Only 3 games were played Thursday. Let’s see how much can be squeezed out of those box scores.

Tigers 7, @Red Sox 3: Miggy stole, Prince tripled, Delmon homered, Pods hit one over the CF, and the Tigers won a game — what the Sam Hill is goin’ on here?

• For the second time this year, Josh Beckett had just 1 strikeout in an outing of 7+ IP. In each of his 112 prior starts of that length, he had at least 2 Ks. His current K rate, 6.5 SO/9, would be the lowest of his career and 2 Ks below his prior career average.

More K-rate madness: Max Scherzer leads MLB with 11.7 SO/9, and his gross K rate of 29% of all batters faced ranks 3rd among qualifiers (behind Gio & Strassy). Yet he has allowed 10.7 H/9 and a .296 batting average. That combination is completely unprecedented:

• Of the 116 prior qualifying seasons with a gross K% of at least 25%, the highest BA allowed was .251. The composite K% of those seasons was 27.9%, and the composite BA was .210.
• Out of 58 qualifying seasons with at least 10 SO/9, the highest hit rate was 8.5 H/9.
• The BAbip against Scherzer is .395 — 85 points above his prior career average.

Now, Scherzer’s 5.55 ERA does have factors besides bad luck. His GB/FB ratio of 0.57 is the 9th-lowest among 55 AL qualifiers. High flyball rates correlate with high HR rates, and Scherzer’s HR% is 8th-highest among qualifiers. And he’s gotten just 3 DP grounders — no shock when you combine his low GB rate with the sketchy character of Detroit’s infield defense. Only 3 AL qualifiers have lower DP totals, including Justin Verlander; all 4 DET qualifiers have DP rates (as a percentage of opportunities) below the league average, and the Tigers are dead last with 26 total DPs and an 8% DP conversion rate (less than half of Minnesota’s rate).

• No one will be surprised to learn that Detroit currently ranks 11th or lower among AL teams at all four infield positions, whether measured by Total Zone Fielding Runs or BIS Defensive Runs. Their middle infielders have been every bit as bad as their dreaded corner men. And that helps explain the over-all disconnect between Detroit’s AL-best 3.01 SO/BB ratio and their 9th-place rank in ERA+.

Jarrod Saltalamacchia scored Boston’s 2 bigggest WPA gains with his 10th HR (tops among catchers) and 10th double, out of 36 hits. Salty’s isolated power (SLG minus BA) of .313 ranks 5th in MLB (min. 100 PAs), and if maintained, would be the 4th-best ever by a catcher (min. 300 PAs); the Catcher record is .359 by Javy Lopez in 2003.

• Quintin Berry had 2 steals for the 2nd time in 9 games since being promoted to fill in for Austin Jackson. No Tiger had swiped 2 in a game since 2010. So far Berry’s offense has been almost a carbon copy of what Jackson was doing: a high OBP despite lots of Ks, 5 steals without being thrown out (Jackson had 6 in 36 games), and plenty of dish-denting — 38 runs in 45 games for the two CFs, a rate of 137 runs per 162 G. Berry, who shares a famous birthday, is with his 6th organization in as many years, but has never been traded nor gotten a prior shot in the majors. The obvious reason is that he has no power; in 3,000 minor-league PAs he hit 20 HRs with .071 ISO. But last year he had a .383 OBP and 42 SB with 7 CS. If there’s a place in MLB for a rag-arm no-power OF who’s not an efficient base-stealer like Juan Pierre, why not for a guy like Berry whose limitations haven’t been conclusively proven yet?

No-Fear Factor: From 2008-11, Adrian Gonzalez averaged 90 walks, 24 of them intentional; he even had 20 IBBs last year with Boston. This year, he’s on pace for 51 and 3. Kevin Youkilis averaged 86 walks per 162 games through 2011; this year his pace is 48 BB/162G. Boston’s #3 hitters rank 12th in AL OPS and 13th in RBI, while their cleanup men are 10th in OPS and tied for last with 4 HRs. (Oddly, their most potent spot in the order has been #6, hitting .358/1.111 with 12 HRs and 43 RBI, and it doesn’t seem to matter who bats there; all 6 men with 15+ PAs in that spot have an OPS of at least .900.)

• Fielder’s stand-up triple was defense-assisted, as you might expect. The Prince isn’t terribly slow on a straight course, but cornering is another story.

Two doubles for Scott Podsednik, his first multi-XBH game since Sept. 2009. In 2010, his last full season, Podsednik had the 6th-lowest rate of extra-base hits among qualifiers (XBH 16.9% of all hits), and the percentage of his hits that were doubles (8.75%) was the lowest of the past 2 years. Pods is tearing up the pea patch so far, 8 for 16 in his 5 starts, with a 208 OPS+. His only time at 100 or better in OPS+ was 2003, his surprise rookie season.

__________

@Rockies 11, Astros 5: If CarGo keeps going like this, he’s gonna need a bigger van to lug his stats around. That was his 4th straight HR (over 2 games); the final figures for his 5th straight multi-hit game read 4-3-3-3, HR, 2B, SB, IBB. Stats for the 5 games: 13 for 22, 6 HRs, 9 runs, 10 RBI, and 4 straight Rockies wins.

• Now I know there’s at least one major-leaguer I can out-jump: J.D. Martinez, I’ve seen one-legged beer-leaguers go higher than you did on CarGo’s HR!

Thanks to the big early lead, Jeremy Guthrie was able to last 7 innings despite allowing 12 hits and 5 runs. He’s the first pitcher since last August to win while yielding 12+ hits. It was Guthrie’s first win in 4 home starts, and actually lowered his home ERA to 8.87; he’s allowed a .363 BA and 1.086 OPS in Coors Field.

• Guthrie’s .940 OPS allowed is the 2nd-highest among those with 40+ IP. The highest OPS is .958 by Ivan Nova, who’s 6-2 despite a 5.60 ERA/77 ERA+, MLB-high 79 hits allowed, and 13 HRs in 63 IP. No qualified SP has ever posted a winning percentage of .700 or better with an ERA+ below 85 (Storm Davis, 1989). The Yankees have scored 5 or more in 9 of Nova’s 10 starts.

MLB strikeout and SO/BB rates keep going up, but in 47.2 IP, Guthrie has just 19 Ks with 17 walks, a 1.12 SO/BB ratio. No qualified pitcher in the past 3 years had a SO/BB ratio below 1.19. Eight qualifiers are below that mark so far this year, but I predict that no more than two will make it through the year with such a low SO/BB ratio, because you just can’t succeed that way. Those who have come this far are either living on borrowed BAbip (Kevin Correia .231, Henderson Alvarez .253, Kyle Drabek .256), “too big to fail” (Ubaldo Jimenez, Derek Lowe), pitch for a rebuilding team (Lucas Harrell) or are being tolerated for other reasons (Daniel Bard, Clay Buchholz). And I think it’s no accident that there are 3 pairs of teammates among these 8 pitchers; if you have one guy with an awful SO/BB ratio, it’s not so hard to find at least a temporary replacement — but if you have two such guys and only one suitable alternative, you’re more likely to try and ride them both out.

• Seven different Colorado pitchers have at least 5 starts; none has an ERA+ as high as 100. Eight have started at least twice at home, and the only one with a good ERA is the guy they just iceberged, Jamie Moyer (3.72 in 5 starts). The others: Guillermo Moscoso, 11.57 in 2 starts; Christian Friedrich, 10.64 in 2 (bonus points if that ERA reminds you of anyone famous); Guthrie, 8.87 in 4; Jhoulys Chacin, 8.53 in 3; Juan Nicasio, 7.04 in 6; Alex White, 6.00 in 2; and Drew Pomeranz, 4.20 in 3.

I don’t know much about reliever Matt Reynolds, who struck out the side in his inning’s work, but I know this: If you’re looking at his career rate of 1.61 HR/9 — 8th-highest among actives with 50+ IP — and thinking, “yeah, but Coors Field…,” think again. Reynolds has been far more HR-prone on the road, allowing 8 HRs in 35.2 IP (145 PAs) — about 1 HR for every 11 batters who didn’t strike out or walk. He’s only allowed 24 total hits in away games, but 8 left the yard and 7 more went for two bases.

• “Paging Dr. Mulligan … Dr. Mulligan, please report to the E.R.A. trauma center, stat!“: Bud Norris (9 R in 1.2 IP) saw his ERA zoom from 3.34 to 4.52. He had a 1.17 ERA in his 5 prior May starts.

__________

Brewers 6, @Dodgers 2: “You can’t predict baseball.” Well, maybe you can, but I never could have foreseen Milwaukee coming into LA 9 games under .500 and putting a 4-game clampdown on the best record in MLB.

• It’s not just the first 4-game sweep ever by the Crew over the Scullymen, nor their first sweep of any series in Dodger Stadium — it’s the first time they’ve ever swept a series or won 4 straight against LA, anywhere, with any amount of time or games passing in between.

Theory: The 2nd DL stint by a star player usually has a greater emotional impact on a team. You instinctively know that a second disabling, especially with the same injury, is likely to last much longer than the first. The Dodgers were 23-11 when Matt Kemp first hit the DL, then went 9-5 without him. They lost his one full game back, lost the game that he left after 1 AB, and lost the first game since he went back on the DL, expected to miss at least a month.

• Dodgers notched 13 hits, but hit into 3 DPs and went 2-11 with RISP.

Zack Greinke has been Max Scherzer without the HRs: 9.6 SO/9, but 9.7 H/9. No one has to sweat it, though, ’cause he’s 6-2.