Lights Out

The Boston Red Sox took a 1-0 series lead over the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim last night behind a "lights out" performance from starting pitcher Josh Beckett. The Angels were shutout on four hits as Beckett threw a complete game.

Beckett was just straight dealing last night. The NL and AL allstar team could have been in the batter's box last night against Beckett and still would have managed only four hits. He was getting ahead of batters all night and only had one Angels player reach third base.

The sports world is giving the Angels no shot to win this series, and this start with Beckett did nothing to help win the Angels any supporters.

The other two games featured excellent pitching as well; no team scored more than four runs yesterday.

Lou Piniella may have wanted to leave Carlos Zambrano in the game longer as the Cubs' relievers gave up the winning runs to the Arizona Diamondbacks as soon as Zambrano left the game. Not that keeping Zambrano may have helped though, because Brandon Webb pitched just as well, holding the Cubs to one run over seven innings.

It was just one game, and I still like the Cubs in this series because of their starting pitching.

And the Colorado Rockies continued to ride their emotions as they beat the Philadelphia Phillies 4-2 behind Jeff Francis. The Phillies were swinging at everything, striking out a total of ten times, four of which by Chase Utley.

Matt Holliday can just rack. He carried the Rockies throughout the season, "scored" the winning run in the one-game playoff, and is continuing his clutch hitting into the NLDS. He hit a homerun off of Tom Gordon in the eighth inning to add an insurance run for the Rockies relievers. NL MVP anybody?