This is probably going to be a long recap. Maybe the longest recap of the year. Bear with me, or at the very least buckle up.
Let’s start with where this recap needs to start: Pedro Alvarez. Not everybody gets up to the plate and hits a home run in their first at-bat. Not everybody goes 3-for-4. Hell, not everybody gets a hit. Some people go up, have three good at-bats, make a great swing on a 2-2 pitch and drive it hard the other way, only to have it go right at the left fielder. Pedro Alvarez, if you watched the game, falls into category number three. When his first at-bat got to a 3-1 count, he tried to bash a baseball into the Negative Zone and struck out swinging when he could’ve drawn a walk. He got into the exact same situation in his second at-bat and drew a walk. And he really did hit that flyout right on the nose with a great two-strike, inside-out swing against a lefty. The boxscore says 0-for-2, but he looked at home in the batter’s box to me.
The second thing we should talk about is Jose Tabata’s homer. Tabata’s not a big guy, but it’s easy to see why so many scouts project him for more pop down the line when he turns on a pitch and drives it into the bleachers like he did against John Danks in the eighth inning tonight. In six games, he managed to do what Lastings Milledge hasn’t done in 57.
But we also can’t talk about this game without talking about the defense. Oh, the defense. It’s true that Pedro Alvarez let two balls by him in the early going that Andy LaRoche probably would’ve gotten to. I don’t know if they would’ve been outs, but they wouldn’t have bounced off the right-angle in shallow left for doubles, either. But the kid was obviously nervous and on one of the plays he actually got to the ball in time and it hopped over his glove. His defense is a big question mark at third base, but I suggest that we give him a pass for one night since it was his big league debut and all.
Besides, things got worse after that. The slew of errors started semi-innocently, with a seventh inning bouncer that got Javy Lopez and Pedro Alvarez crossed up, resulting in an ugly throw to first. Then, Bobby Crosby muffed a ball a shortstop in the eighth. But nothing came from either of those errors and they didn’t seem too terrible. Then the ninth inning came. First, Neil Walker booted a fairly easy play at second on a bouncer by Juan Pierre, placing runners on second and third with one out. Then, Ryan Doumit made a bad throw to second on a stolen base attempt by Pierre that skipped into the outfield and let a run score. Then, Doumit made another marginally bad throw to third (which Alvarez should’ve corralled) on Pierre’s attempt to steal third and dropped Bobby Crosby’s resulting throw to the plate to throw Pierre out. So the inning ended with four errors, three of which involved Ryan Doumit though he was only charged with one.
The entire sequence with Doumit reminded me a whole lot of the day that I stopped being a regular catcher (I’m pretty sure I’ve told this story on the blog before and if I have you can go ahead and bail at any point that it gets familiar, but to be honest I think it’s a good story and I’m going to go ahead with it again). It was during practice for the 13-year old county All-Star tournament. At the time, I was still a catcher, though I wasn’t particularly good at blocking balls after an incident in my 11-year old season when I took a line drive off of my face. I could hit pretty well so the coaches worked with me, but our team was pretty good and so I wasn’t the starting catcher. At one point, I missed about three relay throws in a row from our shortstop and our coach lost it.
“Pat, what position do you play?”
“Catcher.”
“And what does the catcher do?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean what does a CATCHer do?”
“Oh, you mean catch the ball.”
“Yes. And what have you failed to do?”
“…”
“Catch the ball. And what good is a catcher that can’t catch the ball?”
“…”
“Just go sit in the dugout for a while, OK?”
That’s kind of how I fell watching Ryan Doumit in the field right now. He can’t throw the ball, he can’t catch a throw from anyone but the pitcher, and I’m just not really sure what he can do right. Frustrating isn’t the right word, because it’s not nearly strong enough. What’s frustrating to the nth degree? How about disheartening?
And so that’s where I am tonight. Pedro looked rough around the edges in the field, but right at home in a big league batter’s box even without any hits. And Jose Tabata’s home run was a great window into things potentially to come. But dammit, this team is as frustrating as ever to watch. I know that it’s been years since we’ve had anything like a McCutchen/Alvarez duo or a McCutchen/Alvarez/Tabata trio or maybe even a McCutchen/Alvarez/Tabata/Walker core, but sometimes the ineptitude is just overwhelming. And as positive a thing as Pedro’s debut was tonight, well, six errors in three innings just isn’t easy to swallow.
Deep breath
