OK. It looks like there are some stats that show the Angels bullpen to be the "worst", however the important ones, the Nationals are worse.

Nationals 0-8, 3/9 SV, 5.40 ERA, 11 HR, 47 BB, 91 IP
Angels 1-8, 6/10 SV, 7.69 ERA, 5 HR, 36 BB, 81 IP



http://www.covers.com/pageLoader/pag...gular.html&t=0

Washington's bullpen ERA is pretty good compared to their save and win percentages.

Heh, I was wondering when something like that would be said (even though you're kidding and have seen what I meant). K-Rod--might--have saved us last night, where Fuentes was just gawd awful. But Fuentes has been one of the better "bad" arms in the pen so far, and has only blown two saves, I think. No, the pen's problem has been the 6th through 8th innings, where every member not named Darren Oliver (and in particular Shields, Arredondo, Bulger) has stunk to high heaven, giving up runs in bunches and blowing away big leads (The Angels' offense has actually been pretty good, even without Vlad).

Oh, and I never said K-Rod would be easily replaced. I just said he would not be missed with how he pitches at times, especially not for the money he was looking for.

I did say the pen would be fine. Silly me, I forgot to take into account that every pitcher in the pen would suddenly forget how to pitch, yuck. :(

Our bullpen is half good and half bad (and Doug Waechter). The 7th-8th-9th inning map seems pretty easy but it just hasn't been...

Player		G		GS		W		L		SV		BS		HLD		CG		SHO		IP		H		R		ER		HR		BB		K		ERA		WHIP		BAA
Robinson Tejeda		7		0		0		0		0		0		1		0		0		8.2		4		1		1		0		9		13		1.04		1.50		.143
Juan Cruz		9		0		1		0		1		0		3		0		0		10.2		5		2		2		1		4		6		1.69		0.84		.147
Joakim Soria		5		0		0		0		5		0		0		0		0		5.0		4		1		1		0		2		8		1.80		1.20		.200
Jamey Wright		9		0		0		0		0		1		2		0		0		13.0		8		4		3		2		3		9		2.08		0.85		.186
Doug Waechter		3		0		0		0		0		0		0		0		0		4.0		5		2		2		2		1		3		4.50		1.50		.294
Ron Mahay		8		0		1		0		0		0		1		0		0		6.0		8		6		5		1		2		9		7.50		1.67		.308
Kyle Farnsworth		9		0		0		3		0		1		0		0		0		7.1		10		7		7		2		4		7		8.59		1.91		.333
Horacio Ramírez		6		1		0		1		0		0		0		0		0		10.0		15		10		10		2		4		6		9.00		1.90		.349
Total						12		11		6		2		7		2		1		202.0		182		89		85		18		78		176		3.79		1.29		.242

SI

Details on Alex Rodriguez's alleged pitch-tipping with Rangers - MLB - SI.com


i'm so done with this douchebag and glad he's not on my team. he's scum

From what I've read and heard about all of the stuff in this book, I'm embarrassed for Selena Roberts. And her comments yesterday that a couple of people's recollections of him bulking up and bench pressing significantly more weight in high school was "definite proof" that he was taking steroids is so unconvincing and ridiculous that she's almost making ARod a sympathetic figure now. I'm wondering if she's going to add a chapter this weekend blaming him for Swine Flu.

Somewhere along the way, sports journalists lost the distinction between reporting rumors of trades, signings, etc., and legitimate proof of allegations against someone. This stuff may be true, but she doesn't seem to have anything remotely resembling proof. To some extent, ARod has brought this on himself by lying, but it just seems like this book is nothing more than an attempt to profit off of piling on a guy everyone is pre-disposed to not liking or believing. I'll pass.

I don't know what the truth is, but I remember writing about Selena Roberts when the ARod steroid thing first broke, and my impressions of her from her radio interview with Dan Patrick (cast iron you know), as well as trying to go directly to ARod's private residence to speak to him (trying to talk her way past guards), and then walking up to him in the middle of a gym to confront him. It just struck me as wrong.

I haven't read anything she wrote, so I don't know if she only has what you're saying or more legit stuff; I can't speak to whether her info is good, or her chain of reasoning is good and well-evidenced. But it's my been my guess for a while now that she will go to some very low lows to get a story, and those type of writers will usually take liberties in their writing as well.

All that said, she popped the steroid thing, and ARod admitted it (at Texas at least). So take it all for what you will.

Roberts also wrote some terrible stuff during the Duke LaCrosse scandal that later turned out to be completely false, but she never owned up to that.

Chan Ho Park and Oliver Perez should get an apartment together.

Then Mets and Phillies fans can combine to blow that shit up.

Manuel should have given Perez a couple of more innings to try to get his shit together, IMO.

lol

As Rob Neyer pointed out in a blog post yesterday, this is par for the course with Oliver Perez. He is who they knew he was when they re-signed him. He's had streches worse than this during the past several seasons. The only difference here is that it's at the beginning of the year, so everyone is harping on it. But's it not like the guy wasn't known for walking way too many batters and having stretches when he would be absolutely brutal. He clearly wasn't worth the money.

I wonder how common that kind of thing still is. It was apparently no big deal in the 60's (per Jim Bouton).

Man. They need to spread this out. Leave some dirt for the rest of his Yankee career.

amen

Verlander has been spectacular today. Hopefully the bullpen can hold it for him.

Getting out of that bases loaded, no out jam was impressive. He seems to be coming around his last few starts. But now Seay, our most reliable reliever, puts two guys on with two outs. Hopefully they get out of this.

Welcome to the AL Central.

Watching the Reds starters do very well is thrilling..... I have never really been able to watch the Reds shut people down... This is a good feeling

Yep. This is a terrible division but all five teams can win it so at least it'll be entertaining.

I understand when a good pitcher has a good game. But, dammit- what is the evil magic that Scott Baker has over the Royals?!?

SI

We just committed highway robbery and stole a series from the Twins, in what's always a house of horrors for us in the Metrodome. Last night, we won an 11th inning game that neither team wanted with a fangraph that looked like a person suffering from a heart attack, it was oscillating so much.

Today, we were getting no-hit through 6 by mediocre pitcher but horrible Royals nemesis Scott Baker. He always makes us look awful. Twins had us at something like an 8% win percentage going into the 7th, down 4-0. Baker then gives up a couple of cheap hits and grooves an 0-2 pitch right into Guillen's zone and suddenly, it's a ball game. By the time the next inning rolls around, Baker had gone from no-hitter to shutout to quality start to loss.

This was just one of those games where as soon as the pitcher loses the rhythm from the no-hitter, he falls apart.

The increasingly less maligned Trey Hillman presses almost all of the right buttons in using a depleted bullpen to hang on for the win, making the best of a lot of bad options. What a series win, stealing 2 of 3 and taking back sole possession of 1st place.

SI

Weird schedules on deck for MLB this week. Almost everyone plays 7 games and they're all in Mon/Tues, Wed/Thurs, Fri/Sat/Sun series. You rarely see two game series for Mon/Tues or Wed/Thurs- it's almost always Tues/Wed with the usual Mon and Thurs off days.

Also, Crawford with 6 SB today?!? WTF

SI

Yeah, that was freaking incredible!!

Also Scott Baker going from almost no-hitter to loss by giving up 5 in the 7th... ouch!!


Oh, and I like C.J. Wilson a lot more now:

Twitter / ISiddiqui: @str8edgeracer Please tell ...

Twitter / C.J. Wilson: @ISiddiqui yes I have. He ...

A baseball player who's read firejoemorgan gets thumbs up in my book :).

Not entirely true. I seem to remember at least one 2 day-2 day-3 day weeks every year, or at least going back for 2-3 years now. I think last year it happened in July, but not sure. Of course, my focus is on the Angels' part of it, so I don't know if it was a league wide thing. But I definitely remember it happening to the Angels, and not the first time.

Well, I know- that's why I said rarely. It's happened before but it's weird to see on the calendar because it's not usual.

SI

FWIW.....The Twinkie fans should probably blame the Royals TV announcers. During the bottom of the 5th inning, the play-by-play announcer mentioned how many times he's seen a no-hit attempt that goes into the mid to late innings result in the wheels coming off when it's finally broken. No sooner than it came out of his mouth, it happened exactly as he had predicted.

Another great series win for the Royals. Royals haven't played great over the past week, yet they still went 5-2 against the Blue Jays and Twins.

Btw, I don't think I'd call Baker a "mediocre pitcher".

I dunno- he's a career ERA+ 97 pitcher. That's not awful but it's not great either. That makes him slightly below league average and with him being young, he could put it together and improve over the next couple of years to be good.

But right now, I'd take him as our #4 or #5 but I'd still rather have Davies (105, 98 the last 2 years) as our 3.

SI

27 games in the Jays are 18-9, 1st in the AL and 3rd in the majors (though unfortunately only 2 ahead of Boston).

Their current rotation is Halladay, Richmond, Tallet, Ray, Cecil. Cecil will become the 9th pitcher to start a game for the Jays this season when he toes the rubber on Tuesday.

That's right, a combined 19 games started after Halladay, with 8 of those coming this season. With the demotion of Purcey, Halladay is now the only pitcher on the team to have started more than 4 games this season.

Now I have a lot of faith in Cito, but I'm really hoping the cavalry comes soon and comes back strong (Janssen, Litsch and Romero shouldn't be too far off, but it will be interesting to see how effective they are and if they can stay healthy). The Jays are 68-46 since he came back last season with the interesting caveat that they were missing some key offensive pieces when he took over last season which just got swapped out for missing pitchers this season.

How did this guy go without a job as manager for over 10 years?

He's a fairly young pitcher who had a 118 ERA+ last season.

Johnny Cueto has been lights out. Edinson Volquez said during spring training that he expected Cueto to eventually be the rotation's #1 starter... and so far this year, it is coming true.

The Zack Greinke show makes another appearance tonight to try to make it 6-0. Upper deck seats are $5 tonight. He'll be going up against Colon and the White Sox tonight. His first outing was against the White Sox, where he threw 6 innings, giving up 3 hits and striking out 7.

Tallet looks pretty dialed in right now. I may just watch that game or the Royals game, it will be nice to see a pitcher throw some strikes

Nice game by Tallet, tho it was just like Baker yesterday- as soon as the no-hitter was broken up, the wheels fell off the truck.

Zack looking masterful again tonight. 4 IP, 1 H, 0 BB, 6 K- all on 47 pitches (31S/16B). He's faced the minimum due to a caught stealing. Also, he's now staked to a 3-0 lead.

SI

Zimmerman is 4-4 with a walk, 3 R, 2 RBI and has brought his average up to .333.

Dukes is 3-5 with 3 RBI (2 SO, 3LOB)

A good night for the Nationals so far -- a 5 run 6th has done the majority of the work to getting a 9-5 lead in the bottom of the 8th. (2 on, 0 out, top of the order waiting to swing)

Oh, and Zimmerman's hitting streak is extended to 22 games. Finally his batting average doesn't make it look like as much as a fluke.

Yep, The Zackinator has just put the final touches on his 3rd complete game and 2nd shutout of the season against the White Sox and once again leads the majors in strikeouts and ERA while reaching 6-0. Another dominating performance.

This is fun to watch. I haven't seen anyone pitch as masterfully as he has the last month since Maddux was at the top of his game. Beautiful.

Just absolutely sick.

Zack got tired- all but 1 of those in the 9th was hit hard- but still got the shutout. 9 IP, 6 H, 10K, 0 R, 0 BB. 104 pitches, 72 strikes. His ERA dropped to 0.40 on the year and he's pitched every bit of that this season- not a fluke at all. It's just sick.

SI

Yeah, it's been a by-product of the new schedule format that includes a lot of 2-game/4-game series than normal. I'm sure there's a logic to it but it baffles me. The Royals got lucky this time around because they get to come home for a two-game series with the White Sox and Mariners before 3 in Anaheim and 2 in Oakland. Last we had an awful road trip that was something like 4 in Oakland, 2 in Seattle and 2 in Anaheim that looked like it really wiped the team.

So glad for Greinke.

And if you're calculating the Greinke Effect ... last Monday the Royals beat the Blue Jays in front of 9,685. Tonight, 21,843 on had.

Makes me wish I had the time and money to go see him pitch in St. Louis for the all-star game. There's your starter right there.

I would love to be back there to catch a couple of his games and feel that electric atmosphere that I had only ever seen there in 2003

SI

Zack was on his way to stealing Kevin "Planet" Appier's nickname because he's just wired a bit differently. They interviewed him on the post-game show and considering the tough times he went though, he genuinely looks and seems happy right now. He had a big grin on his face that you just don't get in sports often enough. He looked like a kid just enjoying what he did. It's a neat feeling, especially with him.

He'll never look at ease doing interviews and sound very exciting. But two years ago you'd see him do an interview and it looked like he just wanted to fall into a hole and never come out. Now, he looks happy. It's cool to see.

Please bump this thread when Greinke is scheduled to pitch next. I'd like to see if I can watch a game of his on TV (whatever the odds of that are here in Canada).

It will be Saturday night, late, at Anaheim. There's the early warning for now :)

SI

fuckin brewers man, so sick of these fuckers.

I think that was 16 in a row, wtf.

I know it's all random stat shit, but they said on the radio tonight that only 3 times in the modern era has a pitcher had more than 10K's and hit a homer in a 1-0 victory.

Impressive outings all weekend, will be interesting if they can keep it up when they aren't facing a AAAA batting team though.

This offense is BAD.

Oh, and if you were Cueto's dad, would you murder Dusty Baker to save your kids career? I'd certainly be entertaining the thought.

The Cards are coming to town in a couple of days, so we'll find out. Pitching did its job again for the Reds last night, but if you only score 2 runs in 14 innings, you're usually going to lose.