Jimenez	Thompson
4-4, 4.22	8-6, 4.73

i’ll be up in the mountains today --- in a conference room, not on a ski slope --- so i won’t be able to keep an eye on the game thread. azru, houston, and RB --- if the thread gets long and unwieldy and slow, would one of you mind popping open an overflow thread? we should be ok through 500-600 comments or so, but the number isn't as important as the performance. if the site starts running poorly, an overflow thread should rectify.

random notes from the first coupla games:

• kyle mclellan’s slider must be some kind of a pitch. he threw it 4 times tuesday night, and the rockies swung at all 4 --- they missed 3 times and chopped a weak grounder to 3d base the 4th time. last night he threw it 6 times in the 7th inning --- 1 swing/miss, 1 ball, and 4 called strikes. i don’t know how many times he threw it in the 6th --- pitch fX was on the blink that inning, and i can’t access the mlb.tv feed because of the stupid blackout rules --- but he only threw 6 pitches in that inning; i doubt any of them was a slider.
• kyle lohse is supposed to be throwing more curveballs; that’s what duncan wants, anyway. but he only threw 5 tuesday night (in 74 pitches), per pitch fX --- two to helton, one to hawpe, and one each to nix and taveras. 4 of the 5 were over the plate. helton put two of them in play --- lined one for a single, grounded out on the other.
• the bullpen delivered the same results last night as tuesday night --- 4 innings pitched, 2 runs allowed. yet they're perceived to have failed on tuesday while doing their job on wednesday . . . . what we really mean is that the offense failed on tuesday but did its job on wednesday. if you ask me, the relievers pitched better on tuesday even though they took the loss.
• think troy glaus is pressing? he saw 13 pitches last night and swung at 9 of them.
• red baron wondered yesterday how long it had been since 3 cardinal players make their big league debuts in a single game (mclellan, barton, and washington all broke in tuesday night). the post-dispatch has the answer --- it last happened in 1955. alas, retrosheet's box scores reach back only to 1956, so we can't find the actual game. cardinal players who made their big-league debut with the cards that season include bill vidron, ken boyer, don blasingame, larry jackson, lindy mcdaniel, and luis arroyo . . . . it might be that virdon, boyer, and arroyo or jackson all debuted together on opening day (or soon thereafter). that's only a guess.