UCB Progressive Game Blog: 3rd Inning

Written by: Andrea Reiher on 24th May 2009

UCB Progressive Game Blog: 3rd Inning | read this item

It’s been really funny to watch the last two weeks through the eyes of my boyfriend. He wasn’t into baseball (or any sports, really) before we started dating. I took him to a few Cardinals games, got him watching them on TV and suddenly he’s obsessed. I thought I was going to have to take away his shoelaces during our recent 2-7 skid. He doesn’t understand yet that baseball tends to come in waves of wins and waves of losses so his emotional rollercoaster over the last few weeks has been pretty funny. I keep reminding him that we play 162 games and while a losing streak still sucks, it’s bound to happen a couple times a season.

Anyway, today kicked off the May United Cardinal Bloggers project, wherein we each blog about an inning of a game. Our game this month was today’s 5-0 victory over the Kansas City AAA team. The intro post can be found here.

I’ve been assigned the 3rd inning. The top of the 3rd was excellent for Kyle Lohse. Three up, three down. He struck out Hochevar swinging, then got two good hitters, Crisp and DeJesus, to fly out.

I really liked Kyle Lohse today. In fact, our pitching over the last 5 games has been lights out. It’s like night and day from the 3-game series with the Brewers. I hope we keep this up when we travel to Milwaukee next week.

The bottom of the 3rd inning was a little more interesting than the top. It was marked by a rare Albert Pujols base-running mistake. Well, first Skip Schumaker hit a home run, only his third on the year. It’s always nice to get little flares of power from guys who are normally singles and doubles guys.

However, after Skip’s homer, Ramus grounded out and then Pujols singled. He then stole a base. He’s actually been swiping bags quite a bit so far this season. I mean, he’s no Juan Pierre, but Pujols moves pretty well for a big guy. However, on Chris Duncan’s single to right, Pujols took off, then realized he should go back, and got picked off at second base. Nick Stavinoha then flied out to end the inning. So instead of two on, one out, we had one on, two outs and a young guy at the plate. I would’ve enjoyed to see what Yadi did with two on, two outs (assuming Nick still flied out).

However, it’s hard to be too upset because we won 5-0 and Kyle Lohse got his first W in a month. On the other hand of that, though, we’re playing the Royals (I know they were off to a strong start, but still). We can afford those kind of baserunning mistakes against our division rivals, so I hope it’s out of everyone’s system now.

Topics: progressive game blog, UCB

UCB Progressive Game Blog: Pre-Game — United Cardinal Bloggers says:

May 24, 2009 at 9:42 pm

[...] inning*: Redbirds Row Second inning: Bird Brained Third inning*: Baseball Digest Fourth inning*: Cards on Deck Fifth inning*: Redbird Chatter Sixth inning: Whiteyball Seventh [...]