Momentum - The Bochy Way

It's probably not fair to blame Bochy for tonight's 11-0 shellacking at the hands of the Diamondbacks. His handling of the fifth starter, however, that we can go to town on. And for this one, we may even get a little bit of dirt on Sabean too . . . there's plenty to go around.

The experiments with mid to lower tier pitchers to fill in while Randy Johnson is on the shelf have been nice, but the goal is still to make the playoffs right? Maybe you bring up a Bumgarner for a spot start just to see what the kid can do in the bigs - he certainly can't do worse than the 4 1/3 innings 8 earned run effort Joe Martinez turned in tonight. Bring up Clayton Tanner (who's 11-6 with a 3.10 ERA for San Jose) or Kevin Pucetas or Pat Misch. Hey, Pat Misch! Who would have thought we'd be arguing to see him again. But that's how bad it is now.

Situational decisions based on the schedule are fine. Sitting Pablo, Bengie and Nate tonight so that they can be rested and hopefully ready for the Rockies series is understandable, but when you have a chance to gain some MOMENTUM heading into the biggest series of the season, you might want to have your big guns dialed in and sweeping the Dbacks might have just given the team the proper state of mind heading into Friday's game. 11-0 probably doesn't feel the same . . . but that's just a guess.

And for those of you who didn't see the twitter post during the game, yes Bochy was yelling at the home plate umpire about a low strike call on Aaron Rowand. It was the bottom of the 4th and, with the score 4-0 Dbacks, Rowand struck out looking with the bases loaded. Yeah. Clearly that's the umpires fault for calling that fastball that went right across the plate just below the knees a strike. Rowand shouldn't have been the recipient of the yelling, after all he has the right perspective:

"A loss is a loss, whether you lose by one or 11," center fielder Aaron Rowand said. "You come back and regroup."

That may be true Aaron, but just think what would have happened if you would have made contact with that called third strike. A base hit makes it 4-2 and all of a sudden you've got . . . say it with us now . . . MOMENTUM.

Clearly, the Bochy Way has rubbed off on Rowand too. Hopefully, the team can regroup for tomorrow.