American League Around the Horn - 4/28

We can't think of too many people who would have predicted they would wake up on April 28 and the Tampa Rays and Baltimore Orioles would be atop the AL East. Or the Detroit Tigers would be in the AL Central basement. Or for that matter, the Oakland A's would be six games over .500 and tied with the Los Angeles for first place in the AL East.

The Rays are riding the hottest streak now. They went into Boston and took three straight and have won six in a row overall. The Red Sox were starting to roll, a six game winning streak of their own. Then they lost a pair in a row before the Rays came to town and out did them. The Rays (11-6) and Yankees (9-8) are the only teams with winning records against their AL East foes.

There were some classically pitched games in the series. The Red Sox Clay Buchholz had a 1-hitter going entering Saturday's 8th inning. Two seconds later he was losing 2-1 when Dionner Navarro singled and Aki Iwamura hit his first home run of the season. On Sunday, Josh Beckett gave up 4 hits and struck out 13 in 7 innings, and lost! James Shields threw a complete game 2-hit shutout to beat him.

The Mariners lost 2 of 3 to Oakland after doing the same with the Orioles. Felix Hernandez was dominating the A's on Sunday, but gave up 4 runs in the 8th inning to take the loss in a 4-2 game.

The Rangers were involved in another blow out, except this time they were on the winning end. Vincente Padilla blanked the Twins, who had scored 12 runs on Saturday, 10-0.

The White Sox and Orioles had a great pitcher's duel on Saturday. Sox starter John Danks had a perfect game through five innings, before Adam Jones singled and eventually scored. Guillermo Quiroz then hit his first major league home run. Orioles starter Brian Burres allowed just 3 hits in 8 innings for the win. The White Sox Carlos Quentin managed to get with the bases loaded in both games to get a pair of bruises and RBI.

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