[PilotMan]

July Recap


Bad News, Good News. On the downside, a month of 13-13 baseball doesn't inspire hope and optimism for the rest of the season. In a month where we played a lot of teams from the East, we just couldn't make headway at all. On the bright side though...we are .5 game out of first place. How? Fuck if I know. Only 5 games separate the top 5 teams. It's really anyone's division.


Our record on the year is 56-46. In the last 2 months we are a game below .500. We are the #2 team in the NL in HR's and 8^th in extra base hits. But, like every other month, we're 12^th in team average with a .242. 11^th in OPB, runs and hits. And 10^th in OPS. We've gone from being a feared hitting team to a team that can easily be pitched around. Rookies have dominated us and there's no help coming.


The team elected to not make any moves at the deadline, meaning that our prospects are in tact, but also that our team is pretty much going to stay where it is. This looks a lot like last year. We might win, or we might not, and even if we do, we'll be huge underdogs against the Expos or Mets.


One area that we should be killing it in is close games. Our bullpen is very strong, yet our team record in 1-run and extra inning games is 3 games under .500 for both. If that was just 3 games above, we'd be looking at a 6 game swing in our overall record. 62-40, would be whole lot better than our 56-46.


Fred Lynn was the no doubt, player of the month. In fact, outside of Scioscia actually having a 'normal' month, everyone else just sucked. Lynn batted .302/.358/.570 and hit 4 HR's for the month. He's still under performing the season, and well on his way to his worst season in 3 years. Doug DeCinces fell off a cliff. He hit 1 HR and had a slash line of .220/.269/.350. That was the guy we had hitting cleanup. No wonder we can't score runs. Between Lynn early on, and DeCinces now, or really anyone else now, we simply can't get anything going.


With the hitting doing so bad, you'd have to think that it wouldn't matter how good these guys are doing. Can't win throwing a shutout if you never score, right? Starting pitching was lights fucking out. Top pitcher for the month was Tanana, except he was hurt. He still went 1-1, with a 1.73 ERA and 0.92 WHIP. Where he served up 11 HR's in June, he allowed 1 in July. We're not done. Valenzuela went 1-2, and had a 1.70 ERA! Losing record with a 1.70 ERA! His WHIP was slightly higher at 1.04. I don't think it's a secret as to who the worst of the worst was for July. Our closer, John Franco had one, historically bad, month. Franco pitched in 11 games, went 1-3 with 2 S and 3 BS. More blown saves, than actual saves. His ERA was a sad 10.64. His WHIP was 2.27. Rookie. He cost us plenty in July.


August will separate the men from the boys. Where will we fall? We're in the thick of it right now, can we hang on or go on a run? We start the month with a 3 game series at home against the first place Reds.