Things that make you go hmmmm...

I heard on a sports talk radio show earlier this afternoon that this was the year of the pitcher. They were comparing what is happening this season to 1968 when Bob Gibson and Denny McLain dominated baseball. While there are a lot of big name sluggers that are struggling, the same could be said for some big name pitchers. As of this afternoon, May 6th, you could make up an all-star team with batters hitting at or below the Mendoza line:

C- Ramon Hernandez
DH- Jason Giambi
1B- Ryan Howard
2B- Robinson Cano
SS- Troy Tulowitzki
3B- Richie Weeks (I know he plays mostly 2B now, so you could substitute Casey Blake hitting .202 and make the same point)
LF- Scott Hairston
CF- Andruw Jones
RF- Jose Guillen

Not too shabby right?

Well some big name pitchers are doing poorly too. Let’s take a look at pitchers that have an ERA above 6.00. How about a starting rotation of Justin Verlander, CC Sabathia, Barry Zito, Kenny Rogers and Bronson Arroyo? What about a bullpen of JJ Putz, Jason Isringhausen, and Trevor Hoffman?

You put the salaries of the players listed above and it would total approximately $130 million for 17 players. I even left out the likes of Eric Gagne who nobody thought was going to be successful anyway (except the Brewers) and if I had written this posting a week ago I could have included the likes of Big Papi, David Ortiz.

For some reason there are a large number of big name players having a horrible first month of the season. My guess is that numbers will even out for the most part over the course of the season, but being the season after the Mitchell report, is anyone else wondering???