Game 31, Mariners at Yankees
Hernandez vs Mussina, 10:05 am.
Happy Felix Day!
John McLaren is starting Miguel Cairo at second base, telling Geoff Baker that Cairo has some history of success against Mussina.
Here’s their history, and yes, note that they haven’t faced each other since 2003.
7 for 28, 1 double, 0 walks, 1 strikeout – .250/.250/.286. Cairo is a career .258/.315/.368 hitter, so to the extent that you believe that 28 at-bats means anything at all (they don’t), you have to conclude that Cairo is worse than he normally is against Mussina.
To come to the conclusion that Cairo should play because he has a history of success against Mike Mussina takes a special blend of ignorance. Here’s to hoping that McLaren has another reason for playing Cairo today and is just using the 7 for 28 thing as the public story, because if he’s actually playing Cairo because he thinks it gives the team a better chance to win, then he’s not qualified to manage a lemonade stand.
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Mclaren can manage my lemonade stand. i would expect he would favor the veteran kids, giving them more shots, and while the lemonade would be mediocre, the lemons would love him.
The M’s had better not screw up another Felix Day. Especially against Mussina.
Miguel Cairo is batting 2nd in the lineup? Is McLaren trying to lose this game?
So according to Krueger, the Mariners have to pitch well, hit well and field well to win today. Pardon the use of this overused meme, but….
O RLY?
I suppose they shouldn’t start Sexson (3-12, 5 K’s against Mussina), or Beltre (0-4) either, using that logic. Lopez has been one of our most consistent hitters this year, and doing what you’re supposed to do in the #2 spot. This is just stupid. Anyone get the feeling that McLaren’s seat is, while maybe not hot yet, getting warmer?
Geez, they need to give us more time to recover from the last debacle before gut-punching us with the next one. Here’s hoping the team figures out how to generate runs by actually hitting, rather than just sitting there watching Ichiro steal his way around the diamond.
The good news is that Mussina isn’t a very good pitcher and hasn’t been for a while, so this is a much better matchup than Bedard vs the Most Famous Man in Taiwan. I’m calling it right now: Clement takes him deep for his first major league HR of the year.
(And McLaren’s idea about Cairo represents more than just ignorance, however special. That requires WMD-evidence levels of fabrication and self-duplicity).
5 – For it to start getting warmer, someone (in charge) would have to be able to realize that he was making poor decisions.
Looking for a good illustration of Mussina’s decline, I found this kind of interesting.
Cairo played 2nd behind Mussina in 06 and 07. Maybe he has some insight on hitting him.
I am not sure that Mussina being a bad pitcher is good news. It isn’t bad news. Byrd is not a good pitcher and he shut us down. This offense doesn’t recognize good/bad pitching.
I would like to know what’s in that special blend of McLaren ignorance. I’m guessing the lingering effects of the Kingdome’s old Gate F volume food service exhaust clouds are part of it, but what else?
Or maybe not. K.
I love that Cairo’s bitching about the pitches. You’re Miguel Cairo. You suck at pitch recognition. Unless the ball flies up into the stands and is called a strike, you’ve got nothing to say.
Good to know the YES homerism extends once a player goes to another team. The love Cairo, want him back??
A young John McLaren and Bill Bavasi running a lemonade stand…
Given $100 to start, they spend the first $45 at the local hardware store and pick up some quality wood to build their stand, figuring that if their stand looks nice, people will naturally draw to it.
They go home and build the stand, their mother looks on saying “Gee honey that looks great! I have some really shiny plastic cups in the kitchen you can use for serving people who come”
Bill ignores the shiny cups from inside the house and takes off with John to the flee-market where they see some old styrofoam cups with a little dirt on them, an entire box of 162 for just $20!!! “Hey John, you think we can take these home and clean them up and have some decent cups for our customers?” Bill asks
“Yeah!! I’m just pass them through the sink and they’ll be good as new!” John responds, they take the box of styrofoam cups home.
They still need a few things, namely Lemons, a Pitcher, and sugar. They run off to the grocery store and want the shiniest pitcher available, but that’s a beefy $50 which they don’t have to spend. They look at the second one and the store manager figures he’ll be nice to the boys and trade them the 2nd shiniest pitcher for half the shiny cups they have at home in the kitchen.
“Well that’s a steal” Bill says to John, “We weren’t going to use those shiny cups anyway, we’ll keep half and get the really neat pitcher which will draw people to our stand”
“What about sugar?” John inquires.
“Well mom will let us use the sugar, and she won’t charge us much.” Bill replies.
(Had to sneak in there a good point that we got a ‘not-so-hometown’ deal in Ichiro, and he’s awesome like sugar lol)
“What about lemons?” John asks Bill again?
“That’s the great part, we’ll use the lemons from the park which are free, we get to pocket this last $35 dollars!” Bill responds.
A month into their lemonade stand they’ve sold only 13 cups of lemonade while spilling 17 cups worth of lemonade on the floor while John fumbles around trying to get the right lemon to water to sugar combination, although he’s pretty dead on as to how much sugar (ICHIRO!) to add.
They have noticed that the dirty cups were not just dirty but stained so they weren’t able to clean half of them so they start mixing in the shiny plastic cups and put up a sign saying “Now with two kinds of cups”.
The pitcher they traded for is still shiny but the store manager’s son has used the shiny plastic cups and only using a cardboard box for a stand has sold 16 cups of water, without any sugar or lemons in it and no pitcher just taking water straight out of the faucet in the kitchen.
—
I put way too much thought into this… and I’m sure there are other analogies i could draw but i’m missing the game now typing this up!
I can’t wait for Felix to shut the YES announcers up.
Unfortunately, as someone who grew up/came of age in an era when we were being shown movies where Whoopi Goldberg ends up coaching an NBA team, and some little kid gets to own the Twins, I actually half believe a set of circumstances could exist in which Dave winds up as the GM of the Mariners…
So gameday is up to 10 straight FastBalls by Felix, time for another letter.
awolfgang – I’m not sure negativity is allowed so early in Felix Day…
Frickin’ Jeter. I hate looking at his smug face.
It’s not negativity, it’s true. All fastballs.
7 – I meant that, maybe, it’s dawning on those upstairs that something’s wrong here. We can only hope.
abaout friggin’ time. Looks to me like they’re squeezing Felix, and Abreu looked out to me.
Abreu was out.
I’m not negative, the facts are what they are, by the way it was 15 straight fastballs to start the game with 12 of them 92-93 mph.
Yuni missed the tag on Abreu.
Geez, the way the offense has been, I hope that wasn’t “game” already for poor Felix in only the first inning.
(filling in my “Blowers bitches about the schedule” box on my bingo card)
if they’re fully set on giving a start to Cairo, is it really that hard to slide Yuni into the two spot instead
Am I seeing things, or does Mussina get a different strike zone than Felix?
Yeah…I’ve discovered over the years that, especially during sports broadcasts, the “mute” button on the remote is one of the greatest inventions of all time.
They both seem to be getting squeezed or a big zone, I thought Sexson should have got punched out. So far inconsistent in my eyes.
I’ve always thought it would be great to use one of the secondary audio channels to broadcast the stadium audio feed, so you’d get the hits, the PA announcements, the crowd… and no announcers.
We’ll never get that, because it means you wouldn’t get the in-line ads, but it’d be great.
Niehaus and Blowers are still surprised that the M’s defense is bad.
ICHI!
Ichiro knows its May, next year we just need to change his calender and have May A(April) and May B.
wooo small ball. wish we were in the NL
They actually tried broadcasting an NFL game without the announcers back in the 70s, and it was a dismal failure. I can’t find a link to back it up, though, so maybe I’m “misremembering.”
Every time Jeter successfully fields a ball, God sacrifices a kitten.
Ergh.
So when Blowers makes the statement that Cairo is good at hitting the other way, especially with 2 outs … he knows this from research, observation, or how?
Nothing says “success” against a pitcher quite like batting .233 against him.
fishiam- Because Cairo is a gritty veteran and even a “Professional hitter” according to YES. And when you have those lack of real hitting skills you must ground out to the 2nd baseman.
The fuck was that Raul?
Oh Raul, you veteran you.
God this defense just fucking unwatchable. Bedard and Felix have to be sick and tired of it already.
That McLaren comment about Cairo might be the dumbest thing a manager has said since Hargrove’s comments about Julio Mateo getting them a double play grounder to get out of an inning.
Infinite frustration brought to you by: The Seattle Mariners
Sweet toss Ral.
Wow. You can finally hear some frustration in Neihaus’ voice.
Felix is not exactly on top of his form today.
I think Raul slipped Ichiro some of his “suck juice” this morning.
The entire team needs to be benched for a few days.
Guess it is time to go back to playing GTA IV and forgetting it is baseball season.
Really, we’re giving an IBB to a guy hitting .155/.212/.236? They know there is 2 outs right?
53:
I was thinking the same.
Ah yes, I before E…
oh fer chrissakes. I can’t believe yardwork (in the rain) is looking like a better option than watching the rest of this.
Keep throwing that fastball right down the middle early in the count Felix, it’s working.
vin- McLaren doesn’t know what day it is, just that he wants to use small sample size and outdated logic to figure out how to make it better.
Goddamnit Blowers. The M’s defense was bad last year, and it’s bad this year. Stop pretending like it’s ’01.
33: Derek – Funny you should mention that…when I was watching a Canucks game one time on Center Ice over the winter, whatever feed they were using suddenly lost the audio from the broadcast booth — as well as the score/clock bar at the top of the screen. What was left was only the third microphone, apparently down at ice level, as you could still hear all the hits, shots, and crowd noise — but nothing else! Needless to say, it was a strange game to watch, as you almost got the feeling of being out at a frozen pond watching a shinny game rather than at home watching a “professional” broadcast.
At the beginning of the season “EVERYONE thought this defense would be a real asset to them”. – Mike Blowers 5/3/2008
This bloody awful defense is just killing us!
Meanwhile, Rizzy just mentioned that some chips or either tile or paint were falling off the facing of Yankee Stadium. Shades of the Kingdome circa 1994, perhaps?
There’s a huge difference between the NFL broadcasts and MLB broadcasts, though, especially in that there are a comparatively huge number of players on the field at a time and they can move all over the place, whereas a fan paying attention can pretty easily identify all ten players on a normal play.
Wow, Sexson hit into a DP. Didn’t see that coming.
/sarcasm
don’t get me wrong – I would LOVE a game where, say, they broadcast in 5.1 and put the announcer only in the center channel, and you could selectively mute channels in your system. Now _that’s_ a surround system I’d buy.
Oh good bloody lord, this team is dreadful.
As one of the USSM sages put it the 2008 Mariners are 5 good players (Ichiro, Beltre, Bedard, Felix and JJ) and 20 shades of half-decent to mediocre. When Ichiro and Felix make mistakes in the same game there’s just nobody to pick them up.
bad Felix isn’t as fun to watch…
Felix walked a Molina? Bugger this, I’m off.
No kidding. I was thinking the same thing.
What would be really awesome would be to allow open broadcasting of games, so we could set up a USSM channel, and you’d get paid by subscription fees or as a percentage of viewership or whatever. So I could put together a crew of stathead-y people and compete.
PBF.
Matsui is 3rd in the league in daytime batting average? He’s 6 for 15 entering the game. Is Sims trying to imply something there or just is he just making conversation?
Losing the score bar isn’t quite as brutal during a baseball broadcast, though, if you’re paying enough attention to the game. When you lose that graphic in any of so-called “clock” sports that’s really harsh, ’cause you don’t even know how much time you have left in a period/quarter…or in the case of hockey, how much time you have left on a power play.
Now you’re talking! That’s the best web x.0 idea I’ve heard yet! It’s targeted, niche, and a perfect usage of friction free distribution.
Where do they draw the line with that? The crew wouldn’t need to do the play by play. What would be wrong with just talking about the players that are in the game. I would sign up for that description, however we would still be missing the sounds of the game.
70: Awesome idea, Derek! I’d actually pay a little extra for the subscription to hear real game analysis rather than the hard-hitting “journalism” that is Mike Blowers.
The problem would be that without the team and broadcast partner’s consent, it wouldn’t matter — they’d sue you into oblivion whether or not you were in the legal right.
Yay! Miguel Gairo is up in one of the most important situations o the game.
Ichiro just passed HOFer Hank Greenberg for 441st place on the all-time hit list.
True. The Mariners probably have better lawyers than you do.
well… as DMZ well knows (we used to work together at RealNetworks eons ago) we could be up and live with commentary in a matter of minutes. The problem is latency. All streaming systems have it built in, and it would be somwhere between 10-30 seconds. But hey, I’d be willing to give it a try!
Two men on. Two outs. Nobody else I’d want out there other than Cairo.
Ugh.
I thought Cairo had success against Mussina? A really smart manager told me so.
The offense today reminds me of the Sandfrog era teams where it took four straight singles to score a run since nobody had any power.
and legally, if it’s just audio commentary, without the broadcast audio of video, I think you’re on safe legal ground. It’s journalism.
So far Cairo is 0-3 while leading the M’s with three men left on base. Good call Mac.
(sorry about my typing today – “somewhere” and “or”)
Mussina gets a lot of help when he has an expanded strike zone.
Uh-oh…Niehaus just mentioned that, in the new stadium, the “bleacher creatures” will have their own bar in that area of the park.
Judging from their current level of rowdiness, can lowering the level of late-inning civility out there to the level of Man-U hooliganism possibly be a good thing?
Our LOB numbers are out of control. Does someone know where I can find LOB stats by team? Fangraphs and BR don’t seem to track that.
I can’t see Felix coming back out there. He’s at 90 pitches and hasn’t looked that good.
I STAND CORRECTED
Man-U hooliganism
Huh? Man U isn’t known for hooligans above the baseline English hooliganism.
Even then, Yankees fans are nothing like English footie drunks. They’re not even the worst in the AL anymore.
I can’t remember the last time we made a starter look bad.
Leverage Index for Cairo’s three At bats – .63, 1.28, 1.64.
Adding up to give him the highest total of all the M’s batters w/ 3 AB’s tonight. It doesn’t look like anyone will pass him this time through the order either.
Johnny Damon = King Felix Krytonite
Ouch…me not so much like Felix in Christmas tree mode today.
Well, this game’s over.
Blech, I can’t even spell Kryptonite right. Nicolas Cage would be so disappointed. I’m going to explore other games on MLB.TV.
We still love you Felix. Better luck next time.
It didn’t matter Felix the offense wasn’t going to score more then 1 run for you anyways. See you next Felix Day!
Actually, I agree there…I think the Red Sox “wagon jumpers” are probably more obnoxious these days.
And for Premier League, I’ve heard that Chelsea is actually among the worst in that catagory.
Cha Seung Baek looks like a pleasant guy to hang out with. I think it’s the pudginess of his face.
Talking about the game? Why bother?
I suggest visiting http://www.offsettheevil.com to make yourself feel better. Click on the pink pony (pony!!!) to hear a message to Felix!
I think Bedard would be a fun guy to hang out with. Sit at a bar and make snarky comments about people that walk in.
Ah…gotta love the awesome veteran defensive captaincy that is Jeter…
Wlad trying to quickly move his way to the top of the DP leaders on the team. Jeter being the veteran he is won’t let that happen.
Can someone help me understand why they brought Felix out to start that inning. Down by 3 runs at 90 pitches. What good is it gonna do to bring him in. Hes been over the century mark way to many times this year and its still early in the season. You had to know him going back out there was gonna result in more runs especially considering what Jeter and Damon have done to him so far today. Hes not gonna get many wins at least show sympathy and allow him to keep his stats respectable.
Dear Bill and John:
OPS+ splits, 2008 and Career
Sexson: 78/183 98/105
Ibanez: 106/81 109/75
Can you spell P-L-A-T-O-O-N?
I thought you could.
Please find another outfielder.
Your friend,
a Fan
Actually, at this point, you’re right.
I think there’s an ancient episode of Bonanza on RTN right now that’s probably more exciting than this.
Lauren- I don’t know how but that game made my day better. Except every time I let a pony fall in the water I felt like the offense letting a starter down. But they still love me.
Fall in the water? Hell, I think the boys ran all the ponies over a cliff like a herd of bison today!
Ugh, I just remembered we don’t have anything close to resembling a pinch hitter on this team. Sure glad we got rid of Greg Norton.
This team has got to find some offense somehow.
I feel about 60% gayer now after having played that game. And by “gayer” I mean “happier.”
Benne- Only 60%? I jumped to at least 80%. Then I started watching the game again so I am in for a few more rounds after the game.
The Fangraphs win expectancy has been around 98% since the 7th inning, and Jeff at LL already has the recap thread up.
I’m off to work. Enjoy your weekend, those of you fortunate enough to not work on weekends.
Blergh.
Yep…the mojo’s sputtering.
Matt Pittman, after the game announcer guy: “At this point, any time the Mariners don’t hit into a double play, that’s one of our plays of the game.” He then said he was kidding, but I think we all know he wasn’t.
Heh…Pittman, on the post-game, is actually asking the question, “What would you do with this team at this point?”
Well, Matty, to answer your question: (1) you wouldn’t like my suggestions, and (2) you’d never play them on the air, anyway.
Then, the idiot says, “It’s spring…it’s supposed to be sunny and the Mariners are supposed to be in first place.”
In what freakin’ parallel universe do you reside, Pittman?!
1, 1, 2, 3, 7, 2, 5, 3
That’s the M’s runs scored in recent games.
Makes me want to sing that song from Sesame Street, “One of these things is not like the others, …”
Well, watching and keeping track while attempting to research a paper on how video games enhance skill transfer really makes for a piss poor saturday. I think a nice tall glass of scotch is in order in a little bit.
Is it too early to discuss when JM will get fired?
I am ready, mac needs to go last week. Fire him, and hire who ever…. I can’t see anyone managing this team to beat themselves as much as Mac is.
Just glancing through the thread and saw the idea about do-it-yourself game commentary.
I thought it sounded great. I’d pay to hear DMZ and Dave calling the game. The only big loss would be the actual game sounds, I guess. Bat hitting ball, etc.
Because if you don’t use any part of the MLB broadcast, not sure how you’d get in legal trouble.
Anyway, while googling it to see if live podcasting was at all realistic I found this:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/13/youcastr-live-podcasting-for-sports-fans/
Talking about this:
http://www.youcastr.com/
It is difficult to imagine another club in MLB that would allow a GM to survive five years of this, especially with the resources the M’s have.
On the other hand, the rot starts at the top.
Meanwhile the A’s are the top of the AL West, despite the fact they have far less resources and are rebuilding.
I never thought grocery shopping would be better than a ballgame.
After the loss today, McLaren “goes off” on the team according to Geoff Baker:
http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/mariners/2008/05/mclaren_goes_off_on_team.html#start_comments
The Mariners are still suprised the M’s defense is that bad.
last night they said (after someone bitched about it) that Sexson had only hit into 2 DPs this year, the same as Ichiro …
I love RTN.
FWIW, I watched the NFL game with no broadcasters. It was basically a mute button thing, the stadium announcer was all echoey and weird, and all the usual graphics were thrown up on the screen.
It wasn’t great, but when I hear the NFL game guys harp on the prescripted “themes” and “stories” during the game, I miss the silence.
Oxymoron of the Day: Mariners Baseball!
Dave, are you sure McLaren actually told Baker his reason for starting Cairo was Cairo’s history against Mussina? Because Baker doesn’t really say that at his blog.
Mariners are boring.
Yes, I do too! I’m glad somebody finally figured out just how bored a lot of us were with getting with some of the utter crap that networks are churning out these days…and realized that, indeed, there’s still a market out there for quality, well-written classic TV shows.
*Oops…one too many “withs” on that last rant, but as the Geico lizard says, “you get my point!”