Hurling and Pinching Reds

The Cincinnati Reds pitching staff is making all sorts of news in the last 24 hours.

Want the good news or the bad news first?
Ok, let’s start with the bad news.
Starter Mike Leake was collared by a Macy’s department store for shoplifting close to $60 in t-shirts. I believe it was 5 t-shirts.
Now, I imagine that the Reds give their players all of the t-shirts that they want. So it makes me wonder if the shirts he was accused to have taken were Albert Pujols shirts or someone else whom he may have idolized.
Leake made his debut last year right out of college at Arizona State. I seem to recall his salary for this year at around $400,000. That is a whole lot less than his signing bonus which was originally over a million.
I know we all need to tighten our belts these days and cut costs and corners wherever we can, but…um…I don’t think this is a really good idea.

On the positive side, Aroldis Chapman, the Reds 23-year old second-year reliever from Cuba returned to the mound in a mop-up role against the Pirates last night. He threw 25 pitches with all of them over 100 mph. It included a reading in Pittsburgh of 106 mph on one toss, which would have broken his own record set last year. There were two other readings in the park though and three different readings.
Chapman returned after experiencing some shoulder discomfort recently in a game where he only reached the low 90’s with his fastball.

My best throw ever was measured around 62. Girls throw faster than that, underhand, in softball.

The Rockies Troy Tulowitski hit 15 homeruns in the last month of the season last year. He parlayed that into a 140 million dollar (or so) contract.
Some players sign monster deals like that and tend to not perform quite so well. Tulowitski hit 7 homeruns in the first half of April, is hitting .345, and is on a current pace to hit 70 homeruns; amazing numbers for a month let alone half a month, and then totaled with the last month of the 2010 season.
The Rockies, behind Tulo, are off to a 12-4 start, 3 games ahead of the World Champion Giants and return Ubaldo Jimenez, their ace starter to the hill tonight. This will be Ubaldo’s first start since Opening Day when he suffered a cut on his right thumb.

Oh well, the Orioles have dumped 8 games in a row now and sit next to last in the East, where many would have predicted. I can still root for the Orioles, but I don’t see putting forth much energy to do so after that. Much in the same way that I’m not overly excited to hear that there is a Met game playing on TV somewhere.


Times are tight for me for sure right now. Big budget cuts for me personally. I’m not just talking real frivolous things either; I’m talking major leagues cuts. You know, unlike the kind the government is willing to make.

I spoke today with a garden center manager who said his business is down 50% from ANY year that he has had. I’m not sure if that made me feel much better since mine is down 70% from 2 years ago, but at least I know that I’m not alone. I also know that I’m not in the right line of work, that’s for sure. A friend of mine who is a programmer just had two companies bid for his services after he tendered his resignation a bidding war broke out and he stayed where he is for 40% more. Good to see that for him!

I’m going to try to be more positive here so I’m going to let you know that since our first podcast show is up and running on www.marshcast.com we are preparing to create our second one.
Since we are exploring the dark recesses of my soul in show #1, we now want to shine the light on anything and anyone positive that we can.
I am now looking for people local to me to participate in this program and programming. If you are someone who would like to create this new masterpiece with me, write to me at me@marshcast.com If you have some uplifting stories of your own to tell or to send to me, contact me the same way. I am not sure when we will start taping for this; I have to get a bunch of things together and work out a schedule. But contact me anyway if you have any interest.

Wow, the mlb.com website is absolutely pathetic. It is so busy loading up all sorts of crap from all sorts of databases that the pages are taking 30 seconds to load and hogging up 90% of my PC’s processing power.

Ok, it’s time to get ready for the next taping of the Dungeon of Manlove. Last week’s tapings are posted at www.marshcast.com. I’ve chopped it into 3 parts to make it a little easier…I think it’s easier anyway.

Done.