Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Leaving Tatooine
"Traveling through hyperspace isn't like dusting crops, boy!" -- Han Solo to Luke Skywalker in Star Wars
The top of the first inning in Tuesday's 3-0 Diamondbacks loss to the Astros was all I needed to get a bad feeling about the game. Runners at first and third with one out, and Troy Glaus and Shawn Green can't get the ball out of the infield. And at that point, I just had this feeling that the Astros dodged a huge bullet there, and would be fine from there on out.
And sure enough, they were, at least from Roy Oswalt's perspective. The D-Backs' offense had just three more hits the rest of the night. It was as the D-Backs had left the simpler world of Tatooine for something more substantial and had either a) found they couldn't handle it, or b) never made to Houston to begin with and are camped out in some line to see Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith in less than 24 hours.
Can't pin the loss on Javier Vazquez, of course. Well, maybe technically you can, but if you can find fault with 1 run, 5 strikeouts, and no walks over 7 innings pitched, your standards are waaaay too high. Koplove was wild in his outing, so no brownie points for the bullpen.
Now they face lefty Andy Pettite tonight. I would like to see Bob Melvin bat Jose Cruz second tonight to break up the lefty string at the top of the order. Tony Clark has an anemic .524 OPS against lefties, but Chad Tracy's .461 is even worse, small sample size (about 25 PA apiece) notwithstanding. And even though you might think Cintron could bat for Counsell tonight, Counsell's hitting just as well against lefties as Cintron.
The top of the first inning in Tuesday's 3-0 Diamondbacks loss to the Astros was all I needed to get a bad feeling about the game. Runners at first and third with one out, and Troy Glaus and Shawn Green can't get the ball out of the infield. And at that point, I just had this feeling that the Astros dodged a huge bullet there, and would be fine from there on out.
And sure enough, they were, at least from Roy Oswalt's perspective. The D-Backs' offense had just three more hits the rest of the night. It was as the D-Backs had left the simpler world of Tatooine for something more substantial and had either a) found they couldn't handle it, or b) never made to Houston to begin with and are camped out in some line to see Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith in less than 24 hours.
Can't pin the loss on Javier Vazquez, of course. Well, maybe technically you can, but if you can find fault with 1 run, 5 strikeouts, and no walks over 7 innings pitched, your standards are waaaay too high. Koplove was wild in his outing, so no brownie points for the bullpen.
Now they face lefty Andy Pettite tonight. I would like to see Bob Melvin bat Jose Cruz second tonight to break up the lefty string at the top of the order. Tony Clark has an anemic .524 OPS against lefties, but Chad Tracy's .461 is even worse, small sample size (about 25 PA apiece) notwithstanding. And even though you might think Cintron could bat for Counsell tonight, Counsell's hitting just as well against lefties as Cintron.
Comments:
We as baseball fans know that the most important pitch in baseball is strike one. We also know the next most important pitch is strike two. These 2 rules are needed to be a good starting pitcher, but are a must to be a good relief pitcher. Mike Koplove must not be able to read/know these rules. I ask you, what is worse, coming into a game and throwing 4 straight balls to the first batter, or throwing a wild pitch to the next man, then proceed to walk him. There should be a fine of some type for doing this as many times as Mike has this year. Thats my rant for the week. Screamimg at the TV does not seem to work... maybe commenting in a blog will help....LOL...
Dbacktom
Post a Comment
Dbacktom
Comment posted by 
: 10:57 AM
: 10:57 AM
