Friday, June 15, 2007

Round Trip Kip

Fans of the Pittsburgh Pirates will remember Bob "Round Tripper" Kipper, whose alliterative nickname seemingly fit his propensity to give up the longball.

Although former Pirate Kip Wells gave up no home runs last night, he was yanked in the midst of an eight-run second inning during St. Louis' 17-8 loss to Kansas City. Because so many batters have been rounding the bases against Wells - he has a 6.93 earned run average this year - "Round Trip Kip" might fill the bill.

People in Pittsburgh might think every pitcher who ends up with another team suddenly finds success, after watching the likes of Oliver Perez and Chris Young.

But Wells has struggled mightily for the Cardinals, who haven't found anyone to remotely pick up the slack caused when ace Chris Carpenter went down with an injury in April. Kip already has 11 losses, and it's only June 15. (Remember when that was the major-league trading deadline?)

No National League pitcher has lost 20 games since 1979, when Phil Niekro went 21-20 for the Braves and Kip Wells was 2 years old. An old baseball adage is, "You have to be a good pitcher to lose 20 games," implying that the manager won't keep a pitcher in the rotation long enough to hit the mark. With that in mind, figure that Wells might be bound for mop-up work instead of going to the mound every fifth day, and so he probably won't reach 20. Either that, or he'll suddenly remember how to be marginally successful, as he was for a couple of seasons with the Pirates.

As for Kansas City, the Royals still are mired in last place, 14 games behind Cleveland, but they've shown some offensive firepower lately. Yesterday marked the second time in four games the team has scored 17 runs, and in six interleague games so far, they've averaged almost nine runs per contest. And that includes being shut out by Philadelphia's Jon Lieber on Saturday.

Just more evidence of how dominant the American League is these days.

One of the Royals' hottest hitters is Alex Gordon, who was ballyhooed as a potential rookie of the year, then, of course, struggled mightily. On Thursday, Gordon hit a tape-measure home run for the second night in a row, and he's pulled his average up over .200. That might not seem so great, but the 23-year-old was hitting .181 at the start of June.


Trivia question 39: If Wells ends up losing 20, he'll become the first Cardinals pitcher since whom to reach that mark?

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