Opening Day

A lot of baseball yesterday/last night. I took in the entire Braves/Phillies game as well as parts of a few others and had some thoughts...

• Kelly Johnson’s opening day wasn’t as bad as it looked. The Braves leadoff hitter did strike out twice, but hit the ball hard in the top of the 8th and managed to see 24 pitches in his 5 plate appearances (4.8 pitches/PA). In the field, he showed good range by chasing down a ball in shallow right and handling a slow grounder. The dropped ball in short center clearly should have been an error but, as I’m sure you all know, errors mean little if anything. A side note: Keith Law does a good job of mentioning these botched error calls in his blog (which is consistently outstanding) and lobbying for the abolition of this stat.

• By contrast, Jeff Francoeur’s first game of '07 was just as bad – if not worse – than it looked. The Braves RF swung at 11 of the 16 pitches that were offered to him, and was a good foot away from making contact with a Tom Gordon curve in the 9th.

• Speaking of Gordon, both he and Braves LH reliever Mike Gonzalez illustrated just how valuable it is to be able to come out of the bullpen and get a strike out. Gordon fanned PH Brayan Pena to get out of a bases loaded jam in the ninth, while Gonzalez sat down both Shane Victorino and Ryan Howard on strikes with runners on second and third and no outs in the top of the 7th.

• Phillies starter Brett Meyers threw very well, but did have some issues. His 9 strikeouts (and only 2 walks) in 7 2/3 innings was very encouraging, but he couldn’t reign in his curveball most of the day. There was good break on the pitch, but he kept it up in the zone, as is evidenced by his 9 flyball outs (to 5 groundouts) and 2 HR allowed. Attribute this to opening day, since he is usually has groundball tendencies (although his GB/FB has declined somewhat the past few seasons).

• Ryan Howard had a good game as well, going 2 for 4 with a walk. Nothing spectacular yesterday, I just wanted to say a quick word about his power. His stats obviously tell the story, but it is something totally different to see him live. While living in Richmond, VA in 2005, I got the chance to see him come through and play the Braves AAA team on quite a few occasions, and it was incredible. The power that he has to the opposite field is absolutely unreal. If you haven’t seen him live, I would highly recommend it.

Elsewhere in the majors...

• Despite not throwing particularly well, and looking like he went on the Odalis Perez workout program of eating hotdogs and taking naps, Angels starter John Lackey was able to hold the Rangers to 1 run (unearned) over 5 innings. It’s probably good that he only went 5, though, since it gave manager Mike Scioscia plenty of time to start breaking down Scot Shields. Shields has thrown either the most or second most innings of any AL reliever in the past three seasons…check out his ERA splits by month to see the effects.

• It was good to see Yankee fans boo Alex Rodriguez for a bad first inning of 2007. In the 7th, A-rod singled, stole second, and scored what would prove to be the game winning run (not to mention adding a two run shot in the 8th)…there’s no way he can win.

• I haven’t seen Astros closer Brad Lidge throw yet this year, but reports are that his mechanics are out of whack and he’s having trouble locating. I’m hoping he can recover, because that fastball/slider combo of his circa 2005 is too good to be wasted.