Game 124, Mariners at Angels
12:35pm start on the mighty KSTW.
LHP Jake Woods, making his first major league start, vs. RHP Ervin Santana. Time to go with a lefty-heavy lineup, as they hit Sanatana much better than righties do.
I’d beg and plead for the losing to stop, but what’s the point? This is what Hargrove does late in the year. In 2002, the Orioles were 63-63 in late August but finished the year 4-32 with losing streaks of 8, 10, and 12. 4-32. That’s not a typo. Shockingly, he didn’t lose his job until the following season.
CF Ichiro!
2B Lopez
3B Beltre
LF Ibanez
1B Sexson
DH Broussard
SS Betancourt
RF Snelling
C Rivera
If this Ichiro! in center thing is for real — and by that I mean long-term, as it’s obviously for real for today — wow. Potentially a very good thing going forward.
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Aw, fuck. Now I don’t get to see the scroll.
Oh, and, side note: we just got completely swept aside by ALL of our divisional opponents. I’m sure Derek will elaborate.
Joan Figgins does it again. Damn.
…aaaaand on that downer note, what better time, after an 0-11 roadtrip against all in-division opponents (against whom the team is now 0-20 since June 11th), for Bavasi to announce that it’s “just time for a change, and Mike is class guy, a good organization man, and he knows that this is how it works…”
…dreams….
(Let mine be granted the way the “Doyle” dream was granted)
343
I really hope the women we care about have much better taste than that…
Mariners final record for 2006:
56-106
Would we get the first pick?
Go Mariners! We’re only 14 games back, we can do this!
Time for Grover to be fired…preferably across the parking lot….from a cannon…. If Dan Rohn isn’t the manager by Tuesday, there is no justice in this world.
OK.. that sucked. The good news is, we get Seahawks in 90 minutes.
Since Ichiro played centerfield today, does that mean he is no longer the selfish superstar/”team cancer” that certain sports journalists were intimating?
358: Football hey-hey!
Hey, the M’s get a day off. The road trip’s over. No one waiting at home except, uh, Yankees. And the Red Sox. And then the Angels again.
But at least they get to play TB and KC in September. They’re bound to win another game this year. Right?
357. Grover didn’t make a move today that I would have retracted. Maybe the Rivera sac bunt, and not pinch hitting Johjima at that point, but other than that, nothing.
Rizzs and Hendu:
Eleven losses in a row isn’t so bad, is it? :
I’m coming late to the party on this one, but Sherrill should have been in against Anderson. Not only does he destroy lefties, but Anderson can’t hit lefties to save his life. This is no slight on Putz, who has been very, very good (including against lefties), but Sherrill has been incredible.
Sherrill vs. LHB: .115/.214/.131
Anderson vs. LHP: .232/.263/.336
56-104 is a .346 clip… right now, yes, that would be the worst record in the majors, just ahead of Kansas City.
Even snakes couldn’t improve the plane trip home for these guys.
Has any team given up consecutive sweeps to all of its divisional rivals in a single roadtrip? I mean, has that ever been done? Is it possible this is some kind of historical low point not just for the Mariners but for all of baseball? Has KC done that? Did Detroit do it in their 100-and-whatever loss season?
And a fine performance by Snelling was wasted. Still, he gets to keep his stats, hopefully he gets some attention and has earned the right to keep playing, and maybe this outfield alignment is something we’ll see more of.
362: I’m not suggesting that he be fired for anything that specifically happened today… fact of the matter is this team has very obviously rolled over, they just bombed a “critical” road trip, they have an off day to transition to a new manager, and maybe a new homestand with a new manager will turn things around. I don’t have anything personally against Hargrove, I’m sure that he’s a nice guy, but I can’t see a reason to keep him around at this point.
Impressive road trip.
Agree with Jason. George probably gets Garret on that play, the M’s probably get out of the 8th with a 2-1 lead and JJ probably handles the 9th, streak over.
Instead, the game, like the road trip, circles the drain as Hargrove goes to a security blanket in lieu of playing a great matchup, because he let a lack of confidence in Sherrill override Sherrill’s cold hard pwnage of lefthanders, in light of Anderson’s suckage against lefthanders, and put Putz in a dubious situation that even he couldn’t escape this time around.
The M’s have made a series of previously unthinkable moves this weekend. I think it’s time for one more: time to replace Hargrove with Dan Rohn for the duration of the season.
JHC! Can you please just win one game? This is so goddamned frustrating to let Ch-own Fucking Figgins get the game winning RBI. The A’s are counting on you. ARRGGHH!
I don’t know how ownership can rationally let Hargrove kill this team. He’s not coming back next season and every loss only alienates fans more and more.
Disagree with Ichiro for resisting the move to center if you want, but calling it “vanity” seems like a lot of crap to me. I seem to remember that his reasons for resisting the move had been explained before, and that they were sensible: basically, playing right field doesn’t wear him down as much over the course of a season. Sure, it might be better for the team to move him to center anyway, but why insist on saying it’s a “no-brainer”? Seriously, sidroo, you’re so sure you know more about how Ichiro can best serve the team than he does that you have to criticize his character when you disagree?
I really do think it’s too late in the year to make a move, unfortunately. Obviously Rohn is waiting in the wings, but what do you do with him after the year? He was kept around as a mid-season replacement, but after the year they’ll do a full search (and hell, who knows if Bavasi will be back, either, making the whole thing more complicated).
Not saying I wouldn’t make the move now, but I can see why they wouldn’t.
It’s safe to say Ichiro knows his own body and its limitations better than anyone, right? Perhaps he felt, at the end of the shorter Japanese schedule, that he was worn down and unable to play much longer at 100%. The move to RF compensates for the longer MLB schedule.If he really feels like the choice is 160 games in RF at 100% or ~130 games in CF at less than 100%, I think you have to respect that. You can disagree with it, but it’s difficult to argue.
#355. Mariners final record for 2006: 56-106 Would we get the first pick?
I was curious enough yesterday to look at the current standings, just to see where the M’s ranked.
If 4 other teams in the AL and 1 other team in the NL continue to suck at the same rate as the M’s for the rest of the year, the M’s would be tied for 6th pick (which means, of course, they’d get the 7th pick…”Mariner luck”)
No, no. That’s Mariner skill or at least lack of it. We’re just not really good at sucking either.
Pretty rare to fire a manager this late in the season.
In the last 10 years, only 31 managers have been replaced in-season (not including one-game interim managers). Of those, six have been replaced this late in the season: Buddy Bell, Tigers, 1998; Dallas Green, Mets, 1996; Larry Bowa, Phillies, 2004; Lloyd McClendon, Pirates, 2005; Terry Collins, Angles, 1999; and Cito Gaston, Blue Jays, 1999.
History suggests that Grover stays until the end, barring some kind of personal meltdown.
…or untimely death.
Oh, great. Now we are wishing for Hargrove to die? Yikes.
There is some precedent for firing a manager during or following a bad losing streak, though. I know we only have 40 or so days left in the season, but it would be nice to boot Hargrove and give Rohn a chance to show everyone what he can do. If he does well, we keep him. If a better choice comes along, we hire that guy and Rohn goes to Arizona or Chicago or wherever. If he’s putrid, we go get someone else.
If Grover isn’t coming back, then why keep him in the dugout the rest of the way? Give Rohn a chance.
The good news since the break is that Richie (.888 OPS) and Adrian (.899) have looked good since the All-Star break.
The bad news is pretty much everyone else with the exception of Yuni and Kenji is in the toilet. Ichiro’s hitting like Bad Ichiro:. .277 with no power or anything, Jones and Bloomquist are ghastly as the CF, and, arguably, WFB is outhitting our All-Star 2B, and Raul’s gone cold.
That plus Moyer+Meche+Piñeiro putting up Boeing jetliner ERAs since the break…well, that’s how you collapse as a team; half the team doesn’t hit and the rotation implodes.
And the twelve-year-olds get let out to play on the blogs, as long as they’re home by dinner.
thanks for checking in, Sriram.
well, just checking in myself after a 3+ hour wait in the ferry line; we got to turn the car on just in time to hear the bottom of the ninth…
skipping over Kelley in a hurry I was entertained by Larry Stone’s managerial hunt today:
“With the pennant race no longer on the itinerary for the Mariners and their fans, it’s time to move straight to the recrimination portion of our program.”
Wow. Hargrove to Baker. Talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Hargrove to Baker should serve as a reminder to everyone that “anyone” is not better than Bavasi or Hargrove. Certainly we can do better than them, but you run a risk a getting someone utterly terrible. For every Ozzie Guillen there’s a Buddy Bell; for every Billy Beane a Cam Bonifay.
I would say, though, that Bavasi is an average GM, so the chance of getting someone worse is probably 50/50, where with Hargrove it’s probably 1 in 3 odds Buddy Bell is on the bench in 2007.
#383– well, as Stone immediately says “But the Mariners didn’t interview him then, when Baker was coming off a pennant,
and so it’s hard to envision strong interest now, when he is coming off a horrible season that has damaged his stature” I wouldn’t get to worked up about it…
might be interesting to see where doyle appears in upcoming m’s telecasts
Hargrove to Baker should serve as a reminder to everyone that “anyone†is not better than Bavasi or Hargrove. Certainly we can do better than them, but you run a risk a getting someone utterly terrible.
The counter to that, of course, is you also run the risk of waking up some years after you hired your average GM and noticing your franchise hasn’t won jack, your attendance has deteriorated, and you’re spending above-average salary for below-average return, because the ABOVE-average GMs in your division and league run rings around your C student.
“Settle for an average GM and hope you luck into a World Series some year, it could be worse” isn’t particularly inspiring, when you consider the potential this market has demonstrated. The bloom’s off Safeco’s rose, just like it is for Baltimore, Milwaukee and Pittsburgh- you won’t see 3.4 million butts in the seats again until there are shiny rings and pennants. You might run risks of Cam Bonifay if you make a change, true- at which point you fire him, too, until you get it right- but why should you expect your team to be outstanding if you don’t have a GM capable of being outstanding?
New manager? Two words: Wally Backman.