Aaron Sele looked really good, like he had some of his best stuff going tonight. He was great through the first six innings, but seemed to crap out come the seventh – he had something like 115 pitches, if I’m not mistaken. He gave up two innings, before handing the ball over to Venafro, who ended the seventh inning. Jeff Zimmerman came in and got another scoreless inning – lowering his ERA from 0.89 to 0.88. It’s about at the point where it’s not going anywhere else. :) John Wetteland would have come in for the ninth, but we scored a couple of more runs in the top of the 9th, putting a save out of reach, so Tim Crabtree came in for the ninth, and did really well. Again, our bullpen led the way – giving up nothing.
Our offence got started early with a solo home run by Pudge in the first inning. We also had home runs from two others, a solo shot by Ruben Mateo, just back from the DL, and a two run shot by Royce Clayton (whose mother was shown in the stands cheering for him after the hr). Overall, it seemed like a very nice game – good pitching (2 runs on 9 hits), great offense (3 HR, 7 runs on 8 hits), and some awesome defense.
Twice Aaron Sele got out of bases loaded, once in a most cool factor. Bases were loaded with no one out, and Sele got a really big strikeout. Then he got Jackson to hit a ball back to him, and Sele converted a really cool pitcher to catcher to first double play ending the inning.
Todd Zeile did not play, he was “excused” from the game, as he had a personal matter to attend to at home (as his family is in Los Angeles).
Couple of interesting things about the game.. It seemed that every time Juan came up, he was booed (not terribly loudly, but you could hear it on TV), and when Pudge came into the dugout one time, there were two girls within earshot of a microphone screaming “Pudge, we came all the way from Texas, will you sign my ball? We love youuuuuuuuu!” Cute. :)
Tomorrow we’re on national Fox TV coverage – let’s see how bad they dump on Juan for his All-Star game stance.