Bombed

On Tuesday afternoon, I took a look at the MLB scores on Yahoo and I saw an ominous sign: 2nd inning, Phily ahead of St. Louis 7-2. This was ominous because Suppan hadn’t pitched in a while and I had a bad feeling that he was no longer pitching that day. Sure enough, drilling down to the box score, Suppan had started and was gone with a string of ugly numbers.

To make matters worse, Noah Lowry was getting ready to start in Colorado. Tuesday had the possibility of being one of those days that takes you weeks to overcome. Driving home, I flipped on the radio to hear the Giants game. I really recommend that if you have a pitcher starting in Colorado, don’t listen to the game. It cannot be good. As soon as I flipped on the game, Lowry gave up back to back jimmy jacks. The only good thing about that was that Dustan Mohr-on hit one of them. Sure enough, it was downhill from there for Noah, who got roughed up.

When I know it’s ugly, it takes a while for me to look at the BABI standings, and it’s even harder to log onto blogger to write here. I didn’t have much writing energy on Wednesday, particularly after I got a weird email from the Elder Barry. It was the BABI standings showing him in first, Cappers in second, Hobo in third, us in fourth and the Busch Leaguers in fifth. I could hardly look at it, because though it seemed a little strange, I had been expecting the worst after that horrible pitching day. What I missed completely was that it was dated 5/17/04. (In retrospect, I’m shocked that we were in 4th at any time last season).

I finally gathered the strength to look at the standings today and there we were, still atop the list. Yeah, the ERA was pretty beat up, and the ratio was no longer sub 1.2, but it wasn’t quite as bad as I thought. And we had save #1 from the $32 man, the Giants semi-official closer of the moment, Sky Walker. Ken, you’ve been out of town. He’s the closer for now. It’s not a committee thing until he fails (ok, that’s pretty likely). But until this past week, it was still a complete mystery because no one including Felipe wanted to consider Herges, Brower has sucked the big one, and everyone else is a joke. That probably includes Walker, but come on, he’s official for now. You might bet that he’ll fail, but he’s being given the chance.

Many of you know Connie, my office manager, and a member of the fabled Nut Crunchers of PEFA. She’s been sitting around with nothing to do lately, so she caught up on my blog. She told me that she cried when she read Ken’s story. Now it’s pretty easy to make Connie cry. You just have to apply enough schmaltz. But frankly, I couldn’t blame her. Every time I think about keeping my wallet next to my balls, I choke up. Nice story, Ken.

So as I get ready to post this, our other Giant pitcher, Brett Tomko is pitching in Colorado. I refuse to listen. Connie just came in to report that he wiggled out of the first after loading the bases. Hopefully he hit 3 batters. I can’t wait for the Giants to get out of that town.