Friday, July 15, 2005

Baseball News

Okay. A recap of the past week.

What happened: M's sweep Angels. Boone gets traded. Ichiro does his thing in the All-Star game. M's drop two games to the Orioles.

Things I missed because I was hiking around Glacier National Park: See above.

So no in-depth analysis from me. I don't even know who we got back from the Twins for Boonie, but from the sound of things nobody else does either.

Oh, and by the way... go to Glacier. Hike up to Grinnel Glacier and Iceberg Lake (neither one is particularly hard). The views are well worth it.

Friday, July 08, 2005

Today's Baseball Game

The second M's game I've been able to catch on TV all year, and it was a beauty. For two innings, the M's just destroyed Bartolo Colon, and despite him being very sharp after that, the damage was done. Before an Anderson RBI groundout (which without Lopez could well have been an RBI single) the score was 7-0, courtesy of Misters Reed, Beltre, and Bloomquist (yeah, him again).

A note about Colon: He gave up more walks in the first two innings than he had in his previous 8 starts. Ouch.

Immediately after Colon was pulled, the M's made it 8-1, and in the next inning Randy Winn hit a two-run bomb off of Estaban Yan. Snelling was sighted shortly thereafter, moving into right field for Ichiro.

Pineiro finished what he started, going 8 solid innings and a shaky ninth, allowing two runs on six hits and two walks (120 pitches). He made Vlad look absolutely stupid today, the aforementioned Impaler going 0-3 with two GIDPs (erasing Darrin Erstad on both occaisions) and his first fielding error of the year. The error can be attributed to Bloomquist using his newfound force powers (there's no other reasonable explanation for his hot streak) to befuddle and confuse the weak-minded right fielder. Until the ninth, Pineiro was mowing 'em down, but he started to tire and gave up a solo home run do some guy named Josh Paul, who I think is the Angels' version of Greg Dobbs.

And therin lies one of the game's two flaws: Pineiro was left in for way the [bleep] too long. A note to the management: don't actively try to get your pitchers injured by overworking them. When they're pitching well, there's the injury to worry about. When they're not pitching well, then you're letting a guy who sucks throw the baseball to hitters who don't. This point doesn't seem to trouble the management, however (see Thornton, Matt, and Nelson, Jeff). Pineiro is fragile right now. We need him, and letting him have a complete game for its own sake is just stupid.

And the second: When Lopez and Sexson collided on the foul pop-up, I nearly died. How hard is it to call 'mine!' Sigh. Glad nobody was hurt there.

Apart from those two things, the game was perfect. More Snelling next time, one hopes.