Since no one else seemed to be writing one and it had been too long since I actually contributed anything (the amount/quality of material the other editors are putting out makes me fear for my title), I figured we needed a sixth front page article on the day.
It was great getting to watch baseball on consecutive days again (at least until my feed died and minus some of the awful music being played between innings). There is something nice about the speed of those first few innings in a spring training game. Plus, as just about everyone on here said in the gamethread, Bill Melton sure sounded nice.
The hitting was pretty unimpressive for the most part in today's loss, with a few exceptions. Jim Thome crushed a three-run shot out into right center off of Ryan Rowland-Smith. This was preceeded by Carlos Quentin recording his first hit of the spring and a Jermaine Dye double. Unfortunately those were all the runs we could muster up. Thome hit a ball about as far as you can in Camelback (which I'm sorry, but everytime I read that I think of one of these that the Greeks on campus use to smuggle booze) Park without it actually being a home run to deep left-center in his next at bat. Fields continued to play like a man who wants to start at third this season, going 2-2 with both hits being doubles. He is currently batting .500 on the spring and not looking too bad out there. Sergio Santos also went 2-2 in his attempt to become the 2009 Pablo Ozuna.
Unfortunately, Brian Anderson seems to be doing everything he can to insure that Jerry Owens will be coming back north with the club. He was hitless in three at at bats today with a walk. Three of our future starters (Allen, Flowers, Beckham) combined to go 0-4, with Getz getting the nod at second and going hitless in two at bats as well. Alexei continues to struggle at the plate as well, also going 0-2 on the day.
While Clayton Richard didn't have a great performance (3 ER, 4 H, 3 IP), he wasn't completely terrible (3 K, 0 BB). It seems like he still hasn't quite mastered that all-important throw over to first base yet though. Jenks and Linebrink each looked sharp in their inning of work, striking out two and one while allowing zero and one hits respectively. Perhaps the best pitching outing today came from a man who needed it the most, Octavio Dotel. While he gave up 1 hit and screwed up the pickoff move, Dotel struck out the other 3 hitters after looking like crap every inning prior to this.
There are still some things that need to be improved on before the season starts (defense, dear holy god, defense), we've still got a month and a ton more games and a 3-3 record hardly seems terrible at this point.