Bud Norris threw 7 good innings. He had 2 outs in the 7th with 2 terrible hitters coming up. First, Dioner Navarro – ex Ray, who was gotten rid of when he wasn’t any good any more (Gerry H, you know) who hit an inside FB for a GR double. Then, for reasons completely unclear to me, Mills orders Bud to walk Russell Mitchell, a AAA guy playing 3rd because Casey Blake is on the DL – and Russell is hitting under MY weight, had looked BAD facing Bud in his 2 previous ABs – to face Clayton Kershaw.
Don Mattingly may not be the world’s best manager, but even HE has the sense to bring in a pinch hitter for the pitcher in the 7th with 2 on 2 out, score tied at 1.
So WHY, WHY, WHY put a guy who is an easy out on base in the first place?
I hate these POINTLESS intentional walks. Especially when Kershaw (yeah I know he’s the pitcher and yeah, he’s batting lefty vs a righty) is hitting better than the guy who was intentionally walked. It’s one thing to walk Jose Bautista to get to the next guy with 2 outs, 1B open. But a guy who can’t hit? It’s not like someone is setting up the DP – and even THEN, how many times have we seen that backfire?
IF I had any ability to use all this data, I would check and see how many times IBB a hitter who is NOT Pujols actually works. Interesting that Joe Girardi, who is taking some serious heat this year for having a roster full of Old Guys who aren’t playing like the 09 Yankees, had his pitcher issue 2 IBB in the same inning and lost the game. And he’s taking MAJOR stuff for that, too.
Anyway, Bill Hall went 4 fer 4 with 2 runs scored – Quintero drove him in once and Bourn drove him in in the 9th (atoning for a rare error) – he must have read my – who will be gone when Keppinger/Bourgeois are ready – paragraph, hunh?
The media is full of articles talking about how McCourt and his lack of $$$ is ruining the Dodgers and how Wilpon and his involvement, legal or not, with Bernie Madoff and gang, is causing the Mets to slash payroll as Wilpon disses his few good players, Wright, Reyes and Beltran. Guess he’s picked up some hints on how to spit on guys he wants gone, who are good but expensive, so that fans won’t notice that he’s gotten rid of anyone who is any good. And he and fans get to blame everything on Those Greedy Players and their HUGE salaries.
Interesting that Bud Selig and gang, who thoroughly disapproved of Jim Crane for 3 years, suddenly don’t seem to have a problem with him and his massive debt load. I can’t understand why on earth he would want an ownership group with massive debt and no money, unless the real purpose is to try to get evey team except for the Red Sox and Yankees to drastically slash payroll and force baseball players to take less money while the owners hide profit in the RSNs they are all forming, as well as their private ticket resale comapnies (see the C*bs). Which would make sense to me. Bud is one of the old cabal who participated in Collusion with the purpose of paying ballplayers the least amount possible and he’s the guy who mismanaged negotiations, which caused the 94 strike.
I know I’ve said this before, and I sound like an Old Person who wants dam kidz offn her lawn, but more and more it seems to me that MLB has been, for about 10 years, re-organized such that pretty much ALL media attention is focused on Yankees/Red Sox. Bud now wants to re-invent the playoffs with yet some additional game whose sole purpose is to ensure that neither the Yankees nor the Red Sox ever again miss at least the first round. As well as the Interleague “rivalry” series, which are all cleverly scheduled to take place on weekends in late May and mid-June, so as to attract the biggest crowds – so that he can trumpet the Great Success of interleague.
sigh
This is why there is no balance in the schedules, why some teams have a significantly more difficult schedule than others, which is, to put it mildly, hardly a fair contest. Not that Bud and owners and Fox/ESPN care real too particular much.
sigh
It’s getting harder and harder to maintain enthusiasm for MLB, let alone the Astros. And this isn’t even discussing the HP umpires and their inconstant zones.
Today, J Happ faces Chad Billingsley, RHP – so at least tonight, we can be sure that Brett Wallace, our best hitter, isn’t benched in favor of the player who is vastly inferior but makes 40 times as much money. Kershaw pitched a magnificent 7 innings last night, only to get screwed by his lousy bullpen – hmmmmm, sounds like the Astros.
Billingsley has pitched well this year – 10 games over 62.1 IP: 51 H, 25 BB, 3 HR, 54 K, 24 ER: 3.47 ERA/1.22 WHIP and a .223 BAA.
The guy has gotten seriously Clemensed by his team – last 3 games he has gotten a L: 3 ER/6 IP; 1 ER/8 IP; 3 ER/7 IP. And the 2 games before that he had 2 ND: 1 ER/7 IP and 4 ER/6 IP. And the game before that he had a ND for 0 ER/8 IP. Wandy feels his pain.
Isn’t the game exciting now that MLB has deadened the ball to prove that Those Evulll Steroids are finally gone?
Anyway, we didn’t face Billingsley at all last year, so I hate to give previous stats when he face a completely different team. Hard to believe this guy has been in the majors since 06 – I remember when he came up – he was a first rounder and fans/media expected him to come up and be Roy Oswalt and never struggle. His early veteran-heavy teams led by Good Guy Jeff Kent didn’t want young players on the team – they wanted them to be either benched or traded for more Proven Veterans, but Bilingsley has hung in there and pitched very well every year except for 09. He’s posted more Ben Sheets numbers, in terms of Wins, than Roy Oswalt ever did, but too many people think that if some athlete doesn’t measure up to their fantasy/projection, he is a failure, even if he does WELL instead of Great.
Oh, and before I forget – kudos to Hitter Pence for driving in the winning run last night. I like how he’s been making a habit of this. I wouldn’t be real too particular surprised if Fast Eddie, under the edict to slash payroll for our new broke-ass owners, trades Pence and Wandy for a fistful of nothing (Phils ain’t got nothin good in their farm left to trade) as well as anyone else besides Clank who earns over the minimum. Then Crane can endear himself to fans by informing them that he’s not gonna spend any money until they all go out to the ballpark and waste time on money on Pirates V2.
Tags: Dodgers, Houston Astros, Los Angeles Dodgers, MLB
aw c’mon that was a win for the ages! awesome fun — down to the last strike with the winning run not even in the batter’s box. don’t be a grump!
David Schoenfield at ESPN says we must trade Pence for Domonic Brown and Jarred Cosart.
“Why should the Astros trade their best player? For several reasons: (1) He’s good, but not that good; he does a lot of nice things on a baseball field, but a mediocre OBP prevents him from being a true star. (2) He’s starting to get expensive. He won $6.9 million in arbitration for 2011 and will likely get at least $10 million next season. (3) He’s 28, and while he’s at his peak right now, he may not be at his peak as he turns 30 … aka, by the time the Astros are likely to be good again.
As for the Phillies, they are in win-now mode. Sure, Brown and Cossart are arguably their top prospects, but the jury remains out on how much Brown will contribute this season. They risk giving up a future All-Star, but Pence gives them a much-needed dependable bat for the middle of the lineup. With $24 million of Raul Ibanez and Brad Lidge coming off the books after this season, the Phillies can also afford to pick up Pence’s future salary. “
Steve – I’m not the biggest Pence fan in the world — he’s more of a good player than a star — but I’d need to see more power out of Domonic Brown before I’d consider trading Pence for him. The Astros simply don’t have many valuable players; they can’t afford to trade on the basis of upside.
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Lisa – I feel like I’ve read 1,000 stories about debt crushing the Dodgers and at least 800 about debt crushing the Mets, and yet no one seems to have any problem with Jim Crane and his 36 partners buying the last-place, bad-farm-system Astros with $300 million in debt (plus whatever shenanigans are going on with McLane and that $65 million share he’s supposedly retaining).
Richard Justice exposed himself as a fraud yet again today. His latest blog is titled, “Crane passes test with Selig,” but the article is 100% opinion. Justice apparently doesn’t have a clue what was or wasn’t said in yesterday’s meeting between Selig and Crane. I used to like Justice, but he’s turned into a total talk-radio clown. He’ll say or do anything if someone pays him some attention. Sad.
The only reason I can think of for fostering so many cash poor teams is to depress salaries and make the luxury tax on the free spenders more painful. Maybe I I’m just wrong, but I can’t think of any sound financial reason to sell a team to Crane.
I do not believe Pence is at his peak, he has steadly been improving and his work ethic and physical fitness is beyond approach. He is the kind of player that will keep in very good shape till he is 40 if nothing happens to him. Why people don’t think you can get much better after 28 is ridcuolous. Lets take a look at Juan Bautista of Toronto..Up till last year when he turned 29 his career was not close to as good as Hunters. After averaging about 15 Hrs and approx. 50 Rbis a season thru the 2009 season, he all of a sudden hits 54 Hrs in 2010 at age 29. He is now 30 and off to another great season. I’m not saying pence will do the same, I am saying that you can still improve and get much better after age 28 and quite a few players in history have done so.
I think it would be a very big mistake to trade Pence for a prospect like Brown when there is no assurances he will ever make it big or make it at all.
The astros need a pair of very good ballplayers such as Pence and Bourn who are both still relatively young to be the building blocks and leaders of a young club. They form the nucleus core of this team.
Billy – Selig obviously doesn’t like free-spending owners, but I bet even Selig knows this Crane deal both stinks and could blow up in MLB’s face (because of the debt and because of Crane’s sordid past).
I think, if MLB approves this deal, it will do so for one reason and one reason only: Because Selig doesn’t want to stand in the way of his close friend McLane getting top dollar after McLane was a loyal soldier for the past two decades.
If Selig applied MLB’s normal debt rules and normal standards for an incoming owner, Crane would be tossed in the trash quicker than we could blink. There’s a reason Crane was shot down for the Cubs and (publicly) shot down for the Rangers last year. This is just a classic case of MLB doing what it wants when it wants.
steve,
you are right – i was a grump. ESPECIALLY because i went to bed after the 8th inning…
as for the espn “talent” they can just go take a long walk offn a short pier. they are always after lousy/small market teams to trade their good/best player/players to the big popular teams that espn likes to talk about. who is this future all-star? brown? cosart? yeah. suuuuuuure.
- i know that pence is not a superstar, but he is a very good, solid player AND the astros fan fave. they need to go to the park to see SOMEbody and they ain’t goin to see none of the pitchers. or other hitters except maybe bourn. and they go to see him steal bases and catch uncatchable balls.
ann,
i’m REALLY disappointed with justice. i had thought better of him (except for his lifelong selig boot-licking) and am both surprised and disgusted that he is not bothering to either DO any research or report on it. unless he was told by his bosses that they would kill any negative story about crane – and that is possible. sort of like mills doesn’t have the option to bench clank.
billy,
there is absolutely NO sound financial reason to sell a team to crane. not with 4 other bidders who are not overpaying and not leveraged. all i can think is that you are right and that this is payback to mclane – giving him 300 mill for absolutely nothing, even though it means throwing his ex-franchise in the toilet. but then again, bud only cares about the flashy franchises. sorry, it’s true.
Lisa – I hate to be do negative about Jim Crane, but it just seems obvious he’s looking at the Astros as a cash cow rather than coming in with a “whatever it takes” type of mentality.
Crane has been trying to buy an MLB team for four years, and the best he can come up with is a 37-person group that needs $300 million in debt? That, to me, is a HUGE red flag. It’s not like this was a fire sale and Crane only had 30 days to put together a group. He’s had four years, and his biggest backer (Mark Cuban) reportedly ditched him. Chuck Greenberg came up with a way better Texas-based group in way less time. That Crane can’t, or won’t, speaks volumes.
ann,
yeah, i know. and i keep praying that all the negative press about wilpon/mccourt will do some good.
Guess Bill Hall let all of that success go to his head tonight? And when is the Chronicle and local media going to start grilling Mills on why he leaves pitchers in after they get in trouble. Geez.
Bill Hall turned back into the useless second baseman he really is tonight.
You can’t make a “silk purse out of a sows ear”……he should have never been
on this team in the first place. This one’s squarely on Ed Wade. Idiot. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr
charlie,
apparently the local media aren’t gonna go after anyone/anything or do any investigating, let alone reporting. i can understand the chron kissing ass, but not the houston press, which LIKEY exposees. or used to.
all i can say is that i get why there was no nothin “investigated” let alone published about rampant steroid use before That Evulll Barry Lamar forced all the other ballplayers and kids to shoot up in 2002. they just want to get a few interviews and publish the same old drivel. which these past few years, is mostly about how wonderful it is that home runs are down and how grit and sac-bunts are teh awesomeness and stat geeks and their stupid initials which involve (shudder – HORRORS) math – imagine – using MATH in stats or using stats to assess performance.
as for bill hall/clint barmes/clank
unless some other team wants them, we are stuck with them because fast eddie doesn’t want to release them and then see them do well for some other team while we pay their salary and he won’t let mills bench them neither (giving mills the benefit of the doubt. if it is mills that has decided all by his self to bench brett wallace – then all i can say is that he sucks as bad as phil garner)
and by the way,
since this team will turn into the pirates if jim crane and his gang of debtors gets this team, expect them to do what the pirates did which is have a lot of crappy players and sign a few Veteran Presences every year to shut up the MLBPA – and then hopefully trade them at the deadline for more crappy prospects. i count THREE good trades that the pirates have made since barry lamar was told to not let the door hit his ass on his way out
Lisa – That’s a good point about the Houston Press. They seem like a low-budget operation and they’re mostly known for photo galleries and that sort of thing, but they’ve done some incredible investigative pieces in the past (including a devastating 2000 profile of Crane entitled “Transferring Assets”).
I wonder why the Houston Press has been so quiet on this deal, aside from a few potshots from John Royal. If the Houston Press could turn Crane’s divorce into “Transferring Assets,” imagine what they could do with a 36-partner deal that has $300 million in debt.
ann,
i would guess that the answer is that don’t nobody care. sort if like if someone wanted to buy the hockey team (found out we have one – like, whoa)
Lisa and Becky, Bill Hall is ENFUEGO! Not!
charlie,
no argument here.
and I remember when I wanted the Astros to trade for him after the 08 season instead of signing Kaz Matsui.