MLB News and Notes

Working as a stringer for MLB.com tonight at the Royals/Rangers game. A few notes while I wait for the game to start...

• Tony Graffanino of the Royals will have season-ending surgery on his right rotator cuff.
• After reading The Numbers Game by Alan Schwarz, thumbing through The Great American Stat Book, 1987, and looking at the retrosheet play-by-play data I finally realized that the scoring system I use for MLB.com and even the paper scoresheet I keep during the game are based on the coding system developed for Project Scoresheet, the volunteer play-by-play coding effort started by Bill James, in the late 1980s. Schwarz includes the interesting history of the break between Project Scoresheet and Stats, Inc.
• Bug Selig's contract was extended through 2009. The MLB press release quotes George Will - "The office of Comissioner of Baseball is today and will ever be the lengthening shadow of Bud Selig...Baseball's golden age coincides with Bud Selig's Commissionership in no small measure because of the service he has rendered to the sport." Their press release talks about the revenue increases since 1992, the collective bargaining agreement of 2002, franchise values, and even MLB Advanced Media - for which I work, among over a dozen other accomplishments.
• The Cubs are now first in homeruns in the NL with 170 and last in walks with 338 which adds up to a team that has been shut out 9 times and is the bottom half in run scoring in the league (526). The Cubs still lead the league with 44% of their runs coming on homeruns. At least Dusty finally started batting Derrek Lee higher in the order. After the Cubs finish playing the Marlins in the next week or so they won't face another team over .500 the rest of the season. The wild card is theirs to lose.
• The Royals are now last in the AL in runs scored with 502 runs scored and are second to last in the league in runs allowed with 656, last in strikeouts by pitchers, and also last in errors with 103.
• David DeJesus is 25 for 64 (.391) since July 30. Since his 1 for 23 to start the season he's hitting .298.
• The Royals have used 53 players this season, tying their club record set just last year
• The Royals have had better pitching of late getting 10 quality starts in their last 14 games. They're still only 6-8 in those games.
• The Royals are 37-8 when entering the 9th inning with a lead. Affeldt will be back with the Royals tomorrow.
• Allard Baird continues to make good deals. He picked up Matt Kinney from the Brewers last week. I'm planning on writing a post that details how he's done a nice job of acquiring talent this season (Huber, Kinney, Nunez, Mateo, Bautista, Teahan, Buck, Wood). Speaking of Wood he's pitching tonight and has looked good in his last two starts, 13 2/3, 4 ER, 2 walks. Actually, seven of his last eight starts have been good although he's picked up only 1 win in that span (his run support has been low even for the Royals at 3.4 runs/start).