Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Now some more thoughts for you

First things first, a shoutout is in order for Sinensky's web gem at tonight's Mets game, catching a screaming line drive foul ball with his bare hands. Or so he has claimed. He is a god among men.

For those who haven't noticed, the Royals are in the middle of their semi-annual double digit losing streak.

For those whoe don't speak English, semi-annual means twice a year. Bi-annual means once every two years. It really isn't such a difficult distinction.

The flip side of Kansas City's losing streak is that the Tigers now own a .696 winning percentage, projecting out to 112 wins. It's scary to say, but it's getting to the point where Detroit could level off substantially and still finish with 90 wins. This will immediately spark the debate everywhere: Do you prefer Jim Leyland or Jack McKeon when voting for your favorite ghastly old, crusty (literally?) veteran manager to pilot a team to a surprise contention season.

While we're in the AL Central, let's pause for a moment to honor the continued dominance of CC Sabathia. I'm not sure why I'm doing that, as I don't have him in either of my roto leagues. So perhaps we shouldn't honor him.

Anyway, I am proud to say that I was in attendence at last night's marathon at Shea, and that I obviously stayed the whole time, along with Team Thread. Just to toot my own horn for a second (I like to toot my own horn at least once a day, but rarely in the shower, it's too messy), staying for the whole time entailed waiting for a 1:55 train from Woodside that got me home after 2:30, and getting to sleep quite a bit after 3, on a worknight. So you see that I put my money where my mouth is when it comes to my no leaving early policy. I'm truly great.

The only thing more amazing than Ryan Madson throwing over 7 innings in relief last night is that it's happened fairly recently. Steve Sparks threw 7 a few years ago. Of course, Sparks was a knuckleballer, and they can generally pitch 13 innings five days in a row until they hit 65, the federally mandated retiring age for knuckleballers.

On that note: Why wasn't the "ace" starter for the Indians in Major League a knuckleballer? Because that's the only explanation for why a gray haired man clearly in his 50s could have believably been pitching in the majors. Too bad, because Major League is otherwise a thoroughly plausible baseball movie. Yeah, guys score from second on bunts all the time.

Last night turned out to be Jorge Julio's farewell performance as a Met, as he was shipped off to Arizona tonight in exchange for Orlando Hernandez. "Ok folks, it's time for America's favorite game show, CUT...YOUR....LOSSES!!!" The Mets no doubt need reinforcement in the rotation, and Jorge Julio still had worked his way in as a reliever Willie Randolph was going to use in big spots. So in a sense there's no reason for a Mets fan to mind the trade. But El Duque has been so bad this year, and I think he might be Julio Franco's older brother. My fear is that the Mets are going to run him out there for one start, then another, then another, and before you turn around it's July and he's gone 1-6 for the team. It also bothers the Mets fan that it didn't even take two months before the Benson trade, ill conceived at the time, was deemd a failure by the front office. Again, better to recognize a situation and move on, but it confirms the criticisms of Omar at the time the deal was made in January. And you jut know that when the D-Backs come to Shea next week Julio's going to enter into some bases loaded jam and strike out the side. In all 3 games.

I'm not going to do in depth analysis from the Diamondbacks side tonight. Although it actually did just occur to me that I do have Diamondbacks fan readership, so maybe I owe it to that segment. Then again, screw it. So Brian, if you've been reading recently, I apologize for shafting your team.

See? I haven't quit yet.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Didnt Mr. Koo score from second last year on a bunt?

3:25 PM  
Blogger adam20ss said...

"See? I haven't quit yet."

Famous last words.

9:35 AM  

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