Barry Zito, fresh off of a week-long "demotion to the bullpen" that really amounted to a skipped start, dropped to 0-7 Wednesday night despite his best effort of the season against the Pittsburgh Pirates. He is the first Giants pitcher to lose his first seven decisions since reliever Rod Beck went 0-9 in 1996, and only the third starting pitcher since 1956 to go 0-6 before May.

This was the first time in Zito's major league career that he had missed a start, and according to Richard Van Zandt, maybe he should have taken more days off throughout his career. Rich blames Zito's downfall on a loss of velocity, and blames that loss of velocity on Billy Beane's overuse of the once-talented southpaw.

The Hall of Fame ranks chief among Gregory's topics for the first week in May. He gives his opinions on the candidacies of Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, Mike Mussina, and Andruw Jones. The comebacks seasons of shortstops Rafael Furcal and Miguel Tejada, plus the comeback career of Josh Hamilton are also profiled in Gregory Pratt's Week 5 Pepper.

In 2007, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays finished last in the major leagues in hits allowed per game, yielding 10.2, a full hit per game more than the second to last AL team. Consequently, the Devil Rays finished distantly last in runs allowed and earned runs allowed per game. But after revamping their defense and retooling their starting rotation, the Tampa Bay Rays find themselves in second place in the AL in runs and earned runs allowed per game, and are leading the American League in fewest hits allowed per game!

It is hard to imagine that any predicted that simply by acquiring competant defenders the Rays would improve their pitching staff that consequentially. I mean, you could check the BaseballEvolution.com Tampa Bay Preview, but I am certain we did not see this coming.

Asher addresses these points and much, much, more in his most recent Weekly Roundup.

Today marks the evolution from the weekly Power Rankings format to a monthly version. How much sense does it make to rank a team weighted so heavily on the last week of play? All great teams will go through a rough stretch at some point, and many futile teams have found fleeting success here and there. Why, just on the last day of April, we had scores of 8-1, 19-5, and two instances of 13-1 blowouts. Are we supposed to bow down to the winners of those blowouts and write off the losers?

Of course not. Here are the Baseball Evolution Power Rankings based on a full month of play.

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