The controversy over Randy Johnson's 20-strikeout performance earlier this week is a silly one. It doesn't matter whether his 20 strikeouts in nine innings goes into the record books or not; it's the accomplishment that counts. Whether MLB recognizes it as official or not is mostly irrelevant ... The old, dissolved umpires union of Richie Phillips suffered its final blow this week when an arbitrator's decision on the umpires' grievance was less generous than an earlier settlement offer from Major League Baseball. A number of umpires will get their jobs back, but for the umpteenth time they overreached and ended up on the losing side of the battle overall ... The Padres have two 40+ players starting in the outfield this year, but one is engineering quite a comeback while the other has been unable to stay off the disabled list. Rickey Henderson, who had to practically beg for a job this offseason, is off to a marvelous start, hitting .303/.418./.474 (AVG/OBP/SLG) and looks a good bet to get to 3000 hits and set the all-time runs record this season. While Rickey has always been somewhat injury prone, the questions surrounding him were more about whether he could still hit rather than what kind of shape he was in. On the other hand, Tony Gwynn, the Padres' other 40+ year old outfielder, is no longer in the kind of shape he needs to be to play major league ball; he will be lucky if he can stay healthy for any extended time this season ... The Devil Rays franchise has been poorly run - at least on the major league level - since its inception, but its release of Vinny Castilla this week was a move in the right direction. Most major league team don't act like they understand the concept of "sunk costs," and hang on to unproductive players with big salaries just to avoid the embarassment of releasing them. Thus, the Devil Rays took a relatively big step in dumping the useless Castilla. Similarly, the Dodgers recently finally released Carlos Perez, not coincidentally soon after the general manager who had signed Perez to his contract was shown the door ... David Wells' ignorant criticism of Frank Thomas' unwillingness to play through a serious injury is yet another illustration that it is ridiculous to question a player who says he's hurting too much to be in the lineup. The great majority of major leaguers are all too willing to ignore a serious injury and play when they shouldn't, so when a player says he can't play, he almost always deserves to be taken at his word. Even doctors can't always tell when a a player is seriously injured.
