#170---CHA @ BOS, 9/4/2010

Both Sox were trying to make the playoffs and would ultimately fall short. The two runs the ChiSox pushed across against John Lackey in the seventh made the difference. Note Manny Ramirez was back in Boston playing for the White Sox, a tenure I don’t really remember. We also see Chris Sale working in relief against his future team, but what really caught my eye was Daniel Bard, who worked through the eighth with three flyouts to center. The night before I wrote this, it was announced that Bard’s long exile from the majors had ended when he made the Rockies’ roster.

#169---PHI @ WAS, 4/13/2009

Scoring note: You can see a briefly-lived endeavor by me to track the number of strikes thrown by the starting pitcher each inning in addition to total pitches. I quickly decided that this space would be better used for a running total of pitches.

This was a wild home opener for the Nats against the defending champion Phillies. Each team got five of their runs on three homers, with the biggest the three-run shot from Ryan Howard in the seventh after the first two batters of the inning were plunked. The Nats tried to come back with a pair of two-run blasts from Adam Dunn and Ryan Zimmerman, but Brad Lidge recovered from the latter with a pair of strikeouts and a grounder to first.

Some of the names on the Washington side are great: Lastings Milledge, Cristian Guzman, Elijah Dukes, Nick Johnson (this team would finish 59-103).

#168---NYA @ CLE, 4/27/2008

This was a good early-season duel between CC Sabathia and Chien-Ming Wang. Sabathia gave up a leadoff single to Johnny Damon and walked A-Rod later in the first, but then set down the Yankees through the fourth sans a Ryan Garko error. In the fifth, Robinson Cano beat out an infield single, but Sabathia picked him off before he even threw a pitch to Melky Cabrera. Good thing too, as Cabrera hit the next pitch out for a homer. That would be the game’s only run, as for the rest of the game the only blemish on the lines of Sabathia and reliever Masa Kobayashi were a Jeter double. On the other side, Wang retired the last four batters he faced, and then Joba Chamberlain and Mariano Rivera closed it out with a pair of perfect innings.

#167---CLE @ LAA, 5/9/2007

The Indians got two in the first off of Jered Weaver, and Paul Byrd tried to make it hold up and it did for sixth. But in the seventh, Erick Aybar singled on a chopper to the mound and Kendry Morales followed with a two-run blast. In the eighth, Gary Matthews hit the first pitch from Fernando Cabrera to put the Angels up, and K-Rod got the save with a 1-2-3 ninth against the bottom of the Tribe order.

Travis Hafner was involved in a couple plays worth noting on the scoresheet. In the first he reached on catcher’s interference, and in the fifth his grounder was deflected by first baseman Casey Kotchman to Aybar, who threw back to Kotchman for the old 343, with my “d” prefix denoting that the position number that followed deflected the ball. I would now score this play “3-43”.