Conservative Rumblings

My Diamondbacks win 4-2; Webb goes 6, Qualls/Pena/Lyon were electric and shut down the Reds’ potentially powerful lineup in the back three (0 H, 0 BB, 1 HBP). Hudson and Reynolds both made fantastic defensive plays and Young, Byrnes and Salazar all went long…it’s obviously early, but that looks like a good start to the year to me.

In other baseball news, Kerry Wood gave up three runs in the top of the ninth for the Cubs, breaking a 0-0 tie with their division rival Brewers. I’ve been telling Cubs fans for months that this wasn’t the job for Kerry Wood…in fact, his job isn’t even on an MLB roster. I find it amazing that one 20 K game 10 years ago can be milked into a career. Only with the Cubs.

However, with victory in their grasp, the Brewers decided they didn’t really need a win, and gave the ball to the 2nd worst closer in the game, Eric Gagne, who promptly gave up a three-run homer to Japanese import Fukudome. Then, Bob Howry gave up a sac fly in the 10th to Milwaukee and sealed the deal for a Cubs loss. Hilariously, Gagne got the win.

The NL Central works so hard to be the worst division in baseball that they almost deserve an award for it. Almost.

Other notables:

• Washington hammered Phillies closer Tom Gordon for 5 ER in 1/3 of an inning to win 11-6.
• Tampa Bay, who many have picked as the sleeper of the year ala the ‘07 D’Backs, slapped around Baltimore starter Jeremy Guthrie for 5 ER in 5 1/3, while James Shields went 7 with 2 ER on the mound for the newly renamed “Rays.” Maybe they just needed to get that devil off their backs and they’ll mount a challenge on the elusive .500 mark.
• Kansas City took down Detroit 5-4 in 11, an interesting David-Goliath match. Keep an eye on KC DH Billy Butler; the kid is going to be some kind of hitter.
• The Johan Santana Era has begun in New York. The 2006 Cy Young winner gave up just 3 hits and 2 earned runs in 7 innings of work, leading the Mets to victory over the Marlins.

A week before the All Star break, the Snakes would have solidly had an A if I was giving grades, as they were nine games above .500 and leading the tight NL West division. However, a five game slide that included two losses against the hapless Cardinals and an embarrassing sweep by the last-place Reds drop them down a bit. The ‘Backs entered the break with the second worst ‘last 10’ in the majors, dropping 8 of the final 10 games before the break. The young bats continue to be either very loud or very quiet in Phoenix, and the D’Backs need more consistency in order to make the playoffs. Eric Byrnes (.306, 14 HR, 49 RBI) leads essentially every offensive category for the team, and while Byrnes is one of those players who plays 100% every pitch of every game, he can’t power the offense by himself (although he certainly tries sometimes). Chris B. Young (.233, 13 HR, 31 RBI) and Orlando Hudson (.296, 7 HR, 47 RBI) are both putting up relatively solid numbers as well, but the Diamondbacks sorely lack a true power hitter.

The rotation has been solid, but not spectacular; Randy Johnson (4-3, 3.81) is back on the disabled list, Cy Young winner Brandon Webb (8-6, 3.37) has not looked like himself lately, and Doug Davis (5-10, 4.26) has a painfully high 1.75 WHIP. The bullpen has been shaky as well, but some recent demotions to Triple A Tucson (see: Brandon Medders, 1-2, 4.84, and a penchant to give up HRs like they are going out of style) might help to stabilize the situation. Look for the Diamondbacks to make a good run for the pennant if they can get through the first set of games after the break, as they play a tough series against NL West leaders San Diego and NL Central frontrunners Milwaukee and Chicago.

Somehow, the Cubs are still in the playoff race (4 ½ back of Milwaukee) despite making, on a regular basis, some of most stupid and amateurish plays in baseball (such as throwing the ball away on game-altering plays or getting caught in run downs over and over again…paging Angel Pagan) and nearly blowing half the games they’ve managed to win. Case in point: on June 29, the Cubs took a five-run lead into the ninth inning, promptly gave up six runs in the top half of the inning to fall behind, only to come back in the bottom to score two and win the game.

They seem to have settled down a bit since the departure of the hot-headed Michael Barrett, and when you combine that with a Milwaukee team that is starting to slip just a little, the Cubs just might be able to squeak themselves into the playoffs. They need to win the division, however, because there are too many good teams in the East and West vying for the Wild Card to consider that a really viable option (Mets/Braves in the East and Padres/Dodgers/D’Backs in the West are all legitimate playoff contenders).

Probably the biggest flaw on the Cubs right now is the atrocious and inconsistent bullpen. Aside from Carlos Marmol (2.0, 0.96), who is having a career year and has only given up a whopping three runs all year, the rest of the cleanup men are not getting the job done, especially in clutch situations. Scott Eyre has a 6.60 ERA over 30 IP, Bob Howry is running at 4.68 and almost all the relievers have the unerring ability to give up runs at exactly the wrong time for the Cubs.

Chicago nearly lost 100 games in 2006; a comeback to 85 or 90 wins this season could be quite a victory for the Cubbies. Seeing as they are only a game above .500 at this point, it will be a stretch; will they be able to hang on? It depends on whether or not they play like the Cubs of late June and July or the Cubs of April and May.

The better question, however, is whether or not Lou Piniella will eat his hat in a fit of rage before the end of the season.

Alex Rodriguez (.317, 30 HR, 86 RBI) continues to clobber the baseball, but his 30 homers are more than double (in fact, nearly triple) of what the next best on the team is producing (Hideki Matsui at 11). Derek Jeter has only five long balls, and Johnny Damon and Bobby Abreu are in similar power slumps (five each as well). The lack of home runs hasn’t particularly hurt the run production, however, as the Yanks are third in the Majors for runs scored (464) and fourth for team average (.280). They are still not winning games, however, and with there being 10 games between them and Boston right now, they probably won’t catch the Sox unless the latter really fall down in the second half of the season. For New York, a team that hasn’t seen the World Series since 2003 and hasn’t won since 2000, it may be time to rebuild.

New York plays Tampa Bay six times in their first nine games back from the All Star break, then they have four games against Kansas City and three against Baltimore, so they should be able to pick up a lot of momentum very quickly, but Boston’s schedule isn’t that much more difficult, however, with games against the Jays, KC and the White Sox, so the Yankees can’t rely on Boston to trip and fall, and they probably will not be able to muster enough of a blitz to take the top spot from the Sox.

Barry Bonds will, barring some sort of career-ending injury, break Hank Aaron’s home run record sometime this year. Unfortunately for the Giants, that is pretty much the only highlight they have left in the season. They are 10 ½ games back in the hotly contested NL West, and the ‘other Barry,’ Barry Zito, has been a tremendous disappointment; $10 million a year for a starter that has a 6-9 with a 4.90 ERA and a 1.2 K/BB ratio is definitely not that San Fran had planned when they made the blockbuster deal. Zito’s 57 ER are a dozen more than the next most on the team.

Matt Cain and Morris have both been better than their W/L record show (3-9 and 7-5, respectively), but the Giants’ struggling offense can’t keep them alive in close games. Noah Lowry looks on paper to be the most solid of the starters with a 3.35 ERA and a 9-6 record, but Cain and Morris both have solid ERAs as well. The Giants simply are not giving the run support; the only teams to have scored less runs this year are the White Sox and the Nationals. The Giants’ team batting average of .250 isn’t helping either.

Morris and Cain also have startlingly bad K/BB ratios that are only slightly better than Zito’s. Morris does have three complete games, however, while Zito has none and Cain and Lowry each have one.

To add to that mess, the bullpen, aside from Randy Messenger, is a disaster. Their reliever with the second most appearances (behind Messenger), Jack Taschner, also has the highest ERA, clocking in at a staggering 6.08 after giving up 18 ER in just 26 2/3 innings.

The Rays stumbled and fumbled their way into the All Star break, going 1-9 in their last ten games before they mercifully got a reprieve. The team’s awful .391 winning percentage is the worst in baseball, and when you have a winning percentage worse than Texas and Kansas City, you know something is seriously wrong. Tampa Bay lost 101 games last year and 95 in 2005; they will easily match those numbers and probably beat them this year. Their second to last game before the break was sort of a microcosm of their entire season; relievers Jay Witasick (1-0, 4.81) and Casey Fossum (5-7, 7.52) combined to walk a team-record five straight batters (walking in two runs) during the eighth inning, giving away a 6-4 lead. The kicker? They were facing the lowly Royals.

James Shields has really been the only burst of sunshine in the black abyss of the Rays’ pitching nightmare, but after a strong start, he’s been slapped around a lot lately, pulling his record up to 7-4 and his ERA to an acceptable (but not great) 3.82. His K/BB ratio is phenomenal, though, sitting at 6.1. The sad part for Tampa Bay is that the other starters are more than bad enough to erase anything good Shields does. Edwin Jackson is 1-9 with a pathetic 7.23 ERA through only 74 2/3 innings (averaging just 5 innings per start), and none of the other starters have positive records (although Scott Kazmir comes close at 5-6).

On the batting side, Carlos Pena has an OPS of 1.004, OBP of .395 and 20 long balls, BJ Upton is batting .320 and speedy Carl Crawford has eight triples to go with 23 steals, but nothing the guys at the plate do is going to slow down the damage the guys on the mound are doing; the Devil Rays composite ERA is a hideous 5.82, almost a full point worse than the next to last team, the Rangers at 5.08.