ESPN Jayson Stark Blog

Once again, the buffet line is open here at the Generic Sandwich Awards deli. But before we hand out this week's awards, let's start with the latest …

Munchies of the Week

• Loyal reader Dane Shaffer fired off the best question of 2009: Three different Rays (Jason Bartlett, Carlos Pena and Evan Longoria) lead the triple-crown categories in the AL. So has any team ever had three different players do that over a full season? Well, I had to know. So after flipping through way too many pages of my baseball encyclopedia, I can report that the last team to do that was the 1902 Pirates. Honus Wagner won the RBI title. Tommy Leach won the home run title (with SIX). And Ginger Beaumont won the batting title. Who knew!

• It's always a good idea to shoot for a milestone against those hospitable Washington Nationals. On Sunday, they were the victim of Jamie Moyer's 250th career win. Four days later, they were on the wrong end of Randy Johnson's 300th. So how rare is that? Glad you asked. If we use 200 wins as the official milestone cutoff, the last team to be victimized for two milestones (200, 250 or 300) in the same season was Rob Deer's 1990 Brewers (Nolan Ryan's 300th, Frank Tanana's 200th). But if we raise the cutoff to 250, the Elias Sports Bureau reports, the Nationals become the first team to do anything like this twice in one year since Pop Corkhill's 1891 Pirates helped Old Hoss Radbourn win his 300th and John Clarkson win his 250th. Hard to believe, folks.

• Another 300th-win nugget from Elias: Randy Johnson was just the third pitcher in the past 50 years to take a no-hitter into the fifth inning in his 300th win. The other two: Warren Spahn in 1961 and Phil Niekro in 1985.

• Gotta love that Trevor Hoffman. He ripped off a streak of 11 straight saves in which he didn't allow either a walk or a run. It was only the fourth no-walk, no-run streak that long in the past 20 seasons. The others: Dennis Eckersley (11 games) in 1992, Troy Percival (11 games) in 1996 and Todd Jones (15 games) in 2005.

• Ryan Howard has hit two grand slams this season off the same pitcher: Washington's Shairon Martis. Loyal reader Chris Rosenberg wondered how unusual that is? Eh, pretty darned unusual. The only other times that's happened in the division-play era: Steve Garvey off Clay Carroll in 1977, Fernando Tatis off Chan Ho Park (in the same INNING) in 1999 and Jermaine Dye off Ryan Rupe in 2000.

• The amazing Bill Chuck (of billy-ball.com) reports that in Kelly Shoppach's first 100 at-bats, he had 12 singles -- and 11 hit-by-pitches. I could only find one player in modern history with more HBPs than singles in a season: Mack (Pass the Band Aids) Wheat in 1915 (5 HBP, 1 single).

• And, finally, thanks to everybody who checked in to help me resolve what to do about the Last Guy To Get A Hit competition, which derailed when the two survivors -- Jason Smith (0-for-25) and Brad Nelson (0-for-21) -- both took detours right out of the big leagues. The overwhelming sentiment was best expressed by loyal reader Tom Battiato (of Hong Kong), who urged me to give Smith and Nelson all summer to get back to the major leagues and resume their quest for the LGTGAH award.

After all, Battiato said, "if these players have found a creative way to extend their streak by days, or weeks, even a few months, more power to them. They aren't breaking any rules, are they?" Heck, no. I make up these rules as I go along. So I'll let you know in September who won this award. For now, I'm just declaring a brief (hopefully) intermission in this always-dramatic competition.

Well done, friends. And now, pass the bread, the mayo and the Sandwich Award envelopes, please.

Strike One -- The On A Roll Award

Before I hand this award to Ichiro Suzuki, I almost feel moved to ask: Does he even eat sandwiches? Does he enjoy a good sourdough roll? Or would he prefer his award stuffed inside a seaweed roll? Just wondering, in the name of culinary hospitality.

But however we serve this prestigious non-trophy, Ichiro has earned it. Over the past week, he's 11-for-26 (.423), with four doubles, a couple of walks, a home run and a stolen base. Now it might seem like this man hits .423 every week, but that doesn't mean it's easy. So here's a look at just some of the latest, fun-filled, Ichiro-palooza tidbits:

• You now have to go back a month (to May 5) to find the last game in which this hit machine didn't get a hit. That's thanks to a 27-game hitting streak, the longest in the AL this year, in case you missed that headline.
• And you have to go back to April 28 to find the last game in which he didn't reach base. That's 34 games in a row, also the longest streak of its kind in the AL this year.
• There have now been 12 hitting streaks of 20 games or longer in the history of the Mariners. Ichiro has strung together seven of them. All the other players in the history of the franchise have combined for five.

Meanwhile, our favorite streak guru, loyal reader Trent McCotter, reports that only five players in any team's history have ever had as many as seven 20-game hitting streaks: Ty Cobb (8), Pete Rose (8), Wee Willie Keeler (8), George Sisler (7) and youknowwho.

Ichiro also had a 25-game streak in 2007, so that makes him only the fifth player in the past 30 years who can say he's the proud owner of two streaks of 25 or longer. You may have heard of the others: George Brett, Wade Boggs, Vladimir Guerrero and Nomar Garciaparra.

The Mariners' trusty public relations staff reports that Ichiro now has cranked out 30 hitting streaks of 10-plus games and 16 streaks of 15-plus. While Ty Cobb had 66 streaks of 10-plus, Ichiro has pulled to within two of Cobb's total of 15-gamers (18). So watch out, Georgia Peach.

And, finally, while Ichiro has thumped 47 hits in the last month, Brewers third baseman Bill Hall is trailing him slightly in that span -- as in 47 to 7! Since the beginning of Ichiro's streak, Hall has hit a scary .108, with 16 0-fers in 23 games. Not very Ichiro-esque.

So I know there are people out there who love to punch holes in Ichiro's repertoire. But peruse all those factoids and tell me this guy isn't as sandwich-worthy as anyone in the game. C'mon. I dare you.

Strike Two -- The Cold Cuts Award

Speaking of 0-fers, I was considering the list of this week's candidates for the highly un-coveted Cold Cuts Award. Then it hit me: Two of these deserving candidates were actually hitting in the middle of the SAME team's lineup.

Incisive observation about that realization, from the Sandwich Awards Committee: Boy, that team must have had a really messy week.

Well, right you are, committee members. That team is the Royals, who have now lost seven in a row. And while they can't blame that whole collapse on their slumping middle-of-the-order tag team of Mike Jacobs (1-for-20, with eight strikeouts) and Jose Guillen (2-for-23, with eight whiffs), those two are sure atop the list of culprits.

Jacobs and Guillen hit fourth and fifth, in some order, in every Royals game but one during the past week. And they combined to bat under .100 (3-for-43, .070), with more than five times as many strikeouts (16) as hits (3). In case you were wondering, there wasn't a single other pair of teammates with 20-plus at-bats who both batted below .100 over the past week -- let alone a pair that was hitting in the 4-5 holes at the time.

So if you've been trying to figure out what's happened to the Royals over the past few weeks, this is kind of a tip-off: THEY CAN'T SCORE. They've topped three runs exactly twice in their past 13 games. And the slumpees in the middle of their lineup have a lot to do with that. But hey, at least they got a Sandwich Award as consolation.

Strike Three -- Can-We-Box-That-Up-For-You Award

There's nothing like a rollicking box-score line to get the Sandwich Awards Committee all worked up. And there were two lines this week that particularly caught our eye. So the two perpetrators can share this award.

No Hits, No Good Dept.: About a thousand readers wrote in to point out Dontrelle Willis' wild line Thursday against the Red Sox. If you missed it, here goes: 2 1/3 IP, 0 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 5 BB, 3 K, 1 HBP. The gist of most of those e-mails was: "How many pitchers have ever given up five runs on NO hits?" And the answer, courtesy of baseball-reference.com's fabulous Play List, is: Only five in the past 55 years. The others: Sandy Koufax (2 2/3-0-5-5-6-3) in 1958, Mark Fidrych (2/3-0-5-5-5-1) in 1980, Pat Combs (1/3-0-5-5-5-0) in 1991 and Mark Hutton (0-0-5-5-4-0) in 1996.

Ten-Spot Dept.: The good news Tuesday for Brewers smokeballer Manny Parra was, he struck out all three Marlins he faced in the first inning. The bad news was, the game didn't end there. And because it didn't, Parra wound up with this gruesome line: 4 IP, 11 H, 10 R, 10 ER, 2 BB, 5 K, 2 HR, 2 WP.

Important Bulletin No. 1 about that game: Parra was the first pitcher to give up 10 runs in a game this year since Brian Tallet did it on April 29. And that double-digit-free May was the first month since September 2005, in which no pitcher allowed 10 runs or more in any game.

Important Bulletin No. 2, in answer to a great question by loyal reader Kyle Begey: The Elias Sports Bureau reports that Parra was the first pitcher to punch out the side in the first inning and then allow 10 runs in the same game since the Twins' Rick Reed gave up 11 on April 21, 2003 -- after whiffing Alfonso Soriano, Nick Johnson and Jason Giambi in the first. And ladies and gentlemen, pitching exploits just don't get much more Sandwich-worthy than that.

Shameless Book-Plug Dept.

Last but definitely not least, I'll be launching my pre-Father's Day book-signing onslaught this weekend. I'll be signing copies of "Worth The Wait: Tales of the 2008 Phillies" on Saturday, from 12-3 p.m., at the beautiful Barnes & Noble in Deptford, N.J. For a complete list of all the pre-Father's Day signings (and post-Father's Day signings) of "Worth The Wait," click here.