Game 13, Mariners At Royals
Fister vs Chen, 5:10 pm,
I don’t have a whole lot to say about yesterday’s game. Vargas was good, Smoak homered, and a bad bullpen gave up a lead to a good offense. It’s going to happen, especially while the team is leaning on Chris Ray’s experience and not on someone else’s talent (not that Wedge has a lot to pick from, honestly) in the eighth inning.
So, now, the M’s take a quick four day trip to Kansas City. The Royals have a lot of good young talent, but fortunately for the M’s, most of it is in the minors. This is still a beatable team, even for a flawed Mariner roster, so taking three out of four shouldn’t be out of the question. They’ll just need to hit a bit better with men on base and get some good starts from the rotation guys, because this bullpen can’t be trusted with a slim lead.
Oh, and try not to laugh when you see who is hitting cleanup today.
Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 3B
Bradley, LF
Kennedy, DH
Smoak, 1B
Olivo, C
Saunders, CF
Ryan, SS
Wilson, 2B
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58 Responses to “Game 13, Mariners At Royals”
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Wow, it’s almost like there’s some team requirement to put a pathetic hitter in the #4 hole…
I’m sorry. I tried. I just couldn’t keep from laughing.
Need Guti back! At least we get a break from Cust today
No Langerbomber as cleanup? Well there goes our power…
Actually I was just delighted Olivo was not hitting cleanup.
I’m pretty sure that if Wedge went into a doctors office and said that he wanted a medical Marijuana license and they asked him why, all he would have to say is “I have to write out the Mariners’ Lineup each day” they would write him a prescription
I’d laugh harder at Kennedy in the lineup if seeing Little Dribbler back at third base didn’t make me so sad.
Fortunately we don’t have a lot of “cleaning up” to do.
Say what you will about Wedge, but what I love is that he doesn’t sugar coat. He’s perfectly willing to admit the team doesn’t have a legit four hitter, where it seemed as if Wak would hum and haw and say Lopez could handle it.
This doesn’t win you baseball games, but it’s something I can at least appreciate.
M’s forced to trot out a lefty CF against the lefty Bruce Chen. Of course, Chen doesn’t seem to have big platoon splits, and it’s Bruce @$#ing Chen, so it almost doesn’t count.
I like the fact that Saunders can get some ABs against a lefty but have some training wheels attached: a mid 80s FB, uses a change-up a lot.
I figure we really shouldn’t relegate Saunders to a platoon until we know for sure that he’ll never be useful against lefties – predicated on the condition that we’re realistically not competitive this year.
So yeah, I agree marc.
I don’t know how to say this without it sounding bad, but, uh, you might be biased in that assessment, Sims.
I don’t get it, why wouldn’t we want our .333 hitter batting cleanup?
Anyone know where the wind is blowing? Because I feel like Kennedy and Gordon got some good wood on the ball but it died completely over in right.
Based on what I’m seeing on weather.gov, the wind appears to be coming out of the SE (ie out of right field and blowing towards third base; Kauffman appears to be oriented with the 1B foul line running due east and the 3B foul line running due north) and very gusty — there’s some ugly thunder storms with a lot of rain approaching from the west/SW, and I highly doubt they’re going to get an official game in tonight.
So yeah, I wouldn’t expect anything hit to right to have any chance of getting out. So much for our lefty-heavy lineup…
Definitely blowing to left, several fly balls have gone a dozen feet farther to the left than where it looked like they were going when the ball was hit.
I hear thunder.
KC scored 2 runs, now we need a big rain storm to cancel the game before the 5th.
Okay, start pissing rain like now.
I just went to weather.com and looked at the satellite, it should start raining pretty soon now, and get pretty serious in the next half hour.
Yeah, I’d say the heavy stuff is ~45 minutes away. The M’s either need to score some runs or slow this thing down.
The weather in Kansas City sure looks nice on Gameday!
And the stands are entirely full of spectators!
It has to be a curse. I just can’t put my finger on it. Why, when you have guys who either have had success in the past, or have the potential to be successful, they absolutely stink when they put on the Mariner’s uniform? I am referring to those try to swing a bat and actually get hits. When a guy on our team goes 2 for 5, our analysts get excited. SERIOUSLY?! Look, I’m not saying that is a bad day by any stretch, but why do we lower the bar so freaking low?!?! I’m not expecting anything close to playoffs this year, but HOW, seriously, HOW is this team this pathetic at the plate against darn near everyone?! There isn’t any logic to it. Figgins is a pain on a daily basis when he’s an Angel, but once he puts on our uniform, he drops off the face of the planet. Beltre hits ridiculous home runs and is a nasty threat while in LA, continues when in Boston, and most likely will while in Texas… BUT NOT IN SEATTLE! Jeff Cirillo was a very good hitter, very good average, UNTIL Seattle. Is it all mental? Is the fact that Safeco being a big field mentally screwing these guy’s minds? Because our opponents don’t have a problem knocking them out! I just can’t grasp what is going on. I know these aren’t perennial All Star players, at least for the most of them, but this hitting has been going on now for 3 1/2 years. Anyone got a clue other than no talent, because I just watched Corey Patterson hit a home run off Felix and hit our pitchers a lot these last three games, so if he can do it, anyone freaking can!
Branyon didn’t seem to have many problems hitting in Safco… In other news, I miss Branyon.
Safeco didn’t seem to mess with the minds of the Mariners in 2001.
Also, 2 for 5 isn’t a low bar. If you can hit 2 for 5 consistently, you’re Ted Williams.
And I realize that was a rant, but paragraphs make it easier to read.
The top of the 6th was like, what, a three pitch inning for Chen?
I heard Guti lost 15 lbs. Geesh. Hope the M’s get him back soon.
Branyon could hit homeruns, but most were solo shots and pitchers weren’t afraid of giving him something to hit when no one was on base. But with his power, hitting a home run wasn’t difficult anywhere.
joser, I totally agree that it didn’t mess with their minds in 2001. I’m talking about the last 5 years or so of players. Everyone talks about how big Safeco is and how horrible it is to right handed hitters. Edgar and Mike Cameron did fine in 2001, and I’d say the same about Boone but he was juicing, so tough to count that. All I’m saying is that we seem to instill this idea that if you’re right handed you’re dead while hitting at safeco.
I’m just trying to find logic in it. We keeping hiring and firing hitting coaches. They all come in with their own idea on what to do. Nothing seems to work. I just can’t figure it out. It’s like the last few years consisted of guys who were mentally handicap at the plate, except Ichiro of course.
Here’s praying for the future. And sorry about the long rant above, joser.
If anybody else is listening to the radio side…is it just me, or does Ken Wilson have a striking similar intonation to one Vin Scully?
Sexson’s numbers in 2005 and 2006 were consistent with his career patterns as well.
Yay! And apparently Bradley was tried down to first base?
Ken wilson does sound like a bad vin scully impersonator.
Good heavens…Rizzs was just referencing Yogi Berra…apparently in regard to comebacks of epic proportions.
Sorry, Rizzy…I think two of those in the same
weekmonth might be too much to ask from this lineup.RayvensdadL no worries. A rant is fine and often healthy — it’s a little too quiet around USSM these days — but if you want folks to read it you want to break it up a little bit. I know my eyes glaze over when I hit a huge block of text.
And you’re right, the offensive struggles of this team — through most of the 00s, really — have been really frustrating and often virtually unwatchable. Some of it is indeed Safeco, as Dave and others have said (see his awesome comment here at LL) but of course it goes beyond that, because these batters (and these M’s teams) don’t scare anyone on the road, either.
Some of it — most of it really — was bad evaluation of talent and bad roster construction in the Bavasi era (overspending for old and mediocre NL batters, not even attempting to construct a roster to exploit Safeco, bad drafts, frantic and shortsighted save-my-job trades). And he emptied the farm system to do it, so we’re still living with the hangover of those years. (How would you like to have Asdrubal Cabrera as SS and Shin Soo Choo in LF? Adam Jones in center, with the Putz trade netting some other position player as awesome as Guti? How would you like to have Tulowitzki or Ryan Braun or Zimmerman instead of Jack Wilson? Ok, I’ll stop now. But a very different team was within his grasp, sometimes already in his pocket, and he pissed it away)
But some of it has simply been bad luck — even bad bets like Bavasi made sometimes pay off, but they didn’t for him (or for us). We had the joy of seeing virtually everything go right at the same time in 2001, and for our sins the baseball gods made sure we saw the other side of the karmic wheel, with virtually nothing going right ever since. (The karmic wheel turns slowly and it grinds very, very fine.)
Pretty sad that the groundskeeper getting rolled over by the tarp is probably the most exciting part of the game.
Seriously…a rain delay?
I think when the outcome’s pretty much been decided already, what the hell’s the point?
And that’s the game. They may be calling this a delay, but judging from the weather data it’s going to rain harder before it rains less, and I expect it’ll still be raining an hour from now when they decide to call it a night.
I don’t know about “exciting,” but I’ll take accidental tarp hijinx over dancing any day when it comes to groundskeeper entertainment. Does anybody remember when they used to try to use little tractors instead of huge teams of people and it often went bad in other ways?
Showing my age a bit here, Joser, but I remember back when I was a kid how some teams would actually drive their closer in from the bullpen in a golf cart!
Tuned in to this one just in time to see Miguel Olivo kill a rally, and then a rain delay happened. Gah.
I shall now pursue some other form of entertainment for the remainder of the evening.
Soooo…during the rain “delay,” they’re replaying Monday night’s rally on the radio side as a “Best of Mariners Radio” feature.
Hmmm…I wonder how much mileage Rizzy will try to get out of that one for like the next ten years or so?
Screw carts, the Mariners relievers came in on a boat! Yes, really.
(More about it, and all the other wacky bullpen taxis, here. Coco-Crisp destroying Moose piloted quads just don’t compare.)
If the M’s get swept in KC, how low do you think the Safeco attendance will be Mon, Tues, Wed against Detroit? I’m betting on sub-10k numbers.
Good luck turning a profit this year, How-Chuck.
Yeah, the M’s are definitely well below 2M total attendance this year, unless something radically unexpected happens.
Well, Gameday just declared it final. ‘Night, folks.
I just got home and saw the box score…. and thought Cust or somebody playing the DH spot must have got hurt? Kennedy DH and Cleanup?
I never thought I’d look fondly on the days when Vidro was our cleanup hitter.
I never could quite understand what all the boats, carts, taxis, etc. were all about back in the 70′s, actually. I guess something kind of cute and fun to entertain the fans with…but still. (As portly as Jose Mesa might’ve been, hey, props to him for at least sprinting in from the bullpen like a professional athlete is paid to do!
)
Isn’t Jack Wilson one of Jack Z’s guys?
Yeah, but my thinking there went like this: Bavasi/Fontaine took Jeff Clement in 2005 instead of any of those guys (or Jay Bruce or Ricky Romero or Jacoby Ellsbury or Colby Rasmus or Andrew McCutchen or Matt Garza… holy frack that draft was loaded, and somehow the M’s found the one thorn among the roses). Clement was eventually traded to Pittburgh (with a bunch of other guys) for Wilson and Snell. Which wouldn’t have happened if they’d picked virtually anyone else in ’05 except Clement. So the last remnant of value from that awful 2005 draft is Jack Wilson.
Joser, you are correct, but all MLB fields are supposed to be oriented in that direction. If you are standing at home plate looking at the pitcher, you are facing northeast. Coors field isn’t quite lined up that way – which is another reason why it sucks. Most every field (high school and above) has or makes a legitimate attempt to face northeast. You will rarely find a good field – that doesn’t.
Other than that pointless piece of information – GOD THIS TEAM STINKS. If they used aluminium bats they probably wouldn’t average 4.5 runs per game. Bruce Chen dominates this lineup. Bruce phooking fracking Chen.
Potential for taking 3 out of 4 from KC? Huh? Maybe if Felix and Pineda threw every other game. Even with that, it would still only be a “maybe” because they can’t throw shutouts every night.
Hey it was the ’70s. The world was up to its patchouli-scented avocado-and-orange polyester shag eyeballs in bad decisions.
Well at least I still have my Mets to root for. Oh wait…
It was the best of times, I I I say it was the worst of times …
“I’m a chicken hawk and you’re a chicken”
BLAM!
I wonder if those old cartoons are out on DVD? I am considering looking for a new 3 hour pseudo vacation away from reality time filler every evening.
Directly from the “More Often Than Not” handbook:
“Luck” – When preparation meets opportunity
“Bad luck” – When bad preparation meets opportunity.
Similar, but not.
Bruce phooking fracking Chen seems to be one of those pitchers that does much better facing the Mariners than he does against most other teams. In fact among teams with at least 150 PAs facing him, only the Marlins, the Astros, and the Jays have done worse.
Still, yeah, ugh.
Agreed.
And unfortunately, the list of those “types” of pitchers is ever growing. The Sandy Koufax phenomena is definitely in play whenever the Mariners come to town.
Wait, how can we have either one of the M’s miraculous comebacks or near comebacks if the game is called? There seems to be a flaw in the M’s playbook here.