Sunday, I took the family to my company’s annual summer fun frolic at Knight’s (“Where the action is!”), so I caught nary a pitch of the final tilt against the Los Angeles Dodgers of Los Angeles. It is for this reason that I feel eminently qualified to comment on the game.
(OK. I did actually hear that Anthony Reyes struck out the side in the first. I ran into a gaggle of co-workers, one whose spouse had a nifty little device that was keeping track of the game. But I digress.)
I think I think these things:
Albert Pujols: Damn, that guy’s good. Three of his four hits Sunday brought runners home. If Joe Morgan (or is it Tim McCarver?) overuses the phrase “productive outs,” what terminology would he beat into the ground about Pujols’ hits? And if you were among those who worried that El Hombre might have come back too soon from his tweakage, you can stop: He’s gone off for a .371/.446/.674 line since his return.
Chris Duncan: Daddy’s Boy had his second three-hit game in three days. One might think he’s beginning to acclimate himself to the No. 2 hole:
“I pretty much know they’re not going to walk me, so I just try to be aggressive, and when they fall behind I usually get a pitch to hit.”
And hit them, he has. Since May ended, he’s gone .328/.364/.557. The 16/2 K/BB ratio during that period is a little troubling, but like he said, he’s going to get pitches to hit batting in front of Albert Pujols. In the few times that I’ve seen him, I think some of his strikeout woes can be attributed to his penchant for swinging and missing at a full-count ball four in trying to make something happen with runners on. In the No. 2 hole, “making something happen” is secondary to “getting on base so El Hombre can drive you in.” If baseball is a game of adjustments, maybe this is one of those for Duncan.
Day by Day Database: Readers of this Weblog (all six of you) may have noticed a lot of “Player X is batting Y in Month Z” in recent posts. This is all thanks to Baseball Musings’ Day by Day Database. Use it to see a given player’s stats in a given time period. It’s like getting THE TOY (and I don’t mean the movie) for Christmas; I can’t stop playing with it. Have you ever wondered what Mike Ramsey (who is my favorite former wearer of No. 5) batted from April 12, 1983, to April 16, 1983? Well, here you go, dudes. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
