Mia Culpa to King Felix, Take 2

When Felix cruised through June blasting through several weak lineups, I was happy, sure, but still very wary of giving him back his crown. I mentioned to a couple people -- these performances were great and all, but let's see him do it against Texas.

Tonight, he did it against Texas.

If Rob Johnson didn't have compromising photos of the official scorekeeper, and actually lived up to the defensive reputation bestowed upon him, King Felix would've been unscathed through 8 tonight -- with a rusty but still Josh Hamilton back in Texas's lineup. I didn't get to watch the game, but I've seen enough of the recap and this screen grab to know that he's well-deserving of my re-coronation of him tonight.

I'm sorry for ever calling you overrated, King Felix -- here's your crown back...

Now please keep it this time.

What the $@@gf WAS That???

So I decided to watch the replay to see the 9th inning debacle with my own eyes (rather than relying upon the memory of the sketchy audio broadcast and Gameday). I'm writing this on my iPhone (yay it's nice to have a smartphone that actually WORKS with Blogger) to see if it can handle the photo uploads I want to share from stills taken on my iPhone camera. Nope - it won't let me uplad them here but I could send them to Flickr...

Anyway - Yes Aardsma imploded. And I just put down the iPhone so I could type and upload photos. But ultimately, Aardsma didn't get much help from his infield (including Johjima, and I think Cedeno probably was fine in the 9th with the glove).

First - how is this ball 4? I'm not even sure Gameday doesn't say it's at least on the black...



Oh, wait, I know! Because Kenji doesn't know how to frame pitches...

That 3-1 pitch gets called a strike, and things might look a little different.

Okay, so a few runners later, there was this gem:



Exhibit #593894-985 why the M's miss Adrian Beltre. AB makes that play in his sleep. Even though it was Adam Jones running...

Wipe away that runner, add an out, and the game looks a lot different.

Then a little later, THIS happened:





Lopez makes the first of two errors he's charged with (although the second one was probably a little unfair as I'll point out in a second) by not being able to pull the ball out of his glove. Of course, whether Adam Jones isn't there in the first place (thanks Woodward!), they would've at least gotten the runner out at first.

So wipe out Markakis, and possibly Jones. And give the M's 2 outs. This game looks a LOT different...

Heh. Brian Roberts' "Checked Swing" yeah right:





Honestly, in the top half of the 9th, I'd say EVERYONE except B'more imploded - the M's, the umps...

Even Branyan.



I would've charged him with the fielding error. Lopez one-hopped it, throwing high a little bit, but it bounced reasonably in front of Branyan, who should've made the play. MAYBE it handcuffed him a little on the hop:




What a meltdown!