Friday, August 04, 2006

Chase Utley Can Chase This...We Give You Vlad The Magnificent
As you know we are a Devil Rays blog and we try to keep the posts to items directly related to the Rays and their divisional foes. Well, we noticed something last night about Vladimir Guerrero that was worth mentioning. We have always been fans of Vlad's from afar. You have to love a superstar that just goes out every night and punishes baseballs as if they insulted his mother. On top of that..in an era when baseball nicknames are mostly pathetic (ie. A-Rod), Vlad has one of the best...Vlad the Impaler.

Well last night Chase Utley extended his hitting streak to 35 games and people around baseball are starting to salivate. While 35 games in a row is very impressive, he is still almost a month away from Joe DiMaggio's record 56-game streak. Meanwhile, there is another streak that we think is actually more impressive and is being given to us by The Impaler. Last night Vlad got a basehit in his 43 consecutive game against the Texas Rangers. To give a sense of the enormity of the feat, the second longest active streak in baseball right now is Vlad's teammate Garret Anderson who has a 21 game streak against the Boston Red Sox. The reason the streak is more impressive in our eyes, is that it is done over the course of 2 and a half seasons. Meaning, in the last 3 seasons, he has never had a hiccup game against the Rangers, which just attests to Vlad's consistency. It is one thing to find a groove over a short period of time and have an overall hitting streak, but to keep churning out hits against one team, every time is quite the impressive feat. Fortunately, the Angels play the Rangers 9 more times, so Vlad's streak has a chance to top 50 games before the season is over, which will be about 15 games longer than Utley's streak will end up being.

update...the streak was extended to 44 games on Friday night, but came to an end on Saturday night when the Rangers walked Vlad 4 times, including 3 intentional walks in 5 plate appearances. One of the intentional walks came in the bottom of the 6th with a man on second with 1 out and the score 9-3. Can you imagine the uproar if this was how Utley's streak ended.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Vlad's streak includes every game he has ever played against Texas. Prior to signing with the Angels he had never faced the Rangers.

2:19 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home