MLB Nutz & Boltz for Thursday

First of all, if I see one more commercial for that horseshit pasta in a pizza crust, with the whiny talking bowls, I'm going to lose my mind. Now then... Some odds and ends from this young baseball season.

Early this season some eyebrows were raised when three major leaguers -- Orlando Hudson, Ian Kinsler, and Jason Kubel -- each hit for the cycle in the span of about a week. The night of Kinsler's cycle, Snizza (who doesn't follow baseball much) asked me how often someone hits for the cycle in the majors, and I guessed there's maybe one cycle in the majors every other year, or two out of every three years. So two in a week was noteworthy, and the third that followed a couple days later made it a true oddity.

But here, my new favorite cycle-centric oddity, courtesy of Joe Posnanski:

Henry Aaron -- The People's Champ -- never hit for the cycle in his legendary career. However, in three games, Aaron hit a home run, a triple, and a double -- but no single. Former Indians OF Ellis Burks and former Phillies 2B Manny Trillo join Aaron on this list -- never hit for the cycle but fell short by just the single three times.

In other news, through just 25 games, the Phillies have drawn ELEVEN bases-loaded walks. In a related story, the Phillies play in the same division as the Braves bullpen and the smoking crater in front of Oliver Perez's locker.

The Phils find themselves in first place in the NL East with a middling 14-11 record. In the first couple weeks of the season, I was ready to concede that those fire-salin' Marlins were already playoff contenders this year -- mostly by virtue of their great young starting pitchers -- but they proceeded to phace-plant in a series against the Phils and haven't really recovered yet. Reports of the Braves' and Mets' bullpen-fueled resurgence have thus far been somewhat exaggerated.

Over in the AL, there is something I feel the need to document: your first-place teams are Toronto, Kansas City, and the Texas fuckin' Rangers.

I still don't really believe it either.

I'm apparently one of very few people who believe the Rangers can contend for the division this season. Of course they can still hit the ball all over hell and creation, but I barely recognize their pitching in the past week or two. Largely because of the health of their starters and the influence of new pitching coach Mike Maddux, Rangers games have actually become relatively tidy affairs rather than the five-hour bomb-a-thons they've been in recent years.

With an offense that I think is better than last year's powerhouse (with the additions of a productive Nelson Cruz, a suddenly non-comatose Andruw Jones, a Jarrod Saltalamacchia who's starting to look like the player he was supposed to be when he got here, plus full seasons of Chris Davis and Hank Blalock), the Rangers don't need great pitching. Which is fine -- they won't get it. But with their improved defense (most notably with minus defender Michael Young moved to third to make room for plus defenders Elvis Andrus and Omar Vizquel at SS), if they can manage a team ERA under 5 (it's currently 5.27, but 3.23 in the past 7 games, so you can see the sample-picking issues at work here), this team could certainly win the measly 85 games it'll likely take to win the morgue of an AL Western Division. Derek Holland has already been called up and is being worked gradually into higher-leverage relief situations, and top prospect Neftali Feliz is also waiting in the wings in case the pitching takes another downturn.

I'm not going to bother dissecting the Blue Jays' success. If they win the AL East, I'll eat the SkyDome.*

*No one will actually be eating the Rogers Centre.

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