Toronto must be a haven for bloop singles tonight.

Zambrano hit his 18th career home run. lol that's awesome.. Damn I didn't realize he also hit .337 last year. impressive

I wonder if there is somewhere to find stats on how often a reliever walks their first batter. Between Marmol, Heilman, and Cotts earlier in the year - along with some of the other scrubs - I'm guessing the Cubs are over 30% on the year across their bullpen. Marmol and Cotts might be north of 50% each. Just maddening.

Detroit is having huge issues against RH SPs. Santana hasn't been able to get a single person out yet this year, and Detroit makes him look like he's in Cy Young form tonight.

The White Sox are trying to get shut out again at home - YaY!

Ain't no way I've got the patience for doing their whole bullpen but just out of curiosity ...

Through yesterday's games:

Cotts has walked 9 batters total in 19 appearances, 2x once, 1x seven times
May 17th - batter reached on error, scoreless outing
May 9th - walked Fielder, allowed 2 runs
May 1st - walked Uggla, scoreless outing
Apr 26th - walked Thurston, allowed 1 run
Apr 21st - struck out Tavers, scoreless outing
Apr 18th - walked first two batters ,scoreless outing
Apr 15th - walked Smith, scoreless outing
Apr 11th - walked Fielder, scoreless outing (but inherited runners scored)

So in 19 appearances he's walked the first batter 6 times.

Y'know what's odder than that to me though? His ERA of 6.75 in games when he walks a batter at all is actually lower than his total ERA of 7.36

edit to add: Given that Marmol has walked at least one batter in 14 of his 25 appearances, I think I'll have to recharge my batteries before tackling the game logs for him ;)

Jon, that is definitely more work than I was willing to put into it. But thanks for rolling up the sleeves and exposing my hyperbole :)

What the hell is this traveling signal they do at the Nats games? I remember last time the Mets were there I kept seeing these morons sitting behind homeplate mimicking the travel call in basketball, and I'm seeing the same thing tonight.

Man these White Sox are pissing me off - "Chicago has not scored in 23 1-3 consecutive innings and has been blanked three of its last four games."

They also lead the league now being shut out 9 times.

wtf is going with the offense?

It's an attempt to distract the pitcher.

There was an old woman who used to do that from her second row seats behind home at Shea every game for decades. She died in the late 90s I believe.

No, I think 7 extra base hits off Greinke qualifies as a good ol' fashioned ass kicking

SI

Carl Pavano, circa 2004, showed up. Seriously, don't worry about the other games in the series. Unless they're slugfests, the ChiSox should win.

It has not exactly been a Murderer's Row of pitchers shutting out the White Sox.

I have never been so happy to get robbed of the save in fantasy baseball.

Lyle Overbay and Adam Lind must have hit shattered bat homers.

To be fair, Santana is a very talented pitcher coming off of a great season last year, and probably has the most natural talent of any pitcher in the Angels organization. So it's not exactly like Detroit turned Chan Ho into Sandy Joufax here. He got off to a bad start, basically going through spring training. Nice to see him turn it around (and hopefully he keeps it up).

2007 Cy Young candidate Kelvim Escobar will pitch in his first game since losing to the Red Sox in the 2007 postseason. He starts tomorrow.

Even Greinke's struggling now. The Royals are in BIG trouble. 8 in a row the wrong way.

I know that, but there was a good article detailing Detroit's struggles against RHers, and this is just further proof they have issues. Santana and Escobar, given their injury issues and struggles to get back to where theyused to be, should have been/be fodder fo a good hitting team right now.

Well, yes and no. Do returns from injury always go smoothly? No, of course not (and certainly hasn't for Santana). Do players come back from injury, though, without hitch? Sometimes, yeah. And at some point, the ones with real talent, like Santana and Escobar, well, that talent is going to show up, and I find it hard to fault the Tigers when they face a very good pitcher, and he pitches well (of all things).

For instance, Verlander had those struggles all last year, and he was just dominant yesterday. I'm not going to blame the Angels for having to wait him out and get to Rodney. Sorta silly to do otherwise--good pitchers are gonna get you out.

Now, if the Tigers made Matt Palmer look like an All Star--which they did about a month and change back--now you're talking.

Whoever said that Burrell was better in the field than Ibanez was smoking crack.

Are you surprised? They're a shit team.

And Lidge blows saves in consecutive nights.

Brad Lidge is making that contract look Zito-esque.

Phillies need to dump him like yesterdays trash.
A one year wonder, who is turning into(or is) a liability.

I think his knee is hurting more than he is leading on. Shut him down for 15 days.

Does Edwin Jackson finally get it? I know he runs hot and cold but this guy is flat out on all year.

Dola, and Jackson finishes off a CG, 4 H, 1 ER game vs the Angels.

Lester was perfect through 7 1/3 tonight before giving up a double.

Fucking offense putting up runs made him wait too long between innings

I was extremely surprised that Lidge didn't get sent to the 15 or even 60-day DL once Romero came back.

I'm not on the "hate Lidge" bandwagon, but I do think he needs to get shutdown for a few weeks.

Meh. You were also one of the guys around here promoting the Ibanez signing as THE WORST SIGNNING EVA@!q!

Watch the life of the contract - I think I'm okay with it. That being said, he's clearly outperformed expectations.

LOL. You should get a six figure analyst spot on TV with those type of analysis skills. You must be the same person that's able to go out on a limb and say that a team with a 10 win streak is a good team.

It's a rough stretch, but they certainly aren't a "shit" team. There's other teams with far worse problems.

Kind of ironic that the oft maligned Hochevar is the guy to end the skid.

+1.

And it was a double rob this time, as Belisario coughed up the lead before Broxton got a chance to protect it, and then Furcal tied the game in the 9th with his homer.

I know I have mentioned it before, but the Nats TV announcers are just dreadful. Especially Dibble.

I'm listening to the Canadian announcers on MLB Audio today. They have some interesting commercials in Canadia.

SI

Nice, I remember in the mid 90's I had Wendell Clark and Doug Gilmour on my fantasy hockey team and living in Jersey I used to be able to get 990 i think it was, maybe 900 from Toronto on my AM car stereo at night. Listened to a ton of Leafs games.

The Jays have former Astro C Alan Ashby for a color guy alongside a pbp guy who is distinctly Canadian.

SI

Halladay looked good today. He got in trouble a couple of times but worked out of it. He didn't get a lot of strikeouts but the Royals helped him by swinging early. A lot. Amazing strike to ball ratio with 73 strikes to 24 balls. Wow. Something like 18 ground ball outs.

SI

Is Joe Girardi the only AL manager who would attempt to bunt with Derek Jeter at the plate in the 5th inning, no outs with runners on 1st and 2nd who both reached base on walks, and with Matt Garza already at 90 pitches? And the Tampa bullpen is rather weak. He's got one of the best lineups in baseball and he's bunting in the 5th inning and giving away outs like it's his job. What a joke.

You +1'd yourself?

Danny is a handsome genius!

+1

Marmol at it again, 3-2 ballgame and Marmol starts bottom of 8th with back-to-back walks. He is yanked, Heilman is in.

What circle of purgatory is this?

Good luck with that.

Angels' pen trying to blow the game.

You know, Marmol even looks like K-Rod. Ever seen the two of them in the same place at the same time?

Pitch to contact, you f'ers. Walks just suck. Make them beat you by swinging the damn bat.

Nice running by Rayburn there. Great slide. I thought he was dead to rights.

It was a nice play by Rayburn, but, really, it was one of the stupidest damn plays I have ever seen by the Angels. Are you freakin' kidding me?

I hate our pen this year.