Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Baseball News & Notes

Detroit Tigers: With a 6-4 win over the Minnesota Twins, the Tigers pushed their way into a tie for first place in the AL Central. This is the first time the Tigers have held first place this late in the season since 1993, which was also the last year they had a winning record. Think about that for a second. May 17th constitutes “this late in the season” for the Tigers. Crazy to think how bad the Tigers have been for all this time…

Tampa Bay Devil Rays: The D-Rays held on to beat the Chicago White Sox 10-7 in a game where they led the defending champs 10-1 going into the 8th inning. D-Rays pitcher Scott Kazmir pitched 7 innings of 5-hit ball, walking 2 and striking out 8. Kazmir ran his record up to 6-2 with a 2.73 ERA and 56 K’s in 56 IP. In other news, Mets pitcher Victor Zambrano is out for the season and his career may be finished. What a lousy trade that was. The responsible party, former Mets GM (and current Orioles GM) Jim Duquette is completely unemployable in my eyes...

Cleveland Indians: The Tribe solved their nagging Kansas City problem by beating the Royals 6-4 in a come-from-behind win. With reliever Rafael Betancourt back from the DL, perhaps the Indians can get back to winning baseball and forget this rough patch which has left them below .500.

New York Yankees: Down 9-0 after two innings and 13-12 in the bottom of the 9th with 2 outs, the Yanks rallied to win the game 14-13 on Jorge Posada’s walk-off 2-run homer off Rangers closer Akinori Otsuka. Given their patchwork lineup (Matsui, Sheffield, and Giambi all missed the game due to injuries), it’s remarkable that the Yankees were able to win this game from so far behind.

What does this all add up to? Baseball’s a funny game where good teams like the Indians and Yankees get their brains beaten in by inferior teams and cruddy teams like the D-Rays can always count on winning at least one game per week, even against stiff competition, thanks to the stupidity of the New York Mets.

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