6-4-2 — an Angels/Dodgers double play blog: Short-Sheeted: Brewers 7, Dodgers 1

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Monday, April 02, 2007

Short-Sheeted: Brewers 7, Dodgers 1

I suppose you could say this is pretty typical for Lowe, except that his last opening day loss, April 5, 2005, was far less embarrassing, lasting seven innings while giving up three runs, two earned, a quality start that then-Giants ace Jason Schmidt and the San Francisco bullpen were able to outdo to hand the Blue Crew a 4-2 loss.

The Brew Crew outplayed the Dodgers, as Vin said during the game, in every phase of the game. The absence of a real centerfielder, i.e., the presence of penguin-armed Juan Pierre, apparently weighed heavily, as Ricky Weeks and J.J. Hardy both ran in the first on what should have been a routine single; Weeks eventually scored, and again in the second, Weeks once more stretched a J.J. Hardy single into an extra base. The Dodgers' problems with the rental legs in center don't look to be getting better any time soon, especially with Pierre so glaringly and wrongly long-termed.

The fielding flubs exacerbated problems with Dodger bats. At one point, Brewers opening day starter Ben Sheets retired 22 consecutive batters, and save for a Jeff Kent homer and a harmless ninth inning double off the bat of Brady "I Still Love Milwaukee" Clark, Sheets was two hits away from a perfect game. That is, he walked nobody and got a whole mess of groundball outs, so it wasn't the most impressive outing you ever saw, but it was nonetheless remarkable for its solidity.

As for Mr. Lowe, he's probably just got a case of opening day jitters; nothing serious, but we hope for the best while keeping an eye out on his next couple of starts. Mark Hendrickson pitched a trio of very creditable innings, giving up an earned run on a solo shot to the Brewers' new starting centerfielder (and former second baseman), Bill Hall.

Finally: I wanted to throw my lot in with Bob Timmermann on the new Gameday, which has become enormously bloated and is terrifically slow and unstable to boot. MLB.com has a Gameday blog that you can sometimes enter comments on; it isn't accepting comments at the moment, but if I had to ask for one thing from them, it would be to allow me to choose the smaller format. Heck, I liked the old mini-Gameday that was about 150 pixels wide and fit neatly on the side of your open screen. In the meantime, you can use Yahoo Gamecast, found to the side of their daily schedule on the bottom right of their baseball home page.

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