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[... and a long one. Feel free to bail out.]

With A.J. Burnett walking off the mound in the 6th inning Saturday -- ticked off, trailing 2-1, and leaving the bases loaded behind him -- it seems a good a time to unburden myself of this screed that's been festering for a week.

A.J. Burnett is one of my least favorite players. I don't mean that he's a jerk, or blames other people for his failings, or anything like that. And it's not because I'm a Mets fan. There's just something about his performance, his salary, his status as the Yankees' de facto #2 starter, and the way that he shoots himself in the foot that offends my baseball sensibilities.

Salary and Benefits

By the end of this year, A.J. Burnett will have earned over $87 million in MLB salary, with 2 more guaranteed years ahead that will bring his total to $120 million. Before today, he has a career 4.00 ERA and a 107 ERA+, and the trendline points down. He has never been an All-Star, nor received a single vote for the Cy Young, MVP or Rookie of the Year awards.

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-- Jets 17, Raiders 7: The starting pitcher must go down, and he must go down hard:

• Trevor Cahill set a career high with 10 runs allowed (all earned) in 2+ innings, the shortest of his 84 career games.
• Phil Hughes had a 12-run bulge, but on a post-injury short leash, he couldn't go the 5, allowing 7 runs on 9 hits and 4 walks in 4.1 IP.

-- With a HR and 2B among his 3 hits, Jhonny Peralta is now slugging .549. Alan Trammell set the Tigers' SS record at .551 in '87. Only 2 other Bengals shortstops have ever slugged .500 or better: Carlos Guillen (3 times), and Dick McAuliffe (yep, he played SS from 1963-66).

• Tigers go up by 1.5 games over Cleveland, their biggest lead of the year. Those 2 clubs have been separated by no more than 1.5  games every day since June 6.

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[Why wait for the games to be over?]

-- Jacoby Ellsbury hit his 16th HR of the season, his 7th in his last 12 games. He also has 28 stolen bases, putting him on pace for 26 HRs and 46 SB.

• The Red Sox have never had a 30-HR, 30-SB season, nor even a 20-HR, 30-SB season. In a season of 30+ SB, their high in HRs is 17, by Tommy Harper in 1973 (17/54). Johnny Damon holds the next 2 spots, with 14/31 in 2002 and 12/30 in '03.
• There were two 30-HR, 20-SB seasons in Red Sox history: 40/22 by Carl Yastrzemski in 1970, and 30/22 by Nomar Garciaparra in 1997.
• Ellsbury's previous high was 8 HRs.

-- The Cardinals hit for the cycle in the 1st inning: 3B by Jon Jay, HR by Albert Pujols, 2B by Lance Berkman and 1B by Yadier Molina. They also had another HR, a walk, a strikeout, a flyout and a groundout.

• If only the K victim had reached on a wild pitch, they could have added a lineout and thus filled out their Basic Baseball Bingo card.

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Check out the lowest slugging percentages for guys qualified for the batting title who homered in at least 4% of their plate appearances:

Dan Uggla and Miguel Olivo are both near the top, although it's not unusual to see guys high on lists like this in the middle of a season. Should Uggla and Olivo improve a little in the last couple of months, they may very well fall off this list. It's fairly hard to maintain such outlying stats over an entire season.

Thursday night, CC Sabathia allowed 2 runs in a CG (8-inning) loss to the Rays.

It was the first time as a Yankee that Sabathia took a loss when pitching at least 6 innings and allowing 2 runs or less. In his previous 40 such starts, his record was 35-0, with 5 no-decisions. The Yankees were 37-3 in those games. (By the way, while this game snapped his streak of 5 starts with 7+ IP on 1 run or less that I mentioned here, his current streak of 6 starts with 7+ IP on 2 runs or less matches the longest by a Yankee since Stan Bahnsen in 1971.)

Seems like CC and the Yanks is the perfect marriage of pitcher and team. I mean no knock in saying that CC is rarely unhittable, but instead, is good almost every time out. For a team with a good, consistent offense, that's a better pattern than a pitcher who is brilliant one day, but so-so the next.

Anyway, this table shows the AL pitchers with the most losses when going 6+ IP on 2 runs or less (2009-present). Somehow, it's fitting that the guy atop this list is the one who outpitched Sabathia tonight. (All stats listed here are through Wednesday, July 20.)

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I had no idea but Hideki Matsui just hit his 500th career homer, which includes 332 in Japan.

I know there are a handful of Japanese players to top 500 homers in Japan. Does anybody have a complete list of all players to have 500 homers spread across both leagues?

Angel Pagan's 10th-inning blast Wednesday was the Mets' first walk-off HR of the year. Just six clubs remain without a game-ending HR this season. Below are the most recent walk-off HR for those six, with a bit of story for each. (Click here for all 2011 walk-off HRs.)

-- Rockies, 2010-09-12: 2-out, 2-run shot by pinch-hitter Jason Giambi, off Arizona's Sam Demel.

• Giambi's 2nd PH/walk-off HR of the year gave Colorado their 10th straight win, pulling them within 1.5 games of the division co-leaders.
• Five games later they were just 1 game out, but they skidded to a 1-12 finish.

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Following up on my post from earlier, here are the longest streaks where a pitcher didn't register a single strikeout in each appearance.

2000-2011:

1990-1999:

1970-1989:

1919-1969:

As relief appearances get shorter and shorter on average, it's getting easier and easier to accumulate such a streak, since appearances with fewer batters faced are more likely to exclude strikeouts.

Going into last night's games, here are the longest streaks in 2011 where the pitcher recorded at least one strikeout in each appearance:

Now, what happened last night? Sergio Santos came in and threw a wild pitch, allowing the winning run to score. He threw 4 pitches to Billy Butler but the game ended before the plate appearance ended, and he didn't register a strikeout. Streak over.

In Detroit Wednesday, David Purcey came on in the top of the 7th against his former team, and walked the only 3 batters he faced. It was the 10th time this year that a pitcher had 3+ walks without retiring a batter. Four of the 10 came in the last week; you probably saw footage of the top one on the list:

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