Guess what?

Uh, on the distant, distant off chance you end up here- and I don't know why you would- but I've moved on. And stolen my old name back. You'll find the new Line Drive in the High Desert here: http://azdbacks.wordpress.com

Well, half a season on Blogspot, and I'm trading teams. Starting with today, I'm going to be writing over at Out in the Desert. Oddly enough, someone over they found my writing style to be of interest, so you can head over there to see what I've got to say as we enter the second part of the season.

Go Diamondbacks!

Bah. Bah, I say!

So, another night where my foolish enthusiasm and a night at the theatre are rewarded with a Diamondbacks loss. Hence, bah.

On the bright side, our starting pitchers across the past three games have pitched 24 innings, given up only 5 runs, and gotten 18 strike outs. Not bad at all. But we're 1-2 in those three games, so it's not quite enough.

And it's not like I was even able to escape in to the theatre for a couple of reasons. First, the casting on the show wasn't impressive- the lead was just too forced, among other things- and second, I was just waiting for the final score. I get the final score text messaged to my cell phone every game, and so with the constant presence of technology, I'm never too far away from keeping track of the game. But it's that sort of thing that also makes it difficult to leave behind if you want to.

On a tangential topic, I was looking on eBay and found this interesting auction. An interesting item, I knew they produced them and that a few always escaped, but it's the kind of thing that you would rarely have a chance to get, but thanks to something like eBay, you're more likely to. So, mixed blessings and whatnot.

Anyway, we go at it again tonight, in the All Brandon Classic- Brandon Webb pitching versus Brandon Claussen. I'm truly hoping Webb pitches better than he did on Monday- 4 ER in 7 innings probably didn't help his chances much for the All-Star Game voting. And Claussen might be a bit of a problem, he's got a 2.50 ERA on his last three starts, so unless the offense gets going, we might find ourselves in a bit of a pickle.

Well, then.

Okay, maybe I shouldn't make fun of Sean Estes. In the half dozen games before his insightful commentary, the Diamondbacks gave up 41 runs, while scoring 23, 10 in the 10-3 win over LA. Since then? 3 allowed, 3 scored. Valverde and Vargas have pitched two of the best games we've seen so far, and I'm just disappointed that neither was rewarded with a W. I mean, this is the first game that I think Vargas really deserved to get the win, but unfortunately he didn't.

Not much on insight at the moment, I just wanted to say that maybe Estes had something going with his wacky scheme on Wednesday. Good going.

Cincinatti comes a'callin' tomorrow to close out the first half of the season. They're struggling along, which, be previous experience, means they could sweep us. But with the impressive play we've seen the past two days, there's always the chance we could end the first half of the season on a high note, and at .500.

Too optomistic, probably, right? Yeah, I know.

Finally!

Someone in the Diamondbacks organization has a plan! They've figured out what we need to do to win! And that insightful genius is Sean Estes. When talked to about the Cardinals, he answered:

"They're just playing a lot better baseball than us right now," Estes said. "It's going to be tough to win unless we improve in a hurry."

Improve! We need to improve! By gum, I think he's right! How did we let this idea slip past us before?


Whoops, sorry, had the Sarcasm knob turned up to 11 there.


Two disappointing defeats at the hands of the Cardinals and I fear unless we have a sudden resurgence of the team who played in LA last week, we're facing another sweep at home. Vazquez is out on the mound for us tonight, and we're facing an All-Star and early Cy Young candidate. Great.

A flicker, but is it enough?

After getting walloped 31-7 through 4 straight games and generally depressing the fanbase, the Diamondbacks roar back and give us a pair of back to back victories that never really seemed close, both games where we got the Dodgers starter out of there in impressive time- Lowe got pulled after 3, and Houlton only lasted 2 innings. Meanwhile, Vargas was given another cushion to start with- we've given him at least a half dozen runs in his past three starts. In comparison, in our past 15 games, we've had 6 or more runs five times- a start by Webb on the 23rd, last night, and the three starts from Vargas. That's an edge that I'm sure he appreciates. Or he better.

I missed Saturday's game, as I was working outside, but I got to hear last night's. And my only question is why does this team only show up one out of every four or six games? We've shown that we can dominate good pitchers, but we just can't bother at times, or so it seems. If we could only get some consistency in here, this team would be much easier to follow. I mean, even if they were consistently awful, we wouldn't have the flares of hope like these games.

My sympathies go out to JD Drew, who's got a broken wrist- ouch. Three hit batters last night by Halsey, which I hope shows some contention of the inside corner of the plate, rather than control issues. I assume that since Halsey wasn't tossed after hitting a second batter or a third, the umpire thought there was some valid issues there.

All Star selections were announced today, and the Diamondbacks will be sending Luis Gonzales as their representative. Congratulations to him, but he wouldn't have been my first choice. I'd love to see Craig Counsell out there- he may not be pounding out 45 home runs a season, but he's on pace for 100+ runs this season, which is respectable. He's having one of his best seasons offensively, and he's got some solid defense, too. I would definitely prefer to have him on the roster than Cesar Izturis, the NL's third short-stop on the roster. On the pitching side, I certainly wish Brandon Webb was up there. Give these stats a bit of a gander:

GS K/9 WHIP BAA ERA
18 5.23 1.40 .272 3.32
16 6.65 1.32 .268 3.24

So which one of these pitchers is in the All Star Game? The first, Livan Hernandez. Because his record is 12-2, versus Brandon Webb's 8-4. In most every other pitching stat that matters, Webb is leading Hernandez, sometimes by just a small margin, but leading regardless. But, as in the Rookie of the Year debate, Webb gets shunned due to his record. Unfortunate. He at least still has a distant outside chance to get elected as the last member of the team, but I don't have enough faith in the internet voting public to think he'll get the nod. But I've put in my votes. Hope they'll help.

We've got the Cardinals in town tonight to start a four game set, and we face Matt Morris. We'll see how it goes.

Unimpressive

At what point in a baseball season do you throw up your hands and say “meh"? I mean, this team isn’t even enough of a team right now to generate any “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it any more!” moments - there’s so little emotion and energy around this team right now, that I can’t even be bothered to get mad. And that’s really, really sad.

Words written over at Nice Guys Finish Third, but I think we can certainly hear their echoes in D-backs country. A disappointing June, capped off by getting swept by the Giants at home. Gah.

The only bright side in this is that the rest of the NL West was nearly as bad. Though I'm not sure I'd put that as a bright side. If you look at the standings, they're just static, mostly. Losing some major ground to the Padres or getting passed in the standings by the Dodgers might have done some good, made the team realize "Oh, yeah, we are playing professional baseball here. Or at least we're supposed to be."

On the other hand, it's hard to say what might get them going. While we've shown some signs of brilliance, very few of those have ever been followed up on. And those moments have been swamped by some very extensive stupidity. All in all, it's rather disappointing. As much as people said this team was playing above their level at the beginning of the season, I think they're playing below it now. This is a team that can be better, and it's frustrating to see them not.

Another game in LA tonight, and if we lose it, we'll be tied with the Dodgers. If we're going to remain serious about having any shot at doing anything this season, we need to start winning, stat.