Saturday, August 13, 2005

About last night

Sorry for the lack of recap, but I was pretty dead tired, and the game ended late in the Midwest. Today, I'm in the office again, so I don't mind taking a few minutes to catch up. Wash actually looked pretty good for the most part, except for the chuck into right field. Forgive the brief rant, but I think it's pretty pathetic that the bunt by Bloomquist was scored a hit. There is a trend in MLB that I'm not happy with. It seems that every botched play that isn't so routine that a junior high school level fielder could make it with ease is scored a hit nowadays. These are MAJOR LEAGUE baseball players. Are our expectations of their defensive abilities that low that we give hits on plays that would have been sure outs had the fielder simply made a decent throw, or simply held on to the ball. Cabrera's boot the other night was an error. It hit him in the freaking glove. But not in today's MLB. He had to bend over for it a little, so that makes it a really tough play, and subsequently a hit.

Anyway, you could tell Wash was a little anxious in the early going. He wanted no part of Sexon in the second inning, and you could see why when he pitched to Beltre, who hammered one out. Timely offense, and Vlad being Vlad, helped erase some of those mistakes, and Brendan Donnelly, fresh off one of the worst performances of his Angels career, stranded two runner on second and third with nobody out to preserve the tie when the game was still in doubt. A little help from that other Santana lifted the Angels back into a tie for first. So it's on, guys. Either play like this the rest of the season, or watch the A's celebrate their advancement toward first round elimination again.

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