Fausto Carmona will be Indians ace

Manny Acta announced that his fellow Dominican Fausto Carmona will be the opening day starter for Acta and the Indians.  Acta says that Carmona deserves the chance to be the ace, after going 13-14 with a 3.77 ERA.  Those may not sound like great numbers, but they are pretty good for a team that finished 69-93 last year.

Carmona had no idea he was going to be the ace going into spring training, even though Acta and a lot of the Indians assumed that would be the case.  This is Carmona's sixth year in the big leagues and he has a career record of 46-51.

Jon Paul Morosi of Fox Sports says that there should be plenty of Carmona to the Yankees rumors later in the season.  It seems like the Indians are providing aces for the rest of the league.  First, CC Sabathia, then Cliff Lee, and now possibly Carmona.

Fausto is from Santo Domingo, DR.

Carmona pitches in 2008, by Eric Kilby on Flickr

All Star Game

The Dominican Baseball Guy hoped to blog about the All Star game, but there really is not much to say.  Most of the Dominicans were shut out.  Here is the yahoo sports recap if anyone is interested.

Hanley Ramirez, Rafael Furcal, Albert Pujols, Jose Bautista, Vladimir Guerrero, Adrian Beltre, and Robinson Cano were all hitless.  David Ortiz had 1 hit.  Jose Reyes did not play because he was injured.  So, the Dominicans were 1-12 on the night.

The Dominican pitchers fared a little better.  Ubaldo Jimenez pitched two scoreless innings to start the game for the NL.  Rafael Soriano and Jose Valverde each pitched a scoreless inning for the AL.  Neftali Feliz, and Fausto Carmona did not get to pitch.

So the Dominican Baseball Guy is sad to report that not much happened with the Dominicans in the All Star game this year.  But they did have 14 Dominicans selected to the game and David Ortiz and Hanley Ramirez put on a great show the night before in the Home Run Derby, as the Dominican Baseball Guy says in his previous post.