Wednesday, July 20, 2011
And That Happened
Posted by Craig CalcaterraPirates 1, Reds 0: Pittsburgh keeps rolling, as four pitchers combine to shut out the Redlegs for the second night in a row. This is all pretty trippy, but I'm curious to see what happens to the Buccos when they start a ten-game stretch against St. Louis, Atlanta and Philly beginning this Friday.
Rangers 7, Angels 0: Texas apparently does not lose baseball games anymore. Twelve straight for the Rangers, this one behind eight shutout innings from Alexi Ogando.
Mets 4, Cardinals 2: Jose Reyes comes back and gets two hits and scores a run, Carlos Beltran comes back and goes 3 for 3. In fact, every Mets starting position player got a hit and Dillon Gee pitched seven strong innings.
Orioles 6, Red Sox 2: Baltimore finally figures out how to beat Boston, besting them for the first time in seven meetings. Two runs in seven innings allowed for Jeremy Guthrie, who broke a personal seven-game losing streak against the Sox.
Tigers 8, Athletics 3: Things were going just fine until the bottom of the fifth, when Detroit decided that it was time to beat the living hell out of Guillermo Moscoso. Sometimes Tigers can just turn on you like that, which is why they make poor pets.
Padres 4, Marlins 0: It was bullpen trade chip audition night for the Padres, as Qualls, Adams, Gregerson and Bell all got into the game, each holding the Fish scoreless. Of course Tim Stauffer did most of the work, shutting out Florida for six. By the way, I think I have used some variation of the phrase "shutting out" more so far this year than I did the previous three years of this feature combined.
Rays 3, Yankees 2: Bartolo Colon returned to useful form, but the pen couldn't hold it. Of course, it's not like they had a big margin for error given how tied up Jeremy Hellickson had the Bombers' lineup.
Twins 2, Indians 1: Minnesota entered the bottom of the ninth down 1-0, but loaded the bases and then Danny Valencia won it with a walk-off single. I wasn't really paying attention to this game, but Gleeman was, and he said that Tribe starter Justin Masterson threw 104 pitches in the game and that 103 of them were fastballs. Heavens to Betsy. It obviously worked, given that he shut out the Twins for seven and two-thirds. Too bad for the Indians that he couldn't keep pumping those speedballs in there for all nine.
Royals 4, White Sox 2: Duffy beats Peavy. That almost sounds kind of cute. Pretend they're the names of cats or teddy bears or something. Or that instead of nouns, their names are adjectives.
Phillies 4, Cubs 2: Another bullpen failure for the Cubs, with Sean Marshall playing the role of Carlos Marmol. Wait, that's not fair. Marshall didn't walk the whole ballpark or anything. He was just hit. Michael Martinez had the two-run double in the ninth that proved to be the game-winner.
Astros 7, Nationals 6: Clint Barmes drove in three to help J.A. Happ get his first win in two months.
Blue Jays 6, Mariners 5: It took fourteen innings, but we got to the same place we've gotten a lot lately: a Mariners loss. That's ten straight for Seattle. Rajai Davis reached on a single in the 14th, stole second and third, and then came in to end it on a John McDonald sacrifice fly.
Rockies 12, Braves 3: Brandon Beachy got shelled for six runs in the first three innings and then the less-impressive end of the Braves bullpen performed pretty substandard mopup duty. This gave Ubaldo Jimenez way more run support than he needed on a night when he struck out nine while pitching into the seventh inning. Three RBI a piece for Troy Tulowitzki, Seth Smith and Dexter Fowler.
Brewers 11, Diamondbacks 3: Five homers for the Brewers -- two of them by Yuniesky Betancourt of all people-- as Barry Enright decided that last night was a good one to work on his batting practice pitches.
Giants 5, Dodgers 3: Brandon Belt returned and in his first game back homered in the second to kick off the scoring and doubled in two in the seventh to put the Giants up to stay. That sound you hear is Aubrey Huff getting comfortable on the bench.
Craig writes the HardballTalk blog for NBC Sports.com