Keeping Things Interesting: April 24, 2009

This is truly going to be a short post. I'm driving 400+ miles out to Cleveland this morning for a much-needed long weekend...

Yesterday's Most Interesting
The Shields-Hernandez matchup proved to be even better than I thought. Ichiro led off the Mariners half of the game with a home run, and that was it for the scoring. Hernandez pitched 7 strong innings, striking out seven while giving up only four hits. Other than that lead-off homer, Shields was just as good, striking out four and walking one in 7.1 innings. It was a good win for the Mariners, who are now 10-6 and 3.5 games on top of the Rangers in the West.

Today's Most Interesting
If there were two teams that were written off before the season began, they were the San Diego Padres and the Washington Nationals. If we expanded that to a third team, it would've been the Pittsburgh Pirates. So it's a pretty big shock that this weekend's Pittsburgh Pirates at San Diego Padres series is actually meaningful, as far as mid-April series go at least. Both clubs are 9-6 and sit near the top of their divisions. Today's game doesn't start the series off with the best matchup, as Ian Snell takes his 4.24 ERA against Kevin Correia's 4.09. But it is an exciting match-up between two teams that are striving to prove to everyone that they're wrong. And that's why it the most interesting game of the day. (The matchup between Detroit's Rick Porcello and Kansas City's Zack Greinke is a close second.)