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For anyone that still had doubt that Yovani Gallardo was capable of being an ace for a Major League team, I submit to you Gallardo's performance on Wednesday afternoon against the Pittsburgh Pirates. Gallardo followed up his first career complete game in his last start against Houston by dominating the Pirates.

He pitched eight shutout innings, struck out a career-high 11 batters, and only gave up two hits. Oh yeah, he also hit his second home run of the season, which turned out to be the Brewers' only run in the 1-0 win.

Some of the members of this blog play intramural sports at their respective universities and we like to share our tales of intramural glory. This is another one of those epic tales.

I love Baseball. Like really love Baseball. So much so that I have Honus Wagner's lifetime BA in my brain.

So much so that I often tell my girlfriend how much time she has left with me (meaning how much time until the first pitch of the Rays game) and so much so that I study everything I can about the history and lore of the game.

Today, we saw another example of a game that got away. I am not as upset at the fact that the Mets lost as I am about how they lost. I am going to place the blame on the shoulders of one of the youngsters who is supposed to be the new leader and spokesman for this team, and that is their third basemen, David Wright.

Some baseball fans will tell you that the most exciting play in the game is the triple.

I can see the logic. It is, indeed, electrifying to watch a player charge around the base paths, making that turn past second base as the crowd noise swells to a crescendo.

“He’s trying for three!“

The ball is retrieved from the outfield, and relayed into the infield. Will there be a play at third base?

Yeah, I can see where that’s exciting.

Starters

Yovani Gallardo

Gallardo has been impressive this season. So far, he has pitched 26.2 innings and given up 19 hits and 11 runs while accumulating 23 strikeouts, two wins, and an ERA of 3.71. That doesn't include his impressive outing today against the Pirates, in which he threw eight scoreless innings, gave up just two hits, and struck out 11 batters.

He has now managed to lower his ERA to 2.86 and boasts a 34:9 strikeout-to-walk ratio. Heck, he even hit a home run, which turned out to be the only run of the game.

With the boo-birds out in full force over CC Sabathia’s slow start to his first season as a Yankee, baseball fans prove that they can always be counted on to completely miss the point.

Rather than go into a tirade about how stupid everybody is, let’s just take a look at CC’s splits from last season, first his performance though April and then for the rest of the season:

The White Sox are 11-10 after a win over the Seattle Mariners today, to take another series at home.

Just to clear the air, I am a die-hard White Sox fan and have been for life—not one of those 2005 bandwagon fans—as many accuse me of being.

The team's question marks going into the season revolved around center field and second base. Some argued that losing Joe Crede made third a problem as well, so Josh Fields was under the microscope, too.

The recovery of Jose Contreras and the effective return of Bartolo "Big Man" Colon were also question marks.

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4/29/09 – The Seattle Mariners finish season series No. 7 in slight disappointment, losing the series 1-2 to the Chicago White Sox. 13-9 is our record heading into the Oakland A’s series after a day off.

Cheer! – Rain outs mean double headers and the White Sox even switch up the rotation to give us a better pitching match up, M’s Chris Jakubauskas vs. the Sox Bartolo Colon and moving John Danks to the night cap to face off vs. M’s Felix Hernandez.

I found this lovely tidbit on Braves.com in the comments section of a Mark Bowman article:

When Chicago Cubs starter Ryan Dempster was signed to that big free agent contract this offseason, I reacted with a bit of trepidation.

After all, he was coming off a season which seemed like a clear deviation from his previous work.

Dempster went 17-6 with a sparkling 2.96 ERA, after coming into camp in the best shape of his life.

Compare that against his career ERA, which is 4.56 even after his career year, and it's easy to see why his signing was a risky proposition for the Cubs.