Baseball Talk - Slow Starts and Bright Sides Edition

Oakland's Dan Haren must be thinking he needs to pitch a perfect game to get a win. In his first two starts, he has given up just one earned run, but has two losses to his name. In those same two games, the Athletics have scored one run and committed three errors. It might help if the team started giving him some run support and stopped booting the ball.

On the bright side, Haren can console himself in the fact that he isn't San Francisco's Russ Ortiz. At least he hasn't gone an entire season without a win. With yesterday's loss, Ortiz hasn't won a game since August 29, 2005.

On the bright side, with each successive loss, the probability that his next start will result in a loss diminishes. At some point in the future, he'll win again. At least that is what Ortiz should be telling himself. It's also what everybody around him should be telling him so he might actually pull himself out of this slump. At all costs, nobody should mention anything about the gambler's fallacy.

The Giants as a team are off to a slow start. They have a record of 1-4. Fortunately, there are four bright sides here...

1. The season is young and there are still 157 games to lose play.
2. At least they're getting to play baseball, unlike the Indians and the Mariners. Their series has been postponed for three days and tomorrow's game is also in question due to snow in Cleveland.
3. At least they don't have the lowest winning percentage in the league. That honor goes to the Washington Nationals, who are 1-5.
4. At least they aren't the lowest scoring team in the league. A lot has been made about San Francisco's anemic offense, but they've still scored three more runs than St. Louis, last year's World Champions. The Cardinals have only scored seven runs in their first five games.

The person receiving the brunt of the blame for the Cardinals' run drought is Albert Pujols. He has one hit (a double) in twenty plate appearances and has yet to bat in a run. To his credit, he has walked three times and has only struck out once. And on the bright side (and I had to search long and hard for this one), at least he isn't Kansas City's Alex Gordon, who is 1 for 15, with a single, no walks, and six strike outs.

Finally, on a baseball-related tangent, I saw part of last night's Padres game and was completely thrown by San Diego's uniforms. I had no idea they had special camouflage jerseys, which they to honor the military. It threw me for a loop. It's one of those things that fall into the category of cool in concept, but eerie in execution.

Happy Easter!