TDIB 25 April 2008

Friday, April 25 2008 @ 01:23 AM EDT

The Jays lose another close-ish game in Tampa as the Rays complete the three game sweep, running Toronto's losing streak to four. In, uh, more positive news, the Raptors won, so Toronto ended the night 1-1 against the state of Florida.

The Jays once again failed to hit in the clutch, and did not take an advantage of the hittable Sonnanstine. This was basically the same game as the last two, as the Jays were unable to capitalize against not particularly fantastic starting pitching while receiving a sub par effort from their own starter, in this case Dustin McGowan, who was chased after 4+, walking seven and whiffing six.

Elsewhere in the Majors,

• Frank Thomas goes 0-3 with 2 walks as the A's beat up on the Twins, 11-2. Francisco Liriano runs his post-TJ record to 0-3 after pitching 2/3 of an inning and giving up 6 runs on 5 hits and 3 walks; he whiffed no one. His ERA now sits at just over 11 - methinks the majors is not the best place for him right now.
  
• The surprising Astros ran their winning streak to five games with a 5-3 win over the Reds, who lose their first game of the Jockerty era.
• Manny Corpas lost the closers job to Brian Fuentes, who shut the door today as the Rockies beat the white hot Cubbies.
• Cleveland is quietly climbing back into things - they won both halves of a doubleheader today against the Royals, and Cliff Lee pitched a CG 3 hit shutout to take game 2 by a score of 2-0. Lee is now 4-0 and in his four starts has gone 31.2 innings allowing 12 hits, 1 earned run with a k/bb ratio of 29/2. So, uh, pretty good.
• Finally the Giants took a 1-0 squeaker against the Padres today on a Rich Aurilia home run. Chris Young and Tim Lincecum combined for 19 k's. More hilariously, the Giants have now scored 71 runs in 23 games (3 fewer than the Padres who are second worst in the Majors.) 3.09 runs a game puts them on pace to score exactly 500 runs, which would be a historically terrible figure - I did some cursory checking, and no other team has been within 50 runs of that since at least 1989. Yes, it is early you say, but the Giants also batted Ray Durham cleanup today. Mind you this was only because Bengie Molina had the night off though, he normally bats fourth. Just for fun, how many of these names ring a bell - Fred Lewis, Eugenio Velez, John Bowker, Durham, Aaron Rowland, Rich Aurilia, Emmanuel Burriss, Steve Holm? That was the Giants starting lineup yesterday.
  

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