Rodrigo Lopez gets his 8th win of the season, Chris Ray gets his 27th save.
Well, Rodrigo Lopez owns the Seattle Mariners this year. In his 2 starts against them, Rodrigo has not given up a run and has 2 of his wins. I’ll bet some teams are kicking themselves for not landing Rodrigo before the deadline yesterday. I don’t think he can pass through waivers, so I’m hoping he pitches great for the rest of the season and we trade him in the offseason. No matter how he does I would like to see us trade him in the offseason. He only gave up 4 hits in and 2/3rds innings tonight, striking out 5. These are the kind of starts that Rodrigo seems to have from time to time to get our hopes up. I have no doubt he’ll bomb his next time out. Tim Byrdak pitched the rest of the 8th and got out it in one batter. Chris Ray sat ‘em down in the 9th, 1-2-3, earning his 27th save. I’m gonna say he finishes with between 35-40 saves on the year, if we can get the leads to him.
The O’s hitting was sparse and spread out, but it was enough to get the win tonight. I love how we score 11 runs the other day and lose, and score 2 runs tonight and win. Love how that works. Everybody but Javy Lopez and Kevin Millar got a hit, but nobody got more than one. The one key hit of the night was a Nick Markakis ground rule double to bring in a run. Fernando Tatis also had a double, and Melvin Mora had the other RBI. Javy Lopez has been crying to the media that he wanted to be traded and is unhappy he wasn’t. He indicated that he wanted his release if we didn’t plan on playing him regularly. This is the guy who lost his catching job to Ramon Hernandez, his DH spot to Jay Gibbons, and whose back spasms kept us from resting Hernandez at all during a rough stretch not too long ago. Yeah, we’ll give you your release… because you aren’t good enough to play on the team. It would be nice if we could clear him through waivers and trade him for something though. Jason Varitek just got sidelined for 5 or 6 weeks, maybe they could use Javy. We couldn’t find anyone to take him before the deadline. And tonight he went 0-4 with 2 strikeouts. Good effort Javy, good effort…
Markakis watch: 1-3 (.298)
Tomorrow afternoon Erik Bedard (12-6, 3.87) goes up against the greatly hyped Felix Hernandez (9-9, 4.60). I feel good every time Bedards on the mound, no different this time. Go O’s.
