Sunday, May 18, 2008

yippee, Skippy!

My dad and I were arguing about the amount of credit Schumaker should get for the RBI base hit that won the game. 

I said I thought it was garbage that it wasn't scored a double*, since if it'd been any other point in the game he would have easily made it in to second. 

My dad (who is a big Cardinals fan but just can't see past the end of his own nose sometimes) argued that because of the situation--game on the line, runners in scoring position--Crawford was playing extra shallow, and in a normal situation would have fielded the ball for an out. 

I argued back that they had been playing him shallow for the whole game, and in fact, most teams play Skip shallow on a regular basis because he's not known for his power hitting.

*Just wanted to point out that when I was watching the game, it was originally scored a single (which I think must be the norm for game-ending base hits other than home runs), but when I checked online, I found that ESPN.com and MLB.com are calling it a double, and that's good enough for me.

Anyway, it was a tough game, the Rays are a very good team, and it was nice to win one for Stan "the Man" on his day. It was also nice to win the rubber game of the series. Mostly it was nice to win one just for the sake of winning one.

We head to San Diego tomorrow. I had this whole shpiel ready about Jake Peavy and his right arm, but lo and behold, no Peavy tomorrow. Anybody know anything about Ledezma?

At any rate, he'll be up against Wellemeyer who is arguably our best pitcher (at least lately).

Tuesday's pitching matchup will be Maddux, who's looking for 351, versus Piñeiro, whose 2-2 record doesn't tell the whole story.

Wednesday it'll be Chris Young (4-3, 4.18 ERA) and Braden Looper (5-3, 4.25 ERA).

The Pǎds are in the basement of their division (not that anybody's truly competing against Arizona) and are 12 games below .500. They have only won TWO series this season, haven't (obviously) swept anybody, and have only won back-to-back games TWICE. I'll just let you draw your own conclusions.