Tuesday, August 12, 2008

This Week in Baseball 8/12/08

Baseball season is coming to an end.  When there's less than half the season left, when there's not even fifty games left, it is ending.  So it's sad, even though our teams have had a rough time of it.  The Oakland A's are long out of it, have been at least since the All-Star Break, when their rookie first baseman was having fun with friends and decided to test the depth of a body of water with his head.  Daric Barton is lucky to be alive, and it is amazing he's not a paraplegic.  Bob Geren, manager of the A's, said of course he was relieved Barton wasn't seriously injured, but also implied that his lack of judgment was concerning.  I now refer to Barton as "head injury," as in, "Head injury hit a three-run home run in the third."



The Twins are flaming their little matchstick light of hope, constantly one-half game ahead of or behind the Chicago White Sox (or, as Bert Blyleven says, "She-cago").  Last week I saw an afternoon game between the Twins and the Mariners.  An obviously worked up Blyleven ranted and raved about the lack of endurance and ability of starting pitching, and the resultant stress on the bullpen.  "People work hard at their jobs, and they work nine to five.  These guys are working nine to one!" he roared.  Apparently Blyleven pitched 280 innings during his first major league season.  Today if a pitcher tops out at 200 innings, he's considered a "workhorse."  He went as far as to call starting pitchers "sissies" if they didn't or couldn't pitch deep into games, and said that they didn't have "the guts" (when he really meant "balls") to finish what they had started.  Clearly someone had put a nickel in him, and his cohort Dick Bremer blamed it on the Seattle coffee.



It's disturbing to find yourself in agreement with Blyleven, he of the "Circle me Bert" fame and the endless commentary on cookies and cupcakes, but there I was.  I don't give a damn about the bullpen and its so-called "stress," but I do think pitchers need to pitch a lot more innings and throw a lot more pitches.  Pitchers are bulking up and breaking down:  don't forget that one of Rich Harden's many injuries was due to his reaching for his alarm clock.  These guys are barely men:  why are they injured all the time?  The workouts and the steroids might have something to do with it.  And I am not a fan of the "specialist" role:  Denys Reyes has that ERA for one reason only.  He comes into a game with men on base and proceeds to do his usual bang-up job of giving up a two-run double, yet his ERA remains perfectly intact.



Last night Glen Perkins was under a lot of pressure:  he just became a  new father; the bullpen had been exhausted the day before in Kansas City, blowing a two-run lead and then losing the game; and he was facing the third-place New York Yankees, who are still the Yankees.  Meaning that they all take a lot of pitches and for reasons that are not statistically understood, Bobby Abreu always gets on base.  But Perkins pulled it off:  he walked three but got out of it every time.  Perkins usually pitches well and then, according to Bremer "without warning" something goes wrong and he starts to give it up.  Actually, there is a warning: it's called the sixth inning.  But last night it came and went and Perkins pitched eight, count them, eight, shut out innings, then Nathan came and finished it off with three strikeouts.



Tonight it's Mike Mussina, also known as "Moose," for the Yankees and Nick Blackburn, another rookie for the Twins.  I hate to say it, but even if they Twins win the division and go to the playoffs, they won't make it out of the first round because they'll have to go through New York or Boston, and they usually don't go through them.  They crumple.  But I would dearly love to be proven wrong.  Go Twins!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Finally, A new Mrs. Hendricks entry!
How have you been? Let's try to get together one of these days, m-kay?

tc