Downward Spiral II

There has been so much hope for this season. There has been so much excitement at times in this season I felt lucky enough to be a part of history and to be a D-Backs fan.

Well it’s now September and we should be excited and raring to make the final push to the post-season. However, the warning signs that I saw in May never disappeared. Mark Reynolds is still hitting in the terrible range, Chris Young still isn’t the hitter he should be. Justin Upton hasn’t improved. The bullpen is still shaky and Lyon’s confidence level hasn’t been 100% all year. Confidence is the key word here. I believe that most of the year the D-Backs bullpen has had loads of confidence problems. It’s not the talent that is the problem, I really believe it’s the collective confidence level of the entire pen. Byrnes and O-Dog are down for the season and to the credit of the D-Backs organization, were replaced with respectable guys. However, nobody can replace those two. Byrnes and O-Dog gave the team an excitement and I believe held the team together with their humor and their all out love of playing the game.

There have been some bright spots:

Co-Jack is awesome. He plays with heart, he plays with style and he plays with a love that I thought would have spread to his teammates. He’s solid. I hope he stays in Arizona for a long long time.

Stephen Drew has made plenty of mistakes this year but he’s also grown the most this year. He has become the player that the scouts knew he would become.

Dan Haren for the most part has been as advertised. His record should have been better because of the lack of run support in a bunch of his outings. His last few starts have not been the greatest but neither has Webb’s. 

Brandon Webb is again in the running for the Cy Young Award and rightfully so. If he can finish off the year with a solid couple of starts, he just may win his second Cy Young.

There is no reason that the D-Backs can go from 4 1/2 games up to 3 1/2 games behind at this stage of the season. Regardless of the past months of up and downs, they should not have been outplayed by the Dodgers, or even the out right terrible Giants. I have this sick feeling in my stomach about the future of this team if they can’t find a way to turn this around and go on a big historic streak.