M’s play none today
DMZ · April 8, 2007 at 9:15 am · Filed Under Mariners
Double-header’s canceled. In the Times blog, Geoff Baker goes off on this ridiculousness.
Most interesting pitching matchup today might be Johan Santana vs John Danks. There’s also the ex-Philly reunion of Schilling and Padilla… man, I wanted my two M’s games today.
Just remarkable.
Back in the 90s a three-game Dodgers-Expos series was completely wiped out by rain in LA. Eventually they made it up with THREE doubleheaders in a row. Six games in three days, and IIRC they were all traditional DHs.
Bummer. Had about a doubleheaders’ worth of homework today, would’ve been great to have Dave in the background. Apart from all the Grover controversy, scheduling craziness, and Indians moneygrubbing, I’m just an M’s fan who’s missing his team at this point.
This is getting old, quite old.
Isn’t it obvious that the reason MLB schedules these series in northern cities is that so that fans can have their home opener reasonably close to opening day? Baker suggests that there be no games in northern climes until at least April 10th. The average temp in Cleveland on April 1st is only three degrees lower than the average temp on April 10th. Waiting 10 days guarantees nothing except that fans would never have an opening day home opener.
For all of the criticism MLB takes for being unfriendly to fans, how antagonistic would that policy be? Sorry fans in New York, Boston, Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago, but your offseason lasts two weeks longer than everyone else’s offseason.
I agree with the idea that it’s better to schedule matchups with intradivision opponents for these early games, since they are at risk of cancellation, but all of this “let’s only schedule games in warm or covered places” nonsense is a complete overreaction. It’s like when the A’s don’t bunt in the first inning, someone strikes out, and Joe Morgan says, “Look! Their strategy clearly doesn’t work because I have witnessed it fail a few times!”
Actually, three degrees is huge (especially in just a week). It doesn’t seem like much for people at ground level, but at altitude that can easily make the difference between precipitation and no precipitation, or between rain and snow. Granted, rain can cause delays and postpone games just as much as snow, but rain doesn’t have to be shoveled up to allow the game to proceed. And, more to the point, you may not get anything coming down with just a couple degrees difference in the air aloft.
That said, I don’t know that you could reasonably schedule home openers in northern cities to be more than a week later than the start of the season elsewhere — though a week really could make all the difference. And you could certainly plan the schedule better: divisional opponents, or at least teams that will be visiting again later in the year. Certainly not four games with a team that won’t be in town again this season.
And guess what: the odds of this problem go up when the Twins move out of their dome in a couple of years.
Man, these baseball seasons seem shorter every year. When’s the playoffs?
I feel your pain, Bro. I bought myself a nice six-pack to work through while watching the games today. Guess since this is the last day of DTVs free MLBtv week, I have to make do with second best with some other game. Life is tough at times but you have to muddle through somehow.
I totally understand Baker’s position. Cleveland is the armpit of America (well, generally Toledo/Detroit/Cleveland/South Bend/Gary) and he is not happy that he’s stuck there for no reason.
Me too — I was really looking forward to a televisd double-header. When was the last time we had that? But now the sun’s out, so I guess I don’t mind, though it sure woul be nice to at least have a game on the radio. Sigh.
BTW, there are some great photos of the snow game over at Cleveland.com — though the only pictures of Mariners (other than Hargrove arguing during his finest moment with the team) is of Guillen throwing a football before the game, Lopez looking cold and awkward, and Burke just looking cold. It does look like this Indians fan was keeping warm, though I suspect controlled substances were involved.
But really, when conditions look like this nobody has any business playing baseball. Heck, I’ve played hockey in that kind of weather and it wasn’t fun. (On other other hand, I’d pay to watch football played in those conditions)
Kazmir’s K’d 8 through 3.
There’s another Slocum!?
By gum, they’re really trying hard to get at least 2 games played between Cleveland and Seattle, back there on the shores of Lake Erie. A DH is on tomorrow’s schedule.
But WHY!!?? is the first game scheduled for 4:05 PM EDT??? if they’ve had problems with freezing cold and snow the previous 3 days? That’s idiotic, particularly since it’s the rescheduled “get away day”. They should schedule the first game for 1:05 EDT to be followed at ~4:05 with the SECOND game.
The Mariners probably will be more inept than usual after (maybe) getting 2 games in after 3 days off (sort of), then flying immediately to another cold weather city and trying to play in the always-challenging Fenway Park.
I’m surprised Bavasi didn’t trade both Snelling and Soriano for this Slocum. Doesn’t he understand tradition?
Clearly this whole thing — the weather, the scheduling, all of it — is a plot to get the Red Sox a sweep in their home opener. They could’ve just scheduled the Devil Rays, but that would be too obvious.
I posted in #11 first, THEN I read Geoff Baker’s article. If he and I agree without comparing notes first, there’s probably a few thousand more Mariners fans just like us…maybe smarter than our team, smarter than MLB, and certainly more humane to our players.
D-Rays announcer on Tropicana (as camera pans across beautiful outfield) “This is just pure baseball -looks and feels like a baseball stadium.”
What are the odds tomorrow’s double-header gets played? The forecast is for higher temperatures (high of 37° rather than the 31° today), but there’s still snow in the forecast.
There’s almost no chance we’ll make up all these games if we don’t manage to play two tomorrow.
The less games against Cleveland the better. Especially on the road. Let it snow.
Quadruple header!!
As an Indians fan in Cleveland, I’ll just say that Sun-Wed of last week the average temp was in the mid 60′s, and it hit 78 on Wednesday. You have just as good a shot of having 25 degrees and snow on April 15th as you do on March 15th.
I’m not sure the domed & warm-weather teams would *want* to play so many of their 81 home games so early in the season, before school’s let out and so on.
Also, wouldn’t that mean that the warm-weather teams would end up with some crazy road trips to end the season?
21.
No, I think teams that play in warm or otherwise playable weather ought to get 100 home games. [/snark]
Pardon. I’m cranky from going to Cleveland yesterday, missing out on baseball, and then having to come back to Chicago so I can work tomorrow.
And by 21, I mean 22.
Someone mentioned Snelling…good to see Casto getting enough playing time to show how ineffective he is
Man, I hate to say this: Barry Bonds is swinging the bat very nice right now. Crap!
I’m writing headlines for Page 1 of tomorrow’s Kitsap Sun.
My proposed teaser headline: “M’S EXTEND GAMELESS STREAK TO 5″ ….
Baker goes too far, but I remember a part of the reasoning for having the schedule weighted more divisionally at the beginning and end of the season was to avoid situations like this that had been big problems before. It could snow in Northern cities later than the 9th of April, there’s no magic date here, weather will happen. The scheduling should be done better with this in mind. Not so much avoiding open-air stadiums as avoiding scheduling problems that can be created by them/weather. I liked the idea of the first half of April being division play only. It doesn’t work out with 5 team divisions and that’s where they should think about what cities weather and stadium designs could cause problems like this. Had that been the case the Twins, White Sox, Royals or Tigers would have been able to pick up the games in at least 2 other series they’d be playing there this year since you obviously wouldn’t schedule one of the eastern division teams to be in Cleveland in the first week of April. Regardless, I think every teams home opener should be against a division rival. That’s who any fan who knows a little about baseball wants to see their team beat in an opener. I agree it was a horrible scheduling faux pass, and I’d like to point out that it has had the potential to happen every year the way series have been being scheduled…
If the weather doesn’t improve we’ve got another issue here too: The Angels follow the M’s into town for their only visit of the year. Idiotic.
Five games postponed in a four game series – now that’s creative…
So presuming we even get two in tomorrow, then Washburn, Batista and HoRam go Tues-Thu, who goes Friday?
a) Felix on three days (seems unlikely they’d push it)
b) White?
c) Baek or Woods callup already?
d) “creative” Grover option
I vote for a one-day callup from Tacoma. Pick ‘em.
Burke!!!! With his 1st ML start…
There is one upside to these cancelled games for the Mariners.
They still have a winning percentage of .667!
Who said the Mariners can’t compete for a division title?
If they can survive that 10-day plague of frogs in August.
I tuned into ESPN for the Red Sox-Rangers game, but I had the sound off through the preliminaries. Then they cut to the booth to show Miller/Morgan and I felt the old dilemma: do I like Miller enough to tolerate Morgan?
I do not.
For humor, next time you see those two do their booth thing, watch:
- When Miller flips to Morgan, Miller turns sideways to stare at Morgan through Morgan’s speech
- As Morgan talks, he gestures with his right hand, jostling Miller over and over. He doesn’t seem to notice (or care)
- When Morgan flips back to Miller, Morgan continues to look at the camera, smiling, moving his head while somewhat disconnected from the actual rhythm of what Miller’s saying
Little Cat!
Yow. Gammons looks absolutely cadaverous these days.
You know, you look at Padilla pitch, and you wonder how he succeeds. He doesn’t have great stuff, doesn’t have great velocity. His pitches don’t have a lot of movement. He doesn’t have fine control of the strike zone. He’s like a righty Jarrod Washburn.
Papi-licious!
Somebody needs to explain to me who this Wilson Valdez character is that’s with the Dodgers. He seems familiar.
Speaking of the Red Sox, I just picked up It’s Only Me – The Ted Williams We Hardly Knew with audio cd for a mere $5 at Big Lots. A pittance for fans of the best baseball team ever.
Gammons is a lich. Like Keith Richards.
So I’m looking at the putative (nominal? tentative? hypothetical?) TV schedule for the M’s (on mlb.com) and it’s claiming that both games of the supposed double-header tomorrow will be on FSN. Then both the Red Sox home opener on Tues and the game on Thurs will be radio-only, but the Dice-K home debut game in between will be on ESPN2 and we also get the Saturday Rangers game on Fox? Is that right?
What a brutal week to have two games on “national” TV (yeah, I know Fox isn’t really national). Though if Felix pitches one of the games tomorrow, he’s on track to pitch again on Saturday — so we got that going for us, which is nice.
And I’m becoming more convinced this is all a setup for the Red Sox…
Emergency Starter, 0ne-day call-up? (# 21 & # 22)
With a One-day Call-Up comes a Ten-day Call-Down. Who do we send down for ten days to make room for the One-Day Call-up?
Just asking.
Bloomquist, of course.
Pineiro is warming up on ESPN! Yay!
Joel must feel bad that Gil got a 5 year/$55M contract as a starter, and he’s a shlub in the Sox pen.
Then again, who’s going to the postseason?
Joel walks the first hitter.
…walks the second hitter.
this is fun
…third hitter bunts for a base hit. Bases loaded, no outs.
Pineiro yanked after loading the bases without an out. I get the feeling that will happen a lot this year.
48… not Joel, at this rate!
…Joel gets yanked. He is responsible for three runners. Hopefully they all score.
Watch Papelbon’s arm fall off.
nevermind I guess we’ll have to wait for that.
The Greek God of Missed Groundballs.
this should help Pineiro’s ERA continue it’s trend of rising one run every year since his rookie year.
Interesting “quote” Morgan relayed from Francona about how he might consider using Papelbon in a dicey 8th and someone else to finish the 9th.
Of course using Pineiro at all should be a black mark, anyway.
you can’t just pay someone 4 mil and not throw them into high leverage situations.
Imagine if Boston hadn’t traded Cla Meredith for Doug Mirabelli…
Pineiro gives up one run while getting no outs. For those of you keeping track, that’s an ERA of infinity for today and an ERA of 7.71 this season.
what’s his ERA+ for today?
If Texas ties or takes the lead, I hope Schilling beats the snot out of Joel in the locker room. Or maybe just slaps him all around the clubhouse.
Wow, Miller pronounced Otsuka’s last name right.
If Texas ties or takes the lead, I hope Schilling beats the snot out of Joel in the locker room. Or maybe just slaps him all around the clubhouse.
What if the Sox win? Are you saying he should leave Joel alone, or exact another form of punishment entirely (water torture, the rack, Babylon 5 reruns, etc.)?
Lock him in a dark closet with Sanjaya Malakar.
Lock him in a dark closet with Sanjaya Malakar.
Dibs on his sister.
huh?
back long ago when the snows first came (friday?) there was an ESPN radio discussion about rigging the schedule to favor domes and warm climates at the start of the year, and when asked if the northern cities would object to losing the home games at the start of the year, the commentator opined they’d rather get the game actually played …
oh, and Drayer put her 2 cents in today, plus some snow fun notes
Baker has some updates on his blog, including one posted about an hour ago, where he opines there may ne no games tomorrow as well …
Shilling’s line – 7.0 IP, 4 hits, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 6K, for +0.353 Win Probability Added. Shiny.
Pineiro comes in for the 8th, goes 0.0 IP, 1 hit, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 0 K, for… -0.353 WPA.
I worried a lot when the Red Sox signed Allard Baird to be a scout for them, and I worried more when they signed Pineiro on Baird’s say-so. Hopefully Epstein will take this is a lesson that Baird was not an innocent victim of circumstance in KC.
Papelbon gets +0.537 WPA for his work in cleaning up Pineiro’s mess and then going on to beat up the Rangers in the 9th. I hear the kid’s pretty good.
70: I may not be recalling this correctly, but I believe that a lich is a ghost.
#74– a ha. not a typo then.
“Lich – in modern fantasy fiction, a lich (sometimes spelled liche, and pronounced ‘litch’) is a type of undead creature… Warcraft III – Lich is the least used Undead Hero, partly because it is difficult for beginners to use him properly.”
Finished reading The Cheater’s Guide on the way home today. Good stuff DMZ. Coincidence or not that after I get the book we get K-Rod doctoring balls and Hargrove delaying the game to scratch a loss off the books?
Bribery and blackmail. Not in that order.
If you want to do me a favor, drop a review on Amazon or BN or wherever — reviews help sales. And I really need sales.
I read it on the bus. Does that count as advertising?
OKAY, OKAY, I’ll work on a review soon.
Also, 76… maybe K-Rod and Grover read the book when it came out and got some ideas ;P
DMZ-
Just wanted to say that I saw your book at Barnes and Noble in Reno(I also bought it while I was there), it was displayed on a main table with other baseball books. I’m impressed, you’ve hit the big time!:)
Next hurdle: pronouncing Okajima right.
You know, I’ve heard every organization has a kid like Papelbon. There’s really nothing special about him.
Liches in modern parlance are almost always corporal undead.
But by their nature, liches are highly intelligent and have a highly developed ability to manipulate necromantic (and sometimes other forms of) magic. There’s really no such thing as a ‘typical’ lich; they are all individuals with their own quirks. So I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there are non-corporal liches running… ok, floating around somewhere.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think that Peter Gammons is a lich. Roger Clemens might be, though.
Just in case anyone is interested, I saw R. Soriano’s velocity didn’t seem to be an issue on Saturday… he gassed as high as 98 mph while throwing easy at 94-95 mph. His off speed stuff was around 80 mph… It was cold and he mercilessly pounded his heat inside to guys most of whom looked like they wanted no part of it.
I kinda miss him…
Clemens can’t be a lich; if anything, he’s a vampire. He exists by sucking the life out of other pitchers. He might also be a mummy, as he apparently covers almost his entire body with bandaging.
Hargrove delaying the game to avert a loss (See # 76)
Regardless of the motivation, it was quite dangerous out there, and that game should never have been started.
Things have come to a pretty pass when “getting in the game” takes precedence over the players’ safety.