Will the Padres win another game this season?

After another loss to the Colorado Rockies yesterday afternoon, the Padres have now gone 9 games without a win. It's the longest losing streak in seven years and the fans here in San Diego are starting to worry that maybe the clock has struck midnight very abruptly on this magical season and this Cinderella Pad squad is turning into a pumpkin.

They had been cruising along at an essentially perfect pace for 5 straight months to start the year. Their record and run differential was better than all but the best two teams in baseball. Counting last year they've actually been playing like the best team in the National League for 7 straight months (they finished the season going 32-21 in the last two months of '09). They had not even had a losing streak longer than 3 games throughout this year and had only experienced such a streak twice.

Now they seem to have ran into a wall and are having trouble getting back up. Well-executed fundamental baseball has been a constant for this crew but we've seen the defense coming apart at the seams in this sloppy 9-game slide. The other night Miguel Tejada, for no apparent reason, tried to catch a throw from the second basemen with his bare hand to start a double play. It was a ridiculous thing to try and he totally missed it, granting the D'backs two extra outs for the inning. Another defensive miscue followed and then Luke Gregerson allowed a monstrous grand slam. Today Everth Cabrera booted an easy grounder that would've started a doubleplay. This is not how the Padres have played all year.

The team's strategy throughout the year has been simple but impeccably executed: keep the games close with strong starting pitching and defense, scrap out a lead with timely hitting, and then hand things off to a virtually unhittable bullpen. During this streak their pitching has been atrocious, allowing almost 6 runs per game and the sputtering offense has only scored 2.3 per contest.

So, is what we've seen these past nine games the real talent level of the Padres? Were the first 5 months of pure excellence a total fluke?

I really don't think so. But the mounting losses are undoubtedly testing this team mentally and you can see guys starting to freak out and have tantrums like Jon Garland did in the Padre dugout during an ugly inning yesterday. Perhaps that's exactly what a discombobulated team needs to get back on track.

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Searching for an excuse for this streak of struggles, we can at least grant that they've played against good teams. The Diamondbacks started out terribly but they have played much better baseball as of late, finishing August with a 16-13 record (the same as the Padres during that span). The losing streak began with a 11-5 pounding in Arizona before the Friars came home for a weekend series with the Phillies who always play great this time of year. With reinforcements like Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins having just returned to the lineup and Joe Blanton and Chase Utley throwing gems, the Phils swept their opponents at Petco. I was at the Saturday game (pic below) and the Padres looked lifeless, showing no indication of the determined, tough at-bats and late inning rallies that have been customary for this San Diego team for basically the last calendar year.

After that embarassing sweep in their home park they went back over to Arizona again and got walloped in a three game set (outscored 19-6) and now the last two games they've battled a Colorado team that is on fire (as they always are at this time of the year) and against whom they've had trouble all season, winning just 4 of 10 games against the Rox. Back in May I stated that the Rockies would probably make a surge eventually and the Padres might not be good enough to withstand it when it comes. Well, here is that surge as they've climbed to within 5.5 games for the first time since July, their best player is back in the lineup after a month on the DL, CarGo is heating up and one mustn't forget the resilient Giants who have continued to nip at the Padres' heels, now sitting only 2 games back. It really is looking like it'll be an exciting September in the NL West.

Last night I found myself up in Los Angeles and actually rooting for the Dodgers as they played the Giants. I'll hopefully make a post entirely devoted to that experience but the Dodgers managed to win and keep the Giants down, otherwise they'd only be 1 game back right now.

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So...will the Padres win another game this season or anytime soon?

Of course they will. I think they'll either win today's tilt with Clayton Richard on the mound or, if they lose again and push it to double digits, Mat Latos will blow away the Dodgers on Monday and we'll all forget this ever happened.

But now since they've allowed the Giants to get close again the question remains: can this Padres team win the division?

The Padres have an extremely tough schedule to finish out the year. The worst team they'll face is the Cubs and they've got to face San Francisco seven more times, the Dodgers six, plus seven games against the Cardinals and Reds.

Once they shake off this embarrassing stumble, this is still a quality Padres team. Keep in mind Miguel Tejada is actually hitting pretty well with a 106 OPS+ thus far as a Padre, Chase Headley and Adrian Gonzalez were great in August, and the surprise explosion that is Chris Denorfia's 2010 season hasn't slowed down one bit (145 OPS+ in August). If Ryan Ludwick can shake off his slow San Diego start (.658 OPS) and hit at a rate closer to his established norm, I think the offense will not only be fine but it should be an improvement on what they've been winning with for much of the year. The rotation looks a little more troubling as Wade LeBlanc seems to have lost his touch (although he had great K/BB numbers last month, he's been giving up far too many homers), Jon Garland's luck is fading and Kevin Correia continues to struggle (5.52 ERA on the year, 7.20 in August).There are reinforcements available in-house though, especially long relief man Tim Stauffer who's been itching to get back in the rotation and I think Bud Black and Darren Balsey will sort things out with the starters. The pen is not to be worried about with this team, it's too deep and too talented to fuss over.

These next four weeks are going to be thriling and, no matter what happens, I'll be glad to be watching pennant race Padre baseball in September which is something I never thought possible. I just hope they don't emulate the recent fate of my ignominious Mets.

Script for Inception now available in book form

I've already written a few posts here gushing about the movie Inception and, depending on how well I hone my writing skills between now and next year, I'm planning on writing a little collection of essays exploring some of the themes, elements, and possible interpretations of the movie. Thanks to my brother John, who usually has his ear to the pulse of these types of things, I've found a new book that will undoubtedly help me in that endeavor.

The book is Inception: The Shooting Script and you can read all about it here. It has the full movie script as well as an interview between Christopher Nolan and his brother, Nolan's own notes which he jotted down in the script, and numerous diagrams, storyboards and concept art. I've ordered it on Amazon already but it says I may not receive it for a month or two. When I do get it, you can bet that I'll have plenty to say about it. I've already seen the film four times in theaters and was all ready to see it a fifth time last week with my girlfriend and her dad but the drive-in movie (yes, they do still exist and they're very cool) we went to wasn't showing it. We settled on The Other Guys, a title that in retrospect seems perfectly apt.

The Splendor of Salvador Dali, the Catalonian Mindbender

My massive Portrait post, one part of it at least, was mentioned on the blog for the James Joyce Quarterly the other day and now I'm organizing that little Dali-Joyce section of it into a mini-essay to submit to their offices for possible publication. I am thrilled about that and also a little nervous.

I haven't had anything published before and it's something I've been striving to achieve for a while now. The possibility has clearly been made open. Just have to submit something that's good enough.

So I've been going through my books and some of my old writings trying to gather ideas or little things to possibly add in to the Joyce and Dali piece and I've realized that, while I am a huge fan of Salvador Dali (he is my favorite painter, although admittedly I've had relatively little exposure to the wide world of painters), that aforementioned Portrait post with its reference to Dali's Temptation of St. Anthony was the first time I've mentioned the great Surrealist Spaniard on this blog. And so I'd like to display some of my favorite work of his and talk some Dali at ya.

I was introduced to Dali's work during a visit to the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill to see my longtime friend Raphe whose basement bedroom prominently displayed a poster of The Metamorphosis of Narcissus. I was blown away by it, completely absorbed in its splendor for the entire weekend, and have been a supremely fascinated Dali enthusiast ever since. Here is that painting:

And a few of my other favorites of his...

Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War)

He has the ability to paint a scene of immense size, like a scene in a major movie, and then fill it with the most unusual mutations and combinations that are always striking for their meanings and the chosen form of communicating of those meanings. We see a body completely broken apart and in an absolutely horrifically scrambled state, the feeling of someone at war with himself. The chest with cabinet and drawers is a common element in Dali's work representing the cupboards of thoughts in which we gather and sometimes hide or forget about things throughout our lifetime.

His most recognized painting is definitely The Persistence of Memory (1931) although it's not nearly his best.

I first saw this in a video of a Joseph Campbell lecture that used to be on YouTube a few years ago but now solely exists on the DVD set called Mythos (scratch that: I think I found it here), a collection of lectures which is definitely worthwhile if you're into that stuff. He brings up this painting in discussion of the timeless realm of dreams and the unconscious (I believe the lecture is on Jung and the psyche). "The unconscious doesn't know anything about this," he says, referring to the clocks melting. This landscape is what I call a dreamscape, a depiction of the background desert of the unconscious (or the 'subconscious' as it's more popularly called---Freud called it the "subconscious", Jung called it in the "unconscious" and the former has stuck in the popular lingo but either one makes sense: it's a consciousness that is essentially below and underlying your everyday waking consciousness and something you are consciously unaware of. You with me?).

The same landscape appears in another Dali painting Campbell comments on it that lecture (in which he fluidly recites its lengthy title):

Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bumblebee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening (1944)

It reminds me now of an exaggerated, highly creative and colorful version of the "kick" one experiences inside a dream in the film Inception. And we also see here another recurring Dali theme: that obelisk-carrying elephant on stilts. Here it even seems to be smiling. Those needlefooted elephants are most prominent in the Temptation of St. Anthony painting which I analyzed a few weeks ago.

He's also got a gift for the mind-benders. Those visual trick images that can be any of a few different things at once. Like this:

The Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire (1940)

The technique is called trompe l'oeil (French: 'deceive the eye') and Dali has a few great examples of it (another favorite artist of mine, M.C. Escher, also used it with awesome effect).

Swans Reflecting Elephants (1937)

The Three Ages (1940)

I've mostly shown works from the 1940s thus far but his archives are immense and span eight decades while his style grows and evolves through each one. Plenty of Freud and Jung stuff in the early part of his career and then, after the dropping of the atomic bomb in 1945, Dali's perspective on things (and thus the depictions in his art) totally changed. Luckily for us, Dali was a writer (though a whimsically eccentric one) as well as a painter and he explained his conversion clearly:

"The explosion of the atomic bomb on 6 August 1945 sent a seismic shock through me. Since then, the atom has been central to my thinking. Many of the scenes I have painted in this period express the immense fear that took hold of me when I heard of the explosion of the bomb. I used my paranoiac-critical method to analyse the world. I want to perceive and understand the hidden powers and laws of things, in order to have them in my power. A brilliant inspiration shows me that I have an unusual weapon at my disposal to help me penetrate to the core of reality: mysticism---that is to say, the profound intuitive knowledge of what is, direct communication with the all, absolute vision by the grace of Truth, by the grace of God. More powerful than cyclotrons and cybernetic calculators, I can penetrate to the mysteries of the real in a moment...

"In this state of intense prophecy it became clear to me that means of pictorial expression achieved their greatest perfection and effectiveness in the Renaissance, and that the decadence of modern painting was a consequence of scepticism and lack of faith, the result of mechanistic materialism. By reviving Spanish mysticism I, Dali, shall use my work to demonstrate the unity of the universe, by showing the spirituality of all substance." from Dali by Robert Descharnes

So now we see his paintings start to change, much more religious symbolism involved but it's combined with a strong emphasis on the world seen through the eyes of modern physics (which is very similar to Joyce's major works).

The Madonna of Port Lligat (1950)

That one's a favorite of mine. Here's a few more...

Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) (1954)

Nuclear Cross (1952)

Raphaelesque Head Exploding (1951)

In the 60s he started taking things to a whole new level.

Portrait of My Dead Brother (1963)

I think I've shown and said more than enough for now and I really haven't even scratched the surface. He has just an absurdly huge amount of art out there, one could easily make a blog entirely about Dali and I'm sure many people have. I highly recommend checking his works out and you can look forward to seeing more of it here as I will continue to occasionally draw upon them in my writings for this blog.

Schopenhauer on The Illusion of Separation

(I would like to present this book excerpt because it's something I often find myself bringing up in conversation but don't always explain so clearly. This is from Joseph Campbell's superb book The Inner Reaches of Outer Space and it is a quotation from the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer.)

[Schopenhauer asks] in his celebrated essay On the Foundation of Morality, "How is it possible that suffering that is neither my own nor of my concern should immediately affect me as though it were my own, and with such force that it moves me to action?...This is something really mysterious, something for which no basis can be found in practical experience. It is nevertheless of common occurrence, and everyone has had the experience. It is not unknown even to the most hard-hearted and self-interested. Examples appear every day before our eyes of instant responses of this kind, without reflection, one person helping another, coming to his aid, even setting his own life in clear danger for someone whom he has seen for the first time, having nothing more in mind than that the other is in need and in peril of his life..."

(My favorite recent example of this was the Subway Superman Wesley Autrey risking his life to save someone who had a seizure and fell onto the subway tracks.)

Schopenhauer's answer to this question is that this immediate reaction and response represents the breakthrough of a metaphysical realization---namely (as he states the idea in Sanskrit), "tat tvam asi, thou art that."

"This presupposes," he declares, "that I have to some extent identified myself with the other and therewith removed for the moment the barrier between the 'I' and the 'Not-I'. Only then can the other's situation, his want, his need, become mine. I then no longer see him in the way of an empirical perception, as one strange to me, indifferent to me, completely other than myself; but in him I suffer, in spite of the fact that his skin does not enfold my nerves."

"Individuation is but an appearance in a field of space and time, these being the conditioning forms through which my cognitive faculties apprehend their objects. Hence the multiplicity and differences that distinguish individuals are likewise but appearances. They exist, that is to say, only in my mental representation. My own true inner being actually exists in every living creature as truly and immediately as known to my consciousness only in myself. This realization, for which the standard formula is in Sanskrit is tat tvam asi, is the ground of that compassion upon which all true, that is to say unselfish, virtue rests and whose expression is in every good deed."

MMS008 Advanced Jazz: Class is now in session

This is the cover for the latest chapter of the monthly Madlib series we've been blessed with this year, Medicine Show #8: Advanced Jazz. The painting is called "Jazzcats Crossing the Hudson" and features jazz pioneers like Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Sun Ra as they make their way towards New York City. Read more about the cover here.

The album is an 80-minute mix of jazz from the last 40 years with Madlib at the turntables throwing in his usual obscure skits and sounds in between the carefully chosen jazz records.* Since receiving this album last week I haven't listened to anything else, just letting it repeat over and over. I've never been a huge jazz fan but with my growing interest for the multifaceted Madlib, especially this year, my audio tastes have witnessed a very pleasing expansion of horizons. The previous Medicine Show, an album of Madlib's original jazz music called High Jazz, helped evolve my ear drums to the richness of this musical genre (although, I should point out that much of Madlib's jazz stuff seems to transcend the limits of any genre except maybe "cosmic music," if there is a such thing). I will have a double review of the Medicine Show's Summer of Jazz written soon but for now I'm still soaking in the sounds of Miles, Pharoah, Herbie, Mingus, and more. I suggest you do that too. You might learn something.

*I've tried to use the Shazam application on my phone to identify the tracks but the app has been completely stumped thus far. Madlib does it again! (Or Shazam sucks)

It's been an amazing week...

That is to say, it is an amazing week when discovering the art of Gustav Klimt is merely a side note.

Here is his Tree of Life.

Modern Cinematic Brilliance

I had a chance to watch this movie the other day. First time I'd seen it in many years and this scene struck me as powerfully as it ever has. Just wonderful filmmaking.

Movie Videos & Movie Scenes at MOVIECLIPS.com

Almost

Well tonight was almost a full moon and sure enough there was an almost no-hitter. The Texas Rangers held the Twins hitless until there was one out in the 9th inning.

I eagerly await tomorrow night's slate.

Tuesday's Full Moon Augurs Another No-Hitter

Since we've had three straight no-hitters that have all occurred on the night of the full moon (and because no-hit bids are happening often enough) I am predicting that we will see a no-hitter on Tuesday night August 24th which is a full moon. But who will throw it? I've identified some potential candidates out of the moundsmen who are scheduled to pitch that night. We can look at the batting average (since we're talking about a no-hitter, not necessarily a perfect game) of the opposing team and the batting average allowed and overall dominance of the starting pitcher. Keep in mind he'd also have to be a guy who can go the full 9 innings without getting pulled for running up a high pitch count (although that didn't stop Edwin Jackson two full moons ago when he threw 149 pitches).

We've actually got a few strong candidates pitching that night.

Most likely:
Adam Wainwright vs the Pittsburgh Pirates

By far the strongest candidate to throw a no-no on Tuesday, Wainwright is one of the most dominant pitchers in the league right now. He leads the NL in ERA and WHIP, ranks behind only Roy Halladay with his 5 complete games, and has the 4th most strikeouts in the league. He is facing a Pittsburgh Pirates lineup that has the second-worst batting average in all of baseball.

Other candidates:

Cole Hamels vs Houston Astros

Hamels had a game against St. Louis last month in which he allowed only 2 hits in 8 innings and before his most recent start (a clunker against the Giants) he had a string of 3 consecutive dominant games, striking out nearly ten per game during that span and pitching into the late innings each time. The Astros as a team are batting .246 on the year (ahead of only Pittsburgh in the NL) even though they've actually played a bit better of late. If it's not a no-hitter, it should still be a pretty dominant game for Cole Hamels.

R.A. Dickey vs Marlins, Josh Johnson vs Mets
The knuckleballing sensation known as R.A. Dickey nearly threw the first no-hitter in Mets history last week, giving up only 1 hit (to the pitcher Cole Hamels) while throwing a complete game. The Marlins rank in the bottom third in the majors with a .255 batting average and have been no-hit already this year but they've got plenty of threats in their lineup, particularly Hanley Ramirez. While Ramirez is having a subpar season by his own standards (117 OPS+ after three seasons above 140) he's still an excellent hitter and, as the leadoff man, will be granted at least 3 chances to hit Dickey's knuckler.

Opposing Dickey and the Mets will be the towering (6 foot 7) ace for the Marlins, Josh Johnson. For most of the year Johnson has been nearly untouchable but he's slowed down recently and was even knocked out of a game in the 4th inning by the Reds. The Mets are pretty bad in the batting average department (.248) and in Johnson's 12 innings against them so far this year they've batted just .182 against him. They've been pretty pathetic at the plate lately, culminating in a weak showing in Pittsburgh. They were held to 1 run on 5 hits earlier today against the Pirates' Zach Duke. Should be an interesting pitcher's duel in Queens.


Gio Gonzalez vs Cleveland Indians
He's prone to wildness so he might rack up a high pitch count but he still has the potential to dominate, especially against a flimsy Cleveland lineup (they were the victims in the famous Armando Galarraga perfect game incident). Opposing hitters are batting just .227 against Gonzalez this year.


Not likely but certainly possible:


Josh Beckett vs Seattle Mariners
Beckett hasn't had a good year at all so far. While his strikeout and walk numbers are fine (8 Ks and 2 walks per 9 IP), he's been shelled for an OPS against of .856. But on this night he'll be facing the absolute worst lineup in major league baseball. The Mariners are hitting a pathetic .238 as a team.

Gavin Floyd vs Baltimore Orioles
I see Floyd as the wild card of the group. He's been hit hard in his past two starts and these Baltimore Orioles he'll be facing are playing much better than the lowly O's I saw earlier this year at Petco. Floyd has occasionally put it all together and pitched some dominant games this year including a game at Wrigley in which he had a no-hitter going with two outs in the seventh inning. I don't think he'll get one against Showalter's boys but he belongs on this list as someone who might do it.

One-In-A-Million Shot Bonus:

Ervin Santana vs Tampa Bay Rays
Nothing against Santana, but this is just kind of a joke because the Rays have already been no-hit twice this year and once last year. In all seriousness though, it is definitely not out of the realm of possibility that the Tampa Bay Rays, who might be the best team in major league baseball (or, at worst, the second-best behind the Yankees), will go hitless in a game for the third time this season. Santana has three complete games already this year and has been pretty stingy in his two most recent starts, giving up 4 hits or less in both games. It would be a memorable and historic event if the Rays were the victims of a no-hitter again but perhaps not as strange as having four consecutive no-hitters occur on the night of a full moon.

Metempsychosis

Still finishing up a lengthy post on A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I've got something else for the mean time.

This is an extremely interesting (though very low budget) documentary. Enjoy.

Absent Note

I haven't been able to put anything up on the blog this week as I have been rehabbing a torn ligament in my knee and working on a huge post to come about A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man which will serve as an introductory post to my series on Ulysses. Hopefully that will be finished up this weekend.

At the moment I'm enjoying watching the Padres' newest pitching star, a young man who was born exactly one day after me in 1985. His name is Ernesto Frieri, he hails from Colombia and amazingly he wears the same jersey number (39) I've chosen to wear for most of my career as an ice hockey player.