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Miguel Batista, RHP (10-5, 4.67) |
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Chris Young, RHP (9-5, 3.80) |
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Today, we send out the National League leader in inducing double-plays. No, not Brandon Webb: Miguel Batista, who over his past two starts has benefited from seven twin-killings. Is this a repeatable skill, or has he just been very lucky? Hard to say. In Webb's case, the vicious sinker would seem a credible reason to believe it's the former, but Batista's ground/fly ratio is 1.74, less than half that of Webb's (3.52). It's still in the league's top 15, but when you get a lot of double-plays, that's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Let's just say, I'd be happier if he wasn't putting men on base at all.
Young is a big guy, almost up at Randy Johnson size, and has been pretty effective for the Padres. It's time for our hitters to wake up, with our position players having only four RBIs over the first two games (a pair of runs were driven in by the pitcher, and another scored on a wild pitch). Given that, it's something of a fluke that we enter the game today with a chance of winning the series. Plan to be around, though will be Snakes on a Plane-ing later. And I see the SciFi channel has an all-day snake movie marathon: Boa just finished, with Python up next. And then later on, of course, we have Boa vs. Python. Joy. :-)
