September 10, 2008
Games of the Day
I'm a bit surprised the Brewers are pitching Sabathia today instead of holding him back a game for the Phillies series. If he pitches tomorrow, he still gets to face the Cubs twice, the second time on the last day of the season. CC takes his perfect Brewers record against Bronson Arroyo. The Reds righty figured out how to keep the ball in the park, and only allowed two home runs in his last 47 2/3 innings after giving up 23 through the end of July.
The Diamondbacks send Dan Haren against Brad Hennessey in San Francisco. Haren tries to right his own ship. Dan made two good starts in his last seven, posting a 6.17 ERA. His walks and strikeout numbers are good, but his hits allowed are way up. Is Arizona missing Orlando Hudson's defense that much? Hennessey makes his first start of the season after posting a 12.46 ERA in the pen.
There's a dot in the rear-view mirror of the Red Sox. It's Blue and its wings are flapping. Josh Beckett tries to keep the image from growing as he hosts Andy Sonnanstine and the Rays for the final regular season meeting of the two teams at Fenway Park. Beckett came back full force from his injury, shutting out Texas for five innings while striking out seven. Sonnanstine is a pitcher I thought would benefit from the Rays improved defense, but he's still allowing many more hits than innings pitched.
The Blue Jays start Roy Halladay against Mark Buehrle, giving them a good chance to extend their winning streak to eleven. Roy held the White Sox to one earned run in 7 1/3 innings this season. Buehrle also pitched well against Toronto in his one start, allowing zero earned runs in eight innings. He took the loss, however, when two unearned runs scored. He'll need to pitch well tonight to keep Chicago from possibly falling into a tie with the Twins.
Finally, Ted Lilly takes on Braden Looper as the Cubs try to turn their slide around. Lilly's having the kind of season where he totally shuts down right-handed batters but lefties kill him. So far, however, righties continue to get about three times the at bats. Looper has a losing record at home and a winning record on the road, despite an ERA 1/2 run lower at Busch.
Enjoy!
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Posted by David Pinto at
08:37 AM
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Isn't it sort of irrelevant if the Brewers make the postseason as the wild card of the division winner? The important thing will be for them to set up their rotation for the postseason, and have Sabathia start the final day of the regular season certainly doesn't accomplish that. I'd still like to see them push CC back until tomorrow against the Phils (go Mets!), especially since the Phils (or Mets) may be their only legitimate threat to the wild card. Regardless, I think they only give him 3 more regular season starts, unless they need to win one of their final two games.
Probably don't want to get beat by Arroyo today. I'm sure if they had somebody else to startt hey might consider it.
Interesting that the Jays run follows a couple August trades that I interpreted as Toronto cutting their losses and investing in the future--trading Eckstein and Stairs for ballplayers that aren't going to contribute this year.
Toronto's still a longshot, but if they do end up contending, I wonder if Ricciardi will regret the trades or regret acquiring non-major-league-ready players?
If things turned around after the trades why would he regret them? Getting Wells back healthy and letting Lind play really helped.