Downward Spiral

As much as I was (as I'm sure all of D-Backs Nation was) happy about the month of April for our team, May has been much less than it should have been. All of the sudden the bullpen becomes severely unreliable, the overall defense of the team has turned from decent to terrible, the offense is now shaky at best, and it feels like the life has just been drained from our beloved D-Backs.

The only bright spot that I can think of at the moment is that the rest of the division is doing just as terrible. Even though we have only won 2 of our last 10 games (including being swept twice, once by the lowly giants), we still are in first place by 3.5 games over the Dodgers. I'm just plain frustrated and am not enjoying watching my team right now. I know that they will snap out of this and find their groove again, but lets not rehash the big peaks and valleys that we went through last season. That roller coaster ride is something that we are supposed to be in the past. This team has evolved, and hopefully they will remember their mistakes and move forward.

As much as I like Chris Young, he should be hitting in the .270's and .280's and not the .238 that he's at right now. Same goes for Mark Reynolds who's hitting .235. Young, Reynolds, and Upton have more strikeouts then they have hits. Chris Young strikes out 26% of the time, Mark Reynolds and Justin Upton strike out 35% of the time. I know these guys are young, but holy smokes. Hey Mr. Batting Coach, are you noticing these numbers? Defensively, we should not have an outfielder that has 6 errors already. 6 ERRORS? How can any outfielder have that many errors in 2 months? I could see an outfielder having that many for an entire season, and that is if he was just having a bad year defensively, but 6 in two months is unexcusable. Rookie or Sophomore mistakes that are being made by Justin Upton I hope are being learned from right now so that he doesn't end the season with 20 plus errors. Reynolds is having a bad year defensively as well, he leads the team with 9 errors. Orlando Hudson, the veteran, the gold glove winner, has 6 as well. I'm blown away by the sloppy play on the defensive side of the ball.

I really didn't want this entry to be a vent of my frustrations but I guess it turned out that way. I'm just a fan that wants to see good pitching, good defense, and situational hitting. Is that too much to ask for right now? I know that the team will return to provide just that, well mostly except for the defense. I know that this is just a valley in a marathon season of lots of peaks and valleys. But I guess they just spoiled us in April. They showed the world what they were made of in April and in May they have shown us that they are human. Never stop believing fellow D-Backs fans, because I won't and neither should you.