Game 66, Mariners at Astros
Washburn vs Oswalt, 11:05 am.
Jarrod Washburn is a pitch-to-contact guy who relies on his defense and a spacious Safeco Field to succeed. The Mariners haven’t been able to convince MLB to let them take Safeco with them on the road, so when he pitches in other cities, he’s at a disadvantage.
Then, Mike Hargrove does this to him.
LF – Ibanez. One of the five worst defensive left fielders in baseball.
CF – Ichiro. He’s good, obviously.
RF – Broussard. He’s not an outfielder. Making him run for a ball is criminal.
3B – Lopez. 9 innings at 3rd base last night doubled his career total. Not a 3rd baseman.
SS – Betancourt. He’s fine, despite the throwing problems.
2B – Vidro. He has no business ever taking the field.
1B – Sexson. One of the five worst defensive first baseman in baseball.
Ibanez, Vidro, and Sexson are all bad enough defensively that they should be DH’ing. Broussard’s not much better as a first baseman, and he’s horrible as an outfielder. And we’ve got Jose Lopez playing out of position to boot.
If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to watch the Marlins play defense on a daily basis, this is going to be similar. Good luck Jarrod – between the short porch in left field and your defense, you’re going to need it.
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173 Responses to “Game 66, Mariners at Astros”
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The problem with Richie’s defense is that his height impedes his ability to get down for low balls, so some grounders get past him that shouldn’t, and he doesnt dig low throws well. (If you saw yesterday’s game, the infield hit off of the Vidro poor throw was potentially Sexson’s fault)
Game over, series over, roadtrip over, competitive part of the season over. This team is absolutely amazing to go for the first 5 games as road warriors, then the last 5 as road kill. It is hard to remember any previous Jekyll and Hyde road trip like this. Oh, well, such is the life as a Seattle Mariners fan.
At least they get a day off before sucking again.
Actually, since they play the Pirates, they should sweep the series. SHOULD.
#151
I’ll agree with that, but I don’t think that’s enough to qualify him for bottom five given that he does some other stuff reasonably well. I think Seattle was spoiled by David Segui and John Olerud. If our firstbaseman isn’t absolutely amazing defensively, we act like we’ve got a blind monkey playing first. Richie isn’t Segui or Olerud, but that doesn’t make him bad. It makes him mediocre.
Are the Pirates really any worse than the Astros or Cubs?
Can we send Morrow down to West Tenn now? Please?
Also, speaking of pitching prospects, Rick Ankiel hit 3 HRs for the Memphis Redbirds yesterday. .282/.317/.606 so far this year. His comeback as an OF is almost complete.
OMFG. Missed the game and tuned in to the box score. We dropped 3 straight to Houston. Hargrove put the worst defense possible on the field, indicating that a) he does think and b) he is truly evil. The M’s outhit the Astros, but thanks to a measly 3 runs on 15 hits – fifteen frickin’ hits – flounder to a 7 run loss.
Thanks to Ichiro!s 4 for 5 night this is only a mitigated disaster, but it leaves the impression that unmitigated disasters are right around the corner.
Funny how fast things can change in one short week.
I love/hate baseball.
DAMellen,
http://ussmariner.com/2006/01/24/evaluating-defense/
That link might help you.
Neihaus on KOMO mentioned Mike Hargrove was “working on some chewing gum down in the dugout.”
Hmmm…seems to me he oughta have a be working on his resume at this point, since he may not be long for this team.
Ankiel’s pitch selection still sucks, and there’s no room for him in the Cardinal outfield right now– but I’m really curious to see how he’ll do.
#156
Damn straight! If Bavasi wanted to prove to us doubting fans that he’s finally done something right then he’s done it. Brandon Morrow was a good pick. Tim Lincecum might’ve been better, but Brandon Morrow was definitely a good pick. I truly believe that someday, he’ll be an excellent major league player. Not today though. Maybe not next season either. I don’t care. Someday he will be and it’s gonna be someday pretty soon.
Morrow looks like a potential superstar to me, but the key word in that sentence is potential. Put him in the minors. Let him work on his control. Let him get his pitch counts down. Maybe if he figures out how not to go full on every batter he faces he can even make it as a starter. Maybe he’ll just be a lights out replacement for JJ. Whatever. Just send him down and don’t bring him back to he walks less than half a batter an inning. Please.
I liked the reading on defense, but it’s not like any of it was especially conclusive. Yes it says that Sexson is bad, but it says that Betancourt is bad too and I just refuse to believe that. Sure this year he’s throwing a lot of balls away, but last year he looked like a gold glove to me. They say he was the second worst shortstop in baseball. I refuse to acknowledge any stats that don’t say Yuni is at least reasonably good.
162, if you in fact read the link provided and came away with those conclusions, you might want to think about brushing up on your reading comprehension…generally it’s a good idea as well, to mosey on over to the “ussm orientation” link above before spouting off the “good old boys’ ‘thinking'” approach to baseball or ideas associated with it.
just something to consider, in my opinion…since the VAST majority of the people who will actually read your post, will come away establishing a caricature of you in their head of a “fan” giving verbal fellatio to Mr. WFB. just saying…
A-Rod is God.
and they are going to miss Ian Snell, the Bucs best pitcher … not that that helped them with the Astros.
He’s really really good at playing baseball.
Stop kissin’ ARod’s, er…bat, you guys.
#163, so you read the main article. Did you read the articles that that article was linked to? I understood the main article’s point about Betancourt having too small a sample size to really give him meaningful numbers. However, several of the articles that article was linked to used much larger sample sizes. They almost all used last year rather than two years ago and they all had Betancourt pretty low on their lists. One list had Yuni second to last with Juan Uribe first. Everytime I’ve watched Juan Uribe, he appears to have about as much range as my grandmother without her walker. Maybe I’ve caught him on bad days, but I still find it hard to believe that he is the best shortstop in baseball or that Yuni is the second worst.
As a general rule, I don’t subscribe to the “good ol’ boys” way of thinking, but a major point of that article was that several different systems for ranking fielders have been made and that they tend to give different results. Some even say that Ichiro (who I think is a good fielder) is bad. I like the statistical approach to analyzing hitters, but I don’t think that any of the statistical approaches to evaluating fielders are particularly effective and I don’t take them particularly seriously. Someday someone will come up with a statistic that really shows who’s a good fielder and who isn’t, but it hasn’t happened yet. Until it does, it’s all pretty subjective.
Holy crap, he might have 100+ RBI before the All-Star Break. That’s insane.
After today’s loss, Ichiro on the Mariners’ losing ways:
“‘It’s like a comedy of errors,’ he said. ‘But for us, it’s not funny.'”
hahahahahaha…
Ichiro is now sporting a higher unadjusted OPS than he had in 2004 (his best season to date).
Yo Dave, I believe you when you say Sexson is awful defensively….I am just curious, when did the decline happen? As I recall, he was touted for his defense when he came here; has he declined since he got here or was that just incorrect? Thanks.