Four games in a row that have taken us from an even 13-13 to 13-7 before we knew it. Why?
I was trying to burn off some frustration after watching the Reds tonight and found that our starters and our bullpen have killed. Not to mention a certain shortstop who was hot and now is not. Lookie here:
Code:Starters IP H R ER BB SO HR ERA 21 32 17 16 9 18 1 6.86 Bullpen 13 16 8 8 10 10 2 5.54
Though we've scored only 17 runs in the 4 games, the first one against Oswalt only netted one run, but that's an average of 4.25 per game--just about where we've been all year. But with the starters falling apart, it wasn't enough. They alone gave up 17 runs and the bullpen gave up another 8, for a total of 25 or 6.25 per game. A good recipe for failure. We expect the bully to be bad, but our starters were absolutely horrible.
Then there was that one aspect that doesn't matter, the lineup. For instance, while he was hot, he was batted up in the order. Well, he cooled off. In the four games, he was 2-16 or a .125 average. Why is he hitting ahead of Hamilton or Dunn? No one paying attention? Hatteberg, known to be a high OPB hitter played in three games and went 2-10 hitting first or second. Hamilton only got 13 AB's, but also got 6 hits. Hitting down in the order he drove in no runs. None. Surprisingly, Narron's whipping boy, EdE was 3-10 (.300) with a run, a homer, and 2 RBI's. and he only started two games.
The bright spots were Griffey at 6-16 with 4 RBI's and Norris Hopper going 3-3 pinch hitting.
It's another slump. Unfortunately, the offense is almost the same, save a little tweaking of the batting order (which doesn't make any difference according to some), but the starters failed us. We expect the bullpen to do that. And they did.