Tuesday March 27, 2007

Seattle just finished coming back from a 25-point deficit late in the third quarter to beat Minnesota by eight. Rashard Lewis is stepping it up to fill the Ray Allen void.

Check out West Virginia’s last second shot to beat Miss State. It was a pretty sweet inbounds play, nice misdirection. I guess the less-famous Hansbrough brother is now done playing too.

In baseball:
Ryan Howard had another stellar day, 0-4 with three k’s. Edwin Encarnacion hit a two-run jack, which helps my confidence as I have him starting at third base in my keeper league.

Boof Bonser looked pretty decent. He went six innings, while giving up four hits and striking out seven. Carl Pavano went six innings and gave up six hits while not striking anyone out. I can only find his pitch count on Yahoo, and they have it at 27, with 22 strikes. Now, with his one walk and one hit batter, he must have thrown no other balls over the entire six innings. He had 14 groundball outs, including four double-play outs. I’m not really confident that the Yahoo pitch count is right, but the results are the same either way. You have to like the ground balls, but a strikeout or five would be nice too.

Morgan Ensberg hit a homerun. He’s a great sleeper because of how late he is going. Last year’s average was pretty bad, but he might be a good cheap power source.

Albert Pujols went 2-3 with a homerun, get used to seeing that in the box score. Chris Carpenter went seven strong innings, four hits and two walks, while striking out five.

Mike Sweeney went 2-3 with two runs, three rbi’s, and a homerun. He might have some success if he can stay healthy, which won’t happen. Aramis Ramirez looked pretty good, and Ryan Dempster picked up where he left off last year, giving up two runs in one innings of work.

Wow, the Padres (they’re not playing in Petco yet) exploded on the Rangers. Kevin Millwood coughed up 10 runs in 4.2 innings. Eric Gagne gave up four runs in one inning; his owners need to be worried. Conversely, Antinori Otsuka’s owners need to be excited. Russel Branyan had five rbi’s, Adrian Gonzalez added three and is a good bet to improve this season. Josh Bard brought nothing more than an 0-6 day to the party.

The Mariners showed off yet another round of astoundingly bad offseason pickups today. Horacio Ramirez (who might actually have some promise somewhere down deep) and Chris Reitsma combined for seven innings, 12 hits, nine runs, and three strikeouts.

Dave Bush struck out six in five otherwise sloppy innings and continues his run as the most underrated fantasy pitcher.

Giant Bobby Jenks gained a little bit of security when his scoreless inning was followed by Andy Sisco and Mike MacDougal getting rocked consecutively. Howie Kendrick went 2-4 and knocked in three.

Scott Hairston knocked out three homeruns and Matt Holliday added one of his own. Josh Fogg gave up 11 runs (10 earned) on 13 hits. Its nice to know he’s working to repeat last season’s 5.49 era.
-Adam