Opening day highlights around baseball
March 31, 2014
A Cincinnati Reds loss, an extra-inning walkoff win and a high-scoring battle were just some of the highlights of Monday’s first day of Major League Baseball action. Here are some of the top stories, not including the Cleveland Indians’ late-night game against Oakland, which finished too late for print coverage.
St. Louis Cardinals 1, Cincinnati Reds 0
Yadier Molina’s homer broke a seventh-inning tie and drew another round of loud boos while he rounded the bases Monday, leading the St. Louis Cardinals to a 1-0 victory against the Cincinnati Reds.
The Reds were blanked on opening day for the first time since 1953, ending the second-longest streak of scoring at least one run in season openers in major league history. The Phillies went 62 years without being blanked in an opener from 1911-72.
Adam Wainwright used his refined sinker to finally get the best of the Reds, who have hit him like no other team. Wainwright allowed three hits in seven innings, fanning nine.
St. Louis escaped a threat in the eighth. Trevor Rosenthal retired all three batters in the ninth, finishing a three-hitter for the defending National League champions.
Bryan Price lost his managing debut with Cincinnati, which opened the season with eight players on the disabled list, its most since 2007.
Pittsburgh Pirates 1, Chicago Cubs 0
Neil Walker homered off Carlos Villanueva leading off the 10th inning Monday, and the Pittsburgh Pirates benefited from an overturned call to beat the Chicago Cubs 1-0.
Walker’s first career game-ending homer easily cleared the Clemente Wall while his teammates rushed onto the field in celebration. It was the first opening-day walkoff homer for the Pirates since Bob Bailey’s off San Francisco’s Juan Marichal in a 1-0 victory in 1965.
Reliever Bryan Morris (1-0) won with the help of an overturned pickoff call in the top of the 10th under Major League Baseball’s new replay system. Starter Francisco Liriano and four relievers combined for 11 strikeouts.
Emilio Bonifacio went 4 for 5 for Chicago, but the Cubs were 0 for 11 with runners in scoring position and wasted a fine start by Jeff Samardzija, who scattered five hits over seven innings.
Travis Ishikawa had two of the six hits by Pittsburgh, which began 2014 much the same way the Pirates spent a long stretch of their breakout 2013: by riding solid pitching and a lights out bullpen to victory.
Philadelphia Phillies 14, Texas Rangers 10
Jimmy Rollins hit a grand slam and pinch-hitter John Mayberry Jr. had a two-run double that put Philadelphia ahead to stay in a wild opening 14-10 victory against the Texas Rangers on Monday.
Cliff Lee (1-0) matched his career high by allowing eight runs and struck out only one, but the left-hander made it through five innings in another less-than-stellar opener for him in the Rangers’ home ballpark.
Marlon Byrd and Cody Asche also homered for the Phillies.
Converted Rangers reliever Tanner Scheppers gave up seven runs infour innings, including the slam by Rollins that made it 6-0 in the second. But the game was tied when Scheppers threw his last pitch.
Mayberry, a first-round draft pick by the Rangers in 2005 who never played for the big league club and was traded three years later, had his tiebreaking hit in the fifth off Pedro Figueroa (0-1) for a 9-7 lead.
Detroit Tigers 4, Kansas City Royals 3
Alex Gonzalez drove in the winning run in his Detroit debut, lining a single to left off Greg Holland in the ninth inning that gave the Tigers a 4-3 opening-day victory against the Kansas City Royals on Monday.
Acquired by Detroit in late March following an injury to shortstop Jose Iglesias, Gonzalez made a costly error in Kansas City’s three-run fourth but made up for that with a game-tying triple in the seventh. He then singled with men on first and third in the ninth, giving Brad Ausmus a win in his first game since replacing Jim Leyland as the Tigers’ manager.
Joe Nathan (1-0) pitched a scoreless ninth in his first appearance for the Tigers.
Wade Davis (0-1) allowed a one-out walk to Alex Avila and a single to Nick Castellanos in the ninth. Holland — who had 47 saves in 50 chances last year — couldn’t escape the jam.
Salvador Perez had four hits for Kansas City, which has not won its opener since 2008 at Detroit.
– Associated Press