Opening Day Eve

Today was opening day for several teams; the Red Sox open at Texas tomorrow. Terry Francona has already announced the lineup as well:

CF Ellsbury (L)

2B Pedroia (R)

LF Crawford (L)

3B Youkilis (R)

1B Gonzalez (L)

DH Ortiz (L)

RF Cameron (R)

C Saltalamacchia (S)

SS Scutaro (R)

SP Lester (L)

No surprises there really. Cameron gets the start over Drew and Youkilis breaks up Crawford and Gonzalez instead of Gonzalez and Ortiz but that's all due to the fact they'll be facing lefty C. J. Wilson tomorrow. I expect to see Drew in Right and Youkilis batting 5th most games. Although with 3 left handed outfielders, Cameron's going to get lots of opportunities to play this year.

I tried out the MLB TV feed today too with the opening day games and was pretty disappointed. For purportedly providing HD service, the feed on the live game was dreadful. The only time I got HD was when nothing was moving on the screen. During the game I was lucky to get SD and whenever there was any action at all (like oh, I don't know, during any pitch or whenever there was a batted ball) the resolution downgraded into gigantic pixels. I'm sure if I called it in, my connection speed would be blamed instead of their service but this was downright atrocious.

The saved games were better in terms of resolution but I'm still disappointed there's not a better way to jump ahead a few seconds to skip the between-pitch video. A 5-second skip would be ideal. I can skip to the next "event" (hit, K, SB, etc.) but the fast forward doesn't preview to where you're at in the game and it needs to reload anytime you go forward or backward. So fast forwarding 5 seconds takes 15 seconds to reload. Looks like I'll have to watch every second of every game if I'm really going to watch all of the games. Yikes!

I'll be out of town this weekend so I may be slow to post my observations for the games this weekend but stayed tuned. Baseball's back, baby!