Baseball Journal 4-4-13

How’s this for a stat line from last night’s Philies/Braves game?

Halladay 3 1/3 innings, 5 hits, 5 runs, 3 walks, 9 strikeouts

How do you get 9 strikeouts in 3 1/3 innings while giving up 5 runs? Seldom do you see a pitcher have such a great and lousy game at the same time. I would have been tempted to have left him in just to see what sort impossible stats Roy might have accumulated for the game.

It was a quiet, cold noon game in Pittsburgh today where the Cubs faced the Pirates on a get-away day. You could tell they were itching to go quickly just by the sheer number of quick outs. The fans that were there were fairly unenthusiastic. You could actually hear individual fans and vendors yelling. Later in the game, you could hear them getting progressively more obnoxious. Not gonna lie, Fan Cam one of my favorite parts of the game, was not pretty. Downright ugly. Polly, or whatever the name of the parrot mascot is, did his best to cheer the crowd, but it just wasn’t happening.

Travis Wood had his way with the listless Pirates for six innings. Wood also got a hit and was driven in by Starlin Castro. Other than that, James McDonald was Wood’s equal in pitching. That one run held up until the 9th. Nate Schierholtz hit a lazy flyball off the end of the bat that somehow easily cleared the centerfield wall and drove in two runs. It was like a Yankee Stadium home run. Well, it still counted, and the Cubs would need them. Carlos Marmol stepped onto the mound to close it out. I’m not sure if the crowd started cheering when he came out, but they certainly were after he’d given up two runs with two more men on, with nobody out. There was no James Russell or Kyuji Fujikawa (I may change my name to that, just so I can hear it more often) available to bail him out. What happened next was inexplicable: a strikeout and a double play to end the game. Cubs Win! Who can explain this game?

Who can explain the Rangers handing Elvis Andrus a big, long-term contract, while sitting on the top shortstop prospect in baseball in Jurickson Profar? Trade bait? Some position switching is planned? Afraid of losing yet another good player in free agency? Something more clever? If Profar can hit, the Rangers could certainly use his bat to go with what looks like some pretty good pitching. We’ll keep an eye on this situation.

The Tigers, after a blown save by Phil Coke, have re-signed Jose Valverde to a minor league contract. They’re panicking right out of the gate. Oh boy, already my World Series pick is falling apart.