Baseball Bonanza

Baseball Bonanza: Tripleheader Running Diary on a Rainy Wednesday

Welcome back everyone to a marathon day of games here on a rainy Wednesday in New York City. Starting off the day will be the Seattle Mariners visiting the Pittsburgh Pirates. We have an ace vs ace showdown as King Felix will be dueling with A.J. Burnett. Expect a lot of strikeouts and not too many runs.

-A.J. Burnett was 4-0 in interleague play last season joining Justin Verlander and Stephen Strasburg as the only pitchers to accomplish that feat

-Starling Marte is having a phenomenal season so far. He’s not the prototypical leadoff hitter, he doesn’t see many pitches and doesn’t draw walks, but thus far he’s been hitting the ball well.

-Andrew McCutchen who needs to pick up the slack, drives in Marte to get the Pirates on the board first. The Pirates are 10-5 when scoring 1^st.

-King Felix is not looking sharp so far but gets the double play to end the inning.

-A.J. Burnett on the other hand is looking nasty with great movement on his pitches.

-Burnett is perfect through 3 innings and has 5 strikeouts on the day.

-King Felix gets McCutchen swinging on a nasty slider. He may be coming on late with the movement and command. He’s not going to overpower anyone with velocity so the key to his starts is his ability to confuse hitters.

-Burnett with back to back walks to start the top of the 4^th to bring up Kyle Seager. If I were to ask you who led the league in RBIs on the road last year, you would probably guess Miguel Cabrera, and you would be right because let’s face it, the answer is always Miguel Cabrera. However, if I asked you who finished second, you would never guess Kyle Seager. Seager had 60 road RBIs last year, but can’t come through this time.

-Kendrys Morales, who leads the league in double plays grounded into comes up and predictably hits one on the ground towards first base. Garrett Jones couldn’t get a good grip on the ball to try and turn the double play so only the out at first is made. Will this come back to cost the Pirates? 2^nd and 3^rd two outs.

-Michael Saunders scores on a wild pitch by Burnett that almost rolls down the dugout steps and would’ve brought in a second run. Tie ball game. Dustin Ackley ends the inning with a strikeout. That’s a shocker; he’s such a hitting machine. Burnett has 7 strikeouts through 4 innings.

- Jesus Montero, who may be the slowest player in all of baseball, is making Yankees fans forget how mad they were that he was traded. Despite getting nothing out of Pineda, Montero isn’t exactly torching the league.

-Through 5 innings Burnett has 8 strikeouts. Not to take away from Burnett’s numbers but this Mariners offense is putrid. Safeco Field can only be blamed for so long when this team couldn’t score runs on a Little League field.

-Jordy Mercer leads off the bottom of the 5^th with a double. Clint Barmes comes up squaring to bunt WITH THE PITCHER ON DECK!!! What is Clint Hurdle thinking with this call? Barmes needs to be swinging away. Barmes gets two strikes failing to get the bunt down, and then proceeds to fly out advancing the runner. A.J. Burnett strikes out, followed by Starling Marte whiffing as well. Hernandez has definitely found his command and gotten better movement as the game has worn on.

-Both of these teams swing at horrible pitches and are overly aggressive at the plate. I’m not really sure how much credit we can give these pitchers considering the lineups they’re facing. Bad offense may be beating out great pitching today.

-Top 7^th Jesus Montero leading off and he drills one out to center to give the M’s a 2-1 lead. Now Yankee fans have forgotten everything else all year and are furious again that this guy isn’t in pinstripes.

-This game is putting me to sleep it’s such a mess with these hitters.

-There haven’t been any threats by either team to put another run on the board and it’s now the bottom of the 9^th. The Pirates have Travis Snider, Andrew McCutchen, and Garrett Jones coming up.

-Snider and McCutchen get out quickly, followed by a Jones single. All for naught as McKenry comes up and gets out ending the game.

 

Next up we travel to Tampa and the big orange juice carton for Toronto against Tampa Bay. Ricky Romero will be facing off against young phenom Matt Moore, who is 5-0 on the young season.

-Edwin Encarnacion continues his power surge by crushing one to dead center off Moore and giving Toronto a 2-0 lead.

-Tampa Bay comes to bat in the bottom of the 1^st and have 1^st and 3^rd no outs. Romero has absolutely no command as he loads the bases and we’re informed he’s lost 14 of his last 15 decisions. He’s good.

-Evan Longoria comes up and bloops a single to make it 2-1 Toronto. James Loney comes up and singles making it 2-2. Loney has been having a fantastic offensive year so far, and I feel bad for the few Tampa fans out there as he will be crashing down back to Earth soon.

-Edgar Gonzalez warming up for Toronto as Romero is at 25 pitches and only has one out.

-Luke Scott comes up, or as I like to call him, Wolverine. His beard and hair are to be marveled. See what I did there. He singles making it 3-2, and either Tampa is a really slow team or they just think you’re only allowed to go station to station.

-Romero is out after 1/3 of an inning and Gonzalez promptly gets 2 outs to end the inning 3-2.

-Matt Moore, for a left handed pitcher, has an absolutely terrible pickoff move. If he can get to a point where it’s even average he will be even better than he already is.

-Kelly Johnson shows some hustle in the bottom of the 2^nd and slides into 2^nd base after Rajah Davis lollygags on the bloop hit and doesn’t get it in quickly. Comes back to cost the Jays as Zobrist follows with an RBI single to make it 4-2.

-Moore has settled down nicely as we’re shown a stat that Tampa has lost 13 games after having a lead. The normally very good bullpen has been anything but this season.

-Evan Longoria crushes a 2 run home run to left just fair to make it 6-2.

-Moore is over 100 pitches through 5 innings. He isn’t giving up runs but he’s not fooling too many hitters, there’s a lot of contact being made.

-Brett Lawrie makes a phenomenal play to get the speedy Sam Fuld at 1^st.

-Jamey Wright is in for Tampa as Moore’s day is done.

-Joe Maddon gets ejected after a horrible call by an umpire, and funny thing is, it won’t even be the worst call of the night in baseball. Hi, Angel Hernandez. Maicer Izturis pulls out a great acting job making it seem like a ball hit off his foot and the ump agreeing. The ball was nowhere close to his foot.

-Kelly Johnson blasts a towering home run that almost hit the roof of the Trop.

-James Loney hits a double making it 9-2 and I’ll say it again, he’s going to crash and crash hard.

-Wolverine comes up and hits a sac fly giving Tampa a 10-2 lead.

Toronto has put across 2 runs making it a 10-4 game but that’s all they will get as the Jays end the 9^th with no threat.

Finally, to end the day we’re in Dodger Stadium for a matchup of Wade Miley and the Diamondbacks looking for the sweep against Clayton Kershaw and the Los Angeles Dodgers. We get the Diamondbacks announcers tonight, as Bob Brenly and Steve Berthiaume are in the booth. Not getting to hear Vin Scully is a shame but these two guys are pretty good.

-We join this game in progress in the top of the 2^nd as it followed White Sox-Mets on Extra Innings.

-Gerardo Parra hits a 2 out double off Kershaw and he’s another guy who is having a great year thus far. If his bat keeps up and compliments his Gold Glove defense, the DBacks will go to the playoffs.

-The DBacks are making Kershaw work for his outs, as he’s at 58 pitches in the top of the 4^th but has only given up 3 hits.

-Steve Berthiaume just said that Martin Prado grew up in a baseball culture in Venezuela, as his mother cleaned houses and his brother worked at a car wash. I know it’s late and this is the 3^rd game I’ve watched but can someone please explain the correlation there.

-Now Berthiaume is calling Juan Uribe a good defensive player. I take back what I said about him being good and someone needs to call a doctor to check him out.

-Dee Gordon breaks up Miley’s perfect game with a base hit. Keep an eye on him on the bases because he certainly is Flash Jr.

-Nick Punto follows up with a double that Parra didn’t play well, allowing Gordon to score and give the Dodgers a 1-0 lead.

-Adrian Gonzalez makes it 2-0 with another double.

-Juan Uribe swings at the first four pitches he sees, showing how great his patience is.

-Adrian Gonzalez busted his rear end to catch a foul pop up, unable to make the play though on a dive, but he is now out of the game with an apparent injury.

-Dee Gordon follows up a 2 out hit with a pickoff. Thought he had Miley timed but was wrong.

-Gordon continues the stellar play with an error that allows Didi Gregorius to reach. Paul Goldschmidt comes up and ties it at 2 with a home run. Berthiaume channels his inner John Sterling making the call “that ball is goldy, goldy, gone.” Now I really take back everything I said.

-Through 7 innings we’re tied at 2. Kershaw is at 103 pitches while Miley is at 90. Kershaw is taken out for a pinch hitter, Tim Federowicz, who cannot reach base.

-Paul Goldschmidt breaks the tie with his 2^nd home run of the game making it 3-2 and we’re treated to a 2^nd “goldy, goldy, gone” call.

-Top 9 Ronald Belisario comes in looking like Grimace with Rec Specs. He gets the DBacks to keep it 3-2 heading into the bottom of the 9^th.

-Heath Bell comes in to close the game with J.J. Putz being placed on the DL and this should be interesting.

-Skip Schumaker leads off with a double, but Bell gets the next 3 out to close the game and allow DBacks fans to breathe again.

 

Well that’s it for today; hope you all enjoyed the triple coverage. Make sure to follow the blog on Twitter @changingspeeds if you aren’t already.