Saturday, April 18, 2009

4/17/07 - COL 3, @ LA 4 "Blame Game"

It’s little things that cost you baseball games. The tip of the webbing of the glove that deflects the grounder in the hole instead of stopping it dead. The half-step that decides a play at first base. The fraction off an inch off the plate that the 3-2 pitch hits.

And that’s why this game is so damn frustrating, and why every loss hurts so bad. Because, damn it, Mark Loretta had no business blooping that Jason Grilli slider into left field that scored the winning run, and that run had no business being on base in the first place if Clint Barmes is two steps to his left to field that grounder by Manny Ramirez earlier in the inning and turns it into the routine 4-6-3 double play it looked like off the bat.

One more centimeter of good wood, and Troy Tulowitzki rips Jonathan Broxton’s first pitch of the night into the gap and the Rockies get the lead back in the 8th.

An inch higher and ball four to Orlando Hudson is strike three, and maybe Matt Belisle is breathing a little easier in that seventh inning.

We can play the blame game all night if we want. But once a decision’s made, it’s made, and whether it’s a right one or not has nothing to do with the thought process and everything to do with the execution, and you can be made or broken on the margins. Tonight, the Rox broke.

And it absolutely sucks, and the panic button gets pulled out in earnest for the first time this season after another bullpen disaster (at least Huston Street looked good in the 8th), and it feels like you have to blame somebody – the pitchers, the manager, the offense – somebody, just to put a face on the defeat. Because it hurts too much to simply blame the game, because above all else that’s what you give your unconditional love to despite overwhelming evidence that it has no interest in loving you back.

The former Cy Young Award winning Dodger reliever Mike Marshall wrote a paper while in college titled “Baseball Is An Ass.” Isn’t it, though?

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Players That Look Worse Than Clint Barmes At The Plate On A Consistent Basis:

1.

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Even after all that above – the point of which, in case you’re unclear, is that sometimes you get unlucky in the game and there’s no sense in blaming those who the bum luck happens to – I still have absolutely no idea why Matt Belisle was the seventh-inning guy tonight, and I sincerely hope to never see that again.

1 comment:

  1. Hey - nice blog. The pitching is not good, and I think we need to cut Helton loose, as Stewart needs 500+ ABs. The future starts now - Tulo, Dex, Stewart, Gonzalez, Morales, Ubaldo... let's just get going with it now.

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