* Reds infielder Paul Janish pitched yesterday for the second time this season, giving up six runs in a 22-1 loss to leave him with a lovely 49.50 ERA. "That's the worst beating I can ever remember on a baseball field," manager Dusty Baker said. "We just got slaughtered."
Cincinnati has a 4.21 ERA as a team this season, which ranks seventh in the league. However, if you remove Janish's mop-up work from the mix the actual pitching staff has a 4.09 ERA and if you completely ignore both blowouts that Janish has pitched in the team ERA drops all the way to 3.87.
* Since being traded to the Cardinals two weeks ago Mark DeRosa has gone hitless in nine at-bats and spent a week on the bench with a sprained wrist before finally being placed on the disabled list this afternoon. St. Louis is back to playing Brian Barden and Joe Thurston at third base, except now Chris Perez is no longer in the bullpen.
* Last week Evan Grant of D Magazine took Rob Neyer of ESPN.com to task (and largely missed the point, at least in my view) for saying that Kevin Millwood had been lucky because his great ERA didn't match his mediocre secondary numbers. Last night Millwood coughed up nine runs to watch his ERA rise from 2.80 to 3.34, and my guess is that there's some more regression on the way.
* Headline of the Week: "106 Sportswriters Reportedly Test Positive for Sanctimony."
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It's one thing to remove Janish's numbers from the Reds team ERA, but to remove both those games in their entirety? You can't do that. They happened, and real pitchers did it. Every team out there can say, "gee, if only we could remove such-and-such games from our record, then we'd be REALLY good." Now that's just dumb.
Oh c'mon. It's just a fun little exercise. It doesn't mean anything. Of course you can't remove runs you actually allowed from ERA.
It's just something fun to think about for a second on a boring Tuesday afternoon.