Gettin' Me Pissed

That's John Farrell's juggalo face, btw.  And yeah, I'm a little miffed at how Farrell juggled his bullpen last night.  Now, I'm not suggesting that the pitch Frasor threw to Saltalamacchia was good or anything, because it was a bit of a meatball:

And I'm not suggesting that getting Perez in there to face the lefty (Kalish) is a terrible strategy either.  And while we're at it, I don't even mind taking Laffey out in that spot.  It's just that when the contingency plan is getting David Pauley and Scott Richmond in to a close (ish) game, maybe we can take a step back and re-assemble our thoughts.  Either let Frasor finish it out, or let Perez finish it out.  I will recite a list of things that were going through my head between the Saltalamacchia homerun and the 3rd out of the inning. This will be in no particular order.

• "Why is David Pauley warming up?"
• "It's not like Kalish is so good that the matchup absolutely has to be there. He's batting .248/.280/.248. Just leave Frasor in. You're only going to pull Perez after one hitter anyway."
• "It's a tie game, and I'm going to turn this shit off because it's going to end in a blowout."
• "Wouldn't this be a good time to have anybody but David Pauley on the mound?  Like, Coco, even? Janssen?  Oliver? CharlieV*?"
• "Louie's splits are even very pronounced. I'd way rather him than Pauley, even with the wrong side of the matchup."
• "Don't walk this guy Pauley."
• "Why the fuck did you walk that guy Pauley?"

That little asterisk signifies that CharlieV will be starting on Friday in place of Jesse Chavez, which I didn't know at the time.  It makes the Pauley selection a little more logical in the sense that he used Pauley and not literally anybody else, but I think the fact remains that he burned through two major league relievers so that he could get a guy who has been DFA'ed twice this season in to the game, while Oliver, Janssen and Cordero just sat and watched because it wasn't "their inning" yet, but we're not going to argue little semantics here. But yeah.  All those things happened.  Maybe we don't always need the right matchup when it burns through three pitchers to get one out.  Little shit like that, you know? Especially within the division.

Anyway, when nonsense like that goes down, it allows people to focus on that, instead of Adam Lind and Aaron Laffey shutting my mouth and rubbing my nose in the mud.  Laffey was actually pretty damn good yesterday, going 6 innings of 3 hit, Zaunhead ball in a park where he should be thrilled with 3 innings of 6 run ball.  This all but assures him of getting another shot to start, given the rotation situation and the Villanueva announcement.  Someone finally stepped up, I see, considering all the spot starters were going like 3 innings before getting mercy-yanked.  I'm not even going to try to piece together what the rotation looks like now, or what the plan is if Henderson Alvarez can't make his next scheduled start.  Lind was okay himself, getting two hits and hitting the ball reasonably hard a couple of times.

Stuff

Shi Davidi tells us that Jamie Moyer has a deal in place with the Jays in which he'll throw two games in AAA, and then the Jays have to make up their minds about whether or not they want to promote him.  Can't be any worse than Pauley, right? Or Chavez. Or Richmond. Or Coello.  Or Henderson Alvarez. (Note: Yes, it can be worse.)

Jon Morosi of FOX was talking to Alex Anthopoulos, who says that he's still not going to rush to acquire an arm, and probably won't make a big deal until mid-July, if at all.  Nothing new there, considering nobody has any fucking arms available anyway.  Can't just find a fucking trade partner out of thin air.  And I don't suppose there's a whole lot of point to acquiring an impact starter when everyone's hurt and the team is in last place in the East, if I can be completely honest with myself.  Maybe if they weren't throwing away games by tossing David Pauley straight in to the god damn fire.


Omar Vizquel has more or less announced that he'll retire at the end of the season, according to Zach Links of MLBTR.

Travis Snider had two more hits last night for Las Vegas, and Shawn Hill went 6 innings, allowing 6 hits and 1 walk, striking out 6.

Cuban prospect Yasel Puig has been declared a free agent.  He's apparently looking for something similar to what Jorge Soler was expected to sign, before he got like nine years from the Cubs.  Kevin Goldstein believes that the favorites are the Dodgers, Braves and Cubs.

Today in umpire incompetence: 

Not sure about you, but if I'm Jack Hannahan, which I'm definitely not, by the way, when that ump gets his finger in my face for a call that he fucked up that badly, I'm going full retard and turning this in to some kind of Muy Thai scenario and kneeing him square in the chops.