That was pretty painful, especially blowing the last game. It wasn't completely a surprise, tho, since the home team has won every game in this year's series, and the Rays juggled their rotation to line up their top 3 starters for the series.

The Rays are playing great baseball, and their doing it with Boston's formula from '04: particularly, the part about emphasizing defense over offense. As I've said, if they weren't in the AL East, I'd be rooting for them 100%.

Last night's 7-0 blanking of the Yankees did help to take some of the sting out of the Tampa Bay series, tho. :)

Mariners' back-up catcher took the loss in a 15 inning game against the Tigers.

Great game last night with the Yankees winning in 10 innings. Sorry Chuck. Brett who?

How about all the complaining with Laz Diaz' strike zone and every time ESPN would show K Zone; Laz was right.

I was noticing that too. Does anyone know how ESPN does their "K-Zone"? Are there electronics involved with the actual plate and ball, like a GPS system, or is it done with a computer and just the camera and monitor, which is probably more of an approximation?

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/articl...rikes-computer
;)

Cool! Thanks, mick.

Trivia
 

TRIVIA QUESTION:

For what is Bill Mazeroski known for?

He hit a walk off home run to beat the Yankees in game seven of the 1960 World Series at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Anyway, that's my guess!

I see the Cubs have filled a hole on their DL.

My, aren't you quite the cynic. :p

As Jim Hendry, GM of the Cubs, said this morning, if Harden wasn't a risk Billy Beane would have never even considered trading him since he still has another year on his contract.

Now it will be interesting to see what, if anything, the Cardinals do in response to the arms race.

:D
Missile Defense?

Well, I think it's just fine that those two fellas are in the real baseball league. :)

Saw an interesting play in the KC/TB game on Monday night. With a runner on first, one of the KC batters (don't remember who it was) hit a weak popup right in front of the plate. He just stood there, obviously disgusted with his lack of hitting skills, muttering a few choice words to himself, and the catcher did a smart thing - he waited for the ball to come down instead of catching it, threw it right to second and started the easy 2-4-3 double play. The batter realized he needed to start running when the ball was already halfway to second, so it was way too late.

Smart move by the TB catcher. Dumb move by the KC batter. Don't we all learn in Little League to run everything out?

Uh, uh - not allowed. If they try that Chicago will obviously consider that a provocation and will have to go in and blow up the Budweiser factory or somethin'.

Doesn't this qualify as an infield fly?