Given how clueless he comes across as on just about everything else, President Bush gives surprisingly cogent and knowledgeable answers whenever he is asked a baseball question.

Witness his answer in an interview with Politico.com/Yahoo (his first ever “interview with the internet”), when asked which position player and which starting pitcher he would pick first if he were starting a team, everyone was a free agent, and he had an unlimited budget.

I’ll give you three guesses for each player, and I bet you’d be wrong on all six tries.

The President’s answers? Chase Utley and Roy Halladay.

What mades these answers so surprising/unsettling/super creepy for me is that those are exactly the two answers I would have given, and that those are almost certainly not the kind of super big name answers the vast majority of baseball fans or mainstream analysts would give.

Especially Roy Halladay. I mean, he pitches in Canada. Do you think Joe Morgan even knows who Roy Halladay is?

But Utley too. Sure, Utley is a rising star, and he’s coming on strong in a big way this year, but I don’t think we can really say he is a household name yet, at least outside of Philly. Fantasy geeks might pick Utley, but I can guarantee you 99 percent of the mainstream media would pick someone else, and 98 percent of those picks would be Pujols, A-Rod, or Jeter.

But perhaps even more unsettling than Bush giving such intelligent answers is the fact that he actually backs up his answers with not-nonsensical reasons. Seeing Bush support claims with actual logic and reasoning was quite a shock to my system, and I’m not sure if I’ve recovered yet.

Let’s look at the transcript (a video is also available on Yahoo Sports):

Q: Mr. President, I know you’re going to hate this, but I’m hoping that we may twist your arm and talk about baseball for just a moment. (Laughter.) Mr. President, you’re a Major League Baseball team owner again. Everyone is a free agent. You have a Yankees-like wallet. Who is your first position player? Who’s your pitcher?

THE PRESIDENT: That’s a great question. I like Utley from the Philadelphia Phillies. He’s a middle infielder, which is always — you know, they say you have to have strength up the middle — there’s nothing better than having a good person up the middle that can hit. And Roy Halladay from the Toronto Blue Jays is a great pitcher. He’s a steady guy, he burns up innings. And I’m sure I’m leaving some other good ones out, but those –

Q: We thought you were going to go A-Rod, Josh Beckett.

THE PRESIDENT: Josh Beckett is good, yes, he’s real good, too. I mean, look, that’s a tough question to answer on the fly like this, Michael.

Here we can clearly see that the president follows the game quite closely. He has some idea that Utley’s marginal value compared to other middle infielders makes him perhaps the most valuable player in the game right now, and that Roy Halladay has been a tremendously reliable starter whose true greatness has been obscured by pitching in Toronto.

We also see that the interviewer has know idea who either player is, the way he is taken aback, and doesn’t really know what to say other than to suggest the two most obvious names known to any person living in the East Coast Bias Zone (in fact, the actual transcript from Politico.com misspells Utley’s name as “Ottley”).

At first I was tempted to assume that Bush must have had the questions in advance and was pre-coached on the answers, as he so often is for actual political issues. But then I realized that no populistic, politically-minded answers-coach would ever tell the President to pick Utley and Halladay.

Whatever else you want to say about our President, you have to give him his due: the man really does know baseball. Now if only he knew anything about anything else.

I have a question.

What’s with all the unassisted triple plays these days?

When I was a kid, literally for YEARS we all knew that there were only 8 unassisted triple plays in more 150 years of baseball history, and that that number was unlikely to change much any time soon, because they were so rare. But since the last time the Dodgers won a World Series (with which I mark the end of my innocent childhood) the total number of unassisted triple plays has nearly doubled from 8 to 14.

Of course, this may just be a fluke, as the play is still extremely rare.

From 1876, which is as far back as we have reliable records, until 1909, there were no unassisted triple plays. Zero.

After Neil Ball turned the first one ever in 1909, there was another 11 years of silence. But then suddenly in the 1920s, like flappers, the jitterbug, and government corruption, the triple play’s popularity skyrocketed, and it seemed like everyone was doing it. Indeed, in just 7 years from the end of 1920, when Bill Wambsganss turned his famous unassisted triple in game 5 of the World Series, until 1927, major league ball players turned SIX unassisted triple plays.

They then proceeded to show just how amazing this actually was by turning only a single unassisted triple play in the next SIXTY-FIVE years.

We finally did get two in the 1990s - Mickey Morandini in 1992 to break a 34-year lull, and John Valentin just two years later in 1994.

But now we enter the 2000s, and the unassisted triple play is suddenly all the rage again. In this decade alone there have already been four of them turned, including Asdrubal Cabrerra’s last night.

Of course, in all likelihood, this is probably a fluke, but still, I can’t help but wonder if there might be structural differences in the game today which account for the uptick.

Is it because guys take more walks and thus “clog up the basepaths”, making it more likely? Is it because line drive percentages are higher? Is it because back in the day there were more Ichiro-like slap hitters, who would deliberately go for a ground ball or a fly ball in those situations, rather than just letting rip with a line drive toward second base? Is it just that there are so many more expansion teams now, so that there are just so many more innings played and thus so many more chances to hit into one?

Come to think of it, if we consider the eras in which the most triple plays happened, those two eras roughly correspond to the most offense-oriented eras in baseball history - the “lively ball” era of the 1920s, and the current era I like to call the “juiced ball” era. So maybe that is your answer right there.

In any case, it’s a ridiculously amazing play - still rarer than a perfect game.

For years now it has been established wisdom that most of the top-shelf talent in baseball eventually gravitates to the American League, due to the presence of big spending teams such the Yankees, Red Sox, and Tigers. This dominance of the AL over the NL has also been perceived in the AL’s recent maulings of the NL in the All-Star Game, the AL’s manhandling of the NL in Interleague Play, the perceived superiority of the recent AL World Series representatives, and the lists of big-name free agents who defect from the NL to the AL each season.

But even the most cursory of glances at the leaderboards this season yields the surprising impression that most of baseball’s biggest starts currently play in the National League, while most of the big name players in the American League are aging, injured, or both.

For example:

- The top five MLB leaders in batting average are all in the National League, as are 7 of the top 10.

- The top five MLB leaders in home runs are all in the NL, as are 7 of the top 10. Fourteen players in the NL have at least 7 or more homers, compared to a mere 4 players in the AL.

- The top eight leaders in OBP are all in the NL.

- All ten qualified players in the majors with an OPS over 1.000 are in the National League (and that is not even counting non-qualified Micah Owings). In fact, the AL only has 11 players with an OPS that is even over .900, compared to 23 in the National League.

While it is still early in the season and it is still possible that we could be seeing some sort of statistical fluke here, I think we may be seeing the beginning of a trend in which power begins to shift back toward the National League.

The way the American League has sustained its dominance in recent years was by significantly outspending the National League in the offseason free-agent market. But with the new trend which has emerged in the past two or three years of teams locking up all their good young players through their peak years by buying out several arbitration years, the free agent market has become thinner and thinner each offseason, making it harder and harder for the rich AL teams to pilfer all the NL’s hottest young stars by luring them with bigger contracts.

So now the AL teams are stuck with the aging, declining superstars they lured away five years ago, while the NL continues to produce the hot new young stars of tomorrow.

This is another in our occasional series of posts wherein we update you on the status of the nonstop schadenfreude express which is the 2008 San Francisco Giants…

As virtually everyone knows by now, $126 million man Barry Zito has been summarily banished to the bullpen after beginning the season 0-6. But what I still don’t get is why the Giants would do this, as it seems like the worst possible option. By all accounts Zito is fully healthy, and given that the Giants have no chance whatsoever of contending this season, the best way to get any return on their investment is to let him eat innings as a starter. Just put him on a 100-pitch count and run him out there, no matter how many runs he gives up. On the other hand, if they want Zito to work on his mechanics in a less pressurized environment, then they should get him to agree to go down to the minor leagues, where he can start every 5th day against AAA hackers and get his confidence back. And if he won’t go down, a third option would be to just do what every other team does and make up an injury so you can DL him and then give him “rehab starts” in the minors. But the last place you want a pitcher with an 80-mph fastball is in your bullpen, where he is going to be useless in anything other than once-a-week mop-up relief, won’t get enough work to work out his mechanics, and will be eating up a spot on the roster.

In other rotation news, Kevin Correia has gone down with an oblique strain which will sideline him until at least the end of May, and Noah Lowry’s recovery from a nerve injury in his forearm is going much slower than expected. Originally he was expected back in mid-April, but now Giants athletic trainer Dave Groeschner is saying, “We’re probably going to have to shut him down for a significant amount of time,” and his return date is indefinite. Pat Misch has been called up to replace Correia, but it is uncertain who will replace Zito.

Meanwhile, lone rotational standout Tim Lincecum was handed what should be the first of many losses this year, losing to the Rockies despite a strong 7-inning, 3 ER performance, because his offense could only muster 2 runs behind him.

As for that Giants offense, they remain last in the Major Leagues at 3.2 runs scored per game. Although they have somehow been able to compile a record of 13-16 so far, good for third place in the NL West, their run differential would produce an expected 19 losses, tied for worst in the game with the Padres, so the Giants have been lucky so far to do as well (?) as they have.

The bloom is off the rose for emergency minor-league call-up John Bowker. After a blistering major league debut in which he batted .364 with 3 homers and 9 RBI in his first 9 games, inspiring hope in Giants fans that they might have secretly had a hitting prospect they never knew about, the guy who had never played above AA before this year fell off a cliff, going 3 for his next 31, and is now batting .193/.217/.404 as reality reasserts itself.

Your obligatory Brian Bocock batting update - .157/.280/.171 for a mind-bogglingly low .452 OPS.

In steroid-related news, one of the lone bright spots in the Giants organization this season - catcher Eliezer Alfonzo - who had been on the verge of a call-up after batting .306 with 3 homers and 14 RBI for AAA Fresno, was suspended by MLB for 50 games for testing positive for taking a banned substance, which Alfonzo has admitted doing.

Three potential difference-makers have just been called up to the Majors from AAA - depending on how your fantasy league works you may be able to grab them already. Even if you can’t, you should probably be hovering over the waiver wire until they become available.

Jeff Clement, C/DH, Mariners - Although Clement has been blocked for years at catcher by the recent extension given to Kenji Johjima (to much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments), he is now going to get a shot to be the Mariners’ full-time DH, thanks to the utter suckiness of current Ms DH Jose Vidro ( .211/.269/.326). Some people are wondering if Clement is going to displace Vidro right away, but I say that he is - I just can’t see the Mariners calling up Clement (and releasing Greg Norton) just to have him ride the pine - and given Clement’s insane AAA line this year of .397/.535/.692, you have to take a chance on him if you at all have space on your roster.

Max Scherzer, SP, Diamondbacks - The DBacks are riding high with baseball’s best record, and had no particular plans or even need to call up Scherzer any time soon, but his insane performance at AAA so far this year - a 1.17 ERA and 38 K in 23 IP - forced them to call him up. Initially they were just going to use him as a reliever, but his stunning performance on Tuesday night, retiring all 13 batters he faced, 7 by strikeout, while hitting 98 mph on the gun, forced the Dbacks to take Edgar Gonzalez out of the rotation to make room for him. He will be starting on Monday, and should be good for strikeouts, and with the Dbacks’ offense, wins, right from the get-go.

Darrell Rasner, SP, Yankees - This may be a less obvious pick, given that Rasner has not been too exciting in previous major league tours, posting a career 4.13 ERA in 52.1 career IP. But with the Yankees finally finding a way to make Philip Hughes disappear (claiming an oblique strain in order to DL him), Rasner looks certain to get the call, and he has been pitching out of his mind this season at AAA Scranton, going 4-0 with a 0.87 ERA in 5 starts, while striking out 27 men in 31 innings. While he is certainly not going reproduce those numbers at the major league level, the 27-year-old hurler looks to have turned a corner this season, and with the Yankees offense behind him he should be good for wins, some strikeouts, and a decent ERA right away, and should be able to help almost any fantasy pitching staff at the back end.

So I look at the leaderboards today, and I notice that White Sox leftfielder Carlos Quentin has already been plunked 6 times this year, and is on pace to get nailed 39 times by the end of the season. If he could maintain that pace, he would be in pretty elite company - the all time record for HBP in a season is Ron Hunt’s astonishing 50 in 1971, followed by Don Baylor’s 35 in 1986, and Craig Biggio’s 34 in 1997.

Of course, that plucky munchkin David Eckstein has also been plunked 6 times so far, and Reed Johnson of the Cubs has been hit 5 times, but who is most likely to keep up the insane pace?

The answer is clearly Quentin, who has already demonstrated that he is the greatest at getting hit by pitches in the history of the game. So far in his pro career, Carlos Quentin has been hit by a pitch every 16 plate appearances. This is an insanely high rate, when you consider that modern master Biggio was hit every 43.8, 80’s champ Baylor was plunked every 35.2, and HBP god Ron Hunt was hit “only” every 25.3 plate appearances.

In 2004, Quentin set the all-time minor league record for getting hit by the pitch by getting plunked 43 times across 2 levels, and in 2005, he set the all-time Pacific Coast League record for HBP by getting hit 29 times.

And Quentin’s propensity for getting hit by the pitch didn’t just start in the pros either. When I was at Stanford, he set the NCAA Division I record by getting hit by 5 pitches in a single game against Florida State. 5 plate appearances, 5 HBP! That was insane.

So get used to seeing images like the photo above, because going forward, if Quentin can avoid the injury bug that has plagued him thus far in his major league career, you can expect him to mount a serious threat to Ron Hunt’s record each and every season.

It probably comes as a surprise to no one that the Washington Nationals have a pretty abominable team once again this season, and that they are tied with the Texas Rangers for the worst record in baseball at 8-17. That is exactly the sort of performance we have come to expect from the Expos/Nats after so many years of futility.

But need this have been the case? Today I got to thinking about some of the really great talent which has come into the hands of the franchise over the years, only to later slip through its fingers, and I got to wondering, what if the Expos/Nationals had had a real owner instead of being owned by the other 29 teams from 2002-2006? Or what if MLB had hired a competent general manager rather than Omar Minaya, who seemed more intent on padding his own resume for his next job with splashy deals rather than building for the future? What if the team had been able or willing to resign even just its most obvious stars? What kind of team could the Nationals have had today, and how much would it have costed?

Thus I set about on the following thought experiment to come up with the best possible Washington Nationals 25-man roster, out of all the players that have been firmly in the team’s control since 2002. This is what I came up with:

Starting Lineup

CF Grady Sizemore
SS Orlando Cabrera
RF Vladimir Guerrero
LF Jason Bay
2B Brandon Phillips
3B Ryan Zimmerman
1B Brad Wilkerson
C Greg Zaun

Starting Rotation

SP Javier Vazquez
SP Chris Young
SP Jake Westbrook
SP Cliff Lee
SP Ted Lilly

Bench

OF Lastings Milledge
IF Maicer Izturiz
OF/IF Marlon Anderson
C Jesus Flores
OF Endy Chavez

Bullpen

CL John Rauch
RP Chad Cordero
RP Luis Ayala
RP Jesus Colome
RP Saul Rivera
RP Ray King
RP Chris Schroeder

As you can see, this team would easily be the best team in the National League. The lineup is loaded with stars and superstars (the only real hole being at first base, where Javier Vazquez would not have been traded for Nick Johnson), the bench is full of extremely useful parts, and the rotation, while perhaps lacking a true ace, is filled with no. 2s and would easily be the best in baseball (especially the way Cliff Lee is pitching this year). In the lineup, rotation, and bench only third-basemen Ryan Zimmerman and backup catcher Jesus Flores survive from the current team.

As for the bullpen, I decided to keep the entire current Nationals bullpen, which is actually one of the best bullpens the franchise has had in years. The fact is, the Expos/Nats really haven’t let any great relievers slip through their hands, the way they have with the lineup and the rotation, so this pretty much is the best possible bullpen for them.

So looking at this team, it would have to cost a fortune right? Well actually, it’s not too bad. If you add up the current salaries of all of these players, you get a total payroll of only $93.8 million. While that is certainly more than the $55 million the Nationals are paying now, it would actually only be the 14th highest payroll in baseball today, for a team that would easily be one of baseball’s very best.

In my view it would be a team that could easily reach and win the World Series. Paying $94 million for that is a bargain, and sure beats paying $55 million to have the worst record in the game.

Is John Smoltz the greatest pitcher of all time?

I only ask because that is apparently what Mr. Mark Bowman of mlb.com thinks. Or his editor. Or whoever it was that picked the headline for this article, entitled “Smoltz latest, greatest to reach 3,000 Ks.”

Do they even have editors over there? Because if whoever it was actually believes that John Smoltz is the greatest pitcher to ever reach 3,000 strikeouts, then they are the only one in the world who thinks that.

Even Smoltz’s own mother wouldn’t suggest that he is the greatest pitcher on this list:

Nolan Ryan, Roger Clemens, Randy Johnson, Steve Carlton, Bert Blyleven, Tom Seaver, Don Sutton, Gaylord Perry, Walter Johnson, Phil Niekro, Greg Maddux, Ferguson Jenkins, Bob Gibson, Curt Schilling, Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz.

In fact, it may even be possible to argue that John Smoltz is actually the worst pitcher on that list, but he certainly isn’t the best one, because that is basically a list of the greatest pitchers of all time. So in no way whatsoever is Smoltz the “greatest” pitcher to join the list.

So what really is going on with that title? I think what has happened here is another example of how these people get so up to their neck in sports clichés that they forget that what they are writing is actually English words that actually mean things, and simply apply these catchphrases where ever they please, much the same way Jackson Pollock applied paint to canvas, although probably with even less forethought.

I’m sure the person who came up with that headline probably just thought it had a nice “ring” to it, without even considering that it was actually words which would be making the insane claim that Smoltz was the greatest pitcher on the list above. But still, my gods. Learn to speak English - it’s your own native language (I hope).

Also, the subtitle of that article is pretty funny too - “Veteran no longer walking in shadows of Maddux, Glavine.” Um, okaaaay. Greg Maddux: - 349 wins, 4 Cy Youngs, 2 20-win seasons, so good he can be caught with your eyes closed. Tom Glavine: 303 wins, 2 Cy Youngs, 5 20-win seasons, hot baseball wife.

John Smoltz? 210 wins, 1 20-win season, 1 Cy Young. I think it is fair to say he is still chilling pretty deep in the shade of Maddux and Glavine. I mean Glavine has ninety-three more wins than Smoltz does. Even if you give him back the three years he was a closer, was he really going to average 31 wins per season?

Also, everyone is talking like Smoltz is a surefire Hall of Famer now, and he probably is, but if Smoltz makes the Hall for getting 3,000 strikeouts, than Bert Blyleven, who is number 5 on the list above, needs to have been inducted several years ago.

Diamondbacks starter Micah Owings is just about the best hitting pitcher you or I have ever seen.

How good is he? Well, last year he led the entire Diamondbacks squad with a 1.033 OPS, including a .333 batting average, 4 homers, and a .683 slugging percentage. In one incredible game against the Pirates on September 27, he went 4 for 4 with 3 doubles and 3 RBI while pitching 6 1/3 innings of shutout ball, en route to an 8-0 victory.

And this season, having gone 2-3 with a run scored in his victory yesterday, his batting average now is up to .308.

Of course, pitchers don’t get too many at bats, so these are some pretty small sample sizes we are talking about, but you can be sure that Owings is for real. For one thing, he was a star two-way pitcher/first baseman at Division-I Tulane, and would certainly have been draftable as a hitter if he hadn’t been drafted as a pitcher. There is also the fact that in his two minor-league seasons, he put up a combined line of .377 /.381/.525.

By my reckoning, Owings is presently the 5th best hitter on the entire Diamondbacks team. He is certainly better than catcher Chris Snyder, shortstop Stephen Drew, or second baseman Orlando Hudson. Which is why it is so odd that the Diamondbacks are still batting him in the traditional 9th spot. He should at least be batting 7th, and maybe even higher.

Of course, there is always the fact that as a pitcher, Owings usually does not play the full game. But this is the good ol’ National League, and that is precisely what the double-switch is made for.

The point is that the Diamondbacks have a rare two-way player on their hands, and if they are smart the should do everything in their power to get him as many at-bats as they can. One way to do that is to put him higher in the lineup, which is so obviously a smart move that it is baffling they haven’t done it already. In addition, they should also probably be pinch hitting him just about every game, and should maybe even consider sneaking him in at first base from time to time. And he should almost certainly be their DH in interleague games.

Obviously they don’t want to risk injury to him by making him play a demanding position in the field, because oh yeah he is also a pretty good pitcher, off to a 4-0 start this year with a 2.42 ERA.

But batting him 9th just because that is where all other pitchers bat is just stupid.

How sucky are the Giants this year? Our ongoing occasional series, “San Francisco SuckWatch 2008,” keeps you up to date! So with out further ado, let’s dive right in and see what is sucky about the Giants this week…

- Someone named Brian Bocock has played every inning at shortstop except one so far this season for the Giants. His batting line so far? .179 / .303 / .196. And as ugly as that line is, it is unlikely to get much better. Last season Bocock did not play a single game above A-ball, and in 345 at-bats at high-A San Jose, he posted a batting line of .220 / .293 / .328. Even if those stats from last year were directly transferred to the major leagues, they would instantly make Brian Bocock the worst-hitting shortstop in baseball, yet those were the stats he compiled last year, in A-ball.

- Bocock has been so bad that the Giants are calling up his double-play partner from A-ball last year, Emmanuel Burriss. This has become necessary because Omar Vizquel, the 41-year old shortstop the Giants resigned after he batted .240 last season, is not healing as fast as was hoped from his knee surgery. If the Giants’ fallback plans at shortstop are two guys from A-Ball, and Bocock is the best of those two, you really have to wonder just how truly terrible the other guys they have playing short in the Giants system must be.

- Bizarrely, in calling up Emmanuel Burriss the Giants DFA’d Rajai Davis, one of their few major-league ready outfield prospects, and the prize they swiped from the Pirates for Matt Morris. Although in the long run Davis projects as a fourth outfielder type, he is highly regarded as a defender in the outfield, and is not entirely incompetent with the bat, so you have to wonder why the Giants are risking losing him to a waiver claim.

- As of this writing, the Giants remain last in the entire Major Leagues in runs scored with 61 runs in 19 games, an average of 3.21 runs per game.

- According to the USS Mariner, the average velocity of Barry Zito’s fastball in 2008 is 82.7 miles per hour. Yes, that is the average, not the lowest. And according to calculations by The Big Picture, Barry Zito will make an estimated $86,000 per inning over the life of his contract, and that is assuming an extremely generous 35 starts per season and 6 innings per start!

- Putative staff ace Matt Cain had the worst outing of his career this week, getting hammered for 9 earned runs in 3.2 innings of work.

- As noted by Baseball Digest Daily, the Giants presently have the third longest championship drought in baseball, at 54 years and counting, behind only the Cubs and the Indians.

- Also via The Big Picture, piling on the Giants has become so fun that even the automated computer feed that updates the scores of ESPN’s game tracker has joined the fun.