|
|
I must confess, I've been grinning like a Cheshire cat all morning, since the news broke that Mandy has been suspended for 50 games, allegedly after taking a medicine his doctor didn't know was banned. Yeah, right... Just a shame that LA's Mandy-powered 13-0 start at home can't be struck from the record, but it'll be interesting to see how the team copes without their dreadlocked doper. What looked like a canter for the Dodgers after the first month, has the potential to be a race once again. Today is the first day of the rest of the season...
As such, Dan Haren takes the mound for the D-backs, going for his fourth straight win - and a victory here would give us an even split on the road-trip, at 4-4, which I think we would happily take. After six brilliant starts, I keep feeling he's due for some regression to the mean - but I've been thinking that for about the past two weeks, and am happy to be proven wrong once again. We face Evil Chris Young, and as has been well documented, the one thing everyone can do on him is run. Run like the wind. A couple of starts back, the Rockies stole eight bases in three innings off Young: that day, Dexter Fowler took five, more than in all the other games of his (admittedly-brief) career combined. Every man we get on first, should be standing on second within three pitches. Whether or not someone is there already. :-)
Today's trivia note. Justin Upton's 13-game hitting streak has been surpassed only four times by players his age or younger, in the past decade. Billy Butler reached 14 early last season, while Jose Reyes, Ryan Zimmerman and Albert Pujols all had 17-game streaks. So if J-Up can get four more, we'll revisit this topic and dig further back into history... Over the streak, Upton has a line of .378/.451/.822 for an OPS of 1.273, which has got to put him among the hottest hitters in all baseball. Here's to more of the same, though with it being a day-game, not sure how many will be about to see it. Not me, for one!