The Ryan Roberts Watch

Don’t ask us why, but we here at Desert Ball are rooting for Ryan Roberts. Roberts is currently the D-Backs 2B and has gotten the majority of the bats at that position since Felipe Lopez got traded. Roberts is currently hitting .286 with a .376 OBP and 5 HRs. Our secret hope is he becomes a right handed, tattooed version of Craig Counsell.

Of the week of August 9-15, Ryan Roberts stat line was:

.133 BA, .278 OBP, 2 RBI, 5 Ks and was officially replaced as the fans’ favorite underdog by Trent Oeltjen

Grade for the Week: D

Chances of Roberts being the everyday 2B in 2010: 15%

Who Is This Guy?

You have no idea who I am

Trent Oeltjen is just the latest fringe prospect to come out and make an immediate impact for the D-Backs. Is this a product of an overlooked farm system or just a team having a bad year? Who cares, lets revel in the fact that Oeltjen is hitting .500! He 12-24 with 3 home runs in his brief major league career. I have no idea if he has staying power but he sure is fun to root for. He joins other surprise players that have filled roles for the D-Backs this year. This group includes Gerardo Parra, Ryan Roberts and Clay Zavada.

Plus it’s always good to have an Aussie on the team. I imagine him sitting around the locker room talking about “footie” while Alex Romero stares at him blankly.

The Ryan Roberts Watch

Don’t ask us why, but we here at Desert Ball are rooting for Ryan Roberts. Roberts is currently the D-Backs 2B and has gotten the majority of the bats at that position since Felipe Lopez got traded. Roberts is currently hitting .286 with a .376 OBP and 5 HRs. Our secret hope is he becomes a right handed, tattooed version of Craig Counsell.

Of the week of August 1-8, Ryan Roberts stat line was:

.455 BA, .520 OBP, 3 HR, 4 RBI and one baby (his wife gave birth to a baby this week, congrats Ryan!)

Grade for the Week: A+

Chances of Roberts being the everyday 2B in 2010: 30%

A great week for Roberts, his incredible week of hitting upped his chances of being the everyday 2B in 2010 by 15%. It was no coincidence that when Ryan Roberts left the team for the birth of his son and Justin Upton got hurt the D-Backs stopped scoring runs.

Rooting for Ryan

Don’t ask us why, but we here at Desert Ball are rooting for Ryan Roberts. Roberts is currently the D-Backs 2B and has gotten the majority of the bats at that position since Felipe Lopez got traded. Roberts is currently hitting .263 with a .354 OBP and 5 SBs. Our secret hope is he becomes a right handed, tattooed version of Craig Counsell.

Hopefully Roberts starts hitting so we have a better picture to display of him

Of the week of July 24-31st Ryan Roberts stat line is:

.283 BA, .375 OBP, .619 SLG %, 2 HR, 3 RBI and 1 SB

Grade for the Week: B+

Chances of Roberts being the everyday 2B in 2010: 15%

We will keep this watch going all season long

Dog Day Musings

It's 115 degrees and nothing is on TV

Let me tell you something, Summer is a grind. The month of July is never easy for a sportswriter because there isn’t much to talk about. I could be talking about the Diamondbacks but, a) They suck and are devoid of any compelling story lines, b) I do that at Fanster anyway (the reason you never see any D-Backs posts here). With nothing to say I end up having to introduce cartoon football characters or relying on YouTube cop outs.

Yup, these are the dog days of summer. They aren’t easy (especially with the fact its been 115 degrees outside recently) but we all have to deal with them. We are only a month away from the football season, which will gives us all much more to talk about. It will be much easier to blog then, but until then I apologize if posts are a little sporadic. I will start myPac -10 preview soon, so that will give me something to write about until the season starts. Until then I am going to touch on a few topics going on in the sports world that have Arizona ties.

Brett Wallace Goes to Oakland

The former ASU star and gem of the St. Louis Cardinals’ farm system got traded to Oakland for Matt Holliday. I’m liking this trade for both teams. St. Louis needed someone who can hit behind Albert Pujols and protect him. One can’t tell from the numbers, but Pujols needed protection. National League teams were going to go into full “walk Pujols at any opportunity” mode in the second half, now they can’t with Holliday’s bat behind him. The Cardinals did have to part with their best offensive prospect, but Holliday isn’t an old player and will be around for a few years.

Wallace may be a rising hitting star, but he can’t field. He is better suited to be a DH in the American League. This is part of the reason St. Louis traded him and part of the reason it is a good trade for them. Young minorleaguers that can hit but don’t really have a position are the type of players Oakland covets. I still wonder why Oakland traded for Holliday in the first place, knowing they weren’t going to keep him. Maybe they thought they could get better prospects for him at the deadline this year than they had to give up for him.

Eric Byrnes for Julio Lugo

The Byrnes for Lugo trade was rumored to happen but never did. This would have been the classic “let’s swap crap contracts” trade. Lugo was actually hitting .283 this year, he can play a position the D-Backs need (2B, more on this later) and would probably have been their best candidate to hit lead off. Considering EricByrnes has done nothing in two years, can’t hit, can’t stay healthy and has become a horrid defender, this trade made sense for the D-Backs. However, they were never going to trade forLugo because of his attitude. He is a bad dude, back in 2003 he allegedly slammed his wife’s face into the hood of a car. Eric Byrnes may be a completely useless player but at least he is a much better guy than Lugo, and since Lugo wasn’t going to be anything more than average on this team I don’t think the trade made sense.

Who’s On Second?

With the D-Backs trade of Felipe Lopez there has become a giant hole at 2B. It looks like Ryan Roberts is going to get first crack at the position. Roberts peak is probably Craig Counsel production, but if he hustles every day and plays good defense he is the man for the job. Roberts, you know him from the dozens of tats that decorate his body, has never gotten a chance to play everyday before so he has the rest of this season to make his case. I will be rooting for him. Other options include AugieOjeda and minor leaguer Rustry Ryal. Ryal is raking in AAA this year, he has 16 homers and .521 slugging % so far this year. I have no idea if Ryal is a good defender and considering he is a 26 year old career minor leaguer I don’t think he is the option. I am sure we will see him during September call ups. Ojeda is a fan favorite, but he isn’t the every day option.

Here is hoping we can survive the dog days together.

The Designated Voter

The D-Backs had this young man sit in the booth all game long tonight and just keep voting for Mark Reynolds. This is awesome! How do I get this job?

Vote! Vote! Vote!

The Missing Links

I went on vacation and something funny happened, my blog started to get a lot more traffic. Not that I am anywhere close to making it big, but I would like to keep the momentum up by posting more. That brings me back to my vacation thing, I don’t really want to blog on vacation because I need to at least think I have some semblance of a life. Therefore I will give you another short post, a few links I have found interesting from around the internet:

• Vince Marotta over at Fanster.com tells us the 10 best and worst Suns draft picks of all time. There are a lot of centers on the “10 worst” list and a lot of icons on the “10 best” list.
• I love the Transformers and I love the MLB, so of course I love this post about Transformers: Revenge of the MLB Fallen. The only think not to like is it centers on Red Sox and Yankees, that is sooo 2004.
• Let’s hope Jimmy Fallon’s golf game is better than his awful monologues. He will be facing off against Tiger Woods in a Wii Golf challenge. I’ll give Fallon some credit, he is always doing something cool on his shows.
• A Street Fighter IV tournament at the Phoenix Convention Center and I am out of town!!!! Dibs on Ryu.
• Now we are even accusing cartoon characters of juicing. Spoiler Alert: I don’t see how the Hulk isn’t number one on this list.
• I predicted the D-Backs to take the NL West this year, now D-Backs guru Nick Piecoro is talking about them being in the race for the #1 pick . . . what a season.

Off to enjoy the rest of my vacation!

The Outman

This man has to be a great pitcher, right?

The Oakland A’s have a pitcher whose name is literally “Outman”. Josh Outman is a 24 year old left handed starter for Oakland. He currently had a 3-0 record with a 3.02 ERA.

Let me reiterate, his name is Outman. The dude gets outs. There is no way this guy can’t be a successful major league pitcher with that last name.

I demand the D-Backs trade for this man and make him a reliever. What better way to prevent future implosions by the bullpen when you can bring in a player with the name Outman.

The only way this could be better is if he legally changed his first name to “Strike”.

This Will Make You Happy . . . Then Really Sad

I'm Better at Baseball Than You

Rob Neyer writes a good piece on Justin Upton’s amazing season so far. It is a good read until he starts delving into the struggles of all the other D-Back’s hitters, then it just becomes sad.To summarize the article: Justin Upton is historically amazing while Chad Tracy, Stephen Drew, Eric Byrnes and Chris Young have been amazingly sucky this year.

What fun!

The WBC: Worth Checking Out

Japan Wins Their 2nd Straight WBC Title

The Phoenix Suns were in a fight for their playoff lives last night. The sold out crowd was rocking in the arena, the Suns were playing hard against a good Denver team and after the Suns won I heard it was “the best game of the year” and “the best atmosphere of the year”. All in all, it sounded like the most can’t miss Suns game of the year. I, however, missed it. Why? I was too riveted by the WBC’s final game.

What? An American that is interested in the WBC? Yeah, we exist. To tell you the truth I had not watched much WBC action and only tuned in to the final game because when I got home last night the Suns game was already at the half. I didn’t turn the game off; I couldn’t turn the game off. The game was played with so much passion, energy and urgency that I don’t know how anyone could have turned it off. It was international competition at its finest. It was a lot like watching a World Cup game. It had all the intrigue you could want:

• Fans: The fans were nuts, they were so loud and made the game so much more enjoyable. They banged on drums and thunderstix, sang, chanted, waved flags and wore traditional garb of their country. My favorite moment was when Ichiro laced a double off the wall and they cut to a fan dressed as a samurai and who was geeking out.
• Players: You may not know many of the players but unlike other countries (USA anyone?), Japan and Korea’s teams consisted of the best players from their respective countries. Who wouldn’t love watching Ichiro come up huge in almost every crucial at bat he had in the championship game? I loved seeing Japan’s phenom pitcher, Yu “The Next Dice-K” Darvish come in and start throwing killer sliders, only to lose his control and blow the save, only to come back and close the game out in the 10th! Who didn’t love the name of Korea’s Bum Ho Lee?
• Intensity: The WBC means a whole hell of a lot more to Korea and Japan than it did to the United States. At one point it was mentioned that some of the Korean’s may be able to get out of mandatory military service if they won the game. The Korean’s were playing for the right not to spend two years in the military! Talk about pressure. Last night’s game certainly wasn’t just another game.
• Game: The game itself was awesome. It was a close battle, the marquee players on both teams made the marquee plays, there was a bottom of the ninth comeback and at the end a champion was crowned.

The WBC final was certainly worth checking out. Anyone who thinks the WBC doesn’t mean anything should watch that game, I think it would change a lot of people’s minds. Anytime you can watch a championship sporting event backed by national pride you should take the opportunity. It is a nice changed from the localized sports scene.