The stache

As bad as the Dodgers have been, at least they have something to look forward to. Kershaw, Greinke and Ryu will make an outstanding 1-2-3 rotation punch. I wish we had just one of them.

We don't have a first round pick anymore, we gave it up to sign Lohse.

Rickie now hitting .127 for the month of May. 7 for 55. 1 RBI. He needs to sit for a few days. Maybe having a couple days off will help him clear his mind, because he's pressing right now.

Axford?

Only one home run this season, Matt Kemp? No problem. Play the Brewers, they'll turn your season around.

Now let's look at the month of May. http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/4200/weeksmay1stmay19th2013.png Since May 1st, Rickie Weeks has a .189 SLG, and a .447 OPS. There is no reason....NONE...to keep him in the lineup right now.

I realize this was posted three days ago, but let's look at Rickie's last three weeks, shall we? http://img801.imageshack.us/img801/5597/weeksapril28thmay192013.png And ok, I'll ignore the .175 average. Rickie's got a .297 OBP since April 28th (including today), a .599 slugging percentage. Oh wait, I'm sorry. That's not his SLG. That's his OPS. He's struck out 21 times in 63 at bats. Once every three official plate appearances. Where again, exactly, has he "not been that bad" the last three weeks?

The top of our offense is Superman. The bottom of our lineup (Weeks, Gonzalez/Betancourt and our catchers) are kryptonite.

Man on third with two out, we're hitting .188. Do you still have the league splits up, trwi7? What's the league average in that situation?

We're hitting .255 with RISP coming into the day. http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/split.cgi?team=MIL&t=b&year=2013 That's not terrible. With 2 outs and RISP, we're batting .213. That's abysmal.

I will hold Ron's feet to the fire for some of the inexplicable moves he makes. I'm not going to rehash them here, as they've been discussed already ad nauseum. But if I could find a stat for what our team is hitting with RISP for the season, I bet it would be pretty low. And that's not Ron's fault.

Bianchi to start at second.

Hell hath frozen over.

Oh no, here we go again.

Really? Axford out for a second inning? Are you ***** kidding me???????????????????????????????????????

Can we just DFA Weeks and Gonzalez please? Neither one of them are worth a damn. They're automatic outs.

This team is just sad right now.

Yuni back to bein' Yuni.

Well, I'll take a walk. Nice AB, Carlos. Can the Yuni Bomber come through?

Come on, Gomez. Jesus, can anybody on this team get a clutch hit?

Will this team ever beat the Cardinals again? Jesus.

Same here.

Good start to the night. Segura and Braun hitting the bejeezus out of the ball.

Yeowch, we're giving up a full run per game more in 2013 than we did in 2011. 3.63 vs 4.60.

The old adage is that a good defense will beat a good offense. I think that applies to baseball, too. Look at the Giants. They've won two of the last three World Series. They didn't exactly have a great lineup. Nobody that really scared you outside of Posey last year. They did it with defense and pitching. They didn't score a lot, but they kept you from scoring at all. Hitting good Major League pitching is, in my opinion, the hardest thing to do in sports. If you have a great hitter, they're going to fail 7 out of 10 times at the plate. And when a truly great pitcher is facing them, that rate of success can drop even more. As much as losing Prince Fielder stings, the decline of our pitching is what's killing this team. Look at our pitching numbers as a team in 2011, 2012 and this season: 2011 (96-66) 3.63 ERA (7th in NL of 16 teams). WHIP 1.240 (3rd in NL). K:BB 2.86 (2nd in NL). 7.8 K/9 IP (5th in NL). 2012 (83-79) 4.22 ERA (13th in NL of 16 teams). WHIP 1.364 (13th in NL). K:BB 2.67 (6th in NL). 8.7 K/9 IP (1st in NL). 2013 (16-24) 4.60 ERA (15th in NL of 15 teams). WHIP 1.367 (13th in NL). K:BB 2.56 (5th in NL). 7.0 K/9 IP (11th in NL) We are allowing more runners to reach base, and more of them are scoring. Now, compare those stats to our offensive production: 2011 (96-66) runs scored 721, 4.45 per game (5th in NL of 16 teams). OBP .325 (5th in NL). SLG .425 (2nd in NL). OPS .750 (2nd in NL) 2012 (83-79) runs scored 776, 4.79 per game (1st in NL of 16 teams). OBP .325 (5th in NL). SLG .437 (1st in NL). OPS .762 (2nd in NL) 2013 (16-24) runs scored 169, 4.22 per game (8th in NL of 15 teams). OBP .317 (8th in NL). SLG .422 (2nd in NL). OPS .739 (3rd in NL) Run differential 2011 4.45 - 3.63 = +0.82 RPG 2012 4.79 - 4.22 = +0.57 RPG 2013 4.22 - 4.60 = -0.38 RPG We are giving up, on average, a run more per game in 2013 than we did in 2011.