O’s-Royals Game Three
Real quick today: the DC Cab takes on Gil Meche. Whoever wins this one guarantees themselves at least a series split. I’d kinda like for that to be us.
Blast on in the comments…
O’s-Royals Game ThreeReal quick today: the DC Cab takes on Gil Meche. Whoever wins this one guarantees themselves at least a series split. I’d kinda like for that to be us. Blast on in the comments… 24 comments to O’s-Royals Game Three |
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(continued from the last thread)
Mora played short with the Mets and when he first got here (he also played some outfield). On the surface moving him to SS would seem to make sense, but I think two things will keep it from happening:
1. I doubt he has the range anymore.
2. I doubt he’d be willing, and there’s no point in shoving something like that down a guy’s throat.
It’s an appealing idea, for sure. If we thought of it then you can bet MacTrembley did as well. If it hasn’t happened already then it’s probably not an option.
I like our chances with DCab tonight. he owns KC with a 2.70 career ERA agaisnt them, and a CG to his credit earlier in the year. We need him to go atleast 8 innings if you ask me. The pen has been used and abused lately. Good to see Loewen back. i like him in the Albers role while he’s out, but only time will tell.
Also, at the game last night, Alex Gordons home run was the closest i’ve seen to a warehouse shot. the ball went right over my head, and he came up about 15 feet short, right about where griffey jrs shot hit. It was a bomb.
All this talk about SS’s, where is Scott Moore? “Rebel Yell” can play anywhere. He can play SS, send Fahey back, and Bynum can pinch run late in games. If you want to give Roberts a day off, he can play 2B, and bynum can start at SS. You could pinch run for a guy like Mora, or Millar, then Bynum goes into the game at SS, and Moore can move to the other positions. Plus in his few weeks here he had shown some pop with the bat, in his limited amount of at bats. More pop than fahey, and bynum combined. I’d also like to here Billy Idols “Rebel Yell” when he comes to bat again.
I remember DT saying at the begining of the year he loved having Moore here to give Millar, Roberts, and Mora adequate time off so they would be fresh come september, being a little older and all. I just think even if his numbers become the same lame ones Bynum and Fahey put up, he’ll still be much more of an asset to the other guys out there.
also if Moore fills in for Mora and Millar rather than Huff, it lessens the chance of our RBI leader, and possible trading chip, aubrey huff, of suffering an injury.
I’m gonna doubt that Moore was any good at short. They put him there a little in Norfolk and it didn’t seem to work out. Well, like they say, someone’s gotta hit ninth, right?
I also feel good about riding the DC Cab into third place tonight. He’s been getting better (relatively) and the Royals are a lightweight, and a lot of those guys don’t take pitches. Plus, we’ve done pretty well off Meche since he went to KC. We really need this series now, though…I think the Texas series is going to be a benchmark, considering how we stumbled in Washington. Texas is playing real good ball, and we need to pick ourselves up and get ready for them.
Aubrey Huff: dare I say…Enfuego?
I like Moore, but he won’t give us the defense we need. At least we know for a fact that Fahey and Bynum can turn DPs.
How about Luis Montanez? Guy is killing it. Too bad he’s not a shortstop.
This is going to be an interesting game, I think.
The DC Cab loves to cough up those singles, huh? At least they aren’t walks.
Another balk? Wow.. it must be that time of the year when the umps have to meet their quota.
Meanwhile, Roch reports that Matt Albers apparently thinks he’ll just go ahead and rehab that torn shoulder. You know, because that will untear it. /sigh
Yeah Dan, don’t you remember how well that worked out for Kris Benson?
If he met with the genius Dr. Andrews and got to thinking rehab might work out, and even if it doesn’t then surgery won’t bring him back any later vis a vis next year…I think’ll stand behind that decision. Seriously, James Andrews is smarter and knows more about pitching than all of us, and all of the Orioles combined.
That’s RBI triple from Cakes was crazy.. it was a home run and actually Gathright was in the process of robbing him of that home run but it came out of his glove and back onto the field. Nutty. Look at Ramon with 2 hits and an RBI.
Do it, Danny, do it! 2 more outs!
Man! Huff has been great with the glove the past week, at third AND first!
Huuuuge complete game win at home. D-Cabs love himself some KC. Big day off for Johnson and Sherrill.
OK…I didn’t get a chance to watch or listen to this one, so I’m coming at it purely from what went down. So correct me if I’m wrong: isn’t this pretty much perfect in terms of what we needed?
Oh yes. And now we get to take the series – tomorrow’s game is GIANT, make no mistake. Stay tuned, if the Yankees lose, we’re in third place (ahead by 1 game in The Loss Column)…not that that’s set in stone yet…
Hey – forget I said that last thing. Anyway, great game for the DC Cab for a lot of reasons. He got back on the horse, he walked nobody, he gave the pen the night off, we won in a way that made me say “They look ready again” and now we can take the series tomorrow with Olson-Davies…I feel real good about the team right now.
So here’s the thing. When Aubrey Huff came to this team he was regarded as a solid and legitimate power hitter who could play enough defense to make him worth having on your team. We all kind of lost that idea last year when he underperformed. But now he’s looking like the guy we thought we were getting.
What does this tell us?
It tells us that player performance is partially a function of the bigger picture. The line between good and bad in baseball is so thin that sometimes it’s barely there.
In an average week a player gets 24 at-bats (four AB over six games). So to hit .250 — not that good, but OK — in a given week a player has to go 6 for 24. But just two more hits per week — going 8 for 24 — raises that average to .333. Which is very good by any measure.
I think we’d be crazy to think that solid leadership, team chemistry, and a generally good attitude aren’t worth a hit or two here and there. A great play. A clutch strikeout. A homer. Etc. Think about your own job: don’t you perform just a little bit better when you’re happy? When you believe it’s worthwhile?
Now extend that idea out from each individual player and add it up to the fact that nine of them are on the field at any given time. It starts to look like a big deal, no?
I say all of this to point out one simple idea: that maybe what the O’s are doing this year isn’t as surprising as it seems. Maybe you just have some guys playing up to their abilities and some other guys overachieving a bit, where for the last ten years you had guys playing down and underachieving.
I’m not saying they’re ready to go to the playoffs — not yet, anyway — but I am saying that Trembley and MacPhail have clearly had a huge impact. And it is, in fact, tangible.
That was the line in Moneyball – there is no way that a fan, even one who watches every game, can tell the difference between a .260 batter and .300 batter, because that amounts to such a small difference that they basically look identical on any given night. Your eyes can very very easily fool you, and you tend to only remember the last thing that happened.
Just food for thought.
it’s like what crash says in bull durham. the difference in .250 and .300… 25 hits in 500 at bats is 50 points. about 25 weeks in a season. 1 extra hit a week, 1 extra groundball with eyes, 1 extra dying quail a week, your in yankee stadium.
Man, whatever Kranitz said after that DCab balk must have been gold, cause he retired the next 14 batters afterrward. He only threw 105 pitches, can we trot him out there tomorrow too?? KC had been playing good ball before coming here too. shortly before our series they had won 7 straight and 9 out of 10. It imperitive that we win tomorrow. I dont think we can settle for a spilt against a team like that.
They said DT was sporting a Sherrill T-shirt around the clubhouse. Awesome. I love this guy more and more everyday. And whats with batting Ramon clean up…then he goes 3-4 with an rbi. Genius!!
We own KC. Have for the past 2 years. That was their 2nd win against us in that long on Monday?
Mike, yeah… during George T-shirt night, DT had one underneath his uniform… you could see the orange sticking out and the guys in the booth were pointing it out. Classic.
Anybody been watching any of the Olympic swimming trials?