Orioles 6, Red Sox 3; Rays 5, Yankees 2: Tied. The details sort of don’t matter anymore. All you need to know is that the City of Boston now has permission to vomit. Continuously. Through Wednesday.
Phillies 4, Braves 2: The Braves are just a lousy team right now in every facet of the game. And you know what? I’ve gotten to the point where my love of chaos has overtaken my devotion to the Braves. On one level this sucks. On another level, this is kind of fantastic in some sick and twisted way.
Astros 5, Cardinals 4: But even if the Braves are lousy, the Cardinals still have to capitalize on their lousiness. And they didn’t. Depending on Octavio Dotel to give you two quality innings is the sort of thing that leads to that. Dotel gave up a leadoff double to Brian Bogusevic and then committed an error on Jason Bourgeois‘ sacrifice attempt and couldn’t field a subsequent bunt from Angel Sanchez.
Rangers 4, Angels 3: A lot of people gave me crap yesterday for not including the Angels in posts about the AL wild card. Well, sorry. Now they’re eliminated, however, so I guess it didn’t matter.
Tigers 14, Indians 0: Doug Fister vs. Ubaldo Jimenez in the battle of the mid-season pickups. Advantage: Fister. Eight shutout innings with nine strikeouts. Oh, and the 14 runs on 18 hits didn’t hurt.
Reds 6, Mets 5: I’m not gonna say this game was an exercise in going through the motions, but the Reds and Mets combined to use 34 players.
White Sox 4, Blues Jays 3: Ozzie Guillen was released from his contract as soon as this game ended. When reached for comment, Guillen said "#$&%!” Glad to see he stayed true to form until the end.
Royals 7, Twins 3: Melky Cabrera notched his 200th hit of the season in this one. In other news, the word has gone completely and utterly insane and we’ll all be lucky to survive the damn week.
Giants 3, Rockies 1: Seven shutout innings for Ryan Vogelsong, capping off a pretty doggone good year for him. He went 13-7 with a 2.71 ERA and absolutely no one, except maybe Vogelsong himself, expected it.
Padres 2, Cubs 0: My brother and his co-workers were at this game. The tickets were a reward from their manager at In-N-Out Burger for meeting some summer sales goal. He called me from the ballpark before the game and read the Cubs’ lineup to me. I told him you get what you pay for. Mat Latos wasn’t impressed with them either (7 IP, 2 H, o ER, 9K).
Mariners 4, Athletics 2: Justin Smoak’s three-run homer broke the tie in the sixth and held up.
Dodgers 4, Diamondbacks 2: Matt Kemp hit a three-run homer which kept him in the lead in that category and extended his RBI lead, but an overall 1 for 4 night pretty much ends his triple crown hopes.
Pirates 9, Brewers 8: And though it was in a loss, Ryan Braun’s pinch hit RBI double allows him to keep whatever small buffer he has over Kemp in the MVP race. I’m a Kemp man, but my sense of it is that more people lean Braun anyway.
Nationals 6, Marlins 4: And we’re one more game closer to the end of them playing games in whatever it is the heck they call that monstrosity of a ballpark in Miami.
