Blogging About Baseball

Move over, Roy Oswalt.

Wandy Rodriguez is finally here.

The Houston Astros’ diminutive lefty has become the unlikely rock of the team’s pitching staff, providing much-needed consistency in what has been one of the league’s shakiest starting rotations.

For those following Rodriguez’s career, the breakout doesn’t come as much of a surprise.

Wandy has been ridiculously good at home for the past four seasons, posting a career 3.63 ERA at Minute Maid Park and a 4.69 ERA while away. In 2008, he evened those statistics out a bit, allowing less than three runs per game at home while holding a respectable 4.34 ERA outside of Houston. The improved consistency was a glimpse at Rodriguez’s ceiling, causing drool inducing visions in team owner’s heads. They signed him to a $2.6 million salary to avoid arbitration.

And they’ve been rewarded. This year, Rodriguez’s home/road splits have evened out even further:

• 7 wins, 2 losses at home. 5 wins, 5 losses on the road.
• 72 SO in 83 innings at home. 70 SO in 70 innings on the road.
• 1.73 ERA, 1.00 WHIP at home. 4.21 ERA, 1.53 WHIP on the road.

Rodriguez ranks fifth in the National League in wins, seventh in earned run average, and 11th in win percentage.

Considering that Roy Oswalt is making over $14 million this year and has won just seven decisions, Rodriguez should be in line for a nice salary boost following the 2009 season.

Fishermen in New Bedford, Massachusetts have discovered a new fish. It fights hard and breaks some lines, but more often than not, it’s easy to get into the boat. Once it’s caught, all the fish does is flop.

The new species is called “Josh Beckett.”

As you can tell, I’m not a Josh Beckett fan. I never have been and I never will be.

He’s never been reliable. I have just as much confidence sending Beckett to the mound during the regular season as I do Tim Wakefield. And that’s because Beckett, outside of his incredible 2005 and 2007 seasons, has never been a consistent pitcher. On a daily basis, he’s yet to prove he’s anything other than your garden variety, hard-throwing Texan, straight out of the mold created by Nolan Ryan. You simply never know if you’re going to get Beckett the Cy Young candidate or Beckett the prototypical flamethrower.

And that’s because he pitches with too much emotion. Pitching with emotion is sometimes a good thing (think Jonathan Papelbon), but when you throw a fastball down the pipe just to prove that you can blow it by a batter, that’s just plain stupid. Beckett has had control problems this year and during counts where a pure waste pitch is the most desirable, he’s done the exact opposite and challenged hitters.

As a result, he gives up way too many home runs. Terry Francona has worked with Beckett on his pigheaded, hit-it-if-you-can pitching since his disastrous 2006 and thus far the results have been impressive. This year, however, Beckett’s on pace to give up just as many home runs as the 36 he allowed in a little over 200 innings in 2006.

In the last 20.1 innings alone, Beckett’s given up 10 jacks and 17 earned runs (including 5 home runs in a game versus the Yankees last night). This latest run of ineffective pitching is eerily similar to runs during Beckett’s 2006 season when he was especially prone to the longball.

Granted all of his struggles can certainly be disregarded if the Red Sox make the playoffs and he continues his postseason dominance.

This, folks, is not a joke.

Among the comments centering around the possibility of an Oil Can Boyd return to the big leagues, one poster at Baseball Think Factory casually mentioned this amazing piece of trivia:

The former-White Sox, Browns, and Indian’s owner, Veeck lost much of his leg during World War II when a piece of artillery shrapnel crushed his foot. Complications led to amputation of most of the leg and the limb eventually required a prosthetic.

That seems simple enough.

But this is Bill Veeck we’re talking about: the guy who sent Eddie Gaedel, a midget, to the plate during a regular season game; the guy who inked Satchel Paige to a one-year deal when he was somewhere in his mid-40′s; the guy who was unapologetically loyal to the “Clown Prince of Baseball,” Max Patkin.

So when it came time for Veeck to design a prosthetic, he did it his way. A to-the-death smoker, Veeck carved holes into his wooden prosthetic so he could ash out his cigarette butts. The leg became the penultimate symbol of Veeck’s non-traditional thinking, the epitome of his grand ideas.

Veeck died at age 71 after he had a cancerous lung removed.

That, too, seems simple enough.

But his smoky, smelly prosthetic wasn’t much of keepsake for family members.

So naturally, it went up for auction.

Bob Colleary, a television writer, beat out the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not crew for its possession in 1999. He paid $8,500.

And since then, the leg has been the centerpiece of a fantasy baseball league aptly called, “Bill Veeck’s Leg.”

The league mates lug the leg to their chosen draft location and base their draft order on the order they draw paper slips out of Veeck’s leg. The league’s champion earns the “honor” of bringing the leg home, which has got to be the world’s most ridiculous championship trophy.

It’s an appropriate tribute to Veeck, to say the least.

Mike Veeck, Bill’s son, is a Mount Pleasant, SC resident and owner of the Charleston Riverdogs, the Yankee’s Single-A affiliate. My efforts to reach him have not been successful, but I’m still trying and will have an interview with him in the coming months.