Roy Halladay starts in Arlington and doesn't leave the game with a gruesome injury. To add insult to injury, or lack thereof, he goes the route and the Jays win 4-1.
Other potentially interesting things going on:
- Alex Rios has 11 walks, which puts him in second place in the AL, one walk behind the champ: Chone Figgins. Rios and Figgins have 4 stolen bases each. Figgins is also the OBP champ with a .537; Rios sits at .451 in that category.
- Evan Longoria made his debut for the Rays last night in a 3-2 loss,
going 1-3 with a walk and an RBI single. He was upstaged by Ramon
Hernandez, who hit the game-winning solo shot off then-perfect Dan Wheeler with
two out in the top of the ninth. The weirdly overpowering George
Sherrill followed with a 1-2-3 inning for his fifth save of the year. Baltimore is 7-4 and
remains a game ahead of second-place Toronto. The rubber match of the
O's-Rays series goes today as 6'9" righty Jeff Niemann makes his
big-league debut for Tampa opposing Brian Burres.
Niemann is
pitching in the place of Matt Garza, who's on the 15-day DL with radial
nerve irritation. Apparently, Garza claims to have known about this irritation
last fall. Joe Smith: Manager Joe Maddon said he had no knowledge
of the injury, though Garza said it surfaced late last season, with him
typically "pitching through it..." The Rays Index has a detailed
analysis of whether the Rays could file a grievance and demand
compensation from the Twins. It mentions the precedent of the Gary Majewski trade. If Garza's injury is not of the short-term variety, this issue seems like it could
become a pretty big deal.
In other Baltimore news, the Orioles expect to throw righty Matt Albers at the Jays on Monday.
- Detroit is 2-9. The White Sox continued their mastery of the Tigers yesterday, as Gavin Floyd used his Tools to outduel Justin Verlander at the Cell and claim his second straight win over Detroit. Floyd took a no-hitter into the eighth. The Sox are 4-1 against Detroit and will look to hand the Tigers their fourth straight series loss when Javier Vazquez opposes The Gambler today.
With Dontrelle Willis on the DL, the Tigers have called on 26-year-old rookie righty Armando Galarraga to take his spot in the rotation. Galarraga is off to a good start this year: in two games at AAA Toledo, he's 2-0 with 12 innings pitched, a 2.25 ERA, 11 strikeouts, and 1 walk.
- The A's are unconscious. They beat Cleveland 7-3 last night. After KOing C.C. Sabathia in the fourth on Friday, they did the same thing to Fausto Carmona last night. With his shiny guaranteed contract in tow, Carmona was obviously in a charitable mood. He issued 8 walks to the A's in his 3.1 innings, single-handedly killing my BBFL opponent in K/BB. Despite all the walks, Carmona only gave up 3 runs, but he took the loss anyway: Cleveland only converted five innings of Lenny DiNardo into two runs, and Oakland's bullpen did the rest. The rampaging A's are now 8-4. They've won five games in a row in some pretty tough stadiums. And they're doing all this in spite of Jack Cust's .114/.311/.257 line. Chad Gaudin faces Cliff Lee this afternoon as the A's go for another sweep.
- Tonight, it's the rubber match at Fenway. Daisuke faces Phil Hughes in the Sunday nighter.
- And today, A.J. Burnett and the Jays go for the sweep. 25-year-old groundball-machine righty Scott Feldman, who's spent parts of the last three seasons as a long man in the Ranger pen, makes his first big-league start for Texas. First pitch is at 3:05.
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20080413063927737