How about moving Phillips to SS, and then Keppinger to his more natural position of 2B?
How about moving Phillips to SS, and then Keppinger to his more natural position of 2B?
"In my day you had musicians who experimented with drugs. Now it's druggies experimenting with music" - Alfred G Clark (circa 1972)
I think it is a convenient excuse, but one that is hard to prove.
I would think that, if Harang's struggles are directly linked to Narron's usage of him, then we would have seen struggles a little bit earlier than the end of May 2008.
Also, Arroyo has thrown 7 games with 2 ERs or less allowed this season. Maybe he isn't hurt or worn out. Maybe he is just flat out inconsistent.
If they both suddenly collapsed or went down with injuries at the end of last year or right at the beginning of this year, then maybe I would be on board. But I remember when many people were calling out Dusty last year when Zambrano was struggling, predicting his inevitable date with Drs. Jobe or Andrews. I think they were wrong as well.
Someone mentioned it earlier in the thread, but one of the biggest problems with this team is the awful atbats some of these guys have. I have never seen a team have so many awful atbats night in and night out like this team does. Griffey just had one of the absolute worst atbats I have seen. The Reds were down a run and had runners on the corners for Griffey. The pitcher hadn't come close to throwing a strike the first three pitches, so what does Griffey do?!? He swings at a 3-0 pitch and jams himself into a double play, possibly costing the Reds the game. This offense is just so painful to watch.
Team stats:
Pitching ERA 4.50 (13th)
Runs 314 (9th)
Errors 54 (15th or next to last)
the offensive stats are likely at little generous due to playing half our games at GABP. A back of the envelope estimate by knocking 5% off the total due to our park would place us 11th/16.
doing the reverse for pitching places us 11th/16. ( this MAY be an underestimate due to the poor defense. earned runs that shouldn't have been is a tough stat to monitor. )
So our offense and pitching are both below league average and our fielding is terrible. we can quibble about the individual players but imo the biggest problem we have is so many players on the roster who have no business in a major league uniform. we have serious talent deficit.
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