Cueto-Mania - Giants Suck - Good Luck Doug

Johnny Cueto made his second start for the Reds yesterday, and though it was a bit of a drop-off from his 7 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 0 BB, 10 K performance last week, he was excellent again against the Brewers. 6 1/3 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 0 BB, 8 K. He has zero walks and 18 K's so far. That's quite a way to start a career. The Reds bullpen couldn't hold the Brewers down, however, and lost 3-2. Former Orioles Corey Patterson homered for Cincinnati - he has 3 on the year, but has only walked once and has a .286 OBP.

Erik Bedard got his first win for the Mariners as they beat Tampa Bay 6-5. Bedard didn't pitch that well (6 IP, 5 H, 5 R, 4 BB, 5 K) but Richie Sexson drove in three and the offense got him off the hook.

San Fransisco Giants' clean-up hitter Bengie Molina git 2 HR versus the Padres. How many runs did the team score? 3... in 11 innings. They did get the win tough, 3-2. Tim Lincecum had a good start (6 IP, 7 H, i R, 1 BB, 7 K) but ended up with a no decision. He's probably happy to not be saddled with a loss - he did give up a run after all.

Speaking of the Giants,

"The San Francisco Giants on Tuesday placed left fielder Dave Roberts on the 15-day disabled list with inflammation in his left knee.

Roberts has been battling soreness in his knee since spring training. However, the 35-year-old veteran has started five of the Giants’ first seven games, posting a .118 (2-for-17) batting average with one RBI.

To replace Roberts on the roster, San Francisco recalled outfielder Clay Timpner from Class AAA Fresno of the Pacific Coast League… The 24-year-old, who has been starting in center field, posted a career-high .301 average with six home runs and 39 RBI in 109 games with Fresno in 2007. "

As BaseballPrimer said: "Clay Timpner? Who ARE these people?" Seriously.

Then there's some commentary by Tim Kawakami:

"The remarkable thing about the badness of the 2008 Giants is that they can be bad in a multiplicity of ways.

They can be bad old (Rich Aurilia, Dave Roberts, Ray Durham, Keiichi Yabu). They can be bad middle-aged (Barry Zito, Jose Castillo). They can be bad hurt (Omar Vizquel, Randy Winn). They can be bad young (everybody else).

They have a manager who is stuck with what he has and isn’t very good at figuring out how to maximize what he has. Their most expensive player is a pitcher who is trending toward disaster. They have a farm system that won’t be providing significant talent for years.

It isn’t yet mid-April, and they already are playing out the string. They’re that bad and I swear by July, we’re all going to need a thesaurus to describe them."

They won't be getting better anytime soon when their manager does things like this.

"Sum it up: Bochy cost himself two players, Davis and Lewis, for the benefit of having an inferior hitter bat in a game-critical situation, and made his defense worse in extra innings to boot."

That's enough making fun of the Giants (for today).

Even though the Dodgers' Matt Kemp shook out of his slump a bit by going 3-5, LA couldn't beat the D'Backs young offense. Mark Reynolds homered, and Arizona went on to win 10-5. Those young players are showing some good power - Arizona has hit 17 HR, including 5 by Reynolds, 4 by Chris Young, and 3 by Justin Upton. They lead the NL West with a 6-2 record. If Reynolds keeps hitting home runs, no one will care when he says things like this:

"“We’re going to surprise people, I think,” Mark Reynolds said.

That may be hard to do, given Arizona won the NL West and advanced to the NLCS. But that was also the team that allowed 20 more runs than it scored.

This year, Arizona has outscored the opposition 40-19.

“It’s like Murphy’s Law,” Reynolds said. “With more time and experience comes confidence.”

Uh, Mark, Murphy’s Law says that if anything can go wrong it will.

“Oh. Well, you can edit that out,” Reynolds said."

In other (more serious) D'Backs news, pitcher Doug Davis, who go the win in the game, will be having surgery Thursday to treat thyroid cancer. I wish Doug all the best, and hope he can make a speedy recovery (not that he's reading this, or anything).