Kevin Kouzmanoff: Sub Replacement Starter

Or, Jack Hananhan-lite, if you will. I really don't know what else to say about the guy. He's never gotten on base at a decent rate, but he always had a little bit of pop and played gold glove defense. Now he's swinging at sliders in the dirt that START OUT outside of the strikezone, grounding into double plays and is doing a spot-on Jose Offerman impersonation at third. He's far from the only A struggling, but he's certainly the one that they have no replacement for. Eric Chavez has apparently found the Fountain of Youth (steroids) and a good way of masking the Fountain of Youth in his urine stream and is playing really well for the Yankees. Failed prospect Andy Laroche is currently the alleged utility man while actual utility man Adam Rosales is on the 60 day DL, and has been even worse than Kouz in the field. AAA Sacramento has no legit hot corner prospects. So the A's are faced with the prospect of going into battle night in and night out with the rare MLB starter who has negative value to his team. There is nothing worse than watching a pitching staff go out and do their job only to watch the inept offense fail to score a single run, and that's what we A's fans have been going through so far. I have a bad feeling we're a week or 2 away from Billy Beane remembering he's a GM long enough for him to turn off the soccer game and declare the A's not fit to compete and use it as an excuse to start trading his usable pieces for minor league journeymen with high OBP. An early May Oakland Fire Sale might be enough to kill my interest in the rest of the season.

Tommy Johns in the House

Last year Jordan Zimmermann was recovering from his Tommy Johnson surgical implants and was having control issues with a lackluster fastball, in the process of re-learning his shit, so to speak, like a stroke victim but about the pitcher's arm instead of the half of brain. Last week, he had a strong showing in punking out the Mets on their opening night, to piss on their field and declare that, "No, we Nats are not the bottom feeder in this NL East motherfucker no more."
Last night against the Phillies though, Zimmermann took it to the next level. Holmes pitched five perfect innings, not allowing a single punk ass Phillie bitch on base, and gave up a homer in the sixth but made it through 7 solid innings with only that one earned run. On top of that, after the game, Cliff Lee remarked that Zimmermann's fastball was one of the nastiest ones he'd seen. Coming from Cliff Lee, that's high praise. Of course being stoked that a star pitcher lavishes praise upon one of your starting Ps kinda goes against that whole "not the bottom feeder in this NL East" mindset. But hey, we take what we can as Nats fans.
Some important excitements and calmnesses to take from this are, it looks Tommy Johnson Surgery can be recovered from, as we all hold our collective stupid breaths looking at the $300 million dollar Kid Strasburg. But the recovery process is longer than just getting back on the mount. Even if Kid Strasburg is back this year by the fall, he's gonna be going through what Zimmermann did last year - relearning how to do what it is he does. Zimmermann got his speed back but took a while longer to get control of that again. Hopefully Kid Strasburg can do the same.
Man, looking at the stupid Phillies pitching line-up a few days in a row is ridiculous. Even if Zimmermann ends up a solid as fuck starter for more than a few months of a few seasons, and Kid Strasburg returns as great as his potential promised, that still pales in comparison to the Phillies. What the fuck man? What the fuck?