RRS to DL
To make room for Ichiro, the M’s put Ryan Rowland-Smith on the DL. Chris Jakubauskas takes his spot in the rotation and will pitch tomorrow. Personally, I’d have rather seen Felix pitching against the Angels on normal rest, but they know the status of his ankle better than I do.
The injury is reported as triceps tendonitis, and the DL move is retroactive to April 11th. If it’s minor, he’ll be back shortly. But these kind of minor arm injuries have a way of lingering, so we’ll have to see.
Dave On KGA
I’ll be on the air with Sean Widmer at 4:20 pm. You can listen live online or tune in to 1510 if you’re in Spokane.
Forget Nick Swisher
If the .685 wOBA during the first week of the season didn’t convince the Yankees to hang onto Swisher, news that Xavier Nady is out for the season with a torn elbow ligament will. No way the Yanks trade Swisher now.
New WSJ Article
My latest WSJ piece is up, for those interested in a 300 word overview on some of the young ground ball pitchers in baseball.
I’m Just Saying
Pitch F/x missed the third inning, so the data below won’t match official totals. Point is still the same.
Aardsma: 19 pitches, 19 fastballs
Morrow: 16 pitches, 14 fastballs
Corcoran: 14 pitches, 14 fastballs
The Mariner relievers combined to throw 49 pitches today. 47 of them were fastballs. Toss in Silva, and the Mariners threw 135 pitches today – 90.3% of them were fastballs.
I get that Silva’s sinker is his only major league pitch. I get that Aardsma throws hard. I get that Corcoran’s sinker is his only major league pitch. I get that Morrow throws hard. I know, they were going with their best stuff.
But 90% fastballs? Really? Did Kenji decide that if Wak was going to second guess him for calling for a secondary pitch in Minnesota that he’d just go drastically the other way?
I’m thrilled that we’re 6-2. But can we get a few breaking balls tomorrow, please?
New day
The M’s, at 6-2, have now won 10% of last year’s total. If they go .500 the rest of the way, they’ll finish 83-79, an improvement of 27 games.
Game 8, Angels at Mariners
Silva vs Loux, 3:40 pm.
Chavez, RF
Cedeno, LF
Griffey, DH
Beltre, 3B
Branyan, 1B
Lopez, 2B
Johjima, C
Gutierrez, CF
Betancourt, SS
Opening Day, Part II
The new look M’s take the field in about three hours for their first home game of the season. Very few people expected this series to feature the first place Mariners, and I’d imagine most people outside of Seattle expect the Angels to “correct” that early season fluke in this series. However, I’d give the M’s pretty good odds tonight, at least.
I know, Carlos Silva is pitching. But for Silva, this is about as good a match-up as he’s going to get. The Angels line-up is almost as RH heavy as the Mariners – their only LH bats are Chone Figgins, Bobby Abreu, Kendry Morales, and Erick Aybar, and neither Figgins nor Aybar is going to scare you much. Almost all of the Angels power is right-handed, so Silva should be able to feature his sinker/slider combination against Guerrero, Hunter, Napoli, Kendrick, and Rivera. You neutralize those five, and the Angels aren’t going to score many runs.
LAA counters with Shane Loux, who is basically their version of Silva. He throws a 91 MPH fastball that doesn’t miss any bats at all, and his game plan is to put the ball over the plate and pray. He’s the kind of pitcher that a contact oriented team can beat down pretty badly – Betancourt and Lopez can hit guys like this.
Don’t be surprised if we’re talking about the 6-2 Mariners after tonight’s game. The next two will be significantly tougher to win, but at least for one night, bet on the M’s.
Dave on KUOW
I’ll be doing a short interview on KUOW 94.9 at 12:40ish this afternoon. Probably only lasts five minutes or so, but tune in if you’d like.
Recap of the Monday content
Since we posted many thousands of words yesterday, and I’m sure you need something to distract you from Opening Day at Safeco Field, Featuring Newer, Slimmer Carlos Silva (side note: is there really no way they could have jiggered the rotation somehow to avoid this?).
– Jay Yencich wrote a Minor League Wrap that will be retold by future generations in epic verse form
– I threw in an update about construction and traffic around the games
– Dave offered thoughts from the first week
– Larry Stone got great quotes from Ichiro
– The FTA’s blaming the 2005 Congress, the M’s, and you for the regulation that ended ten years of success with shuttle buses
In non-M’s news, Harry Kalas, Phillies broadcaster, and Mark Fidrych, Tigers pitcher, died. Jayson Stark’s column on Kalas.