jimmy no nose

Dan Johnson's big year at Durham carried on over to his first at bat as a Ray. Huge homer to tie things in the 9th.

I knew the Angels had an enormous lead in the division and have most of the year, but I didn't realize their number was down to 2. An Angels win and a Rangers loss today (or any other day really) means the division is already officially theirs.

Aaron Rodgers performed easily onto the better end of the line of expectation I had for him. Nothing too spectacular, but he hit the short routes and avoided making any mistakes. A little over 200 total yards and 2 TDs. Playing behind one of the league's better pass blocking units (I think they only gave up 15 sacks in 2007) should help him a great deal.

Something I've never seen before: Nate McLouth attempted to make a diving catch in center against the Giants, missed the ball, it took a hop into his face, sunglasses exploded, ball flies into left field, and blood everywhere. 3 runs scored as a result.

Things really aren't going to Colts way today. What percentage of the time do they not convert that 4th and inches? Turn over on downs just inside the 50.

NFL.com is reporting he's out for the season to. Pretty much official at this point. Chris Simms is already heading into town.

What a weird half. I guess you can chalk up the Colts offense to Manning missing the preseason and maybe it will come together in the second half, but I was more surprised by the other matchup. I know they only gave up 13, but the Colts D looked like they had some trouble with the Bears offense. If you can't stop the Bears offensive attack you're going to be in some trouble.

NFL.com used to be cool when they gave free audio from both the home and road teams about 2 years ago. Now they charge for full game audio, but it's supposed to be able to give Red Zone audio for free, but I can't even get that working.

And of course the Chargers go straight down the field 80 yards in 3 minutes. Maybe there's still hope.

I guess taking the Chargers at home over the Steve Smith-less Panthers in a knockout league wasn't a good move this week. Down 9 with 10 minutes to go things aren't looking good.

Chiefs down 7, first and goal at the 5.

Remember when Carson Palmer was a top 5 QB in the league? Me neither.

Chiefs TD...Uh-oh. 14-10 in the 4th.

I thought the Texans defensive line was supposed to be great and the Steelers o-line should definitely be awful, but they're opening up the most ridiculous holes today and Willie Parker just picked up his 3rd TD. He had 2 all of last year. What happened?

I don't know that I'm even entirely sold on USF winning that conference. They probably are the best team this year, but for some reason I just feel another situation like 04 when they had WVU, BC, Syracuse and Pitt all tied and ended up sending Pitt to get slaughtered in a BCS game.

I guess I'm late on this, but yesterday's Oakland-Baltimore game featured quite possibly the worst pitched inning in recent memory. Oakland scored 8 runs on 1 hit, a grand slam by pinch runner Rajai Davis. 6 walks and a hit batter in the inning.

East Carolina just scored another TD right before halftime to go up 17-3 on #8 West Virginia.

Great game going on right now in Toronto. The Blue Jays picked up 3 runs early and they kept the Rays off the board until the 9th when Ryan blew a 3 run lead on a Rocco Baldelli pinch hit 2 run homer, then another run on an error. In the bottom half Rolen was then thrown out at home attempting to score the walk-off run with 2 outs. In the 12th now the Rays loaded the bases with 2 outs, but Pena flew out. Evan Longoria is listed as available for today's game, but has yet to even take BP with the team, so he won't be hitting at least for a couple more days.

Dubee presumably argued balls and strikes. He was walking away when the umpire tossed him, no idea what exactly he said. Smith got involved arguing that close play where Howard was called out at first base. That was the game where Soriano hit the go-ahead home run. I think Smith threw his helmet, but my memory could be iffy on that. I was pretty sure Steve Smith got suspended for two games for punching Ken Lucas during training camp, but then I saw him playing Thursday night for the Giants, so who knows.

I'm glad I don't live in Jets-Dolphins territory. We obviously get the Steelers here in Pittsburgh which should be a decent game since I think Houston should be a little better than most people expect this year. The best game of that group probably ends up being Jacksonville-Tennessee. None of the Fox games this week look all that exciting. I guess Dallas-Cleveland might at least have some scoring.

It could just be coincidence, but there are a ton of examples of guys who it's happened to. It's not so much just pitching 200 innings, just having a significant jump in innings pitched. The biggest example would be Francisco Liriano who missed all of 2007 to TJ surgery, but then there's guys like Tom Gorzelanny this year who just saw their ERAs explode and had lingering arm issues throughout the season although he didn't miss significant time. Ian Kennedy hasn't had too big a drop off, at least at the minor league level, but he has had some arm issues and spent time on the DL. Fausto Carmona and Yovani Gallardo also missed significant time this year, but those were most likely unrelated leg injuries.

Since it's September it's about time that managers start monitoring some of their Innings Pitched numbers. I would start by looking at Edinson Volquez. Dusty Baker made it pretty clear in yesterday's game that he wants him to pick up 20 wins this year and left Volquez in about 40 pitches longer than he should have and he's now at 170 IP. Since he ended up not picking up a W yesterday he'll probably need 4 in 4 starts which would require at least 20 innings of work, and most probably more. Last year was easily his career high with 174 innings, 144 in the minors. Letting him push 200 in the majors this year would probably be a huge mistake. I know it can also be attributed to other things like the league being more used to him, but if you look at his monthly splits as the season goes on hits are up, ERA is up, and strikeouts are down aside from last night. I'd almost understand if they were actually playing for something, but when you're the Cincinnati Reds you should probably be thinking about shutting him down.

The Rays are once again having a ton of trouble with the Yankees and the Red Sox are now in line to pull within 3 games of the AL East lead.

CC Sabbathia officially didn't pitch a no hitter on Sunday. I kind of wish they ruled that he did just to see if anyone would care at this point.

It's nice to see Aramis fielding like he was back in Pittsburgh. I think he put up something like a .935 fielding percentage for his Pirate career. I just wish he would've stuck around to make his 100th error. He was so close.