Game 29, Mariners at White Sox
RHP Gil Meche vs RHP Freddy Garcia. Freddy faces the team he would hardly recognize! Gil Meche faces the fourth-highest-scoring team in the AL! White Sox hitters beg (beg!) Ozzie Guillen to give them a start today!
Lemme throw this out there, then: why not start Livingston? The Sox are a crazy 13-2 vs RHP so far this year and 5-6 against lefties. Meche is a hittable righty. Even if Livingston’s a hittable lefty, he’s a much better option against this team if you want to win the game.
And it’s not as if you’d be messing up a critical part of the rotation, or anything. Plus, there’s a lot of debate over whether Livingston’s minor league success can translate at the major leagues. There’s not a similar debate about whether Meche is going to be contributing to the next good Mariner team. Why not look for opportunities like this to get him some work and see how he holds up?
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307 Responses to “Game 29, Mariners at White Sox”
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He’s a Gasoline Can, that’s what he is.
I come after a tough day to watch the box score and get pissed that Eddie blew it again.. did hargrove say something that he will have a new closer from tomorrow ? Doesnt he want his job here ???? WTF ????
Asked about Guardado, manager Mike Hargrove said he didn’t believe the time was right to talk about it, not so quickly after the game. He did say the Mariners will discuss what to do.
“I don’t want to answer any questions about Eddie right now,” Hargrove said. “That will be discussed, but now isn’t the right time to talk about them
Stephen Kahn and Mark Lowe: *HAHAHAHAHA* I realize these kind of numbers happen in A ball, but that’s usually in _low_ A ball. I just hope that they have some of that gassss left when they make it to the Bigs. I’ll be interested to hear your report on Julio Santiago as well, Dave. 6’0″, but 155 lb.? Room to ‘fill out??’ Tui’s hitting, too, I hear.
The 66ers have THE _WORST_ website I’ve seen in ten years.
I don’t blame Hargove for this loss. He tried to win the game in 9 innings, the proper strategy IMO. If you manage for extra innings, what does that tell your team? You expect to blow the lead? No, this was 100% about Guardado. He needs to go to middle relief until he figures things out (if he ever does). It’s beginning to look like Eddie will be joining Boone and Olerud as players who decline right before our eyes that we wait too long to trade and thus get nothing for. If I have a complaint about Bavasi it’s that he always seems to be dealing from a position of weakness due to waiting too long to move guys.
It certainly seems like its time for Hargrove to go to the bullpen by committee. Guardado is in a funk right now where he is finding ways to blow saves, and the team isn’t good enough to deal with it right now. Putz or Soriano seem like they could play closer for a week or two, while Eddie get a little more work in. The team needs wins right now, and 2-3 more late innings losses could put it into a tailspin. Guardado just hasn’t been effective so far.
But isn’t every bullpen a committee? The best thing to do is, short of being lucky enough to have a Relief Ace for whom you throw out splits and everything else because they are so freaking unhittable (in which case you use them in the highest of high leverage situations, not exclusively the 9th), just completely forget about the ridiculous notion of the Closer. Then manage the 9th the way you have the whole rest of the damn game, playing matchups, looking at career numbers against given hitters, etc.
Guardado could actually be of some use, even now, with him struggling, if he were put in positions where he could succeed. But because of this grotesque Closer rigidity, he is being put into a postion to not only fail, but fail explosively.
I can’t believe we are still having this discussion.