Game Five Recap
Boo, 1-4.
Jason Vargas pitched really well, honestly. Changed speeds, threw strikes, got some big swinging strikes when he needed to strand runners. It all came unraveled in the 6th inning when some good hitters hit some good pitches, but overall, it was an encouraging outing. If he pitches that well, the results will catch up.
The rest of it – meh. I don’t really feel like fighting the frustrated crowd. Rant away. Felix day tomorrow. Will be nice to expect a win for a change.
Okay, one comment. The correlation between the winning percentage after five games last year and the team’s final record is a measly .15 (remember, correlations are between zero, for no relation, and one, for perfect relation). A .15 correlation is basically nothing. I know, this sucks to watch, but it doesn’t mean anything.
Find your return key, “former great player”.
???
Most people around these parts of the internet have been saying that they were close to even with the rest of the AL West and that it would be a 4 team race. They definitely don’t get enough credit for their pitching, and their defense is of the same order as ours. Rajai Davis is like Gutierrez lite. No reason these 5 games should make us think that they’re better than us, though (I realize that’s not what you’re saying, I’m just pointing it out given the tendency in this thread to extrapolate meaning from an insufficient sample size).
Fun Fact: Milton Bradley’s OPS and wOBA have been higher than Jack Cust’s every single year of either of their careers including last year (excpt for 2001 when Jack Cust had 3 plate appearances). Milton Bradley was a far above average hitter last year, though not up to his standards from 2008-2009. You might not think so if you only look at the .257 BA and 12 HRs, but there’s no excuse at all for ignoring walks, doubles, and triples. Even if we expect no improvement from Bradley over his stats from last year (which would be somewhat pessimistic), he’s our best option at both LF and DH. Jack Cust would be a fine pickup, but you would have to drop Griffey. If you want to make the argument that we should do that, go ahead, but don’t say we should ditch Bradley.
Once his non baseball antics interfere with his actual playing, or if it has a negative effect on the M’s revenue. There’s absolutely no way that flipping the bird to Texas is crossing that line. Personally it makes me like him more.
You must have typed numbers into your calculator wrong or forgotten to add the 1, because that comes out as 83.4. Which makes sense, because we’re a little more than 1.5 games back of where we would expect to be.
It seems like if Vargas is a bad match for going against Texas, they should have switched the order with Fister to start the season. Not sure it would have changed anything, and maybe there’s something else I’m not considering. (They could have switched RRS and Snell if they didn’t want back to back LHP, but other than that, I can’t think of a reason to not stack it up the way they want at the start of the year.)
Trading Lee for AG doesn’t make sense for either team. There are other players on our roster that are both more expendable for us, and more desirable for the Padres than another soon to be top line free agent.