It shouldn't feel this good to beat a sub-500 team.
Drew Davison's notes at the FWST blog say that David Murphy will be an everyday player and start against lefties down the stretch, finally besting Craig Gentry for the coveted Rusty Greer Memorial Gritty Hustler Prize. Joke's on Murphy, though, because the prize is cortisone injections in his knee and an injury shortened career. Speaking of cortisone injections, Davison says Washington only intends to use Joe Nathan in save situations for the rest of the year. He also has a post about a day at the plate for Josh Hamilton apparently free of the influences of a vengeful God.... for now.
Zack Meisel at the Rangers MLB.com site has a notes column, crying "Save us Scott Feldman, you're our only hope." He also reveals that Jim Leyland is neither concerned nor impressed with Justin Verlander's recent 134 pitch outing, saying it's a "walk in the park." Leyland then proceeded to swing a pickaxe into Verlander's elbow while singing an arm-slagging ditty he learned from his pappy. T.R. Sullivan has a recap, with quotes from Hamilton, Cruz, and Andrus. Harrison's short outing was due to a stomach bug, so I guess the monkey from Outbreak is still running around the clubhouse.
Evan Grant says that Ron Washington met with Yu Darvish Wednesday to discuss Yu's state of mind. Interestingly, Grant reports that this was the first time Wash has had a "real" conversation with Darvish since June, which makes me wish Ron Washington was my manager. Grant also has some extended quotes from Washington about Murphy starting against left handers. You'll be happy to know that Wash may be aware of the implications of small sample sizes, provided you have no follow up questions.
In what is surely an interesting application of search engine optimization, the DMN has a slideshow (yay!) with the inriguing headline "Darvish Gets Massage." For the Rangers slashfic writers in our audience, the person giving the massage is Elvis Andrus. They also a have a non-slideshow photo essay on Mike Olt's major league debut that's actually pretty neat. We should have a caption contest for the one where he's sitting next to Michael Young.
Gordon Edes at ESPN Boston says that it was a Mike Olt fan that caught Will Middlebrooks' fan-assisted homerun Tuesday night, so thanks, Mike Luzzi from Branford, Connecticut. "It was certainly within the rules," said Mr. Luzzi, though the article does not specify if he was making the douchey Yankee-fan hand motions from the 2010 playoffs. Richard Durrett has his rapid reaction to the game, with some feel-good stuff about the offense and some crap I'd rather forget about the pitching.
And because I saw this the other night and thought it was neat, here's a short film called Terraform. There are parts that look a bit too much like a console game cut scene, but it's still pretty nifty.