U.S.S. Mariner

Hi folks, Jason here with your game thread for the last day of May.
Chad Gaudin, making his 2005 debut, vs. Ryan Franklin. 7:05pm, FSN and KOMO.
Gaudin’s just a kid, having made his MLB debut at 20 years of age back in 2003 with the Devil Rays. Tampa Bay traded him to Toronto this winter for [...]

Get out those lighters, folks, and wave them gently from side to side…
Scott Spiezio, who you may remember as the guy who injured himself getting his only hit of the year and has been out since with a “strained oblique” was on the field for batting practice yesterday. His recovery from the oblique strain was [...]

If I told you that a 26-year-old right-handed outfielder, who makes the league minimum, and is slugging .512 on the strength of 4 home runs in 41 at-bats so far this year got designated for assignment this morning, would you be interested?
Say hello to Ryan Ludwick. The Indians removed him from their roster [...]

Shortstop Mike Morse has been called up from Tacoma. No corresponding roster move has been announced yet. He’s expected to get significant playing time at shortstop as the M’s hope to inject some life into the bottom of the order. The fact that he was hitting just .253/.317/.407 in the PCL is [...]

Minutes before the deadline last night, both Stephen Drew and Jared Weaver put their names on the dotted lines with the Diamondbacks and Angels, respectively. As expected, both settled for significantly less than they were demanding.
The interesting thing here, from the Mariners perspective, is that rumors continue to persist that a side [...]

LHP Lilly v LHP Moyer. 7:05, FSN.
Mariner bullpen usage
by day, by batter faced, with 10+ as + to preserve formatting
[Derek note: deleted for formatting reasons]
Organized alphabetically. Names and dates removed for pattern-scanning ease, though they’re still alphabetical. I had this done up in Excel with conditional formatting, but I could never get it to look [...]

Miguel Olivo has been sent to AAA Tacoma. Rene Rivera will replace him on the roster. Though this was rumored, I’m still somewhat surprised, since you have to anticipate that Rivera will effectively become the everyday catcher. Unless another move to acquire a more experienced catcher is in the offing …
Quoth Bill Bavasi: “We have, [...]

Hey, I have to take some high-falutin’ noble to a game this week, and he’s insisting that cigarette smoke upsets his delicate constitution. This rules out many of the cheap-beer bars that tolerate me. Does anyone have suggestions for decent non-smoking bars/restaurants within walking distance of Safeco that we can patronize?
I’d like it to [...]

Time/PI notebook watch: Borders, Bloomquist may get more and more of the playing time (Borders, presumably, until he stops hitting, Bloomquist, relative to Wilson Valdez, is probably a better choice anyway).
This leads to a problem we saw in yesterday’s game: because the bench is so thin (and bad), if Bloomquist is the 4th outfielder, playing [...]

I had Friday off of school, so I made my first-ever trip to the Hall of Fame. It’s a nice day trip from here, about 2.5 hours each way of pleasant driving through the Catskills. Incidentally, I found a great baseball fan litmus test for anyone living in this area. This week at school people [...]