Well, the Cardinals hitting woes continued Saturday night, but at least it was by the arm of an actual good pitcher.
Roy Oswalt continued his careerlong excellence against the Cardinals by going the distance Saturday, allowing just one run on five hits.
The following numbers sum up Saturday’s game pretty well:
When all five of your hits come from the 6-7-8 spots in the lineup, you got problems.
Last time, the Cardinals nearly got swept by the Royals.
This time? We’re on the verge again, this time by the Mets, a team that by most accounts is the class of the National League.
To add injury to insult, Chris Carpenter’s got a bum elbow. If he misses more than his next start, I might have to break out the old sign again.
Hopefully, Braden Looper can stick it to his old team tonight. I’m not holding my breath. Here’s a question to help put your mind at ease: Who has the dopier look on their face, Looper or John Maine?
It is with a heavy heart that I announce that The 26th Man is on hiatus.
I don’t know for how long. It might be permanently. It might be a few months, a few weeks or a few days, in which case this becomes a pathetic plea for attention.
In the meantime, I would like to profusely thank everyone who visited and read what I had to say, everyone who left comments and everyone who linked here. Thankyouthankyouthankyou for making my blogging experience so enjoyable.
Yours in red,
Jeff
“When I was young
life was fun.
Now that I’m older
life’s a bitch
or just the son of one.”
The fantasy baseball season piggybacks with that of the real season, and the folks at The Worldwide Leader have put together a poll that is quite the fantasy.
They give you a list of 35 pitchers, and you’re allowed to choose five to make up your “ideal starting rotation.” Some curious options include Tim Wakefield and Jeff Suppan. Maybe it’s a former Pirates thing. Jason Marquis was not made available, though.
Anyway, my choices were (with total voting percentage):
Did you know that you, like, lost again and Houston sorta won? What’s up with that?
I’m showing that the Cardinals’ lead is down to 1.5. How long has that magic number been stuck at five? Six, seven weeks now?
Or is this whole September Swoon thing akin to a cat toying with its prey before finally putting it out of its misery?
Like my friend Jerry Seinfeld says… what is the deal?
One night after torching the Cardinals for four hits in five at-bats, Diamondbacks rightfielder and onetime Cardinals bloggers fetish player Carlos Quentin took Jason Marquis deep Saturday to score what turned out to be the only run Arizona needed.
That was the longest sentence I’ve ever typed.
Quentin, whom John Sickels considered Arizona’s No. 1 prospect this season, once was linked to the Cardinals in offseason trade rumors.
Longtime readers of Viva El Birdos will recall that during the 2005 winter meetings, a blockbuster deal was brewing that involved the Cardinals acquiring both Javier Vazquez AND Quentin.
Of course, that deal blew up on the launching pad and was never consummated, presumably because ownership wasn’t interested in taking on Vazquez’s salary. Same old story.
Well, all Quentin has done this season was go .289/.424/.487 for Triple-A Tuscon. Since his mid-July call-up, he’s hit .262/.355/.570 in 106 at-bats for the big club.
Chris Duncan’s play this summer has taken some of the sting out of losing out on Quentin, but it still doesn’t stop a man from wondering, “What if…”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Speaking of Viva El Birdos, Erik in Sunday’s Game 142 thread touched on what I had next planned to write about.
Essentially, it seems that now that the starting pitching seems to have settled in, the Cardinals’ bats have gone silent:
the alarming trend as of late is how anemic the offense has been, scoring an average of 2.55 runs per game in the month of September…
It figures. The hallmark of the 2006 season has been inconsistency.
Back in May, I wrote about how, after a four-game losing streak, playing the Marlins was the baseball equivalent to Zoloft:
Give me that Z, O-L-O-F-T
No longer pissed, you don’t bother me
I’m making it through, I’m giving my all
When base are loaded, I’m whacking the ball– “Zoloft,” by Ween
Back then, the Marlins were 8-21, seemingly fulfilling everyone’s prediction that they would be terrible, given the high number of rookies that manager Joe Girardi was starting.
(If that were Tony la Russa’s team, he’d be in the corner of his office, curled up in the fetal position. But I digress.)
Since then, however, the Marlins have scratched and clawed their way to a 64-66 record and are threatening to make the National League wild-card race.
In fact, after beating the Brewers on Monday, the Marlins have rattled off eight straight wins on the strength of their fancy young pitching staff.
Josh Johnson, all of 22 years old, leads the majors with a 2.87 ERA. Fellow rookies Scott Olsen and Ricky Nolasco each have 11 wins, which makes the Marlins the first team since the 1952 Brooklyn Dodgers to sport three rookies who have at least 10 wins. Other rookie hurlers who have made positive contributions include recent call-up Anibal Sanchez, Renyel Pinto and Taylor Tankersley.
On the other side of the ball, the Marlins have had surprisingly consistent efforts from Hanley Ramirez, Dan Uggla and Josh Willingham. And Jeremy Hermida remains a droolworthy youngster, despite injuries and a slow start.
And you can’t talk about the Marlins without mentioning their cagey “veterans,” Dontrelle Willis and Miguel Cabrera, who is making the run for the MVP award a five-man race.
But Tropical Storm Ernesto isn’t the only storm that’s threatening South Florida, as whispers of friction between Girardi and Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria are increasingly growing louder.
Back on Aug. 6, the Marlins were playing the Dodgers, and Loria, in his usual seat next to the dugout, took exception to umpire Larry Vanover’s strike zone and began shouting at Vanover from his seat.
Girardi then apparently asked Loria to knock it off, which led to an “exchange” in the dugout. That exchange was resumed after the game, after which preparations were made for a news conference, allegedly at which Girardi’s firing would be announced.
The news conference never happened, though, and both Girardi and Loria’s peeps were tight-lipped about the confrontation and the aborted news conference, and Girardi still is the manager.
But as recently as Sunday, Loria refused to indicate whether he still supported Girardi, who has two years left on his contract:
”I’m not going to talk about that because it falls under the category of next season. We don’t talk about next year until this year is over.”
At least, for Girardi’s sake, Loria hasn’t given him the dreaded “vote of confidence.” That is worse than the kiss of death.
Loria is not held in high regard by some folks. He apparently took a lot of Expos’ property, scouting reports in particular, after he sold the team to MLB and took control of the Marlins. He also was sued under federal racketeering laws when it was alleged that, after buying the Expos, he purposely undermined its operations in order to move the team.
So it seems that the Marlins, with their current hot streak, are playing well in spite of their owner’s worst intentions. The Cardinals also are playing well, imbued with a renewed sense of hope.
This should be a fun series.
If the Minnesota Twins, currently third place in the A.L. Central, were in the N.L. Central, they’d be in first with a six-game lead.
Every time I walk my dog, I pass this car in my neighbor’s driveway, and I always smile when I see the little dealer tag thingy. Oh, Albert Buick-Honda-GMC of Columbia, Mo., you’ve got a great name.
So… I hear Sidney Ponson’s been DFA’d. Thanks, dude; it’s been real. I can’t help but wonder what the season would be like had this spring’s competition for the No. 5 rotation spot been an actual competition instead of a rigged affair. Probably not much different, but it would have given the bloggers one fewer thing to whine about. Because that is what we do.
… and I return to find out that the Cardinals lost two of three to the Royals.
*cough*
And the one we do win was very nearly given away, in classic 2006 fashion. I defy anyone to tell me that this team can go deep into October.
I did manage to luck into the first game of the series with the Braves late Monday in my hotel room. After watching the “Behind the Music” about Pantera, I flipped to ESPN to see if “SportsCenter” was still on. Instead, I get the haunting strains of the “Monday Night Baseball” theme, Cool, I think, a game to enjoy as I float away on the clouds of slumbertude.
And lo and behold, the game I get is the aforementioned Cards-Braves tilt. Got to see some offense early, including an Albert Pujols homer. Also got to see Anthony Reyes twirl a couple of scoreless innings before Mr. Sandman got his gritty meathooks into my brain.
Apparently, in those two-and-a-half innings, I got to see the best of what that game had to offer. Am I alone in worrying that the Reyes boy pitched the best game he and I will ever see from him a couple of weeks ago?
Anyway, after properly decompressing from long hours spent on the road the past few days, I hope to get back on a regular blogging schedule. You can all step away from your respective ledges now.
