Weird day of baseball

- I was utterly and completely wrong about Red Sox-Yankees. I'm sorry. ESPN, I owe you $5. Utterly incredible game, with Jason Bay hitting a tying two-run shot off Mariano Rivera with the Sox down to their last out in the ninth, and Youkilis blasting the walkoff job in the 11th. Suffice it to say, I'll be watching tomorrow at 2: RED SOX! YANKEES! THE RIVALRY OF THE CENTURY! ONLY ON FOX!!!!!

- Yesterday Chad Billingsley had another fantastic start, and is now 4-0 with a 2.05 ERA. ESPN.com's Fantasy Spin for Chad says: "NL Cy Young, here we come?" Uh no, and here's why: barring a season-ending injury or the Mets blowing a 54-game lead with 55 to go, Johan Santana will be the motherfarking unanimous NL Cy Young Award winner. After his 6 IP, 1 ER, 1 BB, 10 K game today, he's at 3-1, 0.70 ERA, 0.90 WHIP, .181 BAA, 37 Ks and 6 walks in 25.2 IP. Honestly, I have no clue what Santana's ceiling is now. 1999 Pedro Martinez?

- Everyone is falling over themselves trying to tell people not to get too excited about the Blue Jays and Mariners (both comfortably on top of their divisions against all odds), and now that I've come out and praised them they'll all probably end up looking like geniuses. But it's still worth pointing out that the Blue Jays thwacked the White Sox 14-0 today, and the Mariners settled for a slightly less comforting 8-3 win. The Blue Jays' record now stands at 13-5, 2 games ahead of the Red Sox (with their +46 run differential currently the best in baseball), while the Mariners are at 11-6 and 3.5 games ahead of Texas with every other AL West team looking like complete crap. (Including the Angels, who could very well end up becoming the saddest story of the season; all of their best players are getting hurt and they have to deal with the tragic Nick Adenhart situation? Just awful.)

- Speaking of surprise teams, Kansas City Royal fans should live this up while they can; after yet another dominant outing by Zack Greinke, they're 9-7 and at the top of the division by one game over both Chicago and Detroit. Hey, if Greinke allows one (unearned) run every 38 innings, they might have a shot.

- Now a reeling team: I give you the Diamondbacks! This is how bad their offense is right now: After his 1-for-4 game today, Stephen Drew actually raised his average to .205--and that's better than four of the other starters in the Dback lineup. As of right now, the Diamondbacks have 0 starting outfielders batting higher than .197. Of course batting average isn't everything, and of course your batting averages are going to drop after you just faced (a rejuvanated) Tim Lincecum, but still, wow. They're currently 6-10, and it's amazing that they've won that many games with their current offense and without Brandon Webb.

- ESPN rarely gets anything right, but their recent commercial depicting Albert Pujols as a Terminator-like figure is pretty dead-on. Since everything's already been said about him, I'll keep it simple. I just looked up Pujols' stat line on ESPN.com: .355 batting average, .462 OBP, .710 SLG, 13 walks to 4 strikeouts, 10 extra-base hits in 62 atbats...and I'm completely unamazed.

- And Pujols' team? In the "other" great rivalry in baseball (Cubs-Cards), the Redbirds stole a 4-3 victory...literally, as Pujols singled and stole second in the eighth before coming in on a Ryan Ludwick single to break a 3-3 tie. Ludwick, who most were writing off as a fluke before the season, is currently the only Cardinal with a stat line that can match up to Fat Albert's (.364/.390/.691). Those two guys along with Yadier Molina (???) are spearheading a suddenly vicious Cardinal offense that's helped the team to a 12-5 start. Since there's a 101% chance that the Cubs trade for Jake Peavy in July, I wouldn't get too excited, but it's still a pretty good story.

- Yeah, the Dodger offense is pretty good; you've probably heard that from multiple sources (including me). Furcal, O-Dog/Cyclist Hudson, Manny Being Manny, Some Guys Who Are Only Good Because Manny's On The Team (Ethier, Kemp, Loney), A Pretty Good Hitter With A Beard Who ZOMG Is Hitting Eighth (Casey Blake)...yeah, they're not too bad. If I told you that the Dodgers were led to a victory they very much didn't deserve against the Rockies tonight by one of their hitters sparking go-ahead rallies in the eighth and ninth, 99.9% of the baseball world would think that hitter was Manny, right? (The other 0.01% would think either Kirk Gibson or Sandy Koufax). No, it wasn't Manny. Or Hudson. Or Furcal. No...it was a guy who many thought wouldn't hit better than most pitchers this year. Brad Ausmus, Russell Martin's backup catcher, scored the go-ahead run in the 8th inning after hitting a two-run double and scoring on a Mark Loretta single, and then hit a two-out RBI single in the ninth to plate another go-ahead run after Hong-Chih Kuo blew the lead in the bottom of the eighth. Ausmus is now hitting .417, and not to be outdone, fellow bench player Mark Loretta is checking in at an even .500 through 12 ABs. Fuck, even Eric Stults walked twice in the game. What next, Tommy Lasorda hits a pinch-hit grand slam off Brad Lidge?

- And just as I was typing this, another great story (although another one not likely to hold up over the long haul) continued in San Diego as a Brian Giles RBI single in the 11th allowed the Padres to beat the Pirates 4-3 and move the Pod People to 10-6 on the season, when most had them figured for 0-16 at this point.


Funny thing, the first few weeks of the baseball season, huh?