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Through yesterday's games:

That's right--Cliff Lee.

Only 4 players in history have had a season in which they qualified for the batting title, had an OPS+ of at least 160, and played at least 20 games in right field and 20 games at third base. How many can you name?

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-- James Shields threw his 4th shutout, tying Derek Holland for the AL lead, and his 8th CG, tops in MLB by 2.

• He's the first pitcher with a CG shutout over the Royals in over a year.
• This century's high in CG was 10 by CC Sabathia in 2008.
• Shields is Tampa's career leader with 66 wins and 6 shutouts, also leads in IP, Ks, CG and GS.
• Tampa got just 5 hits, all from their top 3 hitters, and no walks. Evan Longoria drove in all 4 runs

-- Chien-Ming Wang has not allowed a hit through 5 IP in Chicago. Wang has a pair of 2-hit CGs on his resume.

• The Cubs have not been no-hit since 1965, when Sandy Koufax (perfect game) and Jim Maloney (10 IP, 10 walks) both turned the trick.
• (Never mind.)

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I get a lot of suggestions from readers sent in by email, and many of them are quite good.

Here are a few recent ones:

Win Spread

Dan F. wrote in before yesterday's Phillies-Dodgers game noting that Roy Halladay (14-4) and Hiroki Kuroda (7-13) had a large difference in their records, with a "win spread" of 27 (the sum of Halladay's win total and Kuroda's losses). Dan wondered what the biggest win spreads in history are. There's no way to use the PI to find that.

Certainly there have been much larger ones at the end of seasons--for example in this game near the end of the 2003 season, Kyle Lohse (14-11) matched up with Mike Maroth (8-21) for a win spread of 35.

But--what are the largest win spreads for a game as early in the season as last night's?

Incidentally, last night came out true to form as Halladay picked up the win and Kuroda the loss.

Brewers on the road

John V. wrote in to talk about the Brewers' disparity in home and road records. Splits in records can be found right here. At the moment, the Brewers have 20 more losses on the road than at home. The Athletics (15) and Nationals (13) are the only other teams with a difference of at least 10.

The Brewers' home winning percentage is .732 while on the road they are .407, for a difference of .325.

Last season, the teams to finish with the biggest disparity in home and road losses were the Tigers (23) and Pirates (23), plus the Braves at 21 just missed made the playoffs. The Tigers win percentage at home was .642 and one the road it was .358, for a difference of .284. The Pirates at home were .494 and .210 on the road, for a difference of .284 as well. The Braves were .691 at home and .432 on the road, for a difference of .259.

So, the 2011 Brewers are really quite stilted...

Most homers since 1990 by stadium

Reader eorns wrote in with a list of most homers by stadium since 1990. I don't know how he figured it, but the top 10 are:

US Cellular	3908
SkyDome	        3832
Wrigley Fld	3797
Coors Fld	3644
Camden Yards	3622
Rangers Bpk	3532
Angel Stad	3486
NetworkAssoc	3342
Fenway Pk	3336
Yankee Stad	3272

The stadia with the fewest are those that haven't been used the whole time--Fulton County, PetCo, Astrodome, etc.

It would be neat to calculate this on a per-game basis, eorns!

Young Astros

Reader Harrison L wrote in the talk about how inexperienced the Astros' recent starting lineups have been. For example in their August 3rd game, the rookies included Jose Altuve, J.D. Martinez, Jimmy Paredes, and Jordan Lyles.

Houston starting a very young lineup? This is nothing new. Think back to September 29, 1963.

[Submitted by faithful contributor and fellow box-score treasure-diver, Kahuna Tuna, who must know that I'm a sucker for numerical alliteration ... or whatever it's called.]
___________________

In honor of the highly symmetrical date of 8/8, which happens to be my birthday, here are the box scores (where available) and a few comments edited from Baseball Library about the 27 games since 1901 that have ended in an 8-8 tie.

1. August 13, 1910 (2nd game): Pirates 8, Superbas 8. Starters: Howie Camnitz and Nap Rucker. Comment: The Pirates and Superbas each had 8 runs‚ 13 hits‚ 38 at bats‚ 5 strikeouts‚ 3 walks‚ 1 hit batter‚ 1 passed ball‚ 13 assists‚ 27 putouts‚ 2 errors‚ and used 2 pitchers. Darkness ended the game.

2. August 26, 1912: Naps 8, Highlanders 8. Starters: Fred Blanding and Ray Caldwell.

3. August 27, 1912: White Sox 8, Red Sox 8 (12 innings). Starters: Eddie Cicotte and Hugh Bedient. Comment: White Sox infielders Morrie Rath and Buck Weaverwere thrown out of the game‚ and coach Kid Gleason took over at 2B. The 45-year-old last appeared in a game in 1908. Gleason made no errors and went 1-for-2 at the plate; with this appearance‚ he had played in four different decades.

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Check out the box score from Saturday's Nats-Rockies game. Here is the line for just the Nationals' pitchers:

It's neat that all five of their pitchers finished with their season ERAs right around 4.50.

They all also had a negative WPA for the game, and they all allowed at least one earned run (except Sean Burnett, who just allowed his 2 inherited base runners to score.)

In Cincinnati's 8-7 win over the Cubs, reliever Nick Masset was credited as the winning pitcher, according to both MLB and ESPN online. Was that decision correct?

Masset came on in the bottom of the 7th with a 1-run lead, 2 outs and 2 on. The first batter doubled, tying the game. Masset intentionally walked the next man, then let in the tiebreaker on a wild pitch, before recording his only out. The Reds went ahead in their next at-bat. Aroldis Chapman struck out all 3 in the 8th, and Francisco Cordero pitched the 9th for the save.

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Can you name the only 2 players with at least 10 triples in each season since 2009?

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Dan Uggla and Freddie Freeman both extended their hitting streaks Saturday, to 27 games and 20 games, respectively.

It's the first simultaneous hitting streak of 20+ games by teammates since ... well, I'm not done checking yet. It's definitely the first since 2001.

And now for the fine print: The definition of "simultaneous" that I'm using is, a stretch of at least 20 team games during which both streaks are active. In the case of Uggla and Freeman, there was one game during the simultaneous streak that Uggla did not play.

In the past decade, there were a handful of other teammate streaks of 20+ games that had some overlap, but not for 20 team games.

Incidentally, the double streak hasn't exactly propelled the Braves to new heights; they're 10-10 in the 20 games.

I'll try to follow up on this Sunday, though Elias may beat me to it. In the meantime, here's the next batch -- hitting streaks of 20+ games from 1991-2001 -- in case anyone wants to start checking.

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-- Seattle rookie Blake Beavan allowed 1 run in 8 innings for his 3rd win. He has a 2.83 ERA and 6 straight quality starts to begin his career, the longest such streak in the last 5 years.

• Beavan's strong suit is control; he walked none tonight and has walked just 6 in his first 41.1 IP. He averaged 1.5 BB/9 in 4 minor-league seasons.

-- The Padres pounded Pittsburgh, again. They've scored 15 and 13 runs in their last 2 games; it's their first time with back-to-back 10-run games since Sept. 2009, and the first with 12+ runs since 1998.

-- Justin Verlander joined CC Sabathia as the majors' only 16-game winners, 2 more than any other pitcher. He extended his streak of 100-pitch outings to 43, the longest by 5 since pitch counts have been reliably kept, and ran his streak of 6+ IP to 33, one better than Jered Weaver for the longest active streak.

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