Ugh. :(

No time to write commentary, but even if I did, what more needed to be said about this one than Bartolo Colon? :)

No time to write commentary, still way too busy at work. Nice to see 6 in a row, though!

No time to write commentary, too busy at work. Nice to see a sweep, though!

Dave Burba pitched a complete game – Dave Burba?!? Of all our pitchers this season, Burba was the one I least expected to pitch a complete game. Not that I’m not happy about it mind you, just more surprised at seeing that. Was nice to see us get out and get another win – this now makes three straight series we’ve won, and with the Indians reeling pretty good, I’m hoping we can step into Cleveland on Friday and take another one there. With Seattle losing too, we’ve pulled into a respectable last place position of only 6.5 games out. :)
Anyway, there’s not much to say about this game except Burba was great, tossing only 104 pitches for the complete game, and our offense was good – with Arod getting another home run, and Raffy finally getting his 500th double – he really was hoofing it to get that one, too. :) Rusty Greer contuinues to play extremely well, going 4-5, scoring a couple of runs, and driving one in. This modified lineup that Narron has had out there the last couple of days has worked really well. Bill Haselman also had a few RBI’s himself, and has done really well the last week or so.
We’ll probably see Hector Ortiz catching tonight as Has needs a day off again.

A great way to start off the road trip – a big 10-2 win in Toronto, although I thought it was Montreal for all the empty seats they showed on TV up there (granted the Maple Leafs were in a Game 7 situation, but still..)
It was a night of historic home runs for us. Well, all but Bill Hasleman’s. :) Arod finally hit his 250th, becoming the second youngest player in history to do that (about a week behind Jimmy Foxx). Raffy hit his 254th, I believe and is now in sole possession of 25th place all time. Also, Hank Blalock hit his first major league home run (after Arod made another one of his “predictions” that Blalock would bust out this series). Kenny Rogers looked superb again, and my least favorite remaining bullpen person Steve Woodard gave up a home run, but we limited Toronto to 3 runs on 5 hits.
The more I see him, the more I’m impressed with Calvin Murray – I suspect he’ll bump Everett from the regular lineup once Gonzalez comes back. Speaking of Everett, was nice to see a big smile on his face when he and Murray crashed into each other in the field.
Overall, a great game – the bobblehead approves!

With this win, we have now won two series in a row, and are 4-2 over the last 6 games! Woo-hoo! :) Plus we’re going to end the month less than 10 games out, which isn’t great, but is still manageable – the season isn’t over quite yet.
What a pitching performance! Ismael Valdes still isn’t getting any run support – but this time it didn’t matter, he won. I have to say, Valdes has been the biggest surprise of the season so far for me. The more I see him, the more I like him, and hope he does well enough to stick around for more than just this year.
Offensively we got next to nothing, but that’s not a surprise given it’s Bartolo Colon pitching against us. We got only two runs, but it was enough. Valdes combined with three other pitchers (Rocker, Seanez, & Irabu) to keep the Indians to a lone run with 7 scattered hits. A sweet sweet pitching performance, and if our offense ever comes around for real, we shouldn’t have any trouble winning games with pitching like this! Plus it was nice to see this performance on national TV (ESPN covered this game).
As I write this on Monday’s off day, Dan Miceli was designated for assignment. Good – I never wanted him here in the first place as a pitcher. He was ineffective, and I think the pen is better for his not being here at all.

Rob Bell returns, wearing a new uniform number, and also seems to be a much better pitcher than he was last year.
Rob looked really sharp tonight – curve ball was good, and was most definitely way better than the Rob Bell we had pitching for us last year. If he continues to pitch this way – then this will be a most welcome addition. I see that he’s going to get another start, which is good – hopefully he can string it together and stay.
Overall our pitching was very good again this game, only giving up two runs on six hits. That’s an ERA of 2.00 – which is Pedro Martinez territory – can’t argue with that! Van Poppel & Irabu both pitched shutout frames, and over the last 6 games, our pitching has looked like what it was supposed to look like if we had Zimmerman & Powell from the start of the season. This month has been maddening, but it looks like we may be starting to turn the corner finally.
Time will tell. :)

This is one of those games that annoyed me to lose. Mostly because I had it in my head that we SHOULD win this one. The Indians are struggling right now even more than we are, and we always seem to beat up on Chuck Finley – plus Doug Davis has pitched pretty well overall this season. That combination in my head told me that we should win this game.
We didn’t.
Davis struggled pretty good, and never seemed to get it going at all. We were down 4-1 after three (3-1 after 2), and never recovered. We had a few threats here and there, but it never seemed that we were in this game at all to me (I’m saying this writing the commentary on Monday for a Friday game). Davis gave up three home runs (never good), and we had none. Arod is stuck on 249 home runs for his career, I wonder if he’s thinking about 250 too much, although he did go 2-4 tonight. Gabe Kapler also went 2-4.
Overall a pretty “blah” game.