Stark's Ravings...

Jayson Stark churned out his weekly useless info column, and he details some of the inneptitude of the Tigers, which is kinda fun to look at, as long as you're not a Tiger. The comparisons with the 1962 Mets aren't really fair...to the Mets. In fact, calling this team 'bad' is almost an insult to bad teams. They may have to make up a new word to describe how horrendous the Tigers are, if they keep playing like this. Astonishingly, their pitching is not completely awful: The team's 4.53 ERA is 9th in the AL and 20th in the majors, better than a third of all the teams.

It's their offense that's really killed them: the entire team is hitting only .202 coming into tonight, and has scored fewer than three runs per game.

Stark makes a comparison with the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, which is also a fun team to look at, but he says that their record, "...an almost hilarious 20-134, thanks to kind of a tough finish (i.e., 1-40)." Actually, it's a bit more involved than that, and I'm not sure Jayson realizes it. This isn't the first time he's mentioned this Spiders team, and he's never really explained why they were so bad, so maybe I will, a little. Or maybe not: you can read where I explained it here: In a response to a previous Stark post. Only you should know that I was wrong: The Cleveland Owners were the ones who purchased the St. Louis franchise, not the other way around.

Stark also discusses Kevin Millwood's no hitter (a little late, dontcha think?), which I already did, so I won't get into that, except for:

Kevin Millwood and Jim Thome demonstrate 

the Phillies' new calisthenics program.

Cy Young vs. Cy Old

In a relatively unrelated note (F#)...

Last week's matchup of 2001 CYA winner Roger Clemens and 2002 CYA winner Barry Zito did not disappoint, providing a great pitchers' duel. I found it amusing that in the post game interviews, when asked what he thought of Zito, Yanks' Manager Joe Torre said, "He really gonna be something special when he grows up a little..."

Umm...excuse me? Isn't this the guy who just blanked your team for eight innings? Isn't this the guy whom the clueless sportswriters dubbed the best pitcher in the Al last season? What's left to grow up? The guy's pretty damn special now. Silly Joe.