Really?

 At this point I’m so used to the 2006 Cardinals going on ridiculous streaks, good and bad, that their vivisection at the hands of the Pirates leaves me more surprised than angry. Teams can win a game and then lose a game, just like that? I’m intrigued by this concept. In any case, Cincy lost, too, so in the major leagues things remain the very uninteresting status quo.

 In Memphis news, a former major leaguer had a great night on the road to recovery from a lingering arm injury.

 And it was Junior Spivey. Well, crap.

Mulder’s results in a rehab start are of limited importance to me; the key is that he was throwing 88-90 on the gun, which he hasn’t done since late May. One other thing he needs to work on is his post-game interview:

“When you are rehabbing, you can’t look at results,” Mulder said. “The only thing I am frustrated with is my command.”

You can’t look at results, sure, but command? This is slightly more important. Leach mentions later on in the mothership piece that the only reason he would have another rehab start is to sharpen his mechanics, I guess implying that he wouldn’t have another rehab start because he really digs the Memphis sound, or because they’re worried his arm will fly off and hit the backstop (going 85 mph down the middle, naturally.) It seems like, if you need to sharpen your mechanics and you’re in a close playoff race and you have two pitchers fighting the battle of who could suck less it would make sense to take the rehab start and take another trip through the rotation to see if Weaver is for real. But if they’re convinced the problem was just one of coming out of his arm slot–anybody who watched the game on MILB.TV is encouraged to comment as to whether or not they noticed that–a healthy, hard-throwing Mulder would actually fulfill the time-honored cliche of “That’s your deadline deal, right there.”

And regardless of whether or not that happens–hey, Junior Spivey’s inexplicable August power run rolls on… that’s cool, right? He’s now hitting .257/.350/.686, with three doubles and four home runs. Did he adopt the Jeromy Burnitz corkscrew-uppercut method or something? I’ll tell you what–if Spivey comes up when the rosters expand and starts crushing home runs in some ritual Rob Deer impersonation, this whole, crushingly inconsistent season will be worth it.