Mark and I went to the Red Sox/A’s game last night. When we were picking out this game at the beginning of the year, we looked at the the team schedules, pitching rotations, factored in injuries and the effect the All-Star break would have on rotations, etc. and decided to that last night’s game would probably be a match up between the opening day starters for each club: Pedro vs. Hudson. Either that, or we just picked it because it was a Monday.

This pitching matchup is another in a series of great matchups that have included Hudson this season. It seems that he’s always matching up against the other team’s ace:

• Pedro Martinez
• Greg Maddux
• Javier Vazquez
• Freddy Garcia (twice – hey he was still the ace at the beginning of the season)
• C.C. Sabathia
• Mike Mussina

The A’s are 21-5 in games started by Hudson this season, unfortunately he has only gotten the Win in 11 of those games.

This game was a tough one for my fantasy team. I have both Pedro and Hudson and I don’t like starting pitchers against each other. On a normal start, a pitcher has about a 60% chance of getting a win. That drops in half when only one of the two pitchers can get the win. Often in a great pitching matchup, the win/loss will actually go to relievers.

So I decided to start Pedro and sit Hudson: Pedro gave up 2 runs in 5 innings and was pulled, Hudson threw a 2 hit shutout and just dominated!

Here are some photos from the game (posted using my b2photos hack).