A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball

The St. Louis Cardinals need to reconfigure that left field wall. It’s absurd that Molina’s ball was ruled a GRD. Price is whining about only having 10 seconds to decide and I agree with him about that. But he’s the manager, he’s supposed to know the rules and the configuration of the park. That ball CLEARLY hit up against the advertisement wall, anyone could see that. I’m not sure how all the umpires missed it when the announcers caught it right away (as well as Duvall, more on him in a moment). I’m assuming this happens a lot is St Louis because of that inexplicably configured wall. How is everyone playing and/or umpiring not critically aware of this?

And again, why would the Cardinals even be so dumb as to set this up to be so controversial? We’ve got ads out in left field, if the ball hits an ad it’s just part of the field of play. The way it looks to me, there is about an 8 inch (or so) break between the wall and the the ad wall above it. It may be set back slightly too, I can’t tell. But why create such a muddled situation? They are both walls, if a ball bounces off either one it should still be considered in the field of play. At the VERY least, paint a giant yellow line at the bottom of the ads to distinguish between the two walls.

A ground rule double is a ball hit fairly that leaves the field of play. Did Molina’s ball look like it reasonably left the field of play to any of you?

Duvall was interviewed after the game. Nobody had a better look at where that ball hit than him. He said “I definitely knew it hit the sign but I wasn’t sure if that was a ground rule double or not.” Look, the Reds deserve major blame in this, too. When we would play away softball games the first thing everyone did pre-game was walk the field with the ump and he would tell us what was considered a home run and what wasn’t. How, at the major league level, do you not inform your freaking left fielder about that stupid ass ad wall being a ground rule double? Shouldn’t their version of Wotus have gone over that with him? That’s just incompetence as far as I’m concerned. Duvall could have started screaming for their to be a protest/review but he just walked off the field because he didn’t know the rule…….

If you feel like laughing about this instead of steaming, this is a pretty funny tweet.

Looking back on it, I never really believed in my heart that they had a chance to string together two days of hitting. We were jizzing on ourselves after Tuesday’s 19 hit outburst. But just like the *No Jizz Area!* sign that Stix scrawled out on a piece of cardboard and tries to strictly enforce daily in his jail cell, the Giants hitters were intent on not letting us jizz ourselves again last night.

Baseball has the funniest effect on fans. If your team does something ONE DAY the fans start tricking themselves into believing that’s the way things are. Any bad team can hit one day in a row. Some bad ones string together nice stretches of hitting together, just as we did in the first half of the season.

We just don’t have the hitters this year. I think some guys are having bad years (Panik, Belt and Span), some guys are probably hurting because they played the game too hard for too long (Pagan, Nunie, Pence, Posey and also maybe Panik) and some guys might just be worn down (Crawford). Take Span for example. I would bet ANYTHING that Span would be having a better year if he had Kent and Bonds hitting behind him. He’d be scoring more runs. That would probably create less pressure for him. Good things would unfold from there. And forget Kent and Bonds since that’s an unrealistic example. How about just Pence and Pagan in their prime? Pat the Bat? Uribe? What would I would give for an Andres Torres atop this line up…..

The 2016 Giants put way too much pressure on themselves individually by sucking collectively. You can’t win consistently like that. Being 0 for 5 billion when losing after 8 innings is evidence of that….

You know how sometimes we hear a players name and somebody says “Remember when he was a Giant?” and everyone is like “No. Absolutely no recollection.” That’s what you’ll say 10 years from now when somebody says “Remember when Gordon Beckham was a Giant?” Rich Rodriguez’s only at bat at the triple A level must have been a good one. Anyway, he’s a Brave now and we get Beckham and if I’m Specs I’m wondering just how much the Giants actually hate me.

All of a sudden, they started hitting. Let’s see if they can cobble together 2 games in a row. Someone needs to tell the Giants, before tonight’s game, that it’s ok to hit 2 games in a row…..

Somewhere is a dimly lit cell in the Clearwater county jail, Stix is whispering to himself “to get Belt in the 2 hole, I’d do it all again, I’d do it all again….”

I’m not one for omens signs or superstitions. Well, not lately anyway. Not with the weird and awful year it has been for Bay Area sports teams, and sports and rock & roll icons in general.

Anyhow, I found this moth on my doorstep yesterday night. An omen of good things? 6 games, 6 days, 3 teams, 2 spots.

I’m of a mind that we just need to get in. Even losing the one-game play-in means we made it to the playoffs. I’d rather lose the play-in game that be labeled the biggest fail in baseball history. At least since the playoff format started.

We get to take a day off from losing or sucking, whichever you pick to take the day off from. Marlins game tonight should be sold out. I woke up this morning marveling at the fact that Arnie and Fernandez died on the same day. Two guys who personified unbridled joy and happiness in the sports they played. One of them packed as much life as you could pack into a lifetime. The other one didn’t get a chance to do that.

I hope this video loads properly. I’ve watched this several times and it just makes me feel good. Don’t spend even a second today bumming out on the Giants. It’s a waste of time. Go do something that makes you happy. Finite number of day, you know…..

Very sad news about Jose Fernandez. His start had gotten pushed back to Mon. Just wonder if he would have been out on a boat speeding through the night at 3am if he had to pitch today. One minute you’re shaking a hoe at the feds the next minute your boat is crashing on rocks. Life is precious. Don’t fuck it up.

8 games left….

Well, we did it. We were all out to do it but we ultimately ended up beating the 2016 PCL champs, the El Paso Chihuahua’s who were, coincidentally, wearing San Diego Padre uniforms last night. But who cares? A win is a win. Always looking for a proper measuring stick, I think it’s safe to say that we would have been good enough to take down the PCL this year if not for the biased rule against us being allowed to play for that certificate. I blame this on the ghost of Bud Selig….

Big Al Suarez is going tonight and me-thinks this won’t be his first rodeo with most of these fellers.

Agent 000 hit a bomb and we lost. That barely computes. But hey, no worries, the Mets and the Cardinals lost, too! It’s embarrassing being in this wild card race. I am not on board in the slightest with the take of “hey, if we can get in, anything can happen!” That’s a perspective for a team that’s at least half way decent. We suck. In literally every aspect of the game except starting pitching. In that area we have 2.5 solid starting pitchers as long as the first one isn’t getting stared at, the second one isn’t getting bitten in the balls by a crab and Mr. 0.5 is pitching in an easy, breezy pressure free game.

Do I think we could win a wild card game? Sure, anyone can. Do I think we could beat any other post season team in a 5 or 7 game series? Haha, no chance in hell. Just kill this season already. Pence is playing the OF like he’s half awake. If the Reverend is shutting it down it’s time we do, too. I don’t remember much about the ’85 hundo loss bunch but it has to be worse being a fan of this year’s team than that team. It HAS to.

Smarge going tonight in SD.

Cueto says it felt like his groin got bit by a crab and I have to believe there’s another way to let us know what that felt like. Kruk was gushing about Okert but this is the same guy who served up a fatty to Shimpf and now we’re supposed to trust him? Our bullpen has got some great arms but most of them are connected to some 10 cent heads.

Matty Moore Wednesday and I’ll be interested to see how he does. As far as pressure goes, this is one of his bigger starts as a Giant.

MadBum would be a big hit in prison. “Don’t look at me. Did you look at me? Stop disrespecting me!” It’s just such a simpleton approach to interacting with other humans.

Nothing to say about last night except the Giants learned a valuable lesson this season. You can’t build a 200 million dollar team and have it backed by a 10 cent bullpen. I like a lot of the guys in our pen, believe it or not. But collectively, they are not the right mix. The sad thing is that I am worried about management’s ability to build a bullpen for *today’s game.” I get that they built one that worked for the WS years. But frankly, I think that was lucky. The bullpen of today is stacked with dudes who throw gas. We have like one dude who throws gas and his location smokes copious amounts of pole. Plus, he doesn’t have the right make up for this job.

This is the same brass that thought that fucking lefty reliever was worth Bickford AND Susac. And he couldn’t be any more non-descript.

So don’t be surprised if this happens again next year…..

…..and cue Romo’s laugh track. I really need to see a video of this. I’d settle for a gif. I watched it live but now that I can’t find it anywhere on the internet I feel like I need to see it again to really let the *mosaic* of it wash over me. At the very least I’d like to get a Romo laugh track and play it whenever I see something stupid or absurd unfolding before my eyes…

Five back of the Dodgers. One back of the Mets. One UP on the Cardinals. About the only thing that’s remotely plausible is that the Cardinals go into Nepal and get blasted and watch their pitching staff implode. Even if that happens we still have the ongoing problem of sucking and even if we get a lead Bochy will just give it to Santiago GasCan and up in flames we go.

This is the worst September for baseball I can ever remember. Total let down.

Regarding the Crue….Kickstart My Heart is far and away my favorite Crue song. I’m not sure how anyone could listen to that and not get stoked to go do something.

With three World Series beauties in the bank since 2010, I really don’t have a problem with losing. It washes off me so easily I almost feel guilty. It’s not that I don’t care. I care. But I don’t understand some of these fans who are rioting on the KNBR airwaves about not getting Cespedes or losing a series to the Padres. They act like those pathetic losers in Willy Wonka who didn’t get all the candy they were promised. Winning a World Series is hard to do and you should spend your time celebrating those rare victories, not whining for an entire year when you don’t win.

While I don’t have a problem with not winning a World Series every year, I have a HUUUUUUGE problem with how we lose individual games. And we have reached a form of losing I don’t think I can ever recall experiencing as a Giants fan. Bruce Bochy has paralyzed his ability to manage successfully with his bizarre obsession with Santiago Casilla.

Bochy seems to have camped out in 2 defenses of the indefensible decision to use Casilla: 1) Casilla’s *stuff* and 2) his 31 saves. What Bochy doesn’t value: 1) Casilla’s mental state 2) the fact that the fans are booing him before he throws a pitch and the pitcher he is replacing is literally laughing out loud. Numbers 1 and 2 of *The Things Bochy Doesn’t Value* absolutely matter. You can’t just gloss over that like they don’t. And #2 sustains and worsens #1. And you cannot be a closer at any level of baseball if #1 is fucked up. Finally, this isn’t about the fans booing although they have every right to question Bochy’s decisions. Romo’s hee-haw all the way to the dugout showed what the players think of this shit….

Every single decision you make in your life comes down to risk/reward. The higher the risk, you better see a potential higher reward. Or you shouldn’t do it. That’s the poker player in me talking but if you think about it you can apply it to every decision you ever make. Since Bochy began this obsession with bringing Casilla into high risk situations I keep trying to figure out what his reward is. It doesn’t seem to come close to matching the risk. I’m assuming he’s trying to #1 win the game and #2 get Casilla’s confidence back. But at this point, Casilla has no chance of stringing the several successful outings together needed to rebuild his confidence. So one save is great but it will all soon be undone, exponentially, with the next impending implosion. And each blown save at this point in the season far outweighs any small bump to his confidence that a save might give him. I will cue up Romo’s laugh track if you tell me I’m wrong….

So none of this is making any sense unless #1 Bochy is trying to lose these games or #2 Bruce Bochy is suffering from a total breakdown to his own level of confidence. And if that’s the case our season is doomed and if he can’t figure #2 out in the off season it is time for him to go.

Maybe the Padres have just had the worst luck of any team in the history of baseball? The most potent 62 win team in the league?

Is it possible the Cardinals are worse than San Diego? Of course not. I think I am being too linear with everything. “This team lost to this team so they are worse than this team…” That doesn’t work in baseball. Any team can beat any team in a series for a variety of reasons.

And for whatever those reasons are, we are beating St Louis rather handily right now.

I saw something last night, didn’t understand it, maybe you guys could help me out. It was the 4th inning and Buster Posey hit a ball in the air (no seriously, he did) and it flew and kept flying and it ended up going over that wall that separates the fans from the field. Then for some reason play just kinda stopped. Buster was running slower than usual around the bases and the fans were cheering. Cardinals were standing around, nothing was happening and the ball he hit was never returned to the field of play. What exactly happened there? Did the Giants or Buster get penalized because Buster seemed to have inadvertently lost the ball they were using?

It’s Saturday. Go dominate this great day….

So sticking Nunie and Span at the bottom of the LU turned out to be the trick. Interesting…..

Matt Moore has been dominant in 3 of his last 4 starts. He’s been the anti-Leake. I don’t see any reason why he can’t keep that going tonight. Whether we can string together 2 good hitting games in a row is definitely in question. Luke Weaver isn’t like those 3 bad Padre pitchers, he’s actually pretty good. And we don’t know him. Uh oh.

Wonder what it’s like to be a Cardinal fan this morning. Losing to the Giants has got to be an ignominious defeat. Those fans have been going through a pretty parallel year with us. Disappointment, frustration, being let down time and time again. Just like Giants fans, right?

It’s probably almost easier to be an A’s fan. You know you’re going to suck, there are no surprises when you ultimately do.

Probably the worst part of KNBR , besides the commercial of the woman who starts off by saying “My number 2 doesn’t look like a number 2 is there a number 3?” is how dumb their callers are. Multiple fans have called up this week relating the 2016 collapse to the 1993 season. They’re calling it the same thing. This is just like ’93, they say.

Do these dipshits even listen to the words coming out of their mouth? And the hosts are only mildly denying them.

2016 and 1993 have literally nothing in common. For starters, the ’93 team was actually good. Their winning % in by month in July, August and Sept: .692, .577, .571. The Giants winning percentage in 2016 (by month): .458, .407, and (my personal favorite) .385. The Braves in ’93 winning % in those 3 months: .679, .731, .704. The Dodgers winning %: .625, .536, .667. This Dodger team would have gotten killed by that Braves team…….

What we are dealing with today is light years away from ’93. Our 2016 team sucks. And the Dodgers aren’t much better but they are definitely better. And this wild card race (something that wasn’t even around in ’93, the callers might want to recognize that) is completely misnamed. What is the opposite of a race? It needs to be called something that is monotonous, pathetic and without an actual celebration for whoever backs in as the ultimate representatives……

Do any of you guys believe in signs? Stuff that happens to you that ends up foretelling the future? Yeah, that seems like a stretch right?

And then I looked back on my day in Oakland yesterday. Signs that lead to nowhere. A woman dropping a deuce right there on the sidewalk in front of me.

And this morning it’s hard for me not to think that those fake signs and that woman and that damn sidewalk weren’t trying to tell me something about the 2016 Giants…..

The good news is that I’m headed back to Oaktown right now. As I dodge 880 potholes at a solid 5 mph clip I will keep my eyes peeled for indicators of what today’s game might bring……

…and then Paul “Small” Clemens said “Nope!”

Loo covered last night loss succinctly and as Flap-accurate as possible:

No pole left unsmoked…

Nothing about last night’s pathetic lay down surprised any of us (or the VMI guys). We’ve seen this type of limp performance out of the Giants before. To be truthful, I watched almost none of it except some quick glimpses during 49er time outs. Even then, I just had to look away. Bad baseball seems to be all the more boring and maddening if you trying to watch it in between a pro football game. I don’t know what that’s all about. I don’t find baseball boring unless I am watching a football game at the same time and that makes no sense because I greatly prefer baseball to football.

But regardless, we got beaten by arguably the worst current starting pitcher in the National League. At home. In a game we really needed to win. Versus a team that is flat-awful….

Enjoy your day. I’m in fucking Oakland all week at a conference and it sucks here…..

….”thankfully the Padres choked.”

That was the line in Ashkon’s brilliant Don’t Stop Believing video that made me first take notice. I have a vague recollection of the Padres choking so it must have happened. I dunno, 2010 was a long time ago.

Anyway, the Padres are in town and this time they don’t need to choke. They just need to keep on suckin’. This is a moment for Smarge to rise tall and meet the expectations of that contract or fall ant-small and turn in one of his confounding efforts. Kruk will boil it down to one thing: will Smarge use that breaking ball sensi Raggs methodically taught him throughout the year or will he try to blow every Padre away with gas?

How about we watch this one more time just to get some of the old juices flowing….

One of the few days of the year where baseball isn’t going to be on my radar….

After watching Bochy trot the tired and bedraggled Span up to the top of the line up once again yesterday, I finally realized what we’ve all known for so long: Bochy has his guys and those are his guys. Period. I don’t think it even matters if he likes them or not (and that’s a good thing). I mean, there’s no way in hell he likes Casilla with the repeated stink eye he gets from him every time he removes him from the mound mid-blown save.

And that’s not a bad approach for a manager to take. There are ebbs and flows throughout 162 and if a manager jerked around players the way bloggers would they’d probably finish in last place every year.

But Bochy is critically lacking the ability to act in a timely manner when a player is either done or it’s just not going to happen for them with games dwindling down. There are countless examples of this, we all know them.

Hey, other guys might step up and fill the gaps of guys like Span and Casilla. And that might be enough. But it doesn’t mean Bochy is perfect, it doesn’t mean he’s impervious to second guessing. Old dogs know old tricks. That’s what makes them old……

“It’s all good baby, baby….it was all a dream…..”
But it wasn’t a dream, Biggie Smalls. All that stuff really happened. Gearrin was in left field. Casilla was allowed to pitch again and blew another save. And yet somehow, at 12:05am, the Giants won the game. A strange number of Flappers including those on the east coast were here live as human confirmation of all of it.

Question: Has Bruce Bochy gone mad? Or senile? Or does he just give 15 fucks less than he gave the day before? Maybe he’s now controlled by the mob and he screwed up losing last night’s direct order.

Another consideration: Bochy is trying to stick it to Casilla. Teach him a lesson. But would he do that at the expense of the season?

How about this one: Bochy hasn’t changed at all. Sobering thought…..

All I know is that a bunch of Giants fans are walking around tired today because Bochy is managing games like a quick pick lotto machine spitting out losing tickets. The pattern is now undeniable.

He seems to have lost his edge…..

Some solid words at the end of yesterday’s dark day thread: Red Rocks and Star Trek are two topics I could discuss forever.

Now, it’s back to reality. On the surface, it’s a nice looking match up against a bad team in a hitters yard. Sadly, we have the worst VMI for hitters on the board and if you think that’s a joke take a look at what happened to Colorado yesterday when they toted the worst VMI on the board into San Diego. I played Clayton Richard blindly and was rewarded.

Plus, Ruby de la Rosa is back and I seem to remember her shutting us down at least once last year….

But whatever, when faced with adversity Kirk would just bang the shit out of some green chick and let Spock figure out how to fix that episode’s conundrum. There has to be some type of analogy we can take from that and use in a positive way in today’s game……

I’m as pissed off as anyone about last night’s game but I just want to defend Bochy for a minute. Who was he supposed to bring into the 9th? Casilla is still the closer and he did save the game the night before.

And Bochy DID remove him mid inning. There doesn’t seem to be much angst directed at Osich but there should be. This guy was brought in to do one job and he fucked it up. I hate Osish. He seems to do one of three things: walk a batter, strike out a batter or give up a bomb. He now seems to have added beaning batters to his “repertoire”.

So after that dumbfuck move, Bochy brings in Nathan and he does what he’s supposed to do. He gets a lazy fly ball hit to left/center field. You can question where Pagan was playing. You can question his bizarre, meandering route to a ball that HAD to get caught, but you can’t question the job Nathan did. He started Hundley off with 2 teaser breaking balls. When that didn’t work he challenged him and he got a ball hit that should have been an out.

Once the bases were loaded the game was pretty well lost. Nathan got down 1-0 and had to throw a hittable ball and it got blasted to the wall.

Now, if you say “Well Bochy should have brought Nathan in to start the inning” I am with you but that is total hindsight. Casilla had just saved the game the night before and closers don’t typically lose their gigs right after they successfully do their job.

It was a terrible inning and Casilla sucks. On that we can all agree. But I am wondering what Bochy should have done that won’t just look like you’re just “Monday morning QBing” the move last night. Ok, go….

_________________

Now, for a little perspective. Let me take you back to 2009 (morning KNBR guys reminded me of this game). Kuip’s  “this is not good, folks” game. Giants are tied with the Rockies 1-1 headed to the 14th. We go up 4-1. In the bottom of the 14th, Ryan Shitborghs I mean Spilborghs hits a grand slam to beat us 6-4. In 2009 we had nothing. At least now we have 3 in the bank. Don’t forget that when you’re walkin’ the earth this morning mumbling to yourself about Casilla.

Three runs in 2 games at Coors. I guess the + is that we’ve *only* given up 8. Anyone else have a problem with Nunie replacing The Invisible Span at the top of the LU? OBP is an overrated approach to determining who should lead off. I fully endorse Nunie at the top of the LU until further notice.

Another lefty Colorado starter today. I wonder how many of our lefty vets sit again today…..

Yesterday was……a holiday for many. More than I thought actually. Bochy continues to wait out *his guys* and they continue to disappoint him. Buster has got problems that a day off isn’t going to fix. Belt is a hot mess. Span is….look, the bottom line is that nobody on this team is leading the way to anything other than the merciful end to this season…..

Another game tonight. I’ll watch it with a stoic, staid glaze….

Ah, Labor Day. Time to relax. Unless you’re the Giants and you just came off a grinding 4 game series against the best team in the league. You lost a heart breaker in 13 and the only time to rest is on a plane that jettisons you to the top of Nepal to play a game where you’re going to spend more time trying to breath than hitting a baseball.

Sounds like a nice, easy breezy day for the Orange and Black, yeah?

The only guys who probably aren’t half dead today are Crawford and Pagan. But who knows, it is Coors Field, the dumbest place to play sports in all of sports.

Make it a great day, Flappers!

I have no idea how websites determine the % chance that a team will make the post season but I checked a few different sites and they all seem to come in at 85% for the Giants. I get it, the wild card and all. They must be counting the play-in game which is really what it is. But for a team with the worst record in mlb since the break, for a team that seems to not be able to ever put good pitching and timely hitting together in a single game, that seems like a pretty high percentage, no?

Cueto today and he has become as confounding as his delivery. I wouldn’t pretend to know in a million  years how he’ll do today. My guess would be awful. Unless of course we aren’t hitting Lackey at all, then I think he’ll be lights out……

Yesterday I said I’m not giving up but I’m taking the first step towards that (Oregon?) and that is trying to extricate myself from the normal emotions I’ve had for these games. You simply can’t will a forlorn team to victory and that’s what the Giants are right now. So, why spend time feeling shitty about it?

I woke up this morning remembering the 2014 team. At least, trying to remember them. I remembered Bum and Panda and….that was about it. I also remembered not allowing myself to believe they could actually pull that off until they were literally declared the NL rep in the World Series. I pulled up the post season 25 man roster just to get some of the old feelings back about that team.

Our SP’s were listed as Bum, Huddy, Peavy, Voggy. Hmmmm…. I think I’d take Bum, Cueto, Moore and Smarge over those 4.

Our 5 outfielders were….I can barely type this without laughing…..Blanco, Ishikawa, Morse, Pence and Juan Perez. Even a Span disliker like myself would prefer Pagan, Span and Pence out there…..

I probably shouldn’t have looked up that 2014 team. It’s screwing up my attempt to release myself from the emotions I’ve been having for the 2016 team.

The main emotion I’m having trouble with his *frustration*. I don’t understand why we are the worst team in mlb since the break. We have good SP and good enough position players to be AT WORST like a mid-pack team. I can’t put it on the coaching staff because it’s not their job to motivate these guys. The coaching staff could fuck it up if they were completely incompetent but not even R-Kelly could bungle that many *sends*. And it’s not fair to put it all on the bullpen. They haven’t been that bad. In fact, many games they are very good but no one seems to notice.

And yet here we sit at 15-29. Makes no sense to me at all! But hey, it’s been 20 years and I still don’t even know wtf *hakuna matata* means.

Just try to relax, Flavor. Exhale…Serenity now, serenity now……

Yesterday’s game was irritating because it was one of those games where you could just stop and notice, in nearly about any inning you wanted, that it wasn’t going to be our night. Smarge has a 47 pitch first inning. Longer than any inning for any Giant this  year. The longest of his career. All the contact, all the dinky dunky bullshit. Sometimes the ball doesn’t bounce your way. Sometimes you can’t get the ball to miss bats.

And then there’s this: we still have the WORST record since the break (15-28) worse than any other team in the major leagues. THE WORST. You know all those teams who are out of it, who’s fans gave up a long time ago? The Braves, the Brewers, etc? Those teams have been better than us for going into a second month now.

Trip on that and then realize this stretch run might be a mirage…….

Probably my favorite thing about twitter, besides @Super70ssports, is that I get every single mlb bomb texted to my phone the moment it gets hit. What can I say, I like to keep up with the Bomb-ez. It’s not as distracting as you’d think, my phone is almost always on vibrate or silent.

So I’m at my daughter’s back to school night and it’s grinding along and suddenly this bad boy comes across my phone screen:

My first reaction was calm, I just thought “wow, that’s a lot of runs. But lemme go check the score because it’s Coors, maybe its 15-12 Rockies or something like that.” I knew we were pretty deep in that game based on what time it was. I hadn’t checked the score in at least an hour but at that time Colorado was comfortably ahead.

Head to Score app, open up Dodger game…10-8 LA in top of 9th. I thought to myself “you have GOT to be fucking kidding me!!!” which actually wouldn’t have been so bad except I didn’t think it I muttered it, fairly loudly, and like half the parents in the room whipped a look at me like I was an active shooter who had just entered the room.

Remember that gif of Fister pissed off at Gomez for that meandering attempt at a catch? I was Fister in that moment.

It was not my finest parental moment.

I don’t know about you guys, but I continue to not worry much about the Dodgers. They were a pitch away from getting swept at Coors. And while a gift blast like that might galvanize a normal team, I don’t see that happening here. The Dodgers are without a soul and completely sans heart. And if you want numbers, take a look at how many innings their bullpen has pitched this year. They are checking in at a cool 475.2, most in the NL, shockingly even more than The Reds. Nearly 100 more than the Giants. I am banking on that bullpen getting VERY tired here in September. And for a team that I don’t think is very good anyway, they will be a ripe target this month.

I’m way more concerned with our ability to pitch and hit consistently enough to catch them. Get to 90 wins somehow and we are in.