Game 27, Mariners at Twins
RHP Pineiro v RHP Baker (which ties in nicely to another article today). 5:10, KSTW on your television set. Look for Pineiro to have an extra zip on his fastball, since he worked so little last time he was out there. Of course, Johjima won’t call for it, and I’m not sure if he’ll even play — ESPN tells me that he’s got this custom of not playing day games after night games.
So what’s in the game notes today? M’s are on a streak, they’re near the top of all teams in base-stealing, it’s a short two-game series… man, these are boring game notes… someone in the press office uses “it’s” for the possessive. The M’s staff leads the AL in strikeouts, that’s cool.
The last time Willy Bloomquist was caught stealing was May 1, 2005. There’s a stat that’ll come up in today’s broadcast if Bloomquist gets into the game. Or a camera can catch him in the dugout. Or there’s a recap of any previous games. The item is titled “Sure, he looks like a nice guy, but he’s really a thief”.
Yuuuuuup.
Comments
244 Responses to “Game 27, Mariners at Twins”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
198: Bring back the Kingdome!
201: I have some really, really bad news for you…
How rare is the no BB – no K complete game?
CG! The first for the M’s! And he kept it to around 105 pitches.
Trade Joel. Now.
And hooray for a 3 game win streak
Lawton and Petagine have now dethroned WFB for batting average King.
Holy whatever. A complete game win for a Mariners pitcher. Pineiro, no less.
Nice to see the Ms have a relatively easy victory for once. Hopefully this will help lift their confidence with the bats.
#190 – yes there is: http://www.bat-girl.com/
#205, I couldn’t agree more!
203. It’s pretty rare. Mark Fydritch (probably misspelled) used to do it a lot in is spectacular, though brief career for the Tigers.
Gamecenter over at Sportsline had Piniero in the low 90’s in the 9th inning and I saw a couple of 95’s in there as well. Is that total bunk or was Joel doing espresso shots between innings??
212 – I think the radar gun was doing the espresso shots.
Rick L… interesting. I don’t recall offhand ever having seen it.
#212 Radar guns can be deceiving.
The Twins are bad, but this has just been a silly month. They had some pitchers that you could worry about, but I’d like to see the analyst that picked their starting rotation to put up a 7.21 ERA for any one-month period during the season.
And then there’s the Rondell White debacle. PECOTA’s 10th percentile projection had him at -5.5 VORP over 227 PA, and in 91 plate appearances so far this season, he’s hit .136/.143/.148 for a -15.5 VORP. And he’s been doing a lot of that in the #4 spot, right after the only three guys on the team that are acutally hitting right now.
Like I said, a bad team, but they’ve had some pretty extremely bad individual performances, ones that don’t seem very likely to continue to this degree.
Maybe he’s getting the good fastball back. Joel used to be able to hit 92-94 pretty regularly, with the occasional 96.
I saw a game that Fydritch pitched once where he pitched a complete game with something like 79 pitches. Every batter hit a ground ball on the first or second pitch. Or so it seemed.
I like the radar gun on espresso angle. I’ll go with that but I’ll be interested to see what the readings are in his next start.
BTW, Yuni gets webgem #3 tonight
I find it hard to believe Hudson had never had a CGSO before….after asking the ESPN question, I checked in on BBTN, which led off with 15+ minutes on the Sox/Yanks game. Do they really think that there is that great a percentage of their viewers who care that much about a May Sox/Yankees game? Oh, wait, make that more like 20 minutes. Kruk is now explaining to us about hitting a knuckleball pitcher.
ok, at 40-some minutes in, they are now at homeruns & webgems. No Mariners hit a homerun aparently, but Yuni did make the webgems, with a comparison by Karl Ravetch to Nomar. uh-huh.
#130– there was a great quote on BBTN– someone quoting a scout who said he could see whay Arroyo was doing so well, “no one had seen him before, and after the lineups he faced in the Al, this must seem like a holiday”
9 innings, 9 hits, 2 ER, 0 BB, 0 K, 17/9 GB/FB.
“Hello my name is joel pineiro and you can tell how good my defense is by looking at the box score”
Good game. Encouraging to see beltre get a couple of extra base hits.
I find it hard to believe Hudson had never had a CGSO before
Not only that, but his first as a Brave. 😀
Wait, that’s not right.
Yes it is Huddy’s first shut out as a Brave.
His 9th Career Shut out.
221. Beltre’s play should be #2 then.
So, the Metrodome has the old Jamie Moyer radar gun from a few years back? The one he got from France…
Ooo, la la.
#224. that makes a lot more sense.
interesting discussion on the postgame about Joh, and how nicely rested he was today; Drayer wondered if he might not get a few more regular days off (like it or not) just because of their awareness of the chance of wearing-down from the longer American season & the vastly-increased travel on top of learning 2 languages, his own pitchers, new pitchers, new hitters, new ballparks, new umpires, a different style of calling a game, etc etc etc…
oh, and they just played Sexson saying that he’d trade that home run for a few good ground balls when guys were standing out there on 2nd or 3rd….
227- Whats more interesting is the 1 hit he allowed, was to the Rockies pitcher.
Today’s game takes the edge off of the fact that the M’s would be leading this division if Ichiro, Sexson, Beltre and Guardado had put up career-average stats for April.
I guess that’s the tradeoff when Betancourt, Lopez and Johjima are playing about as well as you could possibly expect.
Is anyone keeping track of the outs by stupid baserunning? We got three today: Ichiro getting picked at second, the ill-advised hit-and-run with Johmija and Beltre getting thrown out at home. Last year I thought Hargrove should be more aggessive, but if this is what it amounts to I’m ready to go back to station-to-station ball, thank you very much.
Beltre needs to do exactly what Jose Lopez needs to do to succeed—and he’s finally doing it: a) lay off stuff out of the zone, especially away, until you walk or get a strike, b) sroke the outside pitch the other way, preferably with authority, c) if you get a fastball over the plate, don’t miss it. They’re very similar hitters. I’m just glad, in a way, that Adrian was finally going so bad that he was willing to let go of pride and fer Chrissakes _STOP_ slashing that power-pull swing at any pitch he guessed he could reach. Beltre might actually turn into, like, a hitter again if he keeps this up.
Lawton played for years in the Homerdome, and even though he doens’t have the legs for CF anymore he he knows how to read balls against the ceiling there, which is the tough thing, and which I think Reed had trouble with last year. Giving Lawton the start was the ‘good manager’ thing do to, and it really paid off.
Ichiro: Look, he starts every year slow, it’s deliberate, he’s said so in the past, and it’s all part of the plan. The team was going so bad that Ichi had to step on the gas 2-3 weeks earlier than he would have otherwise. His first week or so, he was off, but really there was _nothing_ wrong with him.
I just love Betancourt; we’re going to be rooting for him for years. Cat can hit, too.
Mark Fidrych: I started watching, really watching baseball the year that was his year, ’76, and because it was his year.
The thing about the Bird was his control was unreal. Decent fastball, good change, no real breaking pitch—but everything was in the bottom six inches of the strikezone unless the catcher called for a pitch outside the zone. He through like Timmy Hudson, only with less velocity. GB after GB, not many Ks, the other team just could never get anything going off him ’cause, like, they never had anything to hit. He was a rookie and way over his previous innings pitched, so he got tired in September, and the ball came up a bit so he lost his last four to go 19-9.
. . . Then next spring he tweaked his knee fielding a squibber (like Eddie G. pulling his hammy his first spring here), pitched with it, and blew up his shoulder. I suspect it was the labrum, but it was before those kind of diagnoses. He lost 5 mph at least when he came back, and couldn’t locate the ball sharply ever again; in other words, he had no game and was through. Rotten luck. He was the funnest dude to watch I’ve ever seen on a diamond, although I expect that watching Kirby Puckett was a similar larf.
Probably pumping gas somewhere, just like he said.
If you tried to take out a trademark on “Unpretentious Joe,” you’d find it was registered at birth for Mark Fidrych.
Did Joel P really go nine innings-without a strikeout?!?!?!?!?!?!
Just scanned through the highlights of this game on TiVo. Lots of weird wild stuff jumps out. At one point Beltre hit a double and I think it said it was his 2nd double of the year. Now I knew he hadn’t homered since the other day, but – only one double all month??? I hadnt realized it wss THAT bad. In spite of the 19 hits that was a blast to watch just for the defensive highlights. M’s made me proud with the glovework.
Its good to see the M’s beginning to get some wins. It looks like the teams they were playing were among the best in the AL, and they were just struggling. Hopefully we can keep playing and winning against the bottom half teams and build a little confidence. I’ll assume that everybody is disregarding the article in the Tacoma News Tribune about Felix (wanted to send him down because he is pitching worse than Meche). I think they just miss him in Tacoma.
The game also marks a milestone — Beltre has surpassed Everett by 2 points of batting average. Still behind him by 28 points of OBP and 145 points of SLG but gaining fast.
#236– not an article; a column. big difference.
in the PI, Jason Churchill reports that Travis Blackley continues his comeback from labrum surgery and is faring well in Double-A San Antonio and says that a certain outfielder “is close to returning after spending the past four weeks in extended spring training. He’s hitting, running the bases and playing some in the field, testing out the left knee that required surgery in September. “I caught a few games down there and he looks ready to me,” said the scout. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s playing in Seattle by the end of May.””
Bill did say he wouldn’t be 60 days.
Who would they get rid of if a “certain outfielder” comes back? Petagine? Lawton? Trade C-Rex? I would have to think in the short term at least they’d send Petagine down.
Minor League Small Sample Size Theater:
Asdrubal Cabrera 355/512/484
Shin-Soo Choo 349/417/558
Hm. Fat and gaudy numbers. Which of them are looking solid?
they’d send Petagine down
The problem with that is, he’s out of options. So he’d have to be DFA’d, and I’m betting he’d never clear waivers. You DFA him, and he’s good as gone.
Snelling? Chris Snelling?
Snelling? Chris Snelling
Who?