Stats

The bronze baseballs that adorn Camden Yards' Eutaw Street walkway provide four pieces of information—the batter, his team, the date, and the distance—but that's only half the story. Who were the pitchers?

Presumably, no organization would create a monument to shame pitchers, although if that option ever came in vogue I have some candidates in mind for the first statue—2007 bullpen, I'm looking in your general direction.

The bottom line on the ESPN SportsCenter screen scrawled by and the White Sox versus Indians score blinked an all too familiar array of crooked numbers. 

The 11 runs scored by the White Sox, in a rain shortened game to boot, helped cement a growing 2009 pitching legacy that bathes in futility.

It's been well known, the struggles that the Indians pitching staff has had this year. The Indians have given up 440 runs in 2009, which is exactly 80 runs more than the next highest allowed run total of anyone in the American League Central. 

The Giants, now without Barry Bonds, will need to find a new way to fill the seats and, in doing so, fast.

The Florida Marlins have enjoyed a nice recovery thanks to Interleague play. Taking two of three against the Yankees and sweeping the Orioles have helped them climb back into NL East contention.  

There seems to be a battle for the team RBI lead. Hanley Ramirez currently has 47 thanks to two grand slams in the Baltimore series. Jorge Cantu is in second with 46, while Cody Ross and Dan Uggla are tied for third with 45. Emilio Bonifacio has 13 stolen bases, while Ramirez has 11. 

The baseball season is nearly half over. It is time to look back on the season and take a look at the numbers that have defined the A's so far, and will define the team's performance during the second half.

12

The number of times the A’s have used the disabled list.

Eric Chavez, Mark Ellis, Justin Duchscherer, Josh Outman, and Ryan Sweeney are just some of the players who were supposed to give huge contributions to the A’s this season, but instead have spent significant time on the DL.

Like many people after Manny Ramirez was suspended for a violation of the Major League Baseball substance abuse policy, I thought the Dodgers were going to go downhill in historic fashion.

That obviously didn't happen.

The Dodgers have the fourth-best batting average (.278) and the best on-base percentage of any team in baseball (.357).

In addition to these fantastic offensive statistics, the Dodgers are leading the majors in ERA (3.64).

As we approach the halfway point of the campaign for the Jays, it's time to take a look at the numbers.

It's been a weird, weird, season. Expectations were pretty low for Toronto coming into this year. Yet they've turned potential disaster into first place, back to potential disaster, and finally into real competitors.

The numbers say it all for Toronto, and the following ones will define the remainder of the season for the Blue Jays.

32

Travis Ishikawa

Ishikawa’s first base defense has been astonishing to start the season.  He has been as close to perfect as you can get.  I checked out some of his defensive numbers on baseballreference.com.

No doubt about it, the A.L. West is one of the worst divisions in baseball.  Good thing for Mariners fans: The M's are 2.5 games back in the division, trailing only the Rangers and Angels through the first half of the season. 

Fans cannot look at just the negatives surrounding the ball club. With the negatives there are also many positives following the Mariners into the second half of the season.

One of the many things going the Mariners way is their starting pitching.

After a memorable 2008 season that saw the Milwaukee Brewers make the Playoffs for the first time since 1982, expectations for the 2009 season were mixed.

Many people thought the Brewers wouldn't have enough pitching to make a return trip, while others thought their bats would carry them to the promised land for a second straight year.

The Brewers are about to begin a nine-game home stand that will see them try and regain first place after being overtaken by the St. Louis Cardinals.