The last time I prepped posts on this blog was Thursday night. Right after the ASG starters were announced. I was headed to a Yankee game the following night so I just preprogrammed stuff. And then I went to the game, and midday Saturday my laptop decided to crap out, and I had to take it to the shop, five days later here we are again. I hadn't been backing it up so all the customs stayed on my drive, and all I could do is just roll stuff out on other computers and wait for it to be alright, which it was.
Okay. So, a week without writing about baseball. Where does that leave us? Well...the teams I wanted to fall apart haven't. The Yankees have stopped cold. And with a week to go before the All-Star Game, a season that seemed so fresh and exciting is looking to be inundated with the same boring sneaker upper teams as usual. The Sox, Astros and Cardinals are all over .500 and making their way up the standings, and it's...infuriating.
Of the three, I think the Red Sox have had the most calculated and logical climb to legitimacy, simply because they're actually a decent team this year. There were no attempts to not be, which I can't say for Houston or St. Louis. The Sox have been in 3rd for most of the season, and have stayed strong despite being in the same division as the Orioles and Yankees. I saw them play the Yanks last week, and while there were some mistakes from people like Ceddanne Raffaela, Enmanuel Valdez and Tyler O'Neill, this is still a very well put together team, with a lot of guys who can come through. Masataka Yoshida let a stray Clay Holmes ball with two outs in the bottom of the ninth go over the wall. Then Raffaela did the same in extras. Rafael Devers nailed us all night. Tanner Houck shut us down thoroughly. It really is as simple as having the rotation together as well as keeping the lineup moving. Even Connor Wong, who I always wrote off as a decent enough backup catcher, is a .300 hitter and can do enough to slap balls away from people.
The Astros, though, have the nearest swipe at 1st place, as they're currently 2 games behind the Mariners, who've slipped quite a bit with nobody hitting. The one aspect that prevent the Astros from staying in it during the first two months, the pitching, has mellowed to a consistent unit. Not perfect, as Spencer Arrighetti still has too many starts where he gets lit up, but Hunter Brown, who was troublesome early, hit a point where everything clicked, and he's had some excellent starts since then. Brown had a 1.16 ERA in June, with 36 Ks and 4 wins. He did get lit up in his last start but, again, some guys take a bit to really figure it out. Valdez has also evened into a strong year, with a 7-5 record and a 3.84 ERA. There is the issue of that open fifth spot, and they've been using Shawn Dubin there at the moment, but those three and Blanco have been very strong, and more befitting of the overall strength of the lineup.
I think the Cardinals are the weakest of these three infuriating teams, and they have to worry about the Pirates and Reds also getting hot soon enough, despite a 4.5 game head start. I just don't see a lot of unity with them, a lot of older players and younger players coexisting despite complete differences in mentality, under a manager that no one likes. If they win this year, it'll be in spite of themselves. Never in my life have I seen a team with so many crucial players flat out failing [Arenado, Walker and Scott, Goldy arguably] continue to do well. It's really organizational strength. I dunno where it'll get 'em ultimately, but they're lucky they're the Cardinals.
The good news is July is a weird month for momentum, and August is a lot more telling of the real stories in a given season. So if these three are still really intimidating a month from now, then I'll panic.
Coming Tomorrow- It is so great that we have another knuckleballer. And that he's doing really well.
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