Welcome

WELCOME to DiamondHacks, where I, an idle, arguably friendless "loser" pontificate ad nauseum on all things Diamondback. I genuinely feel sorry for you for being here - couldn't you be advancing a meaningful relationship, or at least mowing the lawn?   

Rather than inaugurate this 'umble lil blog with a shotgun diatribe hitting all the org's far-reaching foibles(stay tuned!), let's dive in with something specific like, say, Shawn Green's bat speed (yes, there's a reason that phrase is highlighted in brown).

The stadium roof retracts in less time than it takes Shawn to fully unhitch his gargantuan slo-mo uppercut rarely seen beyond a whiffleball patch. The Almighty Swing uniquely requires Arizona's RFer to actually generate his next looping arc while still uncoiling his backswing from the previous pitch.

When Green made his April return to Dodger Stadium in purple and green, I couldn't figure why the crowd heartily booed Green? He seemed like an unassuming guy who clearly contributed to 2004's heartwarming division triumph. I assumed the Angelinos' gatocalls must have stemmed from some off- season incident - perhaps a contract dispute or a misunderstood quote in the LA Times.

But witnessing Green play every day for a couple months can truly be maddening. Despite his current practice of endlessly rolling weak grounders to the right side while connecting for his weekly quota of two line drives, Green refuses to shorten his stroke even with two strikes, and appears disinterested in hitting the other way, a habit he dabbled with in early May with some success. 

His field specialty is diving for, and almost catching, fly balls. One can count this year's sweet snags with three fingers but both hands and a foot are needed to catalog the outs and singles he's played into extra base hits by meandering after line drives.

And his basejogging is hideous. Indeed, the nadir of Arizona's season was when Green hit a lazy fly to right in Colorado and inexplicably coasted into his home run trot. After the ball caromed off the wall, Green began to actually run, where Hawpe's throw predictably beat him to second base by 10 feet. With the season almost half gone, Green has not stolen a single base. (Roly poly Ruby  Durazo was barely hitting .200 before he went on the DL in May and he's swiped two bags!!)

Green's play has been so uninspiring that the club felt the timing right to publicly harp on his generous, but previously discrete, contributions to a pair of local hospitals. And Manager Bob Melvin warned outsiders yesterday that his rightfielder's passive demeanor belies a deep-seated competitiveness that Melvin, or any of us, dare not question. "Shawn's his own worst critic" , according to the man who skippered Seattle into oblivion. 

Maybe so. But I wonder what kind of numbers Green would be accumulating if Bobby Cox or Buck Showalter was "his own worst critic" instead?