fathom

Hope I'm wrong, but this game reminds me of some of the Twins games from years past. Bloopers and infield singles left and right for the Twins, while the Sox squander good scoring opportunities.

His arm is pretty poor, but there's no excuse not to try and throw out a runner at home in a 4 run game.

I think we're seeing some of that "great" defense by Podsednik that the Brewers fans warned us about. I still don't know why he didn't try to throw the runner out at home in the 7th inning yesterday.

Rowand seems to have changed his swing a little, and looks awful. He's swinging with all arms, and is making him hit everything on the ground.

Hmmmm.....so this is what it looks like to save relievers in case the game goes to extras? Sorry, had to say that.

Good bunt by Branyan. Not in a million years would I have thought he could get it down.

Ah yes, the reverse psychology worked against Jenkins! Leadoff double for Jenkins.

That was the worst AB I've seen from Aramis in a long time. Now, Jenkins has the chance at 5 K's in a game. Where's Austin Kearns when you need him?

I'll never understand why Cubs didn't go harder after Benitez. Benitez was lights-out last year, and he's still young enough that he's not going to start throwing 88 mph all of a sudden. On the other hand, I think Percival is well on the decline. He was very shaky for the Angels last year. I'd guess every Angels fan is happier with K-Rod as their closer instead of Percival. With the Cubs high payroll, you would think they'd spend some money on their bullpen, which failed them so much last year.

Even if the Cubs win this game, I'm still going to take some pleasure from it knowing that Hawkins has already blown a game. I guarantee every Cubs fan is b****ing about their closing position right now. Much more so than we were yesterday.

Is the wind blowing in from center? Of course, the announcers don't even mention that Lee's ball might have been knocked down.

Haha, wow! I thought they were going to have Spivey out by a mile at home if H'worth came up cleanly with that ball. Come on Carlos!

Amazing that Cubs are going to win this game when I think they've had 2 hard hit balls the entire game. These announcers are worse than any major league tandem I've heard in a long time.

The last few years, I was nervous about the Cubs being a World Series contender because I thought their talent level was better than almost every team in baseball. However, this year, I'm nowhere near as nervous about them being a serious threat at winning it all. Other teams like the Braves, Marlins, Cardinals, and a few NL west teams are superior to the Cubs, in my opinion.

For the person who keeps saying that Mia Hamm is ugly.........I couldn't agree more. She looks like a rat. I've never understood how people think she's hot.

Am I the only one who thinks Cubs are going to have a ton of problems with their middle relief? Fox is incredibly inconsistent/wild, and we all know how Hawkins is as a closer.

Geoff Jenkins is a terrible player. Talk about someone who hasn't improved at all in the last 3 years or so.

The question I have is this: is Gload's defense that much better that it makes up for the difference between potential offensive help regarding Gload having to bat instead of Konerko? This isn't a situation like a few years ago where we replaced Carlos Lee in LF late in the game for someone like Rowand, where the defensive replacement was far and away better than the starter.

Let me also add that I hate the whole Gload for Konerko defensive replacement strategy. As I noted in the game thread, it's not like PK is bad on defense. We need to keep our best hitter in the game in case of a blown save.

- Just as easily as we could have swept this series, we could have easily been swept by the Indians. - Ozzie can't have the same patience this year with Shingo as he did w/Koch last year. Shingo was great last year, but it's not like he's a young man. All the AL has seen him and his trick pitches. - Against lhp, I think Rowand should be batting 3rd. He's a stud vs lefties, and Everett typically struggles against lhp. - What's wrong with Uribe in the field? He was incredibly lazy today, and seemed to be in another world. - I love the addition of A.J. Pierz. He's the best catcher the Sox have had in a long, long time. - Anyone else think that Dye kinda looks like what Michael Jordan would have in the Sox uniform with the number 23 and his physical characteristics? Anyways, time to go to the Metrodome. I'd be ok with a 1-2 series there, as the pitching matchups aren't in our favor.

No matter what though, this loss falls on Shingo's hands. Having relievers left for extra innings or not, Shingo was given the ball with a 3 run lead and 3 outs to get. He failed miserably.

Why not just let Marte pitch the 7th, and Hermanson the 8th? I hate the logic of using Marte as a situational lefty. He's the type of pitcher that needs to get into a rhythm on the mound.

QUOTE(Soxbadger @ Apr 7, 2005 -> 10:01 PM) This is the f***ing first series of the year. OMG our 2nd year manager made a rookie mistake using his pitchers, our team is dead now. Sorry, but I don't want to hear any excuses this year about Ozzie's lack of experience.

Seems like every season, we blow a big lead at the end of a game in the opening season of the season. Last year, it was the opening day debacle at KC. The year before that, I think we blew a 2 run lead against KC in which Koch got rocked. 3 years ago, Foulke blew a 3 run lead in the 9th against Seattle.

Nope, Widger's up in the pen!