Baseball In Canada II

-- You know, it's weird considering Frank Thomas spent the first 16 years of his career with the White Sox, but he now seems like a total rent-a-player. There's no, "Oh, he just looks wrong in a Blue Jays" uniform feeling.
Royals announcer Paul Splittorff just said, "You know Thomas finished fourth in the MVP voting last year." Ugh. I had almost forgotten.

-- Emil Brown just threw out Vernon Wells at home plate by about 15 feet. You know, Emil said a couple of weeks ago that he was an underrated left fielder -- "underrated" in this case meaning that he disagrees with all the people who think he sucks out there. We'll keep a defensive eye on him. So far, he's plus-one.
By the way, when did Vernon Wells start running like Boog Powell. Youch.

-- Here's Alex Gordon -- and they just showed a statistic that he has reached two strikes in 14 of his 19 at-bats. I can honestly say that I have absolutely no idea what that statistic means. But he's reached two strikes again. In fact it's a 3-2 count against A.J. Burnett ... this should be an interesting pitch.
OK, it wasn't that interesting. Burnett hit him.

-- I have absolutely no idea how anybody hits A.J. Burnett. He throws 98, has some sort of a ridiculous power curve and a nasty slider. And at the same time, he's 30 now, and he's 59-59. How do you explain that?
Wait, he just a 99-mph fastball three-feet high to walk the bases loaded, and the next pitch he threw a fastball when catcher Greg Zaun called for a curve (the 96-mph heater bounced right off of Zaun's chest protector). That might begin to explain things.

-- Announcer Ryan Lefebvre just brought up a pretty common baseball pet peeve ... why are pitchers not allowed to catch pop-ups? Everybody asks this question, but as far I can tell, nobody's ever given a good answer. There must be some reason.

-- Former Royals headache Ambiorix Burgos had his first official Burgos moment today ... he came in with the bases loaded against Philadelphia and got Abraham O. Nunez to ground out. Good, right? Next inning, he hit Jimmy Rollins, gave up a single Shane Victorino, gave up a stolen base, struck out Chase Utley, and grooved a pitch to Ryan Howard who crunched a three-run homer. And he then struck out Pat Burrell. That's Ambiorix. You've been warned Mets fans.

-- Royce Clayton is still playing baseball. Man. Since 2002, he has played for SEVEN different teams -- and every single one of them finished .500 or worse. The Royals announcers (naturally) just said he's a good influence in the clubhouse.
I'm not saying this is a good thing or a bad thing, but Royce Clayton has made more than $31 million in his career.

-- It's not going well for the Royals. Odalis Perez looked awful and got yanked in the second inning. Buddy Bell just got tossed out of the game for arguing a BRUTAL fan interference call by the umpire -- and also for peppering a world record 32 F words in one 20-second conversation.
The call: Bases loaded, one out, Lyle Overbay hit a shot down the first base line. Some idiot fan reached over and grabbed it. That's a ground-rule double. But the umpire allowed three runs to score -- replays showed that Reed Johnson (the third run) had barely crossed second base when the fan touched the ball. It was a terrible call. It's no wonder Buddy got tossed.
But it's more than just a bad call. It's the kind of awful call that I never understand. Hey, I can appreciate a missed call, a mistake, but why would you go out of your way to make that kind of ridiculous call -- fan touches the ball in Toronto, that should have been two runs. Period.

Whatever. Royals are down 4-0.