Morning news and notes
The Guardians won in ugly fashion yesterday. But after a series of ugly losses, this was an improvement.
The pitching was great. The hitting was the furthest thing from it.
I’m not entirely convinced that Chicago’s Rule 5 starting pitcher Shane Smith looked all that special, but he didn’t give up any runs. The offense he was facing was, uh, slightly inept. I read somewhere like a week ago that the Chi-Sox plan on throwing a bunch of changeups this year. If that continues, uh, we are in for a bunch of these (unless thGuards magically learned how to hit the pitch during the winter(is it still winter?)) games this season.
But what isn’t in question is that Mike Clevinger did not look all that special. He faced 5 batters on the day, and walked 3 of them and allowed 1 hit. That hit was 33% of Cleveland’s sad total.
his final walk, vs Nolan Jones, ended the game. Yes, a walk off walk. That double word in the headline was not a mistake,
Around baseball
- Francona and Valaika brought GuardsBall with them to Cincy, once again barely scoring any runs yesterday. But 1 was enough for them, too, beating SF 1-0. Terry’s team has OPS’d 547 in the past week.
- The Dodgers lost to the Nationals again. They are 0-2 since arriving in DC.
- The Royals beat MIN 2-1. The Twins are another team that isn’t hitting.