This is my nightmare!

My favorite Jason Siegel quote from "I Love You Man" pretty much sums up the Phillies series. (More on this at the end of the post)

It's like, really? Are we really doing this crap again?

We all know the stats. We gave up 3 runs in 3 games, and we lost two of them. Unreal. Totally unreal. The road is not a good place for the Gyros.



It's a serious problem when we can't score three runs a game. Seriously, if we average three runs a game in that series, we sweep. Aggghhhghgh!

A nice wall post I received on Facebook yesterday from Kevin C.:

"Phils win 2 out of 3 by scoring 3 runs total. New idea for Kuiper/Krukow... Yell "goaaaalllll!!!!"-- like they do in soccer-- whenever the Giants score a run."

God... it's soooo true.

It's even more upsetting when we're getting shut out by an over-the-hill Pedro Martinez. I know that he's one of MLB's all-time greats, but the man is old balls and he was picked up off the dung heap because no one else wanted him. Either he's got a lot in the tank, or we're pathetic. Maybe a little of both.



Also, with each wasted Lincecum start, Timmy is in danger of falling significantly behind in the Cy Young Wins race. His numbers are sick, but the wins need to be there. He can't win one with 14 or 15 wins.

Let's just put this Philly series behind us. Gotta move forward, gotta keep the faith that the bats will awaken. We're getting Freddy Sanchez back soon, which is much needed. More importantly though, we've gotta get Pandoval back. He's been hitting like an injured man. I have to believe that if it were earlier in the season, he'd have already been on the DL. This whole "playing through pain" thing may be worsening his injury. It's a fine line.

But what choice do we have? None. He has to play until he can't walk. We have no choice. At the same time though, we may not have a Kung Fu at better than 75-80% for the rest of the season.

In his past 4 games, he's gone 1-12 with zero RBI. That's the difference when the margins are so thin.

New batting helmets are awesomely bad

-- The new and "improved" batting helmets are absurd, ridiculous, and hilarious. During the game, I got a text from my buddy Raph about it:

"Dude. Shane Victorino looks like a bobblehead with that new helmet."

So true.

The helmets are designed withstand impacts up to 100 mph, while the current helmets are technically rated to take a pitch of only 70 mph. While no one on this side of Timmy Wakefield is throwing 70, the new helmets are simply laughable.


They're oversized, jagged, distracting, and seriously look like some kind of headgear more suited to a "specially-abled" hemophiliac that rides the short bus on his way to some sort of social interaction therapy.

Jeff Francoeur, a cool dude, said of them, "No, I am absolutely not wearing that. I could care less what they say, I'm not wearing it. There's got to be a way to have a more protective helmet without all that padding. It's brutal. We're going to look like a bunch of clowns out there." (MLB.com)

Krook & Kuip are with Frenchie and the Flyin' Hawaiian on this one. After Victoreenz went 0-2 in that monstrosity, he switched back to his old helmet, which prompted some good ol' Krook & Kuip banter, in which they both not-so-subtly made fun of the new helmets and would have refused to wear them.

Kuip remarked, "I might wear it while I was hitting, but then I'd switch back to the other one if I got on base."

Krook jabbed at the helmets, saying the players would fight it and they might wear it in 15 years at best.

Regardless of the safety thing, baseball players don't want to look silly. They want to look cool, they want to feel cool. They are actually very vain creatures. Hence the jewlery hanging out of the jerseys, unnecessary wrist bands, eye black at night, etc.

They will fight these stupid-looking helmets until they get drilled in the head like David Wright, who has no problem with being safe after getting nailed by a Matt Cain fastball a few weeks back.

NEWS UPDATE:

David Wright has reverted to his old batting helmet, saying, "It's just not comfortable. The last thing I need to be worrying about in the box is trying to shove it on my head." (NY Daily News)

So, there you go Rawlings/MLB. Improve this thing or they won't wear it.

On to Milwaukee, Zito vs. Suppan today. It's go time.

A little Dodgerhater mojo

If you haven't seen I Love You Man, you're missing out. My favorite aspect of the movie's awesomeness is the dedication that Peter and Sydney (Paul Rudd and Siegel) have for the legendary band Rush.

Rush has been one of my favorite bands since I first heard them years ago. I think it's only appropriate to include these inspirational lyrics from my favorite song, "Limelight."

All the world's indeed a stage
And we are merely players
Performers and portrayers
Each another's audience
Outside the gilded cage

Living in the limelight
The universal dream
For those who wish to seem
Those who wish to be
Must put aside the alienation
Get on with the fascination
The real relation
The underlying theme

The Giants are in the limelight. The players and us fans dare to dream, and it's time to lock it up, Jobin.

The Giants found a lucky Penny, Posey called up

Where were you when you first heard the news?

I received multiple text messages this morning and confirmed this while Facebooking and driving on 101.

Our Golden Boy Buster Posey was indeed called up today-- something that we were hoping for, but not expecting. Sabean and Bochy have been noncommittal about calling up either of our blue chippers all year.

It really makes all the sense in the world.

With Bengie Mo walking on rubber legs and Eli Whiteside being a weak offensive option, this really seems like a no brainer. It also means that Bengie's quad injury is not progressing well.

We don't know how much PT Buster will get, after all, we're in a playoff chase here. More than anything though, this will give Buster a sense of what it takes to play at an extremely high level. He'll catch bullpen sessions for major league pitchers, he'll get to take a few hacks, and most importantly, this cup of coffee in the bigs will give him a crash course on what to expect next year when he inevitably takes over the starting catcher position. Rookie catchers are traditionally eased into things, but I'm anticipating a rapid fire transition.

PS: Those of you in fantasy keeper leagues, I hope you have the #1 waiver priority, otherwise, you ain't landing him.

It'll be exciting to see this youngster. I cannot wait!


Penny looks like a Silver Dollar

Or maybe a gold Sacagawea!

These coin jokes doing anything for you? No? Okay.


So, still any doubters out there?

(Crickets chirping)

Look, as I said before, this was a great move. None of us expected an 8 inning shutout performance, as Aaron Rowand said during the postgame show, but I fully expected a quality start. At this point, a 6 inning, 3 ER outing would've been awesome. Consider how badly Joe Martinez and Ryan Sadowski pitched in each of their three final starts for the Gyros.

In case you forgot, their final three starts combined resulted in a 9.48 ERA and disasters all around.

The whole point in this is this is a veteran guy battling for his career and a contract next season. He's a big, burly, surly son of a bitch out there with a chip on his shoulder-- the type of wild card you want on your side in a good old fashioned Western shootout or bar fight.

The AL East is a whole 'nother animal, and when you're coming off an injury, trying to get your velocity back, adjusting to a new city, new team, and a new league full of hitters-- not to mention a slugging DH around every corner... well yeah, I'd expect a few struggles too.

And lest we all forget, the Red Sox technically didn't get rid of him; Penny requested his own release, and it was granted. This is simply the perfect situation for the horselike Oklahoman, and Lord knows he made the correct call.

Plus it looks like he can even be better. His fastball topped out at 97 tonight and he was consistently hitting 94-96, which had been a concern. I reckon that if his splitfinger gets back to being a swing and miss out pitch, we've got ourselves a #5 with the stuff of a #2 or #3. God I love this rotation.

He's not a savior, but he doesn't need to be. He needs to be solid and give us a chance to win every fifth day. He's a little bit too down.

Plus he HATES the Dodgers. Rock on big man.


Game Notes & Quirky Observations

-- I'm not as anti-mascot as Mike Wilbon, but I think generally they're pretty lame. That Philly Phanatic though... great! The guy opened up the game by "flashing" the Giants dugout, and dancing around like a sex pervert. Hilarious. Touche Phanatic. Touche.

-- Aaron Rowand truly is the king of the unproductive out. God I hope there's a stat I can find out there about this...

-- Haha! Ryan Howard grounded into to the shift in right field in the second inning. That's gotta really tick a hitter off.

-- Thank God Andres Torres got on base (and got the RBI). I had to see his routine to confirm my suspicions. I'd like you all to know that he uses running gloves. Allow me to explain.

He bats barehanded a la Nate Schierholtz/Vlad Guerrero. But-- in a bizarre twist of fate, whenever he reaches base, he withdraws not one, but two, white batting gloves from his buttocks pocket, and places them on his hands for running only. He must have a really nice manicure he's trying to protect. I've seen him do this multiple times and I'm actually assured by people who have played the game at the college level that this is not totally unheard of.

I only wish he switched chains in the same manner. Like he hits with that huge silvery pit bull chain, then reaches base, calls time, hands that chain to Roberto Kelly, and puts on a sleeker, lighter gold chain for baserunning. Hilarious.

-- Speaking of habits, Krukow took great delight in pointing out "...that The Panda does somethin' I've never seen before. When he's in the field, he chews bubble gum, but when he takes his AB's, he puts in a dip."

Krook and I have noticed the same thing!

And we're not talking about any dip here. Pablo is putting in like a quarter can of Skoal every time. As a guy who chews his share of the stuff, I can say that that is one significant lipper!

It just lends more credence to the fact that ballplayers are extremely superstitious, especially when it comes to their oral fixations... whether it's Skoal, Red Man, seeds, bubble gum, or what have you. Pablo definitely doesn't disappoint in this category.

-- If you haven't noticed, I've begun spelling Mike Krukow's shortened nickname to the more phonetic "Krook" as opposed to Kruk. Because we cannot being thinking of John Kruk while referring to Krook. Not on my watch.

-- Before Uribe slammalammadingdonged that ball about 420 feet into left field, he took two MASSIVE cuts. I could almost sense his homer was coming. Man, he really swings as hard as anyone in baseball. And to think, he was given a non-guaranteed minor league deal coming into Spring Training.


GREAT MOVE SABEAN!

-- I have begun to fast forward through Aaron Rowand's at bats. Messed up, I know. I started doing it this weekend, and was about to do it after Uribe's dong, but the remote fell down and did this crazy football bounce. Naturally it was too far away to get. That remote was clutch! Aaron Rowand went yard.

It was surprisingly, the fourth time the Gyros have done that this year.

-- Ever heard of the website FMyLife? Well in case you're old and haven't, FML has little stories of people's bad life experiences and they all begin with "Today," end in "FML". They may be made up for all I know, but here's one that I'm going to submit. Pretend I'm a Phillie fan:

Today, at Citizen's Bank Park at the Phillies game, I saw Tyler Walker and Jack Taschner warming up at the bullpen at the same time. Then they came in the game one after the other. FML.

-- They didn't give up any runs up there, but mark my words, those two guys and that effed up bullpen are the reason Philly won't repeat as champions.


-- Yesterday on the CSN ticker, did anyone else do a double take when they saw this scroll by?

"Exclusive interview with award-winning rapper Ice Cube on Chronicle Live"

I missed it, can anyone fill me in? Has he abandoned the Dodgers and Lakers and become a Warriors and Giants fan? Did Greg Papa try to be cool and end up looking more white? Comment below please.

-- Sanchez threw a helluva game yesterday. Krook referred to his strike three pitch on Ryan Howard in the 2nd inning as "abusive."

Howard got the last laugh though as he singled in the only run of the game.

-- Colorado won again. Bastards.

-- Never thought I'd say this in a million years, but GO METS!