Things I can't explain

* How the San Diego Padres have a 10-game winning streak.

*How the Chicago Cubs (100 wins in 2008) have an eight-game losing streak ... with half those losses coming to the Padres and Pittsburgh Pirates.

* How it is that the corpse of Gary Sheffield has been resurrected. He's hitting .277 for the Mets, but more impressively, his OBP is .417 and his slugging percentage is .494.

* How it is that Jason Bartlett is hitting .373-.418-.596. Again: Jason Bartlett's slugging percentage is just a nick below .600. (Yeah, I know: He's using a big Justin Morneau bat to warm up. Give me a better reason.) Nick Punto is a nick below that too ... several nicks. Cut Bartlett's percentages in half, and you've still got better numbers than Punto in two of the three percentages. (.181-.290.-.198). Punto hit .284-.344-.382 last season and Bartlett hit .286-.329-.361 ... but of course Punto had a similar season to this in 2007, the other time he came into the season with a regular job secured.

* Why anybody pitches to Joe Mauer at all. I was amused by the Terry Francona quote in the game story after Mauer hit his two-run pinch-hit homer (which left the Twins one run short: "I'm glad he came up where he could hit that ball as far as he wanted, and he about did."

*Why Dusty Baker keeps pulling this stuff. Last year he used starter Aaron Harang for four innings of relief in an extra inning game, then started him two days later; Harang's season went into the toilet. On Sunday, Harang started; there was a two-hour rain delay; Harang pitched after the delay too. He had 93 "real" pitches and Lord knows how many extra ones during the delay trying to stay loose. Harang's having a nice season so far; let's see if it survives this.