I have to say something about the PITTSBURGH PIRATES.
I didn’t want to even think about getting excited about this season until August. Well, august is around the corner, and the Pirates are playing great! If the REDS were not playing lights out, the Pirates would have opened a 4 game lead over the whole division!
And unlike last year, they don’t seem like they are going to go away. I actually think they have a great chance for a playoff spot, and I’m all giddy with excitement.
I have to tip my cap to the reds, though. The Pirates have the 3rd best record in baseball in July, and have actually lost 2 games to the Reds in the standings in that time. Incredible! What’s even more disgusting is watching Bronson Arroyo, a Pirate reject, pitch like a hall of famer.
The Reds are doing it without Joey Votto!
I am actually starting to think that both the Pirates and Reds will get a spot in the play-offs.
I have not thought about the Steelers all month, and that’s a nice thing for this baseball first Pittsburgh sports fan.
As a fan of a Bengals team that’s on the uptick, its *all *I have been thinking about. Baseball is a mere distraction from the gloriousness that will be the 2012-13 NFL football season.
He was pretty much the same pitcher for the Sox then as he is for the Reds now…wasn’t he?
And too bad about Wily Mo…I liked him as a Red and I really wanted him to succeed…just didn’t work out. That doofus couldn’t field to save his life. He did have power when he wasn’t striking out though!
Wlly actually played darned well for Boston in his only full season there; as a platoon guy he hit .301 with 11 homers in half a season of at bats. He got off to a bad start in 2007 and got traded for someone named Chris Carter and that was pretty much it; he’s been drinking cups of coffee and hitting home runs. I think he went to Japan.
Poor Wily was one of those guys who should have been picked up by an AL team and left at DH; it might have saved his career by letting him concentrate on hitting, the way the Jays have rescued Edwin Encarnacion. Willy’s 2004 looks just like Edwin’s 2008. Getting traded back to the NL wrecked his career.
But hoo boy, Pena could not play the field. He could catch; if he got to the ball, he’d catch it. The problem was, you know, getting there. That was a challenge for Wily. He was frickin’ huge and had all the smooth, graceful mobility of a concrete parking barrier.
That’s quite a tear the Reds are on. If I’ve counted right, they’ve won 16 of their last 18 going into today’s game.
They’re one of a number of teams that have gotten similarly hot lately. The A’s have won 18 of their last 21, the Pirates 20 of their last 27, and the Braves 15 of their last 20 in what I certainly hope is a futile effort to overtake the Nats.
Not in Boston; he was *much worse *against lefties: .260/1/11 vs. 326/10/31 in 2006, his only full season here. Maybe he paid too much attention to the LF wall, like so many other big guys do.
And they are winning again today. A sweep in Colorado is impressive.
This reminds me of the run the Rockies had at the end of the year that got them into the playoffs by winning 24 of 26 or something.
The Pirates lose today and fall another full game behind the Reds. The way they are playing, the Pirates have to be perfect… And let’s face it. They don’t have that kind of track record. The Pirates are 15 games over 500. If you told me that at the beginning of the year I would have never believed it. But I dont want to see them give up on catching the Reds. Even if they don’t catch them, they will still he playing good baseball and finish with maybe 90 wins.
If the can take that 20 year monkey off their back, maybe the organization can finally move forward.
I can’t believe I’m talking about the Reds and Pirates. Makes me feel like I’m in the 70s!
Its crazy how well both teams are doing (and just how abysmal the rest of the division has been). The Reds are tied with the Yanks and the Nats for the best record in baseball before today’s win (10 straight!). They are now 21 games over .500…without Joey Votto!
The Reds pitching has been the difference maker. They are solid in the starting rotation, their bullpen is really good, and then there’s Aroldis Chapman, who is lights out in the closing role aside from a couple bumpy outings.
This Reds team is starting to really come together. They have the feel of a team that can win a playoff series.
The Dodgers get back-to-back shut-outs against the Giants in San Francisco (away) for the first time since 1957. AND they get a sweep. Payback’s a bitch, ain’t it, SF?
Kershaw also gets another complete game, and Luis Cruz is looking very nice at short. Ramirez is fitting in well at third, so now all we need is some more pitching and please lord I don’t ask much a left fielder who can hit.
The Nats won an 11-10 donnybrook in Milwaukee to keep pace with a certain Red-hot team for best record in the majors (the Yanks are still playing), and the Braves won to stay just 4 back of the Nats.
Another team that’s been hot lately that I neglected to mention earlier, the Tigers, won again today and have now won 15 out of their last 21. They’re still only 6 games above .500, but they just have to finish ahead of the Chisox to get into the postseason, hardly out of reach.
So. Looking around for a silver lining to the current season, I see that every single Astros minor-league affiliate has a winning record at the moment (a couple of them only by one or two games, but most of them by a healthy margin). Anyone know if there’s any real correlation between winning minor-league systems and later performance by the major league team?
