I guess things like Ultimate Fighting are all the rage now. I've never watched it, and I don't think I would enjoy it if I did. Those of you who know me are aware how much injuries freak me out. However, if there is one kind of fight I can enjoy, it would be the awkward "these guys have no business even trying to fight" variety of fighting. The type of fights you occasionally see in normal sports. Basketball players slapping each other around, hockey players putting more effort into not falling over on their skates than actual fighting, fat baseball players charging at each other. That's some good stuff.

Naturally, I was disappointed to have fallen asleep on the couch before Prince Fielder's late inning heroics. And by heroics, I mean getting beaned, standing around looking like he had just been screwed over by Vince McMahon, and of course, the clubhouse rampage. Brew Crew Ball had an excellent recap of the events, if you also missed it.

Before all of this, I had meant to write about AAAA superstar RJ Swindle and his major league struggles. I feel bad for him. How could a pitcher be so dominant at the AAA level, but get hit so hard in the majors*? Is the talent gap that wide, or is he doing something differently? Swindle has been known to break PITCH/fx, so its hard to tell for sure what he's throwing. Last night, most of his hits allowed came off of low-80s fastballs. Rafael Furcal and Juan Castro struck out on offspeed (lol) stuff.

* Ben Hendrickson would also be interested

Should a junkballer rely so much on a (likely) below-average fastball? I don't think so, especially considering the situations: Swindle was ahead 1-2 in the count when he gave up the home run to Matt Kemp. He was ahead 0-2 on Russell Martin's single. Guillermo Mota singled on a first-pitch fastball. Now, I didn't intend to turn this into a Jason Kendall bash-fest, but you have to wonder what he was calling for. The funny thing is that this goes against my general observations of Kendall's work - I've always felt that he tends to call for more offspeed pitches when ahead in the count.

Maybe Kendall isn't familiar with Swindle's pitch selection. Or maybe he doesn't really call a good game. I don't know. But do think that RJ Swindle can get major league hitters out. We don't have much information on minor league pitch types/speeds yet, but I'd be very interested to know what he was throwing down there. Do we need to do a better job of scouting our own players, in order to put them in positions to succeed?

Jason Schmidt today. Winnable. Ramon Sessions still a free agent. Shocking.