Suppan pitches well, Duffy on his retirement, and more

There is rain in the forecast for the home opener tomorrow
(Photo: emples)

Jeff Suppan looked much better in his second start of the season last night in Round Rock than in his first start this season. In his first start on April 8 at Albuquerque, he gave up 7 ER on 7 H in 4.0 IP. Last night he gave up just 1 ER on 6 H in 5.1 IP.

Rob White from the Omaha World Herald wrote a feature about LHP Danny Duffy, who is scheduled to start tomorrow night for the first ever Storm Chasers game at Werner Park. The feature includes this quote about Duffy's brief retirement last year: “I knew I wanted to come back a while before I did. Watching 'Baseball Tonight' (on television), and seeing people I had faced kind of lit that fire. Baseball has always been what I was meant to do. I just had to go home for a while to realize that.”

The Omaha World Herald includes another story today about the Storm Chasers that says there's a 90% chance of rain tomorrow and it doesn't sound like it will end by game time.

Centerfielder Lorenzo Cain is scheduled to come off the 7-day DL today. No word yet on whether that will happen or when he’ll return to the lineup.

According to the Japan Times, former Omaha Royals pitcher, Brian Bannister is AWOL in Japan. He returned to the US after the earthquake and tsunami, like many foreign players did, but he hasn’t returned.

I checked with Omaha Storm Chaser radio announcer Mark Nasser about Vin Mazzaro’s start on Sunday to see if he saw anything in Mazzaro’s delivery that would warrant the seven walks he issued in the 2.1 innings he pitched. Here’s what Nasser said, “It just looked like he never found a release point the entire time he was out there. Even some of his sliders, he had guys helping him out by chasing.”