Thursday, May 11, 2006

In the air tonight

Random notes on a rainout day:
  • The White Sox are supposedly calling up Augie Montero. Take a look at his splits. You have to give this guy a chance. It probably won't work, but he's holding batters to a .143/.241/.186 line, so I don't know he's got anything to prove in Charlotte.
  • Aaron Rowand broke his nose, Hideki Matsui injured his arm, Frank Thomas injured his leg. An ugly, nasty day.
  • Speaking of Frank, the Oakland A's website has a story saying Frank Thomas was starting to find his stroke before injuring his quad today running the bases. This is ridiculous. For a quick comparison, look at Frank Thomas' last 50 ab before today and Brian Anderson's last 50 ab. Anderson is a fine-fielding centerfielder, and on Monday night half the ESPN Baseball Tonight yappers wanted to send him to the minors. Thomas is a gimpy late-30s DH. (Admittedly, Thomas drew 3 walks today in a loss before getting hurt, but still, he's got to significantly out-hit a scuffling Brian Anderson to be "finding his stroke".)
  • I know ESPN has to love it, but the Boston-New York rubber match is now well over three hours and they are in the bottom of the 7th. This is what I hate about Red Sox-Yankee baseball, looooooong, tedious ballgames. The key problem I have with Baseball Prospectus brand of baseball is it is boring. The game needs risk to be exciting, the kind of risk you get from steals and triples. The work-the-pitcher, slow-pitch softball wannabe games that stretch toward 11pm EDT just bore me to tears. The good news is it saves us from the inanity of more Baseball Tonight, which would consist of, well, half an hour of analysis of the Yankee-Red Sox tilt and Barry Bonds' bases on balls.
  • Joe Morgan, discussing the heirs to Barry Bonds' home run chase, tiptoed around the question of why people don't like A-Rod either last night. Joe, we don't like him because from what we know, he seems to be a selfish, surly jerk. Steinbrenners' jabs are just gravy to us in the flyovers.
Now, the Twins. Thank god 8 1/2 games is a long way back.

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