Building up inside of me: Omar Vizquel

In this ongoing series of however many I feel like I tackle an issue that has bothered me in the past but is not necessarily relevant.

This season at some point I saw a game where they put up a 3000 hit tracker for players in the range of making this pointless plateau. Included on the list was Omar Vizquel.

Omar Vizquel currently has 2720 hits currently (I have no memory of what he had at the time I saw the graphic). That puts him 280 hits shy of the 3000 hit mark. That wouldn't seem so unreasonable except for a litany of reasons. Omar Vizquel is 44 years-old. Omar Vizquel's highest hit total in a season ever is 191; it happened in 1999 when he was 32. Omar Vizquel is a lifetime .272 hitter and would need something above 1000 AB to get there. Omar Vizquel is currently a utility player for the White Sox and will probably play in something like 70 games this season if he's lucky.

If Omar Vizquel reaches 3000 hits I will buy an Omar Vizquel jersey and wear it to a church on Easter Sunday. I'll make it a Rangers jersey for funsies.

If you are the type to hold arbitrary benchmarks at numbers divisible by 100 or 1000 for whatever reason at least do it reasonably. There are arguments to be made for Omar Viquel to be elected to the Hall of Fame when the time comes. His hits are not one of them.

A piece of advice for Steven Strasburg

Don't try to strike everybody out. Strikeouts are boring, and besides that they're fascist.

Seriously that was an awesome game last night for so many reasons. The reasons we're interested in here all have to do with numbers and algebra so deal with it. Strasburg's K/IP is 2 and his K/BB is undefined.

Also it was awesome that every run of the game came off a homerun until the eighth inning when Pudge had one of my favorite statistical plays: the run scoring nonRBI GIDP.

I'm so happy the winning run came from Adam "True Outcomes" Dunn too.

Pointless extrapolation time! At this rate Strasburg will shatter the K/9 record (13.4 Randy Johnson 2001) and of course the K/BB record. Let's worry about Ks. Modern era record is 383 by Nolan Ryan in 1973. (When he was 26. His name appears five times in the all time top 50 strikeouts in a season and that's not excluding deadball era pitchers. Goddamn I love Nolan Ryan.) Strassburg needs to pitch 184.5 more innings this year at his clip of 2 K/IP to get there. The Nationals have 103 games left this year. Assume Strasburg gets a start every five games that gives him about 20 games to pitch those 184.5 innings, meaning he will have to go the distance in every game plus get an extra start or make some relief appearances.

It could happen. If only Dusty Baker managed in Washington.