Game 10, Mariners at Indians
Dave · April 13, 2006 at 3:51 pm · Filed Under Game Threads
Happy Felix Day!
Travis Hafner, Victor Martinez, Grady Sizemore, and Jhonny Peralta anchor one of the best line-ups in baseball. The Indians can flat out hit. Even their bad hitters are not bad hitters.
But it doesn’t matter. King Felix is on the hill. The best hitters in baseball don’t stand a chance against the Royal Curveball when Felix has even mediocre command. Every night is a possible no hitter, and every batter is a potentially embarrassing strikeout.
Felix Day only comes around 30-35 times a year. Don’t take it for granted.
Long Live the King.
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GOd, have Beltre bunt
Of course, it doesn’t matter if we swing at balls in the dirt.
wow big surprise he went after the low and outside pitch
I’m really digging the new ESPN gamecast and it’s pitch location thing.
For example, right now it’s telling me that beltre will still chase down and away pitches like a tool. I dont have to even turn on the tv to see this – it’s right here on my computer! convenient!
Beltre K’s on a bad pitch … SHOCKED I am 🙂
Carl’s OBP is pretty high in this game.
Okay, Kenjji!!!!!!!!
Has Johjima been on base every game so far?
Time for K-Jo to get some action
PR for Carl, and it makes Hargrove look like a genius.
Jojima is after Prime Minister Koizumi’s job.
Clutch Kenji!
One more and Eddie should be able to hold them. Come on Reed!
that should be some good insurance right there!
Kenji believe it?
254. Yeah, isn’t it cool? It’s almost like watching the video game version. Speaking of which, the ’86 world series game as reenacted pitch-by-pitch on RBI Baseball: http://www.sandiegoserenade.com/2006/04/1986_world_series_game_6_reena.html
I bet at least one cleveland run scores in the bottom half.
Does that mean we have to give up a run in the 9th, so we can bring in Eddie to get the save?
#258 no, he missed a couple times. 8 of 10 games.
#261– well, their Imperial Highnesses The Crown Prince and Crown Princess still need a male heir….
In our victories this year, we have been a lot like the Rangeers when A-Rod was there. Lousy pitching, great hitting.
270. Or like the Yankees this year?
#270 i’d much rather have that than have felix go out and get losses or ND’s due to lack of run support.
267. That seems to be the thinking, leaving Putz in.
272. Agreed
We have won two thirds of our series this year!
And look at that. The Indians gave us a series.
I’m gonna go out on a limb right now:
JJ Putz should be starting. Now that he’s mixing in his splitfinger and slider to disguise his fastball, he’s been damned effective. Stretch out that arm, get him some endurance, and make him a starter. He can’t do any worse then Gil Meche.
I can not understand a word Jose Lopez says.
A win is a win. Ahhhhh yea!
#278– the Venezuelans have their own accent in Spanish, different from that found in other parts of Latin America, and I’ve noticed it continues when translated to English– a fast, slightly slurred sound… I wonder if it is sort of like a Southerner hearing a true New Yawk speaker for the first time 🙂
Yet another reason to love Kenji: his quasi-bat flip, a la Dan Wilson. I love it when players sling the bat away from themselves like that. Looks great without pushing into Boonesque arrogance (though that was funny in its way, too).
Well, Jose didn’t really have much to say. He was looking for a fastball and he got it. Anyway, if you can’t understand him (or any of the latin M’s), just pretend he’s repeating “Baisbol’s been berry, berry good to me.” It’s not like any of these guys say anything very interesting or informative, no matter what their native language.
Well, except for Carl. He’s always coming up with interesting, uh, facts. Did you know physics says home runs are impossible, and they’re all accidents (impossible accidents, I guess, like dinosaurs)?
maybe it is catchers protecting their territory– the mask goes flying one way when catching pop-ups, the bat goes flying away from the plate in another direction…
24,638. That ain’t bad for a Thursday night April game.
Cubans have their own accent too, and often speak very, very fast (a friend from Argentina says he sometimes can’t understand Cubans unless he asks them to slow down).
I think catchers may be especially concious of having crap cluttering the home base area and screwing up plays (or being downright dangerous). That would explain why both Wilson and Johjima fling the bat away like that. And I agree, it looks cool.
Wow, we don’t look bad at all compared to the rest of the division.
Runs Scored/Runs Allowed:
Anaheim: 38/50
Oakland: 44/53
Seattle: 55/56
Texas: 44/51
1.06 OPS for the day. We started the day something like 11th in the AL in that stat, so this should bump us up. BA was only .257 though.
24,638. That ain’t bad for a Thursday night April game.
Over 8,000 walkups, too. When was the last time the M’s had 8,000 walkups?
8,510 walkups gotta be the Felix Factor. They probably all have him on their fantasy teams.
Hooray bullpen!
Boo Beltre.
#281 – Re: Boone’s bat flip
It was funny until he flipped it and still got caught in front of the warning track.
As for the game, it was said earlier that the team this year isn’t giving up, anf that, for me, is the best part of the season so far. Last year, if we were down by as little as one run as early as the third it seemed like we just gave up. If I’m not mistaken, we’ve had somewhere in the ballpark (pun intended) of three come from behind wins this season. Not bad at all for only three series.
Now if we could just get ahead early and stay ahead…
“Baisbol’s been berry, berry good to me.â€Â
Very Classy.
“The best hitters in baseball don’t stand a chance against the Royal Curveball when Felix has even mediocre command.”
Um, yeah… unfortunately 8 walks in 9.2 innings doesn’t even qualify for mediocre.
So far this year KiFi has looked more and more like his mentor and hero, Freddy Garcia, at his maddening worst. The fidgeting, the sweating, the hint of getting out of trouble with just one good pitch, but then, oh, too bad, not so much…
Interesting dispute about how to use closers between Tony LaRussa and Jason Isringhausen … shades of the Eddie Guardado situation.
From the Associated Press:
ST. LOUIS — St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa believes the cure for Jason Isringhausen’s woes is keeping his closer in standard, ninth-inning save situations.
Pitching in a tie game, Isringhausen gave up a go-ahead homer to Carlos Lee, his second crucial home run this week, in the 11th inning of Thursday’s 4-3 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers.
“In games where he hasn’t been in a closing situation, he hasn’t been the same,” La Russa said. “Which is kind of typical for closers.”
La Russa hoped the next shot would come Friday night in the opener of a three-game series against the Chicago Cubs.
“I think he probably didn’t throw enough to where we couldn’t use him,” La Russa said. “I hope there’s a save situation. And if we use him in that situation he’ll have an outstanding year.”
Isringhausen disagreed, saying a lack of focus is not the problem.
“I want to get in there as much as I can right now,” he said. “I need to get people out, I need to throw pitches to people, I need to see how they’re swinging at my pitches and right now everything they’re swinging at they’re hitting it pretty good.”
VERRRRRRRRRRRY interesting. Is LaRussa being counterintuitive? Or counter-counterintuitive?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA … remember our Ryan Church discussion?
From today’s Transactions:
“Recalled outfielder Ryan Church and infielder Brendan Harris from New Orleans of the Pacific Coast League (AAA); optioned outfielder Brandon Watson and catcher Wiki Gonzalez to New Orleans.”
That’s Jim Bowden admitting he’s a dumbass, without admitting he’s a dumbass.
The Mariners hit .257/.409/.600 in this game.
I’ll take that.
Least it only took Bowden 2 weeks to realize his mistake, instead of a couple months.
Wonder how long it’ll take Bavasi to realize his 4 million dollar mistake.
People need to start bringing “We Want Petagine” signs to the game or something.
#294: That tells me that when LaRussa looks at Isringhausen, he sees Dennis Eckersley.
Tony La Russa and Dave Duncan were instrumental in narrowing the role of the final relief pitcher to ‘save-only’ situations, that is in creating the modern role of closer, and also in using a deep bullpen to maintain situational roles for other guys. It’s no surprise that La Dufus thinks that the save situation is somehow magical, while his pitcher just thinks he’s throwing lousy and needs more work so as to make better pitches.
La Russa’s career will be a fascinating one to dissect after he’s done; in many ways, he would make an excellent subject for an analytical biography. Most of Tony’s ‘intuition interventions’ are certifiable lunacy for which, I suspect, no statistical support is forthcoming. On the otherhand, he’s tinkered with many small refinements through the years, some of which have value. If ‘closer’ is overrated from the statistical standpoint, he understands the psychological impact of nailing down a victory or having it slip away on both teams involved. The idea of situational roles for non-closer bullpen guys seems to me to have merit, too, more so than the closer position in some ways. Tony looooooooovves to hog the media spotlight to the point where he feuds with players publicly in the media (tho not at Ozzfest-like levels), and makes offbeat observations matched to eccentric elliptical orbits, then drops a shrewd baseball observation into the melange as an intelligent integral to an equation that didn’t look to sum no how. Hmm.
. . . I couldn’t imagine an ‘ideal manager’ functioning anything much like Tony—but that’s part of what makes him interesing in a maddening way.