Those wacky young Diamondbacks, they have the best record in baseball (20-8), won their division last year, and yet no one seems to know who they are. Sure, there's Brandon Webb, who with six wins is the early NL Cy Young leader. But they have a potential MVP candidate in Conor Jackson who still gets carded this side of Tempe, and he is one of their veterans.

Last season, this team started transitioning to their seemingly endless supply of youth, and they still able to call up an unusual talent or two at will. They are like t he Montreal Expos of old except that they actually win with the talent.

The might have the next Babe Ruth—or at least the next Brooks Kieschnick—on their hands. They send Micah Owings to the mound tonight with a 4-0 record. His last appearance in a game was not as a pitcher but as a pinch-hitter, for the fourth time this season actually. He hit a game-tying home run Wednesday en route to an 8-7 Arizona win. He was pinch-hitting for the pitcher at the time.

Owings now has five career home runs in 84 plate appearances. That's about the same HR to plate appearance ratio as home run king Barry Bonds enjoyed in his apparently completed career (.060). However, it's not the best career HR/PA ratio for a pitcher. That honor falls to Frank O'Connor, who had one homer in his two career plate appearances in his one-year (1893) career.

If you look at just those pitchers who hit at least five career home runs, Owings still comes in second:

Note that three active "pitchers" make the list with notorious slugging pitcher Carlos Zambrano and converted pitcher Rick Ankiel, who still has more career games as a pitcher than at another pitcher, joining Owings. Also of note, Kieschnick is right behind Owings, and two legendary hard-hitting pitchers, Bob Lemon and Wes Ferrell, round out the list.

Meanwhile, prospect Max Scherzer makes his first career major-league start against the Phils Monday. It will just his second game in the majors. In his first, he relieved Edgar Gonzalez (the man he will replace in the rotation) trailing 6-2 and pitched 4.1 perfect innings while striking out 7. In his four and one-half year minor-league career, he averaged about 1.2 strikeouts per innings pitched (401 K in 336 innings).

Looking at pitchers with at three career innings pitched, he now ranks fourth in strikeouts to innings pitched:

You may notice that a fair number of these players are currently active. Ross Ohlendorf also made the list until I added in this year's stats. And that's the problem. As pitchers gather more innings pitched, their ratios tend to drop.

Given that Scherzer had a slightly lower K/IP ratio, I wouldn't be surprised if he trailed off a bit. Then again, who could keep pitching perfect innings forever? However, he still is a good bet to record at least as many strikeouts as inning pitched in his career, which is extremely rare this side of Brad Lidge and Billy Wagner.

Given the way Phils strike out and their tendency to be dominated by young pitchers the first time they face them, Monday could be a long night for Phils and a big one for Scherzer.