Week Eight Wrapup: 715!

Voodoo Albert says this was an ok week to be a Reds fan, but a good one for Nats and Giants fans. Since Voodoo Albert was born, the Cardinals are 0-1.

Reds (28-22, 2nd place)

Walk off homers have a way of changing your outlook completely. Sunday's 5-4 win came as a result of Javy Valentin's one out, two run bomb in the bottom of the ninth inning, a moral victory as much as a W in the column. What had been a seemingly bad week all of the sudden was salvaged. Sure, crushing the Brew Crew in the first two games of the week made us all think that the offense we all have come to know and love was back. But then it disappeared completely in the sixth inning of Wednesday's game, and the team failed to score a single run until Ryan Freel hit one out in the first inning of Sunday's game, which saw three Reds longballs. A 3-3 week isn't a bad one.

We got rid of Dave "Sean is playing some rehab games next week" Williams and Cody "We didn't know you" Ross, but the roster moves did nothing to improve the team. Wouldn't D-train look fabulous in a Reds uniform?

Brandon Phillips is playing like earlier. Bye, bye, slump.

Reds Saint of the Week: Austin Kearns. 8-20 (.400), 2 longballs, 3 RBI, 5 runs scored. It's been like the Kearns Show instead of the Dunnandkearns Show since Dunn hasn't been showing up to the ballpark of late. Kearns certainly looks like he's from Kentucky in his profile pic, doesn't he?

Nats (21-30, fourth place)

I'm a big fan of this winning stuff. The Nats took three of four from the hated Asstros and had a four game win streak snapped by the Dodgers on Saturday, but they ended up winning that series, too, with Sunday's 10-4 victory. Talk about a hot team - these guys were 7-3 on this homestand, you know, RFK stadium, where the Nats seemed to never win. A 5-2 week is awesome; the Nats have now won three series in a row.

The Nats have the equivalent of a whole starting rotation on the DL but replacements Michael "Irish" O'Connor and Sean Hill had a heck of a week pretending they were real starters. Irish has earned a permanent spot in the rotation in my book, but we'll see if Hill can be as good as he was during Saturday's seven inning one run no decision.

It seems that Nick Johnson has come out of his slump. Apparently the Nats ex-hitting coach was in town this week to work with him.

Losing Jose Guillen to the disabled list isn't that big of a loss - Guillen hadn't been doing anything anyway, not at the plate and not in the field. Hey Jose, how has Soriano hit 11 out of RFK?

Ramon Ortiz has won three consecutive games. Whoda thunk it, eh?

Nats Saint of the Week: Alfonso Soriano. Alf had 11 hits in 27 bats this week (.407) with 3 HRs, 5 RBI, and 10 runs scored. He also walked three times and stole two bases. Too bad you can hear the clock ticking for him in a Nats uniform.

Giants (26-24, third place tie with San Diego and Colorado)

715! The idiot who got the ball didn't even think enough of the feat to be sitting in the stands to watch it, for he was standing in line for a beer when Bonds came to the plate and belted it out. Also, the Giants' radio announcer's mic went out as soon as the ball hit Bonds' bat, so no one heard the historic call on the radio.

The Giants have won 12 of their last 19, though they dropped two of three to the Deadbirds this week (Voodoo Albert has just been stabbed at the thought of this.) The team has been playing how everyone thought they would play, but the Dodgers and the Diamondbacks are doing just as well and both Colorado and San Diego are right on their heels. This division, which was so awful last year, seems to be killing everyone else this year.

Giants Saint of the Week: Barry Bonds. No offense to Omar Vizquel, who had a heck of a week, but it's not every day a man passes Babe Ruth.

Around the Horn

Curt "Jesus makes me get wins" Schilling won his 200th game on Saturday.

Derek "I'm a respectable Yankee" Jeter collected his 2000th career hit on Friday. The guy is only 31 and is scheduled to collect number 3000 sometime in 2011.

David "I should retire" Wells took a line drive off the knee that makes my own knee hurt just thinking about it.

Jered Weaver, younger brother of Jeff, pitched brilliantly in his Major League debut Saturday.

The Cubs are awful. Dusty Baker can't figure it out. The Pirates are awful, too. Jim Tracy blames the players. It's kind of like how my boss takes all the credit for our successes but blames us if something goes wrong.

The Asstros have been losing a lot recently. Woohoo!

Demon of the Week

The Fox Corporation. I hate everything Fox. It was bad enough that they have a Faux News Channel, but now they are dictating what baseball games I am allowed to watch on Saturdays. Because of Fox Saturday Baseball, those of us with MLB.TV or Direct TV are not allowed to watch the games of our choice until the Fox games are over. So if I want to watch the Reds play their 6:10 starts, I have to wait until the 4pm Fox game is over. For this reason, I will not be watching any baseball on Fox until I am forced to watch the playoffs on that channel. Nor will I watch any of its television shows, even though the few good shows I like are on that station.