There was an ommission in today’s ESPN pitch-by-pitch Game Log. The 7th inning should read:
—
TEXAS 7TH
Gil Meche pitches to Michael Young
Pitch 1: ball 1
Pitch 2: strike 1 (foul caught by D Zumsteg)
Pitch 3: in play
M Young flied out to center.
Gil Meche pitches to Hank Blalock
Pitch 1: strike 1 (looking)
Pitch 2: strike 2 (swinging)
Pitch 3: in play
H Blalock flied out to center.
Gil Meche pitches to Alex Rodriguez
Pitch 1: in play
A Rodriguez flied out to center.
0 runs, 0 hits, 0 errors
Texas 2, Seattle 7
—
M’s won, I made a nice catch — I’m one happy fan tonight.
A note for those of you in the eastern time zone (or you pacific time zone people who get up way too early on weekends); I’m going to be live on Baseball Prospectus Radio on Saturday at 6:25 a.m. pacific time. We will be taking phone calls, so if you’ve got a prospect or two that you want to talk about, feel free to call in.
Thanks, Arthur
Mariners Notebook: Rhodes admits injury
“It was tough at first to throw; it was hard on the landing,” Rhodes said. “I think now maybe I should have gone on the disabled list. I’ve been pitching on it, and it hasn’t healed.”
I’m not a doctor — nor do I play one on television — but I said at the time he should have gone on the DL to get his ankle healed up. Sure it would have been rough without him for two weeks, but at least we’d have him 100% now. Instead, the only left-hander in the pen won’t be quite right the rest of the season. Injuries like this, which cause a pitcher to change his mechanics or motion to compensate, are the sort of thing which lead to arm injuries.
Well, a win tonight. And it only took 129 pitches from Joel Pineiro to do it! In fairness, he was working on seven days rest. But 129 pitches? Soriano hasn’t pitched since Sunday. Mateo threw 5 pitches last night. Rhodes only threw 3. Sasaki hasn’t pitched since Friday. Given that it was a save situation, I’m surprised he didn’t use Shiggy. But this is classic Melvin — when something bad happens (like Tuesday night’s loss), he overreacts huge in the opposite direction.
Boston and Oakland both won, so there’s nothing doing in the standings.
Oh, and I think this is about the best news I’ve read all day: “[Mark] McLemore, who is a free agent at the end of the year, has expressed an interest in returning to Texas according to the Dallas Morning News.” So, uh, good luck with that.
Tomorrow…
Anaheim (Scot Shields; 4-4, 2.97 mostly in relief) at Oakland (Rich Harden; 4-4, 4.80), 12.35pm
Texas (Mickey Callaway; 1-6, 7.28) at Seattle (Gil Meche; 14-10, 4.08), 7:05pm
Boston idle (home vs. White Sox starting Friday)
Yet another botched bunt (two by Wilson — the so-called “best bunter on the team” — in less than a week).
C’mon guys, this isn’t rocket science.
You know, the “power outage” jokes got really old, really fast. Rizzs has just used about 14 variations of it since Boone homered. The power is back! The power outage is over! I’m an uncreative nitwit!
Oh, and, while I’m here, I’d like to let everyone know that we’re sorry if we don’t answer your emails. We currently have 70 emails sitting in our inbox, and we simply don’t have time to respond to them all. They all get read, however, and we try to respond to as many as we can.
Oh, and as to the Mariners thanking “the best fans in baseball” — Seattle doesn’t have the best fans in baseball, as clearly shown every time Alex comes up to bat.
I come here not to defend Box, but to bury him
Given a game-winning situation with Olerud, who can’t hit lefties and hasn’t.. um, almost ever… and a lefty pitching, where one hit/run will win the game, why not pinch-hit for Olerud (this season, .243/.327/.309 v LHP) with:
C-B Ben Davis (.278/.333/.556 v LHP)
Pat Borders, C-R, who hit .348 with 12 doubles, a triple, and a homer, 7 BB and 11 K in 83 AB v LHP at Tacoma
Chad Meyers, UT-R, who hit .314 with 5 doubles, a triple, and a homer, 8 BB and 10 SO in 86 AB v LHP at Tacoma
Jamal Strong, OF-R who hit .278 with a double, triple, and homer and 6 BB, 6 SO in 36 AB v LHP at Tacoma
Bleah. What a dumb move that was.
Question of morality: If you saw Rafael Palmeiro walking down a dark alley tommorrow and knew you wouldn’t get caught, would you take out his knees? I think I’d be tempted. He’s the new age Brian Downing. Just kills us.
I’m going to defend Box here, as well. Benitez has pitched extremely well since the trade, and this was a good spot to use him. It just didn’t work.
Off-the-cuff game preview: Texas at Seattle
The Rangers are starting a lefty (Tony Mounce), which should bode well for the M’s. As a team this season, they’ve hit .285/.358/.428 vs. LHP, as opposed to .268/.340/.407 vs. RHP. Much of this advantage is thanks to Ichiro, who boasts a reverse platoon split this year, Randy Winn, who has hit lefties quite well. Other lefty maulers include Edgar (1.049 OPS) and Ben Davis (.556 SLG). Oddly, Bret Boone has hit RHP much better than LHP this year.
Jason’s batting order for the night would be: RF Ichiro, CF Cameron, LF Winn, DH Edgar, 2B Boone, C Davis, 3B Guillen, 1B Olerud, SS Sanchez. These are the nights when it would be really nice to have Greg Colbrunn in place of John Olerud, but hey, what are you gonna do?
On the other side of things, I’m concerned about Ryan Franklin tonight. He’s given up the second-most homers (32) of any pitcher in Major League Baseball, and he’s facing the team that’s hit more homers than any team in Major League Baseball. Strangely, Franklin’s homers are second only to another Franklin, Wayne Franklin of the Brewers (35). In any event, we all know the Rangers are capable of putting runs on the board. Franklin will likely be facing some combination of A-Rod, Rafael Palmeiro, Mark Teixeira and Hank Blalock in the middle of the batting order, and that ain’t shabby.
Mounce has walked 22 in 36.2 major league innings this season, so you’re probably thinking it would be a good idea for the M’s to be patient up there and take a ton of walks. See, I’d normally think that too, but frankly they’ve been hitting so poorly lately I’d like to see them be a bit more aggressive. Guys like Cameron and Olerud in particular have looked so, well, passive lately. Olerud seems to get down 0-2 before even taking the bat off his shoulders. So I say take your hacks, boys, and try to jump on this rookie early in the game. After all, he’s allowing hitters a .320 average this season.