work. Against Cleveland he picked up 8 in 5.1 innings of work.

On the year the Pirates have a team total of 452 strike outs in 65 games entering Thursday or 6.9 per game. The Indians have struke out 478 times in 64 games or 7.46 per game.

Oddly enough the Chicago White Sox have struck out the fewest among all major league teams. With 317 strike outs in 64 games they have struck out almost 300 times less then the Major League leading Arizona Diamonbacks. On average the White Sox have struck out 4.95 times per game, well below even the numbers of Pittsburgh or Cleveland.

Of course the White Sox also rank near the bottom in just about every other offensive category with the exception of home runs.

So while the White Sox are still not much of an offensive foe they aren’t exactly going to go swinging and missing either. With Jim Thome and Jermaine Dye out of the White Sox lineup it’s easy to understand why the club has taken dips in all the aforementioned stat categories.

Strasburg is expected to have another good outing tomorrow night and considering all the numbers rightfully so. Just don’t expect him to rack up the K’s but if he gives the Nationals another 7 inning outing and just as importantly a win then I think everyone with a curly W on their hat will be happy.

Popularity: 6% [?]

It looks like Bobby Cox may not be the only big name to leave the Atlanta Braves this off season. Chipper Jones may follow. The 38-year-old third basemen has been a mainstay in the organization since being taken as the first overall pick in the 1990 draft.

During Jones’ playing career he was a regular at All Star games and took home the 1999 NL MVP award. Injuries took their toll on his playing time over the last six years as he never topped 150 games played following the 2003 season. Even during that time he still managed a 42 home run season, a NL batting title with a .364 line and led the NL in OPS.

The last two seasons Jones has really struggled on the field even when healthy. His batting average dropped to .264 last season and he’s batting just .228 this year. Predicting when Chipper is going to be in the lineup is no easy task and even when he makes a start there is little guarantee that he will play the full game.

Manager Bobby Cox has kept Chipper in his customary third spot in the order but aside from a still high on base percentage he’s offering little to nothing this year.

Even I, a life long Braves fan who always roots for older players to show they still have it, think things would be better if Chipper would go ahead and hang them up. Part of me even wonders why the delay in doing it at seasons end when he’s pretty much a burden on the club right now.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Jamie Moyer became the third pitcher in baseball history to top 100 wins after the age of 40 when he threw a complete game against San Diego on Saturday.

The numbers may be hard to understand but at 47 years of age Moyer has won 100 games over the last seven and a half seasons or just over 13 a season. Moyer broke in with the Chicago Cubs back in 1986 but it wasn’t until 1996 that he developed into a worthwhile pitcher. Since that 1996 season Moyer has won 205 games. It wasn’t until he was 38 that Moyer finally won 20 games in a season, a feet he would do again at the age of 40.

Moyer was given six runs of support from a surprisingly struggling Phillies offense and it was all he needed.  True to form Moyer allowed seven hits, walked one and struck out one for his sixth win of the season. He had pitched well in two of his last three starts but had taken losses in each.

Popularity: 14% [?]

The New York Yankees headed into Toronto with a five game win streak and promptly lost thanks to two home runs by Jose Bautista.

Jose Bautista?

Yep that Jose Bautista.

The guy without a regular position who leads baseball now with 18 home runs. The same Jose Bautista who had never hit more then 16 in any season or the one who set a career high in OPS last season at .757. The same Jose Bautista who appeared at the big leave level with four different teams in his first  season back in 2004.

Needless to say Baustista is on his way to setting career highs in every offensive category.

In 56 games for the Blue Jays this season Bautista is hitting .259/.380/.627 with 18 homers and 45 RBI.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Jamey Wright’s time in the bullpen for the Cleveland Indians appears to be over. The journeyman reliever who had made a history of winning roster spots out of spring training had a 5.48 ERA, 1.59 WHIP and a 9/9 K/BB ratio over 18 relief appearances with the Tribe.

Wright spent last season as a member of the Kansas City Royals and had previous stops in Texas, Colorado, St. Louis, Milwaukee and San Fransisco. He has a career line of 83-117 with a 5.03 ERA in 438 big league appearances.

There doesn’t appear to be a ton of interest for him on a big league roster but if he chooses to accept a minor league assignment there’s a fair chance some team will call him up for a job in middle relief.  Wright has pitched his best baseball over the last four years of his career since being used strictly as a middle reliever.

Popularity: 8% [?]

It’s the only thing I can even thing to say following the veteran umpires blown call with two outs in the top of the ninth of what to that point had been a perfect game pitched by Detroit pitcher Armando Galarraga.

Upon about a thousand different replays and multiple angels it’s clear Joyce missed the call.

I suppose if there is one positive of this it’s that it may actually usher in instant replay for more then just home run calls.

Then again these guys pride themselves so much of being macho that they will fight that one to the end.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Ken Griffey Jr was one of the biggest faces in baseball during his 22 years in the majors. Known as Junior or “The Kid” he rose to the majors at the ripe age of 19 and finished his career with 630 career home runs. Known for his wide smile early in his career he rose to fame quickly patrolling center-field in the Kingdome.

If baseball players were ranked like super hero’s Ken Grffey Jr was unquestionably one you wanted on your side.

The son of former big leaguer Ken Griffey, he broke into the big leagues when his father was still actively playing. One of baseball’s more memorable moments came when the two hit home runs in the same inning. Throughout the 90’s the younger Griffery was a frequent All-Star and in 1993’s home run Derby he became the first (and thus far only) player to bat a ball off the warehouse past the right field fences in Baltimore.

In 1995 Griffey’s mad dash around the bases in the 11th inning of the ALDS  propelled the Mariners to the ALCS and became an instant baseball memory for fans in Seattle. Griffey won the 1997 AL MVP award after he hit .304 with 56 homers and 147 RBI. He would became synonymous with video game releases and baseball card boxes. After 10-All Star appearances with the Mariners he was traded to Cincinnatti upon request for a list of players most notably Mike Cameron.In his last four seasons with the Mariners he hit 49, 56, 56, and 48 home runs.

After initial success for both Griffey and the Reds it seemed that injuries on Griffery’s behalf and poor perfroamaces from the club were a yearly expectation. When Junior hit just 40 home runs during his 2000 season the media was already ready to claim the decline of him. In eight and a half seasons with the Reds he hit a total of 210 home runs or one more then his last four seasons with Seattle. It was a laundry list of injuries rather then poor performance that hampered Griffey’s time with the Reds but he still averaged nearly 25 home runs a year with an OPS approaching .900. Late in 2007 he was asked if he would ever return to the Mariners to which he replied if the situation was right. This set off a whirlwind of speculation to when he would return to Seattle.

In 2008 he was traded to the Chicago White Sox where he filled the role as veteran/part time outfielder. The highlight of his time with the White Sox undoubtably came when he threw out a runner at the plate of  a one game playoff between the White Sox and Minnesota Twins. The White Sox would win the game 1-0.

Before the 2009 season there was speculation that Griffey Jr was on the verge of signing a one year deal with the Atlanta Braves to play left field. Following an article by David O’Brien of the Atlanta Journal Constitution citing the expected contract the deal was called off and Griffey made his long awaited return to Seattle.

Originally the remarrige between the Mariners and Griffey was expected to last only for the 2009 season.  Griffey appeared in 117 games for the Mariners in 2009 mainly at DH hitting .214 with 19 home runs and 57 RBI. Over the winter the two sides annouced that Griffey would return for the 2010 season, his 22nd in the major leagues. With Griffey contuning to struggle at the plate there were rumors that the Mariners may opt to relase him. Two still unnamed Mariner players spoke out to reporters that Griffey was in the clubhouse sleeping during a game. With just a .184 average and 0 ho0me runs Griffey made the annoucement today that he was ending his time in profesional baseball.

You can stack Ken Griffey Jr’s numbers against anyone in the history of the game. A lifetime .284/.370/.538 hitter he was the premier power hitter in the American League during the 90’s and finished his career with 630 homers and 1836 RBI. Those numbers rank him fifth and fourteenth all time. He had a string of 10 consecutive Gold Glove awards from 1990-1999 and was a 13 time All Star.

Popularity: 12% [?]

For the first month of the season at-bats of Troy Glaus were not a good thing to be on the television in my house. Glaus, a former All-Star, had been signed to play first base for the Braves and provided more hair pulling then hand clapping to start the season.

Glaus had been a notoriously hot hitter to start past seasons so his early struggles only blazzed a fire in me that called for his departure from the club. The sooner, the better.

Well that was April. In May Glaus drove in a career best 28 runs in 28 games. To end the month he went 2-for-4 with a three-run homer off Chad Durbin in a Braves win that restored the team to first place in NL East. A win over the Phillies that completed the Braves transformation from worst to first in two weeks.

On May 1 Troy Glaus was hitting .194 with more strikeouts (21) than hits (14). In May he hit .330, six homers and 28 RBI. Numbers that could  earn him NL player of the month honors.

Mark Bradley of the Atlanta Journal Constitution asked the Obvious question: What changed? Glaus’ answer: “It didn’t feel any different in April. It’s the results that are different.”

I wrote back in Spring Training that the Braves 2010 season rest on the back of Glaus. At that time I didn’t expect Jason Heyward to be so good, and I didn’t expect Chipper Jones to be so average. In April the Braves were a boat losing water quickly without the bat of Glaus clicking, in May the big guy took charge from the fourth spot in the lineup and the Braves reeled off 20 wins. That’s more then Baltimore, Cleveland, Seattle and Houston have had all year.

The Braves who once had a dreadful 9 game losing streak at the end of  April now seek their seventh win in a row as June starts.

Popularity: 6% [?]

One of the easier ways to tell when an organization is nearing the call up of a top prospect is by a similar move of calling up a lesser prospect who figures to stay with the club for some time.

That’s exactly what the Washington Nationals did today. They called up prospect Drew Storen. While Storen projects as a possiable late inning reliever or a closer he’s certainly not Steven Strasburg.

So why is this even news you ask?

Well by caling up Storen the Nationals have started his service clock ahead of that of Strasburg. Ok…

Well the top 17% of players who haven’t played three years become super two players in terms of arbitration so basically what the Nationals have done is exactly what I thought the Braves may try to do this year with Jason Heyward.

In other words they did the same thing the Braves did by calling up Kris Medlen before they called up Tommy Hanson last season.

These types of manuevers, like the Storen one, have become a clear sign of a top prospect about to be called up.

Popularity: 11% [?]

It’s easy to sum up why the Atlanta Braves are on an 8 game slide. They can’t score. The Braves have managed a whopping 13 runs in their 8 losses or an average of 1.62 runs per game. Their pitchers have allowed 4.62 runs per game but if you take out an 8 spot that Philadelphia put up on Thursday it comes down to a respectable 4.12.

On the season the Braves have one player hitting above .250 in Martin Prado. (.361) That could be fine if they could get on base but only 4 players in the everyday lineup have an OBP above .310 and with the exception of Jason Heyward there’s a major power outage in the lineup as well.

Going back to when they were no-hit by Ubaldo Jimenez the Braves have been shutout four times. They have scored more then 3 runs a total of 3 times. Yikes.

With Adam Wainwright on the mound for the Cardinals in series finale thing’s are looking quite bad for the team.

A shakeup is needed but with the players the Braves have and a less then thrilling bench it’s hard to envision much change anytime soon unless some of these veteran bats start to click.

Popularity: 7% [?]