Sunday, July 29, 2007

He's Shaun F'ing Marcum. Get used to it.

With today's eight inning, two-hit, one earned, eight strikeout performance, Shaun Marcum should (if our math is right, and it rarely is) officially qualify for the ERA title, and will vault ahead of Roy Halladay for the team lead in both ERA and WHIP. Moreover, Marcum's 3.67 ERA should slide him into 12th place in the AL, while his 1.11 should move him into the top 10 in the Majors.

Which is all a whole hell of a lot more than anyone was anticipating for a guy who was destined to be the main mop-up guy this year.

5 comments:

Jim Briggs said...

Change three letters in "Marcum" and you have "Maddux." Just sayin'.

Darren Priest said...

Remove 2 letters from Jays and you have As and all those exciting post-season moments from the past few years. Not to mention you have the real Billy Beane and not just one of his disciples.

Ain't the alphabet fun?

Question Mark said...

I warn everyone to not get quite too carried away yet on the "with Marcum and McGowan in the rotation next year we can't lose!" bandwagon. Remember back at the start of 2006 when we everyone was pretty confident about Josh Towers as a rotation stalwart?

Jim Briggs said...

Darren, you and I are in agreement about the merits of a quality stache or beard on a ballplayer, so let's start with that for cordialities.

The fact is, save perhaps the Thomas signing, this team is good enough, as put together, to win games and compete. V.Wells certainly didn't disappear for good overnight -- and most of us who know a guy like VW knew he would probably slump through the first year of an expectation-laden contract.

And this team is being built to succeed in the AL East -- it could win (or probably could have already won) the West. The East is a much tougher row to hoe. Also, mind you, the real Billy Beane has nary a title to show for his brilliance. I do admire what he's done but I'd still put him behind a few other personnel men in the league until he wins the big one.

As for Mark P., I wrote you up a response on Fire Gibbons. Cheers, it's good talkin' baseball.

Jim Briggs said...

Seeing I didn't quite finish my statement there, the team is good enough, save for the coaching staff, to win now.