The Padres finally managed to score a few runs last night, although the Rockies made it interesting before San Diego got the 6-4 win. They’re still not looking great on offense, though.
With the Cards 7 games back, we probably won’t see Albert Pujols in the playoffs this year, but he has easily enough plate appearances for the season that, if he were to suddenly break a leg today and never be able to play baseball again, he would still qualify for all the stats, and thus for the Hall of Fame as a 10-season player.
His numbers so far this year, with 20 games to play:
.308 AVG
.410 OBP
.595 SLG
39 HR
104 RBI
100 Runs
OPS+ 165
RC/G 8.1
VORP 68.4
These figures, which most players don’t approach in their best year, represent a below-average season for Pujols. The guy’s incredible.
Twins pasted the White Sox pretty well last night. It was called a “must win” game for the Sox, not for the Twins. Of course it wasn’t really a “must win” game because the Sox are still not eliminated and they will still keep playing. However at this point if the Twins just play .500 baseball (9-9) the rest of the way, the White Sox will have to go 16-2 over the same span just to tie.
Twins got that lucky horseshoe in their pockets. Sox with bases loaded and one out and Jesse Crain manages to strike out Paul Konerko and then Manny Ramirez to end the inning. Great stuff.
Love seeing my Twinkies win but it’s almost painful to see how frustrated the Sox look.
Twinkies are actually now close to the best record. The Yanks scuffling for the last week let them pick up a lot of ground. The races themselves are not tight, but the jostling for position at least is. Tampa could easily beat the Yanks out for the division or not but in the meantime they play each other a few more times and after this series the Twinkies have only (or mostly) sub .500 teams.
BTW: Very good win for the Yanks last night that they needed. The kid Nova, pitched 4 great innings and then completely imploded in the 5th. A shame as he was probably auditioning for a post-season start as the 4th. There was a lot of sparkling D though for the Yanks to pull out the win in the 10th.
The difference between A-Rod and Jeter doing the same thing is that A-Rod has been hated ever since that contract the Rangers gave him. The NY media and fan base have fallen all over themselves for years treating Jeter like some sort of secular saint who, “plays the game the right way,” and “has integrity.” His admission that he uses gamesmanship just like any other player is admitting he’s as mortal and fallible as any other ballplayer.
Not that I blame him for acting. Heck, even Joe Maddon said he’d have praised one of his players for doing the same thing. But that’s just the point – Jeter is somehow not supposed to be like any other ballplayer.
Well, the Padres got hammered by the Cardinals tonight, and Mat Latos didn’t do his Cy Young chances much good, getting only 4 outs and giving up 8 runs on 9 hits and 2 walks.
Ugh.
On the plus side, my Fantasy hitters went crazy tonight.
Nelson Cruz: 1/3 with a HR.
A-Rod: 2/5 with 2 HR and 4 RBI.
Billy Butler: 4/4 with a HR and a double.
Shin Soo Choo: 4/5 with 3 HR and 7 RBI.
The Giants are absolutely horrendous on offense. A lot of it can be blamed on Andres Torres being out with a freak bout of appendicitis, but he isn’t coming back.
I hate to say it, but if I was unbiased, I would probably pick the 3rd place Rockies as the favorite to win the division.
