24-39, Game Thoughts

Team meetings. Team meetings are the market's new undervalued resource.

Beautiful day, so let's keep this brief:

• When Felix is laboring, it sucks to watch more than when your average pitcher is laboring. But when Felix is executing his game plan, it's artwork. Early on, Drayer tweeted:
  

  
  Atta boy Felix. Just strike everyone out.
  

  
  ...as Felix struck out six between the second and third innings. Later, he switched gears and started pitching to quick outs in working towards a complete game. After the third, he had one inning with more than 15 pitches, and four with 13 or fewer. Felix was classic Felix. It was another one of those games that reminds you why he's such a big deal to us.
  
  The final tally, for those curious: 66% strikes, 16 whiffs (13 against non-pitchers), 13 grounders, six balls in the air. After Gwynn's line drive to center in the third, Felix didn't surrender any solid contact.
  


• Felix, for the most part, stayed low and in against Adrian Gonzalez. He didn't give him any of those high-away pitches that Gonzalez loves to hit out to left field. Could be a coincidence, or could be an effective plan of attack.


• Felix loves to hit. He loves it. He has a history of screwing around at Safeco, hitting balls into the upper deck with a metal bat, and he talks a big game during interleague play. So you can only imagine how frustrated he must've been when, on three separate none- or one-out occasions, Rob Johnson singled in front of him, leaving Felix to bunt. Gotta think Felix was thinking "of all the times for you to get hits."
  
  The one time Felix got to swing away, he went down on three pitches. At least he got his hacks.


• The eighth inning Luke Gregerson slider that hit Milton Bradley in the leg didn't actually hit Milton Bradley in the leg. But he insisted that it did, and Angel Hernandez awarded him first base. I'm never sure how I feel about that sort of thing. It's helpful when it works, and it's not really any different than deliberately sticking a knee or an elbow in front of pitch, but it seems kind of unsportsmanlike, and when you aren't convincing enough, it's kind of embarrassing. We've all seen the video. I suppose I'll award Bradley points for not overselling it. That was the key to the free base.


• Tony Gwynn's second home run of the season flew about 250 feet, a line drive that bounced in front of a diving Franklin Gutierrez and rolled all the way back. It was such an awful gaffe from such a special player that you have to assume that the sun, the spin, or the sun and the spin were playing tricks. The first thing they teach you about playing the outfield when you're young is that you don't dive forward for a line drive. You only dive forward for high flies and bloopers.
  
  Hilariously, over time our memories of the play will fade, and in a few short years we'll be charging that homer to Felix.


• When Milton Bradley connected on his home run, he dropped the bat and took a couple slow steps down the line before breaking into a run. This is Petco, Milton. You played here.


• When Felix bunted with Johnson on first in the fifth, Johnson looked in twice on his way to second, and was thrown out by a hair. I don't remember this part of the fundamentals from when I played, so I don't know if you're supposed to give two looks, but it seems unnecessary, so I'm going to blame Rob Johnson.


• I don't know why announcers like to say that a broken bat "died a hero." Broken bats usually lead to weak groundballs. More often than not, a broken bat died a failure.


• Perhaps the best thing you can say about Ichiro as a player is that, whenever he strikes out, fans ask if something's wrong.


• I was not a big fan of bunting with Gutierrez against Gregerson in the eighth with Jose Lopez on deck. However, that failed bunt attempt did lead to Lopez's game-changing RBI double, so I can't be too upset. Lately Lopez has hit a lot of balls very hard that wound up going for double plays or groundouts, so he has to be even more ecstatic than usual that this time a well-hit ball scored the winning run. I like when Jose Lopez is happy, because Jose Lopez is an adorable little child.

Now to St. Louis, where Luke French, Ryan Rowland-Smith, and Jason Vargas get to face a 2-5 of Rasmus/Pujols/Holliday/Ludwick.