So. I'm following the Phils game, and it's been a wild couple days. I was at the Park Friday night, Phils-A's, expecting, logically I might add, for the Phillies to be able to do something against one of the worst teams in baseball. I was mistaken. The A's roughed up Ranger Suarez, the bats were silenced, runners were left on base, the umps were screwing us and we looked pathetic. A's I had never heard of were getting RBIs. And then Lawrence Butler, who's been very meh this year, comes off the bench and hits a homer late. Like, to add insult to injury, here's a guy that could have been here the whole time kicking the shit out of us now.
The Saturday game was much better. I watched that game in a colleague's backyard, several beers crushed enjoying the moment. Tyler Phillips, the starter, was a local product, and he was pitching beautifully. The offense kept making it even more of a stretch for Oakland. It was an incredible moment, and perhaps the single most triumphant thing to come out of Pennsylvania that day.
But that Sunday, the day after, was something different. I was gonna have the Phils game on in the other room, and a good friend of mine, who comes from a family of Mets fans, was going to his first game at CitiField. I'd been wanting him to go for a while, that's a great stadium, and he was finally getting there. The Mets were playing the Rockies, who had German Marquez back but were still a last place team. I told him it'd likely be an easy win.
The Phillies...for the umpteenth time during the runup to the ASG break, failed to appear. And not only were the A's on again, but they were crushing Michael Mercado. Evidently Phillips won the fifth starting position that day, because Mercado got chased by a triple-A team. But what was even more crucial was that Lawrence Butler who, again, had a really slow start to the season...had a three-homer day against us. Butler could power hit, I knew that, but 3 in one day against the best team in the NL? He had five homers before the Phils series, and he left with nine. We turned his season around. Good for us.
So I checked the Mets game, because I was at least hoping my friend Marc got something nice out of that day, and Pete Alonso had decked one early so I figured there was a shot. No...no, Jose Quintana got chased and the Rockies were leading. Even stranger, Michael Toglia, a corner guy so mediocre that I had no idea he'd even gotten to 13 homers by July...had himself...a three-homer day. The guy's hitting .190 and he hit 3 home runs against the Mets.
So let's recap. Two different obscure young guys for two terrible teams had three-homer games against teams that were better than them, on the same day. And of course they were the two games I had a vested interest in that day. I don't know what this says about Butler or Toglia or anything, but...it was just wild. The harbingers of doom are two people that no one would expect to have three-homer days.
The Rockies and A's aren't gonna have many other moments of pure subversion this year. Both will likely end in last, and both will get mediocre material out of Toglia and Butler this year. But they had that Sunday, that moment, to absolutely floor me. And they deserve props for that.
Coming Tonight: I never thought this guy would become such a consistent power hitter, and such a consistent starting infielder, but here we are.
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