Game 59, Mariners at Padres
DMZ · June 10, 2007 at 11:59 am · Filed Under Game Threads
Happy Felix Day! 1:05.
I don’t want to make a big deal out of it, but this (and Felix’s next start against the even weaker Astros lineup including the shell of Biggio) are a fine time for him to put up some great numbers. Mix pitches early! Seriously! It’s the key to life!
Faces Chris Young, so I’m looking forward to a great pitching matchup, though looking through past game threads, it looks like hoping for great pitching matchups rarely results in them. Still, I always enjoy looking forward to seeing Felix.
Comments
386 Responses to “Game 59, Mariners at Padres”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Anyone notice the article in the Sunday Times by a sports writer we thought was gone for good?
Is he undead?
As to the interesting use of Batista on his bullpen day… just checking the Mariner bullpen and appearances and IP in last 7 days (on ESPN, I assume this does not include today):
Davis: 2 games, 2.1 IP
Green: 2 games, 3.1 IP
Huber: 2 games, 4.1 IP (to DL)
Morrow: 2 games, 2 IP
O’Flaherty: 3 games, 1.1 IP
Putz: 4 games, 4 IP
Reitsma: 1 game, 1 IP
Sherrill: 3 games, 1.1 IP
Doesn’t strike me that any of those guys, possibly excepting Putz, is overused. A couple of them could probably use some work. So I don’t think the Batista thing was absolutely necessary, but perhaps it was a good thing. Hargrove is a little overcautious sometimes with his relievers.
I think Bloomquist stole third on his own.
They showed Grover in the dugout and he was yelling about something. Maybe he was fired up by the ignitor, or maybe he was upset that WFB was running in the situation (that seems unlikely), so maybe he was upset about something unrelated. Maybe his pizza order was late.
They showed Grover in the dugout and he was yelling about something
He hates it when he’s woken up in the middle of a game.
Further proof that Pat Gillick is completely insane:
Don’t you get the feeling Gillick is the Disco Stu of GMs — his brain stuck somewhere in the late 90s? If a name comes up from his days with the M’s, he grabs it no matter how little sense it makes. It’s like he’s certain he was smarter than everyone else then, and despite all evidence to the contrary (and the fact all these guys are now almost a decade older) he’s going to take another opportunity to prove it. I’m sure if Buhner and Borders unretired he’d sign them too.
I vote that Lauren’s new unofficial should be Jamie Burke. He’s a bit older, but he sure can slide!
And bunt. Dude can bunt too, don’t forget. And he hits a little.
Yeah, Lauren needs to give the whole cougar thing a rest — however briefly. The danger with switching to Burke, however, is that we could be witness to an exact Bull Durham re-enactment.
oh, sadly, I knew it wasn’t for good — they had a note online that he was just on leave until June 10th.
And he came back with a column just chock full o’ wacky humor.
i don’t know how to link on this mf, but Gaslamp thinks we’re like, a Rival! au natural. http://www.gaslampball.com/story/2007/6/10/185942/896
‘I will not stand for getting swept by another one of our rivals…’
Watched the game on UPN 11. Gotta say, Bloomquist is pulling his weight (great steal), Burke is pulling his weight (great slide!), everyone is contributing. Felix was OK, certainly not the dominant pitcher we saw in his first two starts this year, but good enough to keep us in it…just like…Jeff Weaver(!!??) was yesterday. This sweep was a true team effort. Now lets get one out of Cleveland.
No reason we can’t catch the WC easily or the division title
Dude, this team once won as many games as any team in the AL ever did, and they couldn’t “catch the WC easily.” If it was easy to catch, they would’ve got one sometime in the last 30 years. It’s not easy. It’s never easy. Grabbing a wildcard or getting out of a 4 team division is one thing; the postseason is something else. Not trying to harsh your mellow or anything; I’m pleased with the way this team is playing too. But the 2001 team had better pitching than this one and it let them down in the postseason. Of course any team can catch fire and whistle their way through October — just ask Miami. But it’s never easy.
Anyone notice the article in the Sunday Times by a sports writer we thought was gone for good?
Yeah, and he managed to suggest Hargrove deserved “Manager of the Year” in the first couple of paragraphs. Good to see the time off hasn’t harmed his cluelessness. The less said about that column the better; the last thing we want is to encourage more of them.
WC = Wild Card, I think you read WS
The best thing on that padres fan site (well, other than all the hollow boasting followed by semi-articulate expressions of pain and rage) is the picture of the Mariner’s cat. (Scroll down). Cats in hats are funny in general (just ask Dr Seuss) but that pic in particular is hilarious. And a little disturbing. Suggested caption: I don’t know what a “padre” is but I think I just ate a whole team of them. Tastes like chicken.
#315 Zero Gravitas Says: As of today the M’s win percentage projects to 90 wins over a 162-game season. Just want to throw that out there. Do yourself a favor and don’t look at what the Angels’ record projects to, just enjoy it!
“SG” over at the Replacement Level Yankees Weblog has a handy dandy table to calculate the “Pythagorean winning percentage of the team…to determine [theoretically] how many wins they should pick up over the remainder of the schedule.”
The Mariners currently stand at a possible 87 wins using that calculator. Either way, it’s a winning season. 🙂
The M’s are 3 wins, zero losses back of Detroit for the WC (with Oakland right on their tail).
Would now be a bad time to mention the shock that I felt when looking at Greg Dobbs’ line with the Phillies this year? .284/.325/.541(!!!!) in 109 AB’s thus far.
WC = Wild Card, I think you read WS
Yeah, I did, sorry (actually I read it as “World Championship” since my brain wouldn’t parse it as anything but World something). In that case, yeah, you’re right. And after that, well, who knows. The good thing about there being two good teams (and possibly 3) in the AL Central is they may pull each other down. Plus the M’s get to play the NL Central in interleague, but miss the Brewers. Who are the class of that division… and yet are on the verge of getting swept by Texas.
Bautista deserved the win; he was robbed the other night.
This is the first time the M’s have swept the Padres in San Diego? Ever?
Beware the, uh, moose!
363 This is further evidence (Spezio and Weaver being more) that it is easier to succeed in the National League.
Looking at the schedule for the next 13 games: besides the makeup game at Cleveland tomorrow, the other 12 games are against NL central and east teams that are WAY under 500. The M’s need to at least go 8-5 in those 13 games to get to 10 games over to have a chance to make the playoff. The rest of the schedule are pretty tough. These 13 games will make or break the M’s season.
I am just counting tomorrow’s game as a loss to CLE. The M’s will need to go 8-4 against the NL teams.
I love the Mariners, but I am a Cubs fan first and foremost. I live by Wrigley Field and will be at Tuesday’s game. That’s the first time the M’s will play at Wrigley. Not to get too much ahead of myself, but the Cubs are a better team than the M’s.
Based on coolstandings.com, even though the Cubs currently are 6 games below 500, they have a 56.8% chance to make the playoff, more than 3 times as likely to make the playoff than the M’s, who’s at 18.1%. Also, based on RS/RA, the Cubs sould be 33-27, 6 games over, where the M’s should be 31-28, 3 games over. So clearly, the Cubs are the better team.
366: i’ve been going to these games since they started playing interleague, and this is definitely the first sweep here. don’t think they had ever swept them period, actually.
‘On a sunny Sunday afternoon, they hung in against a starting pitcher that has the lowest home ERA in the Major Leagues, overcame a two-run deficit with another productive seventh inning, used Friday night’s starting pitcher as a reliever in the eighth inning of a tie game, stole the go-ahead run in the top of the ninth against history’s only 500-save closer and handed the ball to their own dependable game-ender to put a bow on the Interleague series.
Add it all up, and what the Mariners received was a 4-3 victory over the Padres in front of 35,950 and the first three-game sweep by an opposing team all season and the first-ever for the Mariners in San Diego.’
pretty damn cool.
‘Based on coolstandings.com, even though the Cubs currently are 6 games below 500, they have a 56.8% chance to make the playoff, more than 3 times as likely to make the playoff than the M’s, who’s at 18.1%.’
lies, damn lies, and statistics. Cubs 3x more likely to make the playoffs as the M’s? that make sense unless you, like, watch baseball.
#372: here is the link: http://www.coolstandings.com/baseball_standings.asp?i=1
The reason Cubs under-performed so much was because they are 3-12 in 1 run ball game, which is about to go 3-13 now. We know this type of thing will even out over the course of the season. Winning 1 run game, which the M’s do really well, while the Cubs do poorly, isn’t a repeatable skill.
This recent hot streak, particularly the sweep in San Diego, shows that the Mariners can play something resembling championship level baseball. All of a sudden my 80-1 bet in Las Vegas in February that this team will win the World Series does not look so crazy. Maybe Grover was right: that this team has talent on a par with his AL Championship Indian teams. Let’s keep in going.
Pardon me: Let’s keep IT going.
#373
Basing projections for the rest of the season on just the Pythag theorem is crazy.
The M’s are no longer the team that started the year (thanks to injuries beyond Hargrove’s control), whereas the Cubs are still floundering.
Cubs by month:
10-14,12-15,5-5
Mariners:
10-10,16-14,7-2
And one run games aren’t entirely luck. Quality bullpens help that a lot.
Question of the night:
At what point do I go from rational skeptic to curmudgeon for insisting this team doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting out of the first round of the playoffs?
I’m not quite a fan-tanker, but all this unlikely winning is creating, in my opinion, the illusion of a team to really be excited about.
I don’t mind asking myself this, because less than a month ago I would’a swore we didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of even making the playoffs. Don’t get me wrong…this team is actually fun to watch right now, and I am grateful for that at least. Nevertheless, we sure look like the ChiSox team we swept in the first round of the ’01 playoffs, no?
The ’95 M’s provided one the most exciting sports experiences ever and never gave the impression of being dominant. At some point you have to put aside all the skepticism and just enjoy the ride.
Here’s me in the M’s 9th:
— Way to get on board, Bloomy.
— Bunt by a pinch hitter? RETARDED!!
— Of course they walk Ichiro…Nice Call Hargrove!!
— OHMYGODWHYAREYOUSTEALINGTHIRD??….YES!!!!
— DON’T SWING AT THAT CRAP JOSE!! YESS!!!
I would have enjoyed the inning a lot more if I was a completely ignorant fan.
I’d guess that over a large enough sample size teams tend to win one run games at about the same rate that they win the rest of their games.
Also I’d take issue with: “We know this type of thing will even out over the course of the season.” Umm, that’s optimistic. We know they should, but that’s not the same as saying they WILL.
Here’s a note from Rob Neyer’s blog from last year: “But this season the Royals are 10-18 in one-run games. Call that bad luck if you like; just remember that over the previous 10 years the Royals had the worst record in one-run games in major league history, and they’re doing it again this year.” http://www.robneyer.com/robrany.html
All the same, power to the Cubbies.
SMB – that was 2000 and that White Sox team one over 100 games that season. Of course their rotation went something like James Baldwin, Cal Eldred, Jim Parque so maybe their eventual collapse should have been expected.
And didn’t the umpire fail to notice Carlos Guillen step on home plate while executing the suicide squeeze that won Game 3 at Safeco?
“won over 100 games”, not “one over..”.
What a goof.
#370 – brian_sun:
Those are useless stats. I have watched the Cubs more than any other team this season, since their games, unlike the M’s, are on a channel I receive. The Cubs stink. They’ve had a couple big blowouts, which skews their runs scored/runs given statistic towards the former. Most of their pitching is inconsistent, and so is their hitting. If you watch the Cubs you’d realize there’s no way the Mariners could even be considered to be worse than them.
I just read the game threads for the last two days in their ENTIRETY. Does that make me an obsessive USSM fan? Mebbe so. Or maybe it’s just becaue this weekend was an absolutely incredible display of clutch hitting and somewhat clutch pitching (bullpen). And winning the Weaver start was downright miraculous. I oculdn’t watch today’s game because I was at my son’s Cub Scout picnic, but I snuck away to listen to the later innings (I just knew it would be another good game). BUt unfortunately they started the special ceremony right as the Ms ninth was starting. Came back in 30 minutes or so and heard Rick Rizzs utter those two sweet words: “Mariners win.”
What a weekend. What a team. Don’t pinch me, please, because I don’t want to wake up.
oh, and I just wanted to get the last word in on this thread 😉
#370
Sorry, but that is a pretty bad argument. I am not necessarily saying that the Ms are better than the Cubs, but bringing up stats which are highly dependant on your league/division (like RS/RA and Playoff %) is a very bad idea. No offense, but most people believe that the NL central is the worst division in baseball by far.
Winning 1 run game, which the M’s do really well, while the Cubs do poorly, isn’t a repeatable skill.
Uh, no. The M’s are 9 and 7 (.563) in one run games, which is exactly in line with their winning percentage (.559) — it’s not something they do “really well.” There’s no skill here to repeat: the Mariners are doing exactly as you’d expect.
Not to get too much ahead of myself, but the Cubs are a better team than the M’s. Based on coolstandings.com…
Hoo boy, I knew Cubs fans were delusional (how else to survive as a Cubs fan?) but that’s some seriously stretched logic.
Cubs vs NL East: 9-13; vs NL Central: 13-15; vs NL West: 3-5 (including 1-2 vs SD).
The NL Central, which has only one team over .500, as a division is 31-39 (.443) vs the NL East and a woeful 25-52 (.325) vs the NL West. The Central is inarguably the weakest division in the NL, and the Cubs are under .500 even there. The Cubs aren’t the strongest team in the NL Central; the NL Central is weaker than the NL West; the Padres are the division leaders in the West; the Mariners just swept the Padres.
All coolstandings.com is telling you is that the Cubs play in a weak-ass division. Look at it this way: you have a much clearer path to qualifying for the Winter Olympics if you’re Jamaican than if you’re Austrian, but that says nothing about who is more likely to win gold when the Jamaicans and the Austrians go head to head.
Now, I suppose you could try to argue that even the weakest division in the NL is stronger than any division in the AL, but the history of interleague play certainly doesn’t support that — including history as recent as this weekend. Texas is inarguably the weakest team in the AL West, and they just took two of three from the only team in the NL Central with a winning record.
Of course the Brewers don’t appear to be the team they were a month ago, and maybe the Cubs are getting it together (though losing 5 of the last 10, maybe not). Yeah, the Cubs figure to win a few more one-run games — but there’s no reason to expect the M’s will start losing more of them. Yeah, the Mariners are certainly not a great team: they have a rotation with more holes than arms, they’ve been lucky, and they often succeed in spite of their manager. So, yeah, anything can happen in a three day series, especially for a team playing for the first time in a stadium as quirky as Wrigley. But there’s no way you can argue that the Cubs are a better team than the Mariners. And neither ESPN nor SI think so either.
“To tell the truth, I’m not excited to go to Cleveland, but we have to,” Ichiro said through an interpreter. “If I ever saw myself saying I’m excited going to Cleveland, I’d punch myself in the face, because I’m lying.”
i love that guy.