Essentially nothing happened after I gave up. At least nobody scored. The Glavine Hex is no more, as the Braves were held to six hits and two walks, all by the first five hitters in the order, giving credence, at least for a day, to the doubters who think that the bottom of the order will be a drag on the lineup.
Good news is that after Cruz allowed the one run, he settled down, giving them 2 2/3 innings of one-run baseball. Nitkowski needed only five pitches in the sixth. Base12 got through the seventh but needed a lot of pitches, loading the bases in the process. Will Cunnane had two perfect innings to finish things off. So a pretty good start for the pen, at least, though teams tend not to try as hard when they’re up five runs.
Actual Ace (as opposed to Putative Ace) Mike Hampton tomorrow against Steve Trachsel, as we see what further horrors the good people at Fox SportsSouth have in store.
I was at the game tonight, and it was fairly desultory after Giles’ HR. Ortiz was awful, but hey, it’s just one game. I fully expect him to be the same as he ever was–dependable in an agonizing way.
I’ll also give Cruz a pass on his struggling. Opening day with a new team, and he comes in with bases loaded and one out, with the game about to get out of hand. Tough spot–he did okay.
Sadly, the wave broke out in the seventh inning. Are Braves fans now utterly alone in perpetuating this annoyance?
FWIW, I sat next to the Fox Sports South luxury box. Nothing but middle aged men with loud blonde bimbos. What else should I have expected?
Cruz pitched quite well, I thought. Pitched into some bad luck (Furcal’s error) and got seriously squeezed when he walked in the second run.
I didn’t know Russ had such a great left-handed impersonation of Albie Lopez. That was awful. I had no problem turning over the TV to the wife for Law & Order.
Albie Lopez? I was thinking more Shane Reynolds like.
The Albie Lopez comp seems about right. The defense didn’t do him any favors with DeRo’s error in the second costing him two runs and Furcal’s error in the third bringing in two more, but it wouldn’t have mattered too much because he had nothing out there. Even the outs were scorched. He started slow last season so let’s hope it gets better, because it pretty much has to.
By the way, the 92 win Cards (at least according to BP) hit Womack-Cedano 1-2 in their starting lineup last night. LaRussa’s genius has no bounds.
The Braves must use the balsa bat company or something. More broken bats than I’ve seen in quite a while. Andruw scares me. Lunged at the outside pitch a lot. Looks even heavier than last season although according to AJC he came in lighter. Just one game. Marcus looks on. He was hitting the ball hard. My only source of games is TBS or if ESPN has them. I may have to surf between CSI and the game Thursday night.
Andruw looked better than I expected him too — let’s hope his dad yelled at him to stop playing video games and lose the extra LBs.
Actually I thought Cruz looked ok. He has good stuff. If he can find the strike zone he’ll be a steal. Man, a million 2 is a lot of dough to pay a guy like base12 to pitch a meaningless inning. I guess its good work if you can get it. I hope the error thing aint a trend. Our pitching staff is going to need all the help it can get.
Hey – Andruw let Glavine walk him, that wasn’t too bad following a strikeout with way too many offspeed pitches.
I was there last night too. Not much to add. Glavine looked good, my man Mike Cameron (representing LaGrange GA !) played good defense and got a hit or two. I missed the Giles homerun which was about all the Braves action. From my First base side seats I didn’t think Garcia ran into his bunt.
And that wave didn’t catch on did it? only 5 or six guys in our section stood up.