Don't Watch Too Closely

I just got back from watching the Giants win a sloppy one over the Brewers, 6-2. I got to “enjoy” watching the Pecklers’ own Brett Tomko get his first win of the season, going 6-1/3 innings giving up 2 runs early along with 8 hits and 2 walks. He threw too many pitches early, something like 61 in the first 3 innings.

Watching him reminded me of the Doc’s rule about owning Mark Gardner, which was you never want to actually watch him pitch. He could get wins, but it was always ugly. Tomko had one of those days today. Russ Branyan hit a water shot that was a no-doubter (the ninth Cove homer by an opposing player). I remember seeing Luis Gonzalez golf one in there as well as Cesar Crespo.

I got to see JJ Hardy for the first time. First surprise: he’s white. Second, he’s a stick figure. Third, he had a rough game, slamming the ball into fielders gloves all day, and having an awfully sloppy day in the field.

Carlos Lee was the only Latin player I saw on the Brewers, a shocking statistic. Lee, who I had assumed was Chinese from his name, is a stud. He made possibly the greatest catch I’ve ever seen live on a fading fly in to the left field corner in foul territory, diving and catching it backhanded. At the plate, he reminds me of Cliff Floyd in the way he just looks absolutely menacing with that big, powerful body.

I also got to see the mysterious Matt Wise (Bats, one buck). A tall stick figure who seems to throw pretty hard, they brought him in to strike out Brett Tomko to end an inning and then immediately pinch hit for him. It's a little tough to evaluate him based on that.

Season record at SBC: 1 and 1.

I see from the scoreboard that Dontrelle (like Madonna, first name is sufficient for him) won another one today, and Mark Mulder threw a 10 inning 4 hit no walk shutout, throwing only 101 pitches, of which 75 were strikes. I guess he’s over his physical problems.

We had a big day yesterday and moved up to 73 points. Somehow Barry’s Bats moved into first ahead of us despite hitting .229 with 2 homers and 7 RBI’s and only Tom Glavine’s nice outing. The key was a big jump in ERA and Ratio from that outing. Early in the season you can have these kinds of weird dramatic shifts in position. The Pounders continued their slide this week, dropping below 60 points, which should teach Kevin not to diss the Peckler team in public.

I’m concerned that any success we have this year will be attributed to using a computer at the draft. I say here and now, that is ridiculous. We would have done absolutely everything the same. We were really prepared this year, and the proof is right here on this site. I know Jeff and Larry don’t believe me, but we were prepared to draft without the computer and we would have bought every guy we bought at exactly the same price. You see, as of yesterday (I spoke to them both) Jeff and Larry do not know how much work we put into this because they haven’t had the time to look at this site. As the 2 most successful players in BABI history, I can understand that they wouldn’t be interested in Peckler strategies, but geez, the jokes are pretty good.

Unfortunately the only way we’ll prove that the computer didn’t make much difference is to do badly. That’s not in our plans.