First off, in the wake of Charlie Brown’s pitching debacle comes this fun read about horrid ceremonial first pitches. I just don’t get how you can be that bad at something that you know you are going to have to do. I’ve never hand-tossed a pizza or rode a unicycle but I can promise you if I was ever put in a situation where I was going to be doing those things in front of an audience I would practice so I didn’t look like a complete bag of hammers. These guys, not so much.
Secondly, what in the name of all that is holy and good gotten into Andruw (Satan) Jones? You guys all remember this assjack from last year, right? Here’s a quick recap of Satan’s 2008: biggest single-season contract ever given to a Dodger (Ned Colletti, yay!), showed up fat at camp, apparently went blind, bottomed out with a negative VORP and was cut lose at the end of the season to much fanfare. There was a teeny-tiny bit of a silver lining for the Dodgers when Texas picked up his contract for the league minimum in Spring Training and ended up saving the Dodgers $500k. Because I care when millionaires are able to save a few bucks. That’s important.
So what has AJ done with Texas? Not much. Except for hitting in the middle of the lineup. Check that, hitting well in the middle of the lineup. Yes, those numbers are Satan’s stats–nearly an OPS of 1.000 and almost as many walks as strikeouts. How in the name of Zeus’ butthole is that even possible? There was talk about platooning him but as you can see he’s raking against both lefties and righties and his home/away splits do seem to be Arlington inflated but are still light years better than we would have expected to see based on last year’s performance.
Rudy Jaramillo has got to be credited with a large part of the turnaround but other than that I’m at a loss–I mean at this point Jesus Christ himself is probably speed dialing Rudy Jaramillo to get tips on bringing people back to life. While watching a Rangers game over the weekend (Chris Davis, 0-7 with 6 Ks in the doubleheader, nice work jerkweed) the announcers were raving about Jones’ preparation and willingness to do whatever has been asked of him. Apparently after making the team he went out and rented a one bedroom apartment with virtually no furnishings and got rid of any trappings of stardom or even success. And it’s worked. Maybe Jones was never a guy that could carry a lineup like he was expected to in LA, maybe he put too much pressure on himself, maybe he hated being away from Atlanta and maybe those little injuries were too much for him to play through. Whatever the reason it sort of makes me happy, which is weird.
“How in the name of Zeus’ butthole is that even possible?” Hilarious. … Jesus is getting a lot of ink on this site. Good for you JC. Also, I have the answer to why Andruuuuuw Jones is raking. H-G-H. Went off of it when it became a hot topic and everyone thought MLB was going to start testing for it. Now that it’s evident they’re not going to, had just enough time to get a cycle in since being dumped by the Dodgers and making his way back to the Majors. It’s simple math y’all. HGH = Skill + Power = Millions of $. If only I woulda done the stuff back in the 90s, I’d be a Wiffle Ball Hall of Famer for sure.