Here are the scores. There are the highlights:
Dodgers 6, Nationals 3: Justin Turner homered twice and drove in five runs. Stephen Strasburg finally lost a game. Which is good. Not because I wish ill of Stephen Strasburg, but because it nips this sort of moronic horse poop in the bud.
Orioles 4, Yankees 1: The O’s salvage one in their four-game set against the Bombers. Chris Tillman won his 14th game after allowing one run over seven and striking out seven. Tillman has won four in a row, actually, and in each of those four starts he’s allowed one run over seven. It’s like he’s been set to repeat. Here’s hoping no one hits “shuffle.”
Marlins 9, Phillies 3: Tom Koehler allowed three runs but only one was earned in eight innings. Ichiro picked up two more hits, bringing him to 2,996 in the bigs. He could reach 3,000 this weekend.
Pirates 5, Brewers 3: Francisco Liriano struck out 13 over six and two-thirds innings. In the AP gamer, the writer described his fastball as “dipping and darting like a bug trying to avoid a fly swatter.” If you have any real fly swatter skills, the bug never knows it’s coming. Also: if you have cats, you don’t need a flyswatter. A fly got in my house yesterday and my cats chased that sucker down. I’m halfway thinking of going out to a field to find a mouse. Hi, I’m Craig, and I work from home.
Red Sox 13, Twins 2: The Sox are cruising. Thirteen runs on seventeen hits. This a day after they notched 11 runs on 16 hits. They’ve won three in a row, nine of ten and sit alone atop the East.
Cardinals 6, Padres 5: The Padres held a 5-1 lead heading into the bottom of the eighth. St. Louis scored four in that inning to tie it and then Aledmys Diaz hit a walkoff single with two strikes on him and the bases loaded in the ninth. After the game he said that he knew he was going to swing at the payoff pitch because he regretted watching a called strike three with the bases loaded in the All-Star Game. So there you go: the All-Star Game did mean something, for once. Serving as a teaching tool is better than nothing, right?
Tigers 2, White Sox 1: Ian Kinsler and Miguel Cabrera homered for the Tigers’ only run in a rain-shortened game. Not that it was actually all that short for the players as they played for just over two hours and then had to sit through the rain for over two more hours before they finally called it. More like a rain-lengthened game, am I right?
Rockies 7, Braves 3: A three-run homer from Carlos Gonzalez and a solo shot from Nick Hundley paced the Rockies. Colorado has beaten the Braves in Coors Field seven straight times. I remember when Atlanta used to own Colorado. They were 13-0 against them in 1993 AND they stuck them with David Neid. In other news, I am extraordinarily old.
Rays 7, Athletics 3: Tim Beckham played first base despite never having played the position. He went 2-for-4 with a homer. Tomorrow Cash should try him out as a catcher and see what happens.
