Roberto Hernandez is a nice human interest story. He's old, he's supposed to be a nice guy, he was a big-time closer about 74 years ago for Cleveland, and he recently made his 1000th appearance in a game, which (at this stage) puts him up in the all-time top 10 for pitchers.
But the Dodgers should not have a team of human interest stories. They should have a team of players. And Roberto Hernandez is not that.
Roberto Hernandez is more like ice in the urinal. When you first see it, it's interesting at which to look and possibly kind of neat. But once it's put into practical use, it melts pretty quickly and quietly and scatters piss all over the floor. And when you're done pissing all over it, there's nothing left to look at, as everything has been flushed down the drain.
Why Grady continues to trot Hernandez out there is beyond me. In doing so, he turns the Dodgers from a class act to a circus act. Stop the madness, Grady. If we want to watch old people, we'll flip on the TV Land reruns of the Golden Girls.
But let's do a recap of the key plays of tonight's game, shall we?
- Grady pulls Penny after five innings with a 5-4 lead. Lurch comes in and promptly gives up a two-run home run in the sixth, puting the Rockies up 6-5. In fact, when Hendrickson's first pitch was stroked to right for a single, the TV caught Dodger pitching coach Rick Honeycutt on the phone to the bullpen, while Grady stoically sat beside him. Impact to the Dodgers: -2 runs.
- Grady makes the call for Roberto Hernandez to pitch the ninth, and Hernandez gives up two more runs to turn a one-run deficit into a three-run deficit. Oh yeah, had we pitched a scoreless ninth, we would have tied the game in the bottom of the inning. Alas. Impact to the Dodgers: -2 runs.
- On the positive side, Chin-Lung Hu knocks a two-run home run. James Loney has a three-run home run to take an ephemeral lead. Delwyn Young smacks the crap out of the ball in the ninth for a solo home run. Impact to the Dodgers: +6 runs. Enough to even compensate for Grady's ineptitude, shockingly.
If I was an LA Times reporter, I might also point out that Jeff Kent was nailed by a country mile on an Andre Ethier sacrifice fly this evening, and not only was there no collision at the plate, but what little impact there was between Kent and Yorvit Torrealba (likely) caused Kent to leave the game early. But hey, the Dodgers are one happy cohesive clubhouse, right? No need to point that out!
With tonight's win, the Rockies stay in the Wild Card hunt. With tonight's loss, the Dodgers' sixth loss in their last seven games, their Wild Card hopes offically move to "E" as in "Eliminated."
And while we're talking about letters, someone should remind the Dodgers that "spoiler" is spelled with a "r" at the end, not a "d".
1 comments:
I'll never look at ice the same again.
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