Redman Pulled Early

When Mark Redman can't throw his "fastball" for strikes early in the count, nobody is going to swing at a 77 mph change up that bounces two feet in front of the plate. I'm not sure why anybody would swing at such a pitch to begin with, but I know the chances are higher if he actually starts out 0-1 rather than 1-0. In the second inning today, Redman fell behind repeatedly and bounced a handful of pitches to John Buck, and unfortunately, Bell didn't yank Redman until he'd given up five runs in the inning. Spotting Johann Santana to a five-run lead, no matter how bad he's been pitching probably wasn't a great idea.

Mike Wood came in and stopped the bleeding and gave up just one run over the next four innings. But Santana was too good—striking out 10 and walking none. He had complete command of his change up and made several Royals hitters look foolish. But he started to tire and in the eighth we got a couple more runs off of him to make the score 7-3, but that's all we could do and that was the final score.

We had a couple of guys playing out of position again. Graffanino was at first. German was in center (probably our best option until DeJesus returns). Mientkiewicz sat because he had a sore shoulder. And this was probably the best line up we could have put out there today, but it's not good enough against a guy like Santana. On a positive note, Mike Sweeney had two hits today. Given that he missed so much time in Spring Training, let's hope that he's just about got his timing back. We desperately need his high average and his ability to drive in runs.

Tomorrow night we begin a new series against the A's. Joe Mays (0-2, 10.59) goes against Dan Haren (0-2, 5.60).