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A daily glance inside the numbers from the world of sports:

• The Yankees have lost six straight games and scored three-or-fewer runs in each of those games. Since 1920 (Babe Ruth's first year with the team), the Yankees have had only one longer streak of this kind; the 1965 Yankees lost seven straight games, scoring fewer than four runs in each.

• Brent Abernathy's fourth-inning home run was the catalyst as the Twins overcame a three-run Yankees lead to defeat New York 6-3 Friday night. It was Abernathy's first big-league homer in more than three years and ended his streak of 397 consecutive major-league at-bats without a home run. That was the fourth-longest current streak by any major-league position-player.

Coming into Friday's games, Florida's Luis Castillo (444), Oakland's Jason Kendall (412) and the Yankees' Tony Womack (404) were the only position-players with more consecutive at-bats since their last home runs.

• The Astros were shut out for the 10th time this season. They have played 53 games. Only one other team in the last 20 years was blanked 10 times earlier in a season: the 2003 Tigers in 52 games. The last National League team that was shut out 10 times earlier in the season than the Astros was the 1976 Giants (in their first 46 games).

	Rodriguez

• Ivan Rodriguez's home run Friday ended his streak of 97 straight at-bats without a home run. That was his longest drought in his two seasons with the Tigers.

• Kelvim Escobar was removed from Friday's game after six innings with the Angels leading Boston 4-1. It was only the second time this season an Angels' starting pitcher left a game as the pitcher of record on the winning side only to see the bullpen squander his personal victory. That's the fewest such blown wins for any starting pitching staff in the major leagues. Jarrod Washburn (on April 6) is the only other Angels' pitcher to lose a potential victory in that fashion.

• Johnny Damon's bases-loaded double in the eighth inning provided the eventual winning runs in Boston's 7-4 win over the Angels. That hit lifted Damon's 2005 batting average with the bases loaded to .500 (five hits in 10 at-bats), and it boosted his career bases-loaded average to .415 -- the second-highest such average among active major leaguers (minimum: 100 bases-full at-bats), two points behind San Diego's Phil Nevin.

• With Friday night's defeat, Atlanta has lost eight straight series openers on the road. That ties the longest such streak for the Braves since the franchise moved to Atlanta in 1966.

The Braves had nine hits, but they were 1-for-8 with runners in scoring position. Atlanta is batting .198 with men in scoring position in road games this season. Only two other teams are below .200 in that category: Arizona (.195) and Colorado (.198).

• Prior to Friday night's victory, the Red Sox were 0-20 this season in games they trailed by at least three runs. Boston was the only team in the American League that had not won a game after falling behind by three-or-more runs.

	Hernandez

• Livan Hernandez threw 150 pitches Friday, the most for any major-league pitcher since Sept. 29, 2000, when the Reds' Ron Villone threw 150 pitches in a complete-game win at St. Louis. The previous high in a game this year was 136 pitches by Carlos Zambrano (May 8.).

Last season, Hernandez accounted for two of the 140-plus pitch games in the majors. Jason Schmidt had the other one.

• Since May 8, 14 of Washington's 25 games have been decided by one run, the highest total for any team in the major leagues over that span. The Nationals are 9-5 in those one-run games.

• Orlando Hernandez hit four Cleveland batters with pitches, tying a modern major-league record (since 1900). It was the second game in less than a year between these two teams in which one team was hit by four pitches and the other team was not plunked at all. But on July 21, 2004, it was Cleveland's pitchers that hit four White Sox batters. Chicago won that game 14-0.

• Austin Kearns entered Friday night's game hitless in his last 21 at-bats. That tied the longest hitless streak for any non-pitcher in the major leagues this season. Kearns singled in his first at-bat on Friday night and hit a home run in his second at-bat.

• You can't draw up the start of a game much better than the Brewers executed Friday night. Each of their first three batters reached based and then cleanup hitter Carlos Lee hit a grand slam. It was only the third time in Brewers' history that they did that. In 2001, cleanup hitter Richie Sexson hit a slam after Milwaukee's first three batters of the game reached base and John Briggs did the same in 1974.

• In Dwyane Wade's two seasons with the Heat, the team is 90-48 (.652) when he plays and 11-15 (.423) when he sits out. Among individuals who have played at least 100 games and missed at least 20 games over the last two seasons, no team has such a high winning percentage when a particular individual plays and such a low winning percentage when that same player sits out.

• Isaac Bruce is expected to miss the remainder of the Rams' minicamp because of an irregularity that was discovered in a heart exam. Bruce has been with the Rams since 1994. Only one NFL wide receiver has been with his current team longer than Bruce has been playing for the Rams. Troy Brown was drafted by New England in 1993 and was recently re-signed for his 13th season.

• On Saturday, 30-year-old Mary Pierce will play in her third French Open singles final. She lost in 1994, at age 19, to Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario and beat Conchita Martinez to win the championship in 2000. Only two other women or men, who began their careers in the Open Era, played in a French Open singles final as a teenager and in their 30s: Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert.