Salomon Torres – Savior on Tilt

Monday night was an evening of brutally bad luck at the monthly poker game. There were four full houses that night. I got two of them. They both lost to the other full houses.

Mr. Leaguer tried to console me by saying, “at least you’re not getting bad cards.”

I replied, “You’ve got to be kidding, those are horrible cards, the worst cards. Those cards are the ones you lose the most money with.”

I won’t even mention the queen high flush I had that lost as well, or the hand immediately after when I went on tilt and check raised every betting round including the full number of max raises on the final card. To my credit, I had 10-J-Q-K on my first 4 cards, looking for a high straight that would have won. But I still blew out the final round of betting with just a pair of kings.

It got more expensive.

At 10:30 Doc had to leave to head to the hospital for a night shift. As he walked to the door, I walked over to him and whispered in his ear, “Torres?”

You’re now wondering, what the hell is he talking about? Here’s the background:

Tuesday morning is transaction clearing time in BABI. There are two weeks to go, and Monday night, we were in 9th place, two spots out of the money (and 7th place is not much money.) Sitting in the BABI free agent market was a real useful guy, Salomon Torres, now the closer for the Pirates. Because it is after August 31, he’s not keepable for next year, and almost everyone in BABI is out of FAAB money.

But the Pecklers still had $16 to spend. We are in 11th out of 12 in saves at 17, with no closer. We haven’t had a save since we traded Dempster back in July. The Falkuhns are at 20 saves, also without a closer. Neither of us has moved in ages. But with a closer, we can pick up that save point, only one, because the next team is way, way, way ahead of us.

To be honest, we actually do have a closer. With Izzy out for the season, and maybe forever, we’ve got both Looper and Wainwright. One of them is probably the closer, but the Cards haven’t had a save opportunity in the two weeks since Izzy stopped pitching, so who knows?

Back to the Doc and me. He looked at me and raised his eyebrows. I whispered, “the Lickers (in 7th place) have dropped. We’re only 2 points behind them.”

The Doc answered, “Go for it.”

So the question was, do we want to spend some money to pick up Torres so we can get one more point in saves and give us a slightly better chance to pass the two teams barely ahead of us and try to win a couple of hundred? You’ve gotta love the Doc. The Pickled Pecklers never give up.

On Tuesday morning, I called the Doc just after he got home and just before he went to bed, to discuss the bid amount. The minimum bid is $5, which means $30 with the transaction fee. The question was should we bid more?

We were convinced that Geo, competing for real money (2nd place), would finally realize he should pick him up. He’s been bidding about $8 a pop lately. We decided to go all in. $16 bid plus $25 transaction fee, total $41. All to maybe win $200. And maybe it wouldn’t matter, because maybe we’d get that point from the theoretical Cardinal closers anyway. And yes, we wanted the guy, and we wanted to try. But we had extra incentive: if we could pick him up and screw Geo simultaneously, it would really be worth the extra money.

Of course, because we’re partners, it’s only costing each of us only half the dough. An extra $5.50 to screw Geo? Hey, I’m the guy that went both ways on a $15 pot with a pair of jacks high and a jack low. Woulda won the high too, but I refused to win a measly $8 pot. Aw hell, I’m still on tilt.

It turned out Geo didn't even bid on Torres. No one did. Geo dumped Hennessey and picked up Jeremy Accardo instead. What was he thinking? I've got no idea. Going after wins by picking up a middle reliever on a crappy team with a 4.64 ERA? Yep, that's the ticket. BTW, Geo, there is still an NL closer out there. I'll let you figure it out. But it's too late. Who loves ya, baby?

Last night Torres got us our first save since July 10. Only 3 more saves to go. Meanwhile, we’re sitting in seventh as I type this. Life is good. I’ve always liked that Torres kid. (For you Giants fans who actually read this far, that’s a joke.)