You Can Stop the 0-7 Talk Now

I don’t have a lot of insight into this game, as all I caught “live” was the top of the 8th on the radio and Ryan Perry warming up for the bottom of the eighth (hey, I wanted to watch, but I needed to take a shower cuz it’s just not worth being stinky at school). I finished just in time to see the postgame show. I had a general idea of what the score was when I left work because the pharmacist DID have the game up on his computer. I didn’t think he did, but about 8 o’clock he announced that Miguel Cabrera had two home runs and four RBIs. Surprisingly, when I got to work yesterday I didn’t have to talk him off the ledge as much as I thought I would (and the subject of Ryan Perry never came up). By the way, if you include this pharmacist and myself, our pharmacy consists of three Tigers fans, two Indians fans, one Reds fan, a Red Sox fan who hates the Tigers, a Yankees fan who hates the Indians, several people who haven’t revealed their allegiances (or don’t have any), a few who would rather discuss football year-round, and one technician who hates all sports with a passion. At any rate, last night/this morning, I tried to watch some of the game on MLB.tv, but they’ve got a new media player and it’s obvious to me that they’re still trying to work out the kinks, cuz I’ve encountered numerous problems with it already. It took them forever to get the game into the archive (whereas several others seemed to be available as soon as their games ended). I watched a little bit of the Toronto coverage, but the Detroit feed had its sound so badly out of sync that it was painful to watch.

At any rate, it looked as though Zach Miner got off to a really rocky start, but once he got help from his defense, he apparently settled down, and the bullpen got the job done the rest of the way. Ryan Perry had a 1-2-3 debut. If anything bad can be said about his performance, it’s that he needs to get ahead of hitters more than he was doing. Two of the outs were on full counts, and he three first-pitch balls to all the hitters he faced. They haven’t seen him before, so it’s okay for now, but once the scouting reports build up, he won’t be able to get away with it quite so much. I can’t comment on Rodney, since I didn’t see him, but I do know that the last out sent Granderson to the warning track. Hey, you might as well use the defense from time to time.

I suppose I should elaborate on some of the other quirks I’ve encountered using MLB.tv’s new player. Now, I should be blacked out from live Tigers, Indians, and Reds games because I am in the “viewing area” of all three of those teams (This is true, since my cable has Fox Sports Detroit, Sports Time Ohio, and Fox Sports Ohio). However, when I accidentally clicked on the link to the Rangers-Indians game on Opening Day, to my surprise, I was not blacked out (more on that particular game in a bit). I found out why last night. Apparently (and I don’t know why), MLB.tv thinks I am in either Illinois or Missouri, because I was blacked out of the Royals-White Sox game. I suppose later today I can figure out which state they think I’m in by trying to watch a Cubs or Cardinals game. Anyways, the Opening Day feeds for the Indians and Rangers had their own problems. No matter which feed I tried to watch (STO or FSN Southwest), I would get the Indians’ audio. Only the video changed (and STO’s audio was definitely not synced up to FS Southwest’s video). Then I tried to watch the Marlins game, but when I clicked on THEIR link, all I kept getting was the YES network and the Yankees game until about an hour after the Marlins game started. There have been other problems with the player itself. The player controls (pause, rewind, jump to certain inning, etc) are hidden unless you move the mouse over the video. The problem with that is sometimes the controls don’t show up. Other times they show up, but they’re invisible (the only way you know they’re there is that your mouse cursor turns into the pointing finger cursor, and even then you can’t be sure what button you’re pressing). There are, however, three advantages over the old player that I’ve discovered so far. I like the DVR features during live games (cuz I like flipping between games if the Tigers aren’t playing and I want to watch baseball), and you can pull up scores of other games as they are happening as well. My favorite thing is this, though: I usually watch games on my laptop, which has a wireless Internet connection, and can be somewhat unreliable (especially with a high bandwidth thing like streaming video). With the old player, whenever my Internet blinked, the video player would start “buffering” and even when I got my connection back (which would usually only take about a minute), it would not stop “buffering” so I’d have to restart the player (this was especially annoying when watching archived games). However, it seems that this new player doesn’t fall into the endless “buffering” trap. It’ll freeze when the Internet blinks, but it seems to continue playing once the Internet comes back. And I really like that.

Well, today we get Rick Porcello on the mound for the first time. He did not pitch in any of the televised Spring Training games (though he did start in some of the radio broadcasts), so I don’t have a good handle on what his pitching looks like. He’ll be pitching against a lefty, Ricky Romero, who is also making his Major League debut. According to Those Who Know, it’s the 19th time in Major League history that two starting pitchers are making their Major League debut against one another, but only the first time that the two starters are both first-round draft picks. Leyland is expected to give Laird and Polanco the afternoon off, so I guess that means we’ll be seeing Santiago and Treanor today. Once again, I’ll probably not see much of this game due to the fact that I have compounding lab today. So while Porcello is pitching (and hopefully winning), I’ll be making scabies cream and vaginal suppositories (sorry, guys). Wish me luck.