A Post Not About Michael Pineda

Everyone and their brother is using the morning/after game to take the opportunity to talk about Michael Pineda. Why not? He’s easily one of the best 15 prospects within the game right now and most likely one of top-5 the best minor league pitchers yet to make their debut.

It’s come with a lot of anticipation. What will he bring? How ready is he? ect. Fans want questions answered. That’s why they come to these blogs. But the thing is you can get that specific question answered by both Dave Cameron and Jeff Sullivan who both gave a tremendous recaps. Not to mention Conor Dowley and his amazing gotee at work in some awesome live game tweets. Breaking down some of his keen observations with Pineda.

The thing that really made this game so exciting was it made it feel like baseball, while being back for a few weeks, was now really back. It was on TV! I don’t know how you all are. But I’m tired of talking about 4th outfielders, rehashing the fact that Dustin Ackley needs to start in AAA and arguing over which marginally average reliever should make the pen over the other marginally average pitcher. It gets old. It has gotten old. So baseball on TV is exciting. Let’s get to the games that matter right?

Well after watching the game last night (all four innings that is) and even reading what other peoples thoughts were via tweets. I’ve just come to the conclusion that this team just isn’t ready for spring training to be over.  As badly as I want them to be ready to start games with meaning, it just doesn’t work.

Gutierrez has missed some time this spring and it showed out there on defense. There was a “bad” cut off throw. Then beyond those two things there was just a few kind of head scratching sloppy plays that kind of made you think “This is suppose to be our starters?”

I’ m not going to break each moment down. It’s really not important. It’s still spring training and while we want to get to the next stage in baseball. We need to stop, enjoy this for what it is. Baseball amnesty.

Last night we had a few things that didn’t go our way and we lost. Today it doesn’t matter. It’s not like we now trail someone further in the standings. Instead it’s all imaginary statistics that don’t count for anything and wins/loses that prove nothing. In two weeks the slate wipes clean and we get to start over.

At that point we won’t remember that Adam Moore hit .409, that Luke French had a 1.13 ERA in 8IP, or that Jack Wilson slugged .696. It won’t matter.

And yes, while we’ve pretty much reached the understanding that we all know that spring training stats don’t mean anything and we repeat it over and over again “Spring training stats don’t mean anything, Spring training stats don’t mean anything, spring train..” well you get the idea. Subsequently because of that we tend to get lost in the monotony of it all.

But we need to sit back and remember that we got to enjoy a really good pitching prospect go out and pitch without consequence last night. Sure there was some consequence to the outcome and for guys like Ryan Langerhans or Adam Kennedy. Where meaningless stats are critical to them making money. But it’s not anything that we can really stake any long term success on.

There are still small kinks that need to be worked out. While there are some kinks that won’t ever be worked out, just because this is the team that we have, some of the kinks we saw last night if given enough time can be worked out. We just have to have patience and enjoy this stage. It’s so easy to get caught up in things and want for the stats to matter. But, ultimately this is where we are at now and if you blink you’ll miss it.

Enjoy spring training 2011. It’s almost over and when it is… there will be no  Adam Kennedy in left or Milton Bradley in center. Enjoy it for what it is. A nice warm up to the season. Baseball!