Thoughts

There are Pinstripes among us. Not the one that our boys wear. These pinstripers. With the Yankees embarking on a historic (for the Astros) roadtrip to Houston, an exciting series is hopefully in store. On the one hand, you've got a Yankees team who are sort of humming along like we've been accustomed to them doing in the first half of the season. As is the case with many teams, injuries have had a tremendous affect on New York's season. On the other, we have the Astros who have been scuffling of late after looking like world beaters in May. At a game below .500 (33-34), the team is searching for answers as to their recent poor play.

Among those searching is Cecil Cooper, who is quoted as saying that the pitching staff's propensity to give up home runs, "wont't cut it". After reading that, I'm more certain than ever that, on the whole, people don't know any more about the sport than they did one hundred years ago. How baseball managers and insiders can't do exactly what Stephen did in his last post is incredibly frustrating. With the recent advancements in analyzation, including both the statistics of players and the organization itself, it is foolhardy for a team to not adapt. How is it that Drayton McLane can't transfer his business acumen to heading a professional baseball team? The most stark example of his ineptitude is exhibited perhaps not by McLane himself, but by those people that he hires to run the day to day operations of his club. The product that is most visible to the general public, the Astros, are run by a man who has said the following with a straight face, when asked about Lance Berkman bunting his way on base while losing 5-1 in the eighth inning to Milwaukee:

"'That's a good play,' Cooper said of Berkman's decision to bunt with the third baseman playing him deep. 'That's a baseball player's play. It's a nice job. We need baserunners. If you hit a ball out of a ballpark, I call them rally-killers when you get down like that. We need to keep a rally going, and that was a nice play to me.'"

This argument is so convoluted and nonsensical that I have to close my eyes every time I see it, just to calm myself.

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