For something like the seventh time this year, we tried to get to five games over .500, but failed. The problem we had was even getting one game over .500 for awhile. The bar has been raised a bit to getting stuck at five games over. Hopefully there’s enough time to get through that new ceiling so we can set another one at say 10 games over .500, which if we sustain that through the end of the season, we’ll have a better record than anyone expected at the start of the season, or probably most people when they get a look at our pitching staff ERA.
Scott Feldman may be out of gas, as he’s definitely not as snappy as he was earlier this year. There was a lot of talk of him going to the pen, and that may yet happen, but he doesn’t seem anywhere near as crisp as he was just a month ago, even. His line is five hits and three walks over 5.1 innings for a total of four runs (three earned). No home runs at least, but he just didn’t have it to my eyes. We could blame the heat, but I think it might be a lack of gas already. Jamey Wright followed, and didn’t help matters by giving up two earned runs in his .2 innings of work. Josh Rupe settled things down by throwing three shutout innings, but by then the damage was done – we weren’t coming back this time.
Offensively, we had just six hits, and only four players got them. Frank Catalanotto had a hit, and Josh Hamilton, David Murphy, & Gerald Laird each had two. Wasn’t a great game on our behalf, and while we only lost by two, I just didn’t feel we were in the game. Perhaps I was missing something, but my memory sitting here writing about it on Sunday night tells me that we just didn’t have it.
Oh well, try to take the series on Sunday afternoon.