"It's been tough to watch lately. Really tough."

Just about every game log, regardless of writer, has started with some permutation of that phrase. It's been horrifically true, though. When the pitching's good, the offense declines to score any runs. When the offense does click and puts up a gargantuan run total (maybe something like five runs or so), the pitching blows it.

The injuries have played a factor, obviously, but Delmon Young, Joe Mauer, and Jim Thome are not going to turn this team into a division winner. In fact, I'm becoming increasingly pessimistic about our chances of breaking even (we'd have to play 69-57 from here on out to make it to .500. That's .547 from now on, and I don't know if we've seen more than a couple of games all year where they looked like they could play that way for any length of time.)

So, that's that. The team needs to turn around, and they can't wait for the star catcher to come back. They can't wait for the MVP first baseman to get his head right. They can't wait for the "mvp" (lower case) to Just. Stop. Sucking. It needs to happen right now. It probably won't happen (Sean's historical searchings didn't exactly provide a silver lining), but come on... giving up before June is for Pirates fans, right?

We've got Blackburn on the mound today, they've got Jo-Jo Reyes. Both seem to be fairly allergic to striking people out (though Blackburn's 3.5 k/9 is just absurd*), so I guess we can expect lots of hits today. That'll be a nice change of pace, at least.

Blackburn's our "big game pitcher" right? Well, we need this one. Go get 'em, Blackie.