And That Happened

Giants 10, Brewers 6: Hero-pilot Chesley Sullenberger threw out the first pitch. He had the best stuff out of anyone at AT&T Park yesterday, however, as Tim Lincecum became the third out of the last four Cy Young award winners — following Cliff Lee yesterday and CC Sabathia last year — to get rocked the following Opening Day. Well, maybe “rocked” is too strong a word, but it was a short outing. Jeff Suppan, on the other hand, was rocked (4 IP, 6 H, 6 ER). I spent most of last April riffing on the Giants’ inability to score runs and by the time I got tired of doing so I had built up a nice little archive of Giants-can’t-hit jokes. I hope this sort of game doesn’t continue for them, because I have a lot of material I need to use.

Red Sox 5, Rays 3: Josh Beckett mowed down the Rays (7 IP, 2 H, 1 ER, 10K), showing a lot more velocity than he had in the ALCS last year. It’s the kind of thing that reminds you that health is as big a factor as anything else by the time you get to October. Everyone is hurt to some degree, and the team that is hurt less has the advantage. In other news, according to the game story “The Boston Pops took over the national anthem from singer Seal, who had been scheduled for Monday but couldn’t stick around.” What on Earth does Seal have on his schedule? He’s been free since basically 1994, right?

White Sox 4, Royals 2: Kyle Farnsworth gave up a late blast to Jim Thome despite having no business facing a lefty slugger like him. For a short and concise analysis of this, check out Neyer’s post about it. For an angry, 2,300 word screed about it, check out Rany’s. Remember back in the day when Rob used to be the more bitter of the two of them when it came to the Royals? Yeah, times change.

Marlins 8, Nationals 3: There’s going to be plenty of time to criticize the Nationals this year, so allow me to insert a compliment: the Nats’ bullpen threw five innings of shutout relief yesterday. Of course it followed an act of utter pitching malpractice by Scott Olsen (3 IP, 8 H, 8 ER, 3BB), but let’s look on the bright side, shall we? Also of note: a day after that long inside the park home run to deep center by Emilio Bonifacio, the game summary lists both Ronny Paulino — the catcher, mind you — and Bonifacio himself tripling to “deep center” in the third. Is this all grand coincidence, or does Lastings Milledge have a broken pelvis or something?

Blue Jays 5, Tigers 4: Brandon Lyon blows a decent Edwin Jackson start, coughing up three runs and the game in an inning of work. Bad night for him to be doing that. Due to some alcohol violations, booze sales were banned at Rogers Centre for the game, and you just know that Leyland could have used a belt of something strong to get through this one.

Braves 4, Phillies 0: The Braves bookend a couple of runs on cheap infield hits and errors with a blasts from Kelly Johnson and Chipper Jones, and because Philadelphia is apparently protesting deforestation or something and left their bats in Florida to start the year, it was enough to hold up.

Twins 6, Mariners 5: A three-run ninth inning rallied Minnesota past Seattle. It started when Brandon Morrow retired the first two Twins in the ninth, only to walk the bases full. Then Miguel Batista came in to contribute the remainder of the kerosene, giving up two straight singles to end it. In other words, five straight Twins reached safely with two outs in the ninth. Oy vey.

Cardinals 9, Pirates 3: Just another case of Albert bein’ Albert (2-3, HR, 2 RBI, 3 R, 2 BB). It helped that Ian was bein’ Ian too (4 IP, 9 H, 8 R).

Padres 4, Dodgers 2: I’m not going to say this was an uneventful game, but the recap spends multiple paragraphs talking about Heath Bell’s save, despite the fact that there appears to have been no drama about it whatsoever.

Rockies 3, Diamondbacks 0: Monday’s slugfest turns into Tuesday’s pitchers’ duel, as Ubaldo Jiminez shuts the Dbacks out over seven innings and Corpas and Street close the deal. Jiminez after the game: “I feel really good pitching out there,” Jimenez said of Chase Field. “The weather is nice, and I’m able to throw all my pitches. Here I can throw my curve a lot.” Sounds like a Coors complaint. I’m guessing the Rockies aren’t going to be able to lock Ubaldo up if they’re so inclined. UPDATE: OK, I missed this. Forget I said anything.

A’s 6, Angels 4: I’m not going to say the Angels are in trouble or anything, but a team that contends doesn’t have something called Dustin Moseley start their second game of the season. Three runs over six innings isn’t terrible or anything, but LAAoA is going to have some issues with the rotation as currently structured.

Astros 3, Cubs 2: I watched Monday’s opener and most of last night’s game before falling asleep on the friggin’ couch. Up until then, I was of the opinion that Rodriguez might never get another Major League hit, he looked so bad up there. But I’ll be damned, his tenth inning single ended up getting him on base for the winning run. Since I didn’t see it, I can only assume that five guys fell down trying to field a slow dribbler or something.


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Travis M. Nelson
14 years ago

The Boston Pops released a new album this week, all baseball related stuff, so they may have gotten the nod not because Seal was busy, but because he’s not, and they are.  You know, selling albums. 

Also, re: the LAnahfornia Angels, the rest of their projected rotation right now consists of “ace” Jered Weaver (11-10, 4.33 last year), Joe Saunders, Moseley, Nick Adenhart (22 yrs old, 12 IP in MLB career), and someone names Shane Loux. 

Loux like it could be a long season for the Angels. 

*ducks to avoid hurled, rotten fruit*

Millsy
14 years ago

Grant,

Looks like you got your Klum/Seal joke in with the “not much penetration over there’’ comment.

Tim Kelly
14 years ago

This doesn’t quite count as “five guys fell down” on IROD’s hit in the tenth, but it was a grounder off Ramirez’ glove (scored a hit) so you weren’t too far off…

TomG
14 years ago

“I’ll grant all of you the Heidi Klum thing, but really, how great is she if she’s keeping him away from the ballpark? Beautiful women are common. Women who love baseball are the holy freakin’ grail. “

I take it you haven’t seen her Guitar Hero ads. Beautiful women that love baseball are common. Beautiful women that play video games are the holy grail.

Patrick
14 years ago

Yes, some may say that Morrow gave the Twins the win but Gomez had a hell of an at-bat to draw a walk with two out.  Bedard looked very good for four, unfortunately he went five…Boy was that a fun game last night!

APBA Guy
14 years ago

LAA fans finally woke up to the reality of having their top 3 pitchers on the DL, and an offense that lacks pop. But at least Dustin Moseley has been hanging around the majors for a couple of years.

Billy Beane introduced MLB to Trevor Cahill, just turned 21 in March, as the A’s #2 starter. Cahill, his 5.40 Spring ERA notwithstanding, walked 5 and struck out 1 in 5 innings, but only surrendered 2 earned runs because Jack Cust dropped a fly in right resulting in an unearned run.

But two good things happened for the A’s. The Angels good relievers had pitched the night before so last night their “B” relief gave up 3 late inning runs. And the Angels were helpless against the A’s pen, only scoring once and striking out 5 times in 4 innings.

We can safely draw the conclusion that as long as a team is loaded with very young starters (Washington, Oakland, LAA), they will have a very difficult time winning consistently.

The whole time I was watching Cahill I was wondering what Sean Gallagher had done to piss Beane off so much that Beane would bury Gallagher in long relief.

ecpglp
14 years ago

The entire city of Kansas City wants Trey Hillman’s head today.  Not Farnsworth’s…He did exactly what he was expected to do.

SKates
14 years ago

Let’s see, Heidi Klum at her sexual peak v. Singing for a bunch of drunks…Seal made entirely the right call

Mark
14 years ago

Seal is married to Heidi Klum, which—Well, if it were me, let’s just say I would be frequently busy too.

Matt
14 years ago

Edwin Jackson’s start for the Tigers was far better than “decent”: 7.1 IP, 1 ER, 2 H, 1 BB, 4 K.  That’s a good line, but his pitching was even better than the line suggests.  He needed only 89 pitches to get through 7.1, and through 5 innings he was throwing about 75% of his pitches for strikes.  Even as he began to wear down in his last innings, his control was still very good.  He was consistently getting ahead of hitters and throwing first pitch strikes.  For a guy with a history of mediocrity and control problems, Jackson looked like an ace last night.

Of course, Brandon Lyon is the new Todd Jones, so it was all for naught.

Jason @ IIATMS
14 years ago

Damn, too late for a Seal/Klum joke.

Jason @ IIATMS
14 years ago

Farnsworthless, destined to cause pain to Royals fans for the next two years.

Good riddance!

CH
14 years ago

The Rockies signed Ubaldo Jimenez to a deal that takes him through 2014, worth up to $23 million.

Craig Calcaterra
14 years ago

I’ll grant all of you the Heidi Klum thing, but really, how great is she if she’s keeping him away from the ballpark?  Beautiful women are common. Women who love baseball are the holy freakin’ grail.

As for Edwin Jackson: good point. Not sure why I just went with “decent.”  And for all of his troubles, there were times last year when he looked really sharp.  He was shut-down good one day and godawful five days later.  Maybe he’ll put it all together this year.

Craig Calcaterra
14 years ago

CH—thanks. I had missed that.  Looks like I picked the wrong time to cancel my “Ubaldo Jiminez” Google News alerts.

Grant
14 years ago

Well Craig to be fair Heidi Klum is German. How many Germans do you know that like, or even understand in even the most basic sense, baseball. It hasn’t received much penetration over there, I’ll tell you that.

And I thought I was gonna be all clever with a Klum/Seal joke, but it turns out all of you get up before I do.