Bad Baseball and High Comedy=NL Central Game

Wow. Seriously, just wow. How in the world does a team contending for a pennant play like they did for the first three innings of today's baseball game? (No offense, Cubs fans, I'm very envious of your team's NL Central division-leading mediocrity, and I acknowledge my jealousy with utter sincerity and absolute conviction.) But forget the three innings of ridiculousness from both baseball teams. In today's game, my Pirates specialized in the high, high comedy that results from bad baseball being played.

Examples of high comedy/bad baseball:

--The Pirates' starting pitcher gives up four runs in the bottom of the first inning. This is obviously not the best way to begin a ball game you hope to "spoil."

--Ronny Paulino forgot how many outs there were in an inning. Greg or Lanny (I was too busy laughing to listen) innocently asks Bob Walk, "Doesn't the number of outs matter in terms of what pitch a catcher will call for?" to which Walk vehemently replies, "Yes!" (To which I might add my own exclamation of, "Duh!") After forgetting that there was only one out in the inning and trying to run off the field with only two outs, Paulino promptly proceeds to lose a ball that allows the Cubs to tie the game at 7. As a PBC fan, I should be upset by the clear lack of mental focus and utter lack of basic knowledge of baseball fundamentals, but at this point of the season, I just find myself laughing. Really--what other response is there to something Serious, Lifelong Baseball Fan knows good little league teams don't do?

--Look, I love Freddy Sanchez, but today was just not his day. Swinging at pitches way outside the strike zone and making an error on a ball that could've been an inning-ending double play isn't good for anybody, let alone Sanchez. When one of your team's good players is having a horrific day of fundamental baseball, better to enjoy a laugh about the bad baseball being played than get mad at a player who's usually anywhere from pretty good to very good to excellent.

--And speaking of bad baseball: Both team's starting pitchers are gone after having ridiculous ERA's through less than three complete innings of work? When one of these teams is leading the division? At least the Cubs did what a division-leading team should do and won the game, but the pitching performances throughout today's first three innings exemplified really bad baseball.

--Oh, and I can't talk about bad baseball without mentioning Jim Tracy. Maybe Maholm is healthy; maybe he isn't. But I hate the way his season is finishing, and if he isn't absolutely 100% ready to go, he shouldn't be pitching. Period.

Other Amusing Anecdotes from Today's Game:

--The Pirates were able to chase a starter from the game and take a 7-5 lead. I wasn't listening to the announcers, but wouldn't such a comeback (even if it didn't last) be considered encouraging in the fact that the team was able to chase a starter from a game? (Yeah, that was snarky.)

--Maholm didn't pitch well today (an understatement), but that RBI bunt single was the biggest contribution he's made to the team in his last two starts since returning from a stiff back. Which I don't blame on Maholm but on Jim Tracy for continuing to run out a player who probably shouldn't be playing. Yeah, at some point I should probably hold players accountable, too, and not just the manager, but since Tracy's not all that into accountability for anyone, I figure I'll let accountability rest with Tracy and not his players.

Speaking of the Manager:

--I informed Serious, Lifelong Baseball Fan that I thought if the players really wanted Tracy and his coaching team back next season that they would be winning games at this point of the season. Serious, Lifelong Baseball Fan, like me, doesn't believe that bad baseball teams can morph into good baseball teams, and he doesn't really believe that the players themselves are actually trying to lose games. Serious, Lifelong Baseball Fan does believe that the mental errors made by players can be a signal, however subconscious, that they don't want the manager to return. While I don't know if I believe in such subconscious signals or not, and I realize events such as a closer blowing a save and hot hitters cooling off are natural events throughout the course of a baseball season, a part of me does believe that the players would somehow be winning more games, rather than losing lots of games, if they were serious about wanting to "save" or "preserve" their manager's job, so to speak. Silly as it might be to read things into a bad baseball team laden with mostly inexperienced starting pitchers stumbling toward the finish line, what I'm reading into the performance of most of the Bucco players, however unconscious/subconscious/conscious it might be, is that most of the players wouldn't object to a managerial change. At least that's what their overall performance, as well as their home dwelling in the basement of the worst division in the majors, appears to indicate.