saturday baseball

wasn’t that an exciting and wonderful game last night! a flawless pitching performance from the team ace bolstered by offensive contributions from the whole team!

what? no, that’s definitely what happened. what? chris carpenter did what? no, i meant the memphis redbirds game. what game were you watching?

lance lynn followed up a disappointing 2010 regular season last night with a stellar performance in the postseason, striking out 16 batters in 7 innings. 2 out of every 3 faced! completely unlikely to recur, but still let’s revel in it while we can.

in this big rock candy mountain of baseball that is memphis, joe mather still hits homers, allen craig starts every day, and matt pagnozzi and nick stavinoha are no longer seen. the team is in the postseason and is defending a league title. no word yet on whether the bulldogs all have rubber teeth, whether the cops have wooden legs, or if rick ankiel can hit still the strike zone there. we sent mike shannon to look for the lake of gin and haven’t seen him since. if the big club is making you ill, i suggest that you follow memphis in its exciting run.

in looking back, i see an increasingly angry and insulting tone to my last several saturday posts which, in my defense, is understandable in the context of the season; instead of trying to top them all with a post entitled “why don’t you fuck off and die in a fire,” i’m going to take a step back and write a nice post. so, just pure positivism here today. let’s talk about the rotatio . . . . no, no, let’s talk about the offen . . . . no, let’s  . . . umm. . . . well . . . matt holliday sure looked clutch yesterday . . . . haven’t had a good bullpen blowup not related to macdougal in a while . . . . rams season starts soon . . . . colby rasmus went 4-4 with 2 HR earlier this week . . . .  ugh. this is going to be tougher than i thought. maybe if i just  . . .

miscellany –

beware: not only is todd wellemeyer available, akinori iwamura (.182/.292/.267) has been released by the pirates. let’s see: plays infield; released by another team; season OPS under .560. check, check, and check. he even gets bonus points because his last team was in our division. i predict he will start sunday wearing the birds on the bat, though today may not be too soon.

speaking of checkmarks, one just went up on a figurative (and potentially a literal) tally sheet of wrongs corrected by retaliation for tony la russa. surely ludwick’s comments shortly after landing in san diego about the clubhouse not being so controlling in san diego as in st. louis did not get ignored by tony.

hmm, let’s see who could ludwick have meant by that? jason larue and his perpetual requests that whoever it is who keeps making burritos in the clubhouse microwave PLEASE CLEAN IT OUT after the unmentioned player makes his lunch because your mother does not work here? jose oquendo and his near-evangelical insistence on safety, particularly that players wear batting helmets in the on deck circle, the dugout, the team bus, and whenever brendan ryan plays hacky-sack in the clubhouse? i can’t think of anyone else who might fit ludwick’s description.

anyway, tony made a no-doubt-unrelated comment to the press about how we didn’t even miss ryan ludwick at all because he hadn’t played well in the latter part of the season. notwithstanding the fact that there’s an element of truth to tony’s statement, can’t anybody ever be the bigger man? can’t tony look at a now-gone player and say “he gave us some good years. we were grateful to him, but you have to give something up in a trade to get something.” given luddy’s comments were made weeks ago, you have to admire la russa’s persistence in grudge-holding, if nothing else.

since today seems to be random-neuron-firing day in tom’s head, the mention of oquendo prompts to share with you a theory. i may have figured something out. perusing a thread from this week, i saw someone mentioned that in the annals (you ARE twelve years old. it’s a legit word!) of historically bad offensive performances by infielders (we currently have several candidates), jose oquendo’s 1986 with the mets ranked high.

the idea: is it possible that someone has been letting oquendo coach the kids on hitting? think about it. recently, it looks like mark mcgwire has been teaching people how to field (“now, see, you stand there and wait till the ball comes to you. if it’s going past you, let the outfielder get it. if you try and dive after it, you’ll probably just knock it into foul territory or something. also, sometimes you just have to let one bang off the heel of your glove, just so the other team doesn’t get too comfortable with the predictable plays.”), so the parallel is there. maybe there’s some “freaky friday” event going on? i think this explains so much.

leading candidate for tweet of the month comes from VEB-alumnus erik manning: “Pedro Feliz swings a bat made of poop.” there’s still some september left, so get cracking, tweeters. erik has set the bar high.

david freese had a “debridement” of the remaining ankle still attached to his body. no word yet on whether this was a “routine clean-up debridement,” “precautionary implantation of three surgical screws debridement,” or an “amputation below the knee debridement.”

trever miller is out 1-3 weeks with a forearm strain. tony la russa is right at this moment asking blake hawksworth if he can throw with his left hand "just to see what it looks like."

 hmm. well, all things considered, the post still doesn’t really count as nice or positive.  maybe some days “muted mean-spiritedness” is a personal spiritual victory. 

also, “why don’t you fuck off and die in a fire” would be the best indie band name ever. and your fans could call you WDYFOADIAF for short.