So what did I miss?

Sorry for the late post today. Again had trouble getting online in my new apartment (they provide a free wireless service which I fear may not be fast enough to handle MLB.tv, which is a terrifying thought to me), but I'm finally up and running this evening, which is nice even though there's no Pirate game tonight.

First off, thanks for all the nice comments on my Moving Day post (fittingly, there are 42 comments at the present). They really mean a lot to me and that's the exact reason that I'm not bailing on this blog, despite now being 471 miles from PNC Park.

So on to real baseball stuff. What did I miss since I left on Thursday afternoon? Two losses to the Reds. To the team managed by the man that I nicknamed Mac(k) for his similarities to his old boss, Lloyd McClendon. I didn't see Matt Morris, so I won't pass judgment on his start, but I will say that his line from that night was about what I expected, minus the home run. Instead, I want to talk about one guy right now, I want to talk about Ronny freaking Paulino.

Paulino drives me nuts for a couple reasons. I felt like he was elevated to a starting job last year for mostly artificial reasons and I feel like they're the reason he still plays (we can talk about game calling later, but do you ever get the impression that when a pitcher serves up a homer they blame the catcher for calling the pitch?) and that pisses me off. But this year he's pissed me off because he's been lazy. I know he's not a .310 hitter and I'm not even the kind of guy that thinks being a .310 hitter is good when your OBP is .360 and your SLG is .394. But I know that Ronny Paulino is better than the way he hit earlier in this year and the way he "caught." And recently, he's been on a tear. In fact, the very reason he's been on a tear is that he had a miserable game on Tuesday night in which he very well may have cost us a win. He was so bad that he was getting booed by everyone at PNC and he was getting Bronx cheers for doing things like catching relay throws from the outfield well after runners had crossed the plate. It was actually embarrassing for Ronny. And now he's killing the ball. Why did he have to be literally embarassed to get his fat ass in motion? Why wasn't his pathetic .237/.283/.348 line and sad play behind the plate enough to do that? Did he think we didn't notice? Or that we didn't care? Or did he just not care enough to even consider the fans might notice his substandard effort? It's great he's hitting now, but why the wait?