Was it Mel Brooks or one of the other writers? Cool story either way.
No, it wasn’t Mel Brooks - I believe he was Andrew Bergman.
Andy Pettitte improved to 8 - 1 tonight with an ERA of 2.46 and a WHIP of 1.10. He also became the 3rd Yankee to record 200 wins for the club (Ford, Ruffing.) I’m a big fan, but at 38 years old, and with his history, someone might want to check his pee pee. Just sayin.
Karma can be a bitch sometimes. After sweeping the Cards at home (the last time that happened was 1988) the Dodgers get absolutely shelled by the Angels, 10-1. Two bases loaded, bases clearing doubles did the damage. Billingsley just didn’t have it together last night. The Padres won, so we’re tied in the NLWest.
It’s going to be a long season.
Adrian Beltre has now sent two Boston left fielders to the DL long-term with multiple broken ribs. Maybe it’s time to force him to learn the meaning of “I got it”.
I hate to pile on hte love-in for Strasburg, but Kerry Wood was never, ever the pitcher Strasburg is and never had a chance to be even if he had stayed healthy. He had incredible velocity and movement but Strasburg’s control is unbelievable for a pitcher his age. Strasburg’s stuff and command is without precedent.
Holy shit!
Danial Nava of the Red Sox in his first major-league at bat took the first pitch out of the park for a grand slam home run.
Nowhere to go but downhill from here, dude. Hang it up and retire a winner.
In both cases, it was probably the left fielder’s fault, not Beltre’s (unless you want to blame him for having ridiculous range). They’re the ones who can see him coming, while he’s looking back towards home plate. It’s their responsibility to either call for the ball or get the hell out of the way.
Two interesting factoids:
-
Nava joins Kevin Kouzmanoff as the only players in MLB history to hit grand slams off the first pitches they ever saw. Hilariously, Victor Martinez apparently predicted BOTH grand slams.
-
Nava is taking Jeremy Hermida’s (15 day DL) spot in the Red Sox lineup… the same Jeremy Hermida who is one of the three other players in MLB history to have hit grand slams in their first big league at-bats.
Piling on the grand salami tidbits, it’s been 6 years since Jorge Posada’s last slam, and now he has two in two days. Baseball will continue to be a confounding sport.
First Yank to do it since 1937 I believe I heard.
BTW: The Yanks are now tied for best record in the majors with the Rays.
Chicago’s hurler has a no-hitter in the 7th. In other news Chicago’s hurler has a no-hitter in the 7th.
From the NY Times
Soriano got a hit so Floyd lost his No-Hitter but Lilly is good through 7 so far and now lost the shutout too.
Go Lilly!
No hitter is lost in 9th.
Dodgers get swept by the Angels (what’s new?) and then tear the Reds a new one in a game that had a 2 1/2 hour rain delay. Furcal goes 5-6 and makes his own highlight reel on defense. Unfortunately the Padres were playing Baltimore, so they also won easily.
Did Baltimore move to Canada when i wasn’t watching?
Aaron Harang just fucking blows. Expect a tougher game from Mike Leake, the surprisingly awesome rookie tonight (5-0, 2.68 ERA)…
In other NL Central news… Any Brewers fans here? What goes through your mind when I mention the name Jeff Suppan?
For anyone who doesn’t know, Suppan spent several years as a fairly solid middle-of-the-rotation starter for St. Louis, culminating in a terrific 2006 postseason (the year the Cards won the World Series), on the strength of which he signed a major, multi-year contract with the Brewers. Over the course of his time in Milwaukee from 2007 to early 2010, he went from Slightly Disappointingly Average to Majorly Disappointingly Sucky, so that Milwaukee recently released him. Meanwhile, the Cardinals, who started the season with a great five-man starting rotation, have two of those five on the DL for extended periods of time and need someone who can pitch well enough so that they at least have a chance to win on days when Carpenter, Wainwright, or Garcia aren’t on the mound. Legendary Cardinals pitching coach Dave Duncan sees enough to make him think Supp isn’t totally washed up, so the Cardinals resign him, and he has his first start for the Cards since 2006 last night. Result: he at least does better than Disappointingly Sucky (allowing 1 run in 4 innings), the Cardinals win, and we can expect to see him getting some more starts, though time will tell how well those starts will turn out.
Interleague play has gotten pretty ridiculous. There isn’t even an attempt to have balanced schedules anymore.
Teams in the same division should, over the course of the year, have as close to the same opponents as possible. Otherwise the whole idea of divisions doesn’t make sense.
When it gets to the end of the year and a team wins their division by 1 game, after having played 20-30 games against teams they didn’t have in common with the 2nd place finisher, what does it even mean?
This year you have Boston playing the Phillies more often than they play the Twins.
Speaking of the Phillies, they get screwed in comparison to the Braves. 9 games against the Yankees, Red Sox, and Blue Jays vs ZERO for the Braves, not to mention 18 interleague games overall vs 15 for the Braves.
The Brewers signing of Suppan was one of those head scratchers to me when it happened. Not on par with Pavano for the Yanks, Chan Ho Park to the Rangers or let’s say Denny Neagle to Colorado but one that made no sense. Sometimes these things work out but usually they don’t.
Examples where it does seem to work is I thought the Yanks were crazy when they signed Damon, that really worked out fairly well overall.