TBOH Congratulates Jayson Werth on Worst Baserunning Play Ever

It’s so bad-ass when a catcher lasers a ball down to first or second to catch a guy leaning.  The catcher’s got to be a sniper to pull it off successfully and make it more than just a dramatic warning to the runner.  He’s letting the rest of the would-be base thieves in the opposing dugout know that his is not an arm to be trifled with.

But Humberto Quintero didn’t even have to do that to throw out Jayson Werth at second base.  No, no… he just sort of winged it out there, like he was trying to knock a bird out of the sky, and, like a giant crushing a village, Werth gave a half-hearted stomp back to the base, just in the nick of time to be the first player I have ever seen called out during an intentional walk.

Tonight, we salute you, Jayson Richard Gowan “Werewolf” Werth.  Because that was the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen.

Astros 3, Phillies 2

I don’t understand what is so hard about not losing again for the rest of the season.  Especially when Joe Blanton comes out and strikes nine people out.  And typing that just restarted my computer, so its clearly a thing that doesn’t just happen when you want it to.

I mean, sure, Joe (7 IP, 6 H, 1 ER, 0 BB, 9 K) came out and gave us that first inning hiccup, but instead of letting it evolve into a full-on puke shower of runs, there were some keen defensive plays that stopped all those disasters you were expecting from happening.  Chase Utley threw a guy out at home and a pre-brain fart Jayson Werth had a sliding catch, and the next thing we knew, the first inning was over, and Joe Blanton had quarantined the Astros to a single run.

Which makes the end result of this contest all the more crushing.

A Chooch HR and a Chase RBI single later, we just sort of cruised through the mist for a bunch of innings.  In the mean time, Brett Myers and his goat beard that I can only assume talks to him at night struck out nine and, despite losing for most of the game, seemed be doing all that “sticking it” he claimed he wanted to do to the team that brought him to the World Series.  Those jerks.  Sure, we cast him out like a leper, but hey.  That’s what you do to people who are inconsistent or can be exchanged for a better player (Oh, hey, J.A.!) or have leprosy.

Onward came the 8th inning, when a little knuckle crack of an outburst from the Astros streaked in a couple of runs.  It was like getting our achilles cut a couple yards from the rescue chopper.

And, even though Ryan Madson has been somewhat of a stable role model for the rest of the bullpen during this second half, it was his pitch that allowed those Astros to jog home.  That and a combination of errors on the part of Ryan Howard, who chose to dive after human jackrabbit Michael Bourn to tag him out rather than flip the ball to Chase Utley covering first, and first base umpire Greg Gibson, who sucks.

I mean, if there’s a divot in the grass where the runner ran out of the base path by about 40 feet (EDITOR’S NOTE: Nah), and the umpire doesn’t call it, and then doesn’t confer with the other umpires, even though Chase Utley is standing there, pointing at it, and probably making some really intelligent remarks, how can the runner be safe?  I thought all you had to do was look in Chase’s eyes and you were pretty much at his bidding.

But apparently Greg Gibson has some sort of protective shield from deep, deep, impossibly unique eyes, because he just stood there chewing on something, ejecting Charlie Manuel from the game, and not reversing the call.

Apparently umpires are not as easy to seduce as I assumed.  But the real lesson here is that if the Phillies can’t back a pitcher who throws a great game, how can they expect to succeed when Kyle Kendrick pitches.

If you found out TBOH was on Twitter, would you even care?  Just care.  For me.

Image courtesy of Makli.