Tuesday, August 28 - Oakland, California
10:05 PM (EDT)
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Toronto Blue Jays Vernon Wells cf Reed Johnson lf Alexis Rios rf Matt Stairs dh Troy Glaus 3b Lyle Overbay 1b Aaron Hill 2b Curtis Thigpen c John Macdonald ss Pitching: Jesse Litsch, RHP |
Athletico Oakland Shannon Stewart lf Mark Ellis 2b Nick Swisher cf Jack Cust rf Mike Piazza dh Dan Johnson 1b Marco Scutaro ss Jack Hannahan 3b Kurt Suzuki c Pitching: Chad Gaudin, RHP |
Hope everyone is having a great day. The Jays offense hopes to build on its dramatic 12th inning outburst from last night. It was Troy Glaus who came up with the big 12th inning hit, a rare bright spot in a dismal August month in which he has a .632 OPS.
Jesse Litsch takes the mound for the Jays. Although Litsch is anything but overpowering, with only 30 Ks to 25 Walks over his 73 1/3 innings, he has done a gutsy job, and at only 22, still has time to develop his offspeed stuff and improve his K rate at least a little.
Taking the mound for Oakland is old friend Chad Gaudin, who, like Litsch, is in the midst of a very effective season despite pedestrian peripherals (119/79 K/BB over 161 2/3 innings).
The Jays signed LHP Joe Kennedy today. Kennedy signed a minor league contract and was sent to Syracuse. Kennedy was decent enough as a swingman two seasons ago with Oakland and was pretty good last season pitching out of the bullpen for the A's, so there's a chance he will help the squad more than, say, Mark Redman, who the Jays ditched last week. Kennedy doesn't have great career numbers or anything, and has been awful this season (50 BB / 43 K over 104 IP), but he has pretty good numbers against lefties and unlike Redman, he's at least on the right side of 30 (28). Not a bad pickup, really.
In other southpaw news, Gustavo Chacin's season is officially over. Chacin has elected to undergo exploratory shoulder surgery tomorrow to see if they can figure out what's wrong with him. Chacin hasn't pitched since April, so this has been a long time coming. Get well soon, Gus.
Back to the game at hand, the lineup is finally being shaken up. Vernon returns to the leadoff spot, while Stairs gets the start at DH, hitting cleanup, a move both Torgen and I have been agitating for for months now. Sparky hits second, and Overbay moves down to the 6-spot. At the bottom of the order, Thigpen gets the start, as does J-Mac, despite Olmedo's getting on base 3 times yesterday. As for the A's, they trot out a pretty suspect defensive outfield of Swisher in center, Cust in right, and Stewart in left. Let's hit some gappers.
By the way, today's title is brought to us by the talented, banjo-playing and occasionally-singing-in-Mandarin Abigail Washburn. I'm not much of a trad folk fan at all, but "Sometimes" really is a lovely song.