ESPN Jayson Stark Blog

If it's Friday, it must be time to bust out the rye bread for another edition of our world-famous Generic Sandwich Awards. But first, whet your appetite with the …

Munchies of the Week

• Fun couple of weeks for the Red Sox. They've just finished playing the Tigers, Rangers and Yankees. And on Friday, they start a series against the Phillies. Which caused loyal reader Joel Horn to wonder whether any team in history has ever played four straight series against the leaders of four different divisions. That's been possible only since interleague play began in 1997, obviously. But the answer, according to the Elias Sports Bureau, is no.

• Trying to digest Chien-Ming Wang's season is getting tougher every day. Here's another way to look at it: This man has allowed 34 earned runs this year in only 21 1/3 innings. In 1968, Bob Gibson allowed 38 all season -- in 305 innings.

• On a famous evening 10 years ago, Fernando Tatis hit two grand slams in one inning off Chan Ho Park. On Wednesday at Citi Field, Phillies manager Charlie Manuel actually brought Park into a game to face Tatis -- and got a ground ball out of it. Would you believe that Tatis now has had 10 plate appearances against Park since that two-slam inning (five of them with men on base) and driven in zero runs?

• The Red Sox have won eight straight games against the Yankees this year. And don't you think there must be teams out there that wonder how that's possible? The Rangers have won eight of their last 31 games against the Yankees. The Royals have won eight of their last 28 games against the Yankees. And the Twins have won eight of their last 26 games against the Yankees.

• For all those who have been wondering why teams pitch to Adrian Gonzalez, this just in: They're not anymore. Gonzalez just ripped off a streak of eight straight games with at least two walks. According to Elias, that's the longest streak of multi-walk games in the live-ball era. Believe it or not, Barry Bonds' longest streak was six in a row.

• You might recall that in the 2005 World Series, Scott Podsednik hit a walk-off home run for the White Sox in Game 2, and then Geoff Blum hit a 13th-inning game-winner in Game 3. True, Blum's homer in that Series wasn't a walk-off. But it's still kind of amazing that the two of them had played in a combined 725 games (counting the postseason) since then and had no walk-off hits. Then they had three in 24 hours Wednesday and Thursday (two by Blum, one by Podsednik). Crazy sport, isn't it?

• Back to that 2005 postseason: The other day, loyal reader Michael Hurta was perusing our list of active players who have hit an 18th-inning home run, and he asked: What about Chris Burke? Good point. Burke hit the only 18th-inning postseason homer in history, for those 2005 Astros in the NLDS -- and he was on the Padres team that lost Sunday on Mark Reynolds' 18th-inning game-winner. Which means half of the six active players with 18th-inning bombs on their record were in the same ballpark Sunday.

• Javier Vazquez has ripped off two 12-strikeout games this season. The Braves have lost both of them. The same thing happened to him in 2006 with the White Sox. He'll be delighted to hear that only four other pitchers in the last 10 seasons have had multiple games with at least a dozen strikeouts that their teams have lost -- A.J. Burnett (2007 Blue Jays), Mark Mulder (2002 A's), Jason Bere (2001 Cubs) and Randy Johnson (in three seasons -- 2000, 2001 and 2004).

• The always-inventive Bill Chuck (of Billy-Ball.com) reports that if Mark Teixeira wins the AL MVP award -- which could certainly happen -- he would be the first switch-hitter to become the AL's MVP since … Vida Blue in 1971.

• Finally, Name Game fan Lisa Winston of MLB.com reports that if Red Sox fifth-round draftee Seth Schwindenhammer makes the big leagues, he'll break Jarrod Saltalamacchia's record for longest last name in baseball history. And wouldn't it be cool if the Red Sox, who have looked into dealing for Saltalamacchia, wound up cornering the 97-letter-name market with both of them?

OK, now on with the Sandwich Awards. The envelopes, please:

Strike One -- The On A Roll Award

What's scarier to the poor, defenseless hitters of planet Earth -- Justin Verlander's numbers or the look in his eye these days?

The way Verlander has pitched these last six weeks, I'm not sure why the hitters even bother to get in the box. In his last nine starts, this man has a 1.10 ERA and almost twice as many strikeouts (81) as hits allowed (43). And only twice in those nine starts has the team he's faced scored more than one run.

Ready? Here's more: According to Inside Edge, Verlander not only has induced the most swings and misses in the American League this year (182), but he also leads the closest pitcher (Felix Hernandez) by 24. In addition, this man is the only starting pitcher in the big leagues who has hit 100 on the radar gun more than once. (He did it May 30 and then again Wednesday.) And his 122nd and final pitch Wednesday against the White Sox was clocked at 99.6 miles per hour.

"It's almost PlayStation stuff," said Wednesday's losing pitcher, John Danks, "watching him throw the ball exactly where he wants to -- with movement, velocity, the works."

Hey, it's not only PlayStation stuff. Much more importantly, it's also Sandwich Award stuff.

Strike Two -- The Cold Cuts Award

The last week has taught us all a valuable lesson: Albert Pujols is apparently a normal human after all. Pass the smelling salts.

One minute, a mere week ago, Albert was rampaging along, hitting .344, slugging .704, lugging the Cardinals along like the human tow truck he always is. And then it happened.

He went (gasp) 0-for-15.

Now it's true that it's not like this had never happened to him before. He did have one other 0-for-15 funk -- in the previous seven seasons put together. And way back in the Ice Age, in 2001 (his rookie season), he scuffled through an 0-for-17 streak in July and an 0-for-16 skid in September.

But back then, he was just Albert. Now he's Albert. The Inside Edge folks report that he even missed 38 percent of the pitches he hacked at in that streak. Before that, he'd swung and missed only 11 percent of the time -- the second-best rate (behind only Mike Lowell, at 10.5 percent) of any hitter in baseball with double figures in home runs.

So the chances of this funk lasting longer than, say, another half-hour are right up there with the chances of Jason Kendall winning the home run title. Nevertheless, we want you to know the Sandwich Awards Committee is always paying attention.

Strike Three -- The Super Sub Award

I'm not sure it's accurate to call Ben Zobrist a sub, seeing as how the guy starts just about every darned day (18 games in a row at last look).

But he's started those 18 games in a row at three different positions (second, short and right field). And he's now started at least once at six different positions this year (those three, plus left, center and third base). So if somebody ever writes a book about him, it might be called, "Where on the Field is Ben Zobrist?"

Wherever you find him, though, this guy gets it done. Over the last week, he's 9 for his last 20 (.450), with two homers, a .560 OBP and eight runs scored. And that's practically a typical week in Ben Zobrist's neighborhood.

As Rays public-relations genius Rick Vaughn reports, the only switch-hitter in baseball with more homers than Zobrist (12) is Mark Teixeira. And if Zobrist had seven more plate appearances, he'd be (no kidding) leading the major leagues in slugging (.677), and he'd rank second in the AL to Kevin Youkilis in on-base percentage (.430).

Zobrist also has hit a grand slam from each side of the plate. He's tied for the major league lead in pinch-hit homers (with three), even though he's had only 13 pinch-hit at-bats. And if he keeps hitting home runs at this rate, he'll pass the legendary Felix Mantilla (30 HR in 1964) for most in a season, over the last 55 years, by a guy who started at six positions (30).

Yet I'm forced to ask an important question: Is anybody outside the 727 area code aware of any of this? Well, hopefully, they are now. Once again, the Sandwich Awards Committee is happy to gallop to the rescue of overlooked legends everywhere.

Shameless Book Plug Dept.

With Father's Day looming, it's a crazy weekend of signings of "Worth The Wait: Tales of the 2008 Phillies." You can find four (count 'em, four) of them -- Saturday from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Borders on East Lincoln Highway in Langhorne, Pa., then Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Barnes & Noble in Plymouth Meeting, Pa. On Sunday, I'll be at the Barnes & Noble in Wilmington, Del., from noon to 2 p.m., and then later Sunday from 3 to 5 p.m. at the Barnes & Noble in Exton, Pa. The Plymouth Meeting event will also feature ESPN Radio 950's Mike Missanelli. For a complete list of signings of "Worth The Wait," click here.