MySports Today

The St. Louis Cardinals made a big move to bolster their offense by acquiring Matt Holliday in a trade with the Oakland A’s on Friday.  Holliday will likely bat clean-up behind the best hitter in baseball – Albert Pujols – to give Pujols some protection down the stretch run of the 2009 MLB schedule.

The Cards lead the NL Central by 1.5 games over each of the Chicago Cubs and Houston Astros.  The addition of Holliday should put the Cards in great position to win the NL Central division in 2009.

The Cards sent power-hitting 3rd baseman Brett Wallace, outfielder Shane Peterson and right-handed pitcher Clayton Mortensen back to the A’s in the trade.

As we reported yesterday, Mark Buerhle threw the 18th perfect game in MLB history ni Thursday’s 5-0 win over the Tampa Bay Rays.  After we did some digging on the perfect game, we came up with a few interesting facts.

First, home plate umpire Eric Cooper was also behind the plate for Buerhle’s no-hitter at U.S. Cellular Field back in April 2004 when Buerhle no-hit the Texas Rangers.  Buerhle also faced just 27 batters in that game – Buerhle walked Sammy Sosa to end the perfect game but picked him off of 1st base to maintain the 27-batter minimum.  Pretty random.

Second, cather Ramon Castro caught Mark Buerhle for the 1st time ever in Thursday’s game.  Buerhle typically has his regular catcher A.J. Pierzynski behind the plate (as he did for his no-hitter back in 2004), but because the White Sox were set to play 4 games in 3 days against the 1st place Tigers over the weekend, Manager Ozzie Guillen wanted to give Pierzynski the day off so that he would be able to play each day over the weekend. Castro spoke with both Buerhle and Pierzynski before the game to go over the game plan, and surely benefited from the fact that Buerhle works quickly and rarely shakes off the catcher’s call during a game.  Pierzynski and Buerhle even joked around about Buerhle throwing a no-hitter or perfect game on Thursday, so good things come to those who wait I guess.

Congrats Mark – it couldn’t have happened to a better guy…