A month or so back, I wrote a post here about the triumphant return of Major League Baseball and the wonky statistics that we see in the first few weeks of the season. Now that the 2009 season is one-quarter of the way through, I thought it might be fun to check in on the statistics that I quoted here on April 21st.

At the time I, along with the fans in 30 other cities, was reveling in the fact that the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees were duking it out for last place in the AL East. Since then, they’ve moved up considerably, battling for a more respectable 2nd and 3rd now. Though I don’t think the fans of either team will be very pleased with second or third after 162 games.

Back on April 21st, there were five pitchers with a perfect 0.0 earned run average. That standard is, of course, long gone. There is still one pitcher with a sub-1 E.R.A., though. Kansas City’s Zack “Who?” Greinke has a shockingly low 0.82 E.R.A. at this point, a quarter of the way through the season.

Back then there were three players batting over .500 and seventeen batting .400 or better, numbers that would make Ted Williams not only spin in his grave, but come back as some sort of baseball-zombie to reclaim his mantle as batting king. Mr. Williams can rest in peace, however, because now there is just one player, Indian’s Catcher Victor “No Clever Nickname” Martinez in the category, and he is batting exactly .400.

Back in the day, Tampa Bay Rays’ third baseman Evan “Not the Chick from Desperate Housewives” Longoria was averaging .714 home runs per game. That has dropped to .27 dingers per game, not even in the top five in the league. Right now, the best the league has to offer is a paltry .385 round trippers per contest from Philadelphia’s Raul “It’s pronounced EE-banez, not EYE-banez” Ibanez, which projects out to a ho-hum 62 for the season.

We’ll come back again at the ½ and ¾ marks to see how these stats bear up along the way to our season-ending review. Stay tuned.

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