Batting Around

Game 67: Durham Bulls 8, Louisville Bats 2
Season: 40-27; Last 10: 7-3
Wrap, Box, Courier-Journal

Since I wasn’t able to listen to the game last night, I'm depending on the wrap and the Courier-Journal reports. Interesting differences between the two. From Louisville’s perspective it was the awful run of wild pitches and errors that did them in. That ignores Joyce’s home run in the first, and timely hits by Chris Richard and Dan Johnson.

An interesting point of the game, for me, was that for the first time in a very long while Fernando Perez made a difference. He did make a mistake getting picked off in the 3rd and struck out in the 5th. Nevertheless, he got on base twice and picked up a key RBI in the go-ahead 7th. And he avoided drifting down below the Mendoza Line.

Richard De Los Santos recovered nicely from his awful start last week with a solid 6 innings of work letting only two runs in.

That De Los Santos pitched indicates a minor change in the Bulls rotation. Rodriguez was skipped over and is available in the bullpen. At a guess, the idea is to keep the stronger pitchers as close as possible to their 5-day routines (rainout and day off messed that up). Expect Rodriguez to show up out of the pen for a couple of innings soon and to be back in the rotation either just before or after Heath Phillips. Missed Neil’s commentary. I imagine he covered that either last night or the night before.

Grass!

I suggested a couple of days ago that the infield might look a bit different when the Bulls gets back. Bulls blogger George Habel has photos of the operation and confirms that the spring abuse by Trinity College team as a contributing cause.

Web Stuff

Montgomery Advertiser reporter Stacy Long drove over to Atlanta to watch some of the Rays games earlier this week. And he interviewed some former Biscuits (thus former Bulls). Stories here, here, and here.

A Rays blogger makes the argument for calling up Matt Joyce sooner rather than later.