Friday, May 26, 2006

Clarification

Watching the Giants, thus far, beat up on the Colorado Rockies. Travis Ishikawa showing out with a couple of hits...

Wait. This just in. The Kansas City Royals have defeated the New York Yankees, 7-6. I don't talk about the Royals much on this site because I really don't have the time, but their losing streaks this year have been like having someone telling you they're going to punch you in the balls, then slowly winding up to do it. You know it's coming, you know it's going to hurt, but when it happens it still manages to hurt more than you ever thought it could.

Anyhow, the nice thing I see in the Giants game isn't necessarily Ishikawa's nice game or even Jason Schmidt's dominant performance to this point, but rather Omar Vizquel. Reason being that after Vizquel's incredibly hot start and subsequent nosedive back to Earth, he's heated back up again -- always nice to see out of someone his age playing the 2nd toughest defensive position on the diamond.

Also, wanted to clarify something about yesterday's post and a comment that was left in response to it by AllFrank which read:
You don't run a team by saying "yeah, he can't be worse than..." Merkin clearly is not ready. He didn't win a spot out of Spring Training and he's done nothing in Fresno to show he's improved significantly. Taschner, on the other hand, has improved, tho I still don't see enough improvement to make him the clear cut choice to be called up. It will be a lefty, and the two best lefty's right now are Taschner and Sanchez. They, at least are showing the potential to succeed in the bigs, which Mrkin is not.
This was in response to an admittedly flippant comment I made that Merkin Valdez "couldn't be any worse than (Scott) Munter". Now, while I still believe that to be true, this was not meant to be any kind of endorsement of Valdez or suggestion that bringing up Valdez is the organization's smartest choice.

Rather, if you read the post, I simply said I wanted to see Valdez brought up. Didn't mean I thought he'd be any good, didn't mean I thought that move made sense. I simply like flamethrowing relievers that strike a lot of hitters out, which is what Valdez does best. Nevermind that he doesn't seem to do anything else well -- throws fast, strikes guys out, throwing fast and striking guys out is an exciting thing to watch, thus...

...I really hate explaining myself, but I suddenly had visions of other people thinking that yesterday's entry was me endorsing Valdez's promotion. Thought I was pretty clear that although I wanted to see him pitch, Valdez wasn't doing well, thus his callup was unlikely at best.

Sidenote: You should see continued improvement out of Ray Durham. While many might attribute this to Durham simply snapping out of his early-season troubles and finally becoming the hitter that he really is, to that I say balderdash.

"Balderdash!" There. I said it.

No, this is because I invoked the Jersey Mojo, something that can be used once per year by a passionate fan who owns an authentic (and expensive) jersey of a major league player.

It's simple. When a player is slumping and you own an authentic (again, expensive, and something that you really paid way too much money for), then you have the ability to invoke a hot streak for that player once in a season. Durham was slumping, I invoked the Jersey Mojo, and the result is a bonafide hot streak.

And don't you bastards go checking your shoes, the bullshit you're wading through isn't even ankle-deep. You'll be fine, just fine.

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