The Daily Jolt is a dose of baseball reality every weekday morning.
Jered Weaver gave the Angels a much-needed respite Tuesday night. Weaver, along with left-hander Joe Saunders, is one of the last men standing in a Los Angeles rotation ravaged by injuries and, of course, the tragic death of Nick Adenhart.
He pitched seven innings and allowed three runs as the Angels beat the Tigers, providing a quality start and taking some of the pressure off of a bullpen which entered the night with a major league-worst 8.31 ERA.
Unfortunately, it was only one night, and Los Angeles has many ahead.
The Daily Jolt is a dose of baseball reality every weekday morning.
There's something about Patriots Day that seems to bring out the best in the Red Sox. Or maybe it's the Baltimore Orioles. Either way, it only took a long weekend at Fenway Park to put to rest many of the fears that began to bubble up after Boston's 3-6 start to the season.
It didn't look like it would be that way after the top of the second inning in the series opener Friday night.
The Daily Jolt is a dose of baseball reality every weekday morning.
The Tigers came into 2009 with a shot at redemption. Two weeks into the season, they at least seem to have the shape of a chance to accomplish that. Expectations were sky high for Detroit last year after a pair of trades brought All-Stars Miguel Cabrera, Dontrelle Willis and Edgar Renteria to the Motor City.
Those additions had some talking heads hailing the Tigers as a modern day Murderer's Row and dreaming of a 1,000-run season, but the funny thing about scooping up All-Stars is that they aren't always playing at that level when they arrive in their new team's clubhouse.
Two years removed from a trip to the World Series, Detroit wound up finishing in dead last in the AL Central in 2008, its fate sealed by injuries and, most of all, a paper-thin pitching staff.
The Daily Jolt is a dose of baseball reality every weekday morning.
The White Sox are in the same place they ended 2008, tied atop a heap of clubs in the AL Central that all have designs on contention in 2009. John Danks' gem Thursday night against the Rays hurtled Chicago into a deadlock with the Tigers and Royals at 5-4.
Just 24, the left-hander is 1-0 on the season with a 0.75 ERA and has 13 strikeouts in 12 innings this season.
The Central division seems almost impossible to figure out at this stage, and indeed it could take until August or even September for the wheat to separate from the chaff.
But if the White Sox end up as the former once again, Danks and the rest of their steady rotation will be a huge reason why.
The Daily Jolt is a dose of baseball reallity every weekday morning.
James Loney drove in the winning run, or more accurately walked it in. The pricey free agents -- Orlando Hudson and Manny Ramirez -- were the heroes sparking the game-winning rally in the ninth inning with consecutive no-out hits. But it was Clayton Kershaw who sent the loudest message Wednesday night.
The Dodgers pulled out a 5-4 win over the hated Giants, securing the series victory ahead of Thursday night's finale in dramatic fashion by scoring in the bottom of the eighth and ninth after Hong-Chih Kuo and Ronald Belisario coughed up the lead on Aaron Rowand's three-run homer.
Those dramatics made for interesting theater, but as is so often the case with early-season games, it obscured the real story: a dazzling performance by Kershaw.
The Daily Jolt is a dose of baseball reality every weekday morning.
On any other day, the work of the Cardinals' bullpen would be cause for concern. St. Louis relievers were torched for seven runs over seven innings in a 7-6 extra-inning loss to the Diamondbacks Tuesday night.
Josh Kinney blew a one-run lead in the eighth inning, then after the Cardinals rallied to tie the game in the ninth, Brad Thompson lost it in the 10th. No amount of mixing and matching by Tony La Russa could save St. Louis, and with Jason Motte -- the club's designated closer out of spring training -- sporting a 15.43 ERA, there's a genuine closer controversy brewing in the second week of the season.
But any worries about the Cardinals' leaky bullpen have been replaced for the moment by bated breath, or maybe even downright panic over the status of Chris Carpenter.
The Daily Jolt is a dose of baseball reality every weekday morning.
WASHINGTON -- When is it time to start worrying?
That's the question Nationals fans have to be asking themselves after watching their team fall to the world champion Phillies 9-8 in Washington's home opener. The Nats are now 0-7 and have lost 11 straight games dating back to last season, a season in which they lost more games than anybody else in the majors (102) in a brand new ballpark paid for by the taxpayers of Washington D.C.
"I think we could call the first week a down," Stan Kasten, the team's president, says coyly. "We are confident we've made great progress with the team on the field."
The Daily Jolt is a dose of baseball reality every weekday morning.
This is why you can believe in the Marlins. It is not because Emilio Bonifacio has hit like Babe Ruth in the first week of the season. Nor is it because Hanley Ramirez might secretly be the game's best player, though those things help. It is because they have pitching.
The Daily Jolt is a dose of baseball reality every weekday morning.
BALTIMORE -- The big, bad New York Yankees are a big, bad 0-2, and you can bet your next Subway fare there's going to be hell to pay Thursday morning in the Big Apple.
The damage after two games against an Orioles team no one sees touching 80 wins in 2009:
• Yankee starting pitchers CC Sabathia and Chien-Ming Wang have surrendered 13 earned runs in eight innings of working. They've combined to walk 13 and -- most sobering of all -- have yet to record a strikeout.
• Prized $180 million first baseman Mark Teixeira is 1-for-9. He's been booed mercilessly by the snubbed Baltimore fans in all nine at-bats, and Tuesday night he popped out to the left side of the infield three straight times then struck out feebly against Danys Baez before finally slamming an RBI double in the ninth inning of a 7-5 loss to the Orioles.
The Daily Jolt is a dose of baseball reality every weekday morning.
General manager Jim Bowden is long gone, but the mess that he helped create in the nation's capital is still festering. It's bad enough two whole days into the season that by the time the Nationals return to Washington next Monday for their home opener any glimmer of optimism might have already gone dark.
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