But first a story about a woman who was arrested for stealing toilet paper. Her name had to be "Butts", right?

Yesterday, Wes Helms homered and Aaron Rowand hit a grand slam en route to an 8-4 Phillies win over and series sweep of the White Sox. The Phils have now swept two of their last three series. They throw a kid from Double-A (Kyle Kendrick) who is basically the best warm body in the organization, and they win—the kid even got a "hit" on a ball that clunked off a diving Jermaine Dye's glove. They are a juggernaut. Fourm, count 'em, four games above .500! Break 'em up!

Helms won the First Annual Wes Helms/Jason Kendall Home Run Derby, hitting his first home run of the season just hours before Jason Kendall ripped his first homer not only of the season, his first since May 31, 2006 (157 games). That leaves just four regulars (i.e., batters who qualify for the batting title) without a home run. Kendall also is 5-fot-9 in his last two games, raising his average from .194 to .210. Keep in mind that Helms hit 10 dingers last season and once hit 23. Kendall has hit double digits in homers three times with a career high of 14 in 2000 with Pirates. However, In two and one-half years with the A's he has a grand total of two home runs.

Here are all the qualifying batters with one or fewer dinger this season:

Kendall is still in the midst of a potentially historically poor season at the plate. He has .249 on-base percentage, .238 slugging, and .487 (!) OPS. That is still 64 point worse than the next lowest OPS for any batting-title qualifier:

It's so bad that Kendall's OPS is closer to the overall statistic for AL pitchers, who bat just during interleague play, .425 (62 points lower) than he is to the next worst regular, Corey Patterson at .551 (64 points away). If Kendall keeps it up, he could be the first batter in 39 years to register an OPS under .500 and just the second in 75 years. There are just 16 sub-.500 OPS seasons since 1901 that have been registered for a batting-title qualifier:

Oddly, Helms and his career-low .635 OPS has all but lost his job in Philly, but Kendall is solidly entrenched behind the plate for the A's. He is even batting eighth regularly, down from his usual leadoff spot, instead of ninth for the most part.

Coincidentally, GM Billy Beane yesterday was given a seven-year extension by the A's. He did get a regular catcher in 2005 from the Pirates for a journeyman pitcher who would deservingly lose 15 games that year (Mark Redman) and a reliever who is no longer in the game (Arthur Rhodes), but he didn't have to hang onto Kendall for so long after so many of his offensive tools had evaporated. One has to wonder how many of those seven years will witness Kendall behind the plate.