Well that was ugly!

After surviving a game like that, I almost don't know where to start. Guess we will begin with the pitching. Jeff Niemann had a serious problem keeping the ball down, and was just providing extending Batting Practice to the Houston line up. Fortunately for us the starter on the other side was equally wild down the middle and the top of our order padded their season statistics nicely. Damon, Zobrist, Longo, BJ and Kotchman tortured him. Which brings me to the next point. We have a glaring hole in our line up and this is preventing us from producing at a higher level.
Say, theorectically in the first inning that we get a hit or 2 and then out. Maybe score, maybe not. 2nd inning up comes #5 and gets on, say a double. We then have 6,7,8 who leave him on and #9 leading off the third, so our leadoff batter comes up with one out. I think you can see this coming (those of you who know me), say instead #6 bunts him over, and #7 then just needs to make contact to bring him home. Even another bunt works. If you watched the game on Saturday you saw BJ bunt foul on the first pitch bringing in the 3rd baseman and then getting a hit on the next pitch. That hit was created by the bunt attempt. If the 3rd baseman was playing back that was a double play grounder. Until Reid Brignac stops his golf swing he should bunt every pitch, even with 2 strikes. He had 1 level swing AB this weekend and it was a base hit. Kelley Shoppach even though he did walk into a few hits on this trip, should bunt everytime he comes up with somebody on base and less than 2 outs... period. I am going to give Elliot Johnson another coupla weeks to get back on track and then I am gonna put him on the bunt team as well. I like S.Rod so much I think I let him swing, but he is also on thin ice. I am not a huge advocate of sending everybody back to Durham, I feel we continue finding ways to win with the athletic team we have. I see our BP causing us lots of pain down the stretch, so maybe Cobb in the pen, though they are probably keeping him primed as a starter when our next Ace pitcher trade goes down.
The good news in this is Joe Maddon is managing this club and not me, and we are 10 games over .500 and the old folks up north are sweating!
Keep up the good work

Bunting would be super valuable to this particular team! How many chances did we toss away yesterday by not even attempting a bunt? Joe used the squeeze a lot last year and a few times this year to good effect, although at times it is a little safer form of the "suicide squeeze" where the runner on third goes about halfway and decides to run when they see the bunt location. I guess maybe the only thing I can think of is they do not want to overuse it, but it should be part of the routine and not abandoned. Monk:)

you would think they would be tired of overusin´g the Kelley Shoppach strikeout!

Really!!! I was just starting to think he was swinging the bat well too, until yesterday. Neither catcher has been very productive at the plate this year, though, and I was expecting more of Jaso particularly.