Game One, Tuesday, March 25 6:05AM EST, NESN/ESPN2
Daisuke Matsuzaka at Joe Blanton

So, instead of CNBC or Good Morning America, we get to eat our breakfast, run on our treadmills, and shine our shoes to a live regular season baseball game on Tuesday. The morning start time isn’t ideal, but it could be a lot worse — at least the game is during waking hours, however barely. Anything to get me away from Bear Stearns news.

The Athletics are cast as the Washington Generals to our Harlem Globetrotters. Between the whole “world series champion” thing and the Daisuke-Okajima factor, Bob Geren must feel like the ugliest girl at the dance. He’ll throw Joe Blanton to the clutches of reinvigorated J.D. Drew.

Blanton didn’t walk anyone (1.57 BB/9) and didn’t give up many home runs (0.63) in 2007. He also didn’t strike many batters out (5.48 K/9) or get many ground balls (47%). Therefore, his results (106 ERA+) were approximately what we would expect. If anything, I’d project him to improve slightly due to that stellar walk rate.

He busts righties in with his slider for swings and misses, but throws a curve and change nearly as often — around 15% of the time. He’s got four good pitches, none great.

Game Two, Wednesday, March 26 6:05AM EST, NESN/ESPN2
Jon Lester at Rich Harden

Another half-assed analysis coming Tuesday.

Pitch data from Josh Kalk.