Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Post-Game 14 Thread: Juan Pierre Is THE MAN

After all the bashing that Juan Pierre has taken (admittedly, including from us at SoSG), starting about the millisecond that his 5-year, $45M deal was announced this offseason, it brings me great pleasure to announce that Juan Pierre was awesome last night against the Diamondbacks, leading the team to a 6-4 victory. Pierre doubled, tripled, had one RBI and scored three runs. Let's give credit where credit is due: Pierre was great last night.

The clincher came in the seventh inning when Pierre smoked a pitch to center field, scoring Wilson Valdez from third. Pierre then scored from third on a throwing error by Snakes shortstop Alberto Callaspo (whose name has the same wonderful cadence as Enrico Pallazzo). Watching Pierre motor around the bases was pretty amazing--the dude is fast when the wheels start moving--but I have to admit that I was more reeling from shock when I saw Pierre hit a ball that actually rolled all the way to the back wall. The Dodgers took a 6-4 lead that they held for the final score.

Pierre earned even more points from me when I heard his post-game interview this morning. Pierre calmly said (and I'm paraphrasing here) that yeah, a two-game sweep is cool, "but we didn't go up against their top three pitchers (Randy Johnson, Livan Hernandez, Brandon Webb)," so we shouldn't read too much into this yet.

I too will not read too much into this one game, which raised Pierre's batting average to a dismal .220 while his OPS still lingers at .530 (Ramon Martinez's OPS is .518, if you get my drift). But for one night, in an important game against a worthy division rival, in a late inning of a tie game, Pierre rocked the house.

On to the Rockies.

photo: Roy Dabner/AP

0 comments: