Reading boxes

When a tyke, I often - always - went to bed before the east coast games were over. So I didn't even try to follow baseball as it happened. Every morning there would be the paper, or, if Bones and I were at our the grandparents', every afternoon we'd sit on the porch and wait for the mid-afternoon delivery of the four-page Tyrone Daily Herald. Only two sections were of interest: the box scores and the funny pages.

To this day I can skip a day or two or three of watching or listening to baseball - so long as I can get the box scores from a paper.

You see things in the box scores that you might miss otherwise. You miss an awful lot by not tuning in, but sometimes the events that seem to characterize the game as it happens are just white noise, masking other events. And of course no one has the time or the patience to watch or listen to every single game.

So I missed everything yesterday but spent an hour this afternoon reading the box scores. I go here and print the whole - it runs twenty-odd pages. That way you get all the late games as well.

Looking at Saturday's box score, I see Matt Lawton going 2-for-3 and three RBIs. He's been a great acquistion. Why was I concerned about him? With some effort I recalled the history of this guy as a Buc. My initial response to the Kendall trade was enthusiasm, since I've been a fan of Lawton as an offensive player. Then we heard through the grapevine etc. that he has a tremendously weak throwing arm and doesn't play any outfield position well. So then I look below, in the San Diego batting section, and see: 3B - X Nady, M Loretta and remember the note-to-self I made about tracking the number of triples the Pirates allow this year. Sure enough, those two were enough to have them leading the league. I don't know if any of the triples were on Lawton; that's a question I'd like answered. Or not.

I also see that Ward and Wigginton have been zeroes out of the gate. Ollie is throwing way too many balls - is he having the same problems he had in spring training a year ago? And I also see that he loads the bases in the fifth, gets lifted, and Mac calls on Rick White to bail him out. White appears to have allowed some or all of those runners to come around and score.

In other games, I see a bunch of quality starters getting torched. Besides Ollie, Zito (8 earnies), David Wells (6 earnies), Roy Halladay (5), Javy Vazquez (5), Scott Erickson (good luck with that), and Jeff Suppan (5) were all hit hard. There were some gems, but obviously it's not unusual to see even the better pitchers struggling early. Given that Ollie pitched in the 03-04 winter season and did not in the 04-05 winter season, I'll be giving him a bunch more starts before I begin to wonder if the 04 season was some kind of fluke.

I also note that Houston's Willy Taveres wants to stick when Berkman returns. The guy is fast - have you seen him run to first? Wow. And St. Louis's lineup strikes me as high stakes. If David Littlefield had signed David Eckstein to lead off for the Pirates, can you imagine the outrage we'd endure around here? His OBP the last two seasons: .325, .339. He's hitting .429 so St. Louis he looks good in red for now. After Eckstein, it's Larry Walker, Albert Pujols, Scott Rolen (still not hitting this year), Jim Edmonds, and Reggie Sanders. From an injury standpoint, that's a high-risk, high-reward quintet, esp. when - for what reason - I see Abraham Nunez (yes, that Noonie) pinch-hitting (!) for Scott Rolen. I'm curious to see how the Redbird Nation will react if Tony LaRussa sends Noonie to pinch-hit as often as McClendon did. Five somewhat-fragile studs and Noonie. Wow.

All hail Jose Mesa for career save number 294. Lanny's "There was no doubt about it" rings pretty hollow these days, doesn't it? Uh, duh, Lanny.