“Manager? GM? Water boy? Round ‘em all up and let me set ‘em on fire,” said Kal Freedman, the leader of a local fan group. “Draw and quartering’s too good for them. I'm thinking machine guns. Kinves. You know, something painful. We don’t need excuses. When I go to work, if shit hits the fan, somebody commences to firing, you know?”
At issue is the team’s lackadaisical play and the general idea that no one seems to care. The team’s offense has been tepid, the pitching horrible. Defense: code mediocre. Starter Han-lee Kim was retained at the major league level and proceeded to get blasted for three weeks before the team announced his one-way ticket to the waiver wire was being punched. Fellow starter Ernesto Ramos has begun to wear out his welcome with a 5.32 ERA. (“We thought he was supposed to be a phenom,” Freeman said. “Turns out he was a peon.”) Third starter Luis Colon, who had a nice enough rookie and second season, has been a 6.75 ERA doormat, his last outing being a 3+ inning stint where he gave Boise 6 runs and three homers. “You can’t blame to defense for a homer unless you put on the mega-shift,” Freedman said. “And I don’t think the league allows you to post your right fielder behind the fence.”
In the meantime, the club eeked out a series victory in Boise before taking a three-game dump in Des Moines, losing the match in straight sets, 5-2, 5-4, 6-4 in games where they lost early, lost late, and lost by generally just grinding the sausage all game long.
“We’ll be fine,” said second year manager Bill Inkster, who is certainly being tested in ways he hadn’t been last year. “It’s a long season, and we’ve got great baseball players. It’s time to just let things settle and stew.”
Hmm…. you can almost year Kal Freedman say, I guess boiling could work, too.
