Games That Matters: May 9th-May 11th

I have to say that Juan Cruz so far this season has been exactly what I have hoped he would be. He's picked up the long innings when I have needed, got a couple of outs to set up the rest of the bullpen to close out a game and when needed, came in to keep a game close and allow my hitters to maybe come back and snatch a win. That being said, you know that the results of a game can't be too good if you're leading off by talking about a middle reliever. It wasn't all bad, as we lost our first game against the St. Louis Cardinals 4-2, but we didn't muster up much offense besides a solo homer from Sammy Sosa. We did score a run in the 9th off closer Jason Isringhausen, one of the Generation K pitchers I talked about before, but really Matt Morris has his best stuff working against us, giving up only 1 run in 7 innings. And Cruz did what we needed, went 3 innings, only gave up one run and bridged the gap from Shawn Estes, who went 5 to Antonio Alfonseca, who finished the night off. Let's just go back out there and try and get them tomorrow. 

Baseball is a game of numbers and stats to simplify things. You want to know how many wins a certain hitter is responsible for? There's a formula out there for it. You want to know who is more valuable, a .240 slugger with 42 homers, 120 RBI, 65 BB and 175 K's or the hitter with a .315 average, 32 doubles, 3 homers 85 walks and 50 strikeouts, you can figure that out too. But with those numbers come some ridiculous ones too, like the 'Quality Start'. This is one of those worthless stats that exist.  The only thing you need for a quality start is 6 or more innings and 3 or less earned runs. Now, those two numbers would get you a 4.50 ERA. Not exactly ground breaking numbers. For Jason Johnson, a quality start was all he could accomplish against us today as he went up against the pitching buzz saw that is Mark Prior. In his 15 innings of work so far in May, Prior has struck out 25 in those 15 innings, giving up 10 hits and 2 walks along the way. Meanwhile, Johnson only gave up 2 earned runs in 7 innings and was handed a loss. Lenny Harris provided the offense today in a start in place of the slumping Aramis Ramirez, going 3 for 4 with a run scored and an RBI. And another start at 3B tomorrow. 

It's safe to say that when Carlos Zambrano threw the ball over the plate, the Cardinals hammered it hard. And usually when a team hammers the ball hard you hope it's right at someone. Unfortunately for Zambrano, that didn't happen, as he gave up 8 runs on 9 hits in 5 and a third today. The big culprit was Eli Marrero, who hit 2 doubles of Z, including a bases clearing double in the third inning that started that a 5-run inning. Not much else you can say but get em next time, but I'm tired of saying that. We need to put together some quality wins before it's too late. But it's only May and we have a long season ahead of us. 

We've got a 4-game set coming up against the Brewers, who took two out of three from us last week. Hopefully we fare better in their ballpark. Kerry Wood vs Todd Ritchie starts it off, followed by Matt Clement vs Bronson Arroyo, Estes vs Matt Kinney and Prior vs Dave Burba to finish it up. Were sitting 2.5 behind the Reds right now, so a split won't do us much good.