Had some blog trouble, so that's why this is so late. Well, that, and the Eisenberg family reunion, which kept me from giving running updates of Albert Pujols' progress yesterday. As you may know by now, Albert reached base one more time on Saturday before finally having an unproductive plate experience, ending his streak at 11.

As far as I know, there is no record for this. On baseballalmanac.com I did find the following records:

Most Consecutive
(Times Reaching Base)
AL Ted Williams
Boston
16 1957

NL Barry Bonds
San Francisco
15 1998

John Olerud
New York
15 1998

Most Consecutive Hits
(No Bases on Balls)
AL Walt Dropo
Detroit
12 1952

NL Jake Gettman
Washington
10 1897

Ed Konetchy
Brooklyn
10 1919

Bip Roberts
Cincinnati
10 1992


As you can tell just by the names involved, getting hits in consecutive at bats is a much flukier occurrence. I mean, if Bip Roberts can get ten consecutive hits, then who can't? But on base consecutively? You have to be one of the greats of game to get there. And don't underestimate John Olerud, a fantastic player who will probably not choose to play long enough to get the attention he deserves.

Of course, the PDMOH doesn't exactly measure consecutive times on base, although that was the original intention. So there is no record for what Albert did, but of course we know it has to be at least equal to Teddy Ballgame's 16. We could track down the streaks of Ted, Barry, and Olerud and find out out if a sacrifice fly extended those streaks, but it still doesn't account for someone who may have reached base ten straight times, hit a sacrifice fly, then reached base ten straight times again. I'm guessing the record would be right around 20. So that would make Albert's streak very good, but not necssarily historically noteworthy, maybe something similar to a 30 game hit streak.

Miguel Tejada reached base in all five appearances the same night Albert did it for the third time, and Frank Thomas and Alex Cintron did it yesterday. Cintron is now behind only Pujols with Paul DePodesta Medals of Honor, with two.


Won a couple of interesting bets this weekend. I had both Seattle and Minnesota to win their series against the Mets and Padres, respectively. The Twins had it locked up by Saturday night, but the Mariners didn't look too good after a rainout caused them to need a sweep today. They came through mightily though, 13-1 and 7-0, and finished their road trip with an 11-1 record. They are starting to look more like the team from two years ago that won 116 games than last year's edition, who didn't make the playoffs. Keep an eye on them.