No-no nonsense and a busted DH

For those of you who missed it, the Dodgers beat the Angels in interleague play this weekend without getting a hit. Not one.

How did they manage that? Well, you can read the above link or I can give you the quick recap. In the fifth inning of an until-then scoreless game, Matt Kemp came to bat for the Dodgers. He hit a little dinker toward first base that Angels pitcher Jerod Weaver mishandled and failed to get to first base on time. It was ruled an error, not a hit.

Kemp proceeded to steal second on the next at-bat, and when the catcher's throw found itself in centerfield instead of second base, Kemp rounded the corner and took third as well. At that point, with less than two outs, all that was needed was for Blake DeWitt to hit a sac fly to drive Kemp in. The Dodgers maintained the shutout for the 1-0 win.

Well the silver lining for the Angels staff is that they get credit for a no-hitter, right? After all, Major League rules do consider a game a no-hitter for an entire staff despite the starting pitcher not throwing a complete game. Oh wait. No no-no? That's right. As the Dodgers were the home team, in these unusual circumstances they didn't have to bat the bottom of the ninth, and therefore the game couldn't be ruled a no-hitter for the Angels staff. Talk about bad luck.



In other baseball news, Gary Sheffield is back in the lineup for the Detroit Tigers. Fanfare? Anyone?

I can't say I expected (or hoped for) any considering the performance this season by the $13 million designated hitter. He's hitting .219 on the season with an OPS of .698. "But that's not fair!" you might say. "He was injured through much of May and June, and he hit two home runs in his first few games back in the lineup!"

Yes, I'll give him his due respect. This month he's managed to put together an impressive .250 batting average with two dingers.

Forgive me if I'm not exactly wetting myself with excitement, especially considering those numbers are pretty much on-par with third-year infielder Ryan Raburn. Raburn is hitting .267 this month, .250 over his last six games (the same number that Sheffield's played since his return) with two homers to his own credit. He's also batting .224 on the season with an OPS of .719. Oh, he's also making less than $400,000 -- roughly 3% of Sheffield's current salary.

Let's also compare the numbers to a deserving candidate for the full-time DH position, Marcus Thames. His .280 batting average was tempered to a degree by a bad April -- something that we cannot begrudge any one individual Tiger -- in which he only hit .200, and he's batting .286 this month with a 1.128 OPS and he's gone yard nine times (14 this season). (Note: It has occured to me that hits other than HRs are important, but A: this is the American League we're talking about, and B: Sheffield did a fantastic job in his minor league stint of showing us that he doesn't exactly stack up with Ichiro in terms of getting on base without slugging the ball into the stands.)

Now, I can scream until I'm blue in the face, but the Tigers are winning. They just finished sweeping the Rockies and have won six straight series. But I'm of the "If it ain't broke..." mentality. The team was playing great without Sheffield. Younger players have been contributing in big ways. It does occur to me that with Magglio Ordonez on the 15-day DL (joining fielding sensation, if not slightly batting-inept, Brandon Inge) the Tigers need to ensure a strong, experienced presence in the lineup -- but I'm not really buying it too much.

Update: Ironically, not longer after I wrote this post I was perusing a softball blog for which an author wrote an interesting article about why batting states are pretty useless. While it was about softball, the fundamentals and the basic argument still hold. As the author played a hell of a lot more baseball than I ever have and is a softball coach, I will defer to that opinion. That being said, I still maintain that Sheffield is not worth $13M/year.