Game 8, Mariners at Rays
4:05 pm, Bedard vs Garza
First off, Happy Birthday Felix! The King turned 22 today. Twenty-Two. Most hall of fame pitchers are still hanging out on minor league buses at 22, and Felix is heading into his third full season and establishing himself as one of the game’s best pitchers. Enjoy the b-day and please never leave us.
In other news, the M’s really should win this one. Matt Garza has a good arm, but he hasn’t figured out what to do with it yet, and Bedard’s good enough to shut down the Rays bats. Tampa’s a legitimate opponent, but for the M’s to contend, these are the types of games they need to win most of the time.
Line-Up:
CF Ichiro
2B Lopez
3B Beltre
LF Ibanez
1B Sexson
RF Wilkerson
DH Vidro
C Johjima
SS Betancourt
I like Beltre hitting 3rd and Ibanez fourth, and I hope that move is permanent. Ideally, this would setup well if the M’s wanted to bring in a LH hitting left fielder (Kenny Lofton, still a free agent), move Ibanez to DH, and platoon Vidro/Sexson at first base, as Lofton’s bat would fit in well in the #2 hole ahead of Beltre.
Just a suggestion.
M’s defense so far
For all of the talk about how the defense will come around, that it’s a strength of the team (please note I don’t believe either of those things, but they’ve been mentioned in the broadcast over and over), the M’s right now are in the middle of the pack in terms of overall, raw balls-in-play-into-outs, at .716, 17/30. Last year a normal team ran about .695 — but the season’s early, obviously.
And last year on the year the M’s were 27 of 30, at .678, with essentially the same defense except Ibanez was a year less gimpy and RF swaps out. So there’s pretty good reason to expect that despite predictions from Blowers & Co., you’re unlikely to see this level of defense, absolute or relative, sustained for the rest of the year.
2-5
Early trade results: Baltimore acquired three saves, a couple of base hits, and some good outfield defense in exchange for a bad hip. Advantage, Orioles.
Seriously, though, it’s another one run loss. Yes, Eric O’Flaherty had about as bad a first week in his new job as humanly possible, McLaren’s not inspiring confidence that he’s any better at this than he was last year, and the offense still looks horrible at times, but the team has been outscored by a whopping two runs in seven games. If you break an ankle jumping off the bandwagon now, it’s going to be harder to climb back on with a gimpy wheel when the breaks start going the M’s way.
Calm Down
Yes, the Mariners have lost three in a row to the Orioles. But man, reading through the comments, you’d think McLaren attacked Felix with a knife in his sleep. Can we inject a little sanity into this process?
Look, no one’s been more critical of the job the organization in building the 2008 Mariners than I have. All winter, I talked about my concerns about how the team was going to score runs, play defense, and win on days when Felix and Bedard aren’t pitching. This roster has problems – we’ve known it for months, and it’s not a big surprise.
But really, the team has scored 23 runs and allowed 24 in six games. That is not cause for panic. It’s just not. Nothing (besides Putz’s injury) that has happened since opening day should have changed your opinion about this team one ounce. If you weren’t freaking out a week ago, you shouldn’t be freaking out now.
This isn’t to say there aren’t valid criticisms of the roster or the way it’s being handled. There are, obviously. But one of the main criticisms of the blog (fairly or not) is that we don’t get particularly excited about the team doing well when it’s not sustainable. The flip side of that should also be true – there’s no reason to freak out when the team loses a one run game. It’s not proof that this team is terrible; it’s proof that one run games can go either way.
We call out the organization and the local writers when they do things that aren’t up to the standard we expect. In turn, we need to hold ourselves to a standard above firing the manager because the team is 2-4 in six games. Rationality works both ways.
McLaren and his not-exhausted six-man bullpen
McLaren’s carped a little about only having 11 pitchers on his staff. The issue, though, isn’t that the bullpen can’t handle the load, it’s that McLaren’s using his bullpen badly — there’s just no other way to put this.
| 3/31 | 4/1 | 4/2 | 4/3 | 4/4 | 4/5 | 4/6 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Baek | off | 18 | |||||
| Corcoran | off | 30 | 4 | ||||
| Green | 37 | 20 | off | 33 | |||
| Lowe | 3 | 6 | off | 12 | |||
| O’Flaherty | 17 | 14 | off | 29 | 15 | ||
| Putz | 19 | 30 | |||||
| Rowland-Smith | off | 7 |
He has two relievers well-suited to long relief, and he’s burning Green every other game. He’s got two lefties, and he’s not using them even in situations where there are several lefties due up and they could be neutralized by a left-handed reliever. He doesn’t seem to realize that Rowland-Smith is on the staff at all.
And then, because he knew I was working on this post, he threw O’Flaherty in the 9th against some lefties. It didn’t work out, but good for thinking in that direction for once. If only he’d realize there’s another left-handed pitcher that can share the workload. Or… well, there’s a lot of things I wish they’d realize.
Game 6, Mariners at Orioles
Felix Day!
Nothing quite turns my spirits around after a game like last night’s than to know that Felix is going to be taking the mound, even if it’s ahead of schedule to pick up for Bedard.
Felix faces Guthrie, a pitcher whose notable characteristics include not being Felix. Which must suck.
M’s run out their standard Sunday day lineup. It’d be nice if they thought about, say, subbing out more than just the catcher, but this is the Mariners we’re talking about. I remember back in the day, when Lou would throw all his subs in on Sundays, and I’d complain that he’d be better off using them as appropriate rather than just punting one game a week. Ah, those were the days, when the bench got used at all.
The Orioles respond in kind, subbing Quiroz in at catcher, and Hernandez in at short.
In Happier News
Phillipe Aumont’s professional debut in Wisconsin: 4 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 4 K. Not bad. He’s already talking about hoping they move him up later this year, but I wonder if anyone has told him that that High Desert’s park isn’t really a place you want to pitch.
He’s going to work out of the bullpen in a tandem start fashion for the first month of the year and move to the rotation in May. Regardless of what’s happening with the big club, there’s always hope down on the farm.
Jose, Jose
Mariner leaders:
AVG: Betancourt (.429)
OBP: Betancourt (.429)
SLG: Jose Lopez (.722)
H: Betancourt (6)
2B: Betancourt (2)
HRs: Jose Lopez, Jose Vidro (2)
XBH: Jose Lopez (3)
R: Betancourt, Jose Vidro (4)
RBI: Jose Lopez (5)
Total bases: Jose Lopez (13)
Walks: Beltre, Wilkerson (4)
Bedard out
Hip inflammation’s the early word. Felix moves up in the schedule. No prediction on whether Bedard will be available for the Tampa series.
Ow. Ow ow ow.
Sexson at-bats for April 5th
I don’t even need to show you pictures.
I will, quickly, note that what we’ve been saying is not that Sexson’s helpless, or never going to get hits — it’s that his bat speed is appreciably slower than it was when he was an effective hitter. Then his whole approach degrades quickly, because he has to cheat to make good contact, guess a lot, and let a lot of pitches go by. The result is, as Steve Nelson’s pointed out a couple times in comments, the classic old player crash: walks go up, average dives, and power declines though when they do make contact, by guess, cheat, or luck, the ball can still go a long way, because he’s still strong.