Friday, April 14, 2006

And Betancourt pitches to Betancourt...

I'm in a bit of a time crunch and heading to Pittsburgh on a red-eye flight in about 20 hours, and I'll be there for a little more than a week. I expect to update a bit when I'm there -- and I'll be going to a game or two at PNC Park, for sure -- but I'm just warning in advance that I'll be sporadic (or dead, if I get trampled by crazy yinzers seeking Jason Bay bobbleheads). I acquired a copy of Baseball Between The Numbers to satisfy all of my reading needs while on planes and in airports, so when I get back I'll be totally psyched for book club! (Don't forget. May 6th.)

The Mariners won 9-5 today, bringing them back to .500. Today, the only Mariners player with an at-bat and no hits was Beltre. Ichiro and Jose Lopez even hit home runs. The Indians have so many guys starting with B at the bottom of their lineup (Broussard, Belliard, Boone, Blake) that they could give the Astros a run for their money.

Weight Watchers:
Beltre: Batting .143, weight listed at 220
Everett: Batting .125, weight listed at 220

Oh, yeah, and King Felix pitched. I felt sort of bad because when people were making pre-game predictions on Lookout Landing, I almost wanted to suggest that Felix was going to have another bad outing -- I'd rather expect the worst and then be pleasantly surprised when the best happens -- but sadly, it's what happened anyway. It sounds like his velocity was off pretty early in the game, and the Indians were figuring out to just take a lot of his pitches. Oh well, I have high hopes for Zach Duke to start kicking butt and taking names soon too. Young pitchers are so exciting, aren't they? However, tomorrow the M's game will be between two old pitchers -- Jamie Moyer vs. Curt Schilling. In Boston. It should be pretty entertaining.

The Phillies-Braves game today was pretty funny too. Kyle Davies, speaking of young pitchers getting off to slow starts, had one of the roughest starts to a game I've seen in a while -- J-Roll led off and homered, Aaron Rowand doubled, Bobby Abreu homered, Pat Burrell singled, and Chase Utley homered. And this was all before the Phillies even registered the first out of the ballgame! Even David Bell singled as the Phillies batted around the order during that first inning. Despite Ryan Franklin's best attempt to give the game back to the Braves later on, the Phillies still prevailed 7-6. Maybe he just wanted to narrow the score to the point where Tom Gordon could actually pick up a save. I dunno.

No comments: