It seems as though every week I start out my recap with some incredible feat of pitching. Well I don't want to rock the boat so how bout them Giants? The forgotten best staff west of the Mississippi had a week for the ages. Before Matt Cain's loss to Cincinatti, the G-Men posted four consecutive shut outs. That included a shutout sweep of the hated Dodgers to take control of the NL West. If Zito can be an average pitcher down the stretch and Lincecum can even come close to returning to form; the Giants should have the NL West in the bag.
Earlier this week Kevin Youkalis was shipped to Chicago for a few minor pieces to make room for the up and coming Will Middlebrooks. I know what you're thinking , the Red Sox just needed another big bat in the line up. Well luckily for them, four of the nine starters for the Triple-A all star game are Paw-Sox and as you probably could have guess none of their pitchers made it. If I was a betting man (which I totally am, albeit unsuccessfully), I would put Carl Crawford type money on the Sox trading one or more prospects for an arm around deadline time IF they're still in the mix.
The Injury Bug hit the Yankees hard this week as starters C.C. Sabathia and Andy Pettitte were sidelined with injuries. Although C.C will only miss two starts, Pettitte could miss six weeks. Whether this is a major problem or not remains to be seen. Pettitte has been huge for the Bombers this past month but if Garcia can pitch just average,if Kuroda can continue to improve,if Hughes can be good Hughes, and if the line-up can continue to give strangly high amounts of run support to Ivan Nova then these injuries won't mean much.
Although the Orioles are in second in the AL East, four games back of the division leading Yankees and one and a half ahead of the Red Sox, they're differential doesn't show it. A recent 3-7 slide has knocked their's to -16. That's 71 behind the Yanks and 73 behind the Red Sox. Look for the O's to have one of their famous late season collapses this year.
Hot Teams:
Boston: It appears that the 2012 Red Sox will not settle for being the biggest waste of talent in world history and do not want to sit home a third straight October. After taking 12 of 16, the Sox have moved into the thick of the AL East race and appear to be getting better. Will Middlebrooks appears to be a major upgrade over the broken down Youkalis and the lineup isn't even near it's potential yet. Both Pedroia and Gonzalez are capable of putting up much better numbers and Jacoby Ellsbury hasn't been heard from since early April. In other good news for Sox Nation, the pitching hasn't been totally abysmal lately. As mentioned above, they have the prospects to make a move for a good pitcher.
Los Angeles: After winning 14 of their last 20, the Angels are starting to make the AL West look like a legitimate race. With a closer look, the Angels seem to have the talent to be a World Series contender for years to come. They have one of the best one-two punches in the league with Jered Weaver and C.J Wilson, the best young player in baseball with Mike Trout, an all star caliber guy in Mark Trumbo, and oh Albert Pujols who's really starting to come on. They may not win the division because of the powerhouse Rangers, but they will be a force to be reckoned with come October.
Not so Hot Teams:
The Other Los Angeles Team: Hey, remember when the Dodgers were the best team in baseball? Yeah you're right, that was probably just a acid fueled hallucination. They have now lost seven in a row and 11 of the last 12, but that's not even the most impressive feat. They've now been shut out five of the past six games. The game they weren't shut out in, they scored two runs. I predicted the Dodgers would regress a bit as the season went on and I thought it would be due to their offense in which everyone was playing above their capabilities. But I didn't know it would be this soon or this swift. Now that Kemp and Ethier are both sidelined, they're best offensive player is AJ Ellis who leads the rest of the crew with six home runs and 26 RBI's! I guess learning to read and be an analyst isn't all Magic has to work on.
Philadelphia: The Phillies are moving past the slow start stage into the "we're done" stage. The most unsettling sign for the Phil's faithful might be that the pitching has really been the problem, not the hitting. They're 10th in the MLB in runs scored led by revelation, Carlos Ruiz who's OPS is now over 1.000. But pitching is a different story. Cole Hamels and Vance Worley have been good but not great as the top two pitchers right now. Cliff Lee is winless ....winless...it's July. I understand some of it's due to luck but a 4.13 e.r.a is not what was expected of the former Cy Young winner. Then the back end of the rotation, Joe Blanton and Kyle Kendrick have been downright bad. Even returns by Ryan Howard and Roy Halladay wouldn't fix this mess.
That's it for this week, look for my mid-season report next sunday and Stay Hungry My Friends.
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