El Caballo Está Enojado

Alright, so Livan went off last night after the game and everyone's trying to figure out why. Let's start with the things we know.

• Livan pitched like junk. He got the job done, for the most part. Three runs in 7 innings isn't bad. But, for Livan, and facing that lineup, you'd expect better. JD fappin' Closser homered to right! He can't even do that in Denver!
  
  
• Livan hasn't pitched especially well lately. His last three outings, plus the All-Star game, he's looked off -- definitely not the ¡Livan! we came to know and love.
  
  
• His frosting-filled knee has been killing him all season. He tweaked it good very early in the season, and has aggravated it a few times. It was to the point where he didn't even run ground balls out.
  
  
• Having as little run support as the team's providing, and with the slide the team has been on must be frustrating.
  
  
• He's supposedly close to Wife Beatin' Wil Cordero, who was cut earlier in the year.
  
  
• Over the past three years, he's had a series of run-ins with Frank Robinson. It culminated a year or two ago when there was a Tomo Ohka-like show of disrespect.
  
  Apparently they had words and reached a sort of truce wherein Livan, essentially, calls his own shots. Livan decides when he's done pitching.
  
  I'd imagine that that sort of free reign is why Livan wasn't in uniform in the Philly series when they needed him to PH after Junior Spivey's apparently self-inflicted injury. (I'm kidding about that last part!)

With all that swirling around, Livan vented. If you heard his full statement, instead of some of the sound bites, you'd hear the sound of someone blowing off steam more than anything.

There are several issues at play here and he was venting about all of them. To properly assess where he's at, you need to isolate each of them individually.

It's entirely possible that his knee IS killing him and that he can't go on much further, but that decision will be made in isolation, probably, from the others.

He's frustrated, and he lets loose with a stream-of-consciousness rant, which sounds more bizarre, presumably because of the language barrier.

I'm not as worked up or worried about it as I was last night when I first heard it.

But it is important that he get that knee checked out. And despite his kvetching, I have a hunch we'll see him right back out there in 4 more days.