Tater Tots

It's been awhile since we've posted, mostly because, well, we have nothing really to say.  We wanted this blog to be a daily thing where we'd talk about the day in baseball and what happened the night before, but that quickly became difficult to maintain with our schedule.  This blogging stuff is hard work, yo.

Anyway, since we failed so miserably in that regard, we decided to try to only write about abstract baseball issues, like why the idea of "closers" sucks, who should trade whom, things like that.  But then we came to realize that there's not a whole lot of that type of story out there.  Failure #2! 

So every so often, we're going to have posts like today's, called Tater Tots after one of my favorite euphemisms for home runs.  Basically it's like a bullet point list of baseball thoughts. Fun!

• Don't buy the Marlins' hot start.  11-1 is great, but 6 games against the Nats will help that record immensely.  Yeah, great teams win the games they're supposed to, but beating up on the Nationals is taking that to a new level.  Plus, they needed 9th-inning comebacks 3 times in the series, and extra innings in two. 

• On a similar note, we hate the early-season power polls and rankings.  No one really believes, for example, that the Marlins are among the top 5 best teams in the league, and no one really thinks the Padres are anywhere near escaping the worst 10.  Why spend an entire offseason analyzing teams only to throw it away in the power rankings that you write in the first week of the season?  

• And, to keep harping, people really love the small sample size results.  Jason Marquis pitches today for the Rockies; he has a 1.98 ERA.  This does not mean that he is a good pitcher, people.  If he were to post a 3-start stretch with a 1.98 ERA in July, no one would notice.  The beginning of the season just puts a bigger microscope on everything.  

• Boy, those three things probably could've been made into a coherent post, huh?

• Schadenfreude: Emilio Bonifacio, he of the .500 flirting, was hitting .485 a week ago.  He's gone 1-20 since, with 9 K's.  Thanks, Jayson Stark!

• New Yankee Stadium has been quite a launching pad.  We're sure you've heard this elsewhere, too, but...11 HR in 4 games?  Goodness.  We watched their debacle against the Indians on Saturday and balls that looked like bloop hits were carrying to the wall.  Some people say the ball is juiced, some people say it's a random statistical fluctuation - you know, the kind we've been talking about for this entire post.  We hate to accuse MLB of anything untoward, but it sure looks to us like they're doing something with the balls.  And that, ladies and gentlemen, is basically proof positive that there's tampering going on: we, one of the least-read blogs ever, kinda sorta accused them of it!

• Elijah Dukes.  That's really all you need to see to know that some kind of craziness is going on.  But hey, this time, it's not some bizarre death threat or assault or impregnation!  No, Dukes is actually the victim in this one.  He showed up 5 minutes late to the pregame stretching - a critical part of any routine, as anyone who's ever gone to a game knows from watching a couple of dudes randomly wave their legs around - and was summarily benched for the day and fined.  But why was he late, you might ask?  He needs to learn that he has responsibilities to the team, right?  To which we would answer: no.  Elijah Dukes is beholden to no man, and you'd best not forget that.  But seriously - dude was late because he was out playing with little kids.  Er...working with the Little League team that he helps coach and organize.  Sorry to mislead.  Manny Acta said that they need to maintain a culture of timeliness and organization, and that there's zero tolerance for stuff like being tardy to meetings.  Because you were working with a Little League team.  C'mon, Manny.  Oh, and the guy who played in Dukes' place?  Yeah, he broke his ankle.  

• That's all we've got for now.  Here bringing in Kyle Farnsworth to relieve us.  Which means, of course, that there's going to be another tater tot to follow.  Hey oh!

• Seriously, though.  Farnsworth gave up another game-losing bomb.  He has 3 L's.  The Royals have 5.