Kris Benson loses his 10th game of the season to even out his record.
Benson became the second pitcher in as many games to get rocked for double digit hits. He was pulled before he could even get out of the 4th inning, allowing 6 runs on 10 hits. Kris just didn’t have it tonight, leaving too many pitches up in the zone. Bruce Chen came in to relieve him, but I wouldn’t call it that. He pitched the same amount of innings as Benson, but gave up 4 runs on 5 hits and a walk. And then to top it all off, the I-can’t-believe-hes-not-released player of the year, Russ Ortiz comes in to finish the game. In just under 2 innings he gave up 2 hits and a walk to let in one of Chen’s earned runs and one of his own. And he actually lowered his ERA. Simply amazing…
Every starter had exactly one hit tonight, but that only accounted for 2 runs. And both of those came on Ramon Hernandez’ 16th homerun of the season. Brandon Fahey and Miguel Tejada both had doubles, and Nick Markakis had a single and a walk. Boof Bonser and the Twins outstanding bullpen combined to shut us down for the second night in a row. Tejada extends his hitting streak to 12 games.
Markakis watch: 1-3 (.306)
Theres only a week until the rosters expand and the waiver trade deadline passes and there are rumors of LaTroy Hawkins and Jeff Conine being moved. The Yankees and Red Sox are involved in the Hawkins talks (we could send him to Boston for a better overall return on that Javy Lopez trade) and the Phillies are interested in Conine if we kick in some money for the $2 million option for next year. I doubt we trade either of them (we can’t even get rid of Russ Ortiz) but it would be nice if we could. And september call ups could be exciting to watch some kids play.
The Devil Rays come into town tomorrow night for a 3 game series. Daniel Cabrera (6-8, 4.94) tries to imitate his last performance. His counterpart for the evening will be Jason Hammel (0-1, 10.80), who made his MLB debut in April against the O’s and is making his first major league start since April 16th. I think we’ll be able to take this one. Go O’s.
