Saturday, May 05, 2007

Stealing Signals: State and Maine.

Mets 5, Diamondbacks 3 - Bolstered by home runs from grumpy old man Julio Franco and catcher Paul Lo Duca, John Maine has quietly become the Mets' most consistent starter, off to a 4-0 start, and showing promise Mets nuts hoped for when he first came throwing. Franco, 48, hit the homer off Randy Johnson, 43, for the oldest combination of both sides of an at-bat.

Red Sox 2, Twins 0 - Speaking of old men, it's pretty clear that knuckleballs keep you young. Tim Wakefield is still a steady starter in this league in his 40s by throwing a ball that seems to barely require any exertion on his end, and did it while being sick. Papelbon comes in to grab yet another save, and David Ortiz belts one out for the only necessary run (J.D. Drew scored in the ninth after hitting a triple.)

Marlins 5, Padres 4 - Banging back-to-back homers in the eighth is a good way to bail out your star starter when he doesn't have his best night, and that's what Josh Willingham and Joe Burchard did for Dontrelle Willis.

Mariners 15, Yankees 11 - Yay, football scores! The M's had 20 hits total, and everyone in their line-up had a base hit, knocking around Kei Igawa and the Yankee bullpen pretty badly. The Yanks did the same to Cha Seung Baek, getting the Mariners down by five early on.

Braves 4, Dodgers 0
- John Smoltz mows down the Dodger lineup, by pitching seven shut-out innings. Brian McCann and Jeff Francoeur provide the run support.

Cardinals 3, Astros 2 - If you're a last place team recovering from an awful tragedy and haven't won since it happened, then the next-to-last team is always good for what ails you. Adam Wainwright gave up two runs on six innings to grab the win, and Woody Williams is at 0-5 for the Astros.

Giants 6, Phillies 2 - The Giants make Jamie Moyer and the Phils pay for walking Barry Bonds. Eliezer Alfonzo gets a pinch-hit bases clearing double to wreck an otherwise good start by yet another cranky old man on the mound.

Angels 5, White Sox 1
- Darin Erstad bizarrely loses a ball in the lights of Comiskey, and catcher Mike Napoli gets an RBI double as a result. Kelvim Escobar throws seven innings of one-run ball for the win, while Jose Contreras continues to get hit up.

(Photo: Reuters/Rick Scuteri)

2 comments:

One More Dying Quail said...

Jeter manages to kill a 20-game hitting streak, go 0-for-6, AND make the final out as the potential tying run.

What did A-Rod do to him?

Signal to Noise said...

I'm not sure we can blame A-Rod, he was at least hitting, maybe not jacks, but he was hitting.