Can He Do It?

In case the use of pronouns in the headline and the naughty letter to Burt Reynolds pictured above don’t tip you off, this is a post about Brian Fuentes. Mr. Fuentes is not a loser, but he’s lost things. To wit, he’s lost enough games this season to overwhelm something — maybe an over-sized bulk box constructed of triple-wall corrugated fiberboard or perhaps a a silo towering over the American prairies like a tensed phallus — designed expressly — and, it should go without saying, with expert craftsmanship and tantalizingly in excess of industry standards and best practices — to hold a great deal of losses.

Indeed: Brian Fuentes, despite being a reliever tasked with doing something besides recording decisions of any kind, is on pace to go 3-23 this season. Like others who make love to these pages, I’m aware that pitcher wins and losses are far from illuminating. Still, one can’t help but be impressed that a reliever has managed to be yoked with defeat seven times before June.

Getting to 20 losses will, of course, require another, greater conga line of foul-smelling performances on the part of Fuentes. That’s not difficult in a vacuum. The problem is that merely one or three more foul-smelling performances on the part of Fuentes will likely result in his being banished to the low-leverage terra incognita of the bullpen. And thus, the Republic’s dream of a 20-loss reliever will perish.

Not to place the dual burdens of Job and Frodo upon Mr. Fuentes and Bob Geren, who stands in the dugout and projects authority, but they simply must contrive a way to make this happen. This battered generation needs it. These beleaguered patriots need it …

So you say you stormed Omaha Beach, old man waiting for the bus? Adorable. I saw a reliever lose 20 games in a season.

You’re damn right I’ll take it from here.