Game 136, Mariners at Devil Rays
Hernandez vs Stokes, 10:15 am
Because it worked last time, Feliz Dia de Felix!
Brian Stokes makes his major league debut. He’s not a prospect – he turns 27 on Thursday and is your generic Triple-A starter. Of course, Triple-A starters have had boatloads of success against the M’s this year, so who knows.
Game Score is a Bill James gimmick stat created to give an overview of how effective a pitcher was on a particular day, and it actually works pretty well. Felix has pitched four games this year where his game score was over 70. Two of those were against Anaheim, and the other two were against Tampa Bay. Felix’s four best games of the season have come against two of the least patient teams in the American League. That’s not a coincidence. Teams that don’t make Felix work and chase pitches out of the zone neutralize his biggest weakness – command – and play right into his hands. There’s a real good chance we see Good Felix again today simply because we’re playing Tampa Bay.
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It seems that the more homeruns Howard hits, the slower his OPS goes up, he’s got 52 now and he still trails like 2 or three people. Also, Roy Oswalt is perfect through 6 innings, I think that contract has gone to his head…
100- See Albert Pujols.
ah hellz noo!!!!
Are we just gonna wait until Felix has given up TEN runs?
Kevin effin’ Witt?!
I assume we had someone warming up in the pen…thanks Hargrove
Felix has killed my fantasy team. Good thing we’re a keeper league.
Well, the M’s offense could’ve and SHOULD’VE had double digit runs today…easily
Who was Grover yelling at? The moron in his head who makes him do incredibly stupid things?
Just how stupid is it to waste a kid when you lead 6-4 when two pitchers are ready to go in the pen. Hargrove stupid, thats how stupid!
108- Funniest thing I’ve read all week. I’m actually not even mad anymore.
Is Grover trying to spite the M’s by screwing with Felix on his way out the door?
#108 FINALLY! We know the truth!
108
Hargrove: “The leprechaun tells me to burn things!”
lets recap: Pujols 3 HR, Howard 3 HR, A-rod 2 HR and Oswalt perfect through 6. Oh yeah the Marlins are winning too, it’d be so great if they could snag the wildcard spot. Other than this fiasco it’s been a pretty sweet day around baseball
The players should swarm Hargrove like ants and just kill him. It must be very frustrating to play for him.
102
Dang! You’re right!! I guess I didn’t have very far to look back in the history of baseball…maybe ten minutes or so.
I wonder how many years or decades its been since baseball had TWO games where someone hit three homers off of the same pitcher on the same day.
Willie 4-4 and more amazingly A WALK and Ichie leaves guys on all night going 0-6.
Now I have seen everything
Great steal.
Great call.
Let’s go Doyle.
Fack.
Someone forgot to tell the M’s it was “Retread infielder Home Run Day”
I guess we should’ve tried to get back Paul Sorrento, Russ Davis and Jolbert Cabrerra!
Nice ninth inning guys. Lopez, Ichiro and Snelling were without a clue and effin’ Willie is the only guy that figures out Seth McClung and his six and a half ERA…ugh
wow, that generic postgame guy is REALLY short.
So, Friday, Witt comes up and Rizzs says the guy has two hundred and some minor league home runs. Red says that tells him something, because guys don’t hang around the minor leagues long enough to hit two hundred home runs unless there’s a problem. Red says Witt probably can’t hit a curve ball. Three seconds later, Meche strikes him out with a curve ball.
Today, Witt comes up as the winning run, and Felix has just bounced his last four curveballs in the dirt and obviously lost commnad of the pitch late in the game. They’re already worried about his number of innings and will skip two of his remaining starts. Good Grief, why leave the kid in the game to face a guy who should be thrown the very pitch Felix can’t throw at the moment?
Maybe Fairly should be the interim manager. He’s apparently more observant than the one we have right now.
I love the commentator: “Hargrove won’t hesitate to put J J in there when he needs him” or some other such fatuous remark. Obviously, this series is the first time he’s watched the M’s this season.
14 groundballs to 2 flyballs and 7 strikeouts. 7 Runs? God damn, can Felix’s luck be worse? He’s the only pitcher I know of who can dominate without looking like it.
Sorry for being off topic but I just find this hilarious: baltimore’s rookie gives up seven runs to the A’s and only gets two outs in the first inning and they replace him with Russ Ortiz. I know they are surrendering, but we could see the A’s score 20 runs considering baltimore’s pen and the way oakland’s hitters run up pitch counts.
127
LOL I noticed that absolute train wreck too. Notice Ortiz promptly allowes a home run before helping the O’s “espcape” with allowing just NINE runs I guess Ortiz and Kevin Jarvis must have compromising photos of someone in baseball’s hiarchy to still be in the majors at this futile point in their careers.
126
All those stats aside, I think it was just a few to many middle of the plate fastballs to major league hitters. Unfortunately the last one was to Witt who evidently can only hit fastballs from right handed pitchers…which naturally is what he received for some reason.
Hargrove did it again: he pulled a Grady Little by leaving Pedro, er, Felix in to pitch the 8th inning.
I saw Garcia in the dugout, appearing to make a move out of the dugout and to the pitcher’s mound after the wild pitch in the 8th…but he stopped. Why? Did Hargrove tell him he wanted the kid to reach the 100-pitch mark, and he wanted to see if the kid could get that last out? Didn’t he recognize there was a SITUATION brewing that required MANAGING?
Dumb and dumber.
And on another cheery note: my TiVo is finding two Mariners games over the next 12 days. Yes, I know football is far more important than baseball, all the time, and I know the M’s are desperately out of contention, but still. Damnit. I at least want the option of watching the train wreck.
sheesh. what os there to say– I got to a tv and checked in to see that Felix obviously should have come out a batter or two or three back, but no– there he is, and there Witt is.
The Mariners are without Lowe and Soriano. Yes they could have pitched Putz, but need to worry about his fatigue also – two games in a row coming in the eight inning.
So if Hargrove brought in anybody other than Putz, say Green or someone else, and this pitcher gave up the winning run, everyone here would have been bitching about that as well, saying we should have left Felix in.
I’m with everyone here, Hargrove has to go. But this is a case where there was no course of action that was obvious – other than getting lucky, rolling the dice and whatever pitcher he chooses, miracoulously getting an out. Regardless of the decision, if the outcome was a loss, you all would have blamed Hargrove anyway.
He’s only to blame most the time, not all the time.
132
Wigginton had already doubled and homered off of him and Witt is a guy that can only hit righties and fastballs.
I didn’t necessarily think Witt would homer but letting him extend into Wigginton AND Witt was clearly going against the percentages
Ichiro really stunk today. He went 0-6 with 7 LOB. That must be a record for him.
Harking back to the days of Lou, he never let a pitcher who had pitched deep into a game with a lead take the chance of losing. That’s to say, as soon as the pitcher put the potential tying run aboard he’d yank him so he couldn’t take the loss. Not very scientific, but a great psychological move. As it turns out, that’s probably a good way to manage for other, more scientific reasons.
Not having Lowe and Soriano is a pathetic excuse to not manage the bullpen you *do* have (dozens to choose from fer cryin out loud), so Hargrove gets no free pass here. I mean, what’s he afraid of – losing and dropping out of the pennant race?
Another point – the continual yanking of pitchers at 100 pitches or so almost guarantees they’ll never be able to go further than that simply due to conditioning. So with Felix 100+ pitches, tying run aboard, the evidence mounts against Grover.
And how about the day that one William Paul Bloomquist had?
4 for 4.
Woot!
I saw a film yesterday (DOWNFALL) about the last days of Hitler. It was quite depressing. Now this.
Years from now, I’ll be saying, “I haven’t felt this low since Hargrove allowed Felix to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.”
BTW, why was Felix still in there after turning Rivera into a goalie?
LOB – Beltre had 7 too. Hitters 1-4 had 20! (There may be no such thing as “clutch” hitting, but there sure may be “anti-clutch.”) [BTW, the game was followed (on television) by that I-c-h-i-r-o commercial.
If Soriano and Lowe were healthy, neither would be the right guy to bring in against Witt. Sherrill should’ve gotten that out. Not that I’m a big LOOGY fan or anything, but that was the critical point of the ballgame – tying run on with two down in the 8th and the starter wobbling. If you’ve got a death-to-lefties LHP in your pen and a guy like Witt at the plate…
Well, from Drayer’s comments on the post-game, maybe it was a “learning situation” for Felix, and he’ll be better for it next year. The loss certainly doesn’t cost us anything at this point.
The question isn’t whether there is such a thing as clutch hitting, it’s whether there is such a thing as clutch hitters.
#136: That was the emptiest, most meaningless 4-for-4 in the solar system since Alex Sanchez was allowed to lead off for assorted foolish teams.
140- Cmon can anyone on this list be remotely objective when it comes to Bloomquist or DOYLE!! ?
Bloomquist had a very nice game today. Also he worked a BB in the last inning, and then stole a base giving eveyones binkys Ichiro and Snelling a chance to extend the game.
JMHawkins and DavePaisley – thanks for the perspective. A LOOGY might have made sense, pulling Felix at 100 makes sense. But it’s interesting psychology, had the relief pitcher allowed the winning run, we’d all be cursing Hargrove for pulling Felix.
Bugger, bugger, bugger. How does a starter get 14 grounders and 7Ks and still give up three homers? What’s that? 2 flyball outs, vs 3 home runs? How often does that happen. What’s happening here?
#138. Yeah, Felix learned that his manager is an idiot.
If he didn’t know it already…
#129. Correcting my own post rather belatedly… That’s “Chaves”, not “Garcia”. Oy.
LOB DISCREPANCY (See # 137) – When I stated that the first four Mariner batters left 20 men on base, I was referring to ESPN’s Online box score:
Seattle Mariners
Hitters AB R H RBI BB SO LOB AVG
I Suzuki CF 6 0 0 0 0 0 7 .317
C Snelling RF 4 1 2 1 2 1 2 .372
A Beltre 3B 5 0 0 0 0 1 7 .262
R Ibanez LF 5 0 1 1 0 1 4 .278
R Sexson DH 3 2 2 1 2 0 0 .243
(The remaining batters left 7 men on base, for a total of 27.)
Then I saw in both Seattle dailies that there were only 14 LOB, two shy of the team record.
So I re-checked my figures–thinking that I may have made an error, such as misreading a 1 for a 7–but I hadn’t. I then checked CBS SPORTSLINE; they showed a total of 28–8 for Beltre.
I decided to go through ESPN’s Play-by-Play account and tabulate the LOBs. I got the same thing (20 LOB for the first four hitters, 27 for the entire team).
Anyone: Please tabulate–using ESPN’s P-b-P account–the LOBs and explain the discrepancy.
BRAIN-CRAMP SUBSIDES (See # 146) – I now realize that the official LOB total is the sum of each inning’s LOB, not each batter’s LOB.
Sorry.