Game 128, Athletics at Mariners
7:10. Gonzalez v Feierabend
Wlad to center!
LaHair to DH!
Cairo to first!
Now that… that’s excitement.
Good News From T-Town
Brandon Morrow in Portland last night – 4 2/3 IP, 2 H, 2 R, 1 BB, 10 K, 72 pitches, 52 strikes.
In his last couple of starts, Morrow has begun to mix in his breaking ball and not just depend on the fastball, and well, the results are obvious. He faced 18 batters yesterday, punching out 56% of them. Almost three quarters of his pitches were strikes. He was dominating.
The M’s will probably give him one more start in Tacoma, getting him up to 85-90 pitches before bringing him back to Seattle when rosters expand. With Rowland-Smith succeeding last night and Morrow flashing his potential, there is some hope for this rotation yet.
I’m a Sims fan
Sims, talking about Andy Devine (“that name will ring a bell…”)
Blowers, in standard-issue flat Blowers voice: “It will?”
Long, long pause and then you can barely hear Sims cracking up. Then Sims — not acknowledging the break at all — picks up calling the game.
Unlike many other broadcasters, if you really listen to Sims through a game, you’re rewarded: you’ll hear him throw a couple of gems out there for those of us paying attention. Sometimes it’s a gentle self-deprecating joke, or mocking the amount of commercial endorsements they do, or the game, and sometimes it’s a winking pun (“…an explosion out of his lower body” or yesterday’s repetition joke) but I have to say, as much as the “no question/no doubt” thing he’s picking up from Blowers annoys me, Sims has helped make this year a lot easier to watch.
Game 127, Athletics at Mariners
Smith v Rowland-Smith
Will To Win
One of the frequent criticisms of this organization by fans at large is that they’re not interested in winning, just in making money. In fact, the quantity of comments like that popping up here have increased dramatically over the last few weeks – we seemingly can’t have a thread about anything before someone pops in and says that the team is happy just being competitive and profitable. In this morning’s P-I, Chuck Armstrong responded to a similar question:
“I’d respond that that’s nonsense,” Armstrong said. “Look at the payroll. If you split the big city markets with two teams (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago), Seattle is the 18th-biggest market in the league. The payroll as of the All-Star break was sixth or seventh. That’s commitment of ownership.
“I keep scratching my head — what more could ownership do? If we’d made the right decisions along the way, we’d be right there. If what we were worried about was making a profit, we’d lower payroll, not raise it.”
Guess what – he’s right. The “ownership doesn’t care about winning” line isn’t based on any kind of actual evidence. The Mariners have consistently spent huge amounts of money on their payroll since moving into Safeco Field, and have had the financial edge over the rest of the division for the last decade. If winning was simply based on payroll, the M’s would be running away with the AL West for the 10th year in a row.
Simply because of population density, the Yankees, Red Sox, and Mets will always be in their own little stratosphere of payroll, with the other 27 teams lagging behind. Take them out of the picture for a second – who else has consistently outspent the Mariners in payroll?
Detroit has a $20 million higher payroll this year, but this was their go-for-broke season when they pushed it all in to try and win this year. It didn’t work, and they’ll be cutting payroll this winter.
Then, there’s a big cluster of teams all right around the $120 million payroll mark – the Angels, Dodgers, Cubs, White Sox, and Mariners. That’s the group the M’s find themselves in when it comes to spending – being dead even with the two Chicago and two LA franchises.
I’m not sure what more people want, honestly. The Mariners are supposed to outspend the Dodgers and Cubs now? Why? Quite simply, if you can’t build a winning team for $120 million, you don’t deserve any more money, or even a job. And that’s the conclusion the Mariners finally came to this year – the problem isn’t the lack of money available to sign talent, but instead, the people in charge of deciding who to give it to.
Now, I’m not a Chuck Armstrong/Howard Lincoln fanboy by any means – we have deep philosophical disagreements with them on how things should be run, and it’s clear that a good portion of the blame for how this franchise has been handled falls at their feet. But can we please put to rest this notion that somehow ownership doesn’t want to win? It’s ridiculous and unsupported by any kind of actual fact.
The Mariners want to win – they just don’t know how. Ignorance is not the same thing as apathy.
Starting Suckitude
Mariners starters versus White Sox this series:
11 1/3 IP, 24 hits, 21 runs, 7 walks, 0 strikeouts, 6 home runs
Washburn, Hernandez, and Dickey faced 63 batters – they didn’t strike out a single one. That’s only slightly worse than the weekend series in Minnesota, when Silva, Rowland-Smith, and Feierabend combined to strike out a whopping two batters.
The M’s starting pitchers have combined for two strikeouts in their last six starts. The odds of that have to be astronomical.
Game 126, Mariners at White Sox
11:05 AM our time. Dickey v Floyd.
Please cross-apply my previous post
I’ve been chewing over re-writing the “Imagine Sisyphus a Mariner” post for a while, and re-reading it, I think I’ll pass: it needs almost no update, though it was posted February of 2007.
How sad is that?
Game 125, Mariners at White Sox
Felix! Woooooooooooooooo! 5:11.
Try not to get whiplash, but check this out.
| IP | K/9 | BB/9 | HR/9 | GB% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pitcher A | 140 | 5.01 | 2.76 | 1.16 | 36% |
| Pitcher B | 151 | 8.34 | 2.41 | .6 | 52% |
I’ll leave it at that.
USSM redesign request for recs
Hey, I’d really like to spiff up the place and get a nice site design up. Mine is… it’s not cutting it. So — we’re looking for a new WordPress theme, I’ll pay out for it, and rather than put this up on Elance or something, I thought I’d see if the readership had recommendations for design resources.
Random thoughts:
– cheap is good, as our coffers are almost entirely donation-based
– previous WordPress theme work a plus
– Seattle-based a plus
– support in case future WP versions break the layout is extra-good
So please, pointers appreciated.