Each Friday or thereabout, we hope to recap the previous week’s gritty highlights. This is all a part of our efforts to be the Internet’s number one source of grit-related baseball information as well as baseball-related grit information.

Coming off the Grit-Summer Classic, the competition for the 2009 GRIT crown is heating up. In this first installment of TWIG, we’ll check out some notably gritty (and non-gritty) performances and find out how the leaderboard is shaping up for the second half. Let’s get right to it.

Movers

1.10: Jason Kendall, MIL

0.73: David Eckstein, SDP

Jason Kendall took a chainsaw to David Eckstein’s 3.5 point lead with a performance gritty enough to bump his season total to 10.11.

Although Kendall hit .364 on the week, the notorious serial muderer showed his usual lack of power, posting an OMS of -.009. Eckstein lost ground, dropping three-fourths of a point as he remained on the shelf (the one for injured players, not the one where he usually nests) with a strained right hamstring.

A relative stranger to the disabled list, Lil’ Davey is learning quickly that a pile of GRIT can’t earn you more GRIT like interest in a savings account or ants in an ant farm or cabbages in a cabbage patch. GRIT must be paid for. And in the gritconomy, the only acceptable forms of payment are blood, pain and tears (of pain). However, if the previous three years are any indicator, Eckstein’s current stint on the DL should be his only one of the season.

3.11: Shane Victorino, PHI

The winner of the Final Man vote for the NL All-Star team, Victorino headed home from St. Louis jonesing for an opportunity to show off his gritty bona fides. Show them off he did. Over the past week, Victorino put up this undeniably gritty line:

You see that .059 OMS? Those two caught steals on two attempts? A HBP and a SH? That line is grittier than one-finger poi. Between Victorino and Jimmy Rollins, the top of the Phillies’ lineup possesses two of the only five players with DTRM3 scores above 10.

3.88: Albert Pujols, STL

Uncle Albert continues his assault on the bottom-end of the record book. With a GRIT3 of -53.40, Albert has an opportunity to put together one of the most non-gritty seasons ever.

Holding everything equal, if Pujols gets 650 PA this season he would finish with a final GRIT3 score of -84.45. That would place his 2009 season second only to Barry Bonds’ unholy 2004 campaign where the macrocephalic slugger drew 120 intentional passes.

6.79: Atlanta Braves

Over the past week, the Braves went 6-1 while outscoring their opponents 47 to 15. Depending heavily on the long ball for the offensive outburst, the Braves’ team GRIT total plummeted owing to the contributions of Garrett Anderson ( 1.27), Yunel Escobar ( 1.69), Chipper Jones ( 1.82), and Brian McCann ( 2.05).