There is an entire cottage industry around generating hype around numbers. The MLB At Bat App sends messages at least once a day surrounding some accomplishment from someone. This guy is the first left handed hitter with freckles to hit three doubles on a Tuesday. Obviously, that’s an exaggeration, but with the number of alerts that come, it is often difficult to determine what we should really get excited about.

On Wednesday, Ichiro Suzuki collected his 4257 professional hit. Ironically, the Reds finally got around to retiring Pete Rose’s number this week. Ichiro’s most recent hit passed the hit king’s record if we count Ichiro’s service in Japan. Whether Ichiro’s achievement is real or not is open to debate. He did have ten consecutive seasons with 200 or more hits to begin his big league career. It is easy to say that Ichiro is a Hall of Famer and table the hits record discussion for another day. His 3000^th big league hit will probably be a much bigger deal.

This Week in Baseball

The James Shields trade has opened our attention to the trade market for this season. Unlike past seasons, there are several sellers that have already been established. Funny, but all but one of them are in the National League this season. The Atlanta Braves, Philadelphia Phillies, Cincinnati Reds, Milwaukee Brewers, and San Diego Padres are already established sellers at this point.

As usual, we will keep you posted on the fantasy implications of this season’s deals. With the unique stratification of the standings, there will likely be more movement this season. There are some exciting names on the block and those names will have a tremendous impact on the pennant races if they are dealt.

If you read anything

The Blue Jays offense took the world by storm last season and while they got off to a slow start this year, they have gotten back on track lately. Unfortunately, two of their best offensive players are impending free agents in Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion. When you couple those two with Josh Donaldson you get the best three-headed monster in baseball. Encarnacion reached 61 RBI on the season on Thursday and that was with a fairly terrible April. Bautista is “struggling” with only 41 RBI on the season. The defending MVP has “only” 43 RBI on the season. Still, the combined total is pretty staggering.

When we use the only moniker it is because while the Blue Jays are still hitting, the Red Sox have come on strong with the bats. They may have lost on Thursday night, but David Ortiz hit his 17^th home run on the season and collected his 29^th double. The combination of Ortiz, Jackie Bradley, Xander Bogaerts, and Mookie Betts is enough to challenge the Blue Jays top four bats (if we include Michael Saunders in the top four for the Blue Jays). People say that pitching wins championships, but those two lineups will be fun to watch over the summer.

We kind of expected

The Tigers may be struggling overall, but their offense is also taking care of business with five of their nine regulars hitting better than .280. In particular, Victor Martinez is hitting .335 with 11 home runs on the season. Miguel Cabrera has 13 home runs and 39 RBI on the season. The Tigers have also enjoyed the success of Ian Kinsler, Nick Castellanos, and J.D Martinez as well. Unfortunately, they don’t have the pitching to really make a serious run at this point, but they should remain entertaining to watch.

We Didn’t Expect

C.C. Sabathia had another good outing and seems to be on the path to being the comeback player of the year. He spent the fall in alcohol rehab and now seems on pace to be a possible all-star representative for the Yankees. He moved his record to 5-4 and now has a 2.20 ERA. That might not be good enough to make it now, but if he wins his next two or three starts he might make some noise.

Save Opportunities

• Aroldis Chapman (Converted #12)
• Jeurys Familia (Converted #22)
• Steve Cishek (Converted #15)

Injury News

• D. Martinez fractured his elbow. He will be reexamined tomorrow to determine how much time he will miss.
• Glen Perkins has a torn labrum and will miss the remainder of the season.
• David Wright will undergo neck surgery. It is now known at this time how much time he will miss.