Zito was followed to the mound by Victor Santos. Santos is a 31 year old NRI who has over 600 Major League innings for Detroit, Colorado, Texas Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Cinncinati. As a righthander with a career 5.21 ERA, I'm not sure why teams keep giving him a job.

Santos was also a victim of poor defense. After allowing a leadoff single, Santos himself committed an error on a pickoff attempt, allowing the runner to reach 2B. After a foul pop out, followed by a groundball to SS, the runner remained on 2B with 2 out. The next batter hit a solid single to LF. I thought Fred Lewis had a chance to get the runner at the plate......but he threw a high off-line throw that also missed the cutoff man. The runner scored and the batter was able to move to 2B on the throw. Luckily, Fred's second defensive lapse of the game did no damage as Santos got the next batter out, stranding the runner at 2B.

In the next inning, after a flyball out to LF and a strikeout, Santos allowed a 2 out single. The inning became interesting after Stephen Holm threw the ball into CF on a steal attempt. The runner was able to advance to 3B on the error. Once again........Santos was able to overcome the bad defense by retiring the next batter on another fly to LF.

Santos' line for the day; 1 unearned run on 3 hits, no walks and 1 strikeout. Santos threw 29 pitches in 2 innings, 17 of them strikes.