O’s Lose A Close One, 5-4
Rodrigo Lopez loses another one, his 18th loss.
Lopez came in during the 4th inning after Hayden Penn injured himself. Penn pitched the first 3 innings, giving up 2 runs on 4 hits and 3 walks. Lopez came in and pitched pretty similar. His line was 3 innings pitched, 2 runs, 3 hits, and 5 strikeouts. LaTroy Hawkins gave up another run the next inning on 2 hits to make the lead insurmountable. Brian Burres pitched a perfect 8th to round it out. It looked like Penn was favoring his back before being taken out of the game. Don’t expect to see too muchof Rodrigo from here on out to protect him from losing 20 games.
The hitting had pop again last night, but they were all solo shots again. Jay Gibbons hit his 13th. Ramon Hernandez hit his 21st. And Corey Patterson hit another one for his 16th. He also had a single in the game. Kevin Millar went 4 for 4 in the game. Miguel Tejada and Jeff Fiorentino had the other hits. Nick Markakis went hitless. I need him to go on a tear in these last 5 games and finish over .300….
Markakis watch: 0-3 (.296)
Tonight, Kris Benson (11-11, 4.49) faces off against the Yankee’s young ace Chien-Ming Wang (18-6, 3.57). Go O’s.
on September 29, 2006 on 3:33 am
Rodrigo Lopez… wasn’t there a time when people wanted to trade for this guy. You know, I’m all for faith in your guys (kind of), but don’t good franchises, i.e. the Braves, trade guys when they lose confidence in them? Like when they traded Dan Meyer for Tim Hudson, or when they traded Jose Capellan…
I’ve got to admit that I don’t see the good side to Lopez basically pitching all over the place, SP, Long relief, Short Relief, basically looking for a somewhat pressure moment and putting him in.
I hope the offseason does him well, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s permanently missed up at this point.
on September 29, 2006 on 7:46 pm
As long as he’s not pitching here, and I have faith that he won’t be, I’ll be happy. I don’t know why he’s pitching this much either. I say lets see the players that have a chance of being on the team next year play. Use Lopez in the bullpen for emergency situations.