Quoting only for continuity. I finally ran out of time for the recap, but yet again, we've settled into a pretty predictable and frustrating form of mediocrity and I don't really think there's much that needs said.
Starting record: 22-26
Record over stretch: 5-6
Ending record: 27-32
I overlooked that the Tigers series was just the other 2 games rather than 3, so there ended up being 11 games here and not 12. The previous arbitrary stretch had 10 games, and we were 5-5, so us being 5-6 in these games kinda speaks for itself.
It continues to be maddening that we have the difficult foundation in starting pitching to be much better than this, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to look at the offense and the bullpen and draw a conclusion. In a way, I think the 27-32 record tells you more than any written analysis kind of can at this point, because (at least to me) it indicates a rather middling team that is more likely than not to have that under .500 record doubled over the next 60ish games, which would make any kind of improbable WC run very challenging over the last 60ish games of the season.
If we maintain .500ish play and claw enough over .500 stretches to make up for the kinds of series losses we are capable of with the Giants and Jays ones recently, then just by virtue of how crowded the NL is, we probably remain in the WC race as we enter the stretch run.
But that is getting too far ahead of things, and really, I think there's pressure to have a good month of June and prove something before we even start to worry about how the trade deadline looks and how the WC race shapes up. I'll get into this more below, but most anybody is beatable and the current homestand might be the most important stretch of games this season.
Being about 1/3rd of the season into the schedule, there's some good opportunity for a more hard-nosed look at numbers than I am doing in this off-the-cuff recap posts. To throw some quick ones together: in March/April, we were 14-17, buoyed by 4-0 vs the Marlins in March at the beginning of their free fall. May was 12-14.
I'm actually surprised that May wasn't as bad as April, with April actually being 10-17. The end of April and early May were a true horror show that I just don't see how we won't look back and wonder what could have been, in the event that we are able to maintain anything like a 12-14 pace for a while. So many blown opportunities vs the Red Sox, A's, Angels, not to mention winnable games vs the Mets and others.
Everybody can play that game, but turning even a handful of those winnable games into Ws puts us potentially right at the top of the WC with the Braves. Still, the season moves forwards rather than backwards, and if you want to look to the horizon, then the bloodbath of the NL WC race actually favors the kinds of troubles we've had. While it's easy to point to the bottom of the stack and wonder when we'll be closer to there than in the heart of the race, it stands to reason that the next 6-8 weeks will be a total dog fight. A bad week for the Braves or Padres will pull them right back with everybody else. A team that goes on a huge winning streak will give themselves a big leg up as we get to the deadline.
I think it's also a reasonable assumption that most NL teams will keep things tight. The Rockies and Marlins are terrible, but even the Rockies have a decent enough offense at home to win games. Other than a scorching hot streak, I don't see anyone pulling away from the pack in a decisive way.
Looking ahead: 3 vs. LAD, 3 vs. MIN (6 home) + 3 vs. STL, 3 vs. COL (6 road)
I think this upcoming stretch of games will be the most important of the season, especially this current home stand, and will loom large in how long we can keep up the competition for the WC. I think you will be able to keep saying this for every stretch of games as we close on the trade deadline in 2 months, just because I think if you are in our situation, a 3-9 or 4-8 type of stretch is going to create an insurmountable situation.
Until the All Star Break, we have 3 pretty even and balanced home/road chunks of games: this stretch of 12, another stretch of 12, and a final stretch of 13. That's 37 games, where 21-16 puts us right back at .500. For me, that kind of small but sustainable clawing back is what it will take to feel like there's a little bit of urgency again, whereas at the moment I think it's all kind of a blah soup, and I expect the 3-9 type stretch at some point, even if it doesn't happen in the random slice of games I carve up for these recaps.
I'll be a bit bold here: the Pirates need a little bit of a surge, to the tun of 8-4 in these games. MIN, STL, and COL are all very beatable teams, especially the latter who we should be sweeping if the pitching lines up nicely. LAD recently got swept by the Reds. We seem to get up for these games against the bigger teams and the unfortunate thing is that we're catching Glasnow, Paxton, and Buehler even as we have Jones/Skenes lined up.
People wrote the Cardinals off and then they have been on a torrid streak, so it's easy to see how this stretch of games could go completely sideways. There's sweep danger as well as the kind of series squandering that we've seen over and over again. I truly don't think we've had sustained, consistent baseball over something like a 12-15 game stretch other than that first few weeks of the season. 6-6 would probably be an optimistic hope for these games and keep us right in line with the wheel-spinning mediocrity that the previous month or so has been.
Davis and Suwinski are back, which feels like a lesser version of the potential shift that was waiting in the wings when Skenes officially got the call. Any offensive improvement is going to need to be driven by them performing closer to where they are capable rather than completely automatic outs. They had some success in their minor league stints, but they also struck out at a huge clip. In a way it's almost fitting that the ace who got away with some of the best swing and miss stuff in baseball is on the mound to kick off this upcoming stretch.
