Some Baseball Occured Today

Amazing things to note in the baseball realm:

The team with the best offense in all world history put together an opening day loss against a team with as much offense as the Kansas City Royals. Oh wait! It was the Kansas City Royals! Detroit took an extra innings L to the Royals when Tony Pena Jr. knocked in a go-ahead run in the 11th. That would be the son of the Yankees first base coach with the same name minus the jr at the end. Gary Sheffield went 0-1 with 4 walks. Detroit is pretty stacked.

The Mets won their opening day game 7 - 2, with Santana on the mound, but screw them, it was against the Cabrera-less Marlins.

The Phillies still claim to be the team to beat this year, a feat Washington took literally after handing them an 11-6 loss. Washington stayed true to its tradition of limiting opposing teams to 5 runs or more, but they broke their tradition by allowing their offense to really come alive. That reminds me. We never finished our trilogy of know a crappy team. We covered the Rays and Royals, and forgot to finish with the Nationals. Well, I'll make sure to get on that. Former Met, Lastings Milledge hit a homerun. Good for him. Maybe he can write a rap song about it.

The White Sox took a gamble by trading away pitching for offense this off season. It worked in that they scored 8 runs today, it didn't in that they allowed 10. White Sox starter Mark Buerhle lasted 1.2 innings giving up 7 runs. Sabathia didn't do much better giving up 5 runs in 5.1 innings. Victor Martinez was injured in the process.

And no opening day would be complete without an AL East basement brawl. The Orioles lost to the Rays 6-2. They should get used to it. For the next few years the Orioles are going to hold down that last place spot. They released Jay Gibbons recently. He simply isn't as productive without the stuff Mitchell reported him on. Scott Shields put up 7 innings of two run ball. Not bad against a team that has the hard hitting Kevin Millar batting clean up. And who wouldn't pitch to Kevin Millar with Aubrey Huff on deck?

Carlos Zambrano, the Zambrano with actual baseball talent, pitched 6.2 innings of shutout ball. Newly acquired Japanese outfielder Fukudome went 3-3 with a homerun and a double. However, Kerry Wood, and his habitually injured arm gave up 3 runs to tie it and the Cubs lost in extra innings. It didn't help that the 1 and 2 hitters combined to go 0 for 10. Soriano where you at? Despite the frustrating loss, Zambrano restrained himself from attacking his catcher....for now.

Lastly, I got to see Bedard pitch for the Mariners. I was impressed. Texas sucks. Oh, and the Angels lost to Minnesota. Livan Hernandez simply out pitched Jered Weaver. Didn't see that one coming.