Saturday afternoon – My wife is a graduate of Adrian College, in Adrian, Michigan and they were in town to play football at Capital University. As an Otterbein graduate, I don’t need much coercion to go somewhere and root against Capital, so we went to the game and watched Adrian look unorganized and uncreative on offense, while Capital pretty much took them apart defensively. Final score: Capital 34, Adrian 14 and much sunburn.
Saturday evening – An alumna of Adrian works for the Columbus Crew, so it was Adrian Night at Crew Stadium, though there was not much of an Adrian College turnout. The game was fantastic – the first-place Crew, without their leading scorer (Alejandro Moreno) and national teamer Frankie Hejduk, totally dismantled the second-place New England Revolution 4-0, outshooting them 27-4. And, as much of a beatdown as 4-0 is in soccer terms, it could easily have been 5 or 6 to 0, as the Crew hit two crossbars and New England goalkeeper Matt Reis made several impressive saves. The Crew has a legitimate shot at the MLS Cup this year, for the first time in perhaps a decade.
Early Sunday afternoon – watched Cliff Lee win number 21 on the television to take two of three from the Royals.
Later Sunday afternoon – watched the Browns totally stink up the joint against Dallas. Braylon Edwards had a bad case of the dropsies, but even worse, the defense couldn’t get any pressure on Romo at all, which pretty much doomed them to defeat. The secondary isn’t good enough to cover the arsenal of receivers that Dallas runs out there for that long. Do the Browns have linebackers? It was hard to tell yesterday. Based on yesterday’s performance, the off-season moves the Browns made to bolster their defense have not yet paid off. Was Corey Williams on the field at all?
Actually, the Browns had the misfortune of playing what may be the best team in the NFL right now in their opening game, so they will not be as bad as they appeared yesterday all season; however, they have serious work to do if they want to even be competitive against the Steelers next week, on both sides of the ball.
Indians notes:
- Anthony Reyes was pulled from his start on Friday night with “a strained right elbow.” Scott Lewis will make his major league debut in Reyes’ place on Wednesday in Baltimore.
- Pronk helped power Akron to the next round of the playoffs with a grand slam in Game 3. His rehab stint has ended and he is expected to meet the team in Baltimore and enter the lineup once again as the starting DH.
- Gil Meche is good. Too bad for him that he pitches for the Royals. He held the Indians to 1 run on Saturday, snapping the team’s 10-game road winning streak.
- In the last 14 days, according to B-Ref, Shin-Soo Choo’s line is .526Â / .581Â / .921. Really. He’s reached base in 27 straight games now.
- Andy Marte’s consecutive games with a hit streak ended at 9 in the last game of the White Sox series. Inexplicably, perhaps as punishment for not getting a hit, Marte only started one game of the Royals series. Unfortunately, it was the Saturday game when he and his teammates got shut down by Meche. So, because he could not punish the entire team for its poor performance, Wedge sat Andy Marte out on Sunday, starting Jamey Carroll at third base.
