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Today started off in a grumpy way. "We detected an important security update that we downloaded and installed. This required an automatic restart of your computer." Oh, I see: you're able to detect an important security update in the middle of the night, but are not apparently able to, oh, I dunno, save my frickin' documents before rebooting the PC? Personally, I feel I could have survived eight hours without the update: I seem to have coped admirably without it until the early hours of this morning. Still, who needed to read my review of The Thirteenth Floor anyway?
Fortunately, things have improved since. G4TV are having a marathon of Women of Ninja Warrior, a show which I inexplicably left off my favorites where we were discussing them last off-day. And we went to Starbucks', then to the Blockbuster next door for a spot of highly-caffeinated pre-viewed DVD buying [Yay! The original version of The Wicker Man for five bucks!] So, I am now back and ready for a nice, lazy Saturday: it's the first time in almost a month we don't have a show to run Saturday night, so the prospect of being at a loose end has a delicious, slothlike appeal.
Now, if only the Diamondbacks can play their part and deliver some runs, a good pitching performance and some solid defense, all of which were notable by their absence in the third inning of last night's fiasco. Randy Johnson became only the second National League pitcher since 1986 to throw a complete game while allowing seven earned runs - the other being Dwight Gooden on July 1st, 1993, so that did at least save the bullpen. However, it's very irritating to think that, but for two plays in the third which should have been made, on balls that didn't leave the infield, we could conceivably have taken that one.
Important to come back strong...though "strong" is hardly the word to apply to our starting rotation of late. In the past dozen games, we have only four quality starts - two each for Haren and Davis. That's a worrying decline from seven in the previous twelve contests, and nine of the twelve before that. We send Micah Owings to the mound, and that hardly fills me with confidence: the way he's done in his last four starts, we might be better off sending up any other of our pitch hitters to take the mound. It does present an interesting dilemma. Who do we use as DH? Can we send Micah out there as the designated hitter and the pitcher? Probably not, but at this point. I'll take anything we can get...