Baseball Tri-Weekly: House Rules

An outfield under performing. A patchwork pitching staff. A bullpen that's aging. But with Albert Pujols Las Vegas is always playing by...House Rules


House Rules
By Conor Intabedd, Baseball Tri Weekly

Who would have thought it would be this way by August? Closer to 6th place than 1st, but yet so close to the 2nd "BYE" spot they can taste it. The Doggs aren't only not living up to their own expectations, but the expectations of countless figureheads across the EHCC. Las Vegas fans aren't exactly worried however, and have all the confidence in a playoff resurgence come September.

GM Howe Dogg has done everything in his power to show the fans he's serious about making a run this season, and cementing the franchise as one of the best in the league's short history. With the acquisitions made at the trade deadline, the Doggs have upgraded almost every slumping area of their team. With Jason Bay's average approaching the Mendoza Line, and Bary Zito's ERA approaching a career high the Doggs knew they had to do something to bring their staff up to par.

"We've had some nice performances from unlikely sources this season. Olly [Perez], [Jeremy] Accardo, and Joe [Blanton] have been great additions this season. It's just not enough when we had, and still have so many expectations for a few other guys on the roster like Rickie [Weeks] and [Barry] Zito. We figured being able to pitch in his hometown half the season would really put a spark in Zito this year. Hopefully he can find it soon," commented GM Howe Dogg.

The Doggs' offense, led by slugger Albert Pujols, still leads the league overall this season. However, the team average is expected to drop dramatically with Adam Dunn rejoining the team, taking over Ichiro's spot in right field. Dunn is expected to add in more home runs however, a category the Doggs felt they needed to improve upon while making a run at the playoffs.

"I'm really looking forward to coming back to Vegas and pushing for a ring this time around. Last time I was here we didn't have enough to make it to the finals, but I feel this is my best opportunity at a ring," Dunn said at the press conferences reintroducing him to the Vegas media.

Along with Dunn, the Doggs have added four new starting pitchers, while only sending away one. Yovani Gallardo, Gil Meche, Dave Bush, and Mark Buehrle have been added through various trades. The Doggs were forced to give up quite a bit for their additions, including two of their prized draft picks from the 2006 MiDraft (Matt Garza and Jay Bruce), recently acquired Ichiro Suzuki, long time outfielder Jason Bay, and many future draft picks.

"The addition of these guys really puts a lot less stress on us [the offense] to win games. For most of the season it was all on our shoulders to pick up the slack but now I feel that the team has shown they are serious and the addition of the new guys like Mark and Gil will really liven up the rest of the staff. I was sick of seeing a new face in the bullpen every couple of days," commented Pujols in a recent interview, "Come the playoffs, we should still be a team to reckon with but we won't be looking forward to playing some of the other teams out there. It's not going to be a cake walk."

One can only imagine that Pujols was referring to regular season powerhouse Rakeville, who at press time lead the Doggs 7-2 in Week 18. Rakeville has been the team to beat all season, losing just 4 match ups this season, one of which to the defending champion Doggs in Week 7 by the score of 3-7. Even though they have a 8 game lead on Bridgewater in the league standings, Rakeville currently stands 2nd in the Eastern Division to Las Vegas. However, with a win this week things would be much more interesting in the Eastern Division, as Rakeville would only be a half game back from the Doggs with Vegas having two more division games to be played (Week 19 vs Weymouth and Week 20 vs Peoria), while Rakeville only having one more divisional match up (Week 21 vs Bridgewater).

The Doggs are currently 31 games over .500 and sit in 3rd place overall in the EHCC regular season, 3 games back from 2nd place Bridgewater and 11 games back from 1st place Rakeville. After playing Rakeville, the Doggs will finish the season off at 6th place Weymouth (Week 19), hosting 11th place Peoria (Week 20), hosting 9th place Golden (Week 21), and at 7th place Quebec City (Week 22) (all rankings are current as of press time). Las Vegas is 5-4-0 at home and 6-1-1 on the road.

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Many of the Doggs' offensive players are worried about second baseman Rickie Weeks, who has reportedly been having his gambling problems resurface. He has been spotted hanging out with The Stardust University Crazy Horses players during the off season at the Stardust VIP lounge, sometimes losing tens of thousands of dollars at a time to the FAC-10 champion players.

"He's a cool kid to hang out with, but I'm glad he's not on our team. I just wouldn't be able to trust him out there. you've got to think there's more than just baseball on his mind," stated Stardust running back Travis Henry.

Weeks' performance has declined this season, and many assume it's because of his bad habits. Rickie had no comment when asked about this ongoing issue.

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