Felix Start #2
Okay, so I missed the M’s game this afternoon, but I’m around for Felix going in Sacramento tonight, so I’m going to do a running game diary, at least for a few innings.
Also, for anyone headed to Tacoma for the home opener on Friday night, you get a happy surprise: Chris Snelling should be in the lineup on Friday, barring any other freak accidents in the next 48 hours.
7:10 PM PDT The feed isn’t doing that hot tonight. Hopefully I can actually pull this off.
7:14 According to Mike Curto on the broadcast, there’s a “modest crowd” in Sacramento tonight. He should have seen the crowd in Winston-Salem last night.
Also, Curto informs us that Jamal Strong and Wiki Gonzalez are on a play-play-day off schedule, where they never play three games in a row. Both are coming off knee surgeries.
7:19 He’s “King Felix” on the broadcasts too. That nickname’s not going away. Nice job, Jason.
7:22 Bobby Smith just stared at strikes one, two, and three. Didn’t move his bat the entire trip to the plate.
7:24 Scoreless first for Felix. 12 pitches, 10 strikes. Since he’s on an 80 pitch limit, its great to see him firing strikes.
7:34 Rainiers take a lead on a base hit by Dustin Delucchi, scoring Shin-Soo Choo.
7:40 Curto rules. He just called Jack Cust a Three True Outcomes hitter, and then explianed what the TTO are.
7:48 Felix with another strikeout to end the inning, stranding two runners. Quoting Curto: “That was nasty.”
8:06 Felix is starting to cruise. 96 MPH fastball blows away Freddie Bynum.
8:12 Shin-Soo Choo with his first home run of the season. Rainiers up by two.
8:23 I’m wearing down, so this is probably my last inning. We don’t have anyone warming up in the USSM bullpen, though.
8:28 Felix gives up a triple but gets out of it scoreless. Four more shutout innings. He’s kinda good.
Night all.
Comments
77 Responses to “Felix Start #2”
In spite of the first-week system hiccups, I really like the new MILB.com. Getting real-time game logs from the minors is quite a treat. (In fact, I think I’m becoming spoiled.) Here’s the Tacoma one (the game just ended– nice win, Felix): http://www.minorleaguebaseball.com/app/milb/stats/stats.jsp?t=g_log&gid=2005_04_13_tacaaa_srcaaa_1
The San Antonio log allows me to scroll down through, thinking “Wow, Livingston’s getting ground balls almost every time– Oh, no! [homer by Colamarino]– okay, now he’s tiring– oh well, 1-0 loss.”
I can remember 1981 (when I was 13), during the strike, finding a newsstand with The Sporting News, and wondering who all these minor-league guys were, especially the very good Wausau team that year (Nunez, Coles, Presley, Calderon, Reynolds, Moses– and, interestingly, eventual Detroit pitching coach Rick Adair) and what futures they might have. But even small bits of information about them were quite rare. Truly we live in an amazing time.
I like Rich Waltz. He’s low key, doesn’t fawn over the players asks them relatively intelligent questions and actually listens to the answers in order to pose follow ups. I was actually hoping the M’s would can Rizzzzzsss and offer the job to Waltz. Rizzzs is too much of a suckup to ever lose the job though.
Now you guys have made me want to listen to Curto. The Marlins could have done a lot worse.
and now for the “what are you still doing up at THAT time?! post”…
this might seem ignorant, but is Rich Waltz NOT doing pregame/postgame stuff for the M’s this season I would guess?… I’ve actually gone to more games this season than I’ve watched, so this is news to me…
Can someone explain to me why Joe Morgan rubs people the wrong way? I’ve only heard him do commentary a couple times but when I heard him he didn’t say anything that rubbed me the wrong way. John Madden is another one that some people complain about but I liked as an announcer, although different sport.
Did anyone else notice in the game-log that most (all?) of Felix’s strikeouts were *looking*? Isn’t that a bit odd?
Now that Rich Waltz is in Florida, who will spell Dave Niehaus in July when he goes on his vacation?
Sounds like a job for Mike Curto if you ask me. Or Kevin Calabro. Can’t go wrong with either man.
#41, I’m assuming that’s the same Brian Davis that’s doing the Sonics games now? He’s TERRIBLE if so. Be nice if him to go back to Football, as Brad Adams is about 5 times better. Hell, Angie Arlati did a better job too.
As for baseball, where’s the Dave Henderson or Dave Valle comments?
#54 Tim,
Sorry to say it, but if you’re a fan of Madden, there’s just no hope at all. I know it’s football, but I guess that’s the point, why does he have to dumb it down even more?
#53- greenalw9 said:”but is Rich Waltz NOT doing pregame/postgame stuff for the M’s this season I would guess?”
he’s in Florida, and Fox hired the bland fellow Matt Morrison to replace him:
http://edition.cnn.com/CNN/anchors_reporters/morrison.matt.html
I was sort of hoping Capuano would get a shot, as she has been pretty good so far (esp. by FSN’s usual standards).
#57- Dobbs said:”I’m assuming that’s the same Brian Davis that’s doing the Sonics games now? He’s TERRIBLE if so. Be nice if him to go back to Football, as Brad Adams is about 5 times better. Hell, Angie Arlati did a better job too.”
um, Elise Woodward. I still don’t know what FSN was thinking, replacing McKinney & Woodward with Ehlo and Davis.
Apr. 14 The Mariners clarified their rotation for the weekend, and Gil Meche (P) Sea is now scheduled to pitch Sunday and not Saturday, according to the Seattle Times. Either way, he’s still being pushed back from his originally scheduled start on Friday due to a stiff elbow.
Apr. 14 Ryan Franklin (P) Sea will move up a day to pitch on Saturday so that Gil Meche can get another day of rest for his stiff elbow, according to the Seattle Times.
Apr. 14 The Mariners sold the contract of Kit Pellow (3B) Sea to the Lotte Giants of the Korean professional league, according to the Seattle Times. Pellow had been with Triple-A Tacoma.
at least madden is the kind of dumb that makes your laugh. or at least makes me laugh. not like joe theismann dumb, which makes me turn off the tv. or joe morgan dumb that makes me throw things at the tv. hard things. big hard things.
Curto is awesome to listen to. He’s got that nasally tone to his voice that carries good emphasis. I’d love to see him in Rizzs’ shoes. Maybe Detroit will come calling for Rizzs again soon…
I always liked the voice of the Rainiers before Curto too, WSU’s Bob Robertson. He did play-by-play for years for them, only to find out he was losing his job by seeing it advertised. What a shame…
He was one of the last throwback announcers too, who, while the Tigers/Rainiers were on the road, he stayed back in his Cheney Stadium press box broadcasting the game, similar to the announcers in “Bull Durham”.
Tim (#54)– the distaste for Morgan here is largely due to his tendency to disrespect sabermetrics [modern statistical baseball analysis] every chance he gets.
(What’s ironic about that tendency is that sabermetricians have consistently recognized Morgan as having been a truly great player, much more so than the mainstream sports media ever did.)
I don’t like Morgan for two reasons.
1) He’s always thinks he’s right, and I mean always. If you watch an entire game he’ll say questionable things the whole time and find a way to make you think he’s right. Even when he’s wrong he finds a way to make it look like he was right.
2) A year or so ago he wrote an article on ESPN where he said something to the effect of Player X Sucks. Then that Friday he did a chat and said something like “Player X needs to improve skill Y.” Later someone asked, “Why do you think player X Sucks?” Joe came back and reemed the guy saying “I never said that. I wish people would actually read what I said and not infer things that I never said.” Maybe he writes enough stuff that he doesn’t remember or maybe an editor changed it. But you could still fine the quote on ESPN and Joe adamantly said “I never said that”.
Morgan always struck me as a great player, but not a great mind, if you will. This is why he obstructs new and/or non-linear thinking. He is the baseball equivalent of a Luddite–comfortable only with the more visceral aspects of the game as he recalls them and more than happy to destroy the machinery of new and interesting mode of consideration in the sport.
That said, nice guy…and a fine 2B.
Rizz to Office, Curto to Booth–yes please. Should we start a movement?
Joe Morgan was on an ESPN chat and ripped Billy Beane for self-promotion when he wrote Moneyball. No kidding. Someone pointed out to him that Beane was not the author, but a subject of the book. What did he do? On the next chat, he repeated his assertion that Beane wrote Moneyball. To me, that shows that not only is he hopelessly ignorant, but he willfully ignores facts that get in the way of his viewpoint.
Perhaps more annoying in his disdain for statical analyis is Harold Reynolds. I don’t know what motivates Morgan, but Reynolds seems to be motivated by the fact that his career is exposed for the mediocrity it was by almost any statistical measure.
The only thing I ever liked about Morgan was that he loved Junior. But he is an arrogant man, and to paraphrase Moneybal, the ringleader of the old boys network in baseball that refuses to get with the program re: sabermetrics
That Q & A with him and karl ravech was awful
I too, would like to see Mike Curto moved up to the big league booth. I cannot stand Rick Rizz any more. He isn’t as good as Curto.
this seems like an appropriate spot for a thought about seattle area broadcasters–maybe i’m alone on this but i absolutely cannot stand dave henderson in the broadcast booth. he literally sounds like he has an i.q. of about 60 with a dumb nervous “i’m a goofus” giggle that just drives me bonkers. i actually would rate him in a category with craig ehlo. am i the only one who thinks this–if so i’ll shut my embarassed trap.
#69 – I completely agree. I can’t stand Dave Henderson either. I remember last season when he constantly referred to Olivo as “Oliva”. He’s full of horrible grammer, freudian slips, mispronounciation of names, etc. However, he knows the game and is a familiar name to fans, which I think is why he somehow still has a job in the booth. I really wish they’d bring back Dave Krueger as a full-time color guys instead, however. But I believe Krueger is probably cemented in his FSN Live job now.
Imagine if we could have a first 4 1/2 innings of Niehaus and Fairly, and a second 4 1/2 innings of Curto and Krueger.
*Grammer = grammar. Sorry.
Did Jason come up with the idea to call him King Felix? I just heard it here and used it ever since.
Jason or Dave used it first in email, Jason used it in public first here.
What happened to Buhner as color guy? Am I crazy? Didn’t he try that for a while, maybe a couple of years ago now? Can you imagine anyone who would be more popular?
Sorry for being so behind; I’ve been living in DC for the past few years.
The Times reported in spring training that Buhner got some suggestive comments from management that he not be as critical of the team in his commentary this year.
In typical Bone fashion He said he’d commentate his way or not at all. He said he didn’t need the money, would rather spend more time with his kids and told them to stuff it.
Now I hardly heard a critical comment out of Bone whenever I heard him and if any team had a right to get some criticism it was the 2004 Mariners. Apparently the M’s only want corporate shills like Rizzzsss behind the mike. You sell your soul to the men in charge when you take a position as the front man to this crew.
I do recall Buhner ragging players once or twice. And Niehaus will make some pointed commentary as well…but he’s Broadcaster-for-Life in the M’s banana republic.
Well, frankly, I think Buhner’s earned the same right to rag on players if they’re not up to snuff….