Game #150: Meh

A wise guy once said, "Well, baseball was my whole life. Nothing's ever been as fun as baseball." However, Mickey Mantle didn’t have to sit through a season of watching the Colorado Rockies play baseball or the last four innings of tonight’s game.

The game was cruising along with Alex White pitching as we had been led to believe, sinkers down in the zone with some really well hit fly balls finding gloves. The fourth inning arrives and Brandon Belt didn’t miss White’s first real mistake hitting a two run home run to right center (what is it with left-handed rookies hitting against out pitchers?).

Cody Ross was Cody Ross when he hit a very good pitch down in the zone to the same place Belt did for a solo shot in the fifth.

White started the sixth inning with two quick outs but the third never came. He walked the .194 hitting SS and hit the .207 hitting catcher. With Madison Bumgarner at the plate the outfield moved in only to have him hit the ball over Dexter Fowler’s head for a double driving in the first two runs of the inning (and his first of two hits in the game). With still no action in the bullpen a single from Cody Ross drove in Bumgarner (Ross left the game at this point with a pulled muscle in his leg). Romero came in and shut down the inning.

On to the 7th where Aaron Cook is making his first appearance from the bullpen in 2011 (remember that it is still 2011). Cook took his cue from White and got the first batter of the inning to ground out but gave up a double to Huff and got Belt to strike out. A single from Crawford scored Huff and Crawford advanced to second on a throwing error by Seth Smith (what has gotten into him lately?). The error didn’t cost Cook anything though because the next batter, Chris Stewart, would hit a two run home run to make the score 9-1.

At this point the game turned Spring Training style with only Brandon Belt, Crawford and Stewart playing the whole game for the Giants and Hector Gomez getting some action for the Rockies (0-2 with an error). Hector was the 11th Rockies player to make his MLB debut for the team this year and 12th player on the team to make the jump to “The Show.” In addition to Cook’s first relief appearance we also got to see the first relief appearance for Barry Zito on the season (EY2 doubled off of him in the 9th).

The lone Rockies run was unearned against Bumgarner (7ip, 6 hits, 1bb, 3k) because the Rockies had runners on second and third with two outs when Fowler grounded a ball to third that Sandoval booted allowing Rosario to score.

This game was pretty good until the 6th when it just died.