With all due respect to Brandon Webb and John Smoltz, Twins starter Johan Santana came up with the weekend’s hottest pitching line (8 IP, 2 hits, no walks, a club record 17 K’s) in Minnesota’s 1-0 win over Texas. I’m sure this been said before, but if Barry Zito can command $126 million, perhaps Carl Pohlad’s best hope of retaining Santana in 2009 would be making the hurler a 50/50 partner in the franchise.
There’s no truth to the rumor Anthony Young is coming out of retirement to replace Chris Capuano in the Brewers’ rotation.
Carlos Beltran had a pair of HR’s (one of ’em off Nats starter Jon Rauch Rumble) and 4 RBI’s in the Mets’ 8-2 throttling of Washington earlier today, while Shawn Green and Marlon Anderson each drove in a couple of runs in New York’s 4 run eighth inning. The stats say that Anderson has fewer RBI’s (14) than Green (34) this season, but the latter is the everyday player who just went an entire two weeks without a run batted in.
In the event Buddy Carlye ever pitches to Micah Owings again, he might wanna consider dusting his counterpart off. On the subject of pitching inside, the following comes from the Boston Herald’s Steve Buckley last Friday.
For years, former California Angels righthander Jack Hamilton has dismissed the theory that his pitch that hit Tony Conigliaro on August 18, 1967 was a spitball. But one of Hamilton’s own teammates, shortstop Jim Fregosi, has a differing view.
“To me, it looked like it could have been a spitball,” said Fregosi, now a scout with the Atlanta Braves. “The way the ball rode in on Conigliaro, I thought it was a spitter.”
Hamilton, who has admitted he sometimes threw the illegal pitch during his professional career, adamantly denies the suggestion.
“I liked Jim and liked playing with him, but he wouldn’t know what I was throwing, said Hamilton. “I only threw a spitter once in a great while, when nothing else was working. I was pitching pretty good that night.”
“It was a fastball,” said Rodgers, who, like Fregosi, later managed the Angels. “The only people who would know for sure if it was a spitball are the pitcher and me. Everyone else would be guessing. And I’m telling you, it was not a spitball. It was just a fastball that rode in on Tony.”
“If you’re asking me if Jack Hamilton threw a spitball from time to time, yes, he did. But I caught a lot of guys who threw spitballs on occasion. I caught Lew Burdette at the end of his career, and he threw a spitter on occasion. George Brunet threw a spitter on occasion. Ryne Duren tried throwing a spitter, and what a disaster that was.”