Telling quotes from Ed Wade in McTaggart's season-closing story on how maybe they had an idea that 1,194 things would have to go exactly right - consecutively - for this team to be competitive:
Wade:
"We knew a lot of things would have to go right, including Roy winning his normal 15, 17, 20 games and Lance having a big year and Carlos [Lee] having a big year. Those types of things didn't happen for us. It was a combination of a lot of different factors."
It's funny, because even though Roy had a down year, he still had 15 no-decisions, meaning he just might have won 15, 17, 20 games. But the offense was so terrible, namely because Lance was hitting well under .200 for the first two months of the season, that Carlos Lee - despite hitting .300 with 26 HRs (two fewer than his mark at G115 in 2008 when he went down with the pinky injury) - couldn't make up the productivity.
Anyhow, Wade, on the pitching:
"Our pitching was a strong as we could make it, probably not strong enough to stand the test of time, so to speak."
Ed Wade knew that this team wouldn't contend, and it's not his fault.
We didn't come out here to play tiddlywinks, son.
-Hal Smith
