The Fate Of The Entire Universe was supposed to be decided this weekend, but given recent (shocking) events, the Reds find themselves eight games up, and the Cardinals are grasping at straws in the wild card chase.

St Louis recently completed a 2-8 stretch against the woeful Pirates, Nationals, and Astros, and the Reds have taken full advantage of that skid.  Coming off the successful 6-3 West Coast trip, they won five out of six against the Cubs and Brewers at home.

Tony LaRussa’s decision to align the rotation so that Carpenter/Wainwright/Garcia would pitch against the Reds looks bad in hindsight.  They could have used someone more efficient than Jeff Suppan in their series finale against the Astros.

Now, the Cardinals need a sweep.  Their season may depend on it.  If the Reds even so much as win a game, they would maintain a seven-game lead with less than 30 games to play.

Before we get too overconfident, lets look at the New York Mets as a recent example of a team who blew a huge division lead.  It can happen.  We have to continue to play Cincinnati Reds’ baseball, because nothing is guaranteed until the division title is clinched.

Additionally, as badly as the Cardinals have struggled, we all know how well they have fared against Cincinnati.  Following this weekend visit is a trip to Colorado.  Critics point out that this team doesn’t fare well against winning teams, so this is a chance to silence some of them.

Kick a team while they are down.  Don’t give them an ounce of daylight.  I feel that St. Louis still has a good squad, and all they need is a little momentum to get the ball rolling.  Carpenter and Wainwright have had a lot of success against the Reds, and have pitched in big spots.

Brandon Phillips had his choice comments a few weeks ago about the Cardinals.  I think it’s a bit over the top to suggest that they saw that, and THEN ramped up their efforts in sweeping that series.  Athletes are pretty motivated people in general.

However, looking back, did they place all their eggs into that one basket?  Did they leave their heart and soul back at Great American Ballpark? 

Regardless of what’s transpired since then, it should be a fun weekend, and there is still a lot that the Reds need to prove.

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You read about Oswalt’s propensity to shut down the opposition in August, September, and even October when he was an Astro, but you tempered your expectations after realizing that those impressive playoff numbers were from 2004 and 2005. Those were the days when Cole Hamels was dominating hitters by day and breaking bones (in his own valuable left hand, unfortunately) at night in Clearwater, Florida.

Nonetheless, it was hard not to be excited. After all, in the eyes of every baseball analyst, the Phillies starting rotation (or at least the three arms at the top) was the best in baseball.

Then came Oswalt’s first start as a Phillie, and even though it was less than twenty-four hours after his arrival from the deep south, and with a catcher he had just met, his 8-1 loss to the last place Nationals still gave you that unsatisfied feeling. The kind of feeling you get when you go to a Panera with a huge appetite.

What’s happened since, however, has made you forget those bitter Cliff Lee thoughts and envision another season with Halladay, Oswalt, and Hamels beginning or prolonging the offensive slumps of National League opponents.

In his first month as a Phillie, Oswalt is 4-1 with an ERA of 1.89. Take away that hurried first start against the Nationals, and those numbers go to 4-0 with a 1.31 ERA.

Maybe those late season statistics from years past weren’t a myth after all. With nearly 200 innings under his belt in 2010, Oswalt seems to be surging when it matters the most.

Isn’t it amazing what a pennant race can do for a terrific player freed from a losing atmosphere? The Phillies have now seen this phenomenon in two straight years with Cliff Lee and Roy Oswalt.

With Oswalt, the move to a contender has already proven that this undersized, 33-year-old Mississippian plays to win.

In a crucial stretch of August baseball, we have seen him win with or without his best stuff. At times, his location has been Halladay-esque, but there have also been days like this week’s start against the Dodgers, when Oswalt simply dug deep and competed when the strike zone didn‘t seem as friendly. Firing a 95-mph fastball for a strikeout on his 90th pitch of the afternoon was something you see $15 million pitchers do.

What you don’t often see $15 million pitchers do are things like pinch hitting at crucial spots in late-season games, and substituting as a surprisingly slick left fielder. Oswalt is leaving little doubt that he is here to win.

And the best part is that he will be wearing a Phillies uniform for at least another full season, and possibly two.

Maybe this Ruben Amaro, Jr. guy learned a thing or two during those three years under Pat Gillick. After all, have you heard anyone describe former Phillie J.A. Happ using the word “untouchable” since Roy Oswalt arrived in town?

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As the Nationals were warming up in the field, me and about 20 other people began heckling centerfielder Nyjer Morgan.  First off I want to clear up for everyone who has a negative connotation of “heckling”, that most of the time  it is harmless.  Some “You Suck Morgan” and a few A-hole chants, but that’s it.  In my years of heckling opposing players, 99 percent of them pay no attention to the fans in the crowd, but this night was special.

As the pitcher was finishing up his warm-ups people began to scream at Nyjer Morgan to throw the ball in the stands.  He responded by hiding the ball and pretending to throw an imaginary one into the crowd.  Bad choice Nyjer.  He was then greeted with the customary and aforementioned “You Suck Morgan” screams.  Then, if it wasn’t enough that it was 35 below, Nats Manager Jim Wriggleman decided that he would try and see how many pitching changes he could make in one half inning. 

As bad as this seemed at the moment it allowed us fans and Nyjer to continue to bond.   A fan screamed out during one of the pitching changes, “Hey Morgan, show us your slap shot.”  He proceeded to pretend to skate and shoot slap shots in the vast Citi Field outfield.   

More amusing then that was him blowing kisses at the 20 of us still in the left field bleachers.  Thing was, we were all dudes.  The jeering began to get worse, but thankfully for him the inning had ended.

I was tempted to leave after the Mets were unable to score in the eighth but why should Nyjer Morgan get off that easy. 

So I braved the cold and stayed for the ninth. We continued to scream at him as he warmed up, “Throw us the ball Morgan”.  Well in response to our pleas, Morgan thought it would be funny to show us the ball in his glove and then grab the family jewels.  People who thought that heckling was inappropriate before, a Major League centerfielder just grabbed his avocados, enough said. 

The last straw was when Morgan finally threw the ball into the stands, but over everyone’s head into the 20 empty rows behind.    He continued to tip his cap towards us as the jeering got worse, but in the end Nyjer got the final word as the Nats held of the Mets 3-2.  As much as I dislike most opposing players, after this encounter I will always have a special space in my heart for Nyjer Morgan.

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The team itself had a real good April (.591) followed by a .500 May, a sub-par June (.481), a torrid July (.714), and a dismal August (.464). 

This is the team that scored one run in three games against Oakland in May and then scored 11 runs in three straight games against the Reds in August. 

After having one of the top defensive teams in the country over the first portion of the season, San Francisco has made 23 errors in their last 30 games. 

They have had stellar starting pitching. In their best two months (April and July), the starters had ERAs of 2.64 and 3.29, respectively. The starters pitched 80% of the innings, keeping the bullpen fresh and sharp. 

But in their worst two months, it was a different story. In May they maintained a respectable ERA of 3.80, but in August it ballooned to 4.55, and it showed in other places as well. In August, the runs allowed jumped 20 runs from July, and the batting average against leapt up 40 points.

The starters only pitched 67% of the innings, meaning a lot of long relief and bullpen games, which can be both physically and emotionally draining for the team and the fans. 

But if you’re going to have a bad month followed by a good month, there’s no better time to have a spike in performance than September. We’re seeing that from the Padres right now: if you perform well all season and drop off in the last month of the season, nobody cares about the first five. 

On Wednesday Tim Lincecum followed up an abysmal August (0-5, 7.82 ERA) with a dominant start to September, hurling eight innings of one-run, five-hit ball and striking out nine batters for the first time since July 30. 

Hopefully Barry Zito can emulate that against the Dodgers. Usually a strong second half pitcher, Zeets had an equally rough August (0-4, 7.76 ERA) that included three losses in one week (one in emergency relief). But his career line in September (27-14, 3.65) is encouraging, to say the least.

Many were ready to write off Pablo Sandoval as a one-season wonder. His first-half line was unimpressive (.267/.322/.382) compared to 2009’s production. But then August came around, and even though the Giants didn’t have a great month on the pitching side, Sandoval suddenly rediscovered his stroke.

After hitting a low point on August 1 of .263, the Panda’s August average of .321 has raised his average significantly and is certainly encouraging to this Giants team. He also pounded six homers in August, matching the amount of dingers he hit in the entire season up to that point. 

In the middle of August, Freddy Sanchez had significantly cooled off from his torrid return from the disabled list, hitting a low point of .255 on August 11. Since then, he’s raised his average 40 points in 17 games, including back-to-back 4-hit games against Cincinnati. This comes at a good time for San Francisco, as Juan Uribe’s stats have dropped every month so far this year.

Baseball is a streaky game, and the Giants have been playing well lately. If not for the “Broken Bat Heard ‘Round the West” on Monday, they could have swept the Rockies (how often does that happen?). 

And even though there’s been our fair share of fan heartbreak in 2010, there have been just as many games that the Giants have proved worthy of praise. This 2010 team can come back from the dead (10-1 against the Reds to 12-11), can make things exciting (any time Brian Wilson comes in), and can win when they need to most (Darren Ford flying home against Ubaldo Jimenez). 

Now they’re entering the final month of the season in the heat of a pennant race. There are still four head-to-head games with San Diego, and six games against the Dodgers. 

And if we base this final month on the season as a whole, I can promise you that the rest of the way will be about as far from boring as possible. 

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Seaver, while traveling as a player, wouldn’t carry any of his luggage with his right appendage. In fact, he tried mightily to do nothing with his right arm other than hurl baseballs at 90+ mph toward enemy hitters.

Seaver was the prototypical power pitcher of the 1970s—strong leg kick, violent arm action. His right knee would often scrape the dirt of the mound as he delivered the baseball to home plate. Seaver got more strength from his legs than any pitcher I’ve ever seen.

But it was his exemplary right arm that earned him his living, and so Seaver treated it as the mythical goose who laid the golden eggs.

Seaver enjoyed a long, storied career. A sure-fire Hall of Famer, Seaver was. You could see it coming in the late-1960s, when he burst onto the scene, and throughout the ’70s Seaver was among the top two or three pitchers in baseball.

Seaver knew rightly that at any moment, it all could have come crashing down, no matter how much care he took of his right arm.

The pitcher’s arm wasn’t cobbled together by God to withstand the whiplash-like tension that throwing baseballs incur on it. There’s nothing natural about the pitcher’s throwing motion. If a pitcher’s arm could talk, it would need a seven-second delay.

The American worker is all too familiar with layoffs and downsizing. Most of the time, the worker has no control over whether he stays or he goes.

In a profession where control is everything, a pitcher ironically has none of it, either—in the truest sense.

Companies and corporations lay off workers. A pitcher’s arm decides such matters.

How many times have we seen it? One last, violent whipping of the arm, and something goes snap, crackle, or pop and that’s the last we ever see of that hurler on a big league mound.

Every pitcher is one throw away from the end of his career. Not trying to be dramatic—it’s the truth.

In Detroit, we may have seen the last of lefty Bobby Seay and right-hander Joel Zumaya. Maybe not, but maybe. Both of them have serious arm/shoulder issues. Seay is scheduled to have surgery soon that may knock him out for all of 2011—after missing all of 2010.

It could also knock him out, period.

Zumaya’s injury-pocked career has been frightfully documented. When last seen, Zumaya was rolling around on the grass at Target Field in Minneapolis, in tears due to a broken elbow—an elbow literally broken by throwing a pitch.

Dave Dravecky’s left arm just about snapped off as he delivered a pitch, leading to the arm eventually being amputated.

Amputated!

The young phenom Stephen Strasburg’s career hangs in the balance today, his golden right arm in disrepair.

Strasburg, the biggest thing to hit a pitcher’s mound in years, is 22 years old and will have to undergo Tommy John surgery. If all goes well, Strasburg has a shot of pitching sometime in 2012.

If it doesn’t.

People often ask: What did they call Tommy John surgery before Tommy John came along?

It’s a trick question.

Unlike Lou Gehrig’s Disease, which had a medical name prior to Gehrig’s diagnosis, Tommy John surgery had no name because Tommy John was the first professional athlete to undergo it.

The surgery works thusly: a ligament in the medial elbow is replaced with a tendon from elsewhere in the body (often from the forearm, hamstring, knee, or foot of the patient).

You can imagine how groundbreaking this was when Dr. Frank Jobe famously performed the operation on the Dodgers’ John in 1974. And you can imagine how amazing it was when John returned to form and was pitching again in the big leagues in 1976. Even more astounding was that John pitched until he was 46 years old.

So there’s certainly hope for Strasburg, and baseball, which needs a kid of his freakish ability on an MLB roster.

I can’t imagine what it must be like to be a professional pitcher and feeling a “twinge” in my elbow or shoulder, or anywhere on my arm for that matter.

I can see why Seaver went to such great lengths to protect his golden egg-laying goose.

Still, it can all end so quickly, without any warning.

I don’t ever begrudge the big league pitcher his large salary. You could be out of the game in your 20s, just like that.

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Actually, the Chicago Cubs are one of two teams that the Bucs have beaten (5-4) on the road this season. The other one is the Colorado Rockies (2-1). (Although they barely managed a 2-2 tie in PNC Park.)

A sorry road record is the main reason Pittsburgh’s overall record is the worst in the majors. Their home record is better than that of the Chicago Cubs, the Cleveland Indians, and the Baltimore Orioles.

The Pirates are 14-53 on the road with 14 more games to go. That winning percentage is barely above .200. The team that they are now competing for in the “race to the bottom” in road games is the 1962 New York Mets, the all-time worst team who won all of 17 games away from home.

It didn’t get off to such a bad start. The first two months, the Bucs won five road games in April and four in May.

The April wins featured two road game victories against the Milwaukee Brewers, which represented a (relative) high for the Pirates. They also included one win each against three western division teams away from home. In May, Bucs feasted on the Cubs and won one each on the road from the now-contending Cincinnati Reds and Philadelphia Phillies.

But then the Pirates had a horrible June, 6-26 overall, which meant only two road wins (against the Cubs). Four out of five American League opponents swept the Bucs 3-0 during Interleague Play, with the Detroit Tigers, Texas Rangers, and Oakland As doing so in their home parks.

Since June 30th, the Pirates have won only the two games against the Rockies, and one against the Cubs, outside of PNC Park.

They’ve been blanked on the road by the division leading San Diego Padres and Atlanta Braves, as well as the relatively weak Washington Nationals, and the Houston Astros in their own division. (We haven’t closed the books on the road seasons against the St. Louis Cardinals, Florida Marlins, or New York Mets.)

The weakness on the road is a testament to the inexperience of the team, among the youngest in the majors. The home record (and other factors such as the dominance of the Cubs) suggests the team’s raw talent is NOT league worst. But it is rookies who will play the worst on the road relative to their overall ability.

Pirates that fall into this category are heralded call ups like Pedro Alvarez, Neil Walker, and Jose Tabata. Andy McCutchen and Garett Jones are barely out of this category. Among everyday position players, only Ronny Cedeno, Ryan Doumit, and Lastings Milledge can be considered even close to “veteran.”

This team is better than the 1962 Mets. But it seems to play like them away from home because they are relatively new players for which all the veterans have been traded.

Some call it “trading up.” Others call it rebuilding. Overall, the Pirates have a cyclically weak team on the field—even for them—one headed for a 100-110 loss season. Let’s hope that 2010 represents the low point of their record.

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