It seems as though every time we face a pitcher who has been struggling all year, they go out and throw a great game. It happened last week against Edwin Jackson, yesterday against Buhrle (or however you spell his name), and not today against Floyd. And this is only in the past week. It's extremely frustrating and it speaks volumes of how inconsistent our hitters are...

until maybin and coghlan start providing something the lineup is going to continue to struggle. the starting pitching is really being let down by our horrendous offense.

Lack of run support and bad defense has caused 3 of Volstads 5 losses and ruined some quality starts. Our offense needs to pick it up or the quality starts losses will continue for a long year. With this team if the starter avoids a loss hes lucky.

until maybin and coghlan start providing something the lineup is going to continue to struggle. the starting pitching is really being let down by our horrendous offense.

 

 

Watching Coghlan and Maybin are like watching 12-year olds play in that everytime they do something good this year (at the plate) it seems like a big deal. Everytime these guys get a legitimate base hit or goes on a mini-not entirely terrible streak it seems like they're starting to do well because the expecations have been lwoered so much by their overall shodiness this year. These guys are playing in the major leagues, and they need to be capable of doing something positive offensively every game. Maybin is starting to slowly but simply not quickly enough, and Coghlan is so far off in LF that it will seem ridiculous that he stayed in the majors as long as he did when we finally demote him which is pretty much inevitable. I don't see how you can look at teh fact that his walk rate is worse than Maybin right now, only 10 BB's all year, and come to another conclusion.

 

Last year this team was competitive offensively even with one major hole in the lineup. These year we've got two major holes, and its bringing the entire lineup down. We're not good enough to overcome these weaknesses more often than not.

But those two weaknesses can improve. So, there's still hope.

Our starting pitching is so much better and consistent than last year, and even with a few holes in our lineup, I still believe in our strong offense... if we can patch up a few holes here and there, I have no reason to believe that this team can't be consistently better, and a threat to the division all season long. I mean that.

Wow! Jose Lima dead at 37. Massive heart attack.

 

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

It's definantly true that Chris Coghlan is not having a great year. He's on track for only around 100 hits this year, 60 less than last year. That really sucks, you have to admit. And he's already 24. But for Cameron Maybin, in 39 games this year, he has 35 hits. I don't think that's so bad...I could be wrong though haha.:thumbup