Sunday, April 22, 2007 |
Two Games
All That It Takes To Get To .500: Angels 6, Mariners 1
Missed this one because, hey, we actually have a social life and decided to see some friends who've been making like workaholics over the last few. Look up, and thanks to Jeff Weaver, the Halos are a .500 team again with a 9-9 record. What with the general squidginess of the AL West, they're in a flat-footed tie with Team Beane for the AL West lead.Lookout Landing imagines the scene inside the Mariners dugout:
If there's an upside to today's game, it is this - my friends, we may be witnessing the dying moments of Jeff Weaver's Seattle career. Despite getting out of a jam with consecutive strikeouts, Weaver was yanked after three innings and only 68 pitches, and replaced by a guy Bavasi picked up in the Rule 5 draft. The message is pretty clear: Hargrove thinks nothing of our $8m fifth starter, and would rather watch a minimum-wage nobody try to tame the toothless meerkats that make up the Anaheim batting order instead. Weaver wasn't hurt, and his last two AB's were pretty good, but Hargrove had nevertheless seen more than enough. And given the seven hits in three innings, you can't really blame him.And — what's this? A crack through which a ray of OBP sunlight peers in the otherwise murky Angels' offense?
"We've had two 180-degree turnarounds with our offense already this season," said Scioscia. "When we put pressure on teams by getting on base early in innings like we did this weekend, that is when we will be successful."Did he just say, "on base"? Mirabile dictu. That aside, it both encouraged and discouraged me to note that Garret Anderson managed to get a scoring sac fly off George "Death to Lefties" Sherrill in this one; not that I'm taunting, Stephen, and in fact, quite the opposite. The resulting success from that effort will no doubt be used as an excuse to keep Anderson facing the left-handed pitchers he so clearly can no longer reliably hit against. Given that the division no longer seems to consider him the team's second-best hitter, how long will it be before Reggie Willits (or whoever) starts seeing platoon time against lefties?
Otherwise: thank you, Rangers, who managed to beat Oakland 4-3 in Texas, in a game that included the Rangers' anointed closer, Eric Gagne, limping off the mound after vanquishing only one batter. Will he ever get well?
No Magic This Time: Pirates 7, Dodgers 5
Same story as yesterday, only no heroics by Russ Martin and no magical ninth-inning comeback. Just a host of squandered opportunity and Brett Tomko living down to his (usual) level of ability. At least they made it exciting, though I was reminded of yesterday's afterthoughts from Lookout Landing, one of my favoritest blogs out there, in which Jeff chided the Mariners for their late-but-futile comeback: "at least have the common courtesy to let your fans doze off without making annoying loud noises to wake them back up." It sounded awfully loud out there at Chavez Ravine, and so I can imagine the noise would have busted up a perfectly good snooze.In fact, it did. We turned on the game while heading home from the Farmers' Market, which was cold and windy, and I without so much as a windbreaker. (I left my fleece jacket in the car, thinking we would be indoors. Foolish mistake.) Driving back, the cold forgotten in the warm cocoon of the car, I actually fell asleep listening to Charlie Steiner and Rick Monday not give the score, but then I had to wake up when Martin came to the plate in his futile attempt to get lightning to strike twice. No such luck.
Labels: angels, dodgers, mariners, pirates, recaps
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