Friday, September 4, 2009

The Tale of Two Leagues

If ever there was a case of the AL being a superior league to the NL Brad Penny and John Smoltz would be witnesses #1 and #2. These two clowns couldn't seem to pitch their way out of a paper bag in Boston, but send them to San Francisco or St. Louis and they look like Bob Gibson. Just look at their splits. Smoltz had an ERA north of 8 when he left Boston with his tail between his legs. Now, it is south of 3.00?!?!? Similarly, Penny had an ERA approaching his weight of 5.61 and in his first start with an inferior offensive team he goes 8 shutout innings? REALLY? I can only hope one or both of these two-faced pitchers can help their teams into the playoffs to give the Sox a meatball dinner during Game 3 or 4 of the World Series.

The Sox were not asking either of these guys to be lights out, only be a back-end starter who could eat some innings, save the bullpen, and keep the Sox in the game. I think Terry would have been appreciative of 6 innings 4 runs from either of these guys. The part that is most frustrating is almost everyone thought that this would happen.

On a positive note, Clay Buchholz is starting to make me eat my words in which I said they should have traded him for Roy Halladay. Buchholz stuff is nasty, it's that 1 square foot of real estate above his shoulders that has given him the most trouble. Hopefully, the Sox will continue to play well into the playoffs and it seems inevitable, meet the Yankees in the ALCS, for 6 or 7 long drawn out games that will make every Sox and Yankee age about 10 years in two weeks.

3 comments:

Dennis said...

You can talk about the AL being superior all you like, the fact is an NL game is soooo much more fun to watch, and I suspect to play in, than an AL game.

You can argue with me, but I am one of the few people that actually watches games from both leagues on a regular basis. And watching fat white guys work 13 pitch at bats because they won't swing at anything a half inch outside of the strike zone and they have to foul off every pitch in the strike zone is just excruciating.

Joe said...

In the words of Herm Edwards; "THEY PLAY TO WIN THE GAMES"

Dan said...

As a general comment, I think I would like MLB to make the game more NL-like in a couple of ways. Get rid of the DH. And for the love of criminey, expand the strike zone.