Thursday, April 06, 2006
Ah, this is why I love baseball season. This afternoon when I got back from class I caught most of the White Sox/Indians game on WGN, while keeping an eye on Gameday to see how the Tigers were doing. I had to go to a lecture, but I still managed to catch the tail end of the Red Sox game on MLB.tv, while watching the end of the Cardinals/Phillies game on ESPN. Then on a lark I flipped on TBS, and lo and behold, the Braves game was just starting because they're out west playing the Dodgers.
So I got to see Jimmy Rollins extend his hit streak to 38 games (on replays later in the game; he hit safely in the first inning), and Trot Nixon hit a homerun to back Josh Beckett's completely kickass outing, and Kameron Loe is friggin' gigantic, and the White Sox bullpen dropped the ball, and Jon(athan) Papelbon had an excellent 9th inning and Jeff Francoeur yay! And Bill Mueller yay! (wearing number 14, short hair, and no goatee. Very strange) No Nomar though, because he's already on the DL. Oh how I chortle.
Finals are murder these days, and will be for much of April (although it'll get easier in a couple weeks when art classes end; the rest of the university ends much later), but when there's a chance of baseball being on one of 4 TV channels, plus the computer... ah, it makes the horror of realizing you have to have a project whipped up all final-like in Final Cut in less than a week much easier to bear.
Quick thoughts:
-Papelbon DID look good out there. Calm, strong, etc. etc. But NESN kept cutting back to the bullpen, where Foulke was sitting, fleecey shirt on, looking vaguely disquieted. Clearly, putting Papelbon in was the right move here. But I hate to think what this is going to do to Foulke's already well-documented less than level state of mind.
-So, after the middle game in that series, who's about ready for Doug Mirabelli to come back? OK, I understand that Wake was doing a lot of that himself, what with the, er, control problems and such. But how much of that was the knuckleball being its usual knuckling self, and how much of it was Wake maaaaaybe not trusting his catcher as much as he used to? That's complete idle speculation, by the way. I have no idea. It's just something else to bite our nails neurotically about.
-Oh, and who had a heartattack over Timlin tonight? Was that necessary? Yeesh. I was all set to make some sort of lame joke about the fact that he's wearing his camo tshirt under his jersey again (100% of FACT), and then he had to go and nearly give the game away and my brain was all, "NO MIKE TIMLIN I CAN NO LONGER JOKE ABOUT YOU IF YOU ARE GOING TO BE SO STRESSFUL."
-Beckett looked really, really good. For a while there I thought we were going to Astro him. I won't believe it though until we see if that holds up and the blisters stay away. Heck, he could pull a Clement and melt down after the All Star break. There's time yet.
-Seriously, Kameron Loe is HUGE. Between him (at 6'7) and Scott Feldman (at 6'6), there was a bloody lot of Texas pitcher out there tonight.
-Is there anything in the universe more annoying than Hawk Harrelson saying "HE GONE!" whenever a White Sox pitcher strikes someone out? I tend to think not. Apparently, many others agree with me. Check out the graphic on the 'Hawkisms' page, by the way. Truly inspired stuff.
-After winning the first game against Barry Zito in absurd fashion (poor Zeets, allegedly his parents were in the crowd), the A's came back to win the next two games against the Yankees. I enjoy this trend. And Huston Street's been looking great. Not that he doesn't look great in an aesthetic sense, but great on the mound too.
-Mueller's been hitting pretty well out in LA. Sadly. I still haven't seen near enough of Lowell to tell if it's a worthwhile exchange, but my gut feeling is that, as of right this very particular moment, it's not. Hopefully we can make it up elsewhere.
-I know this is my Red Sox blog, not the Tigers one, and I know they were playing the Royals, not a real team, but STILL. Did you SEE Jeremy Bonderman's line? 8 Ks in 6.2 innings, 1 run that came when a runner he left on base scored during Spurling's time on the mound. Oh Em Effin' Gee. And did you SEE Chris Shelton on Opening Day, with the TWO HOMERUNS, and holy freaking cats and so on and so forth?
-Bronson got the win today for the Reds, and just so happened to hit a homerun. Yes. That is correct. Bronson Arroyo, the pitcher who looks like a little leaguer with a too-big helmet jammed over his abundance of blondeness, hit a bloody homerun. It was a nice one too, I saw it replayed during I think the Cardinals game.
-The salary list is out, and is topped by 3 Yankees, to the surprise of exactly no one. You have to go down to number 7 to hit a member of the Sox (Manny).
I am most amused by the fact that you have to go all the way down to number 117 before you hit a single Devil Ray.Labels: baseball, MLB, random
5:15 AM
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