Can you feel it? That little twinge when you look at the name of a player you kept and his sub-.100 batting average or his bloated 5-plus ERA?
It happens about this time in the season.
Panic.
Did you keep the right player?
** Cough, cough, Franmil Reyes **
Did you draft the right reliever in the fourth round?
** Cough, cough, Andrew Miller **
The urge to drop is one many have to fight 11 days in because that may wind up being the biggest mistake of them all.
The last thing you want to do is give up on someone you invested in.
Take for example my boy Jesse Winker. He’s 1-for-20 right now, batting .050.
Any 30th round or later pick with that batting average would be back on the wire right now, but as a keeper, I have to have faith that he’ll be better than the first eight games of his season.
So many players, even the great ones, go through 1-for-20-like stretches during the regular season. It just is less noticeable in June and July,
In the first week of April, it’s much worse.
Things should average out, or at least one would hope.
MONKEY SEE, MONKEY BOOM
I just sorted homers by teams, and Monkey was sitting at the top with 22.
That was not the case two days ago, I know this for sure.
So, I wondered what the heck happened?
The answer: nine homers in two days. He blasted six on Friday — thanks to a two-homer night by Mike Trout — and another three on Saturday — thanks to yet another homer by Trout. The $430 million dollar man has four homers in three days now.
I feel a little bad for Choo, who has 17 homers this week. I thought I had it bad going up against Firestine, who keeps hitting homers to take a 1-homer lead on me, but Choo really has it bad. He’s facing the JLB’s home run leader after a monster two-day stretch.
Of course, as mentioned, Trout was a big part of this, but so has been Adam Jones, the 13th-round pick who is batting .395 with four homers and six RBIs for the Diamondbacks.
Obviously, our resident Orioles fan would be the one reaping the benefits of this start. He’s all about Orioles — current and former.
THE WORST BLOWN SAVE IN BASEBALL
To me there is nothing worse than a reliever entering a game with a one-run lead and the bases loaded and no outs.
It’s a real no-win situation for the pitcher.
Barring three straight strikeouts or a combo of strikeouts and perfectly placed balls in play, it’s going to be a blown save.
A groundout to get out No. 1? Too bad, you just got tagged with a blown save.
Another out to allow the go-ahead run to score and since the runs scored do not belong to you, the eventual loss will get hung on the pitcher who put the runners on.
How fair does that seem?
We’re smart enough in scoring to make sure the loss goes to the pitcher that put on the runs, but the negative statistic of a blown save goes to the guy who came in and recorded three straight outs — you know, like Adam Ottavino did tonight.
I hate that stat.
I’d hate it even more today if it weren’t for the fact that Andrew Miller picked up a well-deserved blown save for the Cards and thus making it fairly irrelevant at his point.
Maybe I should drop him.
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