If it's 4th of July weekend, we should be serving foot-long hot dogs, not Sandwich Awards. But what the heck. The tradition continues.
But before this special holiday presentation of the Sandwich Awards ceremony begins, it's time for …
Abreu
The Munchies Of The Week
• Almost exactly four years since he hit 41 home runs in one evening to win the 2005 Home Run Derby, Bobby Abreu hit two homers in a game Thursday night. It was the 612th game in which Abreu has made it to home plate at least once since that Derby. It was only his third multi-homer game. Bizarre.
• How did this happen? Albert Pujols hit 14 homers last month, and the Cardinals had a losing record (12-17). (OK, it's possible. This is the fourth time in the '00s a team has had a sub-.500 record in a month in which one of its players made at least 14 home run trots. The others: the 2001 Giants in April (Barry Bonds), the 2004 Phillies in June (Jim Thome) and the 2007 Yankees in April (Bonds).
• And how did this happen? Phillies starting pitchers have three wins in their past seven series -- and they're still tied for first place.
Ichiro
• OK, let's talk Ichiro for a while. His two-hit game Tuesday meant he'd gotten at least one hit in 53 of his last 56 games, meaning he was, essentially, three hits short of DiMaggio. And my favorite streak guru, loyal reader Trent McCotter, reports that only three players since DiMaggio's streak have had a 56-game stretch like that within a single season: George Brett in 1980, Johnny Damon in 2005 and Ichiro one other time, in 2007. Derek Jeter (54 of 56) and Benito Santiago (53 of 56) also put together stretches that good over two seasons. Nice group.
• Oh, and one more astonishing fact: McCotter also reports that Ichiro is only the second man in the live-ball era to have two different 56-game stretches in which he got a hit in at least 53 games. The other: DiMaggio himself.
• And now one more very odd Ichiro nugget: As loyal reader Andrew Vavoulis points out, he's hitting .370 this year, but he's only on pace to drive in 44 runs. And nobody in the live-ball era has ever done anything like that. Fewest RBIs by a guy who hit .370: 54, by Tony Gwynn in 1987. Highest average by a guy with fewer than 50 RBIs: .363 by Harry Walker in 1947.
Slowey
• Here's another fellow having a fascinating year. As loyal reader Evan Jones reports, Twins pitcher Kevin Slowey already is halfway to 20 wins, even though opponents are batting .306 against him. That computes to 11.09 hits per nine innings. Did you know only one pitcher since 1900 has won 20 games in a season in which he allowed more than 11 hits per nine innings? That was -- who else? -- Ray (Krispy) Kremer, of the 1930 Pirates (20-12, 11.93 hits per 9 IP).
• Finally, the multi-talented Bill Chuck, of billy-ball.com fame, reports that Miguel Tejada leads the National League in both singles and doubles. So who's the last man to lead his league in both of those departments in the same year? How 'bout Tris Speaker -- in 1916.
Got all that digested? Great. Then on with the Sandwich Awards.
Strike One: The On A Roll Award
One of the great streaks of modern times is going on right now, in front of our very eyeballs, and you probably never even noticed.
Hanley Ramirez has driven in a run in 10 games in a row. Yep, 10.
Ramirez
Before we put that streak in historical context, think about how tough that is. You can't drive in a run every darned day unless somebody gets on base in front of you. And you can't drive in a run every darned day unless you get a million big hits when those RBI opportunities arrive.
So now that we've got that straight, let's offer a little perspective:
• It's the longest RBI streak by a National League shortstop, according to the Elias Sports Bureau, since the invention of RBIs as an official stat in 1920. The old record, which was nine by Arky Vaughan, had held up for 69 years.
• If Ramirez drives in a run Friday, he'll tie the longest streak in modern history by a shortstop, which was 11, by Carlos Guillen, set way back in, well, 2007.
• This is also the longest streak in Marlins history. And granted, Marlins history might not be quite as long and rich as, say, Cardinals history. But it's long enough that 227 different Marlins not named Hanley Ramirez have also driven in a run somewhere along the line in that history. So it's not as if any of those other guys ever did this.
• And over the past 55 years, according to baseball-reference.com's fabulous Play Index, only two other middle infielders beside Ramirez and Guillen have had an RBI streak this long: Frank White (11 in a row, in June 1983) and Jeff Kent (10 in a row, in June 2007).
• Finally, Ramirez has driven in 24 runs just during this streak. Bet you didn't know that's more RBIs, in a week and a half, than six shortstops with at least 200 at-bats this year have all season: Yuniesky Betancourt, Brendan Harris, Erick Aybar, Cristian Guzman, Rafael Furcal and Elvis Andrus.
So I know we're in a Ramirez state of mind today. But maybe we're all talking about the wrong Ramirez.
On-a-roll runners-up: Albert Pujols (9-for-19, 4 homers, .630 OBP), Lance Berkman (10-for-22, .552 OBP), Gordon Beckham (12-for-25, .519 OBP).
Strike Two: The Cold Cuts Award
A middle-of-the-order Red Sox masher is 1 for his last 23, with 11 whiffs. And 2 for his last 30, with 14 whiffs. Yet, mysteriously, this man hasn't sought out eyedrop therapy. Or been the subject of 12 consecutive nights of "Baseball Tonight" swing analysis.
That, of course, is because the slumpee in question is Jason Bay, not Big Papi.
Bay
The moral of this story is that it's always a good idea to go through a slump like this in the middle of a season instead of right out of the chute. Remember that, kids. Nevertheless, it's been a messy week for the Red Sox bopper.
He just went 0-for-Baltimore (0-for-15). And he topped that off Wednesday in the finale by becoming only the second player all year (along with Alex Rios) to spin off a rarified platinum sombrero (0-for-5, with 5 strikeouts). Now here's what you need to know about Red Sox Cinco de Whiffo history:
• Bay was the first Red Sox player to go platinum since the legendary Phil Plantier, on Oct. 1, 1991.
• And this was only the sixth time in franchise history that any Red Sox hitter had whiffed five times or more. The others: George Scott twice, Ray Jarvis once and Cecil Cooper, who made team history with an 0-for-8, six-punchout 15-inning game on June 14, 1974.
But there's one great thing we can say about Jason Bay: He definitely isn't in denial of how ugly this has been.
"I'm completely getting myself out …," he told the Boston Globe's Amalie Benjamin. "Can't hit the fastball, can't hit the breaking ball. It's just one of those situations where everything that could go wrong is going wrong."
Well, not everything. On his off day Thursday, Bay became an American citizen. And he didn't swing and miss once during the ceremony.
Other cold-cutters: Jimmy Rollins (2 for his last 32), Brian Roberts (2-for-25, 11 strikeouts), Pat Burrell (2-for-20, 8 strikeouts).
Strike Three: The Can We Box That Up For You Award
Maybe you're someone who peruses minor league box scores regularly. If you are, you probably know all about this. Then again, if you are, you also need to get out of the house more.
At any rate, for this item, we venture to scenic Maverick Stadium, in Adelanto, Calif., the hitters' capital of the world. There, on Sunday, a fun little 33-18 game busted out between Adelanto's High Desert Mavericks and the Lake Elsinore Storm of the Class A California League.
The box-score lines were flying in this one. So here are the crooked-numerical highlights:
• Lake Elsinore starter Jeremy McBryde -- a guy who had allowed one earned run or none in four of his previous six starts -- had a slightly different kind of day in this game: 4 2/3 IP, 13 H, 11 R, 11 ER, 1 BB, 6 K, 3 HR, 4 doubles and 1 triple -- and his team won by 15 runs.
• Meanwhile, High Desert starter Nathan Adcock -- coming off an eight-inning two-hitter in his previous start -- didn't make it out of the top of the first inning, allowing eight runs while getting two outs. The first three High Desert hurlers of the day -- Adcock, Juan Zapata and Natividad Dilone -- combined for this mind-boggling line: 4 IP, 19 H, 22 R, 21 ER, 8 BB, 6 K, 1 HR, 6 doubles, 2 triples, 2 WP.
• Two position players wound up being dragged to the mound for High Desert. And one of them -- catcher Jose Yepez -- had kind of a rough day. He faced six hitters. Four of them homered. But at least he still gave up fewer runs than both starting pitchers.
• Of the 18 position players who started this game, eight of them got four hits, and one of them -- Lake Elsinore's Matt Clark -- got five hits. He also scored seven runs. And just to put that in perspective, no big-leaguer has scored seven times in one game since Guy Hecker did it for the Louisville Colonels, of the old American Association, in a 22-5 game on Aug. 15, 1886.
• Somewhere in there, High Desert center fielder Jamie McOwen got a hit in his 36th straight game, which broke the California League record but got slightly overshadowed by other developments. He's now up to 39 in a row, by the way.
• And other highlights: There were seven different innings in which one of these teams scored at least four runs. Sixteen different players scored at least two runs. Lake Elsinore's hitters got an impossible 60 official at-bats (and 82 total plate appearances) in this game. And High Desert mashed five homers and got 26 hits, and lost by 15 runs. Tough to do, friends.
So if you're scoring at home, that's 51 runs, 57 hits, 10 homers, six errors, 14 walks, 31 extra-base hits, 12 pitchers and 136 hitters marching to home plate -- all in a tidy 4 hours, 10 minutes.
"It seemed," Clark told mlb.com, "like a never-ending game of hits."
Hey, that's funny. It seemed to me like a Sandwich Award waiting to happen.
Shameless Book Plug Dept.
The final two scheduled signings (for now) of "Worth The Wait: Tales of the 2008 Phillies" are just over the horizon. I'll be at FirstEnergy Stadium in Reading, Pa., today, starting at 5 p.m., for a Reading Phillies-Altoona Curve game. And on Monday, you'll find me at Chickie's and Pete's in Northeast Philadelphia, from 6-8 p.m. I'll alert you if any future signings bust out. But for a few weeks at least, the Shameless Book Plug Department will be on hiatus.
Jayson Stark
