Observations from today's games

Hey everyone, hope you enjoyed some Tuesday baseball! Not every team was in action today, but enough teams were in action today for some interesting observations. While I only actively follow about one game a day while it's happening (typically the Red Sox game), I check the box scores for every game after they all go final. Tell me I have a problem if you want to (I might), but I almost always find a handful of things that interest me enough to make checking all of those box scores pay off. Baseball is just such a quirky game that almost every day something interesting is happening. Here are the two things that interested me the most that I noticed today.

1. In today's Orioles @ Rays game, two guys who worked in a shared closing role for the Atlanta Braves last year were the pitchers of record for opposing teams, those two guys being Mike Gonzalez and Rafael Soriano.

It would not surprise me if this is the first time in history that two guys who got 10+ saves for the same team the year before were both the pitcher's of record on opposing teams the next season, simply because two guys getting that many saves on the same team is rare, and the chance of both closers being used by opposing teams in a single game is also rare. It might happen more than once too, since these two are in the same division..assuming they can hold on to their positions in bullpen hierarchy.

2. In today's Yankees @ Red Sox game both starting pitchers struggled. This means that the top two pitchers for both of these extremely well-funded organizations, all of whom are getting paid incredibly well, have put up some horrible numbers to begin their seasons, numbers that look even worse when you put all four of them together. As ESPNBoston's Gordon Edes put it "Starting pitching in first two games of series: 20 IP, 26 H, 17 ER, 7.65 ERA, $353.6". Obviously what he means by "353.6" is the millions of dollars that all four of these men's (CC Sabathia, Josh Beckett, Jon Lester, and A.J. Burnett) total contracts are worth. Hopefully John Lackey and Andy Pettitte can put up some good numbers tomorrow, or things will be even more laughable. The chances of all four starters putting up such horrible numbers in the first two games of the season, especially when three of the guys often have "ace" attatched to their name, has to be pretty low.

That's it for now.