Turns out McLaren told Lopez to only bunt if Huston Street used a slide-step, in which case, I can only blame McLaren for putting complex ideas into Lopez’s simple mind. Oh, and Ichiro said that the bunt call was the right one.

Two points.

1) I don’t think this team will lose 90 games but boy did that feel like a loss only a 90-loss team would have. The opposing team scores its runs on a few walks and singles without doing much of anything else and we just let’em win. This game was an annoying combination of pitiful offense and bad luck. Both bunt attempts were fouled out and a diving Bobby Crosby prevents the tying run from scoring in the 9th (funny call by Sims, BTW).

So that makes 3-straight losses. Pythag says we should be 13-11 but instead we’re 11-13. Making up for 2007 pheraps?

2) I’ll give Batista a pass on his “secret”. He was clearly injured. And I’ll still give him the four or five starts he requests to see if his reinvention is for real.

As bad as this game was, I so badly want Bedard to come in hurling 9.0 innings of shutout ball (okay, at least 7.0 innings?) it’s not even funny. No more of this hip thing, man….mmmkay?

McLaren started relaying the customary ‘take 1st pitch’ sign for Loafie to Perlozzo, but sneezed, meaning his finger slipped up his nose, which is ‘bunt the first pitch’ sign, Perlozzo wasn’t the wiser, relayed the sign and Loafie did what he was asked.

Moral: MARK LORETTA GETS THAT BUNT DOWN.

wow.

But it is still depressing to watch 3 straight crappy games like this. It’s ok because we have our 1-2 Punch™ tonight.

Despite overreactions and some depressing games it’s essentially bad luck and underperformance holding this team back. Not having a healthy Erik Bedard every five days doesn’t help either.