“I mean, I never walked eight guys
in a season!”
Thus spake
the Eck last night, expressing his bemusement and exasperation at Dice-K’s most
unusual pitching line.
That’s true
— three different
times, in fact. (And, twice more, his last two seasons, he walked exactly
eight.)
In
fairness, of course, Mr. Mustache-Mullet put up those numbers as a reliever,
not a starter.
(Speaking
of Eckersley, by the way, this reenactment of his darkest hour is terrifically
creative and very well done...almost as good as RBI Baseball Game Six.)
Anyway.
Last night.
This is
really weird:
IP H
R ER BB K
5.0 2
1 1 8 1
He got his
fifth win, lowered his ERA, and took a no-hitter into the fourth — all while
throwing the ball all over the damn place, allowing base runners at a
ridiculous.
But he
always wiggled out when it mattered. One wonders if, like it was in Japan,
this could actually be a viable strategy for him if only there were no such thing as
pitch counts here. (Alas, there is such a thing.)
It was excruciating
to watch. But it worked. Our starter got the win, our closer got the save, our
middle reliever got some seasoning.
Mikey Lowell was mere inches
away from having a 4-5, 2 HR, 5 RBI night, and Ortiz just destroyed that ball
in the ninth.
Hail, hail,
the gang’s all here. Let’s see if we can keep these good things happening.
Last
night’s game also marked the debut of the
lovely Heidi Watney. I think she did a fine job. She seemed a little
nervous, which is OK. But she did what’s expected of a sideline reporter. Some
commenters I’ve read on a couple message boards seem to be demanding she offer
the incisive commentary and encyclopedic baseball knowledge of a Gammons
or a Kurkjian.
This seems to me to be a ridiculously excessive expectation.