Monday, May 24, 2004
My Thoughts on the season thus far…
I was doing a little cleaning yesterday, and I found the SI baseball preview issue from back at the end of March under a stack of old magazines. I thumbed through it for a minute or two and I was struck by how few surprises there actually are to the 2004 baseball season. Honestly, think about it: every year there is usually a team that comes out of nowhere to stun everyone. Remember last year’s KC Royals?
-I don’t see any real surprise team: sure, the implosion of the Giants is a mild surprise, as is the unexpected strength of the Padres and Dodgers, but I think that the NL West was so wide-open to begin with that it really hasn’t surprised anyone.
-I looked up the Phils stats on Yahoo Sports and I was pleasantly surprised by one stat in particular: the Phils are fairly middle of the pack in the NL in terms of BA (.264, 8th), but they are a sterling third (.345, just .009 behind the Astros) in OBP. The Phils are also third in slugging average with .450, and third in runs … A far cry from last year’s team, which struggled to claw out runs, now the Phils are, statistically, third in the majors behind the Astros and Rockies in most categories. Given how well the Phils are pitching, how well they are hitting, this team has just two flaws:
-upper-order hitting (Byrd and Rollins need to get on base more);
-finding enough playing time for Chase Utley. Seriously, this guy has been fantastic.
Alright, I had better get going, but first …
… a few non-baseball thoughts …
Anyone here a fan of Alias? I watched the season finale last night and I was really disappointed. The past two finales have been pretty big deals, but last night’s was really anticlimactic.
…and forgive me for being preachy for a moment, but…
-My fiancée and I did some running this afternoon and stopped by Petco. They had a number of cats there: some had been abandoned, one had its owner die, some had been declawed (which is really an awful thing to do to a cat- imagine having your fingers cut off) and mistreated. The cats were being sponsored by the local animal league, so the adoption fee was pretty small, but the cats that pet stores typically have are a hundred or more dollars. We own two cats and I’m proud to say that they were both pretty bad off when we took them in: one was a stray and the other was badly abused. We rescued both from a life on the street. It struck me, looking at the cats, that it is awful when people go into pet stores and buy cats for a few hundred: shelters are overflowing with strays, some of whom have been badly abused and are in need of a good home. If you are thinking about getting a dog or a cat, please try to adopt through a shelter of some kind. It broke my heart looking at those cats, thinking that some weren’t going to be adopted and might have to be euthanized [sic].
-I don’t see any real surprise team: sure, the implosion of the Giants is a mild surprise, as is the unexpected strength of the Padres and Dodgers, but I think that the NL West was so wide-open to begin with that it really hasn’t surprised anyone.
-I looked up the Phils stats on Yahoo Sports and I was pleasantly surprised by one stat in particular: the Phils are fairly middle of the pack in the NL in terms of BA (.264, 8th), but they are a sterling third (.345, just .009 behind the Astros) in OBP. The Phils are also third in slugging average with .450, and third in runs … A far cry from last year’s team, which struggled to claw out runs, now the Phils are, statistically, third in the majors behind the Astros and Rockies in most categories. Given how well the Phils are pitching, how well they are hitting, this team has just two flaws:
-upper-order hitting (Byrd and Rollins need to get on base more);
-finding enough playing time for Chase Utley. Seriously, this guy has been fantastic.
Alright, I had better get going, but first …
… a few non-baseball thoughts …
Anyone here a fan of Alias? I watched the season finale last night and I was really disappointed. The past two finales have been pretty big deals, but last night’s was really anticlimactic.
…and forgive me for being preachy for a moment, but…
-My fiancée and I did some running this afternoon and stopped by Petco. They had a number of cats there: some had been abandoned, one had its owner die, some had been declawed (which is really an awful thing to do to a cat- imagine having your fingers cut off) and mistreated. The cats were being sponsored by the local animal league, so the adoption fee was pretty small, but the cats that pet stores typically have are a hundred or more dollars. We own two cats and I’m proud to say that they were both pretty bad off when we took them in: one was a stray and the other was badly abused. We rescued both from a life on the street. It struck me, looking at the cats, that it is awful when people go into pet stores and buy cats for a few hundred: shelters are overflowing with strays, some of whom have been badly abused and are in need of a good home. If you are thinking about getting a dog or a cat, please try to adopt through a shelter of some kind. It broke my heart looking at those cats, thinking that some weren’t going to be adopted and might have to be euthanized [sic].
Comments:
Post a Comment
