"Every day is a new opportunity. You can build on yesterday's success or put its failures behind and start over again. That's the way life is, with a new game every day, and that's the way baseball is."-- Bob Feller
05/02/2012
Pirates 3 Cardinals 12
Dear Carlos Beltran,
It's funny how on the day your slump reached the magnitude (3 for 32) that inspired a worried press to interview you before the game about whether you were actually in a slump, you proceeded to go 4 for 5 with two 3- run home runs, finishing the game with a career-best seven RBIs. You told the beat reporters that you aren't hitting because you've lost that hitting feel and that it has nothing to do with batting clean up. (Although you did mention that you are being pitched differently in the fourth spot than you were in the second.) I'm just impressed that a reporter at least questioned whether you were in a slump because of your new lineup position. I mean, your slump started when you went to the clean up spot. I'm glad someone noticed and asked whether that was a problem instead of just saying you were just in a slump that happens to correlate with a new spot in the lineup. But I digress.
I'm guessing that you have that "feel" back. I think you got that feel back when you sent the Aj Burnett's sixth pitch of the game over the right field fence with a nice, easy swing.
Yes, I wrote AJ Burnett's SIXTH pitch. The man threw only six pitches to the first four Cardinals batters and found himself down 4-0. And there were no outs. What do you even do as a pitcher when that happens? I guess you shouldn't wave the white flag,accepting that it isn't your night; you should buckle down, weather through it and refuse to give up any more runs. AJ did a good job of weathering through the start-- his problem came because he still gave up runs. Twelve runs in 3 innings look very good added to your ERA. No, it doesn't actually.
'Til Later
P.S. Congratulations to Lance Lynn on winning his first 5 games!
No comments:
Post a Comment