Seattle Manager Takes Walk On The Logical Side

For lack of something better to do the other day, manager Lou Piniella flipped through a packet of baseball statistics and stopped at the numbers that spoke of major league pitching.

“I’ll bet you,” he said, “that if you look only at one column here - walks allowed - we can figure what teams have good records and which teams don’t.”

Take the American League. The Boston Red Sox had allowed the most walks (122) and were 6-16. Cleveland, by contrast, had allowed 68 walks and had a 13-7 mark that led the league. Detroit pitchers (8-15) had walked 119 batters.

“What you find out is that teams with the fewest walks are winning teams, and the teams with the most walks struggle,” Piniella said. “The teams in the middle, there’s more middle ground - some have good records, some bad. But all other stats aside, you walk too many batters and it’s tough to win.”

Seattle, with 97 walks after Friday’s game, is in the middle of the pack.

Good idea, Junior

Ken Griffey Jr., who has been involved in more promotions than he can recall, came up with a fine one for the Cleveland Indians - “Albert Belle Dodgeball Night.”

“The first 20,000 get free T-shirts with a bull’s-eye on the front,” Griffey said. “Albert gets to throw a baseball at all of them.

“Something like that might take the pressure off Albert (who is accused of throwing a ball at a photographer), let him have fun with it.”

Notes

Historic Day? All four teams in the A.L. West were better than .500 Friday morning - the first time that had been true since July 3, 1995… . Luis Sojo stole his first base of the season in the first inning, the 19th steal of a career that spans 449 major league games. He was safe because shortstop Jose Valentin dropped the throw… . How cold was it in Milwaukee on Friday? At game time, it was 47 degrees - with a wind chill factor of 28. “That’s nothing,” Chris Bosio said. “We played a game in Detroit one April and it was so cold that during the game the pipes in the clubhouse froze.” … For Little League weekend in the Kingdome next week, advance sales are close to 50,000 for two games vs. Cleveland.