Daniel Cabrera wins again. He’s 7-8. Chris Ray gets his 30th save.
Cabrera pitched outstanding for the second straight game. And for the second straight game, he didn’t allow a run. But this time he only went 7 innings instead of 9. He walked 3 and gave up 5 hits. He also had 7 strikeouts. Its pretty encouraging to see back to back great starts by Cabrera. Granted it was the Devil Rays, but if he can get some consistency, Daniel could be a dominant pitcher. LaTroy Hawkins was brought in to start the 8th, but he didn’t last long. He gave up 2 hits and only got one out before Chris Ray was brought in to save the day. Ray recorded his 30th save by pitching 1 2/3rds perfect innings.
The hitting didn’t do much, but they got enough runs on the board to win tonight. Ramon Hernandez and Corey Patterson both had a double and a single each. Kevin Millar added a double of his own. Brian Roberts, Nick Markakis, and Jeff Conine had the other 3 hits. Miguel Tejada ended his hit streak by going 0-4. Not too much to say… although its encouraging to see Hernandez starting to hit again.
Markakis watch: 1-3 (.306)
Tomorrow afternoon our ace, Erik Bedard (12-9, 3.98), against James Shields (6-6, 4.74) for the Devil Rays. I’m liking our chances, Tampa Bay is just bad. Go O’s.
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First of all, Daniel Cabrera has broken my fantasy baseball heart already this year with some of his 7-walk outings… That said, he’s an absolute joy to watch when he’s on. 96-MPH with movement, a good hard breaking ball… It would be pretty nice if he can put a few quality outings together to end the year.
And Markakis is such a joy to watch, isn’t he? Only 1-3 tonight, but once again his outs were hard hit balls. It seems like 75% of the time he hits the ball hard, which really has me drooling.
Absolutly Nick. I think there are more reasons to watch the Orioles this September than any other September in the past 8 years.