[canadiancreed]

However, they may crawl out of their hole if Montreal gets hit any harder with the SARS virus. Bad joke, I know (though I am mixing Canadian cities), but how else to explain the six pitchers currently accruing time on the disabled list? And even the healthy are not without unsightly warts and blemishes. Take 25 year old Luke Lockwood, a strapping young lefty with a rather indistinguishable minor league line and half-decent three-start cup of coffee last season; he's seen it all enveloped in an 11-start nuclear mushroom this year, with more walks than strikeouts, 67 hits in 50 innings, and a fine, dandy 7.33 ERA, only three-and-a-half runs above league-average. And the parade of unfortunate souls continues with 27 year old right-hander Seung "Sung" Song, who has carved out a nice niche as a pitching pinata, allowing any old left-handed batter to let 'er rip and watch the little foil-wrapped candies pop out. Hell, you could probably go deep on this guy, and you're reading the incoherent ramblings of some guy on a baseball text sim message board. Left-handers are batting .472/.525/.764 against him this season in 72 at-bats. Sample size and all that, but four-freakin'-72! The opposite handers could go up there sans bat, and I bet his record would still be 1-6.

Not all has gone awry for Montreal, who has had the reverse curve of our season, starting out fast and then slowly spiraling downward. 26 year old right-hander Darrell Rasnar has emerged from obscurity to lead the team in wins with eight, and if young ace Frankie Butto ever returns from injury, you are looking at a half-decent rotation when you mix in efficient, crafty veteran Ryan Drese (7-4, 2.56). The lineup also has a solid nucleus, as 28 year old first baseman Hee Seop Choi has finally lived up to the minor league billings in his first real shot at the bigs (.292/.424/.545 in 154 AB), creating a nice middle-of-the-order punch with similarly talented outfielder Brad Wilkerson (.280/.372/.468) and free-swinging, position-drifting 25 year old Vic Diaz (.305/.327/.481). But this small-market ballclub (26th in payroll) just doesn't have the resources that others do, and even unexpected surprises like the emergence of Rasnar and the mild renaissance of 35 year old offseason pick-up Jorge Posada (.282/.384/.377 vs. .242/.333/.366 last year) can't cover up other deficiencies, like the fact that the club has started seven different third basemen this season (and not because of injuries) and that the bullpen has one pitcher with more than 10 innings and an ERA below the league average of 3.96. And as luck would have it, that man, superb Mexican right-hander Luis Ayala, is currently on the DL along with apparently all other comers in the organization. With what was diagnosed a few weeks ago as a torn tricep muscle, he'll likely be there a while.

Montreal will suffer the same fate in the standings if their minor league system is any indication, and since they can't outspend even the Pale Hose, the fact that they have just one prospect to speak of means, as the French say, je ne voudrais pas etre a sa place. (Feel free to pretend the accents are there if it makes it sound a little less like Ted Nugent to you) Even worse is that right-hander David Gibbs looks like a supernova, with a 3-0 record and sparkling 0.28 ERA in four double-A starts...yet he's just nineteen years old, with plenty of time to blow out his arm three times, and even worse, his A-ball lines from the last year-plus suggest that his idea of the strike zone is just rudimentary. If he flops, same as 2005 1st rounder Don Larios did (granted, he is still 24, but his AA record was 6-19 last year!) and same as this year's #1 pick, Frank Corbett is likely to do...(OK, that is jumping the gun, as the third base prospect is all of 19 years old, with 118 professional at-bats. But he's hitting .153!!)...with an organization with that kind of track record, you can't say anything but "Mon dieu, avoir pitie au Montreal."

But their is one spot where pity is not needed....

at least they still exist