8.27.12 Red Sox @ Braves - Today is a birthday, they're smoking cigars

Good job, Red Sox! Winning 3-1? Tremendous. Nelson Figueroa gets the win, pitching 7 and a third innings and using 99 pitches.

Figueroa gave up one run on three hits. The run came about in the eighth inning, when Figueroa was down and out, feeling small. Center fielder and cowboy Luis Durango singled with one out and that was the end of Figueroa's night. Rich Hill stepped out from behind the curtain and was great, as usual. Hill got three outs all told, and then Chris Carpenter finished everything off by squirting hot, nasty pitches at Gwinnett.

Starter for the G-Braves was Yohan Flande, except it was Jair Jurrjens, who's essentially the same guy. KIDDING. If you've ever played fantasy baseball in your life, you've had Jurrjens on your team, but you always hold off on trading him because you never know and he never does that great but for some reason you wind up keeping him. Jurrjens only pitched two innings, but got the loss because he gave up a two-run homer to catcher Dan Butler.

Pawtucket scored their third run off reliever Daniel Rodriguez in the fourth inning. It was unearned. Tony Thomas had walked for a second time, then moved to second on a bum pickoff attempt. Another pickoff attempt that went awry landed Thomas on third, and then he scored when Dan Butler hit a sac fly. So Mr Rodriguez' ERA was unblemished, but he disappointed his entire team and perhaps his grandparents.

vanessa and phil:
1. Jeremy Hazelbaker came and DH'd in this game, but didn't get a hit and struck out twice. Che-Hsuan Lin is back. Kalish called up.

2. Josh Kroeger drove in the only run for Gwinnett, in the seventh inning. Ernesto Mejia moved up two bases on wild pitches to Kroger, who then singled Mejia in. Kroeger must have been pretty pleased with himself, since he obviously hated Pawtucket and everything it stood for. Maybe. I heard. Hey, you wanna get called up? Play better.

3. Jurrjens was rehabbing but hadn't pitched in eleven days. Recently he was hospitalized for dehydration, which is baseball code for 'alcohol poisoning'.

4. "Daniel Rodriguez, a 27 year old lefty who was 11-5 with a 2.54 ERA, a 1.26 WHIP, and a league leading 135 strikeouts in 117 innings for Salito in the Mexican League this season, made his Braves debut, which was also his US professional debut, and he struck out 3 over 3 hitless innings." - from Talking Chop, the Braves blog of record.

Tonight's game is being played at 2:05 due to impending hurricane doom. Zach Stewart will try to take down the mighty... Um, who was it? Lefty Sean Gilmartin, yeah. And now Lehigh Valley's a game and a half behind Pawtucket for the wild card. Pawtucket's only one game behind the Yankees in the division, so anything could happen.

GO TEAM GO. RAWWWR.