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2 Week Progress Report
I'm not much into the daily post-game reviews, far too easy to be overly-reactionary about one play or one moment that doesn't really say much about the team or individuals in generals. But now that we're two weeks and eleven games into the season, let's discuss a few trends and other tidbits that have caught my eye.
- The $18 million dollar man is struggling, no doubt. The easy answer is that he's struggling with the over-bearing expectations of his record-breaking contract, but that's a bit too subjective for my tastes. The biggest fear on my part was that the patience he found last year would disappear and well so far it has and it hasn't. His pitches per plate appearance is at 3.86 just off his career high from last year which was 3.90, but his walk rate is down to 0.40 per plate appearance. Of course as long as he's not hitting much, teams will go after him so hopefully a few dingers will get him going on the year, start scaring off the other teams from pitching to him and hopefully those few dingers are coming really soon. He could also help himself by not getting picked off every time he's on-base, that would help...a lot...for my sanity.
- The other man under the microscope, Lou Piniella, has had his moments of good and bad. For the most part, he's kept a consistent lineup and well he did bench Jacque against the one lefty starter we faced to this point (Chris Capuano) - promising signs no doubt. The Murton/Floyd left field situation has favored Floyd over the last five games, then of course Floyd was one of the few players hitting over .300 on the team and Murton did strikeout 3 times versus Harang on Opening Day and Arroyo is rather brutal versus righties. Yesterday would have been a good day to get Murton in, but then of course it was Jackie Robinson Day, so make your own conclusions.
If I was to make any real criticisms of Lou so far, it's that it appears he's forgotten that he's in the National League. He seems to burn through his bench players pretty quickly and then is left with some rather undesirable situations late in the game. Situations he could probably dictate in the American League where the lack of a pitcher hitting doesn't throw the occasional cog in the wheel as it does in the NL. Of course, this is probably why he was pushing for a six-man bench. Hopefully the NL game comes back to him as the season goes moves forward.
-The big culprit in our 4-7 start is our offense or rather lack thereof. 5 home runs in 11 games isn't going to cut it for an offense that will certainly not lead the league in getting on-base. Sure, we're 9th in Team OBP so far, but third to last in taking walks, but as I mentioned earlier, when you're not hitting the pitchers will have a tendency to go after you. There's a lot of blame to go around, bad weather, bad situational hitting, bad umpires and just plain 'ol bad luck, but for the most part I haven't seen anything that has me overly worried about any one individual.
Time to get on the winning path, of course we get no favors in the schedule with the Padres, Braves, Cardinals, Brewers and Cardinals again coming up. Then of course, you've got to beat the good teams if you're going to be one of them.
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