Frayed Knot

Niese - 3.0 Lyon - 0.15 Parnell - 0.25 Davis - 1.1 Wright - 1.4 Buck - 1.6 Cowgill - 0.7 Baxter - 0.9 Murphy - 0.9

Hefner - 2.2 Atchison - 0.2 Murphy - 2.6 Valdespin - 1.0 Nieuwenhuis - 1.0 Duda - 0.5 Baxter - 0.5

And the thing about Dibble is that he's still an asshole 24 years after that day!

St Looie's bullpen sure had a tough night tonight Tied 4-4 at home in the 9th: Boggs pitching: - Choo walks - Heisey pops out - Votto intentionally walked - Phillips doubles (1st run) - Bruce intentially walked - Fraizer walked (2nd run) - Hannahan infield single (3rd run) - Hanigan on via E-6 (4th run) Rzepcinski in for Boggs - Izturis single (5th run) - Choo hits 3-run double (8 runs in) - Heisey grounds out (2 down - both Heisey) - Votto RBI single (9 runs) - Phillips walks - Bruce infield single (loads bases) - Fraizer Ks

Folks, we got ourselves one seriously good pitcher on our hands here.

Geez Terry, if Nieuwenhuis can't stay in to face a LHP in a game like tonight's when is he?

"... there's more degradation and regression here than in the Great Library of German Pornography." I'm not sure I want to get into the mind that comes up with analogies like that one.

Zvon wrote: Wow. What an at bat by Tejeda. Can we consider that breaking the game open? I'll put it this way, if he didn't come through there after Byrd & Buck couldn't get it done, I would have spent much of the next four innings fretting that this lost opportunity was going to come back to bite us.

We're getting a lot of bang from our Buck so far.

It's an ESPN game for those of you who don't normally get to view such things.

Gee - 3.0 Lyon - 0.25 Edgin - 0.25 Turner - 2.0 Buck - 1.5

Harvey - 4.5 Duda - 1.7 Buck - 1.7 Davis - 1.3 Wright - 0.4 Byrd - 0.4

Bad day for aces on Sunday. Dickey, Strasburg, & Price got rocked and even Verlander was off from his usual. Funny that his game was the one the Yanx won this weekend.

Laffey was kind of unlucky early, lots of soft hits and such (they were getting soft hits all weekend) but it was really just a matter of time after that. The Fish batters started measuring him and the harder smacks started coming. Once he walked the leadoff batter in the 3rd or 4th I saw a bad moon a'rising and if the luck/key outs hadn't turned our way a bit through the middle innings they would have gotten a lot more runs than they did. Tejada decided to go to 3rd a bit late; don't think he got a great read on the bloop. But once he made the move it wasn't all that risky with Pierre's arm. The real gutsy move was Nieuwenhuis's in that the 3rd baseman never looked at him after he received the throw. Quicker action on his part and he might get Kirk and that would have been a killer. Gary went nuts on the infield in move - ahead of time as usual for him - and, assuming Byrd's hit is exactly the same with the fielders back, he shirley gloves the ball and at worst probably gets an out somewhere even if the game got tied. I hope the one or two writers that covers that team ask Redmond about it.

Edgy MD wrote: Man, some heartrending empty seats in the background. That sort of stuff tends to become more likely when the game passes the three-hour mark and it's still in the 7th inning.

If Burke can get through this half-inning (6th) and Stanton without damage, and with the kid pitcher outta there for Miami, I'll start feeling OK about the chances for a comeback in this game.

Saturday was a tough one for several "established closers". - Carlos Marmol took the mound with a 2-run lead to protect and quickly gave up a tying HR to Justin Upton then a one-out walk-off one to BJ Upton. It was Justin's 5th HR of the season. It was BJ's 2nd hit - Newly installed Washington closer Raphael Soriano took a 2-run lead into the 9th in Cincy but went lead-off HR (Choo), Triple (Votto) and then wild pitch. This was all after previous 'established closer' Drew Storen had given up 2 in the 8th. Nats finally won it 7-6 in the 11th after holding a 5-1 lead at one point. - In Philly KC's Greg Holland had an interesting inning. Given a 2-run lead, he starts things off by walking Utley, Howard & Young consecutively. He then K'd both Brown & Mayberry. Then Kevin Frandsen hits the first pitch he sees for a two-out, bases-clearing, game-winning double.

Edgin in line for the vulture victory but, assuming this lead holds, the scorekeep could invoke the 'both briefly and ineffectively' clause and deny Edgin the win in favor of Atchinson. Edgin faced just one guy, didn't retire him, and only got an out via the fluky interference call. Oliva got rightfully charged with two errors that inning on the steal attempts but the young SS Hechavarria did a shit job of trying to stop either one of them and Senor Oliva didn't look happy about it, nor should he have.

I think who she's a fan of has often depended on who she's fucking that particular week.

Edgy MD wrote: Man, the Mets really want me to buy Cholula sauce. These Mets make me want to guzzle some Cholula sauce. Two really shit games in a row; seven hours of mostly bad baseball.

MFS62 wrote: Since Marlins are fish, you might have said they were scaled down by the owner. But we commend you for resisting that temptation. Good job. I should have said that they were gutted like ... well like a caught Marlin.

* Yanx lose 8-3 - although even in their supposedly power-outage era they're still getting the majority of their runs via the HR (small sample size alert). Today a Youkilis HR accounted for 2 of their 3 runs and I think that's 8 of their 13 runs to date via HRs * Angels v Texas is Josh Hamilton's return home. I don't get the opinion that they were all that happy with him by the time he left. Not sure what the reception was like. Beltre just tied it up at 2 with an 7th inning HR * Nationals get the Reds twice, the Braves twice, plus the Cards, Dodgers, Giants & Tigers once each between now and mid-May. You get the opinion that if they come out of that stretch with a good record then they could just run away with things.

O's 2nd baseman Brian Robers can't seem to catch a break. A two-time All Star and regularly a 150+ game/year player earlier in his career, the last four seasons have seen him total ~450 ABs total (and just 76 over the last two seasons). He was carried off the field yesterday in his 3rd game after a 5-for-12 start with what is now being diagnosed as a ruptured tendon in his knee - although at the moment they're saying no surgery and he'll be out just 3-4 weeks.

This all reminds me of the joke circulating right after Sonny Bono and whichever Kennedy it was were killed on the ski slopes within a short span of each other by running into trees. The joke came in the form of a ransom note saying: STOP THE CLEAR CUTTING OR WE'LL CONTINUE TO TAKE YOUR CELEBRITIES ONE BY ONE -- Signed: The Trees Funny if you're Cher or a Kennedy? Probably not. But otherwise it was and also right in line with 'The Rays' crossing Irwin off their list for his decision to go swimming in their home turf.

batmagadanleadoff wrote: I didn't even get it. I had to google "Steve Irwin". And I still don't get it. I mean I don't get the supposed joke. I get the bad taste part, but only after googling Irwin. Irwin was killed by a type of Ray, hence that part being crossed-out as already accomplished leaving only a WS win on their to-do list. I think it's kinda funny myself. Mean? ... yeah, but still kinda funny.