One Month Later, Everything I Say Is Still Wrong

The Darling Asteroids awoke this morning to a 7-4 lead over Antarctic Arsenal with two days left to play. Evan Longoria continues to be the man, hitting .412 for the week with six runs, two homers and four RBIs.

And in a heart-warming show of camaraderie, three Darling pitchers started on the same night for the third time this season. Randy Wells, Brad Penny and the Talented Mr. Billingsley combined to go 2-0 with 15 strikeouts last night. A catchy nickname is in order for these new best friends. It’s great to see them forming such a bond, and this can only boost team morale.

That…or they’ll get too cliquey, start wearing matching clothes on off days, only talk to each other, make fun of David Aardsma behind his back, have their own corny inside jokes, and sit at the cool kids’ lunch table without inviting Pablo Sandoval.

PABLO WANT FISH STICK

Such behavior would certainly cause a rift in the Asteroid clubhouse. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to this.

In real world news, today is the first day of May. Or as I like to call it, May 1^st.

What a perfect time to reflect on the first few weeks of the season, to analyze some early storylines, and ruminate further on why Melky Cabrera is so freaking terrible.

So what have been the big stories in baseball’s opening month? Well…

Defense is stupid: With their signings of Adrian Béltre, Mike Cameron and Marco Scutaro, we were beaten about the head with “Boston will win it with defense!” stories this off-season, and Karl Ravech is contractually obligated to orgasm whenever the Sox turn a routine double play.

One month later, the Red Sox are in fourth place in the AL East. They are seventh in the league in runs scored while committing the third most errors.

Coincidence? Nope.

Slick fielding is excellent if you want to win Gold Gloves, the second most useless award in sports (the first being a WNBA championship). But this is America. We want taters. And the Sox can easily afford some big bats but opted instead to get cute, prove how strategically clever they are, and sign Bill Hall.

Well played, Boston.

Let this be a lesson to all aspiring GMs out there: Defense doesn’t put runs on the board, and neither does Jason Varitek.

Every NL pitcher is awesome: We knew Roy Halladay would be a formidable foe for Tiny Tim Lincecum. While the Doc has been great (going 4-1 with a 1.80 ERA), Timmy has been even better, going 4-0 with a 1.28 ERA and 43 strikeouts. Criminy.

But it’s the party crashers that are making this race interesting. The Mets Mike Pelfrey is 4-0 with an absurd 0.69 ERA, and everyone’s favorite Ubaldo (Jimenez, that is) is 5-0 with a 0.79 ERA, already has a no-hitter to his name and hasn’t surrendered a run in his last three starts. Even Barry Zito is 4-0, and Johan Santana appears to be back in business.

Keep your eyes on the NL Cy Young race. This figures to be epic.

Livan Hernandez will destroy us all.

Albert Pujols is a Baseball God who walks among us and we should all bow down before him: But we knew this already.

I am a complete idiot: Ditto.

My preseason predictions, which you can re-read here and here for comic relief, have been terrible. If the season ended today, I would have gone a solid 1-for-10 with only an Albert Pujols MVP to help me sleep at night.

One out of ten. That equates to a .100 batting average, which is only slightly worse than my AL MVP pick of Mark Teixeira (hitting a cool .136). To add fantasy insult to my pretend injury, absolutely none of my projected division winners currently sit in first place.

But that’s why baseball is the best game there is. It’s completely unpredictable. Pudge Rodriguez is hitting over .400, for crying out loud. Nothing in life is certain except death, taxes, and Melky Cabrera sucking the life force out of my body on a daily basis.

You have to admit...I nailed that one.