Today while Carlos Zambrano was winning his eighth straight and hitting his fourth homer of the season, Ryan Madson tied a major-league record with four wild pitches in a season.

And incidentally, Harold Reynolds and his strip-ed suits got canned over at Baseball Tonight. While most would say, "What took so long?", with the other abrasive talking heads that have been hired since Reynolds established his insipid on-air persona, I will dread the show even more. Reynolds may have been fired because the bar for abrasiveness had been raised too high for the diminutive ex-second baseman to reach. His quaint yet groan-inducing one-liners were nothing compared to John Kruk's insane bloviations.

But I digress. Zambrano becomes just the third pitcher since Ken Brett in 1973 to hit at least four homers in a season. Zambrano projects to six home runs by season's end. The other two both hit seven homers (Brooks Kieschnick in 2003 and Mike Hampton in 2001). Zambrano is just the 90th pitcher to hit at least four homers in a season, and the all-time record for a pitcher (9 by Wes Ferrell in 1931) is in reach.

If Zambrano continues to pitch and hit as he currently projects, he will become the first pitcher in 35 years to hit at least six home runs and win at least 15 games, a feat that's been done just 17 times in baseball history:

As for Madson, he has the oddest pitching line this side of Colorado—well, at least before this season. He is 8-7 with a 6.18 ERA, 1.75 WHIP, and now 10 wild pitches in 94.2 innings. Opponents are batting .319 against him. He has allowed 125 hits and 72 runs in 94.2 innings pitched. In his four major-league seasons, his ERA has gone from 0.00 (in just two innings pitched) in 2003 to 2.34 in 2004 to 4.14 last season to his current 6.18.

He would become the first man to have an ERA under 3.00 one year, an ERA between 4.00 and 5.00 in the next year, and an ERA over 6.00 in the third.

Madson has not won since June 29 when he came up one out short of a five-hit shutout against the O's. Oddly, he still projects to 13 wins for the season. If his trends continue, he would become just the ninth pitcher with at least 12 wins and an ERA over 6.00 for an entire season:

His wild pitch-to-innings pitched ratio (.106) is the highest since the infamous Jesse Foppert in 2003 and just the 38th highest all-time (min. 100 IP). Here are the highest wild pitch-to-innings ratios of all time: