The Cardinals are reeling at a particularly inopportune moment for them. They’ve managed 10 runs in these 7 losses, and they’ve still got three games @CIN before they finish up their terrible, horrible, no good, very bad road trip. On the flip side, how about a hand for the Pirates? This is a huge series for them.
Over in the AL, Detroit has been hitting the crap out of the ball right now. But your 10 run wins still only count as one win, Detroit! Miggy is battling a hip issue, and they had to trade for Jose Iglesias as Jhonny Peralta insurance, but Iglesias won’t make up for Peralta’s missing bat if he gets suspended (that said, I still like the Iglesias pickup for the future). Meanwhile, my Indians continue to lurk, and they’ll go for the sweep with Masterson facing Sale. I predict a 2-0 White Sox lead through 7, before the Tribe wins 3-2 in another walk-off, this time from Nick Swisher. Swisher needs a walk-off, he’s just dying to bro-down at home plate. They’ll head down to Miami for 3 games against the woeful Marlins, then back home for a crucial 4 game series against Detroit, their last home series against them. It would reeeeeeeeeeeeeeally help out if they could pick up a game or two there. Oh, and KC currently has the longest winning streak in the league, at 8. Which has gained them, like, a game in the division standings.
What else…Anaheim continues to be a shit-show. The Yankees are somehow only 8 games out in the AL East. I don’t know what to make of Baltimore. Nor Texas. Atlanta is running away with the division because the Nats can’t seem to produce runs. And did San Fran really win the World Series last season?
29 games in 31 days, 15 away, 14 home. Toughest challenges: at the Cards and Rays, home against the Rays and Red Sox. I sure missed Kuroda last night, wish we’d been able to keep him.
Braves offense is on fire right now. Gonzalez shuffled the line-up because of injury, and had to move Hayward into the lead off spot. May be a coincidence, but they have score 29 runs in three games since that happened. Against the three best starting pitchers the Rockies could throw out there.
Atlanta also has a very easy end of the year schedule. Only a couple of series against +.500 teams and lots of home games. The schedule this year was very front-loaded and they’ve still managed to lead the Division for the entire season.
Interestingly, out of the 10 teams that would qualify for playoff spots according to today’s standings, only two (Red Sox and Cardinals) have won championships in the past 17 years. We’re looking at a cumulative 241 years of drought. (Of course, almost a third of that is due to the Indians.)
Just happened to be talking to my dad, and baseball came up. Things are not looking good for the Redlegs, I’m afraid; six games back going into August is not a good place to be. They did end the west coast road trip with a win yesterday, and they’ve got three games against St. Louis coming up over the weekend. After that, six more games each against the Cardinals and the Pirates… so it’s not like we’re down for the count, but it’ll be damned tough.
ETA (And just checked the Yanks, who are not looking so good either. I guess I can rely on my undergrad at Pitt to cheer for the Pirates in the post-season, if it comes to that.)
That’s about how I’m feeling about the Reds too, although RickJay keeps taking me to task on how they really aren’t hitting/scoring as badly as I think they are. They just don’t seem to come through when it really matters. I am tired of awesome pitching being wasted for a lack of runs in low scoring games, which the Reds have been a recent victim of, repeatedly.
Teams that expect to make the post season play better than this. True, last I checked we were still 3-4 games up for the final wildcard spot, but here’s the deal: I DON’T WANT A WILD CARD! I want the Reds, whom are presumably built to win now, to win the division, not slink into the playoffs. I feel the exact same way about the Bengals. No more accepting that we got there…get there and DO SOMETHING!
And the way this season is playing out, the Reds may not get there at all. Losing three of four to the Dodgers was pretty disappointing. Those were all close, hard-fought and well pitched games. There’s no team hotter than the Dodgers right now. But that’s exactly the kind of team you want your team to measure up against and to beat.
And then there was the Padres series, what should have been salve for the wounds but we dropped that series too, for a lack of scoring again. The pitching has been brilliant, which is why its such a shame to lose those kinds of games. The old adage “Pitching, pitching, pitching” is only true if you can score more than one or two runs to secure a victory. And frankly the Reds are terrible at it in big games, especially on the road, and in clutch time.
If they are going to make a statement it has to be NOW, starting tomorrow against the Cardinals. Oddly, we’ve done well against the Pirates, especially against Liriano. but the Cards always make us their bitch and I’ve had it with that. It’s time for them to stop shitting the bed against teams like that and decide that they are going to start going on a tear. This is the time to do it. No coasting.
Well, after dropping the first four games to the Pirates, they’re ahead 13-0 (after 7 innings, as of now) in the last game of the series.
All along in this losing streak, they haven’t looked like a particularly bad team, just like a team that hit a rough patch. They are still very much alive in the NL Central.
They’re doing more than lurk, given they’re in a wildcard spot at the moment. When’s the last time the Tribe was 12 games over .500?
In other news, Dodger pitching managed to surrender four home runs tonight. On the plus side, all four were solo shots, and the opposition only managed one other hit beyond that. Also, they were playing the Cubs. Thus, a 5-4 victory for the Dodgers, and their eleventh straight road win. As has been pointed out already, they are going to need an awful lot of road wins this month.
If the difference between the NL and AL was that vast, the NL could never win a World Series.
Johnson is probably hurt. I mean, I don’t know that for sure, but he’s been hurt this year and when a pitcher just completely falls off the cliff “he’s hurt” is the correct guess 95% of the time.
