And That Happened

Angels 4, Royals 0: The beauty and the curse of doing daily recaps in a sport with hundreds upon hundreds of games is that it's often the case that I'll look foolish less than 24 hours after making some bold pronouncement or another. Case in point: Brett Tomko, whose arm I suggested be donated to science yesterday morning. A little over 12 hours later he pitches seven shutout innings for Kansas City. Unfortunately for him, Ervin Santana pitches nine -- with 9Ks and 0BBs -- and the KC bullpen gives up four runs in the ninth. The Royals, by the way, are on a 559-run pace for the season.

Reds 5, Cubs 3: Johnny Cueto gets a bit of his mojo back (6 IP, 3 ER, 8K). Everyone is entitled to a bad game once in a while so don't take this as me throwing blame around, but the fact that Fukudome went 0-4 with zero walks in front of Geovany Soto's 3-3, 2B, HR night probably made the difference here. Well, five unearned runs helped, but hey, this week's meme is the Cubs' lineup construction, right?

Blue Jays 1, White Sox 0: Dustin McGowan's second strong outing in a row (7.1 IP, O ER, 6K, 0BB) gives the Jays their fifth win in a row, three of which have been shutouts.

Red Sox 6, Tigers 3: At this rate, Detroit should finally have the lineup it wants by Labor Day. Matsuzaka walks eight guys in five innings yet somehow gets the win. The only way you can get away with that is by only giving up a couple of hits, which is exactly what he did.

Phillies 11, Diamondbacks 4: The Max Scherzer Experience begins with a "meh." So impressive in his debut in relief, Scherzer gives up five runs on seven hits while throwing 92 pitches in four innings. And yes, I realize that only two of those runs were earned, but (a) it's not as if three runs scored on a muffed play; he gave up a couple of hits after the Drew error; and (b) he threw a wild pitch that didn't help that inning.

Dodgers 5, Mets 1: Oliver Perez is rather feast or famine this year, no? Runs allowed in his seven starts: 0-0-6-0-5-7-5.

Mariners 7, Rangers 3: Josh Hamilton gets a night off and the Ranger bats go more or less quietly. Not that it mattered with Millwood giving up seven on nine hits in three innings.

A's 2, Orioles 1: Last week the A's scored 29 runs in two wins. That's 18 percent of their entire season's run total. You can get away with that when you get seven innings of shutout ball from the Dana Eveland's of the world on the other nights. Still, I can't think that the A's want to count on that lasting all summer.