[Kevdog1020]

June 1, 2012

Happy June everyone! While I am a little upset to see the month of May go (we went 15-13) I am excited for our opportunities to improve in June. I believe that our starting pitching is good enough where they can carry us into the wild card race and out of the cellar. If the team can prove to me that they can make a playoff push, I will make the moves necessary to put a playoff team together.

I do have good news and bad news. The bad news (I'm a bad news first kind of guy), is that another big name free agent to be is off the board. Zack Greinke signed a 4 year/$59,200 contract, very similar to the deal that Cole Hamels just signed. Those two deals are making me very happy that I decided to sign Edinson Volquez to a very cost effective 3 year/$9 million contract. With the removal of Hamels, Volquez and Greinke from the 2012-13 free agent market, the top 3 starting pitchers available are SP Derek Lowe (39 years old), Jeremy Guthrie (33 years old) and Erik Bedard (33 years old). Not too promising if you ask me.

I really enjoyed seeing our bats come alive during the Chicago series and also to see us take 2 of 3. We are on our way towards reaching my goal of .500 baseball. I'm just going to go over our June schedule real quick with you before I have to catch my plane back home. We start with a 6-game homestretch against Arizona and San Francisco (very important towards making ground in the division). Then we go on a 9 game road triple to Milwaukee, Seattle and Oakland (Interleague Play!). We come back home for 3 against Texas and Seattle before going back on the road for 4 in Houston and 3 in Colorado. The end of the Colorado series is the start of July. In July, we have 3 against Arizona, 3 at home against Cincinnati and then the All-Star Break. It is very important for us to have a winning record against these team. If we have a losing record in this stretch, we could very well end up as sellers.