Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Some Notes on Monday's Spring Games

It's doubtful that any of the Phillies have ever made it here to the FanDome. But it sure is coincidental that a day after calling Brett Myers, "league average," he goes out and pitches five innings of four hit ball while striking out seven. "Heh! Take that Mr. Fan!" And after savaging Ibanez and Ruiz, they go out and get two hits a piece. "Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Old man!" Well, at least Feliz went 0 for 3 and is hitless this spring, so the Fan doesn't look like a total dope.

Elsewhere, the scintillating Tigers and Astros played to an eleven inning, 1-1 tie with ten total hits. Don't know if Verlander, Mohler and company were that good or whether these two teams just can't hit at the moment. The Tigers are missing most of their players in the WBC, so they have an excuse. It's a good thing that Sheffield has his bat speed back and is still in camp. Where would they be without his .214 average?

To make matters worse for Houston, one of their few decent players, Pence, came up lame today.

Boston beat the Twins today. Since Baker got that big contract the other day, he's pitched five innings and has given up six homers. To be sure, the pitcher would rather not be called, "Home Run Baker" at this point. Varitek had a good game for Boston. Haven't been able to say that in a while.

Jair Jurrjens had a great day for the Braves as they beat the WBC-depleted Mets. He pitched six shut out innings.

The Yankees had a great pitching day as Sabathia pitched four strong innings. Mariano Rivera made his spring debut and struck out two in an inning of work. The man is incredible. Matsui had a good day with a homer and the Gardner/Cabrera competition is still in full bloom as both got a hit today.

The good news for the Padres is that they are still scoring a lot of runs. The bad news? They lost to the Angels 12-7. Hampson, Geer and Patterson all got thumped for the Padres as did Fuentes for the Angels, who at least got a good start from Lackey.

Poor fielding and bad pitching combined to sink the Diamondbacks as they lost to the A's today, 11-3. Gallagher had a great start for the A's. Nomar Garciaparra has been leading off for the A's for the last few days. Wonder if that is a sign of things to come? The A's seem to be leading the lead in Irishmen (since it was Saint Patrick's day) with Gallagher, Doolittle, Cunningham and Hannahan all were in the lineup today.

The other half of Arizona's staff played the White Sox and beat them, 7-6, in ten innings. Haran had a good start for the Diamondbacks and then the bullpen got a little raggedy before getting the win. Pierzynski is having a great spring for the White Sox.

Carlos Zambrano pitched five decent innings and went 2 for 3 with a homer as the Cubs clobbered Randy Wolf and the Dodgers. Soriano is still leading off for the Cubs. Thought the Cubs were going to change that? The Dodgers aren't batting very well this spring.

Cliff Lee gave up nine earned runs in 2.2 innings of work today as the Rangers bounced all over the Indians 11-5. Feldman got knocked around a little bit himself for the Rangers but got the win. The Rangers' bullpen was very good today. Hamilton looks like this year will be much like last year. Young made his first error of the spring at third base. That's much better than expected.

Once Suppan a time had a great start for the Brewers, but Villanueva and Riske ruined that outing and the Brewers lost to the Giants, 7-5. Pat Misch pitched very well for the Giants. Sandoval is having a great spring for the Giants and Corey Hart continues to rake for the Brewers.

Neither Jiminez for the Rockies nor Davies for the Royals had a good start today as the teams finished in a nine-all tie. Tulo is starting to hit and Helton is showing more power this spring than he has in a long time.

Twenty more days!

1 comment:

Josh Borenstein said...

"Once Suppan a time..."

Nice.