The Angels' Ervin Santana was allowed to pitch seven innings despite a 7-2 deficit and allowing 14 hits and four walks. Only a fantasy player can understand the horror of checking in-game boxscores and seeing Santana's runners allowed climb from nine after to four innings to seventeen after five innings. The Angels will have to make a move.
A day after being installed as the closer in Houston, Brad Lidge got his first save of 2007. First save. I know he struggled this year, but I am still shocked it took until July 17th to notch his first save.
So is Twins' rookie Matt Garza a better pitcher for all his travails this year? Complaining from the moment he was sent to AAA from Spring Training, he has expressed his emotions in the press. Mostly, he sounded defiant and disgruntled. However, he has now thrown fifteen innings since being added to the 25-man roster. In those innings, he has allowed just an unearned run and that came against the first-place Tigers last night. Whatever the means, the ends have been justified.
Two possible candidates to turn into pumpkins pitched last night, the Orioles' Jeremy Guthrie and the A's Chad Gaudin. Guthrie picked-up the Win on the road against a hot Mariners' club. In six innings, he gave-up just two runs on six hits with three walks and the same number of Ks. It is not quite midnight for this Cinderella pitcher.
The clock doesn't look quite as favorably upon the other pumpkin-to-be, Chad Gaudin. In a battle to stay as far from the basement as possible, Gaudin allowed five runs on eight hits with six bases-on-balls. In his last two starts, he has pitched 10 innings and walked eleven batters. The fourteen hits and 10 runs are secondary to 11 walks in 10 innings of work. Get your mop and scrub brush, dear.