well, we got our revenge. we beat the marlins thursday night to wrap up the road series win, on the night the fish honored members of the '97 championship team and the players wore the jersey's form that year. take that fish.

more importantly, jason stanford pitched awesome. the d-train was good, stanford was better. not bad for the number 9 starter in the organization.

so, on to another team we lost to in the world series, the atlanta braves. right now, i am watching game one. c.c versus buddy carlyle. through the first six innings, they are equals, in the earned runs allowed department. 3-3 is the score. the braves have 10 hits. each and every one has been a single. most have had eyes, just barely evading a pursuing indians' defender. on at least two of those singles, the bat did not survive, shattering into pieces. the indians only have six hits themselves. no extra base hits for them either. so in the hits allowed department, buddy has the edge.

after 6, buddy is gone though. enter taylor yates. 1-2-3, 7 pitches. so does c.c. in the 8th.

casey blake just extended his hit streak to 24 games. with a lead off homer in the 8th off of the inhittable rafael soriano. my perception of casey has changed so much this season. when the season started, i thought he should be a bench player. i thought andy marte should be the starting third baseman. i thought casey not playing third base regularly since '04 would only weaken his already shaky D over there. the opposite seems to be true. he looks better than ever over there. although he has been batting in the 3 hole lately with DD in the 2 spot, i love casey as a 2 hole hitter. he is number two in the AL in number of pitches per at bat. grady is number four and pronk is number 5.

the 8th is over, and c.c. seems to be coming out for a third straight 9 inning outing. that seems amazing after the 2 run, 4 hit inning in the sixth. grrrrr. the braves have the lead. their first two extra base hits of the night, sandwiched around a jhonny error, have given the braves the lead. i am curious, why was mastny, not borowski warming in the pen? i know joe had another shaky save last night.

mastny is in. once again, he is NOT throwing strikes. what up, dude? the bases are now loaded, one out, andruw jones up. not good. a huge out. jones ground out to casey, who throws home for the second out. wow, mastny recovers. he gets jeff f to ground out to second to end the inning. now we need a run off our old closer to tie up the game. two would be great. we should do well against wicky. we shall see. bob did blow a heartbreaking game for atlanta last night in minnesota. i believe he gave up 3 runs in the ninth to negate 8 scoreless innings by tim hudson and the braves. that took johan off the hook.

it is all up to casey right now. 2 on, 2 out. dang! typical wickman save. one hit, one walk, but in between he struck out the side. i knew garko did not stand a chance. i knew grady and casey both were susceptable.

speaking of K's... we seem to strike out, alot. tonight was no exception. i did some research, here is what i found. of the 21 batters who lead the AL in strikeouts, 5 of them are indians. the offenders are grady, pronk, casey, jhonny, and josh (in that order). because RF and LF platoon and garko does not start every day, that means 5 of our 6 every day players are on the list. the team with the second most players in the top 21 were detroit and tampa bay with 3 a piece. texas, KC, oakland, and the yankees each had two. the angels and seattle each have one. of the 5 teams without a representative, boston is the only team that has a good record. and they only have one player, manny at number 34, in the top 48. i definitely would like us to cut down. but at least we see all those pitches.