MLB Daily: Do Upsets Exist in the Regular Season? Plus Byron Buxton's Throwing Arm Impresses

Welcome to MLB Daily on a Tuesday … maybe we’ll finally get it right this time …

Just a thought: Let’s start today on a philosophical note — do “upsets” exist in baseball? Put the postseason aside for the purpose of this question. Sure there are “good” teams and “bad” teams but over the course of a 162-game season even the good teams fall into losing streaks while the woefully inept win a couple in a row if only through sheer probability. Unlike most sports, rarely does one individual result in baseball during the regular season cause anyone to raise the proverbial eyebrow. There are simply too many games everyday for one outcome to cause that much of a ripple.

The Phillies beating the Yankees 11-8 in the Bronx last night comes close to a surprise upset, only because Philadelphia came into Monday night’s game 7-28 on the road. The Yankees aren’t the pinstriped monster we saw in parts of the last two decades, so it’s not like this Phillies team came to the Stadium and put a thumping on the 1998 version of the Bronx Bombers. Even so as far as regular season games go, this is fairly surprising since the Phillies tallied 18 hits and chased Michael Pineda from the game in the fourth.

For as bad as the Phillies are and the punchline they’ve devolved into, at least Maikel Franco — who homered twice Monday — is showing promise with a .928 OPS in 36 games. The bad news for the Phillies is they DH’d the ghost of Chase Utley — who owns the lowest OPS among qualifiers at .532. If Utley reaches 500 plate appearances in 2014 his $15 million option for 2016 vests, and the Phillies reportedly will let manager Ryne Sandberg decide how much he should play the rest of the way.

Before moving on to another topic, is there a starter in baseball as erratic as Michael Pineda lately? On May 10th, he struck out 16 Orioles and dropped his ERA to 2.74. Over a month later he’s at 4.25. He didn’t strike anyone out last night, either. In four June starts, he’s allowed 2, 5, 1 and 8 earned runs spread out over 20 innings.

Wow: Byron Buxton, considered the No. 1 prospect in the game, showed off his throwing arm last night against the White Sox to nail Melky Cabrera at the plate. A throw like that from the outfield might be my favorite kind of baseball highlight.

Minnesota moved Buxton — who had been 3-for-26 to start his career — into the leadoff spot last night against John Danks and he responded with three hits. Buxton still might end up back in Triple A when Aaron Hicks comes off the disabled list. Hicks, himself highly touted, sports a lifetime .604 OPS in 178 games, so I’d still figure out a way to keep Buxton in the Majors and see what he can do.

Hey now, you’re an All-Star: The great Kansas City Royals All-Star debate from last week paid immediate dividends in the latest voting — something I’m sure the suits at MLB HQ love. Miguel Cabrera is now ahead of Eric Hosmer, while Josh Donaldson is within striking distance to overtake Mike Moustakas at third. Omar Infante still leads at second base over Jose Altuve by almost half a million votes — it’s almost like Royals fans are trying to prove a point here. Fortunately, Infante no longer has the lowest OPS among qualified players as both Utley and Alexei Ramirez are worse than him as of Tuesday morning.

Odds are we won’t end up with eight Royals plus Mike Trout in the American League lineup.

What we have to watch for now is if Ned Yost will tab Joe Blanton to start the game for the American League after he improved to 2-0 last night, out-pitching Felix Hernandez in Seattle.

This is good: Fun with numbers, Albert Pujols edition.

Remembering Hambone: MLB Network put together this tribute package to remember the late Darryl Hamilton last night. I was watching a little bit of MLB Tonight and I know he’s not beloved on the Internet, but Harold Reynolds told some worthwhile anecdotes about his former colleague. This is paraphrasing, but Reynolds also noted that if you were in baseball the last 3-4 decades you knew Hamilton and if you didn’t you hadn’t been in the game very long. Host Greg Amsinger did a good job, too, holding it all together under rough circumstances for live television.

The tone of this piece out of San Francisco conveys the common emotion throughout baseball about the sad news: shock.

More quirks: Does the name Steve Geltz ring any bells? Maybe? The Rays reliever is in the midst of a impressive stretch where he’s retired 28 straight batters after last night’s game with the Jays. Yes, 28 straight outs is one more than it takes to complete a perfect game but this isn’t exactly a “perfect game” although it’s certainly impressive in and of itself. Yusmeiro Petit, as noted by the Tampa Tribune, retired 46 straight last year.

Bigger picture, unheralded pitchers like Geltz and Kevin Jepsen are why the no-name Rays are still in first place in the American League East on June 22.

This & That: The Wall Street Journal figured out the Mets have the worst grammar among baseball fans. Go figure. … The Red Sox will retire Pedro Martinez’s No. 45 later this year. A deserved honor, indeed. … Kris Bryant homered twice and the Cubs beat Clayton Kershaw at Wrigley.