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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.

I had gone to the first game of this series, and they lost. I had tickets to last night’s game, but couldn’t use ’em and gave ’em to a friend. They won. I figured that clinched it – they’d lose game 3. And after going down 6-0, I was pretty convinced of it.

This game can be called Mike Lamb’s (not so) Excellent Adventure!

Mike Lamb actually got booed in the game – although I think it was more of a byproduct of the Rangers season than Lamb’s performance in this game as such. I felt bad for him back there – he really never got it together with Burba – he should probably be learning this at AAA, but we don’t have much choice at the moment, unfortunately. My wife even got mad with the booing and stood up and screamed “Give the kid a break!” :)

What a game – Lamb’s passed ball, the three wild pitches allowing a bunch of runs to score, Lamb’s general ineffectiveness behind the plate (they also stole two or three bases on him), plus other fun like 5 pitchers in an inning, John Rocker (any time he’s there it’s nothing if not interesting), Todd Van Poppel’s trip off the front of the mound, and 5 consecutive hits capped with a home run as part of a 7 spot 5th inning.. Definitely a fun game to watch. Our offense finally woke up, let’s see if we can carry it over to the Cleveland series.We ended up winning a game we probably didn’t deserve to and won our second series of the year, and only the second time we’ve won two games in a row – but then when you’ve won only 7 anyway, that’s not all THAT surprising. A nice day out at the ballpark for the game, too. Was cloudy and a bit chilly, but afternoon baseball is always cool. I’m just lucky that I have a flexible job where I can go see these.

The Topes Win! The Topes Win! (Simpsons reference for the uninformed).
While I will always take a win, I have to be concerned that we only scored 3 to do it. Kenny Rogers continued his awesome start to the season, and overall, it was a well pitched game. I’m really starting to like Calvin Murray – even if he reminds me a lot of Tom Goodwin. Skinny dude, fast, doesn’t hit a lot.
Our relief pitching was pretty good, too. Rudy Seanez allowed nothing, as did Hideki Irabu for a save. Toronto’s pitching was pretty good too – our runs came in the first three innings, and then we couldn’t get anything else the rest of the game – good thing we didn’t need it.

I’m really getting tired of writing about losses. 14 of them already, and we’re 11 back. I didn’t think we could get off to a worse start than last year.
Big shakeup to the roster yesterday. Biggest problem is the Rocker situation. I was a Rocker fan, but his refusal to accept his minor league assignment and the subsequent allowing of him to come back without going down is a bad precedent. I really hope now he doesn’t do well, so we can just dump him. I was a Rocker fan, but not anymore. And speaking of that – Twisted Sister had decreed that Rocker is not to use the “I Wanna Rock” song as an intro to him. I wonder if the Rangers know that. Or Twisted Sister for that matter.
Anyway, as was said on the post game show, I didn’t think this lineup was the kind where we’d be tipping our hats to the other pitcher. What was it – 4 or 5 hits? 1 run? Yeesh. We need some offense back! Help!
A cute note – we now have more salary on the disabled list than a few teams do in total salary (Pirates, Expos, Twins, I think).