Ehh, I can't give this a pass. I know we're kind of opposites on the positive/negative spectrum, but I don't think you can sugar coat that inning for Cotto. Whether those were statistically earned or not is really not relevant game wise. He committed the error. It happens and I'm not mad about the error. Rather, the bad part I can't give a pass on is what came after: 2 walks, a hit batter, a grand slam and a double. All of those are on him even if the runs didn't ding his ERA.
And I'm not trying to pile on Cotto or anything like that. Those bad innings happen. He'll recover and be fine. I just don't think we can excuse that inning by rightfully claiming that none of the runs were statistically earned.
The rest of it, I'll say you certainly could be correct. So far, I have been disappointed with the errors and the miscommunication. Last night I think we saw Harris have one just go right off his glove that should have been an out. For whatever reason, it didn't go as an error even though it was without a doubt a routine line drive right at him. I too am hoping that as we play more, the communication issues may correct themselves and we shake off some of the rust and the defense gets better. Right now, it feels like we can make the extraordinary play, but we too often fail to make the ordinary play. We will see what happens with it, but if it continues and we give better teams more outs then they'll be more apt to take advantage and it won't be so easy to get back into games.
