Padilla, Stairs, and More
I saw one of the stupidest things I have seen on a baseball diamond tonight. I am sure it is getting a lot of coverage in blogs as well. Vincente Padilla just lost his mind. He obviously doesn’t care about the team aspect of baseball. First Padillia hits Vlad Guerrero in the 3rd after pitching very well up until then. Then in the 4th he brushes him back again and seemed to get mad after both teams were warned by home plate umpire Hunter Wendelstedt. At this point of the at bat Padilla seems to be trying to over throw and Vlad is trying to crush one. Well Vlad won and wound up hitting a high fastball into the right field seats putting the Angels up 6-3. Two batters later Padilla hits Juan Rivera and gets ejected. It was a blatant attempt to throw at him and Wendelstedt did what he should have and sent Padilla to the showers early. So you may be asking yourself, why whould he do this in such a critical series? Well if you can figure that out you be sure to clue everyone else in. Padilla marches to his own beat and its not always a good beat. I can just see the Phillies GM getting a chuckle out of this. They traded Padilla for basically nothing and now we know why. He is a headcase and we’ll never know what he was thinking because he talks to NOBODY. There are ways to send a message and I am all for that since its part of the game but he went about it the wrong way and at a bad time. The Rangers don’t exactly have great long relief and Padilla was coming off his best outing of the year. So why tax the bullpen in this critical series with the Angels. It was just plain stupid. Was he folding under the pressure of the dog days of August and trying to catch Oakland? The sad thing is I don’t think we will ever know.
Matt Stairs
This may be one of those under the radar pick ups that pays HUGE dividends over the remainder of the season. Stairs ads the strong lefty that the Rangers were lacking with the struggles of Brad Wilkerson. Tonight he showed that strength. Stairs hit a line drive HR over the left center field wall tonight that was an absolute bullett. I look forward to seeing him in the lineup more and more as the season winds down over the next month and a half.
Michael Young
Young is on pace to rack up over 200 hits again this year. Day in day out he just keeps putting up numbers. Who would have thought this young secondbaseman would take over for Arod and hit like he has hit. Again he is over .300, showing some power, and driving in runs. Throw in a batting title from last year and he has proven he is a star. I hope he remains a Ranger for hte remainder of his career so we can see him continue to tear up AL pitching for years to come.
Trip Progress
I am in the process of looking at RVs right now. I continue to work and save for the trip and have some basic planning done although nothing can really be done till the schedules are put out later on. So far everything is on pace for a leave date of mid March, however I am thinking of starting in Feburary to get in more college baseball before spring training starts. I am really looking forward to it and hope you check out my website for more info.
As always comments and/or questions are welcomed.
Let me hear from you Baseball Nation.
TBJM
The Baseball Journeyman 