Phoenix.BloggersPub

This started as one of the worst C10s I’d ever had, but it finished pretty well.

This week the baby has decided to start crawling and climbing at the same time. Nothing less than two feet above the floor in the house is safe now.

It’s funny how time works. If you sit at your desk and stare at the hands of an analog clock you can barely see them move yet after 30 minutes the hands are in very different positions. With a digital clock you can get the same type of experience but it just does not seem dramatic. I tried to explain that to Trina but all she did was complain that she had asked me to take out the garbage a half an hour ago and here I was sitting at my desk staring at my Arizona Diamondbacks clock. Against my better judgment I took this opportunity to mention that we really needed a new clock. First, the hands don’t appear to move unless you don’t look at them and second the clock still has the purple and teal digits on the face and how could I possibly be expected to tell time on a clock that doesn’t include Sedona Red somewhere on the face of it. As proof to my theory that the clock was busted, when I awoke after losing consciousness from being hit in the head by a glad trash bag thrown by my less than forgiving wife I found that the hands showed I was out 2 minutes where my biological clock and the bump on my head felt more like 5 minutes. My point was somehow lost in that last paragraph. I just find it interesting how the speed of time does not appear to be constant. From October 2 through February 19 time appeared to move at the speed of an Amish farmer on his way home from a barn raising while from February 20 through March 28 time accelerated to the speed of light making the past 5 weeks become a blur. It feels like only yesterday I was dancing in the living room at the thoughts that Spring Training was upon us. Wait it was only yesterday I was dancing in the living room but it was because Opening Day was nearly upon us. Today marks the last day of Spring Training in Tucson. After the completion of today’s game against the Chicago White Sox the team will begin its trek up the treacherous Interstate 10 coming home to Phoenix to finish up the final few games before the regular season opens.

The race for the #5 starter spot in the D-backs rotation appears to have turned into a contest of who can suck the least. After EnGon’s heroic third inning the other day, Dana Eveland wasted no time, letting the Rockies bat around in the first inning, including a double to the opposing pitcher before he took the mound. That inning went walk, strikeout, single, single, strikeout, single, single, single, double, groundout. Does nobody actually want to be the fifth starter?

I mean, all we’re expecting from the role is someone with an ERA of six: give us six innings, four earned runs and we’ll be happy. Just shamble out there every fifth day and try to keep the team in the game, by allowing our ferocious offense to do their job. Six runs in the first inning? Not so good. We had quite enough of that last season, thank you very much. So, do we reckon Micah Owings is now the top candidate for the role? Dustin Nippert is still in the mix, and we’ll see today if he can avoid the meltdowns suffered by EnGon and Eveland.

However, our hitters simply treated a 6-0 deficit, before they came to the plate, as an interesting challenge, and by the end of the fourth, we were 11-9 up. That was mostly thanks to Scott Hairston, who celebrated the news he was on the Opening Day roster [which probably falls into the category of “Well, duh!” news, since he’s out of options] by smacking three homers, in consecutive innings. Okay, it was breezy, 16 mph out to LF, but by most accounts, two of them were no-doubters. They were sprayed around to three different fields too: right, left and left-center.

That’s six for Hairston in the spring, tied for the tops in the majors, and the 17 RBI he has is one off the lead there [hey, look: Johnny Estrada has 18 and is batting .451!]. His .963 slugging is top among all hitters with 30+ ABs. Not a bad spring. Outside of that, it was also good to see Chris Young going 3-for-5. Hopefully, he’ll have a bit of momentum going into the season. Byrnes, Hudson and Snyder all had two hits each, the first two also adding a walk.

After Eveland’s four innings, eleven-hit, nine earned run, er, performance (which still got him the W!), the bullpen shut the Rockies out the rest of the way, though it wasn’t easy. Woody [today’s “Who?” candidate], Cruz, Slaten and Glant all allowed two or more base-runners: Cruz went one better, giving up a hit and two walks but struck out the side around these in the sixth. Carrasco allowed one walk in the ninth, which was the best pitching line of the day.

As noted by johngordonma, the first sets of PowerRankings are out, from Fox Sports and CBS SportsLine. Bit of a difference of opinion: the former ranks us seventh, with Dayn Perry [sporting a natty new Sedona Red jersey, it seems] callng us “legitimate pennant contenders.” However, he calls us “thin on outfielders,” which suggests word of Scott Hairston hasn’t reached him yet. Over at CBS SportsLine, the word is, “The rotation is much more impressive this year — almost as impressive as some of their young offensive talent,” but they seem more concerned about Quentin than, it appears, the team.

Speaking of which, Quentin took some soft toss, then had 15 swings with Melvin pitching . “Everything went very well,” Melvin said. The next step would be regular batting practice, and if all goes well, a minor league game later today. If they reckon he’s ready, he could play in Saturday’s final exhibition at Chase Field, but if he’s not, it’ll be minor-league games all the way. That’s because they won’t count against Quentin, if we want to backdate him on the DL: only games at which admission is charged are considered.

Finally, today’s entry in “Players you don’t want to piss off” comes to us from Venezuela:

Big ups to Hunter at Macktronic, who introduced me to Roman Ruins, the one-man project otherwise known as Graham Hill to family and close friends. Hunter, who operates Gold Robot Records, was kind enough to hook me up with his label’s first two 7-inch releases (my favorite music medium) – one from Roman Ruins and […]

When I found out that Shinji Kurita was making sushi at Autumn Court I had to visit there.

When outfielder Scott Hairston arrived in the clubhouse at Tucson Electric Park this morning he was summoned to manager Bob Melvin’s office. This was an all too familiar trek for Hairston as he had made that same walk each of the three previous years during this week only to be told that he would not be making the trip with the Diamondbacks to Phoenix and he would be sent to the minors to work on some aspect of his game. That news would always be followed by a pep talk where he would be told how he should keep his head up and not let this news get him down. He was still a highly valued part of the organization and that with hard work he would be given a chance to make the team. Scott would be told that over the course of the season things happen and if he would stay prepared he could find himself playing for the Diamondbacks during the year. All those things are meant to put a young player’s mind at ease and minimize the disappointment they feel when they didn’t make the team. On paper it all sounds good but in practice it’s never easy. So it was understandable that Hairston was nervous making that familiar trip into the office where the door would be closed and news delivered. This year was different. Melvin didn’t greet him with a stern face but instead was all smiles. For the first time in his career Scott Hairston would begin the season on the opening day roster for a Major League baseball team.

Gonzalez has a 3.32 ERA in five spring starts, and he has struck out 14 in 19 innings while walking only two.
“He earned it,’’ Melvin said. “He deserves it. He’s probably considerably ahead of everybody else right now.’’
As expected Gonzalez will be a solid number 4 starter to start the season. With RJ […]

With the recent injuries players have been suffering due to injuries following fights, there has been talk about the place of fighting in the NHL.
I say keep it.
Why?
Players will take cheap shots at other players if they know nothing will happen. I couldn’t imagine that anyone took liberties with any Red Wings player when […]

Always good when fans of the team on the other end of a trade are upset about it. It makes me feel much more confident, especially when prospects I know little about are involved. So, I’m pleased to read the Fish Stripes take on the Julio deal:

Otherwise, reaction to the trade seem somewhat muted - perhaps because we’ve been expecting it since the end of last season. It seems much less worthy of discussion than, say, Carlos Quentin’s injury or Randy Johnson’s recovery. I think many fans had already written off Julio, as far as contributing to the team during 2007. So this news is simply the confirmation of these expectations. We do, however, still wait for official word on how much cash went with Jorge: the East Coast media are generally reporting a significantly higher value than the Arizona press, presumably both sides trying to spin the deal in the best light for their team. We’ll see who was right…

With Enrique Gonzales swinging from brilliant to awful in his last outing, the final, albeit temporary, spot in the D-backs rotation appears still to be up for grabs at the moment. Here are the stats of the remaining four contenders: I’ve excluded Edgar Gonzalez from the list, as he seems to have locked in the permanent spot which was available, and also new boy Petit, since he doesn’t appear to be seriously getting considered. Only “official” games are included in these numbers, not B-squad contests.

          IP  H BB  K  ER   ERA  EnGon   19.1 24  3  9  14  6.52  Owings  14.0 11  6 11   3  1.93  Nippert 10.2  9  7  7   4  3.38  Eveland  8.0  9  4  2   2  2.25

No real doubt, Owings has had the best spring, though I still have some qualms about using him. Does he have enough pitches to go through a lineup at least three times without getting lit up? I’m not sure about that, but maybe his last spring training start might give us a clue regarding this. Hefty K’s for Owings, which does suggest he’s got something going for him: what, and how much, I’ll leave to those who’ve seen him pitch more often than…never.

Neither Nippert nor Eveland seem to have got enough innings under their belt yet: unless you take those B-games into account, and if spring stats are meaningless, spring B-games are even more so. I think the rain-outs over the weekend have probably hurt them. Eveland will start today, but I think his destination is likely to be the bullpen, where we could use a long reliever. I think he’s more suited to the role than Owings. Nippert still has a year of options left, so that will probably be used. He’s not getting any younger though, and will turn 26 in May. I’d like to see Nippert get a good shot this year - if for no other reason than the SnakePit sponsors his Baseball-Reference.com page. And all the good D-backs are now taken.

EnGon just hasn’t been consistent enough this spring to get the nod. Admittedly, more than one-third of those earned runs came in just an inning of work today, but I seem to recall the “one bad frame” was his undoing a fair bit last year too. Particularly the first, where opponents batted .370 against him, and he allowed 25 runs in just 18 appearances. That contrasts sharply with the five second-inning runs he allowed, also in 18 appearances. Similarly, in those eighteen opening frames, he also allowed 13 walks and hit two batters: that compares to 21 walks and 2 HBP combined for innings 2-9. Until he can prove his ability to stop the bleeding, I’d rather see him in Tucson.

Interesting artice on CoJack, and his attempts to incorporate a toe-tap move into his swing. However, as someone expected to lead the team in average this year, he’s not doing too much: “If you can incorporate the toe-tap, get a little more movement back, you’re going to sacrifice a couple of things. You might strike out a few more times, might get fooled on a couple of more pitches. I’m trying to keep the same swing, but just incorporate a little more juice behind it. Just get those doubles maybe going over the fence… If you do the opposite where you try for power before you learn how to hit, you’re going to struggle,” he said. Very sensible, sir: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Just stumbled across a particularly irritating puff piece on Gonzo: “Guess who’s the new most-popular guy in Dodger blue?” This is, apparently, because he bought 30 pizzas for his team-mates. Ooh, the generosity. The guy’s a frickin’ gazillionaire: I worked it out, and that’s about the equivalent of me going to the vending machine and buying a Twix for the office. Go nuts, boys… It also makes much of him hitting .300 this spring - though since the article, he’s slumped back to .265. Which is 24 points lower than he hit for Arizona last spring, and we know how that ended. Aargh. Such lacklustre writing is tough to stomach, coming from a supposed professional, but given where Reaves’ tongue apparently was, I’m impressed he could reach the keyboard.