For ten
Marvelous
Exciting
Tremendous
Spectacular
games, everything went the
Marvelous
Exciting
Tremendous
Spectacular
way.
Pitchers' duels. Slugfests. Late and close. Early and often. Go-ahead runs. Tack-on runs. Baserunners stranded. Dominant starting. Sterling relief. Almost everything going right.
Lately, it's been
Miserable
Enervating
Torpid
Slack
Not sure exactly where it started. Since the ten
Marvelous
Exciting
Tremendous
Spectacular
games, the
Miserable
Enervating
Torpid
Slack
ledger amounts to 6-8. That's fourteen games. That, by any calculation, is longer than ten games. Of more immediate concern, over the past seven games, the
Miserable
Enervating
Torpid
Slack
record is 2-5, with every one of the
Miserable
Enervating
Torpid
Slack
losses turning on plays that have gone against the
Miserable
Enervating
Torpid
Slack
Pitchers' duels. Slugfests. Late and close. Early and often. Go-ahead runs. Tack-on runs. Baserunners stranded. Dominant starting. Sterling relief. Several things not going right.
Numbers are numbers. The
Marvelous
Exciting
Tremendous
Spectacular
margin was one game ahead of the pack a week ago. Now, suddenly, the
Miserable
Enervating
Torpid
Slack
can be found in third place, two games out.
Numbers are numbers. What is quantifiable can shift quickly in baseball. Numbers comprise the bottom line yet may not necessarily signify much for the long haul. Yesterday's 10-0 is today's 6-8 or 2-5. But there's something more alarming about the empirical turn the season has taken. For one night [1], maybe two [2], you can chalk it up to the balls not falling in where they fell in last week, the call not being made where it was being made. You don't have to infer the be-all and end-all from the bottom line of the moment. But you string it together over enough time, and you can feel the season very slowly getting away. It's not so much the lagging that brings you down from 10-0 to 6-8 — or its subset of 2-5. It's not just a matter of having been one up in first to being, a week later, two out in third. It's something in the course of events that is hinting to you what was
Marvelous
Exciting
Tremendous
Spectacular
has morphed as if via time-lapse photography to
Miserable
Enervating
Torpid
Slack
Pitchers' duels. Slugfests. Late and close. Early and often. Go-ahead runs. Tack-on runs. Baserunners stranded. Dominant starting. Sterling relief. Almost nothing going right [3].
Almost [4]; but what goes wrong…hoo boy [5], does it ever.
It's a little chilly for this early in August [6]. But it's still early August. Plenty of time left to return to
Marvelous
Exciting
Tremendous
Spectacular
Really there is.